The Party - by Rick

“Janet, are you sure the posters had the correct date on them?”, Doctor Watts asked for the 3rd time, anxiously pacing back and forth.

“Yes Doctor Watts. 21st August, 2009 at 8 p.m.” Janet replied with a touch of exasperation.

“Well where is everyone? This is quite possibly the most significant event of the millennia and only that gangly teenager is here. We must have done something wrong.”

Indeed that gangly teenager was our only guest so far. I was talking to him and he was so excited that he didn’t seem to hear the Doctor’s slur. But I felt the same as the Doctor. Where was everyone? No doubt we would receive world wide coverage at our ABC press conference on Saturday, but we had so wanted the town of Narrabri to share in our glory before the world joined in.

“Likely people are going to arrive later Doctor. It’s very un-cool to be early for a party”, Janet said unconvincingly as she tried to cajole the fretting Doctor. “Oh look, 3 more people just arrived.”

“Are you sure?” asked the Doctor. “And is their hair green? Rick, go over and welcome them.”

“Come on, Jamey (the gangly teenager),” I said. “Let’s greet our guests.”

“Hi, welcome to the SETI party” I said as cheerily as I could. “Come and grab some punch.”

“Hey dudes, is this the place where the Aliens are gonna be?” asked one of the green-haired trio. She seemed to have enough metal hanging from various parts of her head to set of even the most insensitive or airport security alarms.

“Oh no,” Jamey leapt in helpingly. “This is all about radio signals from intelligent life over 1,000,000 light years ago.”

“Oh wow,” said greenie number two. “Is that older than the Earth? These are going to be really old Aliens.”

“Don’t be so lame,” replied greenie number three, with eyes rolling up. “The Aliens don’t age when they go in their space ships.”

“Oh yeah, like you’d know”, greenie number two fired back.

“Everybody knows that. It was in Battlestar Galactica, season 3, episode 4. Can’t you remember anything?” number three volleyed back.

“You know not everyone’s a year 10 graduate like you.”

“Whatever”, greenie three came back with, as Jamey and I slowly moved back with the Doctor and Janet.

“Well what was that all about?”, Doctor Watts asked. “I assume they’re not from Channel 9. I can’t understand this. Surely this town has people who think, who have normal hair shades. Where are they? And where is Arthur? I at least expected all of our colleagues to be here.”

“He’s at home watching the footy. It is State of Origin after all and the third game with both states having a win.”, I said defensively.

“I think I’ll go back to the lab”, Doctor Watts replied wearily. “I might set up our receivers to point at Earth to see if there is any intelligent life here. I’ll probably have to wait a million years to get any result though.”

“Anyone for lamingtons?”, Janet asked.