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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Marushyne on 2024-12-03 17:11:08+00:00.
By Captain Bill Morrison of the USS Remembrance
(Currently seeking asylum in 32 different systems)
Look, nobody goes into space diplomacy expecting it to be easy. But there’s “challenging” and then there’s “accidentally starting three interstellar incidents before breakfast” – guess which kind of diplomat I am?
When Earth’s Unified Senate gave me command of the USS Remembrance (seriously, who names a diplomatic vessel after memories? Why not just call it the USS Your Mom Was Right About Everything?), they handed me a simple mission: visit nearby star systems and apologize for humanity’s various first contact screw-ups.
“It’ll be straightforward,” they said.
“Just say sorry,” they said.
“How hard could it be?” they said.
Spoiler alert: Very hard. Extremely hard. “Converting-the-ship’s-fusion-reactor-into-an-interpretive-quantum-detector” levels of hard.
Day 1: The Alpha Centauri Incident
Or: How I Learned That Colors Can Commit War Crimes
My AI assistant ARIA started us off with what seemed like an easy one.
“Captain Morrison,” she chirped, sounding far too cheerful for 0600 hours. “Our first diplomatic mission involves apologizing to Alpha Centauri B for the Red Spacesuit Incident of 2157.”
“The what now?” I asked.
“Humanity’s first contact team wore red spacesuits to their greeting ceremony. In their bioluminescent language, this effectively declared both a trade embargo and suggested their stellar mass was below average.”
I stared at my coffee. My coffee offered no answers. “How do you accidentally insult a star’s weight?”
Turns out, the Alpha Centaurians take their stellar pride very seriously. And fixing this particular faux pas required our entire crew to don bio-reactive suits that changed color based on our emotional states. Ever tried maintaining diplomatic composure while your suit broadcasts every embarrassing thought in technicolor?
“Captain,” my first officer James Thompson called out during the ceremony, his suit flashing a particularly mortified shade of mauve, “I think my suit just told them about my teenage goth phase.”
“Could be worse,” I replied, watching in horror as my own suit started displaying my entire browser history in various shades of ultraviolet. “At least you’re not currently explaining to their High Chancellor why you spent three hours looking up ‘do black holes have feelings’ last night.”
We left Alpha Centauri with a treaty, several radiation burns, and a new ship’s regulation banning anyone from thinking about embarrassing memories during diplomatic functions.
Day 15: The Tau Ceti Tangle
Or: Why You Should Always Read the Fine Print About Quantum Physics
The Tau Cetians were supposed to be easy. All we had to do was apologize for accidentally drilling into their crystal-based civilization. Simple, right?
Wrong.
“What do you mean they want to install a black hole in my cargo bay?” I demanded.
ARIA’s holographic form shrugged, a gesture she’d learned from watching too many human soap operas. “It’s their traditional form of acceptance. They want to conduct a small gravitational experiment. Very small. Barely noticeable.”
Dr. Michael Roberts, our chief physicist, was practically bouncing with excitement. “Captain, do you realize what an opportunity this is? We could learn so much about quantum gravity!”
“The last time you said that, we ended up with a temporal paradox in the coffee maker. It’s still serving yesterday’s coffee tomorrow.”
But diplomatic relations required sacrifice, so I agreed. The next month was… interesting. The good news? We learned a lot about quantum gravity. The bad news? The black hole developed a taste for coffee mugs, specifically Dr. Roberts’ collection of “Universe’s Best Physicist” novelty cups.
“It’s showing preference for items with scientific puns,” he reported, watching his last mug spiral into the event horizon. “I think it’s developing a sense of humor.”
Great. Even the laws of physics were laughing at us.
Day 45: The Sirius Situation
Or: When Social Media Attacks (Literally)
You know that moment when you realize humanity’s greatest mistake wasn’t nuclear weapons or reality TV, but letting the aliens discover our internet? Welcome to Sirius B.
“Captain,” ARIA announced, “the Sirians have spent 35 years trying to cleanse their spacetime of our social media broadcasts.”
“How bad could it be?”
The answer was very bad. The Sirians, who communicate through gravitational waves, considered our electromagnetic internet traffic to be the equivalent of cosmic graffiti. Imagine trying to explain to a civilization that experiences time non-linearly why humans spend hours watching videos of people failing at parkour.
“So let me get this straight,” the High Resonator vibrated at me. “Your species intentionally broadcasts recordings of itself falling down stairs?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“And these ‘memes’ – they are some form of mass hysteria?”
Lieutenant Jessica Anderson, our communications officer, tried to help. “Think of them as… quantum fluctuations in cultural consciousness?”
That actually made sense to them. Too much sense. They became convinced that memes were a form of quantum weapon. We spent the next week trying to convince them that “Rick Rolling” wasn’t an attempt at mind control.
Day 73: The Grande Unified Theory of Diplomatic Incidents
Or: Embracing the Absurdity
It was during our seventeenth apology ceremony – this one involving synchronizing our ship’s atomic clocks to apologize for introducing daylight savings time to a species that experiences time spatially – that I finally understood.
“ARIA,” I said, watching Dr. Roberts try to explain to an eleven-dimensional being why humans can’t just “take a shortcut through the sixth dimension” to avoid traffic, “I think we’ve been looking at this all wrong.”
Every species we’d met had their own utterly unique way of existing:
- The Procyon Collective thinks in fusion reactions
- The Beta Hydri Alliance experiences time backwards (they start meetings by saying goodbye)
- The Altair Federation considers three-dimensional space “charmingly retro”
We weren’t failing at diplomacy – we were all just cosmic weirdos trying to make sense of each other.
Our final report to Earth’s Unified Senate was simple:
To: The Distinguished Members of Earth’s Unified Senate
Re: Why Everything is Weird and That’s Okay
After extensive research, multiple temporal paradoxes, and one incident involving a black hole that now has strong opinions about coffee brands, we’ve reached a conclusion: everyone in the universe is incredibly strange, including us. Especially us.
Recommendation: Establish the Universal Weirdness Recognition Treaty (UWRT), acknowledging that:
- Reality is subjective
- Physics has a sense of humor
- No one really understands TikTok, across any number of dimensions
Respectfully submitted,
Captain Bill Morrison
USS Remembrance
(Currently oscillating between dimensions 4 through 7 due to a minor quantum hiccup)
They all accepted it. Turns out, the universe has a pretty good sense of humor about itself.
These days, our black hole makes the best coffee in known space (though it still occasionally eats the mugs). Thompson gives lectures on “Chromatic Diplomacy and How to Hide Your Embarrassing Thoughts in Ultraviolet.” And sometimes, late at night, you can find me in the observation deck, trying to understand eleven-dimensional jokes.
Because here’s the thing about space diplomacy: the secret isn’t learning to be perfect. It’s learning to laugh at yourself while you’re trying.
P.S. We did eventually explain TikTok to the Sirians. Turns out it makes perfect sense if you describe it as a quantum superposition of cringe and creativity. The Sirians now have their own version involving gravitational wave dances. It’s actually pretty good, even if watching it does occasionally violate causality.
THE END
(Unless you’re experiencing time non-linearly, in which case, this is actually the beginning)
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