Culicidae
"Who better than a pair of obscure, quirky comedians to bumble our way into first contact with an alien species? At least we’ll be able to laugh about it when we make the inevitable missteps."
From the moment humans began tinkering with tools, a future collision with alien species in the cosmos became inevitable. And being storytellers, many tales were told of that moment, dreamed up by the most imaginative spinners of narratives humanity had to offer, scenarios ranging from serious to apocalyptic to absurd. When first contact finally came, though, the event was so obscure most missed it. Almost unbelievably, the most monumental meeting humans had ever held went entirely unconfirmed by any government or official body for several years, years that could best be described by the denizens of Earth as substantially less itchy. No joke. The whole episode started on a podcast.
“Welcome back to the second half of our EoE monthly livestream. I am your host Wes Turtin, political cartoonist and satirist. With me as usual is the always-funny Karen Dyne, creator of Euroboots, for my money, the funniest comic strip on the web. You all know this. Thanks for tuning in with us. We’re talking all things comics, art, irony, satire, all in an age that’s almost impossible to satirize. What is up? Karen, what is up?”
“Since the first hour?”
“I mean, in general, in life? We talked about the world in the first hour. What’s new in comics?”
“I managed to survive another week without offending so many people that I get to keep my job a little longer, so that’s nice.”
“I had a fun one this week,” Wes said.
“Okay?”
“So, did you see my Tuesday cartoon?”
“The one with the Emperor in the hot tub?” Karen said. “I liked it.”
“Thanks. Did you notice anything particularly offensive about it?”
“Apart from the Emperor of Earth relaxing in a hot tub as the world burns while literally lighting a cigar from the flames?”
“Yeah, that one. So, get this. Emperor of Earth is syndicated in one hundred seventy-two publications nationwide, not to pump my own tires or anything, but like, a lot of people see it. That cartoon about the world burning got a total of one complaint from Magda in Minneapolis, and can you guess what she said to the editor there at the Star Tribune?”
“I’m going to guess something ridiculous and slightly delusional about the rapture, given the apocalyptic subject matter.”
“Not a bad guess. No. But, no. Magda from Minneapolis complained that the Emperor’s cigar was, and I quote, ‘a conspicuously phallic cigar.’”
“Isn’t that kinda like the nature of a cigar?”
“I mean, yes, don’t make me go all Freudian on everyone here, but also, look at the cartoon, hold on, I’ll pull it up.” Wes pulled up the cartoon on the screen in his basement studio. “There. Does that look like anything other than a cigar to you?”
“That cigar is very cigar-like, Wes. I’m not sure that even my mind would go right to phallus, and I dig Oedipus too, man.”
“That’s about as not-phallic as you could possibly make a cigar look in a political cartoon, right? It’s clearly a cigar.”
“The smoke does kinda give that away,” Karen said.
“Holy crap!”
“What?”
“Is that real?” Wes said.
“Is what real?”
“We just got a…I don’t even believe it. Could you come here and look at this? Hang on, I’ll put it up on the screen. I’m not even sure if my eyes are playing tricks on me.”
“What? You’re freaking me out, Wes.”
“For those of you listening on the pod who can’t see this on the livestream, I seriously don’t even know if my eyes are seeing this correctly, but I think we just got a superchat for two hundred thousand dollars. Like what?”
“Shut up, Wes.”
“Euroboots, how many zeroes would that be? Two hundred grand?”
“That would be five zeroes, Wesley.”
“One, two, three, four, five, with a two in front of it. We seriously got a superchat for two hundred thousand dollars right now.”
“Put it up on the screen already,” Karen said. “Is there a message?”
“Hang on. My hands are shaking,” Wes said. “Give me a second. No message, just $200,000 from Viscarlicon8, and a steady stream of emojis, OMGs, and exclamation points from all the EoE fans out there in the chat, who incidentally are too poor to send us hundreds of thousands of dollars in the superchat.”
“That’s our cheap bastard fanbase,” Karen said. “Filthy peasants.”
Wes finally managed to put the chat on the main screen. Karen didn’t react.
“Are you not going to say anything?” Wes asked.
“That can’t be real. I’m not biting.”
A subsequent message came over the chat repeatedly:
“Emperor of Earth, pick up your phone.”
“Is that from the guy?” Karen asked.
“Yeah, same guy, Viscarlicon8.”
“Should we do that? I feel like we’re going to get asked to murder someone or something. Who gives someone that much money?”
