By Martin Lochman

The thing that materialized out of thin air right in the middle of the podium was about four meters in height and looked like a giant coffee maker. Its polished silver surface perfectly reflected not only the intense glare of the stage lights, designed to highlight every minor imperfection and asymmetry, but also the shocked facial expressions of the dozen bodybuilders who hadn’t expected anything to interrupt their five minutes of fame. Certainly not an object of a clearly unnatural origin. 

Their reactions to its sudden appearance—that is after they managed to overcome the initial surprise—varied from angry curses and loud appeals to the panel of judges, audience, and higher power to considerably milder and quieter articulations of discontent. The physical response, however, was the same: all bodybuilders withdrew into what they considered a safe distance from the not-a-coffee-maker. 

A whole minute passed, then another, and just as the judges finally settled on a reasonable course of action (evacuate everyone and call the police, the FBI, and Homeland Security for a good measure), the object elicited a high-pitched shriek and slowly opened. “Opened” perhaps wasn’t the right word, since it implied the existence of a door or a similar barrier that moves aside to make an entrance or exit possible, and no such movement occurred here—instead, a hole appeared in the side of the not-a-coffee-maker the same way a hole appears in a plastic bottle when one pokes it with a wood burning tool—but there probably wasn’t a single person in the building who would want to argue semantics at the moment.

A faint red glow briefly emanated from the perfectly circular opening, before something obscured it. Surprised yelps escaped dozens of throats as that something slowly emerged onto the podium. 

The creature was equal parts terrifying and… well, hilarious. With its short, stubby legs, two pairs of considerably longer and thinner upper limbs equipped with a disconcertingly high number of joints, and a comically small head, it didn’t resemble any animal, living or extinct. One thing that could be said about it with absolute certainty, on the other hand, was that it was extremely muscular. Thick fibers rippled under its paper-thin skin the color of gold as it moved, each separation clearly visible under the stage lights. Over two meters tall and almost as wide, the creature dwarfed even the biggest competitors, who were silently staring at it, unsure of what to do or even think.

The strange being shuffled to the edge of the podium, where it stopped and puffed out its chest (or, to be precise, the corresponding part of its massive upper torso). It looked the judges over from left to right, then from right to left, until its three eyes, each glowing akin to a red-hot coal, settled on the chief who sat dead in the middle and was one tap away from completing his call to the authorities. Staring back at the creature, he swallowed hard and withdrew his hand away from his phone.

“Sincere apologies for my late arrival. Technical difficulties occurred when programming the destination coordinates.”

It took the chief judge longer than he would care to admit to realize that the statement, delivered in perfect English with a Midwestern accent, actually came from the being itself. He shot a quizzical look at his colleagues, but none of them had anything constructive to suggest. 

“Umm…” he began, because the silence felt uncomfortable, but didn’t manage to produce actual words.

The creature tilted its tiny head to the side. 

“Disculpas sinceras—” and repeated the declaration in Spanish.  

By the time it finished doing the same in French, the chief finally managed to articulate a coherent response. 

“Greetings… sir,” he said because that thing on the edge of the podium in front of him was simply too big to be anything but a male. A small part of him promptly reminded him that he knew nothing about the sexual dimorphism of alien lifeforms—because whatever that being was, it had definitely come from outer space—and therefore, he shouldn’t make such dangerous assumptions, but he shoved the notion aside as momentarily inconsequential.

The extra-terrestrial straightened its head and let out a squeal that may or may not have sounded delighted.

“I wish to say that it is a great honor to take part in your esteemed contest,” it said, then bowed to the perplexed bodybuilders on its sides. “May the best competitor prevail!”

The chief judge blinked in surprise. Had he just heard that right? The manner in which the muscular men on stage looked at him, their expressions perfectly mirroring his current state of mind, suggested that his hearing was twenty-twenty.

He turned to his fellow judges, but they either shrugged or averted their gaze altogether, once again proving to be of no help at all.

“Excuse me,” he said hesitantly to the alien. “You came here to participate in the show.”

It came out sounding like a statement, even though he meant it as a question. Fortunately, his otherworldly counterpart picked up on the missing intonation.

“Affirmative.”

“But… why?”

It might not have been the most intellectual of queries, but the chief was dead certain that the vast majority of people in the room were thinking it.  

“My kind, much like yours, has a deep appreciation for body aesthetics. However, our contests are only limited to our world. I was extremely pleased to learn that your planet organizes an event designed to elect the most aesthetic individual in the entire cosmos.”

The chief stared at the creature, utterly dumbfounded. 

“In the entire cosmos,” he repeated, trying out the phrase himself to see if it made any sense.

It didn’t, not at first, anyway. Only as he pronounced it again, this time breaking it down to its component parts, did the realization lazily settle in. 

The massive creature was, in fact, a bodybuilder. And it was here because it assumed that the bodybuilding show’s name, Mister Universe, actually had something to do with its scope. It sounded absurd even in his head, like a bad joke with a lame punchline, but the available evidence suggested it was the reality. 

“You can’t compete.” 

