What would people think? What would people do? How would our positions and lifestyles dictate our reactions to this new situation? One day you are walking to class or work in the academic buildings at CMU, and a big UFO mothership is just hovering over the Cut like a spider in its web.
The Chemists would throw sulfuric acid on it and watch the results. "Kids, don't try this at home."
The Chemical Engineers would try to figure out how quickly gases mix inside the UFO.
The Historians would look into their books to try to figure out if history was repeating itself.
The Industrial Managers would try to buy out the UFO.
If the Industrial Managers failed, ROTC would attempt a "hostile takeover."
The Physicists would examine particle-scattering effects around the hull of the UFO and attempt to find out what the thing was made of.
The Biologists would attempt to classify the characteristics of the pilots by asking the Physicists about the internal characteristics that they derived by bombarding the mothership with radiation. This information would be required to answer a question on the next Modern Biology test.
The Administrators would petition the UFO for money to support CMUs research efforts. They would also hire Photographers to get an aerial shot of the ship over campus.
The Photographers, like always, would be overpaid, but they would offer a complete line of glossy or matte UFO shots from several unlikely angles, in sizes ranging from too-small-to-reasonably-qualify-as-wallet to large-enough-to-endanger-the-earth's-trees.
The Theologians would accompany the Photographers, making sure that the angle of the photographs made the mothership appear to be a halo floating over the graduate lounge at the top of Hamerschlag Hall.
The Philosophers would try to figure out whether the same UFO mothership would make a sound if it crashed in a forest.
The Mechanical Engineers would try to find out what kind of mileage the UFO mothership gets, and would design something more energy-efficient.
The Statisticians would calculate the odds of such an event occurring elsewhere, or again in the same place. They would have the gall to claim it was a "normal" distribution.
The Psychologists would chalk the whole thing up to another one of their own twisted experiments and therefore would ignore it.
The Musicians would play excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind from the CFA building, and would not be prepared for the response.
The Artists would paint their interpretations of the UFO mothership itself, or of what they thought it represented. This could involve drug-induced hallucinations in order to reveal the full symbolism behind the visitation.
The Graphic Design folks would comment on the UFO mothership, saying how it was not designed for the maximum contrast of light and dark and was therefore not as attractive as it could have been.
The Civil Engineers would design a bridge or ladder to climb up to the UFO. The structure would be flexible in wind but resiliant enough to support the weight of the UFO itself, although it would be completely useless after the mothership moved.
The Dramats would invite the mothership to their next performance by, while intoxicated, climbing the structure produced by the Civil Engineers and posting flyers on the windows of the space vessel. They would also negotiate the movie rights.
KGB would hold a Skeptics Picnic directly below the UFO just to be different.
The Eclectic Studies Group would claim foreknowledge, then would proceed up the Civil Engineers' structure to offer Tarot or palm readings for the crewmembers of the UFO.
The Student Environment Action Coalition would protest the UFO for "polluting the ecosystem" by blocking sunlight to the Cut.
The Computer Scientists would try to guess the UFO's IP address.
The Mathematicians would examine the dimensions of the ship and try to relate it into their research. They would also have the computer scientists ask it for the next major revision of Maple.
The Electrical and Computer Engineers would get the IP address from the Computer Scientists and create a gateway so users could connect to it as http://www.ufo.cmu.edu.
The Software Engineers would meet in little committees, each of which would hold sub-meetings to determine what to do next. None of the committees would communicate their findings to the others.
The Architects would examine the UFO, draw some sketches, and build their own original design. "And," they would say, "And--our version has flying buttresses!"
© 1996 by Todd C. Gleason