The hot suns glared down at the foreign ambassador. William Chandler of Terra was unused to the intensity of three suns, and was sweating through his suit. His helmet chafed his neck and the recycled oxygen inside was hard to breathe. He rushed to the embassy building in the city of Juil. Removing his helmet, he relished the fresh air of the simulated atmosphere as he met his fellow dignitaries.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was killer.”

Reis of Saturn greeted him with a smile and a wave; those from the same solar system had to stick together. She announced, “Now that we’re all here, we can get down to business. Wilqui, I believe you said you wanted to start this meeting?”

The ambassador from the Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way stood and shuffled his papers briefly. “Thank you Miss Reis. I would like to discuss the Trifidians treatment of our refugees. When they offered to help control the violence by sheltering our evacuees we assumed they would actually be sheltered, rather than beaten and starved.”

The Trifidian representative shouted, “This claim is ridiculous! We treat them as we have treated your people for millennia.”

Wilqui frowned and accused, “Then clearly there’s something wrong with that as well.”

William sighed; another issue that he had nothing to do with. The United Galaxies had been a good idea on paper, but was essentially useless in practice. He dozed, imagining the vacation he was taking to Venus in a few weeks. Nothing but beautiful skies and even more beautiful women.

A bell rang, startling him out of his reverie. It was time for break already. He joined Reis at a table and said, “Do you ever feel like we’re nothing more than a blip in the universal radar? That there’s something more out there?”

She laughed and said, “You humans have been asking that question as long as you’ve been around. On Saturn we have a little saying: ‘Quit daydreaming and get back to work.’”

“They sound like wonderful people, I’m sure,” he said sarcastically.

Reis laughed and playfully twined a tentacle around his neck. “Don’t worry, I feel the same way sometimes. A little existential crisis never hurt anyone.”