Arthur C. Clarke was a profoundly insightful human being. Fictionally, he posed 2010 as ‘the year we make contact’. But his ideas about ‘what’ we’d make contact ˚with˚ are not like familiar ideas. For me, the year was 2002. May. The onset was like being hit by lightning made of anciently evolved intelligence. It rewrote the basis of my mind, and I was made a child again.