The Alien Among Us
Hello. My name is Kitalia. Amazingly, I am the only extraterrestrial with a significant role in Spak’s universe. I live among humans, appearing to them as a girl of about eight who wears her REGs a few shades darker than most. The truth of it is, I’m about 40 years old and my eyes are… unusual in appearance, hence the shading. There’s no need to freak out the natives.
I am in exile here, banished from the myriad of worlds my civilization has colonized, all for seeking to learn more about humans. The fear among my people is that if humans managed to destroy their own world, what chance would ours have if we let them in? So interaction with humans or even entering human space has be forbidden almost since we first found out about their existence. But I live to learn about other cultures. I worked for several ambassadors prior to my exile, visiting worlds at various levels of cultural and technological advancement. Each new world merely added to my eagerness to see others, to know how much the intelligent species of the universe had in common, as well as how different they could truly be. These humans had survived a calamity our civilizations had never known. What kind of being could be so short sighted as to destroy their own world, yet intelligent and tenacious enough to survive the aftermath? I had to meet one. So I ventured into forbidden space, looking to quench my curiosity.
The story between then and now is worth recording elsewhere at another time. Suffice to say, I am here now. Though I sometimes wonder if the cost to my family has been worth the price, I have good and true friends here who would and have put there lives on the line for me. And a light is emerging in the darkness that may mean my family can be reunited both in spite of and because of my past actions.
Don’t let my presentation here fool you into thinking me a humorless ‘bot as aliens so often tend to be in your fiction. I share the humor of Spak’s primary four (Jade, Destiny, Artemis, and Jo), and have enjoyed many silly and nearly nonsensical conversations with them. But the humor is tempered by a lifetime filled with far more pain if only because it is more than twice as long as any of theirs.
Oh, and I speak Kathra as well, though I am a late learner. Of course, I'm a late learner of English as well, so I suppose the difference in skill is minimal. Not that you'd notice if I mixed up zim and zin (think and know).
Next?
I am in exile here, banished from the myriad of worlds my civilization has colonized, all for seeking to learn more about humans. The fear among my people is that if humans managed to destroy their own world, what chance would ours have if we let them in? So interaction with humans or even entering human space has be forbidden almost since we first found out about their existence. But I live to learn about other cultures. I worked for several ambassadors prior to my exile, visiting worlds at various levels of cultural and technological advancement. Each new world merely added to my eagerness to see others, to know how much the intelligent species of the universe had in common, as well as how different they could truly be. These humans had survived a calamity our civilizations had never known. What kind of being could be so short sighted as to destroy their own world, yet intelligent and tenacious enough to survive the aftermath? I had to meet one. So I ventured into forbidden space, looking to quench my curiosity.
The story between then and now is worth recording elsewhere at another time. Suffice to say, I am here now. Though I sometimes wonder if the cost to my family has been worth the price, I have good and true friends here who would and have put there lives on the line for me. And a light is emerging in the darkness that may mean my family can be reunited both in spite of and because of my past actions.
Don’t let my presentation here fool you into thinking me a humorless ‘bot as aliens so often tend to be in your fiction. I share the humor of Spak’s primary four (Jade, Destiny, Artemis, and Jo), and have enjoyed many silly and nearly nonsensical conversations with them. But the humor is tempered by a lifetime filled with far more pain if only because it is more than twice as long as any of theirs.
Oh, and I speak Kathra as well, though I am a late learner. Of course, I'm a late learner of English as well, so I suppose the difference in skill is minimal. Not that you'd notice if I mixed up zim and zin (think and know).
Next?
posted by SpakKadi | 7:21 PM
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