The Alienist

Today is the first day of my new job. I have an appointment scheduled every half hour for the next 8 hours with a 15-minute break to eat after 4 hours and a 10-minute bathroom break every 2 hours. That is going to be my schedule at work for the foreseeable future. I already know that there will be delays as anyone expects in any burocracy related jobs. My waiting room is already packed with delegations coming from all “corners” of the federation. I am pretty nervous. I am still not sure if I am qualified, first of. Second, no one has even ever done this job before... ever... anywhere... so no one to ask for advise obviously. I guess I have the comfort that I have been judge by a pretty big hiring committee to be the best “candidate” for the job... though I am pretty sure most of them were just grateful they were not the ones to be chosen... I guess I’ll have to fake it until I make it... it might help if I knew what I was trying to make though... well no use in thinking about it now I guess...

- Linda, can you please let in my 9 AM appointment?

- Will do Dr. Xenon.

And here it is my first appointment of the day. Kind of a tall fellow... sharply dressed with what I assume is some kind of very colorful ceremonial robe... I suddenly realize I am not sure how to greet him... Should I bow? Just utter a cordial ‘how do you do’? Should I shake his hand?... and which one? He seems to have 3 pairs of them... with quite a bit more fingers than I am used to... oh, I forgot to mention... my first appointment today is an inhabitant of Proxima Centauri B... and maybe I should also mention that I am a diplomat and xenobiology scientist on a federation space-station in the Proxima Centauri system conducting first contact cultural/scientific/diplomatic interviews with representatives of each member of the federation... by the way that is the Galactic Federation of Planets... all caught up?... no?... well let’s go on anyway...

- How do you do? - I decide to say hoping that worse come to worse the universal translator will compensate for my lack of knowledge in properly greeting someone from another planet.

- How do you do? - my guest replies.

Ok, it seems that these translators provided by the federation are performing as expected... maybe this job will not be so hard. After all, what is the worst that could happen?...