Alex
“It’s a message from the United Terran Security Council. It says, ‘Due to a confirmed Scenario 7, effective immediately, all nonessential Terrans not in Terran space are required to report to their nearest embassy.’” I looked up at Aeva. “This is bad, very bad.”
They immediately sat up from the lying position that they were in. “Wait, why? What does that mean? Is that bad?” they asked.
“Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of bad. Because for humans, it’s pretty bad. Basically, there are ten different senarios that United Nations of Terra have drawn up with the help of the Security Council that outlines different possible things that could happen. Those range from scenario one, where the secret goes out and nothing really changes, all the way to ten, where the secret goes out and the entire Galactic Community is gunning for us, so to speak.” I could see the look of confusion on the much larger dinosaur’s face as I said that. I took a deep breath and continued. “So, what that means is that the Security Council believes that there is a very real possibility that at least two or more different members of the Galactic Community will declare war on us as soon as the news gets out. That’s why all Terrans are going to the embassies because those things are built like fortresses.”
Aeva taking a moment processing this information, feathers fluffing up before they finally said “But why would anyone declare war on you guys? Terrans have been nothing but helpful to the Galactic Community for as long as we’ve known about you! What could they possibly gain by going to war with you?”
I sat in the chair in front of the computer. “Beats me. My best guess is that there are some species out there that seem to like warmongering more than the average species. They might see the news that the imposing Terrans in their impervious space suits were easily puntable the whole time and think to themselves ‘this has got to be the easiest war that we have ever fought!’ It’s at times like this when I am really glad that we never revealed where our homeworld was.”
Aeva was about to say something when suddenly, the loudspeaker system on the ship crackled to life. I’m sure that it didn’t really need to crackle like that, maybe it was just a noise to inform the crew to start listening up, but I digress. “Attention all crew,” she started, “we have been requested by the Terran government to ferry our resident Terran to the Embassy ship Strength Through Diplomacy. We are about three weeks of travel time from its current location.” I double checked my computer terminal. That information seemed to be correct. “Also, due to the urgency of the Terran government, we will not be stopping at any port of calls on the way.” Out in the hallway I could hear groaning coming from aliens probably trying to get a glimpse at me through a crack in the door or something similar. “I know that this is not what you all signed up for, but I have been assured that we will be fairly compensated for our time and efforts. That is all.” And with that the loudspeaker went silent.
I shook my head. “Man, things must be heating up if they want me back so bad.” I wonder if I’ll get court martialed for this. Or maybe even declared excommunicado. At this point the world is my oyster.
“Maybe, but we won’t really know until we get there, I suppose. Oh hey, did you want to get that battery and wheelchair fabricated so you can actually move around without needing me?” they asked.
That shook me out of my self-destructive thoughts. “Yeah, totally. It shouldn’t be that hard to link up my computer to the fabricator.”
If I had known how much trouble that that single statement got me into, I would have never said it in the first place. Connecting the two systems wasn’t a problem, that actually came pretty easily, due to various technological trades that have been happening for the last couple of years. That is where the ease stopped, however. The file for the schematic of the battery was in a specific format that was simply incompatible with the fabricator, and so I had to break out the most dreaded thing a human can think of: a user instruction manual. The manual, for one reason or another, was a physical copy and thicker than a bowl of oatmeal. Three hundred years after the invention of the ebook, and we still can’t get away from physical copies of things. With nothing better to do, I started to pore over the manual and after only thirty minutes of searching, I finally found the passage about changing the schematic format to something that alien fabricators can read and produce. With that passage found, it only took another thirty minutes or so to finally get the schematic formatted properly and sent to the ship fabricator.
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“Thank the Lord that that’s finally done!” I shouted, waking Aeva from the nap they were having.
“Wait, what’s done?” they asked.
“I finally figured it out, and the battery’s being fabricated as we speak.”
“Well, that’s good!” they said. “You’ll be up and moving soon enough!”
“Yeah, I really hope so. Oh, by the way, could you send me the schematic for the wheelchair? I would use a schematic that humans use, but I’m terrible with modeling software, and I’m sure that I would mess it up somehow trying to scale it properly.”
They nodded, before sending me the schematic. That one was easy enough to send to the fabricator due to it being the correct format, so there was nothing to worry about.
“Well, we have about an hour before both things are done being made,” I said. “So, what do you want to do?”
“To be honest with you, I just want to sleep. Today has been exhausting to no end and I am ready to sleep!”
I chuckled. “Yeah, me too.”
I was going to say more when my phone buzzed. I looked at it and saw that it was a message from the captain. It read “Turn to Galactic News. You’re going to want to see this.”
My eyes widened and I made my way to the computer and tuned it to the news station. It was strange, because no matter where you went in the galaxy the news shows looked almost exactly alike. There were always two anchors sitting behind a desk with the news agency’s logo on it, and this news show was no exception. Instead of the humans sitting behind the desk like I had grown up with, there was instead two aliens. One looked just like Godzilla (the 2014 version, not the reboot from thirty years ago), and the other looked like a beaver with the body of a lion. It looked like they were in the middle of reporting something. “-unprecedented move by the Terrans as a mass exodus from the Galactic Community to the various Terran embassies scattered throughout the galaxy. This news comes minutes after images surfaced on the galactic web of a tiny hairless lemur riding on the shoulder of a Cosholay. The person who posted this has claimed that the lemur was what Terrans looked like underneath their space suits.” They then showed a rather high-quality picture of me riding on the shoulder of Aeva. It must have been taken on the bridge.
“Hey Aeva, look we’re famous now!” I said with little mirth.
Aeva, who was sitting on the bed the entire time stood up and walked over to the desk and peered over me to get a good look at the photo that they were showing. “They didn’t even get my good side!” they lamented.
“Yeah, well maybe we’ll get the chance to do a photoshoot later.” I said, quickly silencing myself as the news report went on.
“To give us a better look into what we’re seeing in this photo, we go now to our analyst, Ikkid. Ikkid?”
The camera cut to a giant spider looking alien who was poring over a screen unseen by the camera. “Thank you Chuuzk. So, as we can see from the image, specifically the resolution and the overall quality, we can see that this photo was not fabricated in any way and is the genuine article. As to the claims that this lemur thing is what Terrans look like under their space suits, I cannot verify at this time. But I can draw similarities between the proportions of the limbs and heads of these suits that the Terrans never seem to take off. But this begs the question of why the Terrans would lie about something like this in the first place? And if they’re lying about this, then what else could they be lying about? I would say, but that’s out of my area of expertise. Back to you Chuuzk!”
The camera switched back to the anchors and the Godzilla looking one gave their species equivalent to a smile and said, “Compelling stuff, thank you Ikkid. Well, that’s all the time that we have today, but we will be covering this story as it unfolds. Until then, have a wonderful morning.” With that the ending jingle played and the broadcast was over.
“So much for BSing our way out of this one.” I said, shaking my head.