Under the dim light of a black star, somewhere in the Milky Way in a bar that only exists on the edges of our knowledge, two greenish humanoids shake hands, exchanging apparitions and sparks. What they agree during that handshake will have a staggering impact on human history, one which will only be understood if and when we manage to translate enough of their talking program scripts to form a coherent image of what they saw. And you thought the terms and conditions discussed in your contracting agreements were complex? Aside from the obligatory non-disclosure and non-circumvention clauses with which most contracting agreements are started, the most complicated point involved in most cloud contracts is if and when you need to pay for premium contact support. Most agreements between contracting humans and extraterrestrial lifeforms are far more complex than what is detailed on most Earth contracts which, on the one hand, understandably requires alien lawyers, but still, some of the major points which have been catalogued thus far involve which communes can be accessed through a legal range finder, if old growth interstellar forests can be mined legally and if the minerals found therein are subject to any kind of ownership distinction.
The story of the handshake begins with a special clause in a form of the standard Earth contracting agreements. In looked-up English, this is known as a “turnkey contract agreement”, a form of project delivery system which, like most contracting agreements, includes the meeting of terms such as price or rate terms, time periods and the like. Variations of the Earth version of the turnkey contract agreement involve international treaties, ambassadorship, public works’ arrangements and concession agreements involving governments, so it’s not surprising that when two aliens start discussing the wholesale of Earth technology, they revert back to the “Old Earth” system and show each other the long outdated, high pain index treaty arrangement between the United Nations and the United Federation of Planets.
Having understood the complexities of the bargain, however, the aliens use the same agreements to create intergalactic free trade zones where, for 20 years, the exchange of every kind of technology is unimpeded. This, much to the relief of our galactic partners saves both cultures from tapping and tracing the myriad of interconnected planets which lie within the delta and site 20 corridors. This directly affects human mobility, as there are already commiserating about what happened to intergalactic travel treaties some 20 years later which were not bound by a real extensive treaty. The aliens get out of their shuttle in different colors, regal only by comparison standards – and maneuver as if they were kick star drones. All because, despite centuries of third party treaty interpretation, both contracting cultures experienced equal difficulty interpreting the pitfalls of a contracting agreement.