Calgary, August 2023
Extraterrestrial spaceship landed in Nevada desert, close to the Area 51, the centre of extraterrestrial activities of the United States government. The crew unloaded the extraterrestrial pick-up truck and drove to the closest village to investigate the civilization of the planet Earth. It was evening, the sun was setting, the sky was dark blue, and first stars started to appear.
“It looks nice here,” said Martin, a crew member who was doing PhD in extraterrestrial civilizations.
“Yes, it does,” agreed the captain of the spaceship. “Let’s see if their civilization matches the beauty of their nature.” The name of the village they went was Beatty, Nevada, population 762, and it was about 150 Km northeast from Las Vegas. But the place didn’t reveal much about the Earth civilization.
“It looks deserted,” commented Martin. Indeed, there was not a soul to be seen. After some exploring, they saw a motel called Atomic Inn, with the sign “Open” hanging on the door.
“Perhaps the name has something to do with their technology,” said the captain and send Martin investigate. “You might find something interesting for your PhD thesis,” he added.
When Martin entered the motel, he saw a man behind the counter watching a screen.
“Good evening, my name is Martin,” he introduced himself. “I am researching extraterrestrial civilizations and I would like to ask you some questions.”
The man just shook his head. “So, you are one of those lunatics who think they came in a spaceship. What do you want to know?”
“I would like to know the best way to research your civilization.”
“You can watch movies on Netflix. That will tell you a lot about our civilization.”
“The man said the best way to research this civilization is to watch movies on Netflix,” replied Martin to the questions of his colleges. The crew went back to their spaceship, got connected to Internet, created Netflix account, and paid the $15 monthly fee. Extraterrestrials can do all that easily. But they soon found out that Netflix has thousands of movies.
“Which one should we watch?” asked the captain.
“Perhaps we should start with the most popular,” somebody suggested. Martin typed the inquiry into Google and found out that some of the most watched movies on Netflix are Heart of stone, The gray man, The stranger, amongst many others. The first one was dealing with a murder and finding out who done it. It was also true of the second and the third movie.
“They all seem to be the same,” said one of the crew.
“Perhaps the population of Earth is divided into two tribes. The first tribe are the killers, and the second tribe does the chasing,” suggested Martin, who had a tendency of proposing unconfirmed theories. But the captain disagreed. “If this would be true, who created all that civilization? Who build the cities with their everlasting traffic jams and who designed the machinery needed to construct them?”
Those were good questions. Obviously, those two tribes couldn’t do it. “Maybe it was done by ancient, extinct civilization, and the two tribes are all what is left of them,” came up with a new theory Martin.
“But what we see here is not that old,” commented Daniel, a crew member in charge of observing the activities on the planet Earth. “The ancient civilization must have existed until recently.”
That was also true. Nobody, not even Martin, had any explanation for that until Daniel came up with an idea. “You know,” he said. “Observing people, I noticed that each one has a little box and is watching it constantly. People seems to be doing nothing but watching their little boxes. Perhaps that is what extinguished their civilization.”
Everybody agreed that it was a good theory. It explained all their observations. They send a report to the headquarters and started a flight back home.