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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ash-Baal on 2026-02-20 18:59:39+00:00.

First contact officer Kla was not having a good day, or even a good month. For years, she had been working hard to be able to participate in a first contact situation as a senior officer. She had dreamt of how she would handle it, how the interactions with the new species would play out. Would they be more advanced? Less advanced? Would they be familiar or utterly alien? Every possibility was fascinating to her but now… the dream was turning into a nightmare.

“Ten thousand dead?! How am I even going to report this!”, she yelled in frustration at no one in particular after reading the latest report on how the first humans were settling on her planet, as part of the first contact exchange protocols. The idea was that a select number of individuals of each species would live with the other for about a month, to establish protocols and judge how and if they could coexist on the same planet, before opening up to the rest of the species. It was a system that made sense but it never backfired so spectacularly before.

“But officer Kla, those humans are really difficult to manage you know, I myself am happy with keeping my fifth human alive, it is better than the average of 10 deaths per caretaker”, replied her junior colleague, Tel, almost boasting.

“What is wrong with you Tel? Even a single death is one too many. Sure, there may be accidents and it happens but 10 000? It is like we are exterminating them! Do we know how our exchange is going on the human side, what do they call it again, Earth, right?” Kla lamented. Tel was normally smart and considerate, how could he even think that, let alone say it to her face?

“Yeah, Earth, or officially Sol-3. And you know very well we cannot access this information until the meeting with the humans next week, or it would spoil the results”, her junior helpfully reminded her.

Right, the meeting, she thought. This was going to end her career at the very least, and there would likely be more severe repercussions. She had tried her best to obtain all the information from the humans to ensure the first group to live with her people would strive. They had provided everything requested and more, and yet… how had this happened?

At the end of the day, Tel went back to his residence, and was welcomed by his friend and fellow junior officer, Tak, and their fifth human, John.

“So how was your day?” asked Tak. “I had to deal with accounting again on some of the first contact preliminary trade agreements, I am beat. But John wants to go explore the neighbourhood again and try more of our food, what do you say?”

“Man, I have had a bad day, senior officer Kla chewed me off because of the number of human deaths, but how is it my fault? It is not like we are trying to kill them, they actively try and hurt themselves, no offense John.”

“None taken” the human replied. “Actually, I looked at the deaths of the previous four humans you tried to take care of and I must say with the knowledge you had at the time there wasn’t really anything you could have done, I blame my government for not giving you more guidance on how to handle us.”

At that, both Tak and Tel felt a bit better but also curious: “Oh really? Can you tell us quickly what you think went wrong for each? We will talk while walking around and going for a drink, your people drink low alcoholic content drinks too right?” Tak asked.

“Yes, a trait I am happy we share!” Replied the human before continuing: “well your first human died of poisoning after you tried to discourage him from eating your spices. In typical human fashion, he took it as a challenge and woke up in the middle of the night to sneak into the spice storage and try several of them, poisoning himself and dying almost instantly. It is almost like you needed to baby proof your place”.

Neither Tel nor Tak were quite sure what “baby proofing” meant but they nodded along. Did babies need some sort of proof they were babies on Earth? Some sort of ID perhaps, or some sort of identification on dangerous areas so they would recognize it as a place not to go to? A question for later, translators were always a bit iffy in the first few months of first contact after all.

John continued: “the next 3 deaths are various unfortunate accidents caused by the humans themselves. One insisted on racing in one of your small aircraft, and he had a pilot license too so your authorities let him. He promptly overrode the limiters and crashed.”

Tel winced at that, not only did he like that human as a fellow pilot, but the cost of the aircraft had been billed to him, and it would take a while to recover from that.

“And if the information you provided is correct, the other two fell from high places, one was trying to access the rooftop to get a better view of the moons, and another insisted the higher gravity was fine for paragliding, refused your own paragliding equipment, and instead just went with a slightly modified version of his Sol-3 gear. I, on the other end, prefer to stay on the ground and just see the city and its people, we should be fine, unless we hit too many bars if you know what I mean haha.” John winked, a gesture that had baffled the first contact team at first, having no eyelid, but that they know got strangely used to.

A week later, on the day of the meeting between the two delegations:

“Alright Kla, this may end in you losing your job, or getting executed even, but it is still your duty to present the data accurately and without looking for excuses. Let us just hope the humans will be understanding. In other areas, I am told the trade, science and culture teams achieved breakthrough so this is unlikely to start a war at least. Our role is always more complicated as some species may just not be made to live together on the same planet. It happens, this is why we do this trial in the first place to judge the compatibility.” The head of the first contact delegation told her.

Not feeling reassured at all, and shaking a bit, she made her way to the podium, saluted the human delegation and started her presentation:

“As you know, the first exchange program has been used by both the human federation and us, as well as many other races, to judge compatibility between species in a setting more closely resembling real life. There are always risks that participants are fully informed of beforehand. Unfortunately, in our case, it looks like while we may be compatible on many social aspects, including sharing a drink, dangerous behaviours have been discovered for which we were not prepared” She saw the human delegation starting to smirk a bit at that and exchange some looks, odd. She briefly pondered if they already knew, but it did not matter, she had a job to do.

“I am sorry to inform the human delegation that we had many casualties and…” She took a deep breath, the humans were now visibly looking… excited? Expectant? Or may be they were just angry? She had not actually interacted with them that much and was not good at reading their expression. She realized she had paused longer that she wanted and her counterpart in the human delegation, a Mr Anderson now that she thought about it,  spoke up:

“It is alright senior officer Kla, please just tell us the number”.

“As many as 10 000 have died, of various causes, I am so sorry”! She replied, on the verge of a breakdown.

At that, she accepted her career, and maybe her life, were over. As she mentally prepared for what the humans would say or do, she was not prepared to hear cheers, and a big human yelling “hell yeah! 10 000, time to pay up!”.

Utterly confused, she looked at the head of her own delegation, who seemed equally lost, before finding the courage to ask the humans.

“Excuse me, but those are the worst results we have ever had, why are you not angry?”

“Oh we had a bet going on regarding how many would die, and this guy bet on 10 000, I personally bet on 20 000. Just to be clear, you were not actively trying to kill your humans, right? Most of them died in accidents of their own making?” Mr Anderson asked in return.

Her brain was having trouble processing this so she just focused on the data: “hmm yes that is correct, in fact we tried our best with the guidance you gave us, and we revised that as quickly as we could after each death, the death rate lowered after the corrections were published and most caretakers were then finally able to keep their human alive, after 10 deaths on average…”

“Excellent then, we could not have asked more of you. 10 000 is actually among the best results we have ever got, our people are going to be great friends. My people had a great time with your people on Sol-3 too, we have only had 500 deaths but we realized you were fun to be with. You eat spicy food, you drink alcohol, you enjoy racing. You will hear more in our presentation. Really the only reason for the ratio of death is because your gravity is higher and some of your spices cause allergic reactions to us, but this can be fixed quickly.” Mr Anderson replied, smiling.

“I am happy to hear it delegate Anderson, but…10 000 is by far our worst first contact, I am not sure how to atone for it?” She still could not believe it. They were so casual not only about the death of the humans in her care but also that of her own people on Sol-3. Was this a trick?

“There is n...

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