It was close to midnight on the second day of Diwali when we got the message. From deep space—far out past the Kuiper Belt and Pluto, which is not a planet anymore and probably pissed about it—a radio signal penetrated the atmosphere and reached our big-ass dishes in the desert made for this type of thing.

Props to NASA, they only took four hours to decode the encryption algorithm. Of course, they shared it with the world, but with a heavy dose of “suck it” energy to the European Space Agency, The Indian Space Agency, and, of course, the Russians. Maybe the Russians most of all, because they put a dog in space first and never let anyone forget it.

The message was clear and simple. Alien life with post-luminal speed capabilities knew about us. They addressed us directly. They said they were coming to the Milky Way and might stop by our solar system.

And they said they wanted to party.

Regrettably, they wouldn’t have much time to party, and said that Earth is only one of several possible options in our galaxy. Which was like, whoa, there’s other planets with sentient life that party harder than us? Kind of mind-blowing stuff.

So anyways, they said they might roll up, but if the party was not very good, they would leave and share their advanced technology with some other species who actually knew how to tear it up.

Our world leaders got together and decided that they were definitely down to show the aliens a good time in return for their game-changing tech, but more information was needed.

What constitutes a good party for aliens we’ve never met? We didn’t even know what they looked like. What they’re made of. Perhaps silicon or some weird goo from a nebula. And the Germans were convinced they would want to do kinky bondage stuff at the party, which, you know, maybe? But maybe not, we just didn’t know.

So it was decided we’d transmit a message back to the aliens, along the exact same trajectory from where the original message came from and hope it got to them in time. We said: “Yes, for sure we like to party and can host. How do you like to party, though?”

Luckily, the aliens had probably talked about it too and realized they should be more specific, because a few days later, way faster than our transmission could have travelled to them, we received a follow-up message.

This time the aliens sent us images of what they looked like (quite similar to humans, actually, just with blue skin like in that first shitty Star Trek series where they didn’t have money to make aliens funky like they are in Star Wars).

And they basically said that there should be “no uggos” at the party. And that they wanted lots of glork, which from the way they described it seemed like it was basically the same thing as cocaine. And they said they wanted hot weather and a big ledge nearby with a nice view so they could watch the sun come up after a big night of partying. And maybe pretend to push each other off the edge when they got all riled up on glork and roughhousing ensued.

They finished the message by reminding us that if we partied hard enough, they would share a bunch of their technology with us, maybe even leave behind a little spaceship or a gun that could shoot a beam that turns garbage into diamonds. Which, man, if we could reverse engineer that, we could maybe make a gun that turns garbage into gold.

They said they’d arrive soon-ish, but they had to make a stop to get some photos of a black hole they’d always wanted to check out. We got the impression we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, so we got right to it.

For the first time in our planet’s history, every country put aside their differences and started working together. China made all the decorations. Several countries in Africa and the Middle East got started on a big feast. The UK and France took care of the gift bags. Canada offered to contribute maple syrup, and everyone shrugged and just kind of said, “Uh, sure.”

Colombia was, of course, in charge of the coke. After a little bit of hemming and hawing (“who, us?”) they admitted that yeah, they could handle the order, but they wanted first crack at the garbage-into-diamonds beam, which seemed fair.

Knowing that the aliens wanted a ledge, the Grand Canyon was chosen as the party location. The aliens had also mentioned they hated the colour green, so its national park status was temporarily lifted and rangers got to work destroying the already minimal plant life.

Just in case the aliens wanted a tour of the continent, it was decided that all the uggos in North America would be identified and relocated (at government expense of course, no one was asking the uggos to finance their forced relocation themselves). They would be housed temporarily at hotels in either Peru, Costa Rica, or Belize, all good options because a perk of being in the uggo group meant free scuba diving lessons and you could go on guided tours of old pyramids and stuff. So, most of the uggos were pretty happy overall.

The aliens had sent some samples of their music which the world’s best musicians quickly analyzed and created new versions. Denmark and Spain were really good at it. Great DJs in Denmark and Spain, we discovered. The aliens also liked really fast strobe lights, so the Japanese provided those, and South Korean engineers set it all up, all along the bottom and far side of the canyon.

Not gonna lie, it was pretty cool to see everyone working together. Even Australia sent over some wool blankets for the edge of the canyon to sit on, and it’s common knowledge they are great at wool blankets.

Everyone agreed, this was going to be some party.

Of course, there was a major cost associated with the rager, but the funny thing is, once the wars were paused and governments stopped trying to get one over on each other, things were actually running way smoother. It felt like we had a common purpose—everyone universally understood the metaphorical goal to get in with the cool kids who had the pool and the yacht and the parents who went to Brazil every year. (Speaking of Brazil, they generously lent out a bunch of their hotties for the party—they have an extremely high hottie to uggo ratio over there for some reason.)

Anyways, all this took thirty-one days, which doesn’t sound like much, but the aliens had said they’d message us at Jupiter when they were getting close, and that happened on day twenty-nine. So, pretty tight. But by the time they got to Earth, everyone was ready to party. Except for the uggos, who were probably looking at a resplendent quetzal or some shit up in the cloud canopies of Costa Rica.

They had a livestream going so everyone could watch the aliens land at the edge of the Grand Canyon and pile out of their spaceship. As they walked down the gangplank, one of the aliens smacked his buddy in the balls, which is a funny thing guys do here sometimes too.

They saw the hotties we had gathered, they heard the music we had blasting out of two-storey high speakers. They saw the lights flashing furiously down below in the canyon. They dipped their fingers in the massive piles of cocaine and rubbed it on their gums.

“What do you think?” said the head alien, who honestly, other than being blue, was super hot, way hotter than our hottest hottie.

The other alien shrugged its hot shoulders. “The glork is kind of weak.”

They didn’t like our cocaine at all.

“And the music is blarnz,” added the alien.

None of us knew what blarnz meant, but we got the sense it wasn’t good.

Everyone held their breath as the aliens looked at each other and raised their eyebrows as if to say, “What do you want to do?”

And then one of the aliens said, “It’s not too far to the Andromeda Galaxy, they got that planet with major hotties.”

Which stung, because these were our best hotties the aliens were looking at, and they didn’t even find them all that hot.

The aliens started trying to make their escape. “We gotta go,” they said. “Nice meeting you and everything.”

Just like that they got in their ship and took off.

And this is nuts, I think it was Canada of all places, got super pissed that nobody even tried the maple syrup, and shot a missile at the ship and blew that thing the fuck up.

So, we didn’t get the ship or the superluminal tech or the diamond gun.

But the hot people who were left behind still had a hell of a party. It was pretty sick: They danced all night to the alien music, did a ton of drugs, watched the sun come up on comfy wool blankets, and fell asleep in each other’s arms, exhausted, but glowing.

Meanwhile, I got to see a resplendent quetzal.

So that was pretty sick as well.

It took about a year for things to go back to normal. Same global conflicts, same oil shortages, same wealth inequality.

We had almost forgotten about aliens until one day we received another transmission. From a different alien race, from a different part of the galaxy.

When we heard their message, our leaders said, “Hell yeah, come on over.”

And it was like the entire Earth suddenly got quiet for a few seconds before everyone turned to the person next to them and gave them a big high five.

The aliens wanted to know if we liked to fuck.