(Photo by satyabatasm)

The next morning I awoke to another Broadcast. It came right as my alarm woke me up.

To further enable communications we have synchronized your world.

That was it. I waited to see if there would be a followup message but nothing else came. Unsure what the broadcast meant, I turned on the news while I got ready for the day.

“…night’s riots have mostly been dispersed,” the reporter was saying over images of some city. There were a few broken windows and random bits of debris scattered across the street and sidewalk but the only people that were visible were police. “Fortunately, there are no reports of any serious injuries and damage to property was minimal. Most places across the country enjoyed relative calm, which we can all agree is a good thing in these unprecedented times.

“With regards to this morning’s Broadcast from our interstellar visitors, it appears that they have somehow put our entire planet into the same timezone. To help explain that we have astrophysicist Amy Couser with us. Good morning, Amy.”

“Good morning,” Dr Couser replied as she appeared on the screen.

“So explain to us what’s happened,” the news anchor said.

“Well let me begin by saying we have no idea how they have done this. This is beyond anything I ever thought would be possible, but what they’ve done is shifted everyone on Earth around in time, so that it’s 6:21 right now where I am in New York, and it’s also 6:21 everywhere else in the world.”

“So did they just change everyone’s clocks around?” the anchor asked.

“No, that would only make our clocks seem wrong,” Dr Couser replied. “I guess a better example is that I can stand outside and watch the sun rise while someone on the opposite side of the world is also watching the sunrise. In fact, everyone in the world can now watch the sunrise at the exact same time, regardless of where they are. It’s 6:22, now, wherever you are in the world. We all get to experience day at the same time, night at the same time, that’s what they meant by synchronizing our world.”

“Okay, but how does that make sense?” the anchor asked. “The sun can’t be shining on the whole earth at the same time, just like it can’t be night at the same time everywhere.”

“Like I said in the beginning, we know we are being shifted around in time, some of us might be a bit ahead or behind where we normally would be, but as to how they did it we have no idea. The reports from our astronauts confirm that it’s day the whole world over, even on the side of the earth facing away from the sun which is bizarre and exciting all at the same time.”

“You don’t seem all that concerned by everything that’s been going on,” the anchor said, betraying some of their own misgivings.

“Well, to be perfectly honest,” Dr Couser replied, “these, uh, aliens have exhibited a level of technological superiority so great that they could easily conquer us if that’s what they wanted to do. In the space where astronomy and philosophy meet, there’s what’s called the Dark Forest Conjecture, which hypothesized about hostile, advanced alien civilizations, wiping out anyone they came across. It’s a sort of pessimistic explanation about why we hadn’t found advanced aliens, because if we found them, or if they found us they would wipe us out, take our resources, whatever. The fact that these aliens haven’t done that is a good sign that the Dark Forest conjecture is incorrect in our case and that we’ve found, or rather we’ve been found by some rather impressive, peaceful aliens.”

“There have been a lot of people saying they could be lying to us, lulling us into a false sense of security.”

“Whenever I hear those arguments I always ask why. Why lie to us? What possible threat could we pose to them? If they wanted to take the Earth and strip mine it or whatever, there’s nothing we could do to stop them. We can’t even locate where they’re broadcasts are coming from. We have no idea where their ship is, or even if there is a ship. It would be such a waste of their time to bother talking to us, it would be like if we were going out to build a house and we stopped tell the ants we were there to help them with their colony, only to destroy it. That’s the kind of difference there is between us and them. We are ants.”

The news anchor looked so shocked that they needed a moment to process everything Dr Couser had just said. In the mean time, I was getting dressed and marveling over what had happened. Putting us all on the same time would certainly help with communications. Not in the sense of making a simple phone call or sending a text message, but the leaders of each country would be able to coordinate without having to pick a timezone and make everyone else conform to it. Everyone could stick to their normal schedules and still be able to work together.

I, for one, could appreciate that. Routine had always been an important element to my life. That was why, even though schools were closed for the time being, I still got up with my alarm. Only, I had nowhere to go. There were no homework assignments for me to grade, no lesson plans I needed to review, and since those were my two most common things to do at home I found myself sitting in my living room, staring at the television screen.

