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messages that would reveal themselves in, of all things, music. Music, after all, is the logical progression of communication and ritual, involving an evolved sense of imagination. And an evolved sense of imagination can create beauty, or mas s destruction.
    â€œThe Calling Song” was a sort of intergalactic insurance policy. The visitors from the direction of the Pleiades had peppered a handful of cultures across the planet with such songs, buried deep in their genetic code. The Haudenosaunee had been one such people. Several weeks ago, as they cowered in an abandoned Tim Hortons, stuffing their faces with five-week-old doughnuts, Tracey had pointed out how the Haudenosaunee tongue was so different from all the other languages surrounding it. Almost like it had been planted arbitrarily, smack in the middle of the Great Lake s region.
    â€œI always knew we were out of this world,” noted Aaron with a laugh.
    Various other languages around the world had been infused with a similar hidden genomic blueprint, but as is the nature of human development and evolution, some societies rise to dominance and others disappear from the pages of history. The Haudenosaunee had survived and prospered to broadcast one such implanted song, a message Tracey, Emily and Aaron sent out to the universe basically saying, “Hey, remember us? This planet has the technology to broadcast now. Better come and take care of business before the people on this hunk of rock decide to come knocking at you r door.”
    All three ate their raccoon in silence, lost in their own thoughts and memories. Aaron coughed some more. Tracey looked in the direction of the crater that had been their radio station. And Emily bitterly remembered thinking, all those years ago, how much she had wanted to change th e world.

A Culturally Inappropriate Armageddon
    Part 2
    Old Men and Old Sayings
    Just a couple of months earlier and half a province away, on a small Anishinabe reserve named Otter Lake, there lived a small man in a smal l room.
    His name was Willie Whitefish. It had been many years since this ancient man had done much of anything noteworthy. Mostly, he watched television, listened to the radio and read. Having been forced to master the art of Western literacy sixty-odd years earlier in a residential school, the man had developed a fondness for the dominant culture’s literature. He was not well educated in the conventional sense, but he was well read. His legs had long ago abandoned the concept of being useful, and with practically no family, Willie lived a quiet, uneventful life in his little room at the senior s home.
    But outside his diminutive domicile, the world was abuzz. A spaceship was coming from some place farther away than he could see. It would arrive any day, and the whole planet was going crazy about it. Most of the world was frightened, excited, perhaps fearful that this might be an emissary from God. Willie, however, had other thoughts. And those thoughts made him smile. Not the pleasant or jovial kind of smiling, more like the “I know something you don’t know” kind.
    â€œAliens… people from outer space! These are strang e times.”
    Willie could hear Angela’s voice outside his door, talking with whoever was on shift with her at the seniors home. Willie liked Angela, as much as you can like somebody who touched you way too much. Whether it was to smooth back a lock of hair falling over his forehead, fasten an undone button, brush some dandruff off his shoulder or just give a reassuring pat on the hand, she never passed on a chance to engage in physical contact. It wasn’t that Willie was afraid of germs or people touching him; it was just that person-to-person interaction, like money, should be used economically and with purpose, not willy-nilly. But what can you do, he thought, I’m just an old man who doesn’t matter anymore. Still, he was sad to know she was going t o die.
    â€œI