This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/whelmedbyyourbeauty on 2026-04-17 12:59:18+00:00.

You’re not supposed to break cover until you receive a subspace signal or, even better, the Armada burns through the planet’s atmosphere, mech-bays unfolding like a sped-up video of fungi growing, releasing millions of spheres that unfold into large, terrifying, semi-sentient mobile weapons platforms, the sky filling with smoke and the screams of… you get the idea.

None of this has happened, yet, and I’m starting to worry it never will. Ever since I was implanted, I’ve been cooling my heels on this backwater planet that still thinks computers are cool and modern. I have to stop myself from snickering at people three or four times a day.

But not with Elena. She’s cool, she gets me, even if I haven’t told her who I really am—until today.

The diner is quieter than usual, just a few regulars who sit nursing their coffees and teas. I straighten my apron and walk to the counter. “Elena, can I talk to you?”

“Sure, babe, what is it?” She’s wiping the counter and turns her head in a way that makes her look like a puppy.

“Um… I have to tell you something.” I shouldn’t be doing this but even an elite agent like myself gets lonely. I take a deep breath and say, “I’m not like people.”

“I know, babe, that’s what I love about you. I’m not like other people either.”

“No, I’m not people—human, I mean. I’m an alien. An advance scout for a pan-galactic, agressively hegemonizing, militaristic swarm. I was sent to Earth to learn all I could and prepare the way for my people’s invasion.”

I can’t decide what the look on her face means. Panic? Laughter? Both?

She says, “So why do you look human?”

“My mind-state was implanted remotely in a human zygote so I could grow up undetected and provide intel and support if—when—our main forces arrive.”

“You’ve always known you were alien?”

I’m surprised at how calmly she’s taking it. “No, not really. It would have been weird if I had come out of the womb with all the knowledge of the galaxy, right? I began to suspect around twelve, and by sixteen I knew who I really was.”

“Good for you,” she says, and brings her hands up to her face, as if hiding a smile. “But, can you prove it?”

I’m a bit miffed that she’s demanding proof, but I guess this is a lot to take in.

I say, “I could tell you things no human knows about the galaxy, but you’d have no way to check if I’m telling the truth.”

“Try me,” she says with a smirk.

“Um… okay. There are more than one-hundred thousand different galactic civilizations that we know of. My people, the X’lee Monopolity, have conquered over one-percent of them, which doesn’t sound like a lot but is actually pretty impressive.”

“I’m sure,” she says. The smirk is still there.

“The greatest sight in the known universe are the star-foundries of Axzilar, where new stars bootstrap themselves out of sheer aesthetic joy.”

“Sounds amazing,” she says but I can tell she’s having a hard time keeping a straight face.

“I can’t believe it! I thought you of all people would be open-minded and none-judgemental, but you’re laughing at me?”

Now she laughs out loud. “No, no! Please tell me one last amazing galactic fact.”

I’m upset but say, “Um… okay. Cats have evolved convergently on most life-bearing planets—same as crabs— and are especially revered on the ice rings of the planet your scientists call J1407b, where they’ve—“

“Smashed together thousands of ice-asteroids into the shape of a cat that you can see from the surface of the planet?”

“Yes!” It takes me a second to work out what this means. “Wait, how do you know?”

Elena quietly says a phrase in the language of my people: Because I am like you and my mission has the same parameters as yours, except there are all sorts of nuances, rhyming schemes, and wordplay that can’t be rendered with this primitive Earth tongue.

I’m flabbergasted, and answer in the same language, “This is amazing! What are the odds of my one friend on the planet being a fellow agent?” As I say it I calculate the odds—unlike humans, my people have an innate understanding of probabilities—and they’re astronomical, no pun etc.

Elena motions me to be quiet, but it’s too late. Heads turn our way. Elena sighs and says, “I didn’t want you to find out this way, but I guess the milk has been spilled.”

Five of our regulars, Ruth, Orlando, Gerardo, Azucena, and Tali, say in perfect X’leeian, Welcome! and snap their fingers in the traditional happy-you-are-home pattern. The others in the diner don’t say anything but also snap. No one looks surprised.

“What! Who? What?” I say eloquently.

“You know the carrier wave they used to implant our mind-states in the embryos? It was set a little too strong, and a little too wide.”

“So, what, everybody in the diner is an alien?”

“Um… a little more than that.”

“The city? The country?”

“The planet. We’re all aliens. The Armada scrapped the invasion plans. Didn’t seem to be much of a point, you know?”

“But why keep it hidden, if we’re all the same?”

“Most people—aliens included—enjoy the feeling of having a deep, dark secret that nobody knows. It makes their lives seem meaningful. And it’s not like we can do anything with the information, anyway. So we let people figure it out in their own time.”

I say, “No humans, no invasion, no purpose?”

She nods.

“What do we do now?”

“Now?” she looks at her phone, “It’s almost noon, we need to get started on lunch. There should be a rush with all the students back from break.”

“They don’t know?”

“Some do, some don’t. Just behave like usual. Pretend they’re real humans.”

I sigh and fix my apron.

“What’s today’s special?”