Billions of Sleeping Souls: Rethinking What Advanced Civilizations Might Actually Be Like

We've been preparing for the wrong kind of first contact.

For decades, science fiction has trained us to expect one of two scenarios when we finally meet an advanced alien civilization: either they'll arrive to conquer and enslave us, or they'll be so far beyond us that interaction is meaningless. Independence Day taught us to expect planet-destroying weapons. War of the Worlds gave us tripods harvesting humans like cattle. Even Arrival, with its seemingly benign visitors, carried an undercurrent of confusion and potential threat. The narrative is always the same—advanced means dangerous.

Both scenarios assume that civilizations capable of crossing interstellar space will treat us as either threats or irrelevancies. We're the primitive natives to be conquered, studied, or pitied. Our collective imagination has been shaped by our own history of colonization, and we've projected that history onto the stars.

But what if we've been looking at this all wrong?

The Sensationalism Problem

I understand why science fiction defaults to hostile aliens. Stories need conflict. Drama requires stakes. A peaceful first contact where everyone gets along and shares recipes doesn't make for compelling television. So we get invasion fleets, body-snatchers, and civilizations that view Earth as a resource to be strip-mined or a threat to be neutralized.

This has created a cultural expectation. When we imagine first contact, we imagine weapons more powerful than anything we've dreamed. We imagine subjugation. Even our "friendly" alien stories often feature beings who come bearing warnings or interference—Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still arrives to threaten humanity into peace. The underlying assumption is always the same: they have power, and they'll use it on us, one way or another.

We've imagined conquest because that's what we would do. We look to the stars and project our own anxieties and histories onto whatever might be looking back.

What Would True Advancement Actually Look Like?

Here's a question that doesn't get asked enough: Would a civilization capable of interstellar travel still operate on conquest-based models?

Think about what it would take to cross the void between stars. Not just the technology, though that's staggering enough. Think about the social evolution required. A species would need to cooperate on timescales we can barely comprehend. They'd need to solve resource scarcity, manage conflicts without destroying themselves, and develop technologies so advanced that a single miscalculation could end their entire civilization.

Perhaps the very fact that they survived long enough to achieve interstellar capability means they evolved beyond the primitive impulses that drive conquest. Maybe the Great Filter isn't just technological—maybe it's ethical. Maybe the civilizations that make it through are the ones that learned to be something better than we currently are.

The Fermi Paradox asks: "Where is everybody?" One possible answer: they're out there, but they're waiting. Waiting for us to be ready. Waiting for us to demonstrate that we can be trusted not just with their presence, but with our own future.

What if advancement isn't measured in weapon yields and faster-than-light drives, but in patience, wisdom, and the capacity for stewardship across cosmic timescales?

Stewardship vs. Handouts

But here's where it gets complicated. Even when science fiction tries to imagine "helpful" aliens, it often falls into another trap: the benevolent saviors who solve our problems for us. They arrive with clean energy, miracle cures, and technologies that make our struggles obsolete.

This is just conquest in reverse. It robs humanity of agency. It makes us children waiting for the adults to fix what we've broken. It's paternalistic, and frankly, it makes for boring stories.

Real stewardship doesn't work like that. A parent teaching a child to walk doesn't lift the child and carry them everywhere. They stay close, ready to catch them when they fall, but they let the child find their own balance. They encourage, they guide, they protect when necessary—but they don't do the walking for the child.

What if advanced civilizations approach contact the same way? Not as conquerors or saviors, but as careful shepherds who understand that growth requires struggle, that wisdom must be earned, and that the greatest gift isn't technology—it's the space to become worthy of it.

When the Shepherd Arrives

This is the question I wanted to explore in The Shepherd Descends.

An ancient intelligence arrives at Earth, carrying within her billions of sleeping souls—refugees from a civilization that died when their world did. She's crossed unimaginable distances, searching for a place where her flock might finally rest, might finally have a chance at life again.

She's not here to conquer. She has no interest in our resources or our submission. She's not here to save us from ourselves, to hand us technology, or to warn us about our destructive ways.

She's here to ask a question: Are we worthy of trust?

