The day humanity discovered that it was not alone in the universe, the world rejoiced.

At least most of it did.

There were orations and celebrations and irate pulpit sermons, and military mobilization, and fear. The news had lifted everyone from personal concerns, dull jobs, and tepid sit-coms as they contemplated all the beauty and terror of the discovery: We are not alone.

What did it mean for the earth? What was to be done?

The U.S. Defense Department knew, or thought it did. When it came to aliens, one could not be too careful. It manufactured new weapons and recruited new soldiers. To assume that an unfamiliar race of intelligent beings was friendly would be folly. Most likely the aliens would want to colonize earth in order to exploit its valuable resources.

Though cautious, the White House chose to publicly view the event in a positive light. In a speech the president reached unprecedented levels of grandiloquence in which he took all the credit for the discovery. “I am deeply humbled to report that this momentous event has occurred under my watch. You see? I promised change and here it is.”

The speeches were overflowing with wonderful sound bytes that people would repeat for many days to come. “A new chapter of our history is being written,” he said, “and every day is going to be a new page.”

During these speeches protesters gathered on the White House Lawn holding illegible signs. What they were protesting and chanting unclear. Each person seemed to have their own idea of what needed protesting.

A few were conspiracy theorists who doubted the aliens existed and thought the government had invented the story to protect itself, as a diversion from sex scandals that had swept the White House in recent months.

On the opposite end, cults sprung up that worshiped the aliens as gods. Naturally, a few of the cults drank poison and died. One cult believed that Planet Zod was their ancestral home, which they equated with Eden in the book of Genesis. They believed that their spirits would be received by the Zodonians.

Despite those tragedies, the discovery of extraterrestrial life was the most magnificent and beautiful and horrible thing to ever happen to humankind. In every culture, new art flourished. New literary forms were created. And there was a pervasive feeling that all humanity was witnessing a spectacular revolution.

Everyone seemed to exist in a constant state of amazement. Everyone was desperate to see what the aliens would say next. What did they look like? What were their bodies made of? What were their customs?

But gradually humankind began to notice something unsettling. Despite copious radio messages being fired through space, the aliens were not “answering the phone” anymore. Where were they? Why were they so silent? Weeks passed, then months. Finally, a year passed.

In response to hundreds of desperate inquiries about themselves, the Zodonions at last replied. Decoded, the message said: “You wanted to know if you were alone in the universe. We have generously answered your question. But frankly we have no interest in your planet. If you continue to clutter our air space with unwelcome inquiries, we will be forced to issue an Arg Arg. Please do not contact us again.” No one knew exactly what an Arg Arg was, but many suspected it was a kind of cosmic restraining order.

If the aliens had announced that they were going to invade and colonize earth, humanity could not have been more devastated. Humans had always assumed that if they did make contact with intelligent extra-terrestrial life, the aliens – bad or good – would be just as thrilled to discover humans as the humans were to discover them.

Despite the discouragement, astronomers continued to blast off more inquiring messages, to which they received no response. It was unbearable: the expectation, the curiosity, all the preparation; and then, silence.

The collective sanity of earth-beings buckled. New scandals erupted. An official at the U.S. Defense Department colluded with an astronomer in sending a message of his own: “Our planet is full of delightful resources such as water, air, salt, and precious minerals ripe for exploitation. Surely there must be something here that you would like to mine or harvest. I am sending you some helpful coordinates. Please invade our world at once an promise to take me to your planet with you. Other than our highly colonizable resources, my planet sucks.”

The world held its collective breath in preparation for the coming cataclysm. The Defense Department pointed nuclear weapons toward the skies. Doomsday enthusiasts prowled the streets with signs and looked creepy on purpose. Americans set flags in their windows and candle flames flickered in every church.

After many weeks of praying and preparation, the worst thing of all happened and also the least expected: nothing. The streets remained silent. No doomsday interstellar messages interrupted regularly scheduled television programming. No high tech bombs rained in the streets.

The newscasters feigned enthusiasm, but anyone could see the dullness in their eyes. Viewers recognized the look because it was what they felt. The lack of an invasion was not just anticlimactic, it was insulting. The aliens did not want our natural resources, even after they had been explicitly offered. What was wrong with our resources, and why were they not good enough for the snobby Zodonians? A saying cropped up, which reflected the collective despair and confusion.

It was a quote from a six year old girl named Tina who, in an interview, was asked why she thought the aliens did not respond.

She scrunched her forehead and appeared to think deeply. “The aliens,” she said, “must be doing their laundry.” No one knew why she said it. No one asked. But her answer embedded itself deeply into the human psyche. It perfectly encapsulated the absurdity of discovering intelligent extraterrestrials that were too busy, too coy, or too uppity to communicate

The saying went viral. A line of commercial products including coffee mugs and lunch boxes appeared on shelves, portraying grey aliens with big glassy eyes and antennae who were hanging shirts, towels, and underwear on clothes lines.

The White House, having been overjoyed to claim credit for contact, appointed a committee to discuss possible reasons that the aliens refused to pursue a relationship. The committee did not have to convene for long before concluding the obvious: Earth had a brutal history; humans were a wicked species; the aliens were afraid of us.

