(Oh wow, I didn't notice it was almost the end of the month. Strongly begging for monthly votes here—the votes this month look pretty dismal... Comrades who still have votes, don't keep them tucked away. There are only six or seven days left before they expire.)
It was impossible to tell that the white-bearded old man floating in outer space was actually so full of romantic sci-fi sensibilities. After a chaotic round of conversation and the other party's one-sided, self-satisfied "human diplomatic rhetoric," we learned that this remarkable old man had actually compiled his own guidebook for first face-to-face contact with aliens. It covered how to let both sides understand each other's goodwill as quickly as possible, how to identify whether aliens were hostile in the shortest time, how to avoid triggering Star Wars through misunderstandings, how to determine whether aliens and humans—meaning his own side, naturally—shared the same thought processes and understanding of the world, and he had also...
"!#￥%￥#%￥#%...￥￥%##," the old man said to us with dramatic intonation.
Me: "..."
He had even developed an alien language himself, based on inspiration from who knew where...
And he had come up with all of this despite never having seen an alien in his entire life—and, judging by the scans, if we had not barged in through a traffic accident, he would not have seen one in his next life either. The nearest star system with life signs was six light-years away.
"Is this old man really okay?" I could not help glancing at Sandora. "Didn't I just talk to him? Why is he still over there researching how to communicate with us by himself?"
Unfortunately, the communicator in front of me was still on. That sentence was directly translated and sent into the exploration team's contact channel. I could