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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/TheStabbyBrit on 2025-12-07 22:44:40+00:00.
It was an utterly exhausting job being a representative of the Galactic Forum's Office of Colonial Litigation, and the reason was the paperwork. Specifically, the human paperwork. When Babbliq stated this to others, some occasionally asked, "do you mean the paperwork filed by humans, or caused by humans?" to which, in a suitably human fashion, Babbliq would answer "yes".
Babbliq was currently working under the assumption that humans were a strain of fungus. Pioneer ships of other races would go off into space and find an interesting world, fertile and blessed with an abundance of riches, seemingly uninhabited. Yet the moment the scouts touched down a short ape creature, likely one that was simultaneously "hairless" yet sprouting an entire hedge from their chin, would pop out of the ground and shout a greeting. Usually, they'd be smoking something they'd found growing nearby on the off chance it was a narcotic. If anything on the planet could be fermented into alcohol, a pint of it would be nearby. Even if it was 150 proof or more, there'd be a pint of it.
If the would-be colonists didn't just give up there and then, after several hours of talking, jeering, shouting, threats, tears, cheering, and assertations that one party had fornicated with the mother of the other (not necessarily in this order), the humans would eventually reveal the entrance to their colony and lower their sensor-baffles long enough to show that there was indeed a substantial subterranean facility there. Then the baffles would be raised again, along with either pint glasses or middle digits, or sometimes both, and off the would-be pioneer ships went.
Sooner or later, that led to a complaint to Babbliq's office, whereupon it would turn out that the humans had, in fact, filled out absolutely all the required paperwork - in triplicate no less - and submitted it to the office. Physically. Along with a mountain of other correspondence. The declaration of settlement for the world of Monodromo Solidus had been nestled in a twenty-four thousand page delivery of "important documentation", sandwiched between an article on solar panel maintenance and a handwritten note asking if he needed his gutters cleaned.
The worst part was that technically the humans had done nothing wrong. There was no actual rule saying you couldn't hand the paperwork in on physical paper, and there never would be because there wasn't a rule against filibustering either. The last time anyone had tried, the human delegate had unleashed a seventeen hour speech with pre-prepared slides on the importance, practicality, spiritual significance, ecological benefits, taxonomic validity, and security benefits of a traditional paper-based bureaucratic system. Three members of the forum were hospitalised and seven others retired in despair.
(As is befitting humanity's unnatural ability to invoke a tangent, one has seen fit to inject itself into the narrative flow at this juncture. Earlier, it was said that Babbliq was "currently" working under an assumption. Since that statement was made, Babbliq has had several other thoughts, and those thoughts have led to some actions. In the time you spent reading about human behaviour, Babbliq has come to a very different conclusion, one that propelled him through the various buildings of the Galactic Forum to the office of one Derek Dereksson, current representative of humanity within the Galactic Forum. Just so you know, he's not happy. Here he comes!)
The door to Derek Dereksson's office slammed open. Babbliq, a tall, avian form whose white robes sharply contrasted his black feathers, strode across the dark room and slammed a printout onto Derek's desk. "Why are you like this!?" he roared at the orange beard with a pale man growing out of it.
Derek glanced down. "I'm not like that at all."
Babbliq held onto his fury. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"That's a piece of paper. I'm not at all like a piece of paper. Not made of trees for a start."
"This is a complaint!"
"Is it?" Derek asked innocently.
"About you!"
"Really?"
"Yes, and-" Babbliq paused. Derek hadn't been smoking a pipe when he entered, but now there was a dark oak bowl bobbling in the corner of his mouth, letting out foul smoke. He shook off the distraction. "Your lot have done it again! You've bloody well snuck onto- into a planet when nobody was looking!"
"Did we? I didn't notice."
"Yes you bloody well did! You filed the paperwork!" Babbliq's nails scraped across the hardwood desk in frustration. "Why do you humans insist on acting this way? Why are you always popping up where you're not wanted, drunk and belligerent and petty as all Hell?"
