On the 8th of October in 2027, an alien craft was seen entering the atmosphere over the Atlantic around 600 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

It stayed very high while covering the United States and then descended quickly before landing in an open field near a water reservoir, in Palo Alto, California.

The craft was extremely spherical, somehow more than a sphere, and had a silverish shine to it that seemed to reflect and somehow improve the colors around it.   

At first, the military surrounded it and sent all sorts of drones and probes to go and inspect the craft, but within 18 hours the craft began sending messages on multiple frequencies.

It started by explaining that it was a representative of a distant civilization called The Aleta. That they started as biological life forms but transitioned into a unified (part bio part technology) form eventually, and that they were here to share information with Earth at a crucial time of its development.

Upon figuring out that the craft could not be approached, destroyed, or moved in any way—and after the craft sufficiently explained its technological superiority and benign intentions—humans started listening to what it had to say.

Aleta (that’s what everyone was calling it) sent all sorts of information. It evidently figured out how to read all of our media and look for problems and trivialities. It started sending helpful information about how to solve them.

Some days, it would send extra extraordinary recipes for how to make better muffins, using an extracted type of butter and a new type of salt. It also released the most breathtaking and spellbinding 48 peace fantasy series that quickly became the most talked about and brilliant piece of art ever created. It was called Altered Dominion. Think Game of Thrones, Shakespeare, Harry Potter, the Notebook, and The Sopranos all rolled into one—except 1000 times more compelling.

On other days, it would release explanations of fundamental science, including an actual unified theory of physics. Forumulas for new materials. And explanations of dark matter that we’ve never seen before. The Unified Theory was released on a Thursday, after it rained in Palo Alto for nearly 3 days straight, and after the season 35 finale of Altered Dominion.

But by the summer of 2029, and 2 1/2 years of constant talk and speculation worldwide, the mainstream conversation about Aleta began to change from wonder to disillusionment.

A small number of people—around 140,000 or so—were still stitched to every transmission that came from the craft, and they had actually learned how to speak with it in real-time. They oriented their lives around all of its messages and started working on how to incorporate the new science and art streaming from the craft.

This group, who called themselves ATLiens for some strange reason, literally organized sleeping shifts, transcribing shifts, and studying shifts, and then a whole discipline around the incorporation of the new knowledge into how humans currently do things. To them, the knowledge that had been sent just in the last two years would take several decades, if not a couple of centuries, to properly integrate into human society. It was just that much data, and it was just that transformational.

But to most people, once they had finished watching Altered Dominion and eating all the new recipes and trying on all the new outfits, they went back to TikTok.

By 2030, most people had forgotten about the strange sphere in Palo Alto. And more than forget about it, they took on a disappointed attitude towards it.

The difference between this group, which was most of humanity, and the cult-like ATliens could not be more extreme. Most of them moved to Palo Alto and surrounding areas in the Bay Area, just so they could be closer to others who understood the significance. They structured their lives around the regular broadcasts from Aleta and they could think of nothing else.

They studied every single piece of new information from Aleta, and figured out how to build new things using it. Many of them had trouble sleeping because they feared missing a transmission and all the wisdom contained within.

The difference in attitudes between the ATliens and normal people was captured well by an interaction between Sarah Meyer, a devoted ATLien from Rochester now living in Fremont, who was getting her morning coffee at a Starbucks in Palo Alto.

The barista asked her what all her books and computers were for, and why she always seems so excited when she came in. Sarah explained—a bit embarrassed—that she was one of “those people”, and that she comes in and gets her coffee, and then heads out to the reservoirs to receive new transmissions.

The barista wiped his hands, looked at her blankly, and said,