"Humans of planet Earth, this is General Gox of the Thrin empire.
“In the name of Theisur, greatest of the gods, we declare your species our vassal. Rejoice, for you will get to serve the greatest beings in the galaxy!
“Relinquish your resources to us, or our great armies shall decimate you and take what is ours by right of conquest.
“You have one Imperial Standard Time Unit, thirty-eight of your minutes, for your leaders to respond in genuflection."
General Gox was having a good day. His fleet of warships was in orbit around Earth, and it looked like the planet was every bit as primitive as their radio transmissions had indicated. It had been simplicity itself for his technicians to take over Earth's internet.
He was broadcasting his message through every audio device on the planet at the same time in all their local languages, as a show of strength. With any luck, the humans would just surrender immediately. A vassal that fell in line was much more productive than one that needed to be beaten down first, after all.
He hoped that they would give him an excuse to wipe out at least a small fraction of them, though. It was good for morale, both his own and that of his troops. Of course, if by some miracle none of the humans gave him an excuse, it was always possible to just fabricate one.
An aide nervously approached him. General Gox was quite annoyed by that. He considered himself very disciplined, and very rarely killed messengers for bringing him bad news. That this aide would have the audacity to insult him by being nervous was absolutely unacceptable. He would need to use the especially hot irons to punish him later.
"Oh great general! The humans, their behavior is odd. It is completely outside of our predictions."
Humanity was not a unified species and had many different cultures. They were expecting a variety of different responses. How could their behavior be outside of their predictions, when the predictions were all over the place to begin with?
"Explain." He ordered curtly.
"They are reacting with incredulity, my lord. And annoyance. Almost all of them are, no matter their location." The aide responded.
Ah, their minds must have broken from fear, then. It happened from time to time. It was a rational reaction.
"General Gox. Earth's United Nations are responding. Shall I put them on?" His communication officer interrupted the aide.
"Yes. Do so. If they do not believe that we are real, then I shall make an impression that will leave no doubt in their minds." He responded with malicious glee in his voice.
An image of a human appeared on the bridge screen. The man looked unimpressive. This was the leader of their so-called United Nations? Pathetic.
He gave the human a grin. Many species faltered at the sight of a Thrin grinning at them. Their many teeth and piercing eyes awakened ancient instincts that told even the hardiest species that they were in the presence of an apex predator and should be justly afraid.
And yet, the human did not look scared at all.
The general's HUD scanned the man's facial expression and informed him that he was looking annoyed more than anything else. How odd.
He had a little speech planned for this. The planet wide broadcast was one thing, but seeing the fear in somebody's face directly was another thing entirely, and the opening speeches in a first contact scenario were always something special. It was a delight to see the despair in a creature's face as their hopes and dreams crumble. But before he could open his mouth, the human abruptly shouted at him:
"This is bullshit! Stop the jokes, you are ruining our fun!"
"What?" General Gox replied eloquently. This conversation was not going according to plan.
"Your little alien invasion is not historically accurate at all. And none of it makes any sense. It's like you didn't even try to make a plausible alien species. You have physical spaceships made out of metal. You conquer planets and fight for resources instead of just mining an asteroid belt and building a Matrioshka brain. You enslave other species, as if you had never heard of the concept of robotics.
“And you fight your wars with armies of your own people? With guns? That's ridiculous. I should know. I have fought in simulated battles in over five hundred different cultures and time periods. It isn't difficult to extrapolate from that, and there is no way that a species as advanced as yours is supposed to be would still fight in such a primitive way."
"What is this madness? You are here to submit and surrender, not spout insults at us. Who do you think you are?"
"I am Kendrich Walton, the head of the Historical Reenactment Society. But of course you already knew that."
"My lord, this must be a mistake. That is not the name of the humans' leader according to our scans." His aide fearfully pointed out. He was right to be afraid. Somebody's incompetence had resulted in this prank born of madness, or whatever it was. They had ruined his speech. Heads were going to roll once he found out who was responsible for this.
But then he had a flash of insight.
"What is the Historical Reenactment Society? Only the United Nations should be able to call us. Are you the secret power behind the thrones? A conspiracy that controls all of Earth's many countries from the shadows?" He asked the man.
It wouldn't explain the man's madness, but at least it would explain how he managed to hijack this historical event from the supposed ruler of this planet. But then again, how could their conspiracy avoid being detected when his people took over the humans' internet? It didn't add up.
