"Okay!" They stand up. "It's really important none of them get hurt  - I'm sure you know that, but just in case - if there's violence against a population while we're here and which we could be said to be even tangentially involved in, it gets escalated like crazy and suddenly there are two thousand galactic observers and sixteen thousand journalists and felony murder charges for everyone and their relatives - I know you obviously wouldn't hurt people over not going to work, that doesn't even get them to work any faster, it just bears mentioning because it'd be such a catastrophe if it came up."

"...killing a red isn't murder anyway, what are you talking about?"

"If any reds were to die there would be nearly twenty thousand people here tomorrow reconstructing everything that happened, because that's how our procedures work, and there would be murder charges all around because our courts currently treat reds like people. That's exactly why we're here, figuring out whether it makes sense to petition them to reconsider, but right now that's how they do it and they're absolutely obsessive about violence against local populations which their representatives could be said to be involved in."

"That seems like their problem."

"I guess maybe all the observers would be good for the local economy."

      "You shouldn't joke about something like that."

"Oh, come on, it's just ridiculous - no one in the universe is going to execute their sanitation workers over being late to work because there were aliens in the way."

      "I know that. You still shouldn't joke about it."

"I was really honestly warning them, I thought they might want to know it was really important to be careful."

     "It's kind of insulting, though - it's not like police have to be really careful to avoid beating people to death."

"...that's fair. I apologize. I didn't mean that as an insult in the slightest."

"...look, the trash need to do their jobs and if they don't or they mouth off they get it explained so they can understand, that's none of you guys's business."

"...well, yeah, explaining things to them is good, it's beating them to death that would be bad. We're on the same page here. I wasn't saying, like, 'don't hurt their feelings', I was saying 'if somebody died it'd be a massive international incident'."

"It shouldn't be."

"That's what we're observing them to try to figure out! But it'll be a process to persuade the courts to handle this planet differently, it'll take a couple months at minimum, and in the meantime if anything were to happen, which I totally trust you that it won't, they'll handle it just like if we went to talk to some civilians and then those civilians got murdered for talking to us - which is to say, massive exhaustive public investigation and murder trial."

"Did they talk to you?"

"Nope. Ran away, every last one of them. Do they even talk?"

"Sometimes. If they didn't talk to you there's no question of anything happening to 'em because of it, is there?"

"You just said a minute ago that the reason we have to leave is because we're the ones who scared them, there's no way we're convincing a court it's not our fault."

Cops look at each other. Cops send some messages on their everythings.

Cops leave.

...okay. 

When teleporter comes back Elves ask to be invisible.

Elves go invisible.

Reds start tentatively trickling out after they have been "gone" for about half an hour.

Elves are finding it really hard to stay here for very long without singing but they borrow the eyes of their colleagues in Cene who are talking trade agreements in a pretty skyscraper and cope.

Reds go to work. Eventually some of them come back. Reds move between red buildings. Kids play in the street, a little, carefully out of view of the exits.

Not all the ones who went to work come back?

Not yet, anyway.

They wait and sing oh so very quietly.

Too quietly for reds to hear?

...mostly?

Some of the kids notice. They pause, listening suspiciously.

Very very quiet singing.