The Visit

I am no xenophobe. I tolerate people of all colors. I don't mind their sexual perversions, hobbies, religions or political creeds. I sell hot dogs, you want one, good, if not, then not.

As a kid I was into a lot of stuff, including the search for other civilizations. I've read about amazing projects for communication. Scientists squabbled about how probable life is, and how many races achieve space travel, and when will we finally talk to them. Tellarans - our firsts - solved the problem for us.

Life is rare, extremely rare. They estimated that in our galaxy there's at most a few thousand planets with life. On a few dozen may be intelligent species. The SETI project was useless, we wouldn't hear of neighbors for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Tellarans were also from another galaxy and found us by accident.

So we closed these big deals that should protect our civilization, got some rare materials and a few new technologies. After a hundred years they would review the contract and see if we were ready to get their interstellar drive. Seemed like a good deal.

Just so it is clear, I'm not some nobody with a cart. I sell hot dogs next to the United Nations building! I fought for the place tooth and nail.

I was there when the first alien went out on the street without bodyguards. It had two hands, many legs, a wide head and was blinking way too fast. But in this city people get used to anything.

The aliens started to explore our culture. I saw debates on TV with them. It was so easy to explain some things to them and so hard to explain others. They were so similar but so unbelievably alien... man, those were times.

Slowly, others started to arrive. More ships came, gave the UN some trinkets and they could 'explore' us.


The greatest mess was probably the Samaritans. Their real name was unpronounceable, but they were friendly and religious, so the name stuck.

Samaritans believed in one god, creator of the universe. He didn't create just us in his image, but every other race, too. That's why they study all intelligent life forms, to learn about god from all angles.

Nobody minded being "facets of the nature of the one Creator". But, to be one out of millions, just filed into a cabinet in case we happened to die, that rubbed us the wrong way. That started the first wave of attacks on aliens. Very few were killed but in the unrest that followed many humans died.


Then their numbers just exploded.

The militant Fhnomes studied our military history and tactics. So the more advanced races also had wars! They kept explaining to us their reasons, but I didn't get them. Then again, I didn't get them on our planet either.

By that time we were already speaking of "our planet".


The Dliuksas studied our political and economical systems. After they left, we accidentally learned that their chirping sounds were laughter. Laughing their asses off all that time. Nice.

The disgusting Gahirin fell in love with our art.

One bizarre form of life, I keep forgetting their name, came only to see and try our sex. That was one thing nobody was surprised about.

A race of interstellar chefs came to try our food. They tried everything, including human. That was arranged, too.

Some nameless telepathic race showed up, spent a while with a few volunteers and left.

Trash eaters started to live in our sewers. Nobody can get them out of there.

Terkevs offered us their services as slaves, because it "corresponded to their cultural model".

The astronomers started to complain there was too much traffic in the sky. Ships arrived in droves. Some just flew by, most at least said hello. Somebody demanded that we judge their dispute.


On TV everyone was happy, saying how important we are for the universe, what an honor it is to be this watched. That's when I started to get it.

The universe is big, too damn big. Life may be rare, but there are still millions upon millions of alien races. They have been here long before us and there's just too many of them. There's so many that it's worth it to them to send an expedition to a third-class planet like ours.

Out there, there's at least one alien race for each of us.

Sooner or later they will come to take a look.