“Yes, dude.”
“Cool, so let me see if I got this straight. You, an actual, real-life, probably-not-a-hallucination alien, crash landed in the middle of the New Mexican desert, Roswell-style—almost directly on top of me, by the way—and somehow you speak English, keep a fire extinguisher in your trunk, and are now asking to borrow my phone so you can call an outer space Uber. Does that sound about right?”
“I am very good at languages!” Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p explained excitedly, unable to pass up the opportunity to brag—it wasn’t something he had the chance to do with frequency. “I entered your language center with my brain to get words, and also the more English you say to me, the more I can talk better.”
“I have no idea what the fuck any of that meant, and you kind of missed my point, but okay. Sure. This is happening. You’re an alien. Okey-dokey, then. That’s totally fine and not melting my brain. You want to use my phone? You got it, bud.” The human reached into its pocket and produced a thin, rectangular device. It entered a code—6969, Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p memorized it instantly—and held it out for him.
He eyed the phone curiously. Not wanting to be so rude as to touch the human’s property with his dirty gloves, he undid the two layers of zippers encircling his wrists on his upper set of arms and removed them from his spacesuit, letting the gloves drop to the ground. The sleeves rode up, partially exposing a marking on his left wrist, and—feeling shame about it—he dropped his arm quickly, pinning the offending part of his arm to his side and accepting the phone with his other hand. There were several colorful icons with labels on the screen, labeled with gibberish letters—he hadn’t had a chance to learn the alphabet when he’d dipped into the human’s mind. “How do I make a call, dude?”
“Well, first you’ll need a number. Do you know the area code for Jupiter?”
Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’pglanced up to look at the human. He felt certain it was making fun of him. It also hadn’t escaped him that the human had stopped using “dude” when referring to him, which was surely a sign of disrespect. A pang of hurt tightened in his heart.
“Are you being mean?” he asked the human. “Why are you being mean?”
Something soft flickered across the human’s expression before it defaulted back into impassive resignation.
“I’m not trying to be mean, dude,” it said, and Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p relaxed a little at being addressed formally again. “I just… Look, I’m not sure if popping up on a different planet is just an average Tuesday wherever you’re from, but this is very,veryweird for me. I cannot express to you how improbable this is. Like, here’s the improbability of, I don’t know, winning an argument on Twitter—X—whatever”—the human held one hand at chin-level—“andthis”—the human held its other hand as high as it could go—“is the improbability of me, of all people, being the first person in history to meet a real-life alien. So you’re gonna have to give me a minute to adjust to like,everythingabout this situation, okay?”
So Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’pwasmaking first contact.
“I am going to get a citation,” he lamented, mostly to himself.
The human raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“Oh, no importance,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hands. “It is just that it is a rule that no one on my planet can make first contact with new species without doing paperwork. I did not know humans are stupid and bad at things and have not had communication with other planets. Ugh, the citation will be very expensive. I will have to borrow credits from my parents. They will be very not happy with me.” He sighed. He would be in much trouble indeed.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this to an alien,” the human said, huffing a laugh of disbelief, “but I can relate.”
“Oh?”
The human stuffed its hands into its pockets and shrugged, looking a little bashful. “Yeah, I guess. My car breaks down all the time. Last time the battery died in a parking lot and I left it there overnight, only for the owners to tow it. I had to borrow money from my parents to get it back, and they made sure to tell me that I wouldn’t be in such a predicament if I had studied business administration like they wanted me to do, instead of pursuing a pointless fine arts degree.” The human scowled, not at him, but off to the side into the middle distance, like this was something that had been bothering him for some time. Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p understood the feeling.
“I like to do space exploring,” he said, “but my parents want me to stay on the ground and do metal mining for the government. I hate metal mining. It is not interesting, and there are too many, hm, I think in English they would be called Sand Dwellers? There are too many Sand Dwellers in the mines.”
“What’s a Sand Dweller?”
“It is a large multi-legged creature that catches prey in a mucus web and makes them be there for many days while it sucks out their nutrients with a sharp probe on its belly,” he explained casually. The human grimaced.
“I don’t like that,” it said.
Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p nodded in agreement.
“I also do not like it.” He looked down at the phone still in his hand. “You will explain how this works now? What is an ‘area code’?”
The human blew out a breath and said, “I hate to tell you this, but unless your ride is in the United States, you’re probably not going to be able to reach them. I don’t even have international calling, let alone intergalactic. Besides, if I did, the roaming charges would be insane.”
“Roaming charge?”
“Never mind. The point is, I don’t think Earth is as advanced as your planet, and that phone doesn’t do what I think you think it does. It’s looking like you’re gonna have to figure out something else.”
Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p had a sinking feeling in his gut. It was one thing not to have flash jump capability, but did this planet seriously not have a way to communicate across the galaxy? Just how primitive were these creatures?
“That is… not the most ideal,” he muttered. Now that the initial shock and adrenaline of the crash was wearing off, the reality of his situation was settling in. If his communication panel was nonfunctioning—which was likely the case—then he would be stuck on this planet until he could figure out how to make a new one, and he’d have to do it all on his own. He was, to put it in Earth terms, fucked, and would not be getting unfucked soon.
“Perhaps I can find materials to make a proper phone,” he said, thinking aloud. “Human, can you help me?”
“You want my help making an intergalactic cell phone? You did hear the part where I said I was an art major, right? This sounds like it is quite literally rocket science, and I can barely remember my multiplication tables. I don’t know how much help I could possibly be, dude.”
