Special:Badtitle/NS106:From Bob to You, a Conversation

This page is a mirror of some of the articles from frombob.to/you/, most specifically "A Conversation", a very long page purporting to be a chat log between two people, "Bob" and Douglas S Jones.

Are We Alone?
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Throughout the ages, humans have gazed into the night sky and pondered this question. And for just as long, humans have surmised that surely there must be other worlds, where others gaze into the same cosmos and ponder that same question.

As we enter the new millennium, we still cannot prove that there is anyone out there.

There are some who say they have already witnessed proof, and there are many more who believe what they say. Yet many others remain skeptical. Undeniable proof remains elusive.

Many scientists today echo the sentiments of the philosophers and poets of old. As we learn more and more about this universe we live in, it is becoming widely accepted that life should be abundant throughout the Galaxy, and that many civilizations should have long ago surpassed the level of knowledge that we now possess.

As we gradually extend our perception further and further from the Earth that gave us life, we cannot help but wonder: Where are they? Could it be that not one of them has ever visited this little corner of the Galaxy?

Although most scientists refuse to speculate in public on this subject, some believe that we should have been visited already. And there is reason to suspect that someone may be watching us this very moment, and has been for a very long time. (And this is why.)

If there really is someone out there, then it appears they don't want us to know it. For if they wanted us to know, they could easily have gotten our attention by now.

With every passing year, we are looking more and more deeply out into the universe. If they are out there, we surely will find them someday. It seems unlikely that none of them would ever want us to know them.

Undeniable contact seems inevitable. But how long will we have to wait?

And how will it happen?

Join our two intrepid explorers as they ponder the strange future that may lie before us...

A Conversation
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'..On Aliens On-Line

.doug, .table2 tr:nth-child(2n) { background: #ADD8E6; } .bob, .table2 tr:nth-child(2n+1) { background: #D0F0C0; } Doug Bob

Greetings.

What's going on here?
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I am frequently asked: What's going on here? Is this fictional, or did this conversation really happen?

There are two schools of thought about this...

Doug: During the mid-1990's, I spent a lot of time hanging around the old Encounters Forum on CompuServe (may it Rest In Peace...). People there talked about UFOs and aliens and such things. I had some pretty bizarre conversations there.

One day, I got a message from some guy who called himself Bob. He had obviously been lurking around the Encounters Forum too, although I had never seen him post there. He asked me about some of the things I had written, and we kept corresponding for some time after that. It just kept getting weirder and weirder. By the time of his last message, I had no idea what was real any more.

Unfortunately, I was not able to save all of his messages. But it was obvious he intended that I should share my, umm,... "experience" with others, so I spent a huge amount of time trying to reconstruct the conversation from memory. You can tell which are the parts I wrote -  those are the clumsy parts.

On Valentine's Day in 1996, I posted the first draft of this reconstruction in the Library of the Encounters Forum. Within 24 hours, all hell broke loose. I saw very little message traffic in the Forum about it, but I later learned there were a lot of private messages going back and forth. People were sending messages to each other saying things like, "Send me your phone number! We gotta talk!" I think some pretty big phone bills went out that month... these people were spread around the world. Some people really liked it. Some people really hated it. But one thing was obvious: almost nobody wanted to talk about it. At least not in public.

I continued to add to the file. Over the next year, it got about 50% longer. Much of the new material related to what is now called the plenitude. I had to really wrack my brains to figure out what Bob was trying to say there. Only recently have I discovered that a lot of mathematicians and physicists were arguing about such things.

On the first anniversary of publication, I uploaded the latest draft to the Internet for the first time. More than five years later, I still occasionally remember something else Bob said, and edit it into the file. I'll keep doing it as long as I can... or until Bob comes back.

Bob: Don't believe a word he says. He made the whole damn thing up himself.