First Contact: Coffee & Chaos

“Human Clara, what is the word for that infestation of tiny creatures over there?”

“Those are children. That’s a school.”

“Fascinating.”

I sighed.

In an ideal world, I would not be spending a beautiful Saturday afternoon giving an alien a tour of my hometown and a crash course on the human species.

Clearly, this was far from an ideal world.

“Do you eat them straight away,” it asked, “or are they put into storage for a time?”

I blinked. “…We don’t eat the children.”

“You don’t? Fascinating.”

I rubbed my temple, wishing I was still at home in my pajamas, eating snacks and watching YouTube videos or something.

I was sure that if my life was a sitcom, that would be the moment there would be a flashback to how I got into this whole situation, complete with a ‘I bet you’re wondering how I got into this whole situation’ voice-over. Considering the circumstances, though, I bet audiences would find it ridiculous and anti-climactic.

—

What happened was, I woke up in the middle of the night because I had to go to the bathroom, and afterwards I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I turned the light on, and there it was, a stereotypical grey alien with its short body, spindly limbs, big head, and wide eyes staring at me, right in the middle of my kitchen.

My first reaction was to start screaming bloody murder, as I expected to be bloody murdered. You know, zapped with a laser gun and abducted and dissected, or something along those lines.

What I didn’t expect was for the alien to also start screaming. It backpedaled to distance itself from me but tripped on its own feet and fell with arms flailing, accidentally pulling out a nearby drawer in its descent and landing face-first with a splat on the kitchen floor amidst a shower of clinking silverware.

The ridiculousness of the scene calmed me down. The shock of the fall calmed the alien down. Following a very awkward silence, we composed ourselves and realized we both came in peace.

Surprisingly, the alien could speak perfect English – except it couldn’t, but it did have a technomagical device which translated its speech to English in real-time, and translated my speech to whatever its alien language was.

The alien explained that it had a personal interest in humans, and so had snuck down to Earth. (The implications of the fact that it had to “sneak” down to Earth eluded me at that moment in time, but it was 2am, I still hadn’t gotten my glass of water, and I was having to deal with First Contact, so please forgive me.) Of course, out of the millions of kitchens in the world it could have randomly beamed down to, it just so happened to be mine. Lucky me!

It said that it had spent a long time observing the human species: studying our languages, analyzing our media, cataloging our behaviors, and so on. As if to prove its point, it turned off its translation device and began speaking in its own voice English that was, well, decidedly less perfect and more accented than before, but still more comprehensible than a drunk frat guy at a house party, at least. Not bad for an extraterrestrial, honestly.

The best part was when we introduced ourselves.

I went first and gave it my first name, Clara.

The alien said its name was too unpronounceable for human tongues, so it had chosen a more human name based on humans’ perception of aliens, or at least what it believed humans’ perception of aliens was based on its research.

Lmao, it pronounced proudly. Lmao. It had picked its name based on the internet meme with the baked alien.

I burst out laughing, startling the alien for a second time that night. I’m not ashamed to say I did not elaborate when it asked me why I was laughing.

—

“What are you thinking about, human Clara?” Lmao asked, bringing me back to the present. Perhaps it had noticed my smirk.

I glanced over at the alien. Its appearance was currently disguised by another one of its magical space gadgets, this one weaving an optical illusion field around it that made it look, for all intents and purposes, like a normal human being. A short, nerdy, spindly-looking guy, but a human nonetheless.

“What, you can’t just read my mind and find out?”

“Well, there have been conspiracy theories that our military has been working on a mind reading device, but I have never seen a working prototype, and in any case, I doubt it would be compatible with human—”

“I was joking,” I said. “It was a joke.”

“Oh.” Lmao snapped its fingers, eyes widening. “Ah! Sarcasm! Yes, I understand.”

For what felt like the hundredth time that day, I rubbed my temple. I definitely felt a headache coming on.

“I think I need some coffee.”

“Ah yes, one of the ceremonial human elixirs, correct? Analysis indicates it should be non-toxic to my species’ physiology. I am quite interested in trying it!”

