| Main Entry: | hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia |
| Part of Speech: | n |
| Definition: | fear of long words |
I love the Internet!
Anyway, onto the flash fiction!
The Humanity
Convention
Xorg's normally
pale gray skin glowed green with excitement. All three of his knees
were shaking. He'd finally gotten tickets into Epic-Earth-Con, the
largest convention on human culture in the galaxy. And that's,
tickets, plural, one for him and one for his girlfriend.
Until recently
nobody cared about that little blue planet or hardly knew anything
about it. Disturbing underdeveloped planets was illegal so besides a
few delinquent kids driving by in their saucers(always arrested
afterwards by the police, the human governments usually helped cover
up any tracks) nobody even took much notice or knew anything about
their culture. However just as any civilization develops they must be
studied and when the humans developed their Internet a few scientists
finally decided to land there and put a probe to access the human
Internet.
And what happened
after that was insanity. Near limitless amounts of human culture at
the alien fingertips.(Well, several alien species in the Galactic
Union had tentacles so that sweeping statement could be fairly
politically incorrect) Humans had the most bizarre culture
imaginable. Or deep. Or hilarious. Or mundane and boring. Or twisted.
Or beautiful. Or intelligent. Or artistic. Or whatever. It all
depended on what part of the Internet was being displayed. Because of
its variety human culture had some sort of aspect to please everyone
so there nearly wasn't any alien around that wasn't obsessed with
human culture.
In fact the
Galactic Union had to put up energy barriers around Earth to keep out
hordes of tourists and even then the rich would bribe their ways
through the military to getting human items smuggled off the planet,
but at the same time many things supposedly smuggled off the planet
were fakes, though most aliens had the wisdom not to buy them. In
fact it was smarter to go into the business of selling replicates of
Earth items and saying they were replicates. Some aliens would
actually buy room fulls of replicate human sports equipment even if
they didn't know how to play the games.
After his mom
dropped him off Xorg entered the convention hall with his girlfriend.
He wore his favorite t-shirt. Xorg had four arms so he had to force
his front two under the shirt then put them to his sides and only use
two to keep it on. But he had to wear his t-shirt. He would look like
a total dork at the human convention if he wasn't wearing his
t-shirt. And it was his favorite t-shirt, as it had the word “EPIC”
on it. And as all aliens knew based on its usage on the Internet the
word epic meant greatness and significance. Or impressiveness. It was
an exotic word to all aliens and Xorg loved having it on his t-shirt.
He also spent a great deal of time learning how to pronounce it(human
languages were difficult to pronounce for nearly every alien species)
and his girlfriend thought it was extraordinarily sexy that he could
pronounce it correctly.
Though Xorg's
t-shirt was common, many aliens wore “EPIC” t-shirts. “TROLL”
and “LOL” were common too. T-shirts with human celebrities were
also common. The alien probe had hooked up somewhere on a California
beach so the aliens had been mostly consumed with American culture.
Thus the celebrities on the t-shirts were ripped from American
culture. So the aliens wore shirts with the images of an intense pop
singer that had a dance move that supposedly resembled him walking on
the moon, an actor with a dynamic voice that kept asking for more
cowbell one live Saturday night, and even fictional characters such
as a man wearing blue and a cape while he saved the day with his
incredible powers.
There were many of
the aliens that got into “science fiction” because it had aliens
within it as they could relate to it and found human perspectives
interesting. Though science fiction movies thoroughly confused them
too. (Books were a bit out of there grasp, though linguists had
managed to crack the human language, they had focused on translating
human film instead of books as that was much easier than books) There
were horror stories and friendly stories. Did humans fear or love
aliens?
But these
questions were what also what made this convention so important. The probe
had managed to set up an Internet text chat account, and they were
going to have a text chat with a human that day. And this human was a
science fiction fan! Someone they could discuss all the situations of
alien contact with without arising too much suspicion! The text chat
would be led by diplomat and human cultural expert Dr. Worx(He was
also a linguist, mastering the language in a month, a famous genius,
known throughout the galaxy) though many scientists and political
figures were there. The text chat window opened up on a gigantic
screen, though there were screens all over the convention halls that
displayed the images of the text chat window. Also this was being
broadcast all over the galaxy. Every alien was the edge of their
seats. Subtitles in their language would be shown at the bottom of
their screen if they could not read the human text. Xorg ran around
the convention halls with his girlfriend until he found a screen that
had subtitles in his language. He knew a little of the human language
“English” but not enough to potentially follow everything.
The text chat was
with a human who's user name was SciFiFan49. SciFiFan49's profile
said he was a college student into Science Fiction. He was getting a
degree in computer programming. SciFiFan49 had made his icon in the
chat room his own picture. Dr. Worx had made the icon for them a
picture of that of a popular fictional cartoon character. It seemed
common for humans to make their icons of fictional characters they
like. The aliens made their user name “ScienceFan” thinking that
the similarity between user names would make the human more
comfortable with them.
Every alien in the
galaxy was so tense, finally first contact! The chat began:
SciFiFan49: So
ScienceFan, how long have you been into sci-fi?
ScienceFan: We
have been into science fiction for a very long time.
SciFiFan49: “We”?
Dr. Worx and all
the other scientists panicked. Every diplomat panicked. Every alien
panicked. Only a few moments in and their facade was threatened.
Everyone started yelling at Dr. Worx for making such a stupid mistake
so early. He yelled back that he would fix it.
ScienceFan:lol
sorry, typo.
SciFiFan49:Heck of
a typo. I've done worse myself though.
The aliens
cheered, the day had been saved.
ScienceFan:How
long have you been into science fiction?
SciFiFan49: Since
I was a kid, started with science fiction comic books in high school.
ScienceFan:Cool, I
like science fiction comic books too.
Dr. Worx had
decided he would agree with the human on as many things as possible
to gain favor.
SciFiFan49: Neat,
so which ones?
Dr. Worx couldn't
think of what to pick specifically, what if he picked something the
human didn't like? That could spark an argument and he had to make
sure he didn't offend the human in any way.
ScienceFan:I like
all science fiction comic books.
SciFiFan49:You
like all science fiction comic books?
ScienceFan: Yes.
SciFiFan49: Every
single one?
ScienceFan: Yes.
SciFiFan49: So if
I were to pick a random one from anywhere you would like it
unconditionally?
ScienceFan: Yes.
SciFiFan49:
Alrighttt.....so which science fiction movies do you like?
ScienceFan:All of
them.
SciFiFan49:What
about science fiction books? Do you like all of them too?
ScienceFan:Yes.
SciFiFan49:Lemme
guess, you enjoy everything science fiction related unconditionally?
ScienceFan:Yes.
SciFiFan49:Rigghhhttt.
Well, my dinner's done so I have to log off and go eat. I don't know
if your joking or not but your pretty funny. I'll chat with you
later, bye.
Aliens across the
galaxy cheered as the chat window closed. Successful first contact!
History had been made! They managed to contact the human and get
through the conversation without offending him, proof that relations
could be made! After the chat many more probes had been sent to Earth
to give much more Internet access to the aliens as opening up the
Earth to physical alien contact is impractical, everyone would swarm
it.
So now Internet
forums are filled with aliens attempting to fit in with humans by
parroting pop culture on forums and chat rooms. In fact nearly a
quarter of Internet posts are created by these digital alien
immigrants.
Explains a lot
doesn't it?
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