The word felt wrong coming out of his mouth, and it actually left behind a tangible bitter aftertaste, but he couldn’t help himself. His declaration surprised not only the other judges and at least half of the bodybuilders, all of whom drew in a sharp breath and tensed in anticipation of what would come next, but, as far as he could tell, also the alien itself. It cocked its head again and looked at him expectantly (or that, at least, was how he perceived the intense gaze at the moment).

“Please elaborate.”

Though it spoke in the same neutral tone as before, those two simple words made the judge uneasy. It was as if there was only one right answer, and he didn’t know it, and the alien knew that he didn’t know it. 

“Okay,” he said and paused, buying himself a few moments to consider how exactly to articulate his thoughts. “You can’t participate in the competition because it’s…”

Just then, that diminutive logical part of him chimed in again, making his voice trail off. 

Because it’s what? Only for humans?—that sounded an awful lot like discrimination. Or was it racism? Speciesism? Or any other form of -ism? 

Whatever the correct term for it was, did the aliens perceive it in the same negative light as most Earthlings? If so, how would this particular specimen react to it? The judge suddenly recalled last year’s show, where one of the competitors had had an especially hard time coming to terms with the fact that he hadn’t won. Granted, the anabolics coupled with extreme levels of dehydration had definitely had a hand in the man’s aggressive outburst, but who’s to say the protocol the alien had followed in preparation for the competition hadn’t made its mind similarly fragile?

At the same time, what alternative explanation could he provide? As potentially politically incorrect as it might have seemed, the truth was that the show was indeed intended solely for the (currently) most evolved inhabitants of planet Earth. That it was that way because the said inhabitants had never predicted the possibility of other intelligent beings sharing their particular interests was a whole other matter.

“So here’s the thing,” he started over while trying to keep his voice from shaking. “I know that the name of the competition implies that anyone from the entire universe can attend, but—”

The alien’s eyes stared directly at him, three bottomless pits of lava. 

He couldn’t say it. He looked helplessly around the room, which now felt like a collection of faces, each frozen in the same expectant expression, rather than an actual physical space. Why had he had to speak up first? Why couldn’t he have just pretended that he doesn’t understand?

His gaze landed on his phone. The number—911—still glowed on the screen. All he needed to do was press the dial.

And then what? How long would it take for the police to arrive? 

Just as he was about to risk it anyway, never mind the immediate, highly uncertain consequences, he caught sight of a neatly stacked pile of papers on the desk in front of the judge next to him out of the corner of his eye, and something in his brain clicked. 

What if the aliens were similar to humans in more ways than one?

“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding,” he said, and for the first time since the unexpected occurrence, he actually sounded decisive. “We can’t allow you to participate this year, because you haven’t registered and paid the competition fees. The registrations must be submitted and confirmed two months before the event—that’s the procedure.”

He was stretching the truth a bit thin—entering the show of this caliber required a bit more than filling out a form and wiring a token payment, but he thought that going in depth about regional qualifiers, ranking systems, and other prerequisites would make things unnecessarily complicated. 

An eerie quiet descended on the large room until all that the judge could hear was the hum of the air conditioning and his own breathing. The alien bodybuilder stood on the podium akin to a statue, completely motionless, save for the rhythmic movement of its upper torso that betrayed another important biological similarity to human beings.

Several seconds passed, each feeling like an eternity. Uncertainty turned into doubt turned into worry—was he wrong after all? Maybe the concept of protocol and complex administration processes was completely alien to the aliens (the pun would probably be more amusing under less-stressful circumstances). Maybe they didn’t even have money on their planet, and there was no economic aspect to their competitions. Maybe—

“Apologies,” the alien said finally. “It was not my intention to disrespect the rules of your great contest. I shall ensure to adhere to them next time.”

It looked to the right and to the left, meeting the gazes of the ostensibly relieved bodybuilders.

“Farewell and best of luck.”

And with that, the creature turned around and shuffled back toward the circular opening in the not-a-coffee-maker. As soon as it disappeared inside, the hole closed shut, and a second later, the entire silver contraption winked out of existence as abruptly as it had materialized there less than fifteen minutes ago. 

The silence prevailed in the room for a long while after, as if everyone was afraid that uttering so much as a whisper would bring the being right back. The audience members were the first to brave raising the volume—a soft murmur could be heard from different directions, but it soon spread across like wildfire. Careful comments, crisp declarations, questions both rhetorical and answer-demanding filled the air until it was impossible to tell from whose mouth they had originated.

The chief judge realized that many of these questions were, in fact, directed at him, but he didn’t react to any of them. As the level of adrenaline in his veins finally returned to normal, deep exhaustion settled over him, like he’d just gone through a full-body workout with one of the bodybuilders on stage in front of him. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment, his mind still processing what had transpired. 

His silent introspection lasted anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes—he couldn’t tell even if he wanted to—and what put an abrupt stop to it, forcing him to open his eyes and look at the world around through a whole new lens, wasn’t the constantly growing volume of voices around him, nor were it the hands of his fellow judges on his shoulders, shaking him with undying fervor. No, it was a single, unsettling notion that emerged from the boiling soup of facts, experiences, and hypotheses, and instantly eclipsed everything else:

How many more competitions in the world boasted a similarly misleading title?

END