Lost Transmissions: Manners
Created | Updated Feb 27, 2012
Entry: Manners.
In honour of the H2G2 Manchester Meet and trying to remember what to do when meeting so many new people at once.
Picture this.
You have extracted yourself from the cargo hold of what ever ship you stowed away on, exited quietly by the emergency airlock and stumbled out onto a bright, new and, importantly, alien world. All around you, strange beings go about their business, traffic speeds past the shops, bars and temples and the local ambient racket is punctuated by the final screams of the faithful.
You push your way through the throng, avoiding the strange food and other offers of weirder gratifications and find the address you had scribbled on the back of your hand.
You open the door and step in and are confronted by an enormous tentacled monstrosity that looks as if it has escaped from a restaurant's fish tank, stolen a suit and started a business.
It gibbers at you then makes a strange symbol with its pseudopodia. Any wrong move means certain death. What do you do?
The diplomatic arm of the Corvasil Civil Service (three major planets and counting, plus an ongoing diplomatic skirmish to secure a fourth) provides a very useful rule that has saved many lives; imagine you are meeting a well brought up, elderly relative.
The "Aristocratic Great Aunt" scenario provides nervous travellers with a useful reference point that plays on everyone's deep rooted fears of spilling the tea, being impolite in sophisticated company and using the wrong knife to kill the dessert. It is this "wrong knife" outcome that this example strives to avoid, especially if the cutlery in question ends up sticking out of your ear.
The lesson here is one of manners.
The Corvasis tell us to always defer to your host, to be aware of societal taboos (such as scratching behind your ears – thus letting everyone know that you don’t have gills and are slightly more evolved than everyone else at the table), to always pass the after dinner liqueurs to your left (even if you are sitting next to an open window), complement the cook and never, ever smile when you meet someone new, as teeth are still the primary weapon of choice on most of the outer worlds.
Strangely, this passage of advice stops short when it comes to the subject of shaking hands.
Evolution has blessed the galaxy by filling every available nook and cranny with an astonishing variety of limbs. The majority are smooth and dexterous appendages, well suited to the modern tasks of opening jars of jam, holding a cocktail and using a mobile phone. The remainder tend to be viciously clawed and occasionally poisonous, better adapted to life on the very edge, where the concept of food that is pre-cooked and neatly packaged and not running around squeaking is all a bit foreign to the race in question.
The accepted advice on shaking hands is an experimentally verified "try not to if at all possible".
If you wish to survive such an encounter, even with the smooth skinned, five fingered races who are a cunning bunch and tend to carry guns, merely clasp your hands in front of you with your fingers intertwined. This will demonstrate that you are feeling slightly embarrassed at not knowing what to do and, the important bit, unarmed.
This will allow your encounter to progress to the next social minefield, conversation.
The complexities of etiquette surrounding small talk, acceptable subjects, unacceptable turns of phrase, laughter, mumbling and insufficiently obsequious complements are well known and well documented. For a hitchhiker the best course of action is to get straight to the point. Let the tentacled creature know you want something, you have the money to pay for it and you really want to leave the being in question in peace and take up as little of its time as possible.
Those amongst you who have been paying attention will immediately notice the obvious flaw in this reasoning. If you missed it and you find yourself in this situation you will have just been shot.
The phrase "I have the money to pay for it" is one on the top three most dangerous sentences any being can utter within earshot of anyone.
The other two are the fatal "Oh look, a winning lottery ticket!" and the bankruptcy inducing "Let me get this round of drinks!"
Most alien species recognize that scruffy, smelly hitchhikers who stumble in off the street never have any money and, if they do, nobody will miss them if you kill them and take it – except maybe the expenses department of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who usually send a "Thank you" card and a box of chocolates.
So, in answer to the original question, what to do when confronted with an alien creature in a tiny shop on a distant world? Make sure you bought whatever it was in advance and make sure the only thing you have in your hand is the receipt.
Nothing says good manners like payment up front.
Entry ends.
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