“It’s got to be a mistake,” Wes said. “It’s going to be a little old grandma whose cat was crawling on the keyboard and she’s freaking out. Like, please give me back my money.”
“Polydent is surprisingly expensive,” Karen said.
Wes’s phone began to buzz.
“What the hell? Are we being pranked right now?” Wes said. “For the record, I don’t believe this is really happening.”
“Are you in on this, Turtin?” Karen asked. “Or are you actually being pranked.”
“I’m putting it on speaker, Karen. Hang on.”
“Viscarlicon Eight,” a robotic voice came over the phone. “Provedor Regent, Sagittarian Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy. Contact from planet five, striated gas giant of the local system, designation Jove, contacting party seeking exclusive negotiating rights to biological entities planet three of local system galactic base code 85,483,396,104,664,317,224,368—”
As the voice continued spewing numbers in the background, Wes interrupted. “Um, hi? This is Wes Turtin, speaking. For the record I am not the actual Emperor of Earth, but as the creator of the cartoon, I can say confidently that I do speak for him.”
“I think it’s a recording,” Karen said.
The message was still continuing. “Standby to receive preliminary documentation of Viscarlicon Eight terms for negotiation one species each, flora and fauna exclusive distribution rights to be procured by Viscarlicon Eight, Provedor Regent Sagittarian Quadrant.
“Emperor of Earth, state your terms of negotiation.”
“Wow, hello, mystery alien. If you’re still listening, this is Karen, our terms are that we would like another two hundred grand, please.”
“I don’t think he’s still there,” Wes said. “The call dropped.”
“What the hell was that? Did Doug put you up to that, Wes?”
“Did that sound like your husband’s voice? You’d know it better than I would.”
“No, but it sounds like one of those modulators you can get on a phone app.”
“This is either the most elaborate hoax or the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened in my entire life,” Wes said. “Karen, the money’s still there. Look. I keep waiting for it to disappear like we’ve been hacked or something.”
“This is absurd, Turtin, even for you. I’m not even close to falling for this.”
Wes’s phone buzzed and a text came through. There was a PDF attached.
“Hang on. I just received an attachment from that number. It looks like, some…it’s legal briefs or something. Doug’s a lawyer, right?”
“Doug works in the legal department for a medical device manufacturer, Wes.”
“Do you think he’d know what kind of lawyer negotiates intergalactic contractual agreements?”
“Technically, I think this would be intra-galactic, but that might be splitting hairs right now, Turtin. The short answer is not Doug. Doug does not negotiate contracts with litigious aliens. Is this even real life right now? I can’t believe I even uttered that sentence.”
“The chat is going insane right now.”
“I’m about to go insane. Read a few for the listeners.”
“Mostly it’s like, ‘how are you guys doing this?’ They all think we’re spoofing the chat on the stream somehow, but they’re commenting on it too. I mean, if you’re out there and you don’t trust that the superchat is working, you could donate five bucks to see if it’s working.”
“Great idea,” Karen said. “We could definitely use more support tonight.”
“Obviously this isn’t real, right? Like, let’s be straight with the audience and say we have no idea what the hell’s going on. I don’t anyway. Karen’s playing it awful cool.”
“How could an alien get your phone number, Wes?”
“I think it’s listed in the local…what do you call it?”
“The local cluster? There’s gotta be a star cluster message board for planetary cartoon emperors out there.”
“Okay, well, we’re going to go and immediately withdraw this money, get drunk on some insanely expensive booze, and fly to Barbados.”
“Screw you, Turtin,” Karen said. “I’m going to Ibiza.”
“Fine. Ibiza,” Wes said. “Thanks everyone for joining us for the totally uneventful second hour of the EoE podcast monthly livestream. We’ll see you back here next month if we haven’t been invaded by overly litigious aliens. Good night everyone!”
“Wait. Are we signing off for real?” Karen asked. “Look at the chat!”
“It is blowing up right now. I guess we need to keep talking.”
“About what? Nothing weird and/or noteworthy is happening at all, Turtin. I think we should seriously try to like immediately get that money, though.”
“It takes some time for the superchat money to clear,” Wes said. “In the meantime, I’m looking at this attachment the guy sent, it’s all legalese. I can understand a little, but I wouldn’t really say I’m a brilliant legal mind. I’m going to text it to Doug and see what he thinks.”
“Doug’s not exactly a brilliant legal mind either, Wes. I mean, I love him and everything, but I didn’t exactly marry the president of the Harvard Law Review. Love you, honey.”
