Хосе Гомес - Condomnauts

The first reaction on board the Gaudí was total celebration. As we had suspected from the beginning, it had to be some sort of Alien spaceship. Then we got scared, just thinking about how powerful its antigrav generators would have to be to lift its massive bulk off the ground. And we scared ourselves even more by trying to picture what sort of beings could build a ship as huge as this—especially since our brilliant Amaya couldn’t get her usually superexact biometer to resolve even roughly where they were located inside the immense ship.

In the end, of course, ambition and excitement erased our fears. Nobody had ever heard of such an enormous spherical structure, so maybe we’d hit the jackpot, found what every known intelligent species (a tasteful way to say: any species with commercial ambitions) in the Milky Way, Alien or human, has always been looking for: an extragalactic species. From the Andromeda Galaxy, or the Triangulum Galaxy, or at least one of the Magellanic Clouds.

Our trade opportunities, if we can become the first of the tens of thousands of races in today’s Galactic Community to make Contact with beings from beyond the Milky Way—and, by the way, the first to wheedle or purchase the secret to the hyperjump engine that allowed them to cross the currently insuperable chasm between galaxies (and maybe even get our hands on a functional ansible!), putting us on an equal footing to compete with the Qhigarians or even to beat them at their own trade game—would be practically limitless.

Especially for us humans. We’re such latecomers to the cosmos that almost every planet in the Milky Way fit for colonization by oxygen-breathing races was already taken by the time we started exploring. The right engine would give us access to practically the entire universe. And with that, we’d come up with not just one, but dozens of worlds that could be turned into New Catalonias, for sure.

Plus, the other races would have to pay us, the way everybody now pays the Unworthy Pupils for Taraplin technology, on which they hold an unbreakable monopoly. And they wouldn’t find the new hyperjump drive cheap—we aren’t as gullible as the Qhigarians!

It’s in this hope that every ship setting out from a human enclave tries to have a Contact Specialist like me on board. Or several, if the shipowner can afford to pay them.

Besides, if they make Contact with some new Alien species on their travels, as happens frequently enough, even with one from our own galaxy, they can let them know that humans come with good intentions. Then they can start off with a relationship of peaceful understanding, trade in goods and technology, as beneficial to both sides as possible—rather than hostile misunderstandings and war, always a bad thing.

Now it’s right here in front of me, looming up between the system’s reddish sun and myself, its dull shadow spreading across everything as far as I can see.

I’ve never faced a possible First Contact with extragalactic Aliens before.

What a chance. What a responsibility. I’ve got equal odds of covering myself in glory or in shit.

Most likely this is just the latest false alarm. But maybe not.

For a long moment I gloat over the thought that these Aliens might really be from beyond the Milky Way. Due to my skills in “sleeping” with Aliens, negotiations with them will be stunningly successful. Nu Barsa will get exclusive rights to the first intergalactic-range (and first non-Taraplin) hyperjump engine in the Human Sphere, indeed in the entire Galactic Community, overcoming once and for all the obstacles to intergalactic travel that have so far prevented us from spreading beyond our own pinwheel of stars.

What will the other members of the union say then? All those snobs in the Department of Contacts who can barely hide their disdain for my not being Catalan and for my “plebe” background?

They’ll have to eat their words, en masse.

For example. That stuck-up, envious nanoborg, Jürgen Schmodt. Just hearing that it was me—the immigrant, the plebe, the Third-World condomnaut, the first-generation “natural” talent, the contract worker—and not a member of his team who was lucky enough to make Contact with the first extragalactic Aliens: that will no doubt fry all the high-tech Nazi’s nanocircuits, out of sheer spite.

On the other hand, though my obese buddy Narcís Puigcorbé would have happily given his many rolls of fat to be here, I’m sure he’ll be glad if it’s me, his Cuban socio , who wins the lottery.

He’s a good friend, the best I’ve got—maybe because he’s ready to retire and he doesn’t see me as a threat. If only all the Catalans were like him.

Lovely Nerys, for her part, will also feel proud to the tips of her fins that it was none other than her unmodified first-gen “boyfriend” who took this first step. A small step for me, a giant leap for all mankind. And maybe my self-centered girlfriend will finally give some serious thought to the marriage proposal I made to her six months ago.

That slippery siren is driving me nuts…

Apart from prestige, I’ll probably also get the Nu Barsa citizenship I want so bad, and with it the security of a steady job. No more freelance contracts. Who knows, I might even stop waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat from my recurring nightmare about my disgusting old home sweet home, the Caribbean pigsty of my childhood. City of Havana. Good old CH.

So let me concentrate on my business here. On the here and now, no more distracting memories. Even though I’ve always found it helpful, centering, to reminisce about stuff that has nothing to do with whatever concrete challenge I’m confronting.

To each his own, you know? Every condomnaut has their own way of making Contact. Some use yoga. Others groove to music. Me, I let my mind ramble while I try to figure out how we got here, humanity and me. Not necessarily in that order.

But. Don’t waste your time dreaming about melons when your ass is in the ditch, old Diosdado used to say.

According to our sensors, the local gravity on Hopeful Encounter is slightly greater than Earth’s, but still, though we haven’t yet managed to catch a glimpse of any of the crew members, judging from the dimensions of their ship and the size of the three or four equally spherical surface vehicles we saw moving around from orbit, it wouldn’t be crazy to assume that these presumptive extragalactics are physically much larger than we are.

But will they be slow-moving leviathans with hydrostatic endoskeletons, like the Arctians? Living blobs of undifferentiated cytoplasm, like the Continentines, which I happened to be the first to Contact? Restless, muscular titans that could squash me flat with one false move, like Furasgans when they’re still young?

Could be anything. You never know what to expect on First Contact. That’s something every condomnaut always does well to bear in mind.

Right now, alone and barely five hundred meters from the mountainous sphere, I’m none too happy at the possibility of getting flattened into two dimensions.

The worst of it is, there’s nowhere for me to run if things turn ugly. This dull planet didn’t even have the good taste to develop the sort of rough terrain where you might find a cave to hide in. Not even a cleft or two. The rock’s too hard. Basalt, is my guess. Not that I’m a planetologist.

I feel like I stick out here like a flea on a shaved dog’s bum.

Oh, well. That’s how I feel with almost every Contact.

Though this time the danger is a little too overwhelmingly clear.

If I believed in them, I’d be praying to Shangó, Obbatalá, and all the old Afrosyncretic gods of my faraway native Cuba. Praying that these Aliens’ idea of a safe distance isn’t too different from our own, however huge they may turn out to be.