"I take offense to that! We're not always drunk!"
"It's a quarter to nine in the morning and you've already drunk half a pint of whisky by the smell of you"
"It's three in the afternoon somewhere," Derek answered as he made it slightly more than half a pint drunk.
"Just-" Babbliq shook his head and let out a long, defeated sigh. "Why? Why did you decide you wanted to live like this?"
Derek reached under the desk and drew out two bottles of beer. He popped the caps off on the corner of his desk and slid one over to the exasperated avian. "There was a chap who once said that if you wanted to understand a species, you should study their art. Ironically, that chap was fictional, but he made a good point all the same. The stories folks tell each other, stories they want to tell each other, or feel they need to tell each other, those all wind together into a sort of meta-story, y'see? If folks keep telling stories about monsters under the bed, it probably means they're scared of something. But stories are also lessons, yeah? The boy who cried wolf got 'et by a wolf because he yelled about wolves when there were no wolves, so nobody believed him when there was a wolf. That's a good lesson. We humans have tried to learn about you lot from your stories, but we learned from ourselves from our own stories as well."
Babbliq's brow furrowed as the human took a long swig from the beer bottle. "You learned from your own stories?"
"Aye. A lot of our stories, the ones about who we ought to be rather than what we should be scared of, all had a dark notion built into them: the good times would only come after our darkest days. The new world of peaceful coexistence and enlightenment had to be built on the ashes of the old, that sort of thing. Our best and brightest took that to heart, so they did."
"When we humans were just on one world, our leaders didn't fancy sharing it. They built weapons capable of killing us all, then threatened to use them to get their way. They did what they want, took what they wanted, never gave a toss about what ordinary folk thought. Anyone complained too loud, just make being angry at the government a crime and arrest 'em! Simple as!"
"But the smart ones, our best and brightest, they saw the pot was boiling and they acted. They learned the lesson, like I said; the better world had to come after the dark time. So they went to our politicians and they said how the world-ending war was inevitable, so some funds ought to go to building bunkers and shelters and such. Just for the important people, naturally. Oh, but you would have to build a few extra for the common folk, just enough that they'd feel safe and not upset the gravy train."
"When the dark day came, the lucky few fled to their bunkers, and the politicians went to theirs. They all died pretty much instantly, seeing as their shelters were rigged to kill 'em. Every single politician on Earth suffocated in twenty four hours! The real shelters, the ones that worked, were chock full of folks we actually needed to make a better world; the engineers and scientists, sure, but mostly the common-as-muck types: the ones who'd actually get their hands dirty and do the work, not just give a seminar about what a great world we'd all have if only you'd give them all your money! But when you live underground, with barely enough to survive, everything got to be proper! Every 'i' dotted, every 't' crossed! Entire generations lived and died under a regime that demanded absolute efficiency and precision! When we were finally ready to rise up and rebuild the world, we kept that attitude. When we came out into the stars, we kept it still. We've had our dark time, we've had our great loss, and now we humans that remain have inherited a bright, shining future in the stars: one that shall only persist if we all adhere always to the Rules, and record everything we do in exhaustive detail."
Babbliq sat in stunned silence for so long that the silence itself became a statement. "Ah, it warms my heart to see how my tale has moved you!" Derek gushed.
"No, it's puzzled me. I can understand living underground during a nuclear war, but why keep it up now? And it doesn't explain the smoking, or the drinking, or the need to turn everything into an argument."
"Well the smoking was originally a way to hide the, err, persistent hygiene problems of living in close quarters when showers are in short supply. Alcohol's ever been a way to escape the hardships of-"
By this point, Babbliq had risen from his chair. "You're doing it again! I know you are! You're just spouting bollocks to distract me from something so you can - hold on, what time is it?"
"One minute past nine," Derek replied helpfully.
"Oh damn it! You knew! Somehow you knew I'd be so mad about your bloody stupid behaviour...
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