“Wow, ringing endorsement from the wife!” Wes said.
“I’d say Doug’s like a slightly above average lawyer, which is fine.”
“Doug, if you’re out there listening buddy, I just texted you the file, and we’re interested in your slightly better than mediocre legal opinion on what the hell it is. Call us bud.”
Wes and Karen continued bantering back and forth with the chat for another twenty minutes about whether they were somehow part of the stunt. Then Doug called.
“Okay,” Wes said, putting his phone back on speaker. “We have Douglas MacPherson Esquire on the line, let’s see what he has to say about the documents.”
“Yeah, first of all, Wes, let’s get one thing straight. You can tell my lovely wife that I am a good lawyer. I’m not going to claim greatness on my own behalf, because that’s tacky and even if you are great, you’ll never look great by self-applying that adjective, but I’m a far cry from mediocre, hun, okay?”
“As if the stream wasn’t interesting enough,” Wes said. “We’ve got Karen’s husband here reacting to some serious marital shade live on the internet. Never dull here at the EoE livestream.”
“Doug, honey, for the record I stand by what I said, and I’m not apologizing.”
“Should I come back,” Wes joked. “I’m getting a third wheel vibe here.”
“No, that’s okay, Wes, if you want to judge for yourself, I’ll just give you an indication of what I was able to do in fifteen minutes.”
“Perfect, Doug. What are we looking at?”
“Well, what you’re looking at is a meticulously crafted contract, 115 pages of some of the most perfectly considered legal language I’ve ever seen on a contract. If this is a hoax, it’s damn near genius. I mean I could fire like half my staff if I had one lawyer on my team who could put together a legal document like this.”
“You heard it here folks,” Wes said. “Doug’s wife thinks he sucks as a lawyer and he wants to fire half his staff for sucking too.”
“I’m going to show it to them,” Doug said. “If they want to take offense, I’ll seriously throw this document right back at them. They’d probably quit if I told them they had to write contracts this clear. If you do have a prankster, Wes, seriously, let me know who they are. I’ll hire them.”
“What does it say, Doug?” Karen asked.
“It’s for rights to genetic sequences. I’m not a geneticist, obviously, but it looks like it transfers exclusive proprietary rights over a tight range of genomic parameters—that’s the language used in the contract—which from what I can gather confers ownership of the gene sequences to the purchaser.”
“Gene sequences for what?”
“From what I read it seems to be a single plant species and one single animal. Nothing is specified, so I think that’s part of the negotiation, transferring rights for each species to the contacting party.”
“Transfers the rights from who?” Wes asked.
“I guess from you,” Doug said. “It uses the language ‘Emperor of Earth, AKA Wesley Turtin’ and has all your particulars. Even has your address correct. I’m not going to dox you on your own show, bud, but, I mean, it’s really like if it’s a prank…nobody who could write this high quality of a legal document would waste their time actually writing it. I just don’t see it.”
“So, you think it’s real, hun?” Karen said. “That’s sorta ridiculous.”
“I’m not saying it’s real, but it’s just curious. Suspicious. I didn’t ask you, honey, I suspect Wes isn’t in on this, I’m just wondering whether you are.”
“I’m not in on it, Doug,” Karen said. “And mostly I’m just pissed we didn’t ask him for more money. Two hundred grand is hardly eff-you money.”
“He’s calling back again,” Wes said. “Doug, hang on. I’m going to answer it.”
Wes switched lines and held the phone up to the microphone again.
“Viscarlicon Eight. Confirmation of receipt of documentation by invaded party, Emperor of Earth, is registered. Time Logged. Terms for opening negotiations have been accepted. Remittance in transit. Negotiations shall commence at this position in a single rotation. Communications terminated.”
Wes and Karen sat in silence for a few seconds looking at each other across the room. Then the screen flipped and caught Wes’s eye, a bright red icon appeared on the chat board again, displaying another $200,000 donation from Viscarlicon8 in the superchats. Wes’s eyes bugged out and he put his hands on his head.
“There’s another two hundred grand!”
“This isn’t happening,” Karen said.
“That’s insane!”
“Turtin?”
“Will you slap me in the frickin’ face, Karen?”
“Yes. I will slap you in the face,” Karen said, getting up to look at the screen more closely. She shook her head and sat back down. She didn’t slap him.
“So, Karen…”
“Turtin?”
“What the hell just happened?”
