For Zaux, the Thasu Intergalactic Space Station was a nightmare come to life. He wasn’t particularly timid, but he was a xur—a blue biped with a distinguishing trait of intense agoraphobia. He stood on the New Arrivals Platform #3460 as it navigated the railway system that orbited the artificial planet like a giant web and watched the scenery pass by.
From a distance, the central Space Station was lively and bursting with color, with hundreds of spaceships departing and arriving. What looked like sluggish bacteria from above were actually hundreds of mingling species, some thrice Zaux's height or the size of his foot, some slithering, some rolling in water-filled globes.
Throughout Zaux’s career as a diplomat, he became one of the few individuals of his entire species to have visited over 3,000 stations. Not the best job for someone with agoraphobia, but since it was a species-wide issue, the bonuses for being a sacrificial lamb were always welcome! Even so, the amount of emergency meetings was getting on his nerves, especially with his new promotion. By all standards, once he became an ambassador he should have gotten his own private ship straight to the United Intergalactic Alliance headquarters. But given the last minute notice and the fact that he had been vacationing in a relatively remote galaxy, Zaux was shoved back into the agony of space station crowds.
As Zaux’s platform slowed and veered onto a branching rail, his headset filled his ears with frantic notifications from his superiors. His current mission really gave him a headache. Something about a recently emerged species wiping out half their galaxy and about to colonize the rest. The emergency meeting was still a few dozen galaxies away.
The platform landed with a jolt. Zaux followed the crowds as they began streaming into the main commercial hub of the space station. He sucked in a deep breath and stepped outside. The noise and lights hit him like the after-flares of a rocket engine, and he felt his stomach lurch.
“Move it.” A not-so-gentle nudge from behind prompted Zaux to keep going. He shook off his paralyzed muscles and eased off the platform landing pad, shuddering with each step and flailing his four arms about to make way. It was a strategy that worked often.
From there, he made his way to the station’s highest rated food alley. Zaux had just enough time to catch a bite before boarding his transfer flight and being subjected to more horrid spaceship meals. He wanted both a good restaurant, but also an empty one, which was difficult since the best ones were always packed. He was about to give up before he saw it: an empty restaurant hidden in the shadow of its behemoth neighbor. Zaux almost doubted it was in service, but the wide open door told him otherwise.
Zaux squinted at the name in large, red, bold letters, written in the Universal language. “The Queen of…” He frowned and sounded out, “Ah-mur-ee-cah.”
From the ceiling hung a series of bell-shaped lamps. Red stripes lined the walls, interrupted by two giant menu boards. A figure wearing a matching red uniform waved at Zaux from behind the counter.
The worker had pale skin, two arms, two legs, and very long fingers. On their head was a bundle of—purple hair? For most species, the color was too flashy for survival. Two arched stripes of hair above their two eyes? Unusual but not unseen. A… triangular shaped breathing hole—no, two breathing holes jutting out the front of their face? Fascinating.
The worker opened their mouth and Zaux’s headset translated, “Welcome to the Queen of America! Could I get you anything to eat?”
As soon as they were done speaking, they stretched their lips back to reveal a row of straight, yellowish teeth, and bared them aggressively at Zaux. He shuddered, then reminded himself that different species had different customs. From the way their message was translated, Zaux was pretty sure it was a gesture of friendliness.
Almost as soon as that thought passed, a sonorous beep signifying the second-to-highest level danger alert from his headpiece, which had finished sorting through a database worth trillions of species, filled all six of his ears. Zaux stiffened, fixating on the worker as his headpiece fed him the relevant species profile.
A homo sapiens sapiens? With a total existence of less than a thousandth of xurs’ recorded existence, homo sapiens sapiens— gonochoristic, warm-blooded, highly aggressive, and unpredictable bipeds that exhibit limited-to-extreme speciesism among varying individuals—have waged almost septuple the amount of wars. And just like how “xur” was a more convenient version of “Xeraphnitushsrwu,” these creatures were also more commonly known as “humans.”
Zaux knew he had heard the term “homo sapiens sapiens” somewhere! In his current mission briefing about a newly integrated, genocidal species, no less. Great.
The worker noticed Zaux’s hesitation and tilted their head. “Are you alright?”
He realized he had been staring and shook his head. No matter what sort of species he was facing, it would be rude not to adhere to the universal etiquette—which boiled down to simply answering each other’s questions, using formalities, and staying calm while withholding judgment. And more, if this human was one of the more belligerent of their species, he didn’t want to cause unnecessary trouble.
“Of course. I was wondering about the name of your restaurant, is it a place from your home?”
“Yep! America is the origin of fast food culture!”
So that’s how it’s pronounced. “Does your menu cater to the tastes of specific species?”
“We try to keep it as authentic as possible, although it’s inevitable that our ingredients are toxic to some individuals.”
“What about xurs?”
“Um, let me check.” The worker searched on their hologram interface. They tapped their chin. “As far as I can tell, xurs and humans have similar palates. Probably.”
Well, that was reassuring. Zaux eyed the different translated phrases on the men—hamburger, hot dog, grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, milkshake—but recognized none of them. “What would you recommend?”
