When Aliens Arrive

[anthrodisiac]

Yes, I know this is already the premise of a Twilight Zone episode, bear with me.

So people are minding their own business when somebody lets slip that an alien ship was seen headed for the planet. The government tries to keep it under wraps, pressuring scientists, threatening the original discoverer, but it's far too late.

First Part: Desecent


Second Part: Arrival
The ship finally lands.

Third Part: Truth
One of the displaced's partners manages to sneak into the encampment, desperate to find their loved one.

Yeah, you probably got it way before now... Good for you if you did. If not, then good for me!

Humans.

Similar to the plot of "The Invaders" from The Twilight Zone:

Except, you know, not quite. But the general "oh, it was humans" is the same. I'm sure there are plenty of other stories out there like this, that was just the first one that popped into my head at 11 at night. It feels very much like it could be a Heinlein or Clarke plot, or Vonnegut if you went darker/funnier with it.

Generation ship went to a planet,

So when they finally arrive, ...

Trouble of course would be hiding the twist for as long as possible. Probably no avoiding it's clearly an alien world, I was able to kinda get away with it because it's an overview, but an actual story, even a short one, would struggle with this. So maybe don't hide it, but have it seem like another race, but that feels very much like you'd be able to guess what's coming from a mile away.

Anyway, 11PM me thought it was worth puking up here. So, there you go.

Any other directions or avenues this could take? There are very, very many, curious to see what you all come up with!

Have fun

[WAY TOO LONG. THIS FORUM IS FOR STORY IDEAS NOT OUTLINES]

 

[Husky_Embrace]

Maybe they have envoys that they do some outward changes to over a month by changing the DNA. When they return their DNA is changed back. A rotation of envoys to keep the Earthlings on the wrong foot and a duty to keep the ruse up. The "aliens" drop some hints you'll only understand later as they mutter about the body. "I can't wait to be back in my own skin."

The other world must be pretty similar to ours, or the body would turn out different. High or low gravity, different oxygen levels (dinosaurs!) or even a different atmosphere that changes the light that arrives on the planet. It could take only one change for humanoids to look radically different, as different strategies of survival would work better. You could describe some plants or creatures in passing that aren't real. At the moment it would just he interpreted as creative writing if you describe deep blue flowers with red petals.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

What "displaced's partners"? Did a piece of your explanation get abducted by aliens?

Is this a Literotica story? Is it a "human mating looks weird to aliens" story? That would be cool. Maybe the main characters are more like a LeGuin story instead, say The Left Hand of Darkness (or some other not-like-real-humans system)?

 

[AlinaX]

People…

So, why do the aliens want some locals? For labour? For learning? Actually for sex? Maybe there was a fault in the colony ship’s suspended animation system that damaged women’s reproductive systems so they need local women for their wombs.

The local government decides this is an excellent solution to prison overcrowding and says, “Help yourself to this large, barren island and we have lots of women for you, take them! By the way, your fusion technology would be very useful for us…”

The colonists have all sorts of terraforming equipment so turning the island into a paradise is slow but steady work. They get to know the local women, many of whom are really quite taken with the colonists’, ah, equipment.

After a while, even the married locals find themselves seduced by the colonists, much to the shock of the small band of husbands who sail to the island to rescue them…

 

[anthrodisiac]

What "displaced's partners"? Did a piece of your explanation get abducted by aliens?

Is this a Literotica story? Is it a "human mating looks weird to aliens" story? That would be cool. Maybe the main characters are more like a LeGuin story instead, say The Left Hand of Darkness (or some other not-like-real-humans system)?

Displaced person's partner. It's why I shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard when I'm really tired. My brain pops out nonsense that's way too long for a story idea (sorry about that) and isn't totally coherent or clear.

Thinking more along the lines of colony ship > colonists didn't realize there were aliens when they set out > try to be non-interventionist, but alien government insists on offloading the misfits as a "gift" and the humans are grateful for the help, critical system failures along the way > government tells people the humans are invaders and try to play off that they're holding the evil humans at bay, when really the humans just want to chill and build their own place, and are happy to help out the people who were sent to them.

I'd personally prefer fairly non-human aliens, just to accentuate the strangeness of the human body. More fun than human + blue skin.

 

[LupusDei]

Humans.
....
Generation ship went to a planet,

So when they finally arrive, ...

...the planet has long been colonized by much faster traveling descendants of those same humans the generation ship left behind when it originally left.

Doesn't even need FTL capabilities, the first ship sent at barely tomorrow's tech and the second with efficient relativistic speeds (as in, at significant percentages of lightspeed) would create arbitrary reverse time gaps measured in centuries or rather millennia at interstellar distances.

Doesn't mean both cultures aren't totally alien to us. The colony would be shaped by it's environment and history (and that as well can include loss of contact with homeworld or even less of technology), and what the slowly spacefaring crew of the generation ship had become after multiple generations drifting in deep space to a goal becoming more and more abstract is another matter. (It's been speculated for how many generations a mission statement may survive before the crew completely lose track where they are going and why, and generally agreed that not very many).

But even with millennia, we talk exclusively cultural differences, for actual physical evolution timescales it's still a blink of an eye... unless targeted breeding is involved.

 

[Brandnewbuddy]

I’d say for inspiration: Ursula Le Guin’s “The Wife’s story” (short story where the twist is that it’s about a wolf family who find out the father is a werewolf). The description of the human father at the end is pretty great.


I know there was a short story about a future humanity where everyone is heavily mutated and they are awaiting a ship bringing back the children of the last non mutated children to come back…only when they arrive it’s been so long since anyone saw a human they were terrified (or cosmic radiation and lack of gravity turned them into something horrifying, it’s been a long time and I lost that book)

As for the idea of aliens meet humans:

Aliens are not traditional extra terrestrials. They are actually descendants of a probe humanity sent thousands if not millions of years prior. Once it sent a message back saying the planet was safe, the scientists decided to see if they could have it do a project and gave it the instruction to make city for people to live in.

Its adaptive AI set to work but eventually the signal died. But it had actually started manipulating life forms and modifying them so the instruction could be carried out. Creatures that would have stayed undeveloped started making tools and then modified themselves more.

By the time humanity arrives, a whole society has been made but it’s bizarre to humans. Living buildings, infrastructure that can only be navigated with tentacled bodies. The AI got the city built and the populace is happy but the humans are horrified