Life On Other Planets

The other night I had a really vivid dream about being selected as the person best suited to design and lead an expedition to find life elsewhere. And really, considering that I'm the Agile Manager at work and all, who would be better qualified than me?

Anyway, that bit of non-logic out of the way, it made sense somehow in the dream that I'd be the man for the job. It seems that not only had we recently discovered a means of faster-than-light transportation, but we'd also learned of something that made us believe that there was intelligent life out there in solar system blah-blah-blah. The part of the dream that really stuck out for me, after I woke up, was that I'd decided that there were three "worst case" scenarios for us to prepare for, each of which was worse than the one before it. Here's what they were:

1) We get to blah-blah-blah only to discover that there is no intelligent life to be found there, and our brand new program, that cost so much money to develop, ends up looking stupid. I called this the Laughing Stock result.

2) We get to blah-blah-blah and, regardless of whether we find intelligent life or not, we end up bringing some new kind of virus or germ back with us, which threatens to wipe out the entire Human Race! I called this scenario the Infection result.

3) We get to blah-blah-blah and not only antagonize the indigenous life there, but also give away the location of our homeworld, such that they come to Earth and attempt to conquer us. I called this the Invasion result.

A good deal of my dream dealt with me trying to convince others that these were the three outcomes we needed to worry about, and that our plans should include strategies for each. I don't think we ever got to the point of actually going there, by the time I'd woken up! And the next time I fell asleep (an afternoon nap later that day), I dreamed about it again, and still it was the three results that the dream was obsessed with!

Also, upon waking, I thought it was funny that dealing with conquerors was considered a worse fate than being wiped out by a disease of some sort!