5.  While your alien is staying with you, we’d like him/her/them to feel as though he/she/they are a part of the family. Unless your family is completely dysfunctional, which may cause the alien to deliver a negative report about humans to his/her/their superiors.  In what family events do you plan to involve your alien?

In my extended family, there are no more weddings.  The siblings have been married at least once, sometimes twice.  Actually, we’re excited about a pretty big divorce happening soon.  I’m hoping my alien can attend our divorce party after the trial.  She can help me roll canapés and pour champagne to celebrate a new beginning.  She can give us an alien blessing of some kind.  A special symbol from her culture of a new start.  She can stand or hover or whatever she does, in the circle with us, exchanging hugs.

Of course, if the trial doesn’t go well for us, then I’ll keep my alien away from that function.  My sister will return home to seek solace in one of her many online worlds.  She’ll don her dragon slayer skin or a pull up her sexy spy avatar and forget about what just happened.  My other siblings will sit and scroll through their phones like normal.  But I will come home to my alien to see her playing Connect 4 with my children.  We’ll make root beer floats and play charades and I will laugh and laugh, and forget the world is burning around me.

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6.  We want our alien participants to enjoy their time with you and the wonderful attractions our world has to offer, although we don’t want them to enjoy our world so much that they decide to come down here and colonize us.  Can you speak to the types of attractions you plan to show your alien?

Over a decade ago, I spent many afternoons downtown.  I rode the city bus to the bookstore where I worked alongside the bookstore collie dog, re-organizing the New Age section and looking for attractive book covers to face out.  For my lunch, I brought my cheese and pickle sandwich out to the park square.  The benches were shiny burnished metal.  The water from a bronze fountain depicting two leaping salmon sparkled in the sunlight.  A pigeon gave me the side eye and cooed questioningly at my sandwich.  Across the street, the theater marquis advertised the current production.  I only made minimum wage at the bookstore and couldn’t afford shows, but being downtown in front of the theater, in the midst of the park blocks surrounded by sharply dressed business professionals made me feel like I was a part of something important.

I would like to show my alien that place.  She could relax in the bookstore, the dog sniffing her curiously.  I’d buy her a book on chakras.  She could reach her hand, or her appendage or appendages, out to the water in the fountain and splash with the children who wouldn’t be afraid of her, because they’re children who don’t fear things yet.

I’d like to take her there, but it’s different now.  I unplugged my children from their entertainment feeds recently and dragged them down there to see an actual show with real human actors in that theater I can now afford because most people prefer to escape home through their virtual reality systems.  Bookstores are long gone and only Outside Dwellers have real dogs, since most people can afford a virtual pet.  After the show, a nostalgic production that featured an old-style public school before institutionalized public education put children’s lives at risk, my children dragged me toward the salmon fountain.  The water hasn’t run in it since the shortage years ago.  Pigeons scavenged through the cracked and grimy tiles of the fountain without giving us a second thought.  There were several Outside Dwellers lounging around the park square.

Most Outside Dwellers are harmless.  Scruffy and stinky for lack of water or dry soap, bare feet black with city filth, muttering stories that make sense only to themselves.  That day several of them shared a six pack of 4 Loco.  But you never know when a group of Outside Dwellers may be shooting up, not just smoking weed.  Or when the story one of them is living in his mind may paint you as a threat.  My kids wanted to play with the pigeons and my boy jumped from bench to bench, until I dragged them both away from the city square and the Outside Dwellers.  We went back home where I hooked them up to their entertainment feeds again, nice and safe.

If I took my alien there, she probably wouldn’t be afraid, like I am.  She’d likely even sit down next to one of those Outside Dwellers, joining him on the grungy bench and sharing a 4 Loco.  Maybe with her next to me, I’d be brave enough to hang out with the Dwellers, sharing stories and watching the light change as the sun dipped down into the smoggy sky and then dropped behind the towering skyscrapers.  Twilight would fall like it’s fallen every evening, regardless of who is sitting in the city square, be it an Outside Dweller, an alien, or me.

7.  There are hundreds of applicants for the Alien Exchange Program. In what way are you an especially good fit for this program?

As I sit here in my living quarters, inputting these answers, I guess I can think of lots of people who might be a better fit.  The families with money to take the alien to the places in our world that are still beautiful.  Places with waterfalls, lakes, and piped in rain.  I ’ve heard they still exist in some areas and the top 1% get to immerse themselves in those lakes, feel the spray of the waterfall on their bare arms.  But when I was 13, I watched E.T. in the movie theater.  Later, I watched more gruesome depictions of extraterrestrials, like those in Aliens, but my heart stayed with that waddling big-eyed, neck-stretching E.T.  At night, even though I was 13 and knew better, I held up my finger to the window and searched the sky.  I imagined my finger lighting up like Elliot’s and I reached it up toward the stars in search of an alien.  Decades later, I know she’s up there, her own finger shining brightly.  Please send me my alien. I need to meet her.

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Your application will be reviewed, and you will hear from us in four to six weeks. Should your application be selected for further consideration, alien placement will be contingent upon a home visit to ensure you can provide adequate facilities.  This includes a fully functioning hydration pod, as aliens cannot adjust to our arid climate.  You will also need to demonstrate bandwidth and networking links capable of reaching the alien’s home planet.  Your signature will be required on our “Liability Waiver Contract” where you will agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Alien Exchange Program should you personally befall any harm from or as a result of actions taken by the alien.  Thank you for your interest in the Alien Exchange Program.

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