Alone


The doctor sits across from me in an armchair, which is an exact twin to my chair. He looks across his white desk at me, meeting my eyes. I guess that’s supposed to mean something here. I didn’t for me at home. “Well, Marlena, you say that you don’t remember anything before you were on that spaceship. What’s the last thing you do remember?’ I have to think about this one. Let’s see. I remember a cold piece of glass, probably a window. I remember stars, so many stars against a backdrop of black. I remember a bright green and blue, beautiful planet. It must have been earth because I was traveling towards it. As the images slowly form in my head, suddenly it all comes rushing back. All of what I was doing, where I was, everything in that time before the spaceship reached Earth. I speak up, “I remember now.” “Why don’t you tell me.”

“I was sitting by the window after the copilot woke me up from the freeze chamber. It was dark in the room and...” He interrupts me, “Why was it dark? The full-spectrum lights are kept on almost all the time to lessen the negative effects of space travel,” “Um, I think we were having a problem with the electric system.” He begins scribbling on a notepad furiously and I continue, “I remember it being cold, colder than usual.” He interrupts me, yet again. “The electrical system I assume?” “I don’t know!” I snap back at him and continue, “I was sitting by the window, and staring out into space, marveling how far away from home I was.” “Excuse me,” he says, and I’ll try later, “where exactly was home?” “I lived on Pluto.” “Ah yes, now I remember. You were the one taking part in the exchange program. You must tell me, why was your civilization so eager to participate in this program?’ I stiffen at this question, “I can’t answer that. It’s secret plutonian government business.” “Oh, I’m sorry. Please continue.” I continue, “Now, as I was saying, I remember sitting by the window looking out into space. I had been told to stay in my room, because we were experiencing problems with some of the systems, electrical is the only one I can remember. Soon I felt a sudden shudder and then I heard the engines shutting down. We kept drifting through space in silence. My door is sound proof, so I couldn’t even hear the pilot and copilot speaking, only silence. I tried contacting them through the intercom, but there was no response. I attempted opening my door, but it locked when the systems shut off and I couldn’t open it. I sat there for about a minute and then it hit me. I was alone, floating in my spaceship, locked in a room with a solid steel door. I was alone and no one could hear me. I sat perfectly still by the window, waiting for something to happen. I felt like I didn’t exist, like I was wiped from the face of the universe. After a half hour the engines finally kicked back on, but suddenly a warning siren went off near my window. The pressure was fluctuating and a small crack was appearing in my window. Very slowly, it was creeping across my window in thin veins, so slowly I couldn’t even hear it, but it was there, spreading across my window like a deadly virus. I pounded on the door, screamed on the intercom desperately, but no one answered. At the last second I grabbed my oxygen helmet and jammed it onto my head. I leapt across the room to my emergency seatbelt just as the window broke. I was thrown against the wall, and I believe I blacked out because that’s the last thing I remember.”

“Wow, that’s not the greatest welcome to earth.” he comments. “Do you know what happened to the pilot and copilot?” “No.” “They were both found dead in the engine room,” He says, with a look of false grief on his pot marked face. I’m not especially good at “reading” people, but I can tell this much. I feel no need to respond to his statement. He waits expectantly for a response and, seeing that he is not going to get one, continues, “What do you remember afterwards?” Ugh I thought I was done talking. “I remember waking up on a table with a bunch of bright lights above me. I woke up because someone was bandaging my foot, which seriously hurt. I found out later that I broke it.” “Any other serious injuries?” “I broke my nose, do you consider that serious?” “Not really.” I still have a giant bruise over my face. Here, I have been given the impression that people care very greatly if they have scars on their precious faces. On Pluto, everyone else assumed that you had a perfectly good reason for having scars and weren’t too concerned about how you got them. Things are so different here. I glance at the clock. My hour is up. I go to leave, but the doctor stops me. “Just one more thing Marlena. I’m just curious, we here on earth believed that Pluto was cold and desolate for some time. How was it different?” “Well, it wasn’t that cold. There is a small star near our planet that you Earth people have overlooked. It is surrounded by a section of what you call the Kuiper Belt. The landscape is drastically different here. I have never seen so much green or blue in my entire life. The landscape on Pluto is mountainous and the soil is a different color. More purple than brown. And the sky was always gray.” “Hum, very interesting.” He replies, still scribbling unceasingly on that notepad. Humans and their notes. Why can’t they just learn to remember things?