“Well, there’s a coffee shop near here, but they tend to be small spaces with lots of people. Your disguise thingy isn’t going to glitch out, is it?”

It smoothed out the edges of its illusory shirt in an almost gentlemanly fashion.

“Unthinkable. This technology has been thoroughly tested and received every certification of—”

“Great, great. Let’s go.” I pointed in the direction of the coffee shop and we started walking. “It’s this little place called Cuppa Joe. It’s honestly been carrying me through a lot of semesters— Wait—”

I stopped in my tracks and gasped.

“Oh shoot,” I said, fishing my phone out of my pocket and going through my recent texts. “Oh shoot, oh shoot.”

“What is the matter?” Lmao said.

“I forgot I made plans with my friend Brianna to meet up there today! In…” I scanned the text messages. “…in half an hour!”

“Oh, how convenient! Socialization and sustenance. We kill two avians with one concretion of earthy matter, as your species says.”

“No, no, this is bad,” I said. “She’s gonna find it weird if I’m with someone. Also, you’re an alien.”

“Fret not, human Clara, I will be the perfect picture of a normal human.”

“We don’t say ‘human’ before addressing people, Lmao. That is not picture perfect human talking.” I waved my hands in front of me. “Just… pretend you don’t know me. Yeah. Ok, you just sit close but pretend you don’t know me until my friend leaves. Actually, don’t even talk. At all. To anyone.”

Lmao seemed bewildered.

“Is that really necessary?” it asked.

“I really don’t want to risk some international incident if you’re found out, Lmao. Or worse, having my best friend think I’m a weirdo.”

“Ah, I see,” the alien said, nodding. “Truly, I have much to learn about human social dynamics. Very well, I will be the perfect picture of a mute normal human.”

I was still not entirely convinced but had no choice but to keep leading the way to the coffee shop.

—

We entered Cuppa Joe, Lmao trailing several steps behind me as instructed. I got in line and ordered two black coffees with sugar (‘Better start the alien off with something simple before we get to the caramel snickerdoodle machiattos,’ I thought), while Lmao stood awkwardly in the middle of the shop, head on a swivel as it curiously examined its surroundings. Already it was standing out and drawing glances from some of the other customers.

“Psst.” I waved to get the alien’s attention, then pointed to one of the empty tables by a window. It took a few seconds but it finally got the message and walked over and sat down. I sighed in relief.

A barista called out my name and I retrieved the two coffees. I glanced around the coffee shop to make sure my friend still hadn’t arrived, then briskly approached Lmao and set its coffee down on the table.

“Be careful,” I whispered, “It’s hot.”

“Ah, not to worry, h— Clara. The tongues of my species can comfortably handle temperatures of up to—”

“Ssh. No talking, remember?”

I sat down at the adjacent empty table, and waited for my friend to arrive, watching through the window as people walked past the coffee shop in the meantime.

I didn’t have to wait too long. A few minutes later, I saw Brianna walk in. I waved and she waved back at me with a smile, then got in line to order her drink. Not too long after she was sliding into the seat across from me, a mocha latte in her hand.

“Heeeey girl! I’m surprised you’re actually here on time,” Brianna said with a giggle. “How’ve you been?”

I shrugged. “Been ok. How about you?”

“I’ve been good.” She took a sip of her drink. “So, update me! Watcha been up to?”

“Oh, you know, just university and stuff. Same ol’.” Besides harboring an extra-terrestrial guest.

“Yeah, I get that. How many credits are you taking this semester?”

“Mm… eight.”

“Only eight again? Clara, you’re not gonna graduate in 4 years at that pace.”

I groaned, crossing my arms on the table and resting my forehead on them.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

“How did you even manage to get your advisor to agree?”

I lifted my head up to look at her, resting my chin on my forearm.

“I gave him the old ‘I’m having personal issues’ line.” I chuckled. “Which I guess ironically is true now.”

“Mm? What do you mean?”

I froze for a second.

