🛸🛸🛸
Placement Officer: We’ve found a human match for your recon mission to the planet. Synchronizing your brain patterns will allow you to observe without the individual being aware of you. They will continue to act freely.
Scout: I am excited for this opportunity and hope to make the hive proud.
Placement Officer: Naturally. This is the image of the individual. Do you have any questions?
Scout: Why is the hair two-tone?
Placement Officer: It’s called going grey. Human hair changes pigmentation as the human ages. There is a large industry involved in denying this fact. Research says this individual has been going grey since the age of 19.
Scout: Is that why this one does not participate in the ritual discoloration?
Placement Officer: So it would seem, although many in the proximate location do participate. The individual appears to have brought social behaviors from previous locations to the current one. This is one of the things we would like you to gather data on.
Scout: The legs look strong.
Placement Officer: This individual often walks in pointless circles. Since you will be able to observe the brain patterns, you will help us understand the purpose of this activity. Research says this individual grew up in (checks notes) New York City. This area has a greater share of public transportation than other conurbations with the geographical polity. The use of buses above and below ground entails a large amount of concommitent pedestrian activity. Perhaps walking is an form of exercise the individual feels comfortable with.
Scout: The arms are not as well-developed as the legs.
Placement Officer: Yes. Aside from walking, there is an extreme lack of sports on the schedule. If there is any exercise, it is methodical and individual, such as riding a bicycle. The lack of group melees or sudden darting movements gives us hope that we will be able to maintain a good connection between the brain patterns. Dropping out can be disorienting.
Scout: For which one of us?
Placement Officer: Mostly for you. The individual may notice a change, rather like the feeling of losing a train of thought or forgetting why you walked into a room. Humans do it all the time, even without having one of us along.
Scout: That fact that no harm will come to the subject both strengthens my peace and gives us better data.
Placement Officer: Your attitude is both admirable and correct. To continue along the arms. You can see from the line of the shoulders, an indication of time spent hunched over books and keyboards. Observers have seen ongoing attempts to remember to stand or sit straight but the effort generally lasts until the next page or the next paragraph.
Scout: Speaking of keyboards, the fingernails look very short. Is that to facilitate typing? Not that humans have an sort of respectable hand equipment. (Buffs talons against body covering. Regards proudly.)
Placement Officer: No, the short fingernails are from biting, or more accurately these days, from picking at or clipping. This individual keeps nail clippers in several locations to trim any pointy bits. This appears to limit the actual fingernail gnawing.
Scout: Isn’t that a bad habit, a childish one even?
Placement Officer: Our analysts are divided. One half thinks the prevalence of nail clippers is a sign of maturity. A way of dealing with the tendency without tearing the nails down to a damaging level. The other half thinks the habit itself is a sign of weakness. Just quit already. Hand care is an important part of self-presentation. (Flexes own hands. Extends talons. The middle hand has talons significantly longer than those of the Scout. This does not go unnoticed.) The nail problem will work in our favor, as an indication of a busy internal monologue. Any bleedover from us won’t get noticed in the static that is already going on.
Scout: The individual seems pale.
Placement Officer: As you know, humans come in a limited range of colors, all variations on the theme of beige. Pinkish. Brownish. Yellowish. They seem to get quite excited about the differences, which is ridiculous given the chromatic range of the rest of the lifeforms on the planet. This individual comes from northern genetic stock, which they call “white” but as you can see is closer to pink.
Scout: There is a large amount of localized activity.
Placement Officer: Yes. For a non-sporting type, the individual is quite kinetic. Moves around. Waves the hands and arms. Talks a lot. Shows teeth. Interestingly, a human smile signifies joy, while in the human’s closest relative, the chimpanzee, a “smile” signifies fear.
Scout: The chimes are ringing. I must go prepare myself.
Placement Officer: May the spirit of the hive protect you.
🛸 🛸 🛸
Afterword
Classroom detail.
Assignment #2. Turning Yourself into a Character. Use physical description to portray background & character traits. Target length 750. Example, Michigan Quarterly Review: “Portrait of My Body,” by Phillip Lopate.
Result. More science fiction than was intended, I suspect. (Look at me being extra fictional!). A) I was having trouble finding a way into this. B) Not submitted. Half the class gets critiqued each time, which means we are only scheduled to hand in two of the four assignments. We are on the honor system for what we chose to do with the non-submitted assignments. The joys of continuing education. So, I took a bit of a turn. I figured you wouldn’t mind.
Evaluation. Pluses. Met word count. Wrote something. Always a yay. Minuses. Only moderately fulfilled the assignment. Lopate had more concrete details and more storyline. He managed to work in the color of his eyes and his religion. My stayed superficial, arms, legs, and so on. And, once more, the writing was expository rather than narrative. One character speaking in a thinly disguised info dump. The thing is, I like info dumps. I’ll happily read an entire book on the history of X, without a plot in sight. But I digress.
Mine has less genitalia than Lopate, which I’m counting as a plus.
Class posts
[What Is Personal Narrative, Thoughts Before A Class]
[Why I Write, Personal Narrative Class #1]
[What Is The Story Of Your Name? Personal Narrative Assignment #1, Class #2]
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 