The Message

The President looked at himself in the mirror, preening for his public appearance.  He smartened his red tie and dusted off the lapel and shoulders of his dark blazer.  None of this tidying was actually necessary.  Both the suit and tie were made of nanobots which constantly cleaned and smoothed themselves.  The suit was perfect.

The dark jacket and red power tie, staples of twentieth-century fashion, were still de rigueur for men of power hundreds of years later.  This anachronism had become the de facto uniform of politicians and businessmen.  If you didn’t present yourself this way, the public just didn’t trust you.

The President checked his teeth in the mirror.  He knew he would be smiling a lot, unlike many of his recent public addresses, and he wanted to ensure that his teeth were gleaming like alabaster.  He’d paid enough for them.  Not only did these teeth reflect all wavelengths of visible light, but also reflected wavelengths in both the infrared and ultraviolet spectra.  His teeth were whiter than white.  The only downside to his exceedingly effusive smile was that his teeth attracted foraging honey bees.

“It’s time to address the public, mister President.”  A staff aide made a grand sweeping gesture with his right arm as he spoke, directing the President towards the door of the green room.   The President walked through the door and began down the hallway toward the press briefing room.

The President had a bit of a spring in his step as he walked.  Unlike so many other times heading toward this room, this would be a pleasant briefing.  There were no battles with congress to discuss, no wars, no sluggish economy.  There was some news, exciting news.  It was the kind of news that could get a President into the history books.

The President thought about exactly this as he entered the briefing room.  He paid no attention to the number of people awaiting his speech, standing in honor of the President’s arrival.  “When I give this address,” the President thought to himself, “to both the American people and to the world, I will have sealed my pace in history.  This will be my legacy.”

The President approached the podium and the audience returned to their seats.  The President took a short moment to survey the crowd and to find the cameras that would beam his message not just throughout the United States, not just across the planet, but also to the people working on earth-orbiting space stations and on mineral reclamation bases across the moon. 

The President began his speech, speaking in a slow, halting manner as if he were speaking to a large, outdoor audience.  He spoke...so the echoes...of the preceding phrase...did not drown out...the next.  Despite being in the most acoustically advanced briefing room known to man, he spoke in this manner.  It was the way politicians had to address large groups of people.  If you didn’t speak this way, the public just didn’t trust you.

“My fellow Americans, fellow citizens of earth, and to all men and women living and working in microgravity, I bid you a good morning.  I stand before you today, on this momentous occasion, to share with you great news.  Over three hundred years ago, scientists...” 
The President paused for a moment and then corrected himself.  “Astronomers, radio astronomers, using the Exceedingly Large Array of radio telescopes, detected a unique signal.  Believing this signal to be of intelligent origin, a message was sent.”
The President paused for a moment, watching as flashes fired from cameras.  He wanted his historic picture, the one which would make him immortal, to be dignified and iconic.  He did not want to be caught in mid sentence, his mouth agape.
“The message was simple, binary.  In it, a very basic language was outlined.  Then, in that language, we sent a simple message of greeting.  A simple ‘hello.’”
“You might say, that we were teaching the cosmos how to write a hello world program.”  The President made this statement with a sly smile and a bit of a wink.  He was trying to demonstrate his technical expertise.  Like most politicians, the President was technically illiterate, and a bit of a Luddite.  But, due to that particular affliction of the Dunning-Kruger effect common among all politicians, likely fostered by his cadre of sycophants, yes-men, and supporters, he believed himself an expert on all things.  He reached back to the one programming course he had to take in college and mentioned the one thing he recalled.  After all, once you’ve mastered the Hello World program, you’ve covered about all there is to computer science.
“Recently, we received a signal, a return signal from the very location where we had sent our original message.  This message was similar in form to our own.  It was binary and contained the same codec.”  The President used another technical sounding word to make himself sound like an expert.  He used the word incorrectly.
“But, unlike our original signal, the part of the message containing our greeting had been changed.  Obviously someone received our message and has sent us a response.”
The President paused a moment more as the camera flashes came at higher frequency.  He could feel the gravity of the moment growing.  So could the reporters on hand.
“A few days ago I was contacted by Dr. Sanjay Chattopadhyay, direct of NASA, with this wonderful news.  Despite the urgings of my own staff, my cabinet, and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I have decided that this message, the first from our brothers and sisters across the galaxy, should not be decoded and vetted by some secret cabal before being made public.  Instead, we, all of us, men and women, Americans and other citizens of earth, terrestrials and orbiters, together, can share in this momentous occasion.  We will, together, hear the first message from intelligent life not of earth.  After hundreds, nay, thousands of years of waiting, we finally hear a voice in the darkness.”
“Dr. Chattopadhyay,” the President said turning toward an Indian man to the left of the podium, “Play the message.”

The Indian man put his fingers to the touch screen of his tablet.  Instantly, the speakers in the room crackled to life, sharing the message which had traveled hundreds of light years across space to reach the earth.  It was spoken in a feminine voice, the most natural sounding and comforting voice that could be synthesized by a computer.

Everywhere human beings were watching or listening to the Presidential address, they held their collective breath, not wanting to miss a single word of this exciting message: the first message from an alien race.  The message that would prove, once and for all, that we are not alone in the universe.

“Sup?”