Impact

Humanity was nearly undone at the suggestion of doing anything together, but it was obvious that united action was required somehow. Nations argued with each other, societies were rocked, politicians fell, and still the aliens floated in orbit ominously doing seemingly nothing. The many and varied imaginations of the world were wild with dark speculations. Fear made every person's skin crawl.

Eventually, after a serious and extensive European led diplomatic campaign, humanity chose a small global group to negotiate, or at least investigate, what it was that the aliens actually wanted, if anything.

Small groups of aliens had landed in obscure countries where they could easily nullify small arms and pacify human hostility with a confusing ray of energy that emitted from nowhere. Contacts were brief, but no one of either group died or were captured, including those human beings who frequently and violently attacked the other worldly beings through either fear or desire to control. 

A team of military scientists of six nations finally made a mutual and friendly contact with one of these small alien groups on land, and through math, pantomime, linguistics, and luck, they succeeded in establishing communication with the beings from another place, beings wholly unlike anything humanity knew. It was an incredible benchmark in the history of the world. Nothing would ever be the same again. A page had turned.

Over the next several weeks, calm seeped through the academic and intellectual classes when it was finally understood that, while the aliens were vastly superior to humanity in terms of its technology, their intentions appeared to be wholly benign.  Humanity, it seemed, could have been obliterated easily with hardly any effort, with weapons against which it had no apparent defense, and without the aliens even making themselves known. The logic stated that since humanity was so inconsequential to the aliens, that it took more effort to visit us than it did to destroy us, the alien intentions must then be virtuous. They shared with us. They seemed friendly. If the aliens truly did not care and had viewed humanity callously, they would have done away with us already as easily as a human snapping its fingers.

It was discovered that there existed powerful alien sciences that had remained totally unknown to humanity thus far. With a tiny command, and from many solar systems away, humanity could have popped out of existence in an mere instant, a micro-second, without its suspecting an attacker. It would have appeared as a random cosmic ray if anyone were left alive to observe it.

Further it was learned, that while the aliens would not share much of their technology with us, they shared some bits that they considered harmless. 

Suddenly, humanity had a cheap method of producing vast amounts of energy with a few harmless elements which were easily obtained on earth. Entire industries became irrelevant over night. Even the poorest nations no longer needed assistance creating their internal infrastructures. Competition for economic dominance nearly evaporated from the planet in a month. The poorest villager of any nation could now eat, cook, warm themselves, and take care of all their essential needs for a tiny handful of pennies. Money itself was becoming obsolete.

Perhaps the Universe as a whole was beneficent after all. Aliens had given humanity a big leg up into the far future, common peoples' needs were being met, and humanity's longest problems were starting to fade away.


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