a nice fungal scientifically-minded alien. . .

Yesterday I got hit in the head by a misguided soccer ball. It wouldn’t have been too extraordinary except for the fact that it surprised my visitor. I might have gone on for a few more weeks totally oblivious of her existence if the ball hadn’t shocked her into momentarily allowing her mental guard to slip. The entire situation really shocked me (at least, as much as anything does) at first and I came very near to becoming scared, thinking her to be a parasite of some sort, living in my body and, I dunno, gaining power through the use of my mitochondria (thus stealing vital energy needed for my own purposes) or something. Once I had a moment to consider this revelation thoroughly, though, I realized that she truly means me no harm, although the exact manner in which I gained the information is a bit vague at this point. I’ll try to explain. I was walking along the sidewalk, looking at my shoes and, occasionally, one of the scraggly pear trees which some city official had arranged to be planted along this particular street in some vain attempt to make what could never be mistaken for anything but a run-down city street somehow more aesthetically pleasing, when I glanced over to my right. If anyone yelled, “look out!” I never heard them, but I did turn (with that innate sense most everyone has when he is about to be hit by a quickly moving object) just in time to see the aforementioned soccer ball and think “uh. . look, a soccer ball” before being hit and almost knocked over. (I’m not what you would call burly.) It was at this point that I became aware of my visitor. I didn’t hear her thinking or anything, it was more like I was me, but I was (am, I suppose) also this completely other being. For a split second, I realized I was also her and also that she was using my body as a host (not in a parasitic way, more of a just dropping by to check out the neighborhood and do some scientific research sort of way). I also picked up bits of her memories during that second, but none of it is too coherent, since she obviously wasn’t thinking out her life story at that moment, but after some recollection, I have figured out some general things: she is definitely not from Earth (saying “alien” sounds so cheesy, though, and her normal body looks about as much like those round-headed big-eyed things all the people on the talk shows mention as I do like George Bush.), her name, which is completely untranslatable, since her people, or whatever, don’t speak with words, means something like “that moment when you’re about to fall asleep, but something startles you awake, while sitting beneath a vast open space near a palm tree”, and she didn’t arrive in a spaceship (any intelligent species knows you can’t travel faster than the speed of light, so you obviously have to use a specified hole portal if you want to go light years from home). Some other fragments of things were there, too, but really the main thought I got was a feeling of “what?” and then a frantic jumble along the lines of “uhohsheknowssheknows whatdoidowhatdoiiforgethowdoishutitoffagainidontremembe-“ and then I was sitting on the sidewalk and some kid was yelling at me. Of course I wasn’t exactly in a coherent state of mind and I figured he was yelling at me because I was obviously being possessed by an alien life form and it took me about a minute to realize he was asking if I was okay. Not that he apparently cared too much, since he had turned around and continued playing long before I figured out that he didn’t see me as a potential Ricki Lake guest. Anyway, so here I am sitting on the couch in my living room trying to think at her (come to think of it, I don’t even know if it is a her. there was nothing definite about being one gender or the other, just some vague memories of spores [if the spore thing is right, would that make she/it a fungus? {that’s almost creepy}]) and not getting any response.

