NYT – Group Project

Dear Omega D5:

Everyone screws up. When I joined the Council, I recommended contacting a race of sentient, spacefaring locusts. Believe me, it took centuries to clean up that mess. I still can’t sleep without an electrified mosquito net.

But bringing back those humans? A little more than a screwup. Introducing them to our lives has been nothing short of apocalyptic. An apocalypse it was your specific job to prevent.

I know that fact-checking isn’t as fun as First Contact. But it would have helped to know if a species was dim enough to fight two world wars. With that kind of planet, we should have taken a wait-and-see attitude. Or vaporized them from orbit.

Now we don’t have either option. There are humans in every space station, starting new religions and coughing on endangered sentients. Last week, one of them landed on a Council territory and declared it “New Texas.” We vivisected him quickly, but there are certain to be more on the way.

I encourage you to adopt a more fastidious attitude. Get into details. When you find a new species, ask: Did they take fascism seriously? How many genocides per decade do they commit? Are their leaders the loudest, most sociopathic members of their hives? Did they invent nukes before nonstick pans? The galaxy will be better for it.

Sincerely, Alpha 70-1 ♦