“If I’m following this correctly, you, as the Emperor of Earth’s legal representation just sold the invasion rights to Earth to a litigious species of aliens, who also happen to be cheap bastards. Seriously, did we sell the invasion rights to Earth for less than half a million dollars just now?”
“We need to talk to your terrible lawyer husband about the rest of this document.”
“I never said he was terrible. Slightly better than average was what I said, but I’m not sure we can find a better lawyer on short notice.”
“We got four hundred grand to work with, so…”
Karen tilted her head to one side. “That’s true. I mean, this has been a pretty good night. I’m just pissed I didn’t ask for more money. I thought it was a joke. After taxes and everything? We should have held out for more, Turtin.”
“Four hundred grand,” Wes said. “I don’t believe it.”
Wes and Karen kept the stream going for another hour discussing the call and Wes’s new status among the intragalactic community as the putative Emperor of Earth. The chat was lively with the largest source of debate being which of the hosts’ friends was responsible for the stunt. One particularly active user in the chat, Astrotooner, claimed to have astronomical evidence to support the call’s authenticity. He had been a subscriber and a follower of their show from the beginning, a PhD student in astrophysics who drew space related cartoons as a hobby.
Later that evening, as Karen, Doug, and Wes were sitting at Wes’s place having a beer and going over the document, Astrotooner kept sending Wes DMs about lag time and something about the transmission. Wes couldn’t follow what the guy was saying, so he invited Astrotooner to meet the group at their local watering hole, The Phamous Pheasant, partly out of frustration, but also partly out of suspicion that he might be the prankster himself.
The three friends got a table in the corner while they waited for the young astrophysicist to arrive. Doug was translating passages from the PDF from legalese to common English for Karen and Wes when Astrotooner came in. He recognized the hosts from the podcast instantly and came over.
“I’m Ilya Matasaya,” he said in what seemed to them to be a Russian accent.
“Have we met?” Karen said.
“Two years back, at Day City convention. I was just starting comic about space.”
“How’s it going?” Wes asked.
“Is good. I publish in university paper and mostly people like.”
Ilya sat.
“Crap,” Karen said. “I remember you. You’re not from Russia, right?”
“Croatia.”
“Russian but not Russian.”
“Very good memory!”
“He’s not the guy,” Karen said. “I remember meeting this guy. I remember checking out his cartoon. We exchanged a few emails after. He’s definitely not pranking us.”
“You thought I was one pranking you?” Ilya asked.
“We think somebody must be,” Doug said. “So, we figured you might have been the guy.”
“I am not sure it is prank. Or maybe it is great one by very smart people.”
Doug called the server over for Ilya, who ordered a beer.
“I don’t understand what you were texting me about delay or differential, or whatever,” Wes said. “Can you explain it to me like I’m a child?”
“He is a child, by the way,” Karen said. “For the record.”
“It is time lag in transmission.” Ilya took out his computer and opened it to a video of the live stream. “You see first transmission at this point—one hour six minutes and thirteen seconds. And from that point voice says, state your terms, and Karen states terms, ‘two hundred thousand more,’ right here at this point?”
“Yes?” Wes said.
“So from that point, you receive documents and discuss, then exactly thirty-nine minutes nineteen seconds later, you receive next call. This gap is almost exactly time delay from Jupiter, or he calls it Jove. Same thing. Time delay is almost perfect calculation for hoax, but nobody would do this. You must know exactly where planets are, because distance varies over orbits of Earth and Jupiter. Sometime is thirty, sometimes nearly fifty minutes delay over the course of several years, and this delay is perfectly calculated to be reasonable response time from this distance right now.”
“What are the greater odds, though,” Doug said, “that we have an incredibly detailed prankster, which we’ve already established, or that we have an alien sitting in a ship around Jupiter sending us legal documents?”
“It’s the first one,” Ilya conceded. “Cannot be me, though. My English is not so good to write even my dissertation, much less legal contract.”
“A group of pranksters?” Karen said.
“Couldn’t we detect the signal somehow,” Doug said. “Like couldn’t a hacker figure out where the call was coming from, trace it back somehow?”
“I’m not sure that’s how that works, Doug,” Wes said. “Like you find a geeky enough computer nerd and everyone just sits in a room watching as they trace the red line to the source like Indiana Jones on a plane ride?”
Ilya shook his head. “Is good point, though. Some radio telescope, odds are good, somewhere on Earth would pick up signal from Jupiter. We are looking at Jupiter almost always. But if it is some signal we are not passively listening for or some technology we don’t know, which is probable with alien race, it could be missed.”
