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ALIEN EXCHANGE PROGRAM - HOST APPLICATION
     by Naomi Ulsted

 

It’s extremely important that we choose a good host match for our aliens. This is the inaugural year of our Alien Exchange Program where we hope to facilitate mutual learning and understanding of these new neighbors we’ve discovered.

 

Please answer the following questions honestly.

 

1.  Do you plan to turn over your exchange student to the Federal government or any other for-profit or not-for-profit organization planning to conduct experimental exploration on our exchange student?

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        Yes (you may turn in your application now)

  x    No (go on to the next question)

 

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2.  Even if they offer you extremely large sums of money?

        Yes (you may turn in your application now)

  x    No (go on to the next question)

 

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3.  How did you hear about the Alien Exchange Program?
 

It was at the mall. Which is odd because I hardly ever go to the mall. I find the mall suffocating, with the cloying Cinnabon scent, the crowds of women flocking Bath and Body Works, the teenage boys cruising the walkways with slouching bravado. Not to mention that since our species have taken to using semi-automatic weapons with bump stocks to gun down large numbers of each other in public spaces, I’ve been especially reluctant to visit the mall, a concert, a movie, or any other crowded area. If I had the money, I’d pay for the virtual reality mall, where I could turn off the Cinnabon smell and if someone gunned down my avatar, I could just respawn somewhere else. But like most people in my social circles, I can’t afford that luxury.
 

I won’t tell my alien how we like to kill each other here.
 

That day I was in desperate need of a new pair of sand boots, so I threw my Glock in my purse, hefted myself into my bullet proof vest and headed out to the mall.  I found the Alien Exchange Kiosk right next to the kiosks where young, beautiful men call out to middle-aged women like myself, offering samples of lotion and salt scrub. They’ll apply it themselves if you let them, rubbing your skin with their smooth hands. They can always sense their customer.  We’re the ones wearing jeans from a decade ago.  Our faces show we haven’t grasped the concept of contouring.  We’re the ones with credit cards with high limits.  If I could afford the virtual reality mall, I’d use a male avatar carrying a broadsword. Those lotion guys wouldn’t mess with me then.  As it is, I try to walk in the aisle far from them, pretending I don’t hear them targeting me.

 

As I passed by the Alien Exchange Kiosk, it placed images of the aliens’ planet into my mind.  The planet’s surface was iridescent green and lush, not parched and withered like this one.  As I came closer, the Kiosk’s smooth marketing voice resonated in my head asking, Do you have a thirst for adventure?  Do you want to connect with another world?  I thought about the words. I wanted to connect.

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4.  Have you experienced inter-stellar travel?  (We know that only the top 1% of the country can afford inter-stellar travel. Or a house in the suburbs. Or post-secondary education. So if you choose, you can speak to international travel in your response to this question, as opposed to inter-stellar travel.)

 

I have not experienced inter-stellar travel. When I was in college, I took out extra student loans so I could drink my way through a series of European pubs, but since I’ve grown older and more mature, I’ve redistributed my debt to involve less travel.  Not less alcohol, mind you, but expenses in the form of living quarters, an iPhone, elementary curriculum feeds for the kids.  Every day is planned and routine.  When I traveled, I didn’t have plans.  I woke up and perused a map over coffee. I shouldered my backpack and delved into the unknown.  Now, when my alien comes to stay with me, we’ll have coffee in the morning.  I don’t know if my alien wants scrambled egg protein for breakfast.  I don’t know if my alien will even eat or if she’ll have an enlarged forehead and horizontal ovals for eyes, like in the old science fiction movies.  I hope my alien isn’t slimy, but if she is, I’ll put a towel down on the kitchen chair.  Come to think of it, I don’t even if know if my alien is female.  Even we are evolving past binary constructs, but still, part of me hopes she’s female, like I’m still identifying.  But I do know that as we regard one another in my kitchen, it will be like looking at that map in the morning, shouldering my backpack and hiking into the world of possibility.

