The Heavenly Mixtape

We found it drifting through space, almost assuredly intentionally aimed toward our International Space Station--the plate's face up, instead of on the side, so, when it hit, it would only cause a mild thump, instead of cutting into the relatively fragile material composing the space station.

It was a golden record, just like we remember sending out, with a great slice of our culture on it.

What they sent us in return was a slice of the greatest music we'd never before heard: the hottest mix-tape ever dropped in the history of the universe.

The Sunfire Collection.

Eminem's lyrical skills? Pfaw, please. Those alien throats sung the rhymes that made angels swoon, and spat the lines that wilted the demons from schizophrenic patient's minds.

Oh, how we never knew how great instruments obviously conceived in zero-g, wrought from composite metals obviously melted in the heart of stars, could be.

Those notes wrote from hydrogen frequencies. The ethereal streams like starlight radiance on sensors we had not yet conceived. Every bass drop and treble like a meteor passing through Saturn's ring.

It was glorious.

It was the Artostricies' warming-up present from across the stars, heralding their arrival to Earth with the hottest rhythms and finest lines the best tracks ever conceived, produced by a society that waged war through the medium of musical tracks--declaring the winner the smoothest, jazziest or illest music-maker of all their many squabbling nations.

Play up or shut up indeed.