Earthly Hosts
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
DEAR STAR TOURISTS:
It has been brought to our attention that certain of you want to own some of our ungulates. Because it remains impossible to successfully inoculate our critters against interstellar microbes, we respectfully decline your interest in exchanging shiploads of our sheep and goats for their weight in titanium.
Perhaps, instead, we could offer for your precious metal some other currency. We favor peaceful trade among sovereignties. Maybe you would like tanks of our Dead Sea mud, or flats of our Siberian lichen. We understand that your planet lacks deserts and tundras.
While we await your response, we will start trying to reengineer our bleating, feces-dropping, fecund animals. Likely, we will need a few decades to breed resilience.
Sincerely,
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
We’ve observed that a few of your ilk, specifically those of your denizens who hide behind green eyeshades, disciplinary definitions, and communications about contemporary art’s interdependency with culture, are advancing along your social verges. We think those persons are attempting to make us believe in “illusions.” Be careful!
Meanwhile, we’re happy to linger in orbit for a few decades. Save the mud and lichen for beings that need them. We enjoy mutton.
Sincerely,
Your Star Tourists
***
Dear Star Tourists:
We don’t want to delay trade negotiations. We know you’re an altruistic race committed to serving several galaxies. We might not be able to finish our breeding-for-resilience program over the course of our lifespans. If our moist dirt and algae/cyanobacteria organisms are not to your liking, maybe you’d consider, alternative to our meager offerings, accouterments from the fifth sphere of the Horseshoe Nebula.
Sincerely,
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
We discovered, eons ago, that naysayers don’t live long after pointing out endo/exo dichotomies. We abducted your President’s wife, the mistress of Russia’s Prime Minister, and the youngest daughter of Iran’s Supreme Leader. How do we make them stop shrieking?
Your Star Tourists
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Dear Star Tourists:
We continue to be uniquely qualified, hence, particularly accountable, for raising intergalactic interactions to the level of negotiated reality construction via the intentional utilization of synthesis. Maybe you should stay in this solar system. If we sent you camels, elephants, and zebras, might you return our Very Important Persons?
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
We can’t; they’re dead. We didn’t know that they wouldn’t be able to regenerate after we opened their heads. Your evolution lags behind that of most sentients.
Regardless, you must stop sending missiles. We’re shielded against atomic blasts to the third deviation. The problem is that the noise and light given off by those projectiles disturbs our spans of motionlessness. We thought humans worshipped sleep. Grant us the same courtesy we grant you.
Your Star Tourists
***
Dear Star Tourists:
Certain universal truths were imbued upon us by earlier visitors. We learned that Command is simultaneously power and vulnerability, and that it renders its recipients susceptible to Probing. Between friends, Command creates deep Intertwining, but between enemies, it brings Shattering. We have many mystics among us.
Please stop posturing. Give us diagrams for building tachyon engines and we will forgive your trespasses. Send us our VIPS’ bodies, too, please.
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
Oops. Was that the Indian Peninsula and the entire Middle East that we accidentally destroyed? I think Asia, too, disappeared. I guess you now lack mystics.
Your plasma fusion armaments are still disturbing our downtime. We highly value the transitional state that occurs between wakefulness and slumber. Noisy neighbors are bad neighbors. We don’t want to start an argument with you.
We ate your VIPS. They were good with your hollandaise sauce.
Your Star Tourists
***
Dear Star Tourists:
Coordinated reality, especially when situated between futurism and surrealism, lacks structure. It gets disrupted when forgotten. We are going to ignore all sightings of you. You will cease to exist.
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
Do what suits you. Forget the hoofed mammals. Give us fish. No, forget that, too. We’ll help ourselves to your aquatic life. That noise you hear is the world syphoning, cyclonic pump that one of us remembered to pack for this vacation.
Your Friendly Star Tourists
***
Dear Star Tourists:
This park is closed. Visiting hours are over. Go home. If you do not cease and desist, you will be reported at the next interstellar summit. Marginalized ideas of conquest are no longer in fashion.
Additionally, the grub men of Scarabae informed us that the compensation you offered for our flocks is inadequate. Your “veracities” are lies. Leave our oceans alone. Go home.
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
We’re not entirely sorry that Australia no longer exists. We think that you ought to reevaluate your trade position. We can destroy your planet faster than you can send reports at light speed. We hesitate from doing so only because paying the tax on that entertainment would put us over budget.
Your Friendly Star Tourists
***
Dear Star Tourists:
We yield. Sheep and goats have long been used as sacrifices. We are transferring a gross of each to your ship, immediately. Please return none of them to us; we don’t want your pathogens. Now, go home.
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
As we told you before, we no longer desire your woolly critters. When we began to drain your oceans, your world’s apex citizens, the whales and dolphins, mind melded with us. They are ambitious ambassadors. Soon, “watery world” will take on a fresh meaning.
Your Friendly Star Tourists
***
Dear Star Tourists:
It rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter. Why not leave us alone and bag yourself some riches?
A Few Earthly Hosts
***
Dear Earthly Hosts:
Seriously? Next, you’ll be telling us titanium is not a waste product, but a precious metal. Thanks, anyway, but we want to see how Earth fares as a plankton farm.
Your Friendly Star Tourists 
KJ Hannah Greenberg lives and writes in Jerusalem. She earned her terminal degree from U. Mass, and was a National Endowments for the Humanities Summer Scholar at Princeton. She has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize.