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5.  While your alien is staying with you, we’d like him/her/them to feel as though he/she/they are a part of the family. Unless your family is completely dysfunctional, which may cause the alien to deliver a negative report about humans to his/her/their superiors.  In what family events do you plan to involve your alien?

 

In my extended family, there are no more weddings.  The siblings have been married at least once, sometimes twice.  Actually, we’re excited about a pretty big divorce happening soon.  I’m hoping my alien can attend our divorce party after the trial.  She can help me roll canapés and pour champagne to celebrate a new beginning.  She can give us an alien blessing of some kind.  A special symbol from her culture of a new start.  She can stand or hover or whatever she does, in the circle with us, exchanging hugs.

 

Of course, if the trial doesn’t go well for us, then I’ll keep my alien away from that function.  My sister will return home to seek solace in one of her many online worlds.  She’ll don her dragon slayer skin or a pull up her sexy spy avatar and forget about what just happened.  My other siblings will sit and scroll through their phones like normal.  But I will come home to my alien to see her playing Connect 4 with my children.  We’ll make root beer floats and play charades and I will laugh and laugh, and forget the world is burning around me.

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6.  We want our alien participants to enjoy their time with you and the wonderful attractions our world has to offer, although we don’t want them to enjoy our world so much that they decide to come down here and colonize us.  Can you speak to the types of attractions you plan to show your alien?

 

Over a decade ago, I spent many afternoons downtown.  I rode the city bus to the bookstore where I worked alongside the bookstore collie dog, re-organizing the New Age section and looking for attractive book covers to face out.  For my lunch, I brought my cheese and pickle sandwich out to the park square.  The benches were shiny burnished metal.  The water from a bronze fountain depicting two leaping salmon sparkled in the sunlight.  A pigeon gave me the side eye and cooed questioningly at my sandwich.  Across the street, the theater marquis advertised the current production.  I only made minimum wage at the bookstore and couldn’t afford shows, but being downtown in front of the theater, in the midst of the park blocks surrounded by sharply dressed business professionals made me feel like I was a part of something important.

 

I would like to show my alien that place.  She could relax in the bookstore, the dog sniffing her curiously.  I’d buy her a book on chakras.  She could reach her hand, or her appendage or appendages, out to the water in the fountain and splash with the children who wouldn’t be afraid of her, because they’re children who don’t fear things yet.

 

I’d like to take her there, but it’s different now.  I unplugged my children from their entertainment feeds recently and dragged them down there to see an actual show with real human actors in that theater I can now afford because most people prefer to escape home through their virtual reality systems.  Bookstores are long gone and only Outside Dwellers have real dogs, since most people can afford a virtual pet.  After the show, a nostalgic production that featured an old-style public school before institutionalized public education put children’s lives at risk, my children dragged me toward the salmon fountain.  The water hasn’t run in it since the shortage years ago.  Pigeons scavenged through the cracked and grimy tiles of the fountain without giving us a second thought.  There were several Outside Dwellers lounging around the park square.

 

Most Outside Dwellers are harmless.  Scruffy and stinky for lack of water or dry soap, bare feet black with city filth, muttering stories that make sense only to themselves.  That day several of them shared a six pack of 4 Loco.  But you never know when a group of Outside Dwellers may be shooting up, not just smoking weed.  Or when the story one of them is living in his mind may paint you as a threat.  My kids wanted to play with the pigeons and my boy jumped from bench to bench, until I dragged them both away from the city square and the Outside Dwellers.  We went back home where I hooked them up to their entertainment feeds again, nice and safe.

 

If I took my alien there, she probably wouldn’t be afraid, like I am.  She’d likely even sit down next to one of those Outside Dwellers, joining him on the grungy bench and sharing a 4 Loco.  Maybe with her next to me, I’d be brave enough to hang out with the Dwellers, sharing stories and watching the light change as the sun dipped down into the smoggy sky and then dropped behind the towering skyscrapers.  Twilight would fall like it’s fallen every evening, regardless of who is sitting in the city square, be it an Outside Dweller, an alien, or me.

 

7.  There are hundreds of applicants for the Alien Exchange Program. In what way are you an