Phil rested his head on one of his hands, staring at the digitized numbers that danced across his console. He'd thought, when he signed up for the department in charge of alien contact, that there would have been some excitement. A childlike fantasy, he supposed.

"Hello?" said a staticky voice, causing Phil to jump. Phil searched around him for any possible source of the voice, but there was only one place it could possibly be coming from. And if it truly was, then Phil was about to make history. "Hello?" asked the voice again, a bit of frustration creeping into it, "I don't think there's anyone there," it sounded slightly more distant. Snapping out of his reverie, Phil sprung to the control board and picked up the microphone.

"Hello!" he said into it, his voice sounding flustered.

"Yes, who is it?"

"Uh, this is Phil McDonald, an. . . ambassador from Earth."

"Oh lord," the voice became distant again, there was a sound like a hand being cupped over the speaker, "It's Earth, should I hang up?"

"WAIT!" Phil shouted.

"What? What do you want?"

"Want?" Phil thought a second, "Well, we. . . we want to make alien contact. Hold on, I should probably go get a supervisor or- -"

"You want to make alien contact, do you!? The nerve of you people. . . the neighborhood association has given you what seems like thousands of notices on your pollution, and you refuse to do anything about it; we try to be friendly, you ignore us, then you start sending off all those probes to poor Mars. . . and now you say you want alien contact!? Make up your bloody minds!"

"Wh. . . what?"

"Honestly, how thick can you be!? Why do you think you don't get invited to the annual block party!?"

"Block party? Um. . . can we start over, I'm a little lost- -"

There was a groan. "I'm sick of dealing with you. You Earthlings- just quit bothering the other planets! And for the love of God, clean yours up a little! It's bringing down the value of the whole neighborhood, we can't even get anyone to move into Venus because of you!" There was a click. Phil slowly let down the microphone, staring directly ahead and thinking silently that he'd probably just screwed up Earth's only chance at interstellar contact.

Well. . . no one really has to find out about it, do they?