Kurt walked through the bazaar at the edge of the spaceport, taking in the sights. Around him, galactic commerce ground forward and he found that his sense of wonder had been rubbed dry. After a couple weeks, it seemed completely normal to see four armed merchants selling unrecognizable electronics and machinery to walking plant people, three meter tall creatures from a nightmare strolling through a crowd eating something that looked like candy, and beings walking _over_ the crowd with long, skinny legs while talking on devices that looked like old Earth portable phones. The diversity of intelligent species able to either breath the same air or cohabit the same spaces had originally boggled his mind, but with that special human ability to become accustomed to even the most wondrous sights, it was now just normal.
Until just a few years earlier, humanity had (as far as it knew) lived in an amazing universe empty of intelligence other than its own. Space probes had launched in all directions, telescopes had peered deeply into the cosmos, giant antenna had collected uncountable terabytes of thoroughly analyzed radio and laser telemetry...
...And it had all been a sham.
He passed a group of alien adolescents being led through the crowd by a patient looking adult of the species. They were all chattering at each other and he stepped off to the side a little to let them pass when he noticed the big mouths full of sharp teeth that flashed when they spoke. They were all linked together wrist to wrist in a line and as he watched, there was a scuffle near the end of the line. Turning, he saw the surrounding crowd had spaced out too and just in time as he caught the tail end of some kind of violence. Moving faster than he could follow, two of the youths tore at each other and then suddenly were still, one of them on the ground. One of the fallen creature's arms dragged along behind the group by the rope linking them, ripped free in the fight. The winner started taking giant bites out of its former classmate and before Kurt could figure out what to do, he saw another flash of motion as the rope, now minus the arm, flew through the air and snapped to the winner's wrist alongside where it had been connected to its dead classmate moments before. Grudgingly (the body language seemed almost universal) the youth allowed itself to be pulled free of the corpse and back towards the group which had continued ahead.
Moments later, the last of the students had passed and only a few small pieces of the body remained. Whatever those creatures were, they were fairly opportunistic eaters based on the bites each of the others had taken from it as they passed. Some sort of scavenger or something dropped out of the air above him to grab the little that remained and flew off . The crowd organically reformed as if nothing strange had happened in the preceding 30 seconds.
Kurt disagreed. The galaxy, he had decided, was very, very strange.
There had been a moment when the whole sky had come alive to radio astronomers. Countless overlapping signals washed in from all directions, as if the galaxy had suddenly filled with species. Later, Earth had learned that the sudden inwash of signals had coincided with the arrival of Earth's first starship at a Society outpost which was apparently the only criteria needed for filters to be automatically turned off at the solar system's edge. Kurt had finished college with just enough (now wildly outdated) astronomical education to know how mind-bogglingly advanced that technology must be, but apparently that was just part of how primitive races were protected from contamination.
The moment that legal barrier was gone, however, the economic contamination had begun and Earth's economy was reeling.
Huge chunks of Earth industry were in flux as the cheap, massively capable alien technology flooded its markets. Without anything worthwhile to trade or the education to work among the stars, humanity's future looked bleak. He knew his only chance to really get ahead would be out among the stars and try to find something, anything that could make him a living and allow him to do something with the knowledge and money to help back home.
The ship from Earth that had dropped him off a few weeks earlier was long gone. After weeks of fruitlessly searching for work, he was already broke.
The alien-funded travel ads and emigration campaigns had, he decided, upsold the glamour of galactic life but hadn't really done a good job setting expectations about the cost of living. In just a few short weeks, he'd blasted through the stash of credits he'd converted from his savings and he figured he'd hit bedrock in a few days. He'd been stretching his budget by making use of the social services here on Feiden, the planet he'd chosen at random off the list, but he knew he had to get some kind of employment situation going or else he'd be going nowhere fast.
"Keep your appendages close, huh?" a voice said in his ear. Specifically, the voice came from the little translator buds he'd picked up at the airport back home on his way here. He turned towards the sound. The galaxy must just be absolutely swimming in cultures and species because it seemed like every time he met someone, they were a creature type he'd never seen before and this was no exception. The red skinned, worm-bodied being next to him gestured over towards where the brief fight had broken out with his... with its tentacles. He thought they were tentacles.
"I mean," it said, one of its eyestalks looking at the scene and the other at Kurt, "keep 'em close when those guys are around, am I right?" It started shaking in what Kurt decided must be laughter.
"That was wild, right?" Kurt shook his head and look away from calm crowd that walked through what has been a murder scene moments earlier. "I've never seen anything like that before."
"Me neither, but I guess this isn't the kind of place to go if you're looking for the same old thing." The creature extended an appendage towards him. Quickly thinking, Kurt made a fist and gently bumped it. Apparently, that was correct because the creature withdrew and continued.
"I've never seen one of you before. I hope that's not impolite to say?" Not waiting for Kurt to respond, it went on. "I mean outside of the natives," he pointed at one of the ubiquitous monkey-like Hazen that you could find almost everywhere on this planet, it being their home world. "This place is like the kind of place novelty comes for fun," the red creature continued. Kurt blinked at that, he'd never heard a saying like and figured it must have been a direct translation. Once in a while between words, he could hear its actual voice, a grunting and clicking cadence and mentally thanked his fortunes again for the cheap, ever-present translation buds.
"Yeah, I didn't see many others get off when we got here so I have no idea how many humans are here." He hadn't seen any others since arriving, and he was always looking. It would be nice to catch up with someone to whom he could relate.
"Humans?" The creature seemed to taste the word. Kurt wondered what it sounded like in its native language. "Oh interesting, my guide says you're a new contact?" Now both eye stalks were aimed directly at him.
"Yeah," Kurt admitted. Being a new contact meant you probably didn't have much, it usually took a while for new species to insert themselves into the bustling galactic economy and, sadly, he now knew it was common for their own planetary economies to crash into the ground while it happened with the influx of cheap, ultra-high technology goods.
"How are you doing for funds? Do you have a business or employment yet?" The creature reached into a pouch and grabbed some kind of cracker or something and threw it into its mouth, chewing loudly and swallowing in the space of a few seconds, then added again: "I do not intend to be impolite with my question, of course."
Kurt thought about it. He'd been looking, but figuring out where to even start had been a challenge and so far the jobs he'd looked into had been ones for which he was dramatically underqualified.
"I'm still looking. I'm coming in pretty cold, my education back on Earth didn't really do a lot to prepare me for the job market out here. I can't even find good manual labor, there are stronger species out there who ALSO have marketable skills so..." He shrugged helplessly. The stranger must have gotten the gist of the expression because it waved its eyestalks sympathetically.
"I am familiar with this situation, but for me it's through our history. We also went through much the same after one of our jumpers encountered Society. But if you're interested, I might have a prospect for you." The creature popped another one of the things into its mouth and chewed lightning fast. This time, Kurt thought he saw the thing move when it was mid-air and he wondered if it was alive. Society was definitely very, very strange.
"Sure," he said cautiously, "I'm not turning my nose up at anything, not really in a place for it."
