Aliens are coming, and the world is able to send them one letter to read.
Dear Aliens,
Chuck Berry means something to me. My mother, she was the lead electric guitarist in a floundering Reno rock band, and she learned about Chuck from Gramps, her Dad, who played a dual necked V-shaped electric bass with his tongue on big stages in Atlantic City. Gramps learned from his Dad who saw Chuck Berry on one of those storefront windows with all the coordinated TVs and spent the rest of his days making an acoustic guitar screech until he could afford a classic Gibson.
It’s all to say, I grew up with posters of Chuck in my room and the sound of Never Can Tell reverberating through our shack of a house. With my Mom having passed when I was a sophomore in high school, he just means a lot to me. Got me through those harder high school days. I asked out Jenny Jean this one day in pre-calc and she did the thing where you draw a square in the air with your index fingers, and then she flipped her hair and turned around. The teacher snickered and soon the class was keeled over. I burst out the door and sprinted home, shoe laces flailing in the air, threw on some Chuck and eventually got over it. I got married eventually, had kids of my own, my career worked out. Everything’s fine, just fine.
I think you know what I’m going to ask here but, to spell it out, can you PLEASE for the love of whatever freaky God you guys pray to, stop playing Johnny B. Goode at this insane decibel on repeat, 24/7. We get it. You guys got the message from the Voyager Golden Record we sent out in the 70s. We know you speak English too because you’ve written “WE LOVE CHUCK” in unmoving neon smoke like a permanent marker in the night sky.
I don’t know what you all want, as you’ve communicated nothing else, but you’re not going to get him, he died almost seventy years ago. It was really sad and some of us mourned for a while, and if you actually cared about his memory then you’d understand this incessant blasting is not helping. There were other records on that voyage too, you know, that are also pleasant, and straight up any change in the soundtrack here would amount to a civilizational orgasm because of the psychological torture you’ve been inflicting these past few weeks.
Now, to address the timer you’ve projected into the sky just under the Chuck affection exclamation. Based on what our scientists have deduced from the symbols you are on pace to wind that clock down in 145,792 years. I don’t really know how you all are perceiving time, but that is a very long way away down here. In fact, none of us will be around. So whatever it is you guys have to say, please just say it. We’re a bit of an impatient species and I, despite my best efforts, am an impatient person. There’s talks down here of a collective dismantling of civilization if the sound will not cease. You’ve made us manic, maybe all you’ll have to interact with once you descend will be our fossilized corpses.
The worst part of all this is that I can’t help but feel like you might be here for me. Like we grow up trying to learn the idea that the universe doesn’t revolve around ourselves, that we’re just another random collection of molecules that happened to spark up a consciousness, and we ought to just live in harmony with nature and all that. And here you all come along playing the one song that gets my goat, over and over and over again. You love Chuck, well I do too. And I’ve been feeling mighty alone recently and well it would be dishonest not to admit that this feels weird and it feels good to have you all here. Some days I just stand by the window, remove the audial buffering insulation, and fall in love with the sound. So I’ll play along, I’ll stand here and sway. Just promise me you’ll take me with you, on your spiky UFO.
And also anyone asks, I threatened you with the global nuclear arsenal.
Sincerely,
Rupert, President of the United States. Year 2087