The Insane Little Naked Ones

The door didn’t open so much as it dissolved. Like someone hit delete on a chunk of reality. And then this thing walked through.

Not walked. Glided? Floated? Dave wasn’t sure what the right verb was for a creature that looked like a praying mantis got fused with a peacock and then someone sprinkled it with bioluminescent glitter. It was tall. Like, really tall. Seven feet maybe. And it had these four arms folded across its chest like it was already annoyed to be here.

Dave was eating a bagel.

“So,” the alien said. Its voice came out smooth. Not like a speaker. More like the sound just appeared inside Dave’s head. “You are the one they sent to speak for your species.”

Dave swallowed. “I mean, I’m the one who drew the short straw. So yeah. Welcome to Earth. You want some coffee? We got tea too. I think there’s some orange juice in the back but honestly don’t drink it, pretty sure it’s from last week.”

The alien stared. Which was impressive because Dave wasn’t even sure where its eyes were. Maybe all over. Maybe that was the point.

“I am Ambassador Ziltoq the Anxious,” it said. “Of the Unified Concordance.”

“Dave,” Dave said. “Just Dave. The Anxious, huh? That’s rough, buddy. First contact giving you some nerves?”

Ziltoq made a sound. Not a sigh. More like a series of clicks that somehow conveyed exhaustion. “You have no idea.”

They sat down in the conference room. Well, Dave sat. Ziltoq kind of folded itself into a corner and hovered six inches off the ground. A bunch of other humans were watching through a two way mirror. General Thompson was already on his third cup of coffee. Someone in the back was whispering “holy shit” over and over.

Ziltoq pulled out a device. Small. Glowing. It projected a star map into the air between them.

“We intercepted a signal,” Ziltoq said. “Approximately one hundred seventy three of your years ago. Originating from your solar system. Your planet specifically.”

Dave nodded. Chewed another bite of bagel. “Ohhhhh, the Voyager thing?”

Ziltoq went very still. Which was somehow worse than when it was moving. “You knew about this?”

“Yeah, man. We sent it. Back in like, the seventies. Little golden record attached to a probe. Music, math, our location. Whole welcome basket.” Dave gestured vaguely. “We were going through a phase.”

“You sent your exact coordinates. To everyone. Openly.”

Dave paused. Licked cream cheese off his thumb. “I mean when you say it like that it sounds bad.”

“It is bad.” Ziltoq’s voice cracked. If a telepathic voice could crack. “It is extraordinarily bad. Do you understand what you have done? You have painted a target on every living thing in this system. You might as well have sent a formal invitation to your own extinction.”

“Look, we were excited, okay?” Dave set down the bagel. “Nobody had written back yet and we were starting to feel alone. It’s a big ass galaxy. You get lonely. You know how it is.”

Ziltoq did the mental equivalent of a long, slow blink. “You felt lonely. So you announced your position to the entire galaxy.”

“We also included a diagram of what we look like. Full body. Front view.”

“…You sent them your anatomy.”

“We wanted them to know who they were dealing with.” Dave spread his hands. Friendly. Open. “First impressions matter, you know?”

Ziltoq looked at him. Really looked. Dave felt like he was being scanned. Which, honestly, he probably was.

“You are soft,” Ziltoq said finally. “Entirely soft. No exoskeleton. No protective plating. You have exposed eyes. You have no claws. No venom. No natural weapons whatsoever. You are a bag of water and desperation wrapped in the thinnest layer of skin the universe has ever seen.”

Dave shrugged. “We were going for friendly.”

“You achieved terrifying.” Ziltoq’s four arms unfolded and then folded again. “Just not in the way you intended.”

General Thompson walked in at that point. He was old. Like, old old. Grey hair, wrinkles, the whole deal. But he had that look. The one that said he’d seen some stuff and wasn’t impressed by much anymore.

“General Thompson,” he said. No handshake. Just a nod.

Ziltoq studied him. “You are a leader of your military.”

“I’m a leader of a lot of things. What’s the situation?”

Ziltoq’s projection changed. New dots appeared on the star map. Lots of them. Different colors. Different sizes. All converging on one point.

Earth.

“We have been monitoring the response to your transmission for one hundred seventy three years,” Ziltoq said. “Every species within range received it. Every single one. We spent sixty of those years debating whether to respond ourselves.”

Thompson raised an eyebrow. “Sixty years just to decide whether to reply?”

“You do not understand what replying meant.” Ziltoq’s voice got quieter. Or maybe heavier. “Acknowledging your existence puts us in a complicated position with certain others.”

“What kind of others?”

Ziltoq highlighted three of the dots. Made them pulse red. “The kind that received your signal before we did.”

The room got quiet. Even the whispering in the back stopped.

“How long ago did they get it?” Dave asked.

Ziltoq paused. “Long enough to have already formed an opinion about you.”

“And what’s the opinion?” Thompson asked.

“That you are small, loud, unprotected, and apparently unaware of how dangerous it is to be small, loud, and unprotected.”

Dave nodded. “Okay, that’s fair honestly.”

Ziltoq kept going. “They also studied the anatomy diagram at length.”

The silence that followed was the kind of silence that has teeth.

“…Good or bad?” Dave asked.

Ziltoq’s colors shifted. If Dave didn’t know better, he’d say the alien looked almost uncomfortable. “They have a word for creatures with no natural armor who still choose to fight. I will not translate it directly. The closest equivalent in your language is something like… ‘the insane little naked ones.'”

Thompson snorted. Dave grinned.

“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” Dave said.

“It was not a compliment.”

“Still taking it.”

Ziltoq reconfigured the map again. Showed routes. Escape vectors. Safe zones. The whole thing looked like someone had thrown a handful of spaghetti at a wall.

“We came because we assumed your people would want to evacuate,” Ziltoq said. “Relocate. Disappear quietly somewhere they cannot find you. We have done this before with younger species. We are good at it.”

Thompson looked at the map. Studied it. Dave watched his face. The general wasn’t scared. He was calculating.

“That’s actually really nice of you,” Dave said.

“We try.”

“But we’re not gonna do that.”

Ziltoq’s hovering dipped slightly. Like it lost focus for a second. “You are not going to evacuate.”

“No.”

“You understand what is coming,right?”

“Getting the picture, yeah.”

“And you still want to stay?”

Thompson leaned forward. Folded his arms. “It’s our planet. Our system. We built stuff here. My grandfather is buried here, and my great grandfather, and my great great grandfather, and so on. You know what I mean?”

Ziltoq stared at him. “That is a very emotional reason to die.”

“Good thing we’re not planning on dying.”