“Are you looking for a meal or something to drink?”
“Both. Whatever you think is best.”
“Okay, one pizza and sparkling lemonade coming right up! You can’t go wrong with any of them!” The worker muttered and made a sound… a laugh? And scurried away to the kitchen.
Zaux found himself a seat and mulled over what the worker said while he waited. A sparkling—something. Gemstones sparkle. He sure hoped his drink wouldn’t have gems in it. And what was that about a home country? He hadn’t heard the word “country” in a long time. As an intergalactic diplomat, he usually dealt with planets, star zones, and galaxies.
And the worker, too, was not what he expected. They were nice, very polite and enthusiastic. Zaux had a hard time believing that their species was supposedly committing genocide across their galaxy. Maybe this worker was an anomaly? But then, any species can be driven the wrong way by malicious leadership.
The worker stumbled out from the kitchen holding a steaming plate and a cup filled with light yellow, bubbly liquid.
“Here’s your pizza and sparkling lemonade!” The worker whisked the plate and cup in front of Zaux. The “pizza” was a circular flatbread about as wide as the worker’s head, covered with some strange, creamy white and red goo. A combination of smells assaulted Zaux’s olfactory senses. He took a sip of the yellow drink first, then, not finding himself a fan of its texture, turned to the pizza. He sniffed and prodded at the goo with his finger.
“That’s cheese—mozzarella, specifically,” the worker explained.
Zaux didn’t bother trying to figure out what the chatty worker was saying anymore and raised the entire pizza, about to take a bite.
“Wait! Don’t—”
Zaux swallowed it whole.
“Oh.” The worker’s eyes went wide.
The taste was interesting, to say the least. But the texture was heavenly. Whatever this mozzarella was, it had the potential to be an intergalactically popular food. He looked down at the now empty plate.
“It was delicious. But rather small.”
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“You ate that entire pizza in one bite?”
“Hardly a bite.”
The worker swallowed, then seemed to brighten. “Well, I can make you another one, esteemed customer.”
“How about 15 more? And just call me Zaux.”
“Alright, Zaux!” The worker saluted, laughed gleefully, and raced away to the kitchen again. “Ella Jones at your service—15 pizzas coming right up!”
Ella came out with 16 instead. “One for me,” she clarified. “I can’t just watch you eat it all without eating any myself! My grandma always said: If you’re sad, eat it to make you happy. If you’re happy, eat it to make you happier. If you’re with a friend, eat it together. I haven’t been able to have a pizza eating session in a while, ‘cause no one here really appreciates human food. ”
Zaux nodded, munching on his sixth pizza. “How exactly do you have such an unpopular restaurant here? Isn’t the rent on space stations insane?”
“My family’s rich. They supported my dream of becoming a restaurant owner. I thought human food would take off,” Ella mumbled as she took a miniscule bite of her own pizza. “All the non-humans I met back home said it would explode in popularity, so I wanted to catch the tide. Looks like I was too early though. My family runs another branch in my home galaxy, Galaxy BX198, which is just starting to turn a profit.”
Wait, hadn’t Zaux just read a mission briefing about BX198? This was a good opportunity to get a native’s opinion. He probed, “You mean the galaxy where that war is about to break out?”
“Where a what?”
Zaux expertly hid his surprise. “A war. Well, the brink of war. It’s all over the news.”
“Huh. I haven’t heard anything about it. Who’s the aggressor? Humans?”
“Yeah. So I’ve heard.”
Ella nodded, her focus elsewhere. Zaux could almost see a loading bar in her brain. Then she took a bite of her pizza, chewed a bit, and said something he never expected:
“Guess they’re at it again.”
“Sorry?”
Ella kept munching. “Humans have been squabbling a bunch with our other galactic neighbors over the years. Doesn’t help that our government’s basically a bunch of old people a couple lifetimes overdue for retirement. Hey, don’t you sometimes think to yourself, technology is awesome? Like, my grandma’s four times as old as the average lifespan for humans from before our species’ intergalactic integration…”
Zaux almost wondered if the human he met was a little too scatterbrained. Instead of focusing on a galactic war concerning her species, she’d gone on a tangent about anti-aging technology.
“...But I get to live even longer than that since I’ve been taking those pills since I was an adolescent—”
“Wait, wait.” Zaux held up a hand.
“Something wrong? Sorry, I must be talking too much, right?”
“I was just a bit surprised by your reaction. Most individuals would freak out if they found out their species was on the brink of a galactic war. But you’re so, well, nonchalant.”
“It’s not like it’s a surprise. Our history is full of wars. Besides, what am I supposed to do about it? I’m just a restaurant owner on a space station almost a hundred galaxies away from BX198.”
“But your family—”
“My grandma’s on a business trip even farther away from BX198. My parents are sightseeing somewhere, I forgot the planet.”
“And your friends?”
“They’re mostly studying across the universe.”
“So your attachment to humanity—”
“Attachment? I guess I’m a little concerned, but not that much.” Ella shrugged and took a bite of her pizza. “I told you, humans are violent. In the time I’ve opened shop here, we’ve already waged several star-system level wars. Galactic’s just a bigger scale, right?”
