I was talking about the alien.

And why he came to Toronto.

It happened like this . . .

The alien’s shuttle landed out front of what used to be the McLaughlin Planetarium, which is right next door to the Royal Ontario Museum, where I work. I say it used to be the planetarium because Mike Harris, Ontario’s tightfisted premier, cut the funding to the planetarium. He figured Canadian kids didn’t have to know about space — a real forward-thinking type, Harris. After he closed the planetarium, the building was rented out for a commercial Star Trek exhibit, with a mockup of the classic bridge set inside what had been the star theater. As much as I like Star Trek, I can’t think of a sadder comment on Canadian educational priorities. A variety of other private-sector concerns had subsequently rented the space, but it was currently empty.

Actually, although it was perhaps reasonable for an alien to visit a planetarium, it turned out he really wanted to go to the museum. A good thing, too: imagine how silly Canada would have looked if first contact were made on our soil, but when the extraterrestrial ambassador knocked on the door, no one was home. The planetarium, with its white dome like a giant igloo, is set well back from the street, so there’s a big concrete area in front of it — perfect, apparently, for landing a small shuttle.

Now, I didn’t see the landing firsthand, even though I was right next door. But four people — three tourists and a local — did get it on video, and you could catch it endlessly on TV around the world for days afterward. The ship was a narrow wedge, like the slice of cake someone takes when they’re pretending to be on a diet. It was solid black, had no visible exhaust, and had dropped silently from the sky.

The vessel was maybe thirty feet long. (Yeah, I know, I know — Canada’s a metric country, but I was born in 1946. I don’t think anyone of my generation — even a scientist, like me — ever became comfortable with the metric system; I’ll try to do better, though.) Rather than being covered with robot puke, like just about every spaceship in every movie since Star Wars, the landing craft’s hull was completely smooth.