Contact - Carl Sagan [39]
Most of the planets in the Galaxy would be venerable and pretechnical, maybe even lifeless. A few would harbor civilizations much older than ours. Worlds with technical civilizations just beginning to emerge must be spectacularly rare. It was probably the only quality fundamentally unique about the Earth.
Through lunch, the landscape slowly turned verdant as they approached the Mississippi Valley. There was hardly any sense of motion in modern air travel, Ellie thought. She looked at Peter's still sleeping form; he had rejected with some indignation the prospect of an airline lunch. Beyond him, across the aisle, was a very young human being, perhaps three months old, comfortably nestled in its father's arms. What was an infant's view of air travel? You go to a special place, walk into a large room with seats in it, and sit down. The room rumbles and shakes for four hours. Then you get up and walk off. Magically, you're somewhere else. The means of transportation seems obscure to you, but the basic idea is easy to grasp, and precocious mastery of the Navier-Stokes equations is not required.
It was late afternoon when they circled Washington, awaiting permission to land. She could make out, between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, a vast crowd of people. It was, she had read only an hour earlier in the Times telefax, a massive rally of black Americans protesting economic disparities and educational inequities. Considering the justice of their grievances, she thought, they had been very patient. She wondered how the President would respond to the rally and to the Vega transmission, on both of which some official public comment would have to be made tomorrow.
* * *
"What do you mean, Ken, `They get out'?"
"I mean, Ms. President, that our television signals leave this planet and go out into space."
"Just exactly how far do they go?"
"With all due respect, Ms. President, it doesn't work that way."
"Well, how does it work?"
"The signals spread out from the Earth in spherical waves, a little like ripples in a pond. They travel at the speed of light-186,000 miles a second-and essentially go on forever. The better some other civilization's receivers are, the farther away they could be and still pick up our TV signals. Even we could detect a strong TV transmission from a planet going around the nearest star."
For a moment, the President stood ramrod straight, staring out the French doors into the Rose Garden. She turned toward der Heer. "You mean… everything?"
"Yes. Everything."
"You mean to say, all that crap on television? The car crashes? Wrestling? The porno channels? The evening news?"
"Everything, Ms. President." Der Heer shook his head in sympathetic consternation.
"Der Heer, do I understand you correctly? Does this mean that all my press conferences, my debates, my inaugural address, are out there?"
"That's the good news, Ms. President. The bad news is, so are all the television appearances of your predecessor. And Dick Nixon. And the Soviet leadership. And so are a lot of nasty things your opponent said about you. It's a mixed blessing."
"My God. Okay, go on." The President had turned away from the French doors and was now apparently preoccupied in examining a marble bust of Tom Paine, newly