The message had been received by an outlying satellite and relayed to Earth in the year 2201. When the head scientists and chief military officers listened to the message all they heard was garbled gibberish. But they knew the message came from out there, somewhere. It was proof of alien life.

2201 had slipped into 2202 by the time the scientists and computer programmers finally came up with a program that could translate the alien language. Previous attempts had resulted in messages that read “cat fear pull gar my nine dar hur fire” and other, similar meaningless ramblings. But this new program, after running for a week, gave them “Hail, intelligent beings”. It was a start, it proved the program worked. All that was left was to wait.

Late in 2202, after several storms that cut the power to the lab, four armed inspections during which the program had to be halted and the progress hidden for security reasons, one idiot spilling coffee on the keyboard, and a new motherboard, the message translation appeared complete.


Hail, intelligent beings. Greetings from the most holy leader of the (word untranslatable). We have been sweeping the universe in search of intelligent life and have found many races. To each we have offered the same proposal, the same hand of friendship, that we now offer to you.

Our (word untranslatable) started as the religion of our home-world. When we achieved the lever of space travel we now possess our god gave us the mission to preach to the stars. And so we have brought the message of truth to dozens of inhabited planets. Our (word untranslatable) has grown into a hierarchy of believers. And we most humbly invite you to join us.

We offer you some information in order to facilitate your choice. Our god, (name untranslatable), is the creator of the universe, the planets, and every sentient being. He made himself known to us, the chosen people, in his true form. To others he appeared as a guiding deity, but in all his forms he is still one and the same. (Name untranslatable) is a kind god but his kindness extends only so far. Those who know of his true nature, as you now know, and choose not to acknowledge him, are subject to his wrath.

Be thus warned that this message does has not been sent to you lightly. Understand that we are sharing this knowledge with you to save your people and bring them into the safety of his care. It is with your well being in mind that we share even the possibility of death so that you might choose wisely.

Our ship, the (name untranslatable), shall reach your system 23 Universal Standard Years after the transmission of this message. We look forward to speaking with you, learning about your culture, and teaching you more about the divine creator.

A second program was quickly designed to do the math on the dates. What this program discovered, near the very end of the year 2202, was that 23 Universal Standard Years translated into ten Earth Years. And one of those years had been spent simply translating the message.

Time was running out.