Maggie still couldn't wrap her head around it. Nick, of all people, had managed to get home after being thrown over 10,000 light-years away or whatever it was. He was a great guy, but not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, and the closest he ever got to science after squeaking through his core classes was science fiction movie nights with the Apocalypse Team.

Still...Nick wasn't smart, but he was solid. Dependable. When he made a promise, he kept it. She knew him before he got on medication, and seeing the huge difference it made in him made her respect him all the more for soldiering on without it before. She still remembered how he described his coping back then:

"I dunno, I'm just sad and grumpy a lot of the time. Sometimes, it just feels like life sucks and nothing's worth it. But when I feel that way, I get annoying chores done. I work hard at the cleaning or whatever. Because I know that sometimes, I can be happy, and if I'm in a place where I can be happy, it would suck to be stuck doing stuff I hate. So I might as well do all the stuff I hate when I feel like shit, so that when I can feel happy, I'm free to enjoy it.

"Plus...other people are better at being happy. If some of the stuff I do makes other people happy, then at least I'm making more happiness, you know? Just because my life sucks, doesn't mean I should sit back and let other people's lives suck too when I can do something about it. I can't do the hard stuff, but I can do some of the easy stuff and get it out of their way."

That was when Maggie had really understood that Nick was one of the good ones. She was thrilled when he started to feel better on the medication. But, he never quite got to where he should be, in her opinion. She got to see more than most, because they'd known each other since childhood. And she already knew a lot of the stuff about his family that he was reluctant to share with anyone else.

Earth could have done a lot worse, she conceded. He means well, and he's smart enough to know where he's not smart, and to call his friends for help. He's also not quite as dumb as he thinks he is.

The rest of the Apocalypse Team stayed in the chat, each of them with one eye on the news. Brian was gushing about the new physics and how badly he wanted to get his hands on it. Steve was wondering whether Nick had brought technology or just science, because the technology might need patents. Ness was still catching up, but the rest of them had pooled what Nick had told them, both in emails and in the chat.

"Bet you guys didn't think this would be what the Apocalypse Team was used for," Maggie joked.

"Seriously," Steve replied. "I figured it was going to be either Skynet or a System Apocalypse thing, possibly both."

Vanessa said, "Zombies," which made Maggie smile. Vanessa always voted for zombies.

Maggie nodded. "My money was on ecological collapse."

"Pandemic," Brian said.

"That's zombies," Vanessa declared.

"There are lots of diseases that don't—"

"Zombies."

"Whatever." Brian knew when not to argue with Ness.

"What did Nick think it was going to be? Wasn't it his idea in the first place?" Vanessa asked.

"He thought it was going to be nuclear war, remember? Crusty old geezers who decided that if they were dying, they'd take the whole world with them."

"Yeah, I wouldn't put it past a couple of world leaders I could name..."

"Did none of us think it was going to be aliens?" Brian had an incredulous look on his face.

"A System Apocalypse is sort of aliens," Steve declared. "I came the closest."

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"Uh-huh. Let us know when you can see your stat page."

"Hey, who knows what Nick has run into up there?"

Maggie caught CNN spinning up to show the speech. Watching Fox News, Steve reacted as well. "Guys! Here it comes! Quiet!" The talking heads introduced the video—they must have gotten it on a delay before deciding to air it. The image shifted to...an alien.

"Holy shit," Brian whispered.

The alien looked something like a cross between a fish, an elephant, and a human. It was dark green, and had huge, vaguely squarish ears as big as its head on either side. The ears were expressive. There was no nose, and the mouth was a bit weird. The eyes seemed almost human, though.

The alien was sitting up straight in a chair, and started speaking in a language with a lot of oo and aaah sounds and a bunch of clicks. Over that, a synthetic voice rendered the speech in English.

"Greetings to the people of Earth.

"I am Captain Geh!aoa, commanding the Ooafan starship New Hope. We come in peace. We are friends with the human Nick Tomsun of Earth. We have brought him home to you. We want friendship with the people of Earth, and possibly trade.

"Aboard are also representatives of other races, other peoples. They also want peace, trade, and possibly to stay as ambassadors if that is acceptable."

At that point the camera view panned out to show several...beings...standing around near the Captain's chair. Nick was there, lifting a hand in silent greeting with a nod. Standing next to him was a tall woman with bright red skin, and two slightly curved horns jutting out from her temples, about eight inches up. She wore a black and blue uniform.

On the other side of the Captain's chair stood two...dog people. That was the only way to describe them. One looked like a person mixed with a Cocker Spaniel, and the other looked like a half-human, half Doberman. Maggie got the impression that the Cocker Spaniel was female and the Doberman was male, but wouldn't swear to it.

And Nick was just standing around with three different alien species like he did this everyday. Maggie blinked. He does do this every day!

The speech was continuing, and Maggie returned her focus to it.

"We will not land shuttles without permission. Our ship's doctor, Sana Vickall..." At this, the demonic-looking woman waved and gave a smile with obvious fangs. "...says that we will be very careful to have no sickness on either side after contact. She would like a group of human volunteers to come aboard, to test medicines to prevent and cure sicknesses in humans. Some of the humans can be sick.

"Nick says..." Maggie couldn't help but notice the alien pronouncing it 'Nik!eh' or something like that, but the translation got his name's pronunciation exactly right. "...that you do not have one world leader. We do not want to offend anyone, but we will begin with English, and the United States of America, because that is the language and country that we are most familiar with. We will speak to more of you when your languages have been translated.

"Nick has many gifts of knowledge from other races. We are happy to bring him home. He is a good human. We owe him a great deal."

"We want to speak and act slowly, so no one is scared or hurt. Thank you for your patience."

The speech appeared to be over, but Nick stepped forward, looking uncertain. "Uh, we will be having...I guess, a press conference, in a little while, and I'll answer some questions then. We need to figure out how to set that up, and talk to the government first. Please be patient. Like the Captain says, let's all take it slow and easy. We're all friends here, or we can be if we don't screw it up." Nick actually waved his hands in a patting gesture, trying to placate the entire human race. "Slow and easy. Thank you." The transmission ended, and the news channel immediately started talking about it and replaying clips from it. Maggie muted the channel on her laptop.

"Wow." Brian sagged back in his chair, staring into the camera.

"Most people are going to go apeshit anyway," Maggie mused, "but that was a good, very obviously sincere effort. Probably better than a stuffy diplomatic speech."

"I think you're right." Steve nodded thoughtfully. "You can tell that Nick's a straight shooter. And he's basically the hero of the human race, or will be as soon as the panic dies down."

"So, what can we do to help him?" Vanessa asked the group.

Ask the government to put his sister into Witness Protection, possibly, Maggie thought. But that might backfire. What if the government kidnaps her and blackmails Nick? I can see why he didn't head right down in a shuttle.

"Well, I'm going to make him rich and take a cut for myself," Steve declared. "We have to go over his list of goodies and figure out what to give away and what to sell. I'm going to read this econ book and Uplift for Dummies while we're waiting."

"I want the math books right after the CIA," Brian declared. "And the physics books."

Maggie took a look at the titles of the pdfs Nick had sent.

How to Uplift a Civilization

A Partial History of First Contact in the Galaxy

Galactic-English Dictionary

Basic Economics

She saw the file sizes and blinked. Aside from the dictionary, the books were massive. Is this really the right format for this stuff? she wondered. Looks like you'd need assistance to find anything, and forget printing it out!

She set those aside and focused on her question: What can I do to help Nick? She thought back to the email Vanessa had shared, turned it over in her mind for a minute, then nodded.

Time to call restaurants.

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