Fire-animals meeting
It occurs to me that we and starfaring ETs have at least one very important thing in common: we are fire-animals, whose power technology began with fire, and whose search for ways of extracting power from our environment that transcend fire have taken some very strange turns. We both have that one great technological language in common -- and have it in common with nothing else. When we say "intelligence," what we really mean is "capable of acquiring fire and putting it to use." All creatures have their own kinds of intelligence, each peculiar to its species, but only the fire-animals have managed to domesticate and harness fire, and it is they who finally make the jump into space, headed for the stars. Take fire away from humans -- take the drive to use fire and the emotions surrounding its acquisition and use away from us -- and you destroy the human spirit, putting us on a fast track to extinction. The same is true of any fire-animal anywhere in the universe. Fire is the dark twin of us all, the animus to our daylight selves, the thing we see in the mirror whenever we look into it. Magnificent slave and terrifying master, fire is us in the Looking-Glass, and as long as we are what we are, it will always be there for us, looking back out at us with Loki's quizzical smile.