5 Things You Should Never Do During an Alien Encounter
A spaceship just landed in the Walmart parking lot.
Something is climbing out of it, it is wet, and it is staring directly at you with whatever it uses for eyes.
This is the moment the whole species has waited for. Try not to torch it in the first eight seconds like a true ambassador of Earth.
There are 5 things you should never do during an alien encounter. Humanity fails four of them on instinct.
The fate of the planet now rests on you not being a complete dipshit. No pressure.
Don’t Try to Seduce It
You will want to. Don’t pretend you won’t.
A creature crosses ninety billion miles of freezing nothing to get here, and the average human brain immediately lights up with one majestic question: would it, though.
You do not know where its parts are.
You don’t even know if it has parts. It might be one big screaming part.
It might be a fungus. It might be a colony. The “face” you keep winking at could be its ass, its lunch, or its toddler.
Worse: the being you find attractive may be the alien’s pet. Or the bit it considers a tumor.
Flirt with your eyes and first contact becomes an HR situation that spans two galaxies.
Keep it in your pants. The cosmos is watching, and it is not in the mood.
Don’t Show It Your Phone
It traveled across the universe. Do not let it see the browser history.
One swipe and a galaxy-spanning civilization sees exactly what got typed at 2 a.m. last Tuesday.
They came in peace. Not anymore.
A phone is a confession booth with a camera roll. Hand it over and the species is finished.
Picture explaining the group chat. Or that folder marked “hidden.”
Throw it. Swallow it if the moment truly calls for it. That little rectangle knows things that could end diplomacy on contact.
Don’t Run
You’re not going to make it.
A species that folds spacetime for fun is not going to be remotely impressed by your frightened, sweaty little jog toward a 2014 Honda with a dead battery.
Be honest about the cardio. The last time you ran, a dog was involved, and the dog won.
The treadmill is a clothing rack and everybody knows it.
Don’t Try to Fight It
So you’ve decided to throw hands with a god.
You, a warm sack of soup and unpaid parking tickets, against a being that switched off a star to make room for the parking lot.
The confidence is genuinely beautiful. Misplaced, fatal, but beautiful.
This thing engineered a craft that crossed the void. You cannot engineer a fitted sheet back into the closet.
It bends gravity. You get lightheaded standing up.
The combat résumé is two YouTube videos and a strong opinion about a stranger.
The gym bro will square up.
He skips leg day, but he will not skip this. Some part of him has waited his whole life to lose a fight this completely, in front of an audience this large.
Here’s the full arsenal you brought to a brawl against an entire galaxy:
- Fists. Adorable.
- A pocketknife you have never opened without bleeding.
- The line “you don’t know who you’re messing with,” said to a creature that genuinely does not know and genuinely does not care.
- Adrenaline, the chemical that makes you brave roughly four seconds before it makes you a stain.
Put your dukes down. Dignity is the only souvenir you keep, and only if you skip this part entirely.
Don’t Offer It Earth Food (and Don’t Let Greg Do Anything)
Every human runs the same broken software. A stranger appears, so the stranger gets fed.
An interdimensional traveler steps onto the lawn and somebody’s uncle is already firing up the grill.
Do not hand it a hot dog. A superior intelligence will ask what’s in it, and the honest answer is that nobody on Earth knows.
Skip the Monster energy drink, too.
The fragile peace cannot survive a galaxy-conquering species that suddenly also has the jitters.
And whatever else happens out there, do not let Greg do anything.
You know which Greg. He has already named the alien and is trying to get it to take a shot.
Greg will lick it. Greg will try to ride it. Greg will offer it something straight out of his own body and call the gesture “diplomacy.”
Sit on Greg. Hog-tie Greg. The survival of mankind may come down to one perfectly timed tackle of a man named Greg.
The ship’s door is opening wider now.
Stand still. Keep your hands visible, your phone buried, and your weird cousin restrained.
Smile with a normal number of teeth, which for the record is fewer than you are showing right this second.
If the human race blows this, it won’t be the missiles or the math that did everyone in. It’ll be Greg, holding a vape, going “watch this.”