“A lot bigger,” he emphasized. For some reason, the way Ella so casually dismissed any sort of war made Zaux’s diplomatic pride itch. His remaining three pizzas sat forgotten.
“Right, a lot bigger. But that’s just the way war is. You win some, you kill some. It’s tragic but common.”
“But it can be prevented,” Zaux protested.
“Sure it can, but you gotta be in charge to do that. As far as I can tell, I’m definitely not in charge of humanity, and even if I was, I’d quit right away. Politics are just a bunch of old geezers with inflated egos playing cards with people’s lives as betting chips.”
Zaux got the gist of her reference. “Politics is more than that! As we speak, leaders throughout the universe are working tirelessly to achieve peace. Without the United Intergalactic Alliance, without civic negotiations, budding civilizations like yours would have been crushed by intergalactic proxy wars long ago. Petty squabbles would escalate into destroyed star systems. Trillions of lives would be lost!”
Ella’s brows jumped half her forehead. “How, exactly, do you know these guys have everyone’s best interests in mind? How do you know there aren’t disgusting power plays and corruption going on behind the scenes?”
“Because they’re honorable, responsible people.”
“Whoa. How much are you getting paid to say this?”
“I’m not being—” Zaux took a deep breath. “How about we turn the question around? Why are you so doubtful of the powerful?”
“Well, it’s only natural: where there’s power, there’s corruption. Removal from the masses. People lose empathy.”
Zaux stared, thought some, then stared some more. Ella really looked like she believed what she was saying. It was strange. “What sort of political environment are you used to?”
“Well, my country was a democracy and we had two main parties, but the officials on both sides were always attacking the other party and never got anything done. There was always a bunch of drama and overall it was just ugly. I learned to stay out of that stuff.”
Zaux remembered America now. It was a former country briefly mentioned in the mission overview document he had skimmed while on the spaceship. According to the United Intergalactic Alliance’s predictions, humanity’s origin planet had been on course for an extinction level event due to nuclear warfare. hence why the local Alliance branch made contact back then, largely to prevent it. The irony that the species they saved was starting a galactic war at this very moment wasn’t lost on him.
“I suppose your pessimism is warranted.” Zaux picked up his remaining pizzas, now lukewarm, and continued munching.
“What about you? Why are you so optimistic about the government?”
Zaux looked at Ella. Ella was an ordinary person. An ordinary human. And Zaux? A political figure headed to a conference where her species would be the central topic. His earlier hunch was correct, meeting her here was an opportunity. He made a choice. “Well, because I’m a part of it. I work as an ambassador at the United Intergalactic Alliance.”
“Oh,” Ella paused. “Makes sense then. Sorry if I offended you.”
“No, no, it’s alright.”
“So do you interact a lot with other government officials? Is there a lot of corruption? I mean, you don’t look corrupt, but, you know.”
“All I can say is, most people are decent. On such a universal level, you don’t get to the top by fighting with your colleagues. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with being involved in decision-making on an intergalactic level. Screw up once, and you’re out. Doesn’t matter the backer, there’s always someone more powerful. The universe is boundless.”
“Hm, I guess national and intergalactic are two different levels.”
Zaux continued, “So on this topic, let’s say an ambassador working for the United Intergalactic Alliance wanted to know more about humans—you know, the type of stuff that they don’t tell you in classified files and would be important in a diplomatic meeting about humanity's recent actions. What would you tell them?”
Zaux hoped he wasn’t putting pressure on her. Turned out he had nothing to worry about. Ella made a sharp guttural sound—which Zaux’s headset translated into visual text: *clearing the pharynx of mucosa*—and took a deep breath.
She started, “Well, humans have quite a rich culture, I suppose. Let’s start with one of my favorite stories…”
And Zaux, the newly promoted xur ambassador, missed his spaceship for the first time in his career.
***
The twelve-eyed attendant behind the desk looked at Zaux, a look that made him squirm underneath his thick, diplomacy-hardened skin. Then, she shifted her gaze to look at the automated dolly behind him that carried a stack of pizza boxes taller than himself, each box wider than his arm span.
The pizzas had taken quite a while to make and weren’t exactly cheap. Once Ella had found out Zaux was ordinarily wealthy, she doubled the prices and still had the nerve to call it a discount, claiming her original intention was to triple them. But Zaux was a friend now, and friends did each other favors. Needless to say, Zaux had learned something else intrinsic to humans.
The attendant seemed to study the pizza stack phenomena for a moment, then swiveled back to the paperwork, as if the strangeness was beyond her paycheck.
She sent him his new tickets through the AI interface and promptly kicked him out. Zaux found himself in suffocating crowds once more, but this time, others cleared the way for the giant stack of pizza rolling in front of him. In his mind, he replayed the stories Ella had told him: a princess who had interspecies friendships with animals that most humans considered vermin, an aquatic version of humans, a vigilante who could shoot sticky webs from his fingertips.
Lost in the stories, Zaux barely processed the swirl of lights and movement around him. Finding a partial cure for his innate agoraphobia wasn’t something Zaux had expected when he stepped off his spaceship earlier. But ordinary people could surprise you sometimes, and space stations were full of them.