Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: A set of lectures discussing alien life, or the Other and how abundant they are in the universe, touching briefly on what these beings mean for humanity. The book is meant for less advanced manges.
The Drake Equation is… a curious little tidbit of the academic wonderland of probabilistic argumentation. It’s about the conceivability of alien civilizations in our known universe, the Milky Way. More conclusively, it’s a mathematical equation that goes over the possibilities in need of human consideration in the event of us coming into the possibility of encountering and conversing with any aliens floating out there between the stars. Interesting nighttime reading if you’re really curious, but today we’re bringing it up to cut it right open. More precisely, we’re here to talk about how it’s wrong. Not stupid, not implausible; just plain wrong.
So, that’s a big statement. Let’s elaborate. Referring to the studies on the subject of Firat Rizvan Serhan Tiryaki, a sort-of classic Turkish occultist, we’ve already encountered more than 370 different species of “alien” within our existence on Earth, and his studies came to that conclusion well over 300 years ago. We’ve no idea how many we’ve come to encounter since, but it’s an interesting thing to mull over.
More importantly, however, is how our relationship to these “aliens” has developed, then and now. Professionally speaking, we have come to call them “Others,” as they’re our Other, someone or something very different to us. Even more professionally, what we emphasize in these Others is their ability to have some semblance of sapience slash sentience, much like our own. Get it? Right. If you put your mind to it, you can probably see where problems arise with this sort of specifics.
Dolphins are sapient. They’re not human, but instead of being an “Other,” we just shrug and say they’re animals, really clever animals. Which they are, yes, I know the response you want to give, but how have we intended to define the separation between an Other or the dolphin? Might be it’s that these Others aren’t currently swimming in or existing within our waters. Many of them inhabit what professors call “different dimensional perspectives” that they “slip between” to enter our own dimensional space. If it sounds a little too out there, think of it like them existing on a different lane to you, and sometimes they swerve over to meet you.
Big thing is, they’re from Elsewhere, but now today, they are Here. With us, humanity. Not that this means most of humanity can even so much as see them, though; mages like us, yes, but the average individual… well, it’s for the best. We teach ourselves to try and get used to what we see between the cracks, peering back, but what would Steve McPerson do in our stead, watching these… Things that burrow and pulsate through space and time? What’d happen if that came out publicly?
Thing is, and this is important, they’re unpredictable. We don’t have some timetable of what they’re doing, who they are, or what they are, and why. Some of us are doubtful they do about us, either. Piercing, much less crossing the veil of dimensional space is not simple, you know. Barely any of us humans have even begun to manage that, and the Others have been doing it and making it appear like it’s nothing to them. And strangely, with all that power… they’re happy to come to us. To Earth.
But why wouldn’t they? They might be aliens to us, but we’re aliens to them.
Esoteric Musings... 