"Oh, as if you don't know. Well, at least you are staying in character, so props for that. But your whole shtick just makes no sense. This isn't how aliens would fight."
Then the man paused, folded his hands and narrowed his eyes at him, and uttered the weirdest insult he had ever heard:
"Your whole species is just unrealistic.
"Illogical warfare, technology and resource acquisition are somehow not even the worst of it. I'm looking at the propaganda stuff you sent us along with that cheesy first contact message, and I must say I am very disappointed. Your whole species is completely unoriginal. You have two arms, two legs, a torso, a head on top with two eyes. You are basically just humans with a few extra bits and some added height. A child should know better than to design an alien like that."
"..." General Gox did not know how to respond to that.
He turned to his communication officer instead: "Is this for real?"
"Yes, my lord. I heard the same thing."
Something inside the general snapped.
"I have never been so insulted in my entire life, human. You dare to call me 'unrealistic'? Who even uses that as an insult? Your minds must have broken already, and I have no use for the mad. So let me show you just how real I am: Eat an unrealistic tungsten rod!"
Seconds later, New York disappeared in a massive explosion that was visible from orbit.
There, that should take care of this stupidity.
"Did you seriously just destroy a city just to make a point? You are such an asshole." The human continued to speak.
"What? How are you still alive? You were staying in New York, were you not?" He was now genuinely confused, and just the tiniest bit concerned. Their takeover of the humans' information systems had been absolute, and it was quite clear that the human had been in New York when the city went up in flames.
Nobody should have been able to survive that.
"Well, at least you destroyed New York and not some other city. It's a classic, so I can't really hold it against you. And kinetic bombardment is actually a reasonable strategy. I was half expecting you to send down drop ships full of foot soldiers or something equally preposterous."
General Gox glanced at the drop-pod assault soldiers standing at attention behind him, just out of view of the camera. As his highest-ranking soldiers, they were listening in on this conversation, that had been supposed to be momentous and glorious, but ended up being momentously stupid instead. They did not look happy.
"How are you still alive?" He asked the human.
"I'm not. I'm obviously talking to you from the afterlife. Look, it doesn't matter that you are feigning ignorance and trying to stay in character. The jig is up. I'm not buying it. That alien species you came up with is just so shitty it can't possibly be real. I'm checking your ID, and I'm going to get you banned from interacting with the physical world. Have fun being blacklisted, asshole."
The human seemed to stare off into the distance for a few seconds, before his expression suddenly changed to one of extreme confusion.
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"...wait, this is real? You are an actual alien, and not a cosplayer? Does that mean we just had a First Contact event and this is what will go down in history? Fuck my life. I'm going to call this in."
Then the man disappeared. One moment he was there, then the next he was not. The camera was still running. He just disappeared from where he was standing.
"What is going on? Are the cameras malfunctioning? You said we had complete control over their electronics. If I don't get a good explanation for this in the next minute, heads are going to roll!"
His subordinates started screaming frantically, which did wonders to calm his nerves.
But after just a few seconds, a different human suddenly appeared right where the alleged leader of their United Nations stood before.
"Greetings, General Gox. It appears that there has been something of a miscommunication so far. Mr. Walton was unaware that you were real. It is a surprise to us all. On behalf of humanity, I extend our greetings. Unfortunately the first contact has been somewhat ruined."
"Ah, then you must be the true government in charge of your pathetic species. Tell me, human. How is it possible for you to be so inept that you did not even manage to respond to us?" Gox responded.
"Oh, that is because up until a few minutes ago the universe was lifeless. We had no reason to believe that there was any more point in monitoring physical reality. The only ones who still care about Earth are the people from the Historical Reenactment Society, whose leader you have met. The rest of us usually don't bother to take physical form."
"Ridiculous! Do you honestly expect me to believe this?" He spat at the human.
"No. I do not expect you to believe me, to be honest. But we have decided on a policy of honesty, and while you won't believe us, other people will be able to look at the logs of what happened here and realize that we do not lie. Your personal opinion on this is of little consequence to us. The Thrin empire is a hegemonizing, imperialist aggressor. We have no reason to treat you nicely, and since there is, shall we say, a certain degree of technological disparity between us, we are going to disable your fleet now."
And then a dozen alarm klaxons on the bridge started blaring at the same time.
