My First Galactic Job

—How’s it going, buddy? I don’t know you, but I’ll buy you a drink. It looks like you haven’t had a good time lately.—

—Thanks… I really appreciate it and… I need it.—

—Come on… cheer up! It couldn’t have been that bad… whatever it was that happened to you.—

—Well… literally, I caused my first war…—

—Ouch… well, it happens to everyone, especially if you work in the diplomatic corps of the Galactic Confederation.—

—During a first contact.—

—That’s… well, I heard rumors that someone else had gone through that too.—

—On my first day of work.—

—Waiter, another drink for my friend, and one for me… I’ll need it to listen to this story.—

—…—

—Come on, tell me, you’ll feel better if you do.—

—Okay… have you heard about the new species found? The humans?—

—Oh, yeah! That species that has barely 11 million years of evolution and already managed to split the atom… don’t tell me that…—

—Yes, they didn’t declare war on us, they declared war on each other… because of my fault.—

—Oh, but in their intercepted transmissions they always looked so happy and funny! They even sent a rudimentary ship with a greeting and instructions on how to get to their planet!—

—It seems I made a terrible mistake, but… could you blame me? I followed all the procedures and protocols to the letter. Who would think that humans would be so… abnormal?—

—Are they a species dominated by reptilians that live hidden in their society and control them from the shadows without them realizing they’re actually slaves? Because that already happened to a colleague, jajaja. The poor guy didn’t know what to do when he saw the world leaders eating the witnesses of the first contact, jajajaja.—

—That, in fact, is covered in the latest version of the contact protocol. And no, there were no reptilians.—

—Waiter! Another round! These drinks are getting smaller and smaller.—

—In any case, we arrived on the planet hidden and from orbit we conducted exhaustive analyses of their planet, their culture, their population, while sending some unmanned ships just to take a look, so they could start preparing for the surprise that they are not alone in the universe. In fact, one of those ships was called “Oumuamua” when they discovered it wandering through their system. In any case, the first thing we did was look for the largest cities because, if there is a dominant power on a planet, it’s logical that it would be found in the largest city, isn’t it?—

—Well, we have documented cases where…—

—I know! I know! So before taking that for granted, we checked their population distribution. We saw that they were divided into two biological genders and some rather vague social genders, and a quick look at their transmissions showed that one of those biological genders had greater control over the others. So we cut the search short and found that one of the three largest cities was dominated by a ruler of that gender.—

—That was a smart move on your part.—

—Still, I didn’t want to rush, so I requested a more detailed analysis to confirm, and we discovered that humans are divided into several races, although there’s also a lot of mestizaje. In this city we found all the races and mestizajes, although most belonged to a particular type of mestizaje that, when we extended our search, we found was dominant across the entire continent and even more so around the world. Almost every city had at least a couple of them.—

—Oh, wow. So that mestizaje was the dominant race. That’s strange, but I read a rather controversial thesis a while ago about how civilizations could be in mixed or less evolved species.—

—Still, I wanted to be sure, so we followed several of them on a regular day. We found them doing important jobs, from sanitation to scientific research. They were practically behind every important thing humans did, and we even found communities that completely depended on their skills to exist.—

—Oh! That’s what they call meri… meri… meri-something. It’s when a race dominates the others through their skills, making everyone else dependent on them, and all it takes is a threat of not working to get what they want.—

—Exactly! We all thought the same! The evidence was very clear!—

—And… what went wrong?—

—Well, we revealed ourselves and went to that big city where a human named Claudia presented herself as the ruler of her nation. We were just starting the introductions when four more leaders from other nations arrived immediately, each claiming they were the dominant ones and considering it an insult that we didn’t present ourselves first with them. They were all of the opposite gender, weren’t mestizos, and their capitals were so small we didn’t even consider them in our initial choices. One of those nations was even completely dependent on the mestizos!—

—Auch.—

—They gave us instructions to fly to a building in another small city, where they had a congress of all the nations on their planet. While there, I introduced myself on behalf of the Confederation and made the mistake of asking, “Who is in charge?” Many stood up, started shouting at each other, insulted one another, and declared war.—

—Honestly, I don’t know what to say.—

—And you know what’s funny? That none of the mestizo nations are participating in the war, but all the armies have mestizos in their ranks, and all the civilians are fleeing to the mestizo nations, where they are received as refugees.—

—Well, friend, I can only wish you good luck and that the war ends soon so you can finish the first contact with whoever is in command.—

License: CC BY-SA