He was something of a computer whiz, or at least he had been.
Having been retired for a number of years and living alone, he spent much of his time in the evenings tinkering with anything outside of emails and bank accounts. Now, with his working life behind him, his dear wife having passed on and his only son living overseas, his newly acquired lifestyle is precious to him. For several weeks now he has been surfing around the dark web. He would just open up his computer and browse. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just looking to see what was out there. He was certainly surprised to find an unofficial version of the SETI site. Although it seemed to be set up in order to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, it wasn’t the institute’s normal front page. He found it interesting enough to stop and read what it had to say. It appeared to be some amateur group’s project designed to make contact.
There was a form for sending messages. Looking at the site’s history; he found that multiple copies of Leonardo-da-Vinci’s Vitruvian-man had been sent, using a common email platform. He wondered what an alien identity might think about these. It just so happened that he had a jpg file at hand, it contained his recent passport photograph. He was sure that any recipient would find this far more interesting than Vitruvian-man. Rather amused with the idea, he sent it. To his amazement, he received a reply within seconds. The response was a series of queer little characters he’d never seen before. They formed groupings that would indicate that they may be words of some sort. He sat staring at the screen for a while, but could make nothing of it. So, out of nothing more than sheer frustration, he replied with a single question mark.
It happened a couple of evenings later. He was playing a card game on the screen when, despite the late hour, a ping sounded, indicating an incoming email. It was a message… from them out there! It read; ‘We now have your language. We wish to talk with you.’ Although he couldn’t explain why at the time, he immediately shut down the computer and retired for the night; this would be the first of a number of sleepless nights.
He began to think about the consequences of starting up a conversation of that sort. If indeed there really were beings out there somewhere that wanted to make contact with him, make contact with planet Earth, for the first time… and if he replied and began a conversation, where would it all end? At the very least his quiet life would cease abruptly. He considered the personal ramifications of all this very carefully over several days, finally coming to a decision. So, a week after the night he received the ghastly message, he sat down and opened up his computer once again.
He typed, ‘Sorry, not interested.’