The technicians were shouting over each other.
"The shields are down!"
"The main gun is down!"
"The hangar doors are jammed!"
And just like that, general Gox's mounting rage suddenly turned to shock, and then fear.
"How are you doing this!" He demanded.
"We are asking the universe to do it for us. We instructed it to disable your fleet, so that's what is happening."
"That makes no sense! What are you talking about?"
"You are a layman so I will keep it simple: You know about quantum physics, correct? Events in quantum physics depend on observers. This is a really big deal, and a hint at what lies behind physics. The only way observers could matter for the outcome of a physical event is if reality cares about sapient entities.
"It turns out you can exploit that. We experimented with what counts as 'sapient enough' for the universe to affect quantum physics. It turns out that even a relatively primitive AI satisfies the criteria. So we simply mass-produced self-replicating minor AIs that count as ‘observers’ to the universe, and then we made them think about the things we want the universe to do.
“We call them Faith Engines. They take people's beliefs and think about them really, really hard until reality gives in and makes it real. It's obviously more complicated than this, but I'm neither a physicist nor an applied theologist so I don't know the details."
"Applied theologists?" He asked. None of this made any sense, but that last part stood out to him for being especially weird.
"Of course. Now that we have built Faith Engines to tell the universe what to do, we need experts to tune them. That's the field of applied theology. Finding out exactly how you need to phrase a prayer to get the results you want with the greatest efficiency. The applied theologists make sure that the gods we created to take care of drudgery for us are acting as intended."
"The gods you created..." He repeated meekly. This was ridiculous. No way was this real.
And yet, all around him the klaxons were still blaring. He ignored them. He had subordinates to take care of these things. If any of them failed to do their duties and demand his attention while he was in the middle of a conversation it would not go well for them.
"The reason we are here to meet you is the most fascinating thing, you know? We used to live in a lifeless universe. Humanity was the only species that ever developed sapience. When we realized that, we set up a long-term project where we instructed a large number of Faith Engines to find a way to fix that. They have been running for centuries by now.
"It looks like they finally succeeded. As it turns out, the stars are slightly different than they were a short while ago, from our perspective. We believe that the faith Engines convinced the universe to swap our version of Earth with the local version. This proves that the multiverse theory is correct. Our scientists are freaking out about this. They have already written numerous papers on the topic, since time is flowing faster for us. Once you have convinced the universe to ascend you to a higher form of existence there really is not a lot of reason to obey the normal flow of time, after all.
"Mr. Walton must be so proud right now. The universe-swap could only have happened if our historical reenactment was accurate enough that the differences to the actual 21st century Earth in this universe were minimal. That version of Earth is probably in our universe now, and is safe from having to deal with you."
He did not know what to make of any of this. It was too ridiculous to be true. But it was also too far-fetched to be some sort of prank.
So he did what was expected of somebody in his position and defaulted to his most useful and most socially accepted emotion: Rage.
"You expect me to believe that? Do you think I am a fool?" He spat at the man.
But before he could elaborate on what he was going to do to humanity for this insult, the human interrupted him: "Yes. I do think you are a fool. But independent of that, I do not expect you to believe it. Like I said, the intended audience of this conversation is posterity, not you."
Something inside of general Gox snapped. His voice became uncharacteristically calm as he declared the end of humanity: "That does it. Your disrespect against the Thrin will not be tolerated any longer. In the name of Theisur, greatest of the gods, I declare you heretics. We are going to kill every last one of you. By the end of today, the only thing that remains of your species will be its name, added onto the long list of those we purged for the glory of Theisur, who will feast on your entrails in the afterlife."
In response to his threat, the human raised a single eyebrow. "Wow, your god sounds fucked up. I sure am glad he either doesn't exist or has abandoned you."
"You dare!"
"Of course I do. That wasn't an empty boast, you know? Our theologists have used Faith Engines to check for anything that would be worth calling a god. This Theisur individual of yours definitely isn't here right now. So either he doesn't exist, or he has abandoned you."
Then after a few seconds he added: "Actually nevermind, they just said they spent the last few seconds diving deeper into it, and Theisur definitely doesn't exist. They wanted me to let you know that your god is false and that they can prove it mathematically."
"Cease this heresy at once! We are the strongest species in the galaxy, serving the strongest god! You should grovel before us!"
