I’m not entirely sure why, but often when I drive, especially when I’m driving the Pao, I have this recurring waking dream about being abducted by some manner of alien tractor beam, car and all, and then placed in some vast cargo hold of an alien spacecraft to be taken who knows where. Maybe there’s other cars in the hold, maybe some car-scaled vehicles from places other than Earth, which this particular race of aliens is clearly collecting for some sort of space menagerie/car/vehicle show. And when I think about this, I look around at the interior of my funny little car and wonder just what these aliens may learn from it?
You see, I’ve often felt that if you had to give one human artifact from our normal, daily lives to an alien culture to teach them as much as possible about humanity, I think a car would be an excellent choice. One car can give aliens a sense of what human bodies are structured like and what sorts of dexterities they have, they have examples of written language all over the place, a huge variety of materials, and those materials are markedly different from the inside and outside, giving an idea of the sorts of environments we prefer to surround ourselves in.
The HVAC system gives a sense of the sorts of environmental parameters we like, the radio/infotainment/audio system can tell our range of hearing and hint at our appreciation of musical arts, lights and colors suggest the visual spectrum we can see, the style and design of the car says something about the aesthetic concepts we hold, and so on.
But that’s cars in general. What about your own car?
Like, for my Pao, they’re not really going to get a sense of what the state-of-the-art technology that humans are capable of, because not only is my car from 1990, but even then it wasn’t exactly cutting-edge. Unless I leave my phone in there, maybe. The most advanced thing that stays in the car is probably the cigarette lighter-plug Bluetooth adapter and the USB-powered magnetic wireless charging doohickey I have on the dash to hold/charge my phone.
I do have a good number of random papers and stuff folded up in door pockets which may prove interesting, and some weird little random things on the under-dash parcel shelf, like a keychain of a VW Beetle and perhaps a Lego minifig. Also, there’s lots of stickers in Japanese on the car from its former life in Japan, so there’s multiple language systems that could be learned.
It’s a sort of edge case, automotively, though, and I think it’d give any aliens a pretty skewed view of what cars are generally like on Earth. Also, I try to keep it clean, so I tend not to have a lot of, say, food trash in the car, but in this particular case, if I had a bunch of Taco Bell wrappers and boxes in there, I bet the alien scientists would love that.
But what about you? If some flying saucer comes and tractor beams your car away, what will they think of humanity as a result? Be honest, now. Unflinchingly so, please.
Do People In Your City Drive Fast Or Slow?
What Engineering Decisions Made Your Car Annoyingly Hard To Work On?
What Car Brand Would You Bring Back From The Dead? Autopian Asks
Probably not much. I keep my car pretty empty and remove everything i brought with me when I get home. It drives my wife nuts that my car is always, while not CLEAN on the inside, doesn’t have receipts and pens and bits and bobs in the cup holders, on the pass seat or in the map pockets.
They will learn dogs are the dominant species, and we are simply their chauffeurs. Hold on… wasn’t there a movie about this…
Dogs, though outranking humans, are still part of the cats’ staff.
They’ll understand the two human body types. Front passenger humans have a determinable range of arm and leg lengths. Rear passenger humans forgo legs.
The aliens that steal my car will learn that a human will run down the street barefoot, swearing and throwing his own shoes all in a pointless attempt to take down a flying saucer.
And also that we store our coins under the seats where our hands can’t possibly reach them.
They’ll learn that humans invented pop-up headlights and thus must be protected at all costs 😉
Humans are so stupid that they’re willing to drive around with no spare tire.
They’d learn that humanity has learned animal domestication well enough that there are entire groups of non wild species, that we’re mammalian in nature, that we understand germ theory, pasteurization, automation, refrigeration, bulk manufacturing and storage, and that we’ve mastered them in practice frighteningly effectively, along with the production, machining, and use of stainless steel, to produce a substitute foodstuff source for our young, for those who must be fed artificially as infants, as well as for young children too old for natural such feeding.
…see, I don’t actually own a car. I’m disabled, a forever pedestrian.
Moo.
All they will learn from my car is that there is a lot of vegetative matter that sticks to my shoes, and I frequently forget to bring reusable plastic bags from my trunk into the store and then get a couple more to add to the collection.
If aliens take my car they will find that humans up-armor their vehicles with JB Weld and Gorilla Tape. This will terrify them as everyone knows these are the two substances in all of the universe against which aliens have no defenses.
They will question why there is Taco Bell hot sauce in a circular catchment along the meridian of the car.
Taco Bell hot sauce is delicious, why is it stored in a catchment?
If they take my van they’re in for a treat.
