The Story

Communication lies at the core of civilization. From the first grunts onto the first villages and empires, humans have searched for better and faster means of communicating with one another.

Another thing that lies at the core of what it means to be human is curiosity. Since the first time they’ve looked at the stars, humans have been interested in space and what lies beyond. From their vantage point on Earth they’ve managed to decipher their surroundings, and learned.

Uniting these two basic human concerns, on November 16th, 1974 (Central Solar Earth time) an interstellar radio message was sent out. This message wasn’t in reply to anything, but in true human spirit it was an attempt at communicating just to see what happens. Pointed at the globular star cluster M13, a nearby collection of stars, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico sent out a series of radio waves that spelled out a message in binary.

The message underlied the hope that an extraterrestrial intelligence might receive and decipher these radio waves. The scientists behind it sought to create the most concise explanation of what it means to be a human, what we have discovered about the universe, and where the message came from. In order to do this, they focused on seven points:

1. The numbers one (1) to ten (10) (white).
2. The atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which make up deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (purple).
3. The formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA (green).
4. The number of nucleotides in DNA, and a graphic of the double helix structure of
DNA (white & blue).
5. A graphic figure of a human, the dimension (physical height) of an average man, and
the human population of Earth (red, blue/white, & white respectively)
6. A graphic of the Solar System indicating which of the planets the message is coming
from (yellow).
7. A graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope and the dimension (the physical diameter) of
the transmitting antenna dish (purple, white, & blue).

The message was broadcasted a single time via modulated radio waves. So far, no reply has been received.

Communication has evolved greatly since 1974 (Central Solar Earth time), and those advances have been at the center of human development. The advent of the internet allowed humans to communicate instantaneously around the planet. This has brought humans closer together than ever, but a new development is bound to change everything. After receiving the Arecibo message, the aliens managed to create an open communication channel to Earth. Referred to as “The Tracks”, this channel is now open for exploration.

On September 6th, 2019 (Central Solar Earth time) a group of selected scholars from both the humans and the aliens first made direct contact to one another. Those Aliens are already familiar with a bit of what it means to be human, coming from the Arecibo message. Now the question is, how will these two intelligent groups of the universe communicate, what will they share, and will they be hostile or peaceful?

The original Arecibo message (in binary) can be heard here: Arecibo Message.

#### The Factions ####

**The Humans**: Humans are a carbon-based, bipedal species from the planet Earth. Some of their most impressive accomplishments are: development of complex language use, mastery of fire, the discovery of calculus, and the music of Freddie Mercury. Some of their least impressive accomplishments are: vegemite, wars, the Flat Earth Society, and collectively spending over 10% of their productive time looking at pictures of cats.

Humans have always been fascinated with space, and have long earned to get in touch with an alien civilization. Now that the two sides are in touch, what will they create? How will they explore the many questions they’ve always wanted to ask to one another?

**The Aliens**: An extremely curious race, the Aliens are very interested in learning more about the Humans from Earth. After establishing that Humans are mostly harmless, they went on to observe their daily rituals. Some of the Aliens favorite human rituals are to go places to acquire sustenance and take photographical evidence before the actual consumption and the thorough measurement of one’s length until they are of adequate size to search for their own homes.

The Aliens are fascinated by the endless creativity of humans, who are great at coming up with solutions to problems. Even more fascinating, is the human’s endless capacity to finding problems in the first place. The aliens are hoping that, by getting in touch with humans, they can also learn more about their ways, and come up with their own clever solutions.