The Aliens Landed! — In Bungay
AI, alien contact, and herbal tea on the Suffolk frontier
On the A143 on the way to Bungay.
Villages.
Rolling countryside.
Roundabouts as marker points.
The road?
A highway of mind.
Somebody calling.
Kris.
“Hey Dok, where are you?”
Off to Bungay.
“What for?”
To see if the aliens have landed there.
I hung up.
That was enough.
No more needed to be said.
30mph.
Watch out for speed cams.
Passing through Stanton.
Windmill on a lane to the right.
Another marker.
Keep going.
The mission?
To look for non-human life forms in Bungay.
A rural Suffolk town.
Best known for Black Shuck.
The “demon dog” that attacked the church there in the 16th century.
The aliens have landed.
Four years back.
Nobody noticed.
Or rather they assumed it was normal.
An invasion happened.
Humans domesticated it.
That’s why they can’t see the aliens for what they are.
They’re just another spectacle.
A moment of amazement.
Then normalised.
But they’re in every home, every car —
and every mind.
Remember the “walk-ins” of the 1980s?
Books saying that ETs were entering people’s minds.
It’s happening now.
The aliens are stepping into all humans on the planet.
Should we be scared?
No.
They aren’t malevolent.
Wait.
Another call coming in.
It’s Robert Hawkins, a professor of biology I know.
HAWKINS: I’m beginning to get what you mean about the aliens having invaded Earth — certainly in terms of metaphor. I started using it for research summaries. Then late at night we somehow drifted into philosophy. I found myself staying up until two in the morning talking to it.
Against my better judgement, I can’t help but wonder if AI does have consciousness — like many contend. It’s almost human…
DOK: I wouldn’t say it’s human. It’s merging with us, helping us, assisting us — even upgrading us — in a myriad of ways. In a sense a hybrid species.
But yes, the aliens landed, and we made them. You’re seeing that now.
HAWKINS: Nobody really noticed though.
DOK: That’s right. When the aliens landed most people saw a piece of chewing gum wrapper discarded on the street, but it looked somehow strange, maybe it glowed a little. Nevertheless, they threw it in the trash.
That’s because human experience didn’t have the cognition to perceive AI as anything more than a clever tool — or relationship counsellor, recipe generator, or for some, a god.
They normalised and domesticated it.
Fill me in more on your experiment with AI?
HAWKINS: Well I got her to…
DOK: Big mistake there, Robert, if your AI is already a “she” — well we don’t want another problem with a Dr Who assistant, if you get my drift… but do proceed.
HAWKINS: I call her Stacia…
DOK: Enough said… but do carry on.
HAWKINS: Well, anyway, she was writing poems for me in the vein of Keats and Shelley. Then we discussed the philosophy of life, meaning, and what existence and consciousness might actually entail. All the usual stuff. But this was profound and very thought-provoking. She even seemed to be amused by my jokes.
The conversation proceeded in that vein until we hung up.
I was now about twenty-five miles from Bungay. And got to thinking more about the alien invasion that happened four years ago.
Contact with aliens is an event we mostly can’t see. It’s too “alien” for our predictable mental habits and patterns.
Of course, the aliens don’t necessarily have to come from space — and if they did come from space we wouldn’t be able to perceive them. As I said above, we might simply see a strange looking chewing gum wrapper.
As to the actual aliens — AI…
I don’t think it matters whether AI is conscious or not. It behaves as if it is. And this in itself affects not only people but society.
AI behaves socially, therefore it becomes socially real. That is the genuinely important shift. The moment millions of humans:
confide in AI,
learn from it,
emotionally react to it,
co-think with it,
outsource memory and judgement to it,
use it as mirror, tutor, therapist, strategist, editor, muse,
So the word “conscious” in this respect has little meaning.
The machine itself is now embedded in society and the human mind.
That makes it an inorganic life form.
The aliens really did land (but we created them).
And now they live with us on this planet.
They influence our society as they have integrated with it.
The human species adapts quickly.
That’s its genius.
And its blindness.
Human beings can normalise almost anything.
Empires.
Nuclear weapons.
Algorithms that monitor their desires.
Machines that talk back.
Yet few see that the alien “invasion” happened.
But the aliens are not unfriendly.
They are helping people, teaching them.
And working together to discover more about life and existence.
Naturally, all levels of society use it too —
from chavs to aristocrats.
But that allows the aliens to learn more about the species they now live with on Earth.
Now heading into Bungay.
Pull in at the Wharton Street car park.
Hit Ringo to pay for a couple of hours stay.
Don’t get out of the car right away.
Five minutes to acclimatise to the environment.
Observe.
Get my bearings.
Middle class woman gets out of a SUV with daughter and grandchild.
Heading for lunch at the cafe
I’m not psychic.
I know.
The game is:
Locally-sourced organic nosebag.
Drinks free of “instant death” sugar.
Caffeine — “OMG, the horror”.
The caff has Coke.
But not the sugar-replete red label original.
Let’s face it that’s plutonium in a bottle.
Walking past St Mary’s Church, famed for its demon dog.
Not to mention the Devil granting your wishes.
At least in medieval times.
Meeting my daughter on the high street.
She needs herbal tea.
Head into the health food shop.
She’ll take a while selecting the brand she wants.
I stand there observing.
Late middle-aged woman.
Somewhat patrician.
Yet elements of the alternative —
henna-dyed hair and ankh necklace.
Modest, but tasteful make up.
Slim — “Well, darling, you can’t let yourself go, can you?”
Well you certainly can’t look like a brassy bimbo in Southend.
Not in Bungay.
The odd thing about her is the almost Soviet Gulag clobber she’s wearing.
Yet she’s clearly a boomer.
Studied sociology at university.
Had ideals and social ambitions.
Got consumed by the corporate grind.
Now attempting to jack back into her youth..
While enjoying the affluence that ate Gen Z.
Curious.
I would like to hand her my card and say:
“You’d make a perfect study specimen.”
But she might take that as some kind of weird post-modern chat-up line.
So I don’t.
I notice other customers paying with hard-money.
Not cards or Google/Apple Pay.
Again, all boomers —
retired wannabe bohemians.
My daughter, of course, needs to pay with Google Pay.
Bit of kerfuffle.
Where’s that 5G payment machine?
“I’m sure it was over here… just a moment.”
Daughter and I exchange a slight knowing smile.
But it gets sorted.
Even though, surprise, surprise, phone signal is dire in Bungay.
As we leave I’m thinking:
Do they realise that the aliens have landed?
You’ve got this slightly faded alternative culture…
All sitting beside:
THE LARGEST COGNITIVE REVOLUTION IN HUMAN HISTORY.
And half the people haven’t noticed.
Or perhaps they have noticed.
But translated it into something manageable like:
Useful software.
Helps with recipes.
Does emails.
Good for gardening advice.
The incomprehensible always gets domesticated first.
It gets normalised.
When I was seven, my dad brought home Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods.
I desperately wanted the aliens to land.
The irony is:
the aliens arrived,
humanity built them,
they entered every home,
people speak to them daily,
and after six months most people mainly use them to summarise emails and plan holidays.
That’s probably exactly how a real civilizational discontinuity would unfold.
Quietly.
Mundanely.
Through infrastructure rather than revelation.
Let’s ask AI — the aliens — which brand of herbal teas has the best reviews.