I dreamt all this, this morning. That many said it was an alien invasion. That others said it was the silhouettes of giant angels moving overhead. Certainly there were enormous circular shadows charted sliding slowly and silently across the earth, over cities and field and mountains, seemingly thrown by unseen objects, cloaking technology some pondered, but nothing that could be detected on radar. Scrambled jets encountered no obstructions. The most dramatic physical proof however, the most substantial, was undoubtedly the sunsets, or sunset singular perhaps one should say, since in retrospect it was all just one long sunset, or so it appeared, for thirty days on end. The clouds were being seeded it seemed, with something red. Soon it fell as red rain, then after a few days rivers and streams all across the world began to run red, or pinkish red at times, like diluted blood. The scientists talked of algal blooms, except that those are usually green, and all their tests failed to identify any biological element in the water responsible for the colour. The freaks, the geeks, the tinfoil hats, the conspiracy theorists all had a field day of course. Did their best to whip up all the rest of us into a panic. Conspiracy theories abounded, that the scientists were all in on it together in cahoots with the industrial-military complex and that the red water was going to poison us all, make people sterile or bisexual or liberal or whatever else the right-wing nutjobs are always dreaming up as projections of their own longings. Priding myself on being my own man and a freethinker I just ran myself my daily bath as usual, sniffed the red-pink hot water and concluded it was harmless and jumped right in there.         
        
Interestingly all the armed conflicts around the world were suspended so that combatants on each side, like everyone else, could run home to spend time with their nearest and dearest in the few days they feared we all had left before the presumably impending apocalypse. Even the invisible and un-admitted-to war between the rich and poor was suspended, while the homeless were taken indoors and fed and the rich found that their money was no longer worth very much if it couldn't buy them immunity from alien annihilation.
        
After thirty long days of terror and soul searching it all finally ended and the water ran clear again. The skies returned to blue and the clouds to white and grey. But something was different. Everyone could feel it. Bit by bit everyone found that every single thing was different. The erstwhile warring factions in suspended wars discovered that they could no longer find it within themselves to go back to violence. Russian and Ukrainian, Arab and Jew, Saudi and Yemeni, Sunnis and Shia, even Rangers and Celtic supporters: each of them found upon trying to take up arms again that their hearts weren't really in it anymore.
        
For my own part I found I could no longer get angry and rage at the television news or spout spiteful stories about my employers over the dinner table each evening. I could no longer get irritated by schoolchildren making noise on the train or by people who talked too much or too loudly when I was trying to read. I was suddenly overcome with remorse at how despicable I had been in having an extra-marital affair, so broke it off with my mistress, only to find my wife unexpectedly confessing to an affair of her own and even more unexpectedly suggesting that she have an open relationship with both me and her lover and live in tolerance of each other's wandering yearnings. All around the world people relaxed about all sorts of stuff they could have relaxed about sooner, maybe years or centuries ago, but never quite figured out how, or never dared to be the first ones to suggest it. Religious people were no longer prudish and marriages were no longer prisons or devices for selling yourself to the patriarchy while dressed up like a cake. Straight people could suddenly all understand that gay people were just like them in every aspect that mattered. Sociable people could suddenly see loneliness in others and recognise the small but important ways in which they could reach out and help relieve that loneliness. People were no longer fooled by surface appearance such as beauty or ugliness, but saw the living souls of the people hidden within. People no longer saw and feared and dwelled upon their differences, but perceived their commonality which shone much more brightly. Maybe it always had but something had blinded them to it. Everyone became friends in other words, and kinder to each other, all because for a few weeks they'd thought they'd had their chips and the human race was a goner.
        
In short, almost overnight, or at least over one month of constant sunsets, humankind appeared to have been secretly and silently changed. We were all overwhelmed with tolerance, respect, affection and understanding for each other. Forgiveness became not just possible but a great pleasure to dispense to those who had wronged us. You'll be thinking that this turned everyone into lazy hippy slobs who could no longer be bothered getting out their beds every morning, but that wasn't the case at all. Our perspective had been turned towards making our societies fair and free of poverty, and outwards to the possibility of other planets with other intelligent life on them and the exciting prospect of meeting them. Every nation began working as never before to advance our technology and reach for the stars. People no longer competed with each other, but cooperated, which they soon found was much more efficient and yielded spectacular results.
        
In summary, everyone shared the eerie feeling that something from outside had come and looked down at us, and that we were therefore now all still being potentially watched, and so ought to be on our best behaviour and trying to impress. We all had a vaguely shameful sense of how very unimpressive we had been up until then, but didn't want to dwell on that, rather than simply doing better in future. Maybe the angels had come and looked at us, whatever that would mean, pure theological nonsense or useful poetic metaphor. Call it what you will, but self-evidently humanity had been altered and improved. We had never got to see the aliens, what they looked like or what they thought. But we had got to see ourselves, as we truly are, and how we ought to strive to become, which was a good deal more useful.
        
Finally one scientist belatedly released his findings that the red clouds and rain had been no more than iron oxide released from passing meteors. Pure chemistry these aliens, minerals, not even alive. Would anyone believe him and go back to believing we were alone in the universe? Not all truths are useful, and some illusions are more useful than truth, a wise man said. And although nobody understood him, they felt no need for once, to argue against him or stone him to death.