“Oh… nothing.”

Brianna raised an eyebrow.

“You sure? You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

While I appreciated Brianna’s offer, somehow I didn’t think ‘anything’ included the confirmation of alien life and its presence in the immediate vicinity.

I nodded, smiling.

“Yeah, I know, Bree. Thanks. But it’s… nothing.”

“All right, if you say so. Just let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will.”

Brianna took another few sips of her drink, then narrowed her eyes and smirked.

“Oh, speaking of changing your mind, have you changed your mind about Jason? Do you want me to set you up on a date with him?”

I blinked, caught off-guard. With everything that had happened in the past 12 hours, it took a few seconds for my brain to calibrate back to something mundane.

Jason was a friend of Brianna’s I had met in one of our mutual classes, and she had got it into her head we would make a cute couple and had been trying to play matchmaker ever since. I wondered if part of the reason she’d wanted to meet up today was to bring it up again in person.

“Oh, right, Jason. Um…” My eyes wandered to the world outside of the window again as I spent many seconds mulling it over. Finally, I said: “You know what… sure. Yeah. Why not?”

Brianna shifted excitedly in her seat, grinning as if she had just been made privy to some secret conspiracy.

“Ooh, wonderful! I will set things in motion, my dear.”

Meanwhile, I was chuckling.

“Jaaaaaa-sonnnn.”

Brianna raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s a videogame thing,” I said. “There’s this game called Heavy Rain where the main character has a son called Jason and he just keeps going ‘Jaaaa-sonnn’. It’s um…” Brianna was giving me a look, so I waved a hand and said: “You know what, nevermind.”

My friend shook her head, a bemused expression on her face.

“Ok nerd. Maybe don’t bring that up on the date, though? Don’t wanna scare away another one.”

I frowned and puffed up my cheeks.

“Hey! It was one time, okay? Jeez, you make it sound like I’m just going up to guys and going—”

“BOO!” came a shout from beside me.

I jumped in my seat, accidentally elbowing my cup of coffee off the edge of the table. It tumbled down to the ground, lid flying off and spilling the contents close to our feet. Several people nearby turned to look at the noise. Brianna sat with her eyes wide and mouth open.

I turned on the alien that had just given me a jumpscare.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Social experimentation!” Lmao pronounced proudly. “I estimated that the chance of an international incident was close to 0%, and from my observation it seems that your friend already thinks you’re a weirdo, therefore nullifying your reasons for maintaining our distance.”

“You made me—” I realized that I was practically shouting. I felt my cheeks burning as I continued in a lower voice: “You made me drop my damn coffee!”

Lmao looked down at the spilled coffee. “Oh.”

“Clean it up,” I said, getting a handful of napkins from the table and unceremoniously shoving them in its hand. “It’s your fault, anyway, Lmao.”

After curiously inspecting the napkins for a few seconds, Lmao kneeled and began cleaning up the coffee spill.

Brianna’s eyes darted from me to the alien then back again.

“Uh, do you two know each other?”

In my anger, I had forgotten that the plan was for us to pretend we didn’t know each other, although it was hard to pretend a random stranger would just walk up behind you in public and shout. At least, from the absence of screaming around us, the alien’s disguise gadget was still holding up.

“And wait,” Brianna said, her confused expression turning back into one of amusement. “Did you just say ‘lmao’? Like, did you literally pronounce ‘laughing my ass off’?”

“Yes!” said Lmao, suddenly popping back up from below the table, a wad of coffee-soaked napkins in its hand. “She did, as that is my name. What do I do with these?”

I pointed to the nearest trashcan, leaning away from the dripping napkins. As the alien went to throw them away, Brianna leaned in closer.

“Did I hear that right? Who is he, Clara?”

“No, no,” I shook my head, racking my brain to come up with some reasonable explanation. “His name is L… It’s um… La…”

The alien was soon back, and promptly sat down in the open seat next to me. It gave a stiff wave to Brianna.

