First Contact With Aliens Made Via a Wrong Number Text
"u up?" text from Alpha Centauri startles Nebraska farmer.
CORNHUSKER, NE – The world changed forever last Tuesday night when Earl Bixby, a 47-year-old corn farmer, received what may be humanity’s first confirmed extraterrestrial text message on his aging flip phone while feeding his cattle.
The message, sent at exactly 11:47 PM Central Time, contained only two words that have now reverberated through every government agency from the Pentagon to NASA: “u up?”
Bixby, who had been battling insomnia due to concerns about his failing crop yield, initially assumed the text came from his ex-wife Marlene. But when he checked the sender’s number, his blood ran cold. The caller ID displayed an impossible sequence: +001-4367-CENTAURI-B-PROXIMA.
“I stared at that phone for near ten minutes,” Bixby told reporters from his kitchen table, his hands still trembling. “Ain’t no phone number on Earth got that many digits, and I sure as heck knew what Centauri meant from watching Star Trek with my boy.”
What happened next defied all known laws of physics and interstellar communication. Bixby, thinking he had nothing to lose, texted back: “who dis?”
The response came within seconds, despite the 4.24 light-year distance to the Alpha Centauri system: “wrong planet lol. thought u were my buddy zxqrl from kepler-442b. ur world looks cool tho. trade pics?”
Government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirm that within hours of Bixby’s initial contact, black SUVs surrounded his property. However, the alien entity—who identified itself as “KlaxonVibe_2847″—had apparently been monitoring Earth’s cellular networks for months, learning human texting protocols.
Dr. Miranda Castellanos, a xenolinguistics expert at the (formerly) classified Project LISTENING EAR facility, analyzed the complete message thread, which continued for three hours before government interference.
“What we’re seeing here represents the most casual first contact scenario ever theorized,” Dr. Castellanos explained during a hastily arranged press conference. “This entity demonstrates perfect comprehension of modern Earth slang, suggesting they’ve been studying our digital communications far longer than we realize. The implications are staggering.”
The conversation logs, leaked by an unnamed source within the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs (yes, that’s apparently a real thing), reveal increasingly disturbing details about humanity’s cosmic neighbors. KlaxonVibe_2847 described Earth as “that blue marble with the angry hairless apes” and expressed confusion about why humans “waste so much time arguing about imaginary sky people when there’s perfectly real aliens trying to slide into your DMs.”
Most shocking was the alien’s revelation that Earth had been added to something called the “Galactic Group Chat” approximately 47 years ago, but all messages had been going to area code 575—which encompasses Roswell, New Mexico. Phone company records show thousands of undelivered messages marked “recipient unavailable” in that region since 1976.
Bixby’s phone has since been confiscated by federal agents, but not before he managed to screenshot several other incoming messages from different cosmic area codes. These include dinner invitations from the Vega system, a business proposition involving “premium asteroid mining opportunities” from Betelgeuse, and surprisingly, multiple spam messages about extending his starship warranty from the Andromeda Galaxy.
The farmer remains under protective custody at an undisclosed location, though sources indicate he’s been promoted to “Earth’s First Unofficial Alien Communications Liaison”—a position that apparently comes with a generous government pension and a new unlimited texting plan.
NASA officials have declined to comment, but cell phone towers across the Midwest have reportedly been upgraded with “enhanced deep space reception capabilities” virtually overnight.
Meanwhile, KlaxonVibe_2847’s last message to Bixby remains ominously unread in government servers: “hey small blue planet friend, my cousins want 2 visit next week. they’ll bring snacks. hope u like sulfur-based compounds lol 👽🛸”
The characters and events depicted in this story are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is unintentional and purely coincidental.
