Let’s See Them Aliens

Editor Doreen tasked the Blog Team with addressing the theme of “Far Away.” This is Luke’s response.

By Luke Langlois, Buzz Lightyear’s friend

We are all-too-often defined by our differences in life, but, at the end of the day, we have many universal similarities. We all (hopefully) speak the universal language of laughter and smiles. I also have a side theory that dogs are constantly trying to replicate our smiles, but that’s not the point of this post. I am here to discuss the one universal quandary that everyone has considered at one point or another in their lives–where are the aliens?

Unless you’ve been living under a metaphorical rock, you heard about the Area 51 Raid that took place on September 20th, 2019. The “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” event started out as a Facebook event. As the event gained internet fame, people began to think that this was a great idea! The military isn’t just going to take down millions of citizens. Although, the Air Force did say that they would do whatever needed to defend the United States and its assets. Anyway, two million people on Facebook alone marked themselves as “attending,” and an additional one million said they were “interested.” This doesn’t even take into account the additional millions of people who don’t have Facebook that heard about it through other sources of media like Twitter, Instagram, or the mainstream news networks. We may seem globally divided all the time, but that hasn’t stopped us from putting millions of heads together for a “joke.” Doesn’t that give you some faith in humanity? 

The actual impact of the raid breached the physical world as well as the digital world. Lincoln County, a county neighboring Area 51, drafted an emergency declaration to prepare for a (predicted) 40,000 raiders. The town of Rachel, Nevada, had similar fears. They hypothesized that raiders and their cars from more temperate climates would not be able to handle the heat, causing emergency services and general stores to be overwhelmed. Luckily, their worries did not materialize. Only 150 people actually showed up around Area 51, and only two people were arrested. To my disappointment, nobody tried to raid Area 51. 

We were not able to rescue the extraterrestrials from Area 51, so our alien brethren will remain a mystery. Everyone has a different opinion on extraterrestrial life, but if I had to generalize, people tend to believe that aliens are far, far away. I don’t think so. We’re not quite sure just how expansive the universe is, but we do know that Earth is a tiny dot in the grand context of space. I also subscribe to the multiverse theory. According to my limited understanding of this concept, there’s a universe where Palm Valley’s primary uniform color is teal. Yes, teal. Given this, are we expected to believe that nothing else in our universe, let alone any parallel universe, has stumbled upon Earth? The chances of that are slim, especially when you also consider our Earth’s long history. I’ll leave you with this thought: there already are extraterrestrial species on this planet. They landed long before humans could understand matters like these. Armadillos are weird. Cats have bumps on their tongues. That’s not normal. Trust me, near or far, our intergalactic neighbors are watching. 

Editor: Doreen Yuan