“We think they’re going to call back, though,” Karen said. “Whether it’s an alien or not, you don’t go to such an elaborate effort to prank someone and not call back the next day. He said we’d negotiate tomorrow, right? So couldn’t our astronomer friend here point a telescope at Jupiter when he calls?”
Ilya’s eyebrows raised almost involuntarily, “It is good idea. But telescope time is not so easy to get.”
“Could you set that up?” Doug said.
“Not me. Maybe my professor.”
“Would two hundred grand help, maybe?” Wes said, looking at Ilya skeptically.
“Wow, Turtin,” Karen said. “You’re even more cynical than I am.”
“I mean, this thing has Nigerian prince written all over it, doesn’t it?”
“This guy?” Doug said, looking doubtfully at Ilya.
“I mean in general,” Wes said.
“It was your idea to use telescope,” Ilya said. “I can try to arrange. No money.”
“Excuse me if my guard is up a little here, guys. I’ve become very protective of our alien blood money.”
“I am curious,” Ilya said. “What is in this document? What does it propose?”
“It’s interesting,” Doug said. “Near as I can gather, it transfers ownership of specific species, I think for the purpose of sales throughout the galaxy. It seems to be a proposal of a test case for future negotiations.”
“What do you mean ownership of species?” Ilya asked. “And what species?”
“It doesn’t specify which species, but the purchasing party, Viscarlicon8, would take possession of these species exclusively, that’s on page forty-eight.”
“They will come and take them?”
“Hang on.” Doug looked down and scrolled through his phone. “Yeah, looks like they remove them, one plant species, one animal species, and it looks like it sells them to other aliens it says.”
“A galactic pet store?” Karen said.
“And greenhouse too, I guess,” Wes said. “I think we should troll them.”
“Like they troll us?” Ilya said.
“Tell them they can take the worst species on the planet,” Wes said. “Like the vole and skunk cabbage.”
“That can’t be a real plant?” Karen said.
“It is,” Wes said. “It’s disgusting. A swamp plant and when you step on them it’s like it died and then farted inside your nose.”
“What is wrong with vole?” Ilya said. “Is like mouse. Not so bad.”
“Snakes,” Karen said. “I hate snakes. Or spiders.”
“There is many kinds of each,” Ilya said. “Deadliest animal, and probably worst is mosquito.”
“Mosquitoes?” Wes said.
“Is deadliest animal by far. Malaria kills millions. Aliens can have.”
“I would have very little objection to that,” Doug said. “Can you imagine sitting outside at night and not getting eaten alive by the river. Fishing. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“This isn’t actually going to happen, Doug,” Karen said. “The point is for it to be funny.”
“Poison Ivy,” Wes said. “Oh man, I got that so bad clearing out my yard when I moved to Westover. I thought I was going to tear my own skin off.”
“Not that I do not appreciate idea of joke,” Ilya said. “But even if this is maybe say one in million chance that this is really alien. What kind of message it sends if they come to us and say, ‘Hello, we would like to trade with you, please give us something,’ and we say, ‘Here, take mosquito and poison ivy’?”
Wes started laughing.
“Maybe we could use the Latin names so it’s not so obvious,” Karen said. “Like the name poison ivy is worse than the plant. It’s not such a bad plant if you’re not allergic. It’s kinda nice and shiny.”
Ilya started typing and pulled up the poison ivy Wikipedia page. “Poison ivy in Latin is Toxicodendron radicans. Is not much better.”
“Please friendly aliens,” Karen said. “take the mosquito and this lovely toxico-toxicans plant for your terrarium. Rub your frickin’ alien noses in it.”
“Might not even have nose.”
“That’s actually a good point,” Wes said. “They may love mosquitoes. Can you put that in the brief, Doug?”
“I’m not writing them back,” Doug said. “I get paid to do this stuff, Turtin. Billable hours, brother. Besides, they seem to have the contract end of things covered.”
“So, we’re really going to do this?” Wes said. “If they call back, I’m going to propose they take poison ivy and mosquitoes?”
“Being Emperor of Earth means you make hard decision,” Ilya said.
“For two hundred grand, Turtin? Cheap bastards aren’t getting roses and thoroughbred horses,” Karen said. “They get toxico-toxicus and whatever the mosquito is in Latin.”
Ilya began typing. “Is called Culicidae, which actually does not sound so bad.”
