Codename Alpha: Intervention

I was really at a loss for... well, anything, after that came up. There were some other questions being tossed around here and there, but I simply stopped paying attention, becoming lost in my own mind. I wasn't even thinking about anything in particular - my mind seemed to just be completely empty.

A few more questions were asked while I was staring off into the distance that I simply didn't pay attention to. I was caught off guard, and brought back to life, when I heard the sound of more nearby idle conversation and Eric addressing me directly.

"You good, dude?" He asked, with a concerned look on his face.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," I answered. "Uh... what'd I just miss?" People around us were starting to stand up, so the answer to that question was fairly self-evident.

"They wrapped up the whole Q and A thing," he answered. "I think I'm, uh... probably just gonna go head to bed." He seemed to look around the room, waving at someone I couldn't see as he got up and left.

"Yeah, same," Falco said, as he stretched and yawned.

"Alright..." I looked up over a gray hyena who had stood up and was now blocking my view, towards David. He was speaking to one of the other humans, Lawrence Mateyeva. He looked away for a second and spotted me, nodding. "I'll probably be here for a bit." There were some questions I wanted to ask him, mainly about the full extent of nuclear weapons on Earth. "Goodnight, guys."

"G'night Brownie," Falco said. I shook my head, and laughed a bit. "That's to make up for earlier, by the way," he added, as he walked off.

I remained seated at the table, still not thinking about much, as I waited for the crowd to clear up. After a few minutes, David came over, and waved to get my attention. "Hey," he said, with somewhat of an awkward tone. "So, that whole nuclear weapons thing put a, uh... weight... weigher? Ah, something, on the conversation, didn't it?" He sat down next to me. I didn't face him directly, moreso just stared out the windows blankly while talking to him, since I wasn't exactly a fan of eye contact.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I'm assuming you don't really know why?"

He shook his head, and exhaled. "I'll be honest, I do not. I mean, I hope this doesn't make it worse, but all that is just something we... well, live with, every day."

I shook my head as well. "To give you a brief run down as to why that's pretty damn alarming to us... in short, I guess, nuclear weapons are a relatively recent development for us. Like, fourty or so years ago. And... their invention spurred on this whole... world war, which, even now, we're still trying to recover from." I could see him lean back and nod - judging from his mannerisms, he seemed to realize something as well. Part of me wanted to wonder more about how I could even pick up on the mannerisms of an alien, but that was certainly for another time. "And, so... no offense, but you Humans are obviously not at the level of technological development we're at."

"I take nothing," he said. I corrected him with 'none taken' before continuing.

"And so, you guys having discovered nuclear weapons before... wait, do you have nuclear power?" He nodded. "Right. Well, either way, in terms of development, you've discovered some of the most dangerous weapons of mass destruction way earlier than we did. And not just that... it was mentioned that they're thermonuclear weapons, right?"

"Uh... yeah," he sighed, reluctantly.

"We only ever had fission. And even beyond that, there are a wide range of delivery methods which were only ever theoretical for us. Submarines, missiles, and so on... the only time our nukes were ever used was a controlled test. And there were only two of them. Just... I don't know, it's kind of a nightmare scenario for us. Not many of us are exactly fond of the concept, you know?"

"Yeah, I'd... I'd imagine. If it's any consolation, we don't like it either. Both the US and the USSR have thousands of nukes pointed at each other at every moment, and could end all life on Earth at the push of a button... "