“In the year 2014, a space capsule named KEO will be launched into orbit by the European Space Agency. Its destination is the planet Earth, 50,000 years from now.…Also on board: a specially-engineered, durable DVD, with pictographic instructions for building a DVD reader.”

—Motherboard.tv

Leader:

We have completed assembly of the device and viewed the contents of the disc-shaped object contained within the red capsule, carbon-dated to fifty thousand years ago, at the dawn of our planet’s great Heat Age. Our exploratory team was able to make various observations about the documented ancient civilization, as their language is remarkably similar to ours, albeit primarily monosyllabic.

Upon activating the device, we were greeted by an ominous message forbidding us from duplicating the disc-shaped object or risk detainment of up to five years and forfeiture of the species’ currency, valued at “$250,000.” Repeated attempts to bypass this message, by depressing the “menu” button on the assembled control device, were met with an image of a small “hourglass” onscreen.

The menu button malfunctioned again as we were forced to watch three successive, synopsized versions of what appeared to be lengthier fictitious narratives. The leader in each was the same yellow-haired female of the species, who went, for indiscernible reasons, by the different names of “Heigl,” “Hudson,” and “Witherspoon.” In each, she portrayed a youthful female in the public communications sector of the vestments industry who attempted to reproduce with a youthful, dark-haired male in the financial industry without succumbing to her physiological imperative to simulate an action known as “cuddling.” Between episodes of physical ineptitude, in which the yellow-haired female tripped down “stairs,” revealed infelicitous sections of her anatomy to her colleagues, and, while engaged in the act of reproduction, uncontrollably expelled gaseous matter related to prior consumption of a “mega-burrito with extra-hot sauce,” she and the male exchanged acerbic comments that betrayed their escalating mutual desire to “cuddle.” Despite the energetic auditory accompaniment of a being known only as “Cee Lo,” we do not hypothesize that the narratives were intended to provoke laughter.

Next was a thirty-minute portrayal of a people, descended from a temperate region known as “Italy,” living in a sector of the “northeast of the United States,” in a “sand”-filled community abutting a vast sodium-water source. Their speech, appearance, and customs indicate they may have been part of a yet more primitive civilization. Daytime habits revolved around repetitively moving steel objects of varying density against and with gravity, resting inside epidermis-pigmentation capsules, and the water- and surfactant-based purification of vestments, in that order. Nocturnal habits included excursions to dark, enclosed spaces for ritualistic mass gyrations to auditory accompaniment while imbibing a liquid whose container depicted—perhaps as a symbolic representation of animal sacrifice—a red taurine being.

Intercalated within this portrayal were a number of thirty-second fictitious narratives of objects available for purchase, the utilization or unavailability of which rendered members of the species content or dissatisfied, respectively. The majority of these objects produced a “crunchy” auditory accompaniment when consumed, and were orange-colored. Also present at intervals was the container depicting a red taurine being.

This was followed by two hours of information about a number of the species’ most physically symmetrical members, delivered by its slightly less symmetrical members. The information was documented, however, by highly asymmetrical and hirsute members equipped with portable visual-recording devices. The most compelling of the subjects was the two-bodied deity known as “Brangelina,” guardian of a significant percentage of its larval population. An ongoing source of intrigue was whether one-half of “Brangelina” might detach itself and return to its less symmetrical prior host, thus creating a less mellifluous-sounding hybrid, “Pittiston.”

At this juncture, we accidentally depressed a button on the control device that played, over the onscreen images, the disembodied voices of the disc-shaped object’s “director” and “producer.” The two beings entertained each other with protracted anecdotes of the creation of the disc-shaped object, laden with “inside jokes.”

The viewing concluded with eight hours of footage whose lower-right-hand corner was embossed with “C-SPAN.” (Note: This was the first evidence of written, as opposed to oral, language.) The members of the species present had levels of asymmetry comparable to those of the hirsute documenters of information about the highly symmetrical members, yet they were somehow the species’ leaders. They made lengthy disquisitions, ostensibly on behalf of their powerless “constituents,” who had elected them, but cursory facial and auditory scans revealed their occluded intents: to consolidate power; kowtow to “lobbyists” ultimately responsible for their election; or, often, just to hear the sound of their own voices. We would have been shocked at the absence of a popular uprising against these potentates were it not for the disc-shaped object’s preceding anesthetizing content. An alternative hypothesis is that the entire “C-SPAN” presentation was a fictitious narrative intended to provoke laughter.

During the course of the observation, thirteen members of the exploratory team perished. We have since destroyed the disc-shaped object to ensure the survival of our civilization. At present, our radar systems are unable to determine if there exists a second disc-shaped object, contained within a new red capsule, which will be delivered to us next, in what the species refers to as a “queue.”

Teddy Wayne’s second novel, “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine,” will be published in February.

Illustration by Pablo Lobato