“Hello, friend of Clara! Allow me to properly introduce myself. My name is Lm—”

“Lamont!” I nodded at the alien, giving it a pointed look. “Lamont is your name.”

“Well, no,” the alien said, confused. “My name—”

“Sorry Bree,” I continued, not giving it a chance, “my mind was just all over the place after that hecking jumpscare. This is Lamont, he’s my friend from… from university.”

“Lamont from university, eh? How come I’ve never met him before?”

“He’s… in a different program.”

Brianna narrowed her eyes. After a few seconds, she fixed her gaze on Lmao.

“Well hello, Lamont from university. My name’s Brianna.”

“Greetings!” the alien said cheerfully.

“What program are you in?”

Oh god, they’re talking, I thought in a panic. What do I do?

“Program?” Lmao said, at first unsure. After a few seconds, its face lit up. “Ah, I believe I understand the question. My ‘program’ is Extra-terrestrial Domineering and Social Compliance.”

Brianna blinked and said: “Come again?”

“Electrical Engineering and Computer Science!” I interjected. I gave Lmao another pointed look when it looked at me with confusion, hoping to keep it from correcting my ‘correction’.

“Oh,” Brianna said. “You know, your accent is really interesting, Lamont. Do you mind if I ask where you’re from?”

My eyes widened.

“Certainly,” Lmao said, seeming to sit up straighter. “My home planet is called Brypso ZH4, located in the Aquila Nebula galaxy of the Nova Nexus cluster.”

“…Where the heck is that?”

“Space.”

In the silence that followed, I thought the jig was up. Surely, Brianna was instants away from putting two and two together, contacting the authorities, and forever changing the course of our lives (and, you know, all of humanity)?

Instead, she burst out laughing.

“Oh, he’s funny,” she said. “Although, it kinda seems like you’re not even trying to be. Does he do this often, Clara?”

“What, saying random made-up things? Yeah, it’s definitely one of his space-ialties— specialties! Specialties.”

Brianna looked amused while Lmao turned to me with a look of indignation.

“I will have you both know that I have not uttered one mistruth from the very moment I beamed down into Clara’s home from the mothersh—”

“Ooookay, that’s enough talking,” I said, hurriedly pushing Lmao out of the seat. “Go, go get me another coffee or something. Just go.”

As Lmao strolled towards the counter, Brianna called after him: “And order me a mars-hmellow, Lamont!”

I just groaned and laid my head down on the table.

“What’s wrong?” Brianna asked. “You usually love puns.” She took another sip from her drink. “You didn’t get abducted and replaced by aliens, did you?”

If I still had my own drink, I might have spit it out at the moment.

I looked up at my friend, gesturing with my hands as if I could wrangle a good explanation out of the air.

“It’s just— Look, you don’t— Just, trust me, you don’t understand the gravity of the situation, ok?”

When I saw Brianna just sitting there smirking at me, I realized what I had just said. I frowned and shook my head.

“That one doesn’t count.”

“Does too.” Brianna leaned in a bit closer, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Clara, listen, if you already have a guy on the hook, just let me know and I’ll put a cork on the Jason thing.”

My eyes widened.

“N-No! That is not what’s going on here.”

“No? Because it seems like you two are pretty friendly, and being very vague about where he’s from or how you met.”

“There’s nothing between us,” I said emphatically. “Bree, accuse me of anything, even installing Counterstrike cheats on your PC, but do not accuse me of that!”

Brianna leaned back and laughed.

“Relax girl, it’s not that serious. I’m just curious, that’s all. He seems nice. And besides—”

She got cut off by sounds of laughter that made both of us look towards the counter. My heart skipped a beat at what I saw.

Lmao had somehow gotten behind the counter and was dancing with one of the baristas. He was moving in an awkward yet strangely endearing way, and the scene had drawn the attention of another employee and a couple of customers in line, who were laughing and clapping along to the beat.

“Well, would you look at that, his moves are out of this world,” Brianna glanced at me to see if she’d get a reaction, but I was staring blankly at the scene. “You sure there’s nothing going on?”

