Any Day Now

ANY DAY NOW

The well-known television producer sat pensively in his darkened office after hours. He thought back to that astounding day in the early 1960s when they had first come to him. They had told him that they were called Vulcans and that they wanted to contact the Earth, but that they wished to do so without causing a panic. After years of quietly observing us from space, they were well aware of our undisciplined emotional propensities. They had made him a proposition which would be to his benefit as well as theirs: he must create a science fiction television series in which their people would be featured, and it must be presented in such a way as to cause our people to like and trust and respect theirs. Other aliens would appear in the series too, some fictional and some real, so that the plan would not be too obvious, but the Vulcans must be the most admirable. Two of their own people, Spock and Sarek by name, would actually perform in the series, although human actors looking as much like them as possible must be found to handle interviews and convention appearances. Once humans were familiar with them and well-prepared for their arrival, the Vulcans would be revealed as non-fictional potential allies. They had said that they would give us at least two or three decades in which to become acclimated to them before appearing to formally greet us. The producer sighed. The Vulcans would be arriving any day now.