Missed Translation

[QSWordsmith]

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Here is a story idea for any Science Fiction authors here.

An alien vessel is observing Earth prior to official First Contact. One of their purposes is to determine what the dominant cultures of Earth want that the aliens can supply in order to make opening trade with the planet easier.
One ambitious young officer goes planetside in a remote area to seek out a local inhabitant to find out the answer to that very question.
The finds a person who happens to have a medical condition that causes chronic pain. The Earthling (I hate the word "earthling", LOL) asks for something non-addicting that would relieve his/her pain once and for all. Unfortunately the term he/she uses is "pain killer." The alien's translation device renders the term as "Agony Slayer." The Aliens are shocked by the request, but they feel that the trade potential of a new planetary market is worth the risk. So instead of producing a kind of super-aspirin when contact is officially made with the people of earth, the aliens offer a device/pill/whatever, (the exact method is left up to the author to decide) that causes a most painful demise. Needless to say this would complicate relations between the aliens and the people of earth.


I hope that someone here can take this story idea and run with it. I can see the potential for it to be written as a humorous piece, a serious First Contact story, or as a story that could provide the background explanation for why the Earth is now involved in an interstellar war.

 

[Carnevil9]

How about the aliens observe a man walking his dog. The dog poops, and the man picks it up and carries it. The aliens naturally assume that the dogs are the dominant species on the planet, and humans are their slaves. They initiate relations with the dogs.

The twist turns out to be that dogs really ARE intelligent, and CAN communicate with the aliens. They just like letting humans think they are in charge, because that way the dogs can sit around all day performing auto-fellatio on themselves.

 

[snooper]

.. The twist turns out to be that dogs really ARE intelligent, and CAN communicate with the aliens. They just like letting humans think they are in charge, because that way the dogs can sit around all day performing auto-fellatio on themselves.

How ridiculous; as any HHGG devotee will tell you it is the white mice who are the most intelligent species on Earth.

 

[Carnevil9]

Hhgg?

(okay I've edited it THREE FUCKING TIMES so far, trying to make the HHGG all caps, and it keeps coming up NON caps. WTF?)

(and it DOES come up all caps in my parenthetical rant. WTFucking Fuck?)