Contact

by Carl Sagan

“There was so much your television programs didn’t tell us. Oh, we could figure out your technological level pretty well, and a lot more about you. But there’s so much more to your species than that, things we couldn’t possibly learn indirectly. I recognize you may feel some breach of privacy—” “You’re joking.” “—but we have so little time.” “You mean the Test is over? We answered all your questions while we were asleep last night? So? Did we pass or fail?” “It isn’t like that,” he said. “It isn’t like sixth grade.” She had been in the sixth grade the year he died. “Don’t think of us as some interstellar sheriff gunning down outlaw civilizations. Think of us more as the Office of the Galactic Census. We collect information. I know you think nobody has anything to learn from you because you’re technologically so backward. But there are other merits to a civilization.” “What merits?” “Oh, music. Lovingkindness. (I like that word.) Dreams. Humans are very good at dreaming, although you’d never know it from your television. There are cultures all over the Galaxy that trade dreams.”