We were conducting a survey in Orange County, where it was raining, one of those relentless biblical downpours that strike the area from time to time. I was curious about the personal umbrella technology that shielded us from the weather.
"Is there a portable force field generated by a device on our uniforms?" I asked. My own uniform had been clumsily altered to fit my frame. I'd had to cut a hole for my mouth.
"Oh, no," said the leader of our survey, whose name was Klyde. "Don't be ridiculous. What we do is, we fire lasers from our ship, and vaporize every rain drop individually."
"Much simpler," I agreed.
The Kliborgians, who had been determined to keep everything regarding my employment "above-board," had retained my services as a Subject Matter Expert. I'd been issued several thousand pages of alien tax documents to complete, which I figured I'd get to whenever I obtained a pen (the aliens wrote by squirting ink out of their tentacles).
"This climate seems rainy," observed the second-in-command, Kleopatra, who I'd been made to understand was a particularly attractive Kliborgian. "I suggest the construction of an indoor attraction, such as a merry-go-round, or a haunted house."
The others hastened to parrot her assessment.
"In fact, it rains here but rarely," I corrected them. "It's practically a desert. I would recommend a Ferris wheel, perhaps, or a go-kart track."
Impressed murmuring. Kleopatra and I stared each other down.
"I find your forthrightness attractive," she admitted at last.
"Oh jeez God well ah," I said. "Ah, hmmm. Hmm."
"Don't weasel out," hissed the Kliborgian behind me. "Nobody's gotten a chance like this in years."
In the end I bowed to the obvious diplomatic pressure and asked Kleopatra on a date. Back on the ship, the crew, notorious matchmakers, set up a corner of the mess with noxious orange candles and served plates of squirming ooze. I sipped a champagne flute of the nutrient juice the chef had concocted to fit my delicate human digestive tract. It tasted almost exactly like Tang.
"What are your interests," inquired Kleopatra.
"I like dogs," I ventured.
"What's a dog?"
"A furry four-legged mammal with a big tongue," I said.
"Sounds hideous," she said, slurping ooze through her two largest tentacles.
The key to any first date is showing interest in the other person, I knew.
"Tell me about your childhood," I said.
She painted an image of her homeworld, a tectonic swamp with a thick blanket of acidic atmosphere, lit only by the constant arc of atmospheric lightning. Brisk two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Her first twenty years spent maturing in a flesh-pond with twelve thousand other Kliborgian youths, roiling, consuming the weak, you know - the "yusche."
"As in, like, short for 'usual,'" I said, to show that I was paying attention.
Part 3! hope you have enjoyed!
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