At the beginning of this year, a coworker at my day job suggested we join the SETI home team. He explained that since the office computers we use are always kept on, the dead time could be put to good use with our machines analyzing data picked up at observatories. Our computers could sift through packets sent to us by SETI, processing radio waves, and trying to detect intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. For those who are not familiar with SETI, it stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. I scoffed about committing my computer to such a far out mission, especially since the computer isn't really mine, but I thought the pictures of radio wave graphs looked pretty nifty. Within a week, I checked out their web page (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu) and signed up.

I've never had a insatiable appetite for alien life, I don't watch the X-Files, and I'm not waiting for a big spaceship to take me away to a planet where I have the magnetism of Captain Kirk (although I would not decline the invitation). But as of this week, I have racked up over 2000 hours of computer time searching for little green men and their spouses. My computer has worked much harder at searching for ET than anything I have done for the company. Every time the computers freeze, the higher ups blame SETI (because they don't know what the real problem is). I have no idea if it's just an elaborate screen saver or if something of importance is actually being done, but I haven't ever considered taking off the program.

This week, Frank Drake, the president of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, announced to the public that alien civilizations exist and could be as close as 1000 light years away. While this may seem like a bold statement on the surface, it is such a broad assumption that I can't help but believe is true.

First off, galaxies far, far away exist 1000 light years from Earth, and that means it takes 1000 years for any light signals to hit Earth. Whatever we find happened a millennium ago. The closest solar system Upsilon Andromedae is a scant 44 light years away, and no civilization appears to be on the rise there. Drake is talking about places twenty-five times as far away. There better be something going on. If all those stars and galaxies are just for our entertainment, I'm very impressed with the producer of the show. Give that thing a grant!

Second, there's the definition of civilization. Ants are pretty civilized. So are dolphins. In fact, anything can look civilized depending on what it is compared with. Even Jar Jar and the Gungans would be considered an impressive collection of beings. Man was considered civilized over two thousand years ago, but let's face it, we weren't the sharpest creatures. But we did have thumbs. Given all of the possibilities in the universe, there had better be some creatures complaining about too much gridlock, sprawl and random acts of violence in their public school systems. I'd like to think of those problems as universal as opposed to stupid dilemmas we brought upon ourselves.

To be quite honest, I don't really care if SETI finds any aliens. The dream is far better than reality. The hey day of science fiction occurred before we landed on the moon. Once we found out it was really just a big rock in the sky, we didn't bother to find out its possibilities. I never fantasized about being an astronaut as a kid because I assumed I could spend my two week vacation from a humdrum job on the moon. But instead, we blew up a teacher just after lift off when I was in sixth grade and quit trying anything for awhile. Now, I must resort to spending time in Mexican border towns to be otherworldly.

As I write this column, my computer at work is sifting through SETI data packets. Racking up the hours. Maybe it is actually looking for intelligent life, maybe it's a government plot to link all of computers to do their evil bidding, or maybe it's a bunch of crazy kids at Berkeley with a weird screen saver. I just like the dream.

Chris Jungle used to pretend he was Timothy Orsen, Freedom Fighter of the Galaxy, inevitably doing battle with his archenemy Gor in an eternal struggle for control of the stars. Many copyrights were infringed.