There was definitely something going on: the complete and total upheaval of the life I had always known.

I wanted to organize my thoughts into a coherent explanation and lay it all out for Brianna. I wanted to march over there and strangle that irritating, intergalactic interloper. I wanted to get another coffee.

But in that moment, as I looked from Brianna to the other patrons of the café, all I could do was sit there and think, Why does this alien have better social skills than me?

—

Later, I deposited myself on my living room couch like a sack of potatoes and stared up at the ceiling as if I could find the meaning of life scribbled into the white paint.

“You know, you think it’s hard enough trying to keep weight off, stay on top of your studies, and manage a social life… and then life is like ‘NOPE, here’s an alien to babysit, too.'”

Lmao, who had sat down on an armchair on the other side of the room, simply smiled.

“Today was an extremely enlightening and enjoyable experience.”

“Oh really?” I said, exasperated. “Which part? The part where you made me look like a total weirdo to my friend, or the part where you made an entire café break out into song and dance?”

“Your friend seemed amused, and those patrons were lovely folks. I think it went rather well.”

“At one point, you got onto a table and started singing the lyrics to Starman!”

“And I am proud to say, I did not use any dynamic voice modulation to make myself sound better! ‘Automatic tuning,’ I believe you commonly call it?”

With a grunt of frustration, I pushed off the couch.

“Why, God?” I dramatically demanded of the heavens. “Why am I the one that has to deal with this? Why did you have to send the dancing, singing, child-eating alien to my kitchen, of all kitchens?”

“Goodness gracious,” Lmao said, leaning back in his seat, “we do not eat our children!”

“Huh? But, you asked me before…”

“Oh, I just assumed your species did, given that you’re so primitive.”

“I—” I blinked, mouth agape. I put my hands on my hips. “Ok, first of all, rude. Second of all, we’re not that primitive!”

“In many ways you are, but I must admit that coffee has significantly increased my estimation of your species!”

“Wait, back up,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You assumed we ate their children? Didn’t you say you had been studying us for years? Isn’t that something you should’ve known we don’t do?”

For the first time that I could remember, Lmao looked bashful.

“Well, you see, my people have certainly been studying your kind for many millennia. I, myself, well… I just started as an intern. I mostly just studied English and browsed your internet.”

Suddenly, his earlier words came rushing back to me.

“You said you snuck down here!”

Lmao slowly nodded.

“So,” I said, crossing my arms, “that means you’re not supposed to be here.”

Lmao kept nodding.

“Which meeeans… you gotta go back,” I continued, not able to keep the hopefulness out of my voice. “You’re just gonna take a quick shower, eat a snack, and then be on your merry way, right?”

Lmao hesitated, wringing its hands.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Clara.”

“What, why not?”

“Protocol G-3R(m).”

“What the heck is that?” I asked, shaking my head.

“Protocol G-3R is our non-interference doctrine. Put simply, it states that contact with native species under observation should occur only in our own controlled environments, never amidst the native population itself. Clause (m) of the protocol stipulates the required course of action should the doctrine be violated.”

I was silent for several seconds as the significance sunk in.

“Lmao,” I said, “you violated that doctrine by coming here, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Lmao, what does clause (m) say?”

“…That the offending researchers be disciplined, and that any natives made aware of our existence be either permanently seized or permanently silenced.”

I just stared at him, speechless for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

“Lmao… wtf.”

“Oh, but there is no need to worry, Clara!” Lmao said, hopping up from the armchair. “I do not have to go back! Just let me stay here as your roommate, and my people will be none the wiser! They will almost certainly not even notice my absence before the end of your natural lifespan!” Lmao looked around. “So, may I have that shower now? Where is your bathroom?”

I pointed weakly in the direction of the bathroom. As the alien strolled away, I let myself fall back onto the couch, feeling like all my energy had been drained from me.

I sighed.

In an ideal world, I would not be getting coerced into having an alien as a roommate in the world’s first case of intergalactic blackmail.

Clearly, this was far from an ideal world.