Contact across the Solar System

The Message

The capsules had this message in them:

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Greetings, people of planet Earth! Greetings from the Solar System Community!

We wish to make contact with the people of your planet. We wish to start a conversation that we hope will lead to greater things for all of us.

Our homes are scattered over the Solar System, but we have created a community that includes them all. We are human, members of your species, and we originated from your planet, but we use technology originally introduced by visitors from elsewhere in our Galaxy, visitors that we call "The Founders". How we got to where we are now is a long story that we hope to be able to tell someday, even though much of it continues to be very mysterious to us. We have chosen a distant mode of contact because some of us are concerned that some Earth people will misuse our technology and cause great suffering and destruction to all of us. We would love to be able to land in places like New York City's Central Park, but we regret that we prefer not to do that unless our relations are good enough.

We have nothing to do with UFO abductions. Those actions seem pointless and cruel to us, and we wish to assure their victims that we will be much more friendly than their abductors. We do not look like "Grays" or "Reptilians" or "Insectoids" or any other such abductors, and we know little or nothing about them.

We gather that English is the closest thing to a shared language of the people of the Earth. Some of us are also proficient in that language, as well as in several others. So would English be a good choice as a primary language of future communications?

Likewise, we gather that the metric system of units is the most commonly-used system of the people of the Earth, with the largest exception being the English system in the United States. So would the metric system be a good choice for measurement units?

We look forward to your response, and we have provided a way to respond.

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Then a description of a radio protocol to use for communication and where the SSC's antennas are: the Moon.

The message became big news everywhere, and it provoked a lot of responses.

"I wish that they'd stuck around. There is so much that we could have learned about them. But at least they've given us a way to stay in touch."

"This is so confusing. They claim that they want to be friends, but they are so aloof. They ran away, for Pete's sake! What are they afraid of?"

"Friendly aliens? That's almost too good to be true. Let's wait and see about them."

"So we are supposed to sing 'Kumbaya' with this alleged 'Solar System Community'? What do they *really* want with us?"

"What cloying sentimentality. They seem like a bunch of hippies who never grew up."

"What do they mean by 'misusing' their technology and causing 'suffering' and 'destruction'? That we are horrible warmongers?"

"'We are the Solar System Community. Resistance is futile.' That's what it looks like to me."

"What do they mean by 'greater things for all of us'? Assimilating us? I don't want to be Borgified."

"I bet that they look like ugly monsters."

"'To Serve Man'. Need I say more?"

"Why Central Park? I always thought that it was the White House lawn."

"What a bunch of cowards. Hit-and-run contact? I wouldn't have believed it unless I saw it."

"So they are claiming that they were a bunch of lab rats for a bunch of ET's? Lab rats who broke out of their cages and overthrew the ET's and took over their technology? Now they are coming for us. That can't be good."