'We are not prepared to handle this. It can not go any further. We will have to...'

'Are you guys ready to order yet... ?'

'Give us five more minutes please.'

'Look, if you want a place to sit, I suggest you try the bench at the bus stop. Its not like we have an exhaustive menu like The Ritz. This is a coffee shop, and you will only get coffee here..so better make up your mind coz' I got other customers who would actually pay...'

'Alright lady, can you get us two cups of Earl Grey tea please.'

'Look pal...you are not in England and I sure am not Queen Liz...so forget about anything fancy. All you'll get is the local brew of the town. And you are lucky we serve tea, when everyone else has moved on to Coffee. And just to save you the shock later, it will cost you 300 bucks each, so better make sure you have enough load on you to afford that.

Bobby, can you get these fine looking gentlemen two cups of tea please. And make it fast, I don't want to keep them waiting.

Don't worry people, they are not from around here...and will be leaving soon. Now, who else wants their mugs topped up...ah yes, coming honey.'

'I think we need to get out of this place.'

'Shh...you will make things worst. As it is we feel a bit out of place here. Lets finish our tea and then we will walk towards the car park. He should have told us that getting tea would be difficult here...idiot.'

****

'Have you been able to get any more samples. Any further progress'

'No, and keep off my back. I am trying my best here. Its not like I was trained in this kinda' field work back at home. I am improvising, so don't expect any miracles any time soon.'

'But how did we miss it. Years of planning, volumes of data analysed, and it never came up in any of the reports.'

'Oh come on ! I told you earlier that sending only 12 people was a mistake. We should have sent at-least a dozen more as their backup. If nothing else, we could have had a wider range.'

'You know that would have never got through from the desks at the top. Sending 12 was argued as unnecessary enough. And where are those two fools, its already late. I am sure they would have stopped somewhere to get that damn beverage they have grown fond of.'

'Relax, you are getting on my nerves as well. They are just near the car park. Should be arriving any time. But are you sure they only prefer Tea, because it is not easy to get it in those parts, and it will raise some eyebrows.'

'Yeah yeah..it was my doing. I should have never invited them here before today. I just thought a quick catch-up early will be helpful. How was I supposed to know that something that is so common here is a luxury in those parts, and moreover, they would grow so fond of it so quickly. Ah...here they are.'

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***

'Have the others arrived ? Have they seen any change ? Are we going to see any change, or do we have to abort ?'

'You two are the last ones. Others have already submitted their analysis, and I am afraid its not going to work out.'

'But there must be something that we could do. We did so much preparation for this, so many hours wasted, so much resources spent. Every probability was analysed and re-analysed, every precaution taken. We even have what these 'things' called 'shots', for counter-acting the symptoms of the, what do they call it, yes - disease, they contracted from the primate species. HIV I think they call it. And this, this energy modulator that is standard issue for all the hand held communicator at our side can keep their uncontrolled cell division in check - yes 'cancer' they refer to it.'

'But we don't have a so called shot for that deadly fit they go into sometimes. And no one seems to bother about it too much. They don't even understand how much contamination they cause when making that weird involuntary noise. They sometime use a piece of cloth or their fore-limbs to cover their primary epidermal openings, but in tun end up contaminating those. How have they survived this long ?'

'I froze into oblivion when someone did that near me the first time. I was in a queue waiting for my turn to board their transport wagon they call bus, when one of the younger offspring in front of me started acting like that. I seriously thought our cover was blown and it was an offensive attack.'

'No, our cover was intact all the time. The research by our visual symmetry department was flawless. All 6 places on this third rock from the yellow 'gas glower' are different no doubt, but our cover was never questioned in terms of appearances. Even the transporter at the car parks was flawlessly hidden in plain sight. No one can make out the short range doorway that is only tuned to our bio matter. But anyways, none of this matters any more. We have to pack up and leave. Get ready, we are just finishing up here.'

'All we can hope is that some time in future, we will try again, and then we will be ready.'

***

'...the final recommendation is to abort the invasion to B45820 (commonly referred by the local species as 'Earth'). The species have a deadly contamination within their bio-matter that can will annihilate any landing party. Our research team has not been able to find any cure for the said contaminant, referred to as 'common cold', by the local species. Any future exploratory parties are advised to keep away from any local specimen showing symptoms, which include Sneezing*, Running Nose*, (terms mentioned in local species linguistic syntax due to lack of suitable translation, see detailed definition at the end of the report). It should also be noted that these attacks can happen in public places, or in individual dwellings, and are not limited to young or mature of their kind. Contamination is spread across entire B45820, and all 6 landing parties have confirmed validating multiple occurrences across their assigned sites. It should be noted a near fatal incident was avoided when one of the lander came into contact of the contamination during social interaction. Had it not been for the quick action by accompanying lander to immediately sanitise the affected, and return to Primary Comms Site, we would have lost the third exploratory party. The infected lander lost the right upper limb which had to be surgically removed as contamination was eating away into the bio-matter.

Unexplained Term : 'Bless You'. Generally called out in some landing sites when the local specie commits an act of Sneezing*

Any future landing parties are recommended to try out a beverage called 'Tea' (Earl Grey in specific if available). However, care should be taken as this is only limited to a certain geographic section on B45820, and any unwanted indulgence can tend to diminish the social cover of the lander requesting.

***