#16: Geocentric
Episode I: The Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs
It’s weird how mundane all of this is. Punch in, listen to a few wild stories, write it up, punch out. For crying out loud, aliens exist! I can see one eating a donut in the break room right now! Shouldn’t this be exciting? Wait a minute, that’s no donut.
“Hey Steve, get your own lunch man! Come on!”
Unbelievable. He does this all the time. He keeps telling me that on his planet they have no concept of individual property, which is complete bullshit. The dude drives an Audi ETron. He has his own parking space.
Anyway. What was I saying? Oh right, I can’t believe how boring this is. This was my dream job. This is the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs! I thought I would be zipping around the galaxy on sexy space adventures, negotiating interstellar treaties, or mixing it up with alien smugglers. Guess again my naive young self. Here’s what they don’t tell you until you sign the contract: alien smugglers don’t exist, the treaties have been in place for millennia, and the Galactic Federation sure as shit isn’t inviting any humans off-world any time soon. We are “laughably primitive.” They said that to Truman’s face in the forties. It’s in the Library of Congress.
Of course, no one knows. I mean, you and I know thanks to random genetics or whatever, but most people don’t. Technically, it’s our job to keep it that way: Federation law requires that our hyper-advanced friends refrain from interfering with the evolution and development of us primitives. Every visitor to our little blue marble must carry a standard-issue emitter that simply prevents most human brains from perceiving any alien species (and yes, there are many) or any evidence they might leave behind, including our own records.
None of us understand how it works, which may be an effect of the emitter now that I think about it. The thing is, that little gizmo pretty much makes our job obsolete. If I want any real work to sink my teeth into, my only hope is that one of the damn things breaks while a Luytenian tourist tries to take a selfie with the pope or something. Or, more likely but still exceedingly rare, someone like you or me wins the genetic lottery and a switch flips in their brain, making them completely unaffected by the alien tech. When you see behind the curtain for the first time, it can be…challenging. We bring those folks in for “the talk.” It can get awkward. But I don’t need to tell you that.
Short of that or a pope-ie, I’m typically stuck investigating unsolicited “tips” to confirm that no one has actually seen a real alien. A solid 25% of tips reference Bigfoot, and most of the others are similarly trash. My department handles the human side of things, Steve handles ETs. Or at least he would if anything ever happened in this agency.
Hold on - he’s at it again.
“Steve you cannot be serious right now. I can see you! I know it’s a good bagel, that’s why I bought it! And its gone. Great. Lunch is on you tomorrow.”
“What are you even doing in there Bea? Who are you talking to?”
“I’m recording a podcast about the job for new trainees. Dave thinks it might even be good human PR if we can strike up an off-world following on the nets. Ya know, show them some human slice of life stuff.”
“Hah, you humans and your social media campaigns. You never learn do you? Do you know how many Federation citizens there are? Can your minds even comprehend how large this galaxy is? This rock is a speck. A habitable speck with proximity to a great deal of resources, but a speck nonetheless. No one cares about slices of your life.”
“I know that, but Dave doesn’t and he approves my time sheets. Besides, it beats taking calls. I had three separate people talk to me about their internet going out this week.”
“That does sound excruciating. It is a shame your primitive society still relies on incentives to distribute resources.”
“No argument here. Now please leave, and get that diplomatic expense card ready for tomorrow, I wasn’t kidding about lunch. We’re going loud.”
“Hah! Very well Bea. Door closed or open?”
“Closed please.”
That friggin’ guy.
He’s not so bad really. He usually leaves a spread of home cooking in the break room on days that he decides to go picking through our lunches. The only problem with his traditional cuisine is that it’s very much inedible for humans. He brings in a different recipe each time, insisting this time we are really going to like it. HR isn’t quite sure how to handle it. I think it might be a clan tradition, but he looks at me like I have three heads every time I ask him about it. Oh, sorry, that was an idiom. In case this goes viral on the nets, three heads is not common among humans.
Oh wow, I’ve been recording for awhile. I should probably stop right? Hm, I should have a sign off. I don’t even have a name for this podcast…
Wait! I got it.
Join us next time for another episode of Geocentric. It’s a big universe, it might as well start at my desk.