I was thinking today, what if some super intelligent aliens were to visit Earth? I’m not talking just super intelligent, I mean like so far advanced that they’d have to figure out some way just to communicate on a level that would make sense to us. To them we’d be like ants. No, even smaller, we’d be like whatever microscopic organisms ants look down at and say, man, those microscopic organisms are so far behind us mighty ants.

So they’d show up here at Earth, these aliens, they wouldn’t even bother saying anything like, “Take me to your leader,” because, being so ridiculously smart and advanced, they’d already know everything there is to know about us. They’d know who our leader is. They’d teleport straight to the White House. Wait, no, that’s not advanced enough. They’d freeze time on Earth and they’d transport the entire White House to their home planet. Yeah, that’s pretty advanced.

And so the President, all of the security guys and secret agents, they’d start going nuts. Their first instinct would be to get Obama down to the underground bunker, you know, the one from Olympus Has Fallen, but they’d quickly realize that there is no underground bunker. They’d look outside the windows and have no idea what to make of whatever it is they’d be seeing outside. That’s when the aliens make contact.

They approach the President. They tell him, listen, we’re in charge now. We have our own agenda that we won’t even bother trying to explain to you, one, because you definitely wouldn’t understand it, and two, it doesn’t matter if you know what’s going on or not. You’re going to do exactly as we say from now on, and that’s just all there is to it.

And maybe people in the administration might try and put up a fight, say stuff like, “This is America! You can’t tell us what to do you goddamn aliens!” even though, technically speaking, since they’d be on a totally different planet, the earthlings would be the aliens in this scenario, although they wouldn’t yet realize the scope of their predicament, just how far across space and time the whole White House has been transported.

The aliens would let us humans have our moment, yelling and threatening and cursing and trying to press the launch button for all of our nuclear weapons, but eventually everybody would lose energy. They’d get tired. Nothing would be working. None of the guns or White House weaponry would have any effect. They’d try to storm outside but they’d find it impossible to even open the doors. Maybe it would take a day, maybe a week, but sooner or later everyone would be out of options.

And so the President would have no choice but to listen. The aliens would be like, “All right, we want you to do this and this, change that, keep doing this,” and so on, laying out their plans, not really leaving any room for negotiation or compromise. Obama might balk initially. He might outright refuse, saying something like, “I’d rather die than cooperate.”

But the aliens would respond, “Are you sure?” and they’d snap their fingers or whatever they do to operate their insanely advanced technology, and another Obama would appear in the room. Because these aliens can do that. They can make these clones, identical to anybody, but much more willing to go along with their alien plan.

I could go on like this forever. What I’m trying to get at here is, what if there’s a force in the galaxy much farther ahead of where we are at right now? What if they wanted to alter our history? What if there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop them? That’s not totally farfetched, is it?

And so after they unfreeze time and send the White House back to DC, that would be it. I’d never know about it. There’s tons of stuff that I’ll never know about even assuming that aliens never show up and start bossing our government around. So considering what I know, and what I know that I don’t know, how can I be sure that nothing like this crazy alien scenario isn’t actually happening?

I’ll never be sure. I’m constantly relying on other people, other institutions to provide me with ideas of what the world is like. I can investigate, I can read, I can do lots of stuff to make a case for myself that what I believe to be true is true, but at some fundamental level, I can never be positive that reality is real as I know it.

So if there are aliens out there, if they are super advanced and omnipotent, I’d like to shout out to my galactic overlords, what the hell guys? Why can’t you let me in on the cosmic fun? I’m just supposed to sit here at my computer and try to convince myself that I’m not crazy? Show yourselves! Take me to space! I want to see what’s out there! Come on!