Alien: Unlike in appearance, history, and thought.
Alien: Distant, too distant to reach, too far to travel in a universe
bound by the speed of light.
Alien: They did not come, but they sent word, words so strange that
humans would have to devote their lives to mimicking alien appearance,
taking in alien history, and following alien thought in order to
understand them. No longer so human, generation by generation these
Humans-Reaching-to-the-Alien become Guests on their own world.
Guests
learning to think like five alien species so strange that they do not
have names for names, let alone names for themselves.
Guests
bringing gifts, the thoughts, ways of life, and technology of beings
who share nothing in common with humanity or each other but the need
for survival, the ability to think, and senses that look outward on the
universe.
Earth grew used to these gifts
delivered by alien voice and human hand, to alien medicine, alien power
sources, alien social organization, alien mathematics. Earth grew
comfortable with its Guests.
Until some
of the aliens, on a ship in a long slow two-hundred-year arc from world
to world, announce that they are coming to Earth to welcome their hosts
and Guests.
Hearing of this, one voice cries out a different word for Alien:
Monster.
