I walked into the Flournoy-Croft Special Investigations Center with a particular and intense duality of emotions. My mind was a warzone where anxiety and excitement were currently stuck in a deadlock, with each side battling relentlessly for control. It was as if the opposing extremes were manifesting in my very gait; one leg felt leaden and weighted with an all-consuming dread while the other was light and skipping with glee. As I stepped on the elevator and pushed the 4 button to take me to the top floor, one half of my body was practically vibrating while the other was barely ambulating.
I swallowed a lump in my throat as I walked out of the elevator and into the long, featureless hallway that led to Director Janet Tines' office. Even from the elevator landing, I could see that her large mahogany door was closed. Drat; I'd hoped to catch a glimpse at what lay inside before having to engage. I took a carefully measured breath and proceeded forth, my mind racing tempestuously as I tried to quell the opposing forces warring inside me.
It wasn't that I was afraid of Director Tines. She was a good superior, and we saw eye to eye on most things. It was the special assignment I was being tasked with that had me so conflicted.
My day-to-day job at the FCSIC was...complicated. Both to do and to describe. It could be best summarized (and sanitized to the general populace) by saying I was a diplomat. However, the part that only my coworkers knew was that I wasn't an agent of local or international politics. Rather, the truth was that I was a conductor and manager of relations between humans and sentient extraterrestrial races that had either landed on Earth or contacted it. These were all things that my friends and family had no knowledge of. Things the general populace didn't know. To the public, aliens were the business of hillbillies with abduction stories and doomsday types who wore tinfoil hats. To me, they were my day-to-day, and they weren't weird.
So why was half of me so nervous?
The half of me that was excited was, at least, easy to explain. I was getting put on a special assignment. Everyone loves to be recognized for their hard work and entrusted with things. I didn't know the full details of my special assignment yet, but what I had been told was that a new race of extraterrestrial had made contact, and I would be charged with working with them. Despite what I may have given the impression of in my job description, this was a rare and exciting event. Typically, there were 6 main races of extraterrestrials that regularly interacted with humanity and Earth, and a dozen more that made very infrequent contact. To work with a newly discovered race altogether was practically a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Perhaps that was why I was so nervous? The unpredictability of it all?
As I stepped up to the Director's door, I heard her communicating with someone on the other side of it. A feminine voice was talking with her. I brushed my hair out of my face for a moment, drew a deep breath, and knocked.
"State your identification," came her confident and commanding voice.
"Velouria Givings," I responded, "ID#EF46P19."
"Come in." I opened the door and swiftly entered, as was protocol, hastily shutting the door behind me to conceal whatever was in here from prying eyes. Having shut and locked the door, I turned.
Director Tines was sitting at her desk, her graying hair pulled up in a stately ponytail. Standing in front of the desk, looking at me, was the subject. They had a very humanoid appearance, looking starkly like a beautiful woman. They had cyan colored skin, white and orange hair cut into a slanted lob, and a somewhat slight frame. Their ears were pointed and long, and they had two spots on their face, one on each side of their nose. They had the general body shape of a human woman with, confusingly, what appeared to be a pair of round, mammalian breasts underneath what appeared to be an outfit of plain street clothes from our visitation stock. A red t-shirt with blue jeans.
"Good morning, Agent Velouria. Thanks for coming in; this is P-Qorzrha."
"Earnest greetings," P-Qorzha said with a sweet, feminine voice. I was taken aback immediately. Since when could any extraterrestrial speak English upon their first contact? Typically, we used devices called ITCHes (Intelligent Technological Communication Headsets) to speak with extraterrestrials, which were headsets that read patterns in language to quickly learn the language of the race and instantly translate as we spoke through the ITCH in real time.
However, P-Qorzha wasn't wearing an ITCH. They just spoke.
"H-...how do you do, P-Qorzha?" I asked nervously, following my standard protocol and giving a polite curtsy.
"I'm...oh...quite befuddled, I think is the phrase," they replied, tentatively curtsying as well. It was a facsimile of a curtsy, really. It was clear they were mimicking me rather than performing a gesture on their own. They likely didn't know what a curtsy was for. That was fine; curtsying was protocol for introducing yourself to an extraterrestrial when you do not know their culture because bowing or reaching for handshakes might be seen as aggressive to some races, but curtsying was typically seen as, at worst, placid.
"It's okay, P-Qorzha," the Director said with a smile, "Agent Velouria is here to help with whatever you need. She will be your contact and your caretaker for the time being." The Director's words were delivered with a matter-of-fact confidence that would lead most to thinking what she said was totally normal and not at all unusual. And, to be fair, putting me as an alien's primary contact was normal. However, that other thing that she had said...wasn't.
"I'm sorry," I said, "'Caretaker?'" Director Tines nodded and smiled at me. It was a kind expression, but one that did not reach her eyes. Those conveyed an unwavering confidence.
"Correct, Velouria." I wasn't being offered a choice in the matter and it was clear she had no interest in negotiating one. "This is your special assignment. P-Qorzha has had an incident and needs help. She can fill you in on the details later, but for now, you are to arrange for her room, board, and food. Make sure she does not want for anything."
"Oh, you do not need to fret much over me," P-Qorzha interjected, "I do not need many things."
"Nonsense," Director Tines insisted, "Velouria is going to take extra good care of you. Right, Vell?" A long moment of clashing wants hung in the air as my eyes darted nervously back and forth between my boss staring daggers into me and the hopeful looking alien. I sighed heavily.
"That's right," I replied.
I spent the rest of that day with P-Qorzha, or Pico, as she asked me to call her, showing her around both FCSIC and New Ideal City. She was sweet and engaged; I had to admit that she was certainly the easiest extraterrestrial to get along with that I'd ever met. She was polite and earnest, as well as inquisitive. She seemed genuinely interested in learning about human society and customs, so she asked a great many questions about humanity and Earth. In turn, she was equally forthright in talking about herself and her own culture.
She was a member of an alien race called the Ashasa from the planet Ceruleos, which was very far away from this solar system in Star System 469-b. The Ashasa as she described them were fascinating and possessed a number of interesting abilities. For instance, the reason she spoke English was the Ashasa apparently had a degree of psionic ability which allowed her brain to link with another living being's brain and scan its data centers, allowing her to become fluent in their communication languages rather effortlessly. It was remarkably fascinating; my favorite part of my job was learning about the cultures and lives of extraterrestrials.
