THE WHEN

Do you know what we think as we watch and listen, at our stations? As we stare at you, floating there? Well, I’ll tell you because, by the time you hear this, sixty-two trillion light years will have elapsed and we’ll be in different positions.

We did that, once. We were like you, once. We sent our people into space searching for what your Carl Sagan calls ‘Advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space’. And we made contact with you, but you thought we were other than we are because, on the outside, we are very different.

We’re as advanced as you. And, under the skin, very like you. So we hope that the record of music and pictures and sounds and greetings of all your peoples, the one you sent up with Voyager in your year 1977, the one with the sounds of crickets and elephants, of Brandenburg and Johnny B. Goode, of greetings in all those languages and pictures of mothers feeding children, all we can hope is that ours, the one we made for you, the one with our sounds and our songs, our languages and our mothers, will find you just as yours found us.

We know the what and we know the how. Just as you do. We know the who and we know the why. Just as you do. What we all still have to discover is the when.