That simple premise flips the entire first contact narrative. Suddenly the question isn't "What do they want from us?" It becomes: "What kind of people are we when someone vulnerable arrives at our door?"

Because that's what the Shepherd is, despite her vast age and cosmic perspective—she's vulnerable. She carries billions of lives that depend entirely on her choices. She can't afford to be wrong about us. Every world she approaches could be sanctuary or catastrophe. Every species she encounters could offer friendship or exploitation.

She arrives not with demands but with need. And in that need, humanity finds something we rarely see in first contact stories: the opportunity to be the helpers, the stewards, the ones who rise to an occasion not through violence or cleverness, but through compassion.

The Weight of Cosmic Guardianship

Imagine carrying the weight of billions of sleeping souls. Imagine searching for a home across the endless dark, knowing that every decision you make determines whether those billions will ever wake again. The responsibility would be crushing.

The Shepherd can't take chances. She must evaluate not just our technology or our military capability, but something far harder to measure: our character. Are we capable of protecting the vulnerable? Can we be trusted with lives that aren't our own? Will we see refugees and offer sanctuary, or will we see opportunity and take advantage?

This is first contact as mutual evaluation. She's judging us, yes—but we're also revealing ourselves. Every choice matters. Every interaction becomes a test we didn't know we were taking.

And here's what makes it compelling: we're not sure we'll pass. The Shepherd isn't either.

This isn't humanity earning some advanced civilization's stamp of approval so we can join the galactic community. This is two vulnerable parties—one ancient, one young; one weary, one chaotic—trying to determine if trust is possible. It's messier than most first contact stories allow. There's no clear answer, no easy resolution.

There's just the weight of the choice and the consequences of getting it wrong.

Friendship, Not Transaction

What if advanced civilizations view contact not as negotiation but as relationship?

Not "what can you give us" or "what can we extract from you," but "can we grow together?" Not a transaction but a connection. Not power dynamics but genuine curiosity about who we are and who we might become.

This is the hardest question science fiction can ask: Would we recognize friendship if it arrived from the stars?

We're so conditioned to see contact through the lens of power—who has it, who wants it, who's using it on whom—that we might miss something simpler and more profound. What if they're just lonely? What if, across all that cosmic distance, they're seeking not resources or territory or validation, but simply others who understand what it means to look up at the stars and wonder?

The Shepherd arrives carrying loss. Her civilization is gone. Her world is gone. All she has left are the sleeping billions she's sworn to protect and the hope that somewhere, someone will understand what that responsibility means.

Maybe that's what advanced civilizations do: they seek each other not for advantage, but for recognition. For the relief of not being alone in the vast dark. For the possibility that somewhere, someone else knows what it means to carry billions of years of memory and still choose hope over despair.

The Question We Should Be Asking

We don't know what's out there. Our imaginings are colored by our own history of conquest, colonization, and exploitation. We look to the stars and see mirrors of ourselves—our fears, our ambitions, our violence.

But maybe the civilizations that survive long enough to cross the void between stars are the ones who learned to be something better. Maybe they're not coming with weapons or warnings. Maybe they're coming with the same questions we have, the same loneliness, the same desperate hope that they're not alone in the universe.

Maybe advancement isn't about power at all. Maybe it's about the wisdom to use power gently. The patience to wait for readiness instead of forcing it. The humility to arrive not as conquerors or saviors, but as fellow travelers seeking sanctuary in an indifferent cosmos.

The Shepherd Descends asks a simple question: What if they come in peace? Not to give us technology or save us from ourselves or harvest our resources, but to see if we're capable of compassion toward the vulnerable—even when they arrive from beyond the stars carrying needs we don't fully understand.

What would you do if billions of sleeping souls arrived on your doorstep, carried by an ancient guardian seeking sanctuary?

Would you see a threat? An opportunity? A problem to be solved?

Or would you see what the Shepherd sees when she looks at those billions of sleeping lives: people deserving of a chance, no matter how long the journey or how uncertain the destination?

Would you be worthy of their trust?

The Shepherd Descends is available now at Amazon. Explore what it means when first contact isn't about power, but about the courage to be vulnerable in a universe that offers no guarantees.

What do you think? How would advanced civilizations actually behave? Join the conversation in the comments below.