“You say it’ll never happen,” Doug said. “But you really have no indication yet that the money isn’t real. I mean, it’s showing on your channel’s account?”
“I won’t really believe the money’s real until it shows up in my driveway in the form of a speedboat,” Wes said.
“Two hundred grand and that’s where you go, Turtin?” Karen said.
“What would you do with it?”
“No. Not would. What will I do with it? Three letters, boys. B.M.W. Suck it aliens. Enjoy your frickin’ mosquitoes.”
“In meanwhile,” Ilya said. “I will try to get my professor to get us telescope in time for podcast. Same time tomorrow?” he said.
“Are you guys going to livestream again?” Doug asked.
“I didn’t think about it, but what the hell? We should lean into it,” Wes suggested. “Call it the ‘First Contact with Aliens’ stream, or something like that. I bet half the subs will show.”
“At least, after today’s nonsense,” Karen said.
“I can call in from telescope,” Ilya said. “Could be fun podcast.”
“Game on, then.” Wes said.
Later that night, as she was sleeping, Karen woke up to find Doug alternatively pacing and looking out the bedroom window at the neighborhood. She could tell by his posture he was troubled.
“Oh my God, come back to bed, Doug. Seriously, let it go.”
“What?”
“Or go downstairs and write a brief or whatever you call it, contract terms?”
“Okay, fine. I’m upset. I’m not sure how you can be so cavalier about this if you think there’s any chance it’s not a joke.”
“It is a joke. By default, it’s a joke.”
“But what if it’s not?”
“Then it’s an even bigger joke. In the cosmic sense. And that’s the part you can’t tolerate, that I’m okay with that, which is why you need to go downstairs and lawyer up, dude. I promise I won’t make fun of you when it turns out to be an actual joke.”
“You promise to not make fun of me?”
“Okay, I don’t do that. I will taunt you mercilessly. But at least ten percent of me will be doing so lovingly. Maybe fifteen.”
Doug sighed.
“Douglas MacPherson, don’t you have any faith in the universe?”
“What? That what’s meant to be will be in general, or that this situation will work out?”
“Both.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Look, Doug, I can tell you’re upset at how unserious Wes and I are about this. That’s fine. That’s why I married you. If I’d married another unserious person like Wes, we’d already have driven off a cliff or something for the sheer comedic value of not taking serious things seriously. But trust me on this one. The universe has a sense of humor.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t, Karen.”
“Only when too many people like you get involved. Seriously, Doug. I love you, but if you can tell me the name of one person in government or public policy or any of that crap that you would nominate to do business and speak on behalf of the human race, I’ll call them up myself and endure the humiliation of sounding insane earnestly and being laughed off as a lunatic. I am a lunatic, so that’d be fitting. But honestly, who better than a pair of obscure, quirky comedians to bumble our way into first contact with an alien species? At least we’ll be able to laugh about it when we make the inevitable missteps. How many wars would have been averted if serious people didn’t take themselves too seriously?”
“Or maybe wars start when silly people don’t take others seriously enough.”
“Yeah, maybe I’m a silly person. No, definitely. I guess it’s a good thing I married a mediocre lawyer who’s taking this situation so seriously that he’s going to go downstairs at 3AM and write out all his concerns and draw up legal terms that will alleviate them.”
“Fine. Maybe I can’t help myself. It’s so stupid. But if this thing turns out to be real, I’m going to rub it in your face forever, and if you’re lucky, ten percent of me will be doing so lovingly.”
“I can live with that ten percent as long as I don’t have to endure you staring out the window mouth breathing while I’m trying to sleep.”
“I love you, honey,” Doug said, walking toward the upstairs hallway.
“Yup. Yup, you do,” Karen said. “Happy lawyering, my love.”
At breakfast, Doug gave Karen a quick overview of the clauses he’d put together to see if he’d missed anything important. She joked about it while he explained his thinking for each demand. And she quietly appreciated that he’d put serious thought into the matter on many points she’d never have considered.
When the time came for the podcast, the audience waiting was three times their usual monthly reach. A big draw. Wes began the open by recapping and announcing, that to his shock, the money was still sitting there and confessing that he was starting to get nervous about the possibility that it could be real. He also explained that Astrotooner was standing by at an undisclosed radio telescope to see if they could catch the signal as it came in from Jupiter. The chat thought that was a nice touch in the already overly-elaborate prank.
