Jack of Harts

Contact was an answer to the greatest question mankind had ever looked out into the darkness and asked. “Are we alone?” When the answer arrived though, we did not recognize its importance. Centuries of fantasy and science fiction stories had left us comfortable with the idea of alien life while we lost contact with our own human brothers in other cultures. And when the aliens turned out to be as human as we were, most of us expected them to act rationally. The way we would. Most of us had forgotten that the word alien was once used on fellow humans from other cultures we did not understand. Most of us forgot how truly alien someone with a human face could act. That is why The War surprised so many of us.