Rats!

                                                            Rats!

    First contact turned out to be boring. Humans had spent years and a great deal of ink imagining the moment when aliens would drop out of the skies and announce their presence, and when it came it went almost exactly as expected. When came after, though -- that was another story.
     The alien lander set down on the White House lawn in the morning of a lovely spring day. Red carpets and viewing stands and reception areas had been prepared, and a great crowd of distinguished guests from around the world waited, heads tilted back to watch the silvery grey craft descend noiselessly from the sky. Everything had been set up well in advance, protocols agreed to, the issues discussed and questions asked during the months the mothership had spent in orbit.
     Biological samples had been exchanged and thoroughly tested, microorganisms minutely scrutinized to rule out any possibility of contagion. When the reassuringly hominoid alien representative stepped down from its lander every precaution had been taken to ensure that there would be no unfortunate misunderstandings, no possibility of offense real or imagined on either side.
     The representative was unfailingly polite as it accepted the round of greetings from the leaders of world's powers, shaking hands and bowing with the aplomb of any human politician, speaking English with perfect pronunciation and diction. It even spared a few moments to address the protesters being held a respectful distance away, repeating the aliens' rationale in holding this historic meeting at this location rather than another.
     Speeches were given, gifts were exchanged; the representative remained as closed mouthed as ever regarding the aliens' technology and scientific knowledge. Its mission was not to interfere, it said, not to overturn generations of human technical and social development in a hasty and ill considered gift of disruptive technology. It was here only to introduce itself and its culture, to make humanity aware that it was not alone, that it had neighbors who would greet it as an equal when the time was right.
     "Peaceful cooperation is the key," said the representative as it faced the forest of cameras wielded by the world's press, its voice calm and slightly feminine. "Do not fight over your differences but rejoice in them. Set your sights upon the stars."
     No one noticed the little creature, like a six legged rat, its raw flesh riddled and split by tubes and wires and lumps of exposed metal, its pouch gravid with squirming young, that slipped out of the representative’s ship and scurried unseen into the city's sewers. No one noticed as the disappearances began, first animals, then men and steel and swaths of vegetation vanishing into the burrows that grew night and day under the ground, riddling the soil of this lush new habitat like great maggot holes.
     By the time someone finally did notice it was far too late, for the alien mothership had vanished in a flash of light and twisting space out beyond Pluto, disappearing into the cosmic night with a promise to return and check on human progress in a few decades.