The news turned from Dr Couser to the world leaders who were doing just what I had assumed they would be doing. The U.N. was calling for calm. A few nations were freaking out, and some had simply gone silent to the outside world. There was a movement within the US arguing for every citizen to be armed and ready to defend themselves but for the most part the truly vocal believers of that sort of thing had already hunkered down in their doomsday bunkers and as a result weren’t currently around to shout their conspiracy theories. It was, I had to admit, a nice side benefit of all of this. Even some politicians had decided to shelter in their bunkers rather than come out and deal with the situation.

The news anchors began to repeat themselves, recapping the morning’s Broadcast and so I turned off the television. I’d check it again later in the day but for now I didn’t feel the need to have it on.

“Now what?” I asked myself.

I reviewed my lesson plans for the next couple of weeks of class anyway. They looked just as thorough as the last time I worked on them, though I did find a few minor spelling errors that I then corrected. That took all of twenty minutes. It was going to be a long day.

Most of the time I didn’t mind the fact that I lived alone. I enjoyed the quiet, probably because I grew up as an only child, was raised by a single mom who worked long hours and died a few years ago. I wasn’t overly fond of pets and never was all that interested in pursuing any romantic relationships. So, I sat there in my living room, feeling alone. Not lonely, just alone. Alone and bored.

“We’ve been contacted by an advanced alien race and I’m bored,” I laughed to myself.

I considered calling a friend and seeing what they were up to but decided against it for now. They all probably had their own stuff going on right now. The park wasn’t that far from my apartment and it had some nice walking trails. The weather outside looked fine enough for mid autumn so I put on a jacket and headed out.

The first thing I noticed was just how quiet it was. There was hardly any traffic noise, no airplanes overhead, and even the breeze seemed quieter than usual as it rustled the dying leaves. I didn’t see anyone out and about on my way to the park, and once there I found it similarly deserted.

Was everyone going to just stay in their homes? It reminded me of when I was a boy and everything shut down for the pandemic. Or maybe I was just an early riser and most people were taking the day off and sleeping in. It wasn’t even 8AM yet.

Well, that was probably it. There weren’t many people out this early on most of the Monday holidays so why would there be people out today? Really, this was a net positive since this meant there wouldn’t be as many dogs on the trail either. Why pet owners thought it was okay to let their dogs off leash while on the trails was beyond me. Just because your dog was super friendly didn’t mean I want to have it running up to me. It also didn’t mean that every other dog on the trail was comfortable with your dog either. I’d seen some pretty nasty dog fights involving at least one unleashed dog. Not to mention the people who didn’t pick up after their dogs.

I felt my neck muscles tensing and stopped thinking about dogs and their owners.

“Dogs are fine,” I told myself, whispering under my breath to help reinforce it. “Lots of people love dogs. I’m just not a dog person. Or a cat person. Or a pet person. Doesn’t mean other people can’t have and enjoy their pets.”

I just wish they’d follow the rules.

My neck muscles tensed again and I forced myself to look at the trees and the stream as I walked along the nature trail. This wasn’t the sort of park that had a playground or anything like that. It had a few large, grass fields but the bulk of it was nature trails, ponds, and streams. Frogs were croaking somewhere nearby but, as always, I couldn’t pinpoint where they were, or even which direction they were coming from.

A bunny darted across the trail a ways ahead of me. They were invasive here, but people kept dumping their pet bunnies here after discovering how much work keeping them as pets could be. They had a fairly stable population going in the park now and it was probably too late to try and prevent their spread. Sometimes people came here to try and catch a bunny to keep as a pet. They’d use carrots to lure them out, ignorant of how rabbits don’t actually eat carrots. It was probably for the best that those people were rarely successful in catching the bunnies. You had to actually know what they liked, what they wanted, to get them to come, and even then these bunnies were pretty much wild out here and were intensely skittish.

It reminded me of how people were reacting to the aliens, hiding in their homes while the aliens slowly came out of hiding…offering us help and security.

I remembered what Dr Couser had said in her interview about asking why. If they weren’t here to conquer us, then why were they here? What was there for them to gain if not our resources? She’d said we were like ants to the aliens, but what if instead of ants, we were like bunnies to them?

Those other worlds I’d seen, that everyone on earth had seen, were all at peace but I didn’t remember seeing any super advanced technology. In fact, they all looked rather similar to earth from a technological point of view.

Could it be that the aliens weren’t here to conquer, but instead to get themselves pets? The next obvious question was, would that be bad for us? Would I mind being a pet?