The White House publicly congratulated the committee on their savvy conclusion in a speech in which the president resolved, on the behalf of all humans to be a better planet, less violent, more compassionate, and wiser. “We now have the ultimate incentive to do what our greatest thinkers have wanted us to do all along: end war and irrational violence and replace them with love, pity, and overall niceness.”

The “evil earth” explanation was wildly popular, because it made everyone feel dangerous and important. A line of best-selling t-shirts featured sayings such as, “The aliens just can’t handle us. We’re too damn scary.”

Meanwhile, the committee, deciding to “come clean” made a list of the cruelest people who ever lived, trotting out Hitler as the crowning achievement. In addition were a list of historically evil deeds: slaughters and repressions and imperial invasions. The committee sent videos to the extraterrestrials with a repentant statement which included a sorrowful resolution to be a nicer species.

The earth basked in self-importance, prepared, in case the aliens did not reply, to bear the cross of its tragic and intimidating moral turpitude. The strategy seemed to work, because this time the aliens did reply. “Our apologies.

You certainly are an evil species. We will do further research. Perhaps your history will add valuable insights to the cosmic annals of violence.” The world was ecstatic to bear the tragic distinction of unfathomable depravity.

The world held its breath in happy anticipation. This was really happening. Earth was going to impress the aliens after all. It did not have to wait long. Weeks later the verdict returned.

“Though your bloody history indicates that you are capable of carrying out mass destruction on a cosmic scale, you lack the technology to demonstrate it. It is therefore impossible for your villains to compete with iniquitous luminaries such as Zarg 5 of the planet Apop, who decimated a densely populated galaxy by inducing a double supernova. On an evil scale of 1 to 10, according to our computer estimations, you have scored about a 3.”

The earth released a collective groan. It had endured many strikes against its self-esteem in the last few hundred years, such as the knowledge that the earth was not the center of the universe, as it had once thought; and that the sun itself was only a medium size star, one of countless billions.

But if there was anything the earth had been sure of, it was its incontestable superiority in the realm of evil. To be outdone in moral turpitude, not by one planet, but by many, was unbearable. The meager score of 3 was the coup de gras against terrestrial self-importance.

Psychiatric visits quadrupled in the months that followed, but the psychiatrists were not there because they, too, were depressed.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy theorists theorized. Protesters protested. Ministers shook their fists from the pulpit saying that Satan had been the source of all the madness, because he wanted to make it seem like God was “seeing another planetary species on the side.”

Despite the widespread rebellion and insanity, life on earth somehow went on. The sun continued to blithely trace its daily arc across the sky, which was as annoyingly blue as it had ever been.

But beneath the appearance of sameness raged all the chaos of a child throwing a temper tantrum because a sibling had been born.

However a small and pensive part of the world looked inward. Writers wrote about what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life had really meant for Earth. They argued that the discovery was a challenge for earth-people to become more rational and compassionate toward fellow earthlings.

One writer speculated that the world had been lonely because it saw itself as alone and apart from the rest of the universe, dwarfed by its unfathomable size. But perhaps the universe was all one thing, and separateness an illusion. Instead of being alone and apart, humans were part of all the vastness. Therefore, getting a low score on evil was not nearly as shameful as it had appeared.

Meanwhile, creativity flourished. Songs were written. Art was made. They were like cave paintings rendered on a cosmic wall that would serve as messages to those who would not remember the momentous day of first contact and the return to loneliness after being snubbed.

Years passed. And with each new day, the memory of the aliens was a little less intense than the day before.

Recovery was painfully slow the way it sometimes is for someone getting over a crush, and the loved object gets a little less lovable over time, and the memory, almost imperceptibly, fades, until one day the world settles, food becomes enjoyable again, and life does not seem so bad.

There was certainly no going back. The short-lived encounter with alien life had forever altered how the earth saw itself in relationship to the universe.

But for a while, those who had lifted their eyes to the skies lowered them to look, really look, at their surroundings. They were more likely to notice the way the sunlight struck a pond, or the way the silken fur of a cat felt beneath their palms. They noticed each other, and they observed themselves.

They even began to wonder again, the way humans have done from the beginning. Why were they here? What all was out there in the unexplored reaches of space? Only one question had been answered: Is there intelligent life on other planets?

But there were many other mysteries worth pondering. The riddle of life had not been solved. And if one intelligent species existed, maybe there were others out there, nicer ones who did not have so much laundry to do.

Babies were born, and they grew up without any memories of the excitement and disappointment the aliens had caused. But earth was never quite the same again.

The universe seemed like a great and unexplored ocean with countless islands of which the earth was only one.

And inside the vast reaches of the unknown were questions without end. Amid all its uncertainty and confusion, humanity lifted its head and poised itself on the brink of the future, waiting, wondering, and exploring, as it always has.

Earth, it turned out, had its own laundry to do, problems and interests that had nothing to do with making extraterrestrials like them. And Earth decided that, after it had folded most of its towels and hung up its shirts, it could once again cast its gaze upon the stars and find itself, a small but beautiful expression of the cosmic mystery, a single note in the music of existence that, though tiny, deserved to be heard and, perhaps, even loved.