They started the livestream an hour earlier than Viscarlicon8 had called them the day before, because that was their usual start time, and it gave them a chance to discuss the situation thoroughly. The audience seemed to like their plan, and it evoked a healthy debate about plants or insects or other pests everyone wanted jettisoned into space. Doug even called in to describe some of the language he’d put in their document, which they had texted back to the number Viscarlicon8 had contacted them from the day before.
Doug had inserted several interesting clauses into their demands. In addition to demanding payment in precious metals to be delivered discretely into lunar orbit, Doug insisted on royalties in perpetuity per unit of mosquitoes and poison ivy sold. Everybody thought that was a nice touch. He also insisted that Viscarlicon8 was responsible for the removal of the species in question and must do so stealthily so as not to alarm the other species on the planet. And perhaps most importantly, Doug’s language clearly stated that the aliens were allowed to visit only for the stated purposes in the contract and remove only the outlined materials. Lastly, Doug selected a random date, June 16th, that the mosquitoes and poison ivy had to be removed by, which, in Doug’s thinking, would be surefire indication whether the contract was authentic. If the mosquitoes and poison ivy hadn’t all disappeared by June 17th, it was reasonable to assume the whole thing had been the most frivolous and expensive prank call ever.
Exactly twenty-four hours following the phone call the previous day, Wes’s phone buzzed, showing the same number again.
“Viscarlicon Eight, Provedor Regent, Sagittarian Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy. We are in receipt of your terms, Emperor of Earth. We find the documentation to be thorough and the terms to be reasonable. We propose changes to the language of your terms, which we have integrated into the final contract being transferred. Respond with your mark or counterdemands.”
“Emperor of Earth here,” Wes said. “Our legal team is standing by, right, Doug?”
“That’s correct, Wesley. Standing by.”
“It seems like they think you’re better than mediocre, Doug.” Wes said. “I think they liked your lawyering. They sounded impressed.”
“I’ve maintained that I’m a good lawyer from the outset, Wes. Only one person here has been consistently using the word mediocre.”
“Okay, we’ve got our good lawyer Doug standing by. And…I’ve got the contract here.”
“How’s things at the telescope?” Karen said.
“I was just going to…” Wes was struggling to multitask on the computer. “Hang on. Calling Ilya. Astrotooner, you there?”
“Sranje!” Ilya said. “It was signal! Radio signal at 14GHz. We have caught it!”
“Shut up,” Karen said.
“There is clear signal. I cannot believe.”
Wes shook his head.
The chat was now certain that Ilya was the prankster. There were even several astronomers on the chat that proposed ways that a signal like that could have been spoofed, and they were demanding that the data be shared immediately so they could find the holes in it.
“Astrotooner,” Wes said. “The chat thinks you’re full of you-know-what. Are you releasing the data?”
“It will take maybe ten minutes to get up anything. I will send link for podcast.”
Wes shrugged. “Karen.”
“Yes, Turtin?”
“On a scale of one to ten, how much doubt do you have that this is still a prank.”
“I still think it’s a prank. But seriously, if we get rid of mosquitoes, we are, I’m going to say it, bold, innovative, and heroic. Look over here, Turtin,” she said, pointing to herself. “This. This right here. This is the face of a hero.”
“Truly,” Wes said. “I’ve known it for years, folks. Euroboots, not only funny, but the work of a true hero. I would say heroic. And married to a good lawyer, too.”
Over the course of the following half hour, Wes and Karen bantered back and forth and responded to the chat. Meanwhile, Ilya published the satellite data online. The astronomers in the chat went silent and, though they maintained their skepticism, they couldn’t point out a definitive way Ilya was faking the signal.
Doug called back after he’d finished reviewing the changes.
“You have my approval, Wes,” he said. “If there’s an actual party to this that isn’t a joke, and they follow the letter of the contract, we’re in business. No more mosquito bites.”
When Viscarlicon8 called back, Wes said the following. “Emperor of Earth returning the signed contract with updated language. This concludes our business.”
They stayed on the livestream for another forty minutes to see if Viscarlicon8 would send another message. They didn’t.
There was a strange sense of anticlimax about it. It was a joke without a punch line. Crickets. Then, no sense of whether the whole thing had been an epic prank or the most monumental moment in human history—documented first contact with an alien race.
Ilya’s data spread out fast into the astrophysics community and was drawing attention. But the association with the cartoon/comic strip podcast colored the whole situation with a degree of doubt and silliness. Few astronomers were willing to look at the data with the scrutiny required to validate the signal.