They will get to investigate and experience:
Raw almonds
Edward Abbey
Snarky Puppy
A parachute hammock
A U-bass
They are gonna think we are so cool and chill.
Human transportation is very unreliable and loud
They’d find the lighter my wife left in the passenger side door pull like my son found… said… lighter. I wonder if “child-safe” is also “alien-safe”?
These vehicles clearly cannot generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity they need for near light speed travel.
Classify as “Mostly Harmless”
And “Highly Delicious”
They wrote pages and pages of copy only for the damn editors to cut it down to Mostly Harmless?!
They’ll learn (incorrectly) that humans are very practical and value space efficiency and great packaging. And then when they find out the second row folds into the floor, they will (incorrectly) believe us to be a highly advanced species.
If we thought Earth could develop an advanced species, we’d drop a rock on the planet.
Oh wait, we did.
Nothing intelligent has developed since.
Have you not been paying attention to Corvidae, Octopoda, Mycelial networks?
Cephalopoda is off to a good start, but they have to work on the lifespan thing. Now corvids and psittaciformes? They’re set up very well.
We have cooperative treaties in place with all other off world entities.
Life on this planet peaked at stromatolites and has been going downhill ever since.
I strongly agree with you. The only good thing about humans is the taste. But then, beef is really good too. Maybe when humans finish terraforming the planet for us we will phase them out as a food source in favor of beef. Then again, humans can feed themselves. Less work.
Have you tried reindeer? Its quite nice as is but much more interesting when fed a diet of Fly Agaric mushrooms:
https://andy-letcher.blogspot.com/2011/09/taking-piss-reindeers-and-fly-agaric.html
Try some and maybe you’ll see Santa.
I prefer hippie if I wanna get trippie.
Are you sure? Some alien species react strongly to hippie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxCYeOL4avM
One of my coworkers was a consultant for that show. It’s funny because it is a true story!
“Best we can tell, these largely pointless trinkets are associated with formalized locations from which to procure fuel for the vehicle’s engine. But we know they complete an exchange of goods as the terms to get this fuel, so it’s unclear why they would have these trinkets, much less keep them in the vehicle.”
Probably depends on which car they choose to bring me up with. Anything from this planets to boring to be worth it to to crazy to mess with
“when I’m driving the Pao, I have this recurring waking dream”
This is known to promote close encounters of the venison kind.
oh deer.
Some of us inadvertently hunt deer? We think asslights are a turn on, or turn off, or keep alternating our feelings about them? We move about in pods by ourselves with enough space for six more imaginary friends or possible offspring, but we’re actually too cool to be dads since we are off-road outdoorsy capable (plastic clad dad!). But we sure can tow some shit (lot’s). What an advanced civilization!
My c10 is loud, borderline useless, and it stinks. So yeah, I guess that tracks.
They’re going to learn that summer tires need to be warmed up before trying anything fancy.
I’m sure they’d be disappointed, or at least bemused, by my dashboard having three storage compartments and fuckall being in two of ’em. The left side generally just holds a tire pressure gauge (actually, there might be an old shopping list in there?) while the upper right usually just holds a pride flag in place.
I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have found an old water bottle, a set of jumper cables, or a few jugs of various fluids in the back of someone else’s car already. They might be briefly fascinated by my color-coded Hazard Fraught ratchety-box-end-wrench set, I s’pose.
Wow clearly out there. Think about therapy. This could be a good story idea but I’m thinking therapy needed
Na, he is just more perceptive. We are here among you. The dude with the weird hair on tv is right.
Step 1: Rent Cybertruck
Step 2: Get abducted
Step 3: Aliens take cybertruck, and learn that they don’t want anything to do with humans (the cybertruck embodies the qualities of low-intelligence lifeforms)
Step 4: Profit, only humans will be the end of humanity!
Only humans would come up with the cybertruck.
Step 2: Nuke Earth from orbit
We can only hope.
It’s the only way to be sure.
More effective to drop a rock from orbit. We did it before.
Next time use a bigger rock.
Joke’s on you. They just needed a dumpster.
Umm, I feel discriminated against. Just cause I’m an alien, I’m gonna steal your car? You realise Earth is the galactic equivalent of the bad neighborhood. You humans shoot down our spaceships then steal the scraps to “reverse engineer” even though you don’t have the brain capacity to figure it out. We know everything we need to know about humans. You taste good with a side of potatoes.
“To Serve Man.”
With potatoes on the side.
The person who wrote that movie knew a thing or two. Made a fantastic comedy movie with the idea.
Terrible Lizard- eon – winner winner chicken dinner! And eggs for breakfast.