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240 Fears sacked by Mongols, chroniclers declared that these horrendous visitations were penalties “for our sins.”*” Many humans hope for justice imposed from outside; Christianity seems particularly fixated on God’s punishments for the wicked. Even among non-Christians, humans who suffer deeply from guilt, who think that our species is uniquely evil, may fear retribution, a chastising of Humankind. Some contact pessimists seem to hope for harsh consequences, perhaps because they believe that we deserve punishment. Atlantis Retribution on evil societies is an old idea. In the fourth century B.C., Plato described a wondrous island empire in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules. He placed it outside the known world and sank it to the ocean floor to preserve the power of the mystery. Aristotle saw Plato’s Atlantis as a poetic fiction meant to warn us of what happens to the arrogant and the decadent.” Similar warnings have appeared in our own times, adjusted for scientific and technological advances. Hall offered the example of a person committed to a system of belief that asserts Humankind’s basic evil and the imminent arrival of a savior descending from heaven. Such a person, seeing a strange aerial event, might interpret it as the approach of a threatening, punishing angel or as the coming of a savior.’ Papagiannis suggested a more nuanced possibility: extraterrestrials might be undecided about how to deal with us. They might be debating whether to help us or crush us, postponing their decision as they wait to see what we are going to do with ourselves.” If we found an alien artifact within our solar system, or in the interstellar space around it, we would know that at least one other civilization had achieved interstellar flight. The direct contact scenario suddenly would become more credible, challenging the assumptions that underlie the orthodox view of SETI. Direct contact might force us to consider possibilities that would not arise in the remote contact scenario. The technological wizardry of the extraterrestrials might intimidate us into passivity; or we might respond with a dramatically expanded effort to achieve interstellar flight ourselves. Contact could draw us outward to the stars. Interstellar Travel Confirmed