MY NAME is Karlem Vontaxia and I'm the head of foreign communications here on Voltom. Voltom is not far from your planet, only about 50 million light years in your measurements.

The Grand Controller asked me to send a message to you troubled people on your pretty little blue planet before it was too late. For a brief time, about 100 of your years, we have been picking up disturbing signals from your civilisation.
At first we heard the strange noises you make when you talk to each other. It was some time before we understood what these meant, because you don't make the same noises and can't all understand each other.

Later we detected pictures that you were transmitting, and more and more moving pictures that showed us that you seemed very keen on injuring, even destroying, each other. We are amazed at how much energy you expend on designing and building strange and complicated machines to destroy each other even faster.
Those of you who can't afford these machines seem to find it easier to stop supplying food to each other, which takes longer, but still achieves the same end.

As millions of people are destroyed, there is greater interest in competitions, nearly always depending on moving balls around - large soft balls kicked with the feet, small soft balls bounced over nets, small hard balls thrown at someone holding a piece of wood, and tiny hard balls hit by a long thin club at a small hole in the distance.

We don't understand why competitions are so important. You transmit moving pictures of them to millions, who are happy to stay home and spend a large part of their lives watching them. Sometimes the pictures are of people being injured, even destroyed, which you seem to find entertaining.
For some time we have been sending flying machines to your world because we do not understand the strange, way you live. We are relieved to discover that many of you - unfortunately, a minority - do not live that way.

We have observed very grand buildings in some parts of your world where men, who usually wear long robes, make very long speeches and people listen carefully and give them many gifts, which you call money. The grand buildings and the long robes are often different, but nearly always these money gifts are handed over. This means that the buildings can become more and more beautiful and more and more men can wear the rich, long robes.
The people who hand over their money gifts, seem to get guidance from these strange men and from their long speeches.

We have great trouble understanding just what this guidance is.

Copyright... Grahame Wilson