Several days after the second livestream, Wes, Karen, and Doug got together for dinner, and the mood was mixed. The money had cleared, so all three were understandably elated about the surprise windfall. But their excitement was muted, somehow much less joyful as such a gathering would have been if they’d won the lottery together. “It almost feels like we’ve somehow scammed everyone,” Karen said at one point, “even though we didn’t do anything but react to this ridiculousness.” Karen didn’t joke much that night. It was still several weeks before Doug’s mosquito extraction date.
In the following weeks, there was no further contact and no indications that mosquitoes were going missing. Meanwhile, the event had received enough negative attention outside the pair’s fanbase, that much of their fanbase had turned on both the hosts and the loyal fans who’d spoken up to defend them. Still, no one had proven Ilya’s data false nor outed a collaborator. Fraud was just assumed. There were even rumblings from several newspapers that ran Emperor of Earth that they were exploring dropping the comic from syndication. User traffic to Karen’s Euroboots site had dropped dramatically year-on-year. Wes Turtin didn’t buy his motorboat.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Wes got together with Karen and Doug for a canoe ride on the river. It wasn’t as though the incident was foremost in their minds, as they were largely trying to forget about it, but it had become impossible for Wes and Karen not to think about it. Absent mosquitoes became a constant joke with the sun high above the horizon. But at dusk, when things cooled down and the riverbank normally would have become intolerable, the three of them found themselves quietly looking at each other in disbelief. The mosquitoes seemed to have vanished.
The following week, Wes was cutting his lawn when he overheard two of his neighbors discussing gardening. Mrs. Thackery remarked at one point that the poison ivy behind her compost pile had just “up and dis-n-appeared.” Wes shook his head and smiled. He still wasn’t ready to believe it was anything more than a funny coincidence.
He saw the first article about the mysterious disappearance of the mosquitoes a few weeks later. Shortly after that, “Where have all the mosquitoes gone?” became a somewhat common article topic in local media.
Ilya, meanwhile, had struggled with the fallout from the incident. For a cartoonist, a silly little stunt like that is expected to be baked into the personality. For an astrophysicist, though, any hint of falsified data could end a career, a hoax alien invasion was basically a death knell. Ilya merely tried his best to maintain that he had been fooled as well. He welcomed the idea that somebody smarter than him could prove how. He’d done several cartoons about the incident that Wes really liked, especially the one he titled “Aliens Calling,” where the humans on the other end laughed and responded “yeah, sure” and simply hung up the phone. Ilya kept in touch with Wes and Karen regularly, both in the real world and through the show. They were each about the only people who understood what the others were going through.
By October, things had mostly settled down. On balance, both Wes and Karen had reflected enough to accept the way things had turned out as a net positive. The money had helped to soften the blow of losing roughly half their audience. And the loyal EoE fans who’d stuck with the podcast through the controversy were a hardcore fanbase.
A few days before Halloween, Karen and Wes were back at The Phamous Pheasant running through topics for their monthly live stream. They’d almost gone the whole night without discussing aliens, poison ivy, or mosquitoes when Wes’s phone began to buzz.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Wes said.
“Don’t answer it, Turtin,” Karen said, “if that’s what I think it is.”
Wes put the phone on speaker and slapped it down on the table. Karen could see the name written in clear bright lettering across the screen: Viscarlicon8. That same voice began speaking.
“Viscarlicon Eight, sales report for quarter two, as follows: Toxicodendron radicans, modest returns at one hundred forty-seven million units, sixty-three percent satisfaction quotient, commonest descriptors—bland, green, delicious. Culicidae, substantial returns at four-point-two quadrillion units, ninety-seven percent satisfaction quotient, commonest descriptors—elegant, delicate, cute. Further market for biological commodities high likelihood. Emperor of Earth, remittance of rare metals to be deposited in orbit of lunar body once per planetary stellar orbit commencing in forty-six days per clause 39-A of contract. We look forward to distributing more Earth species in future following subsequent negotiations. Viscarlicon Eight, Communication Terminated.”
“So, Turtin,” Karen said. “As Emperor of Earth, you and I need to have a serious discussion about scorpions, which are my all-time least favorite nightmare fuel. Scorpions and pussy willows.”
“You’re a trip, Euroboots. Pussy willows?” Wes said, shaking his head. “I will say, it’s a damn good thing they called us first. It really is. I hate to think where this world would be without its Emperor.”