Punchlines for peace

Have you heard the one about …?

Other kids wanted to be scientists. Astronauts. Princesses.

But I knew, even then. I was going to become the funniest person on Earth. Later, I learnt that there was a word for that, too. A comedian.

And still later, I learnt, along with everyone else, that there wasn’t just Earth. Fine. Greatest comedian in the Universe, then.

There was just one little problem. The Primulans didn’t laugh. As far as anyone could tell, they didn’t even have mouths. When they were amused — which didn’t happen all that often — their eye sacs would vibrate, making a sound like an angry bumblebee.

Half the time, no one could quite figure out what was making them laugh (well … vibrate), but it seemed to be some blend of irony, brutal honesty and self-deprecation. I had studied all the recordings, and the biggest punchline had been delivered — unknowingly and nervously — by a special envoy addressing a room full of Primulans. He looked tiny in the video, clutching the sides of a massive podium emblazoned with the golden rose of Primula. A slight tremor in his voice, he began his speech with “I am so happy to be here with you”. In the cacophony of vibrations that followed, he looked around, confused, until an assistant had to usher him off stage.

Actually, there was another little problem, too: Primula had started building military vessels. Big ones — no joking matter. Bigger and more advanced than anything we had on Earth, and people were getting nervous.

No one was quite sure where things had gone wrong, but we all knew it was our fault. Maybe it was when a cruiser full of tourists from Earth had accidentally knocked one of Primula’s halo satellites out of orbit, throwing the planet’s weather systems into chaos for weeks.

Or maybe it had been the diplomatic delegation that came afterwards to offer profuse apologies. It had seemed like a good idea. And maybe it would have worked, except that someone on the delegation hadn’t followed proper quarantine protocols. No one knew exactly what triggered it, but within days, the treasured golden roses of Primula all started to turn black, and hadn’t changed back again.

Subsequent apologies had been beamed to Primula from Earth, but had gone unanswered.

So, I was as surprised as everyone else when a Primulan emissary arrived out of the blue to deliver a message to the Earth Council; relieved when it wasn’t a declaration of war; and surprised all over again that the Primulans were proposing a cultural summit to promote understanding.

I guess they were right about that. We really didn’t understand each other. Didn’t then. Don’t now. But sometimes you need to give it a try anyway, and I guess that was why I ended up getting the phone call. After all, a shared laugh is the fastest way to bring everyone together, right? Could it work for Primulans, too?

That had been three weeks ago, and now I was here, clutching the sides of the same podium as that nervous diplomat all those years ago. I looked out at the audience — the left side of the hall entirely occupied by dignitaries from Earth, the right side entirely by Primulans.

I started my routine.

Safe material first — I needed to take my time, build things up bit-by-bit. Sure enough, I was getting polite laughs from the humans, but complete silence from the Primulans. As I continued, the laughs started to fade, grow uneasy — people were nervous that nothing was working for the Primulans. Not a single buzz, not one vibrating eye sac. It was the moment I had been waiting for: no more safe material. I switched to jokes about mouthless aliens, about failed diplomats, about the absurdity of a cultural summit between Primula and Earth.

Silence. Well, not silence exactly. Something more than silence.