I wrote that a week ago. No one believes me. I suppose I should have known better than to mention the incident at all and with my wonderfully limited ability of foresight, I of course decided that the right time to comment would be while at my psychiatrist’s. I think it would have to rank near the top of my personal (quite lengthy) list of Stupid Things I Have Done Thusfar. I’m even going to put it above the time I learned that peanut butter does not mix well with other substances in a blender. The fact that my brain works in relatively messy leaps and bounds from subject to topic has never been too much of a hindrance to me before now, but lately it has been getting worse (I had turkey for thanksgiving and there’s this one farm where people who are vegetarians keep turkeys as pets. They said that turkeys are kinda like dogs and they run up to their owners in the yard. cirrus clouds often appear before a cold front. [There are cirrus clouds in the sky above the running-through-the-yard turkeys in my mental picture of such a thing {perfectly logical. I think if I could put parentheses in my speech, I would make more sense to others. Then again, maybe not.}]) Besides that, my tendency to only see the parts of a thing I am looking at, instead of the whole, has also been getting more noticeable (when someone is talking at me, I hear the tone of his of her voice while staring at the curve of their chin . . . and a little while later I realize that they aren’t talking anymore and I should probably say something at this point, but I have no idea what they were talking about so I mumble something that I consider interesting at the moment [“gosh, look at that thingie on the tree over there”] and wander off.) I only mention this because it seems to be fairly disturbing to those around me and is one of the reasons I get sent to see a psychiatrist on occasion. Personally, I think I just need a new brain filter. One that remembers how to screen out the supposedly irrelevant stuff. Anyway, to return to my story, it hasn’t been a problem for me until now. The look on Dr. Cathy (#4)’s face was almost worth it, though. She looked like Dr. Mueller (#2) did when I told him my idea that we are all be characters in a book written by some being and that the book (our world) had gone on existing and evolving after the author finished. I think all books do that. Dr. Mueller did (and I guess still does) not. At any rate, the result of my revelation to the world that we are not alone in the universe (stupid for anyone to think that we would be) was an increase in the number of times per month I have to go see the doctor. So it goes. It’s better to keep alien visitations to oneself, seeing as it is such a personal thing. Now that I think about it, it’s probably a good thing Dr. Cathy didn’t believe me. Then I would have just had to talk to more doctors and undergo millions of tests and whatnot and besides, I kinda like Vos and they might hurt her or something. Oh yeah, communications with Vos (vast open space, for lack of anything better and she seems to like it) have improved by jumps and bounds. She is a sort of female, even though her people have three sexes and the fungus thing was pretty much right on. Not a creepy, damp under the sink fungal type, though. More of a beautiful oak tree shape swaying softly with the rotation of their planet fungus. That doesn’t quite capture the feeling, but it’s kinda close. Vos doesn’t use words to talk to me. I just suddenly know what she wants to tell me, almost as if I’m remembering something, but it is still clear that the feeling is coming from her. It took a bit of getting used to. She is very smart, apparently even among her own race, and was attempting a daring exploratory mission into the unexplored wilds of Branch 16 of our spiral galaxy when she came to Earth and inhabited me as a random host to study. Her observations were going along nicely when, about three weeks ago, she got a frantic message from home about some kind of invasion and they were sorry, but needed energy could no longer be expended to keep up contact with her and hopefully she wouldn’t mind staying here. It sounds cold when I tell it like that, but her people honestly did seem terribly upset about having to leave her. At least, that’s what Vos tells me. Anyway, now she’s stuck with me and I have to go eat dinner (Vos is amazed by the digestive process) so I’ll write more later.

Well, things were going great until we hit that supernova around Sagittarius Beta. I mean, Vos and I were just flying along after we had gotten the Transfer-Being Locating Device, going through the 24th jump-hole, when BAM! There was this blast of intense light (kind of a bluish-white) and a wave of heat that would have melted us to tiny cinders if Vos hadn’t managed to shield us telepathically at the last second, although it was very tiring for her to put up such a strong shield. . . .Wait, I think I skipped a bit here. Oh damn, I hadn’t even gotten to the jump-holes yet. Hell, this is gonna take a while. Ok, there are these places on planets that link through to other worlds, dimensions, and such across the universe. Vos says that there are nearly an infinite number of these jump-holes, seeing as the universe is such a huge place. Anyway, when a person leaps through one of these holes (and of course one must leap through a jump hole [no, I don’t know why {actually, it doesn’t matter. One could probably step through, or flip through, hell, even fall through (but doesn’t it sound neat to say one has to jump through a jump-hole? I mean, it sounds much more adventurous, and besides, you know, it’s a jump-hole and all. . Yeah, I mean. .oh, nevermind)}]) he ends up on the Paths, which is this kind of inter-dimensional place (at least Vos said something like that), where all the paths to any other jump-hole can be accessed. If someone knows where he is going, he can follow the Paths to any destination in the universe. The problem is simply that there are so unimaginably many different ways to go that a person could get lost forever without some kind of direction device. Vos says that there are some people who can navigate the Paths naturally, using only their own minds, but they are very uncommon, and she, unfortunately, is not one of them. Also, there are apparently a few groups of people who work together to travel the Paths, going to all the different worlds. These groups can train people to travel, but they are extremely secretive, and even experienced beings like Vos don’t know any more about them than rumors.