The Wretched and the Beautiful
By E. Lily Yu, first published in Terraform
When an alien spaceship lands on Earth in need of help, leaders of countries around the world help and house them, causing tension between humans and these costly guests.
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Plot Summary
An alien spaceship lands on Earth, but the aliens inside are not hostile toward humans. They have not arrived on a special mission to find out more about life on Earth, and they are not especially grotesque or bizarre in appearance. In fact, most of them are in ill health and in need of help. Eventually, the leaders of countries around the world get together and decide to house these aliens in different countries, building suitable environments out of helium and neon mixtures so the creatures can thrive. The money for this comes out of tax collection, which pleases no one. The aliens slowly become a nuisance, and people all over the globe become more and more hateful of their decision to squat in their planet. In a few places around the world, aliens start being accused of petty crimes such as stealing. Then, gangs start murdering aliens. By the time humans’ hate toward aliens starts getting out of hand, a handful of new aliens, more beautiful and eloquent than the first batch, come to Earth. They claim that the first aliens to arrive on Earth are actually runaway criminals and that they are here to take them back to their planet. The humans happily agree to let them go, and the beautiful aliens take away the old aliens, the ‘wretched’ ones.
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