Welcome

The night side of Earth's northern hemisphere filled the sky below me; it was a huge, dark disc, the only reassurance that the sun still existed the barest nimbus of light along the far edge. On the planet itself, pinpricks of man-made brilliance followed continental coasts and major inland waterways, scattering more thinly across the interiors of all but the least-developed areas. They merged into glowing puddles at urban centers, as if a child had carefully applied dots of florescent ink to illustrate a geography lesson, only to discover, when she reached the eastern seaboard of the United States, her pen had sprung a leak.

This was my first view of Earth. I'm Gideon Cyrus, an Olam. Members of my species have been living secretly on Earth for a long, long time. We love this planet, sometimes even more than you, the human inhabitants of Earth, seem to. I've only been around for a bit over 150 of your years, but I'd still give everything I have to make sure that Earth, however fragile it is, is still around many millennia from now, and still populated with a wide variety of fascinating, frustrating, creative and stubbornly independent humanity. Plus a few friendly extraterrestrials.

But living incognito can be tiring, when the only entities who know one's true identity are not always around. The rest of the time I must be human - at least on the outside - because many on Earth are not ready for my kind to reveal ourselves. Or any extraterrestrial kind, for that matter.

Still, eventually we will need to come out of the saucer, so to speak, and it has occurred to me that I might tiptoe out on occasion, just to test the waters. To be myself, to let others know how I see the world and perhaps find out how the world might see me. This blog, hidden as it certainly is among so many others, is sure to be found by only the most imaginative, the most curious of readers.

Welcome. I'm looking forward to our conversation.