"What would be the point of that? I thought you said you were already going to kill us, anyway? Not that it matters. According to what we are reading from your computers you still use ballistic weapons and lasers, and you haven't yet figured out how to bypass any of the Laws of Thermodynamics. And based on what we got from scanning your brains while we were talking, you don't even understand most of what I'm saying. Yet you are still planning to attack us by shooting large pieces of matter at us.
"This is not a military operation to us anymore. We have read through the surveillance logs on your ship while we were talking, and we have now learned that you are a horrible, absolutely vile species with ritual cannibalism and an oppressive caste system. We can't really let that stand.
"Now, the good news for you is that we don't actually have a real military anymore. We didn't see the need for one when we became unified and then discovered that the universe contained no other life than us.
“The bad news is that what we do have is an unreasonably large number of people who play war games for fun, usually in fantastic ways, and the Faith Engines to make those games real when we want to. We are currently holding a vote between various interest groups on the coolest and most fun way to take you down.
"If you want my advice for surviving the next couple of minutes? What is most likely to save you here are not your guns, but our pity. We have some ecology preservation groups that are trying to prevent an attack against you because all life is precious to them. Even yours. They aren't really getting a lot of votes, though."
"Your deluded rantings will not intimidate me, human! Prepare to be annihilated!"
"The time is up. The vote just finished and it's not looking good for you. I would urge you to start praying, but we just established that it wouldn't do you any good because your god doesn't exist. So it sucks to be you, I guess"
Then the human shrugged, and the connection cut off.
General Gox stared incredulously at the blank screen for a few seconds, before he was shaken out of his stupor by yet another klaxon.
This one was quite distinctive: It meant that they were under attack by boarding parties.
Old instincts took over, and they were the only thing that saved his life as the door to the bridge exploded only seconds later. He was already moving when the splinters hit the ground. He dived behind cover and shot in the direction of the door. Seconds later it was all over. All the human assailants were either dead or lay dying on the ground.
It was only then that he took them in properly and noticed that they were wearing power armor. They were not meant to have technology like this!
As he walked past the dying forms of the humans, trusting in his subordinates to put them down, he just faintly made out their last words: "I told you not to rush the boss, Leeroy. Why do you never listen?"
From there it was a blur of motion. The humans were everywhere. He fought and killed them wherever he encountered them. But they just kept coming.
Soon he lost himself in a blood frenzy as he killed and killed, and proved to his subordinates just why he was in charge.
But then he noticed something odd. Didn't he kill that guy before? They looked exactly the same.
He ignored it and kept fighting.
But then it happened again. And again. He had killed all of these humans only minutes before! He was sure of it! What was going on here?
Then he suddenly fell on his face.
Huh. What happened just now. He looked down at his armor and found that his legs were missing.
Oh. That explained the pain as well.
So that was what dying felt like.
"Fifth time's the charm! I’m so glad that the respawn timer on this mission is set so low." He heard a human yell out from behind him.
It was the same guy again, looking no worse for wear.
He didn't act like a soldier. He was paying no attention to general Gox at all. Instead, he was looking at the wall, talking and gesticulating wildly at some invisible thing. Something about "Getting so many views from this".
So he took advantage of his inattention and shot him again. For the fifth time.
Then he lost his hand to a shot from yet another human.
"Lol, idiot. Don't brag before you have actually won. Fucking noob." The human said to the corpse of his compatriot.
Then he aimed his gun at General Gox and everything went dark.
--- The Galactic Council, a few days later ---
There was a new species on the scene, and they were incredibly naive. They called themselves humans.
Councilor Vral did not know what to make of them.
They claimed to follow a simple rule: "To repay kindness with kindness and aggression with aggression. Reciprocity is the core of our ethical values, and we hope we can all be great friends. But of course, somebody has to take the first step, and we are willing to take that risk."
He thought that was completely stupid and ignorant of political realities. They were blindly handing out technologies and signing treaties without any regard for the obvious loopholes in them. So many species were taking advantage of the humans' naivety.
The more warlike among them were buying information about the humans' military capabilities that were very clearly a prelude to an invasion.
At least the humans were providing a welcome distraction from the general nervousness going around after the Thrin lost contact with their homeworld a few days ago.
And yet, he couldn't help but feel a little flicker of concern when he looked at the human traders and saw them shaking their heads sadly. They did not look like traders losing on a deal. They looked like teachers who were disappointed in a student who just failed a test.