Aliens
In 1971, an encoded message was received by a battery of radar telescope dishes in Hawaii. The contact was a voice giving an oratory greeting and a message of peace, and also encoded a black and white image of an alien civilization. The signal determined to be 300 light years away from the Altorian Nebula. The world had a short burst of excitement and expectation of greater things to come, which soon died down to life as normal after six months. The reality had settled in, that our message was really a simple hello sent out to whomever was listening, and that it would be another 600 years before we could send a reply and expect some response back. Which given the distance, it hardly served as a means for effective communication. However, this attitude changed slightly with the arrival of another alien species.In 1978 an alien vessel burst into our solar system and was trapped by the gravitational pull of Earth. The vessel crashed into the United States heralding the arrival of Omni-Man. With his blue hairless skin, odd round eyes, but almost human-like shape, he became a guest and hero of the United States. His people, the Volarians, were roughly 3,500 light years away. Omni-man himself was the equivalent of a human astronaut. His craft was an experimental inter-solar system prototype. During his maiden flight a mishap sent him too close to a large gas giant which altered his course and in his attempts to pull out of its gravitational field, hurled him to the outer reaches of his solar system. There it was suspected the craft entered some manner of a wormhole that instantaneously shot him through to the interior of our solar system and onto Earth. Although his people are much like Earthlings in technological levels (sadly not being able to advance human sciences), he did have astounding powers of superhuman strength, durability, and flight.
Another alien arrived on Earth in 1985 in Great Britain. What was first thought to be a meteorite ended up being some organic ‘egg’ and out of it (after some cooling) emerged a small child. Reptilian in features, but bipedal, he was called, ‘Allen’ by the people that found him and later raised him as their own. Allen quickly developed into an adult and became a hero for the British people as Starman. He has no idea of his people or where he came from, and had an extremely limited vocabulary of this language when he arrived. He does have some recollection that he was on some form of a colony ship that underwent a horrible accident. He was placed inside some type of an escape pod and jettisoned from the ship. Because of not knowing who his people really are, and the love his human parents gave him after he crashed on earth, Starman considers his allegiance is with Earth and humans.
These three incidents have cemented the knowledge to the public that human beings are not alone, and that there are some intelligent species out in space. However, the interaction of such life with humans is very limited. It is likely that humans may not really encounter any intelligent life until they gain real space faring technology, and at best be able to travel 300 light years to our nearest neighbors, the Altorians.
[However unknown to the public and considered top secret information, the view of aliens among many governments are very different from the general public. Very secret occurrences came about in 1947 out in Roswell, New Mexico and also in 1954 in the Soviet Union. Alien crafts crashed on earth and alien remains (each of different species) were obtained from both sites. These incidents have been the source of much secret research done to find extraterrestrials, and more importantly, to study the technological capabilities of the vehicles that crashed. Higher sources in each government recognize that because each superpower at the time had access to alien technology, the Cold War continued well into the 1980s. Little useful technology came from these alien encounters. However, it does cause some government officials to worry about who is really watching Earth, and what are their true intentions.]
