Hundreds of books had been written with exactly this opening paragraph, or if not opening somewhere in the beginning, but for the people of Seattle, Washington it still took them somewhat aback when . . . 

Spaceships appeared overhead.

Well, a spaceship anyway.  But a large one.  Considerably larger than the park it hovered over. I forget the name of the park now, but it was at the edge of that beautiful body of water (whose name I also forget) which figured so prominently in so many movies, including ‘Sleepless in Seattle’. The city, and indeed the world, came to a standstill, as the media, in shrill tones of near panic which hadn’t been heard since September 11th.  The ship sat there silently for an hour before it actually took any visible actions.

Obviously, however, NORAD was not sitting still for that whole hour.  Their normal warning systems had shown them nothing, but they had plenty of people listening to the radio and watching TV on their various bases; and of course they had links to the Boeing, military, and Civilian airports in the Seattle area.

NORAD contacted the president, and the president contacted the Russians, and the British, and in the end pretty much everyone. Amidst all of the talking one decision was reached. An easy decision, actually, for apart from acts of utter stupidity there was nothing else to do. So it was decided that they would . . . wait.

Suddenly, exactly one hour from the arrival of the ship two things happened simultaneously. The first was that a door on the bottom of the ship opened, and a shuttle emerged. The shuttle quietly flew down from the ship, and landed at the edge of the park, right besides a major walkway.

The second was that, all over the world, on every radio and television all over the world a voice began speaking. On the television, and on every web page, a written copy of the text also appeared . . .