I head back towards the main wing of the complex. What complex? Oh, I forgot to tell you. This is The Center for Interplanetary Research and Communication. I just came from the psychology wing. I’ve lived here for all three Earth months I’ve been here. I’ve gone out of the center to one of their cities. It was called St. Louis, I think. I thought it horribly insufficient compared to our cities. The buildings weren’t in any beneficial arrangement, whatsoever. I’m going to stop talking about the downfalls of this backward civilizations because once I start I never stop. I stop to give some paperwork to Dr, Hammond, who has helped me with my ankle. I open his door to find him talking to a teenage girl who looks the same age as me. I know she isn’t. In their years, I’m about 2,066 Earth years old. Hammond smiles when he sees me. “Good morning Marlena. Ah, I see you have my paperwork. While I process this you can talk to my niece, Helen.” She nods kindly to me, but once she spots my I.D. tag her eyes nearly pop out of her head. You see, I resemble a human, but I’m really quite different. Just the violet eyes and blue-gray colored hair set me apart. She is only surprised because my tag says PLUTONIAN in giant red letters. It’s subtle, no? “You’re that alien from Pluto?!” “Yeah,” She looks a little disappointed. “Well, you must be different somehow.” Helen says. “Would you like me to tell you?” She nods her head and gives me her full attention, something I rarely get from humans.

“The biggest difference between our civilizations is that ours is far more advanced. I mean no offense, but its true. We have learned to build our cities in the most efficient ways, learned how to extend our lives, stuff like that. We began to study your civilization for the mere reason that you were the closest, in the galaxy and physically. You, however, posses something we do not. Some of the Plutonian people believe it is a curse, others believe it is a blessing. We do not posses the capacity for feeling.” “Wait, do you mean you feel nothing at all?” “Well, I guess we can feel annoyance, a limited sense of anger, and confusion, if you consider that an emotion. We also do not posses the ability to taste or smell.” “Wow, how do you cope with that?” “Coping is not necessary. I have not known anything else, therefore I would not miss anything I never had, even if I could.” She doesn’t ask me any more questions, just stares down at the floor, which must be exceedingly interesting. This is the reaction most Earth people have. I assume they find me distant, and therefore want to avoid me. Humans, they’re so simple-minded. If I encountered someone who was, in theory, distant, I would try to make them less so. She finally speaks up, breaking the awkward silence, “Well, if you can’t taste anything, the lunch lady must like you. You can eat whatever she cooks, no matter how nasty it is.” I smile, not because I’m amused, but because I appreciate the attempt, “Yes, she appreciates my tasteless appetite.” “Is she your friend?” “She doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you mean.” She forgot I process no capacity for friendship. Like I said before, humans are so simple-minded.
Hammond opens the door, interrupting our dwindling conversation. “Well, here it is. Please deliver this to Dr. Marr.” “Sure,” I feel like their messenger. “I’m sure you two will have time later to talk,” he continues. Helen smiles and says, “I’m an intern at the Flight and Rocketry division. Maybe you could come by during one of our classes. I’m sure my classmates would love to hear about Pluto.” I smile at her and say, “I might come by today, if I have the time between my incessant errands.” Hammond doesn’t get my subtle reproof. I half expected him to. I smile at them both and limp out of the office.

I decide to eat lunch before I deliver the document. I sit down with a bowl of odd- looking split-pea soup. The “Lunch lady,” as they call her, walks over to me. She looks at my food. “That’s not fresh or warm,” “If it’s nourishment, that doesn’t matter.” She sits down across from me, “So you’ve never tasted anything in your life? No ice cream, popcorn, pizza, candy, nothing at all?” I give her a confused look, “What are those things?” “Junk food most of us Earth people like.” “No, I’ve never tasted anything in my life. I can’t even comprehend what taste would be.” “How did people on Pluto know what to cook if they couldn’t taste what they were cooking?” I look at her incredulously, “We prepared what was nutritionally efficient and could be grown with sustainable farming methods.” A look of pity sweeps over her wrinkled face. “How are you going to cope with the culture of this planet if you can’t even taste the food they provide?” I stare down at my bowl of slime, contemplating what she had said. This is the most intelligent thing I’ve heard a human say all day. “I... don’t know,” I said. I really started to think about it. I always assumed I had studied these humans enough to become part of their society. I was more than their equal on an intellectual level, but I never realized how much they could communicate through much simpler things, often unspoken. This made me think of the Professors back on Pluto. Some of them considered the possession of emotion a curse, claiming it made you vulnerable, weak, and clouded your mind with chemicals that you simply couldn’t fight. Others claimed it was a gift, to be able to communicate with so much complexity, to be able to form a genuine attachment to your society, or a specific person. After listening to both of these arguments for years, I couldn’t come to a definite conclusion. That’s why I wanted to come to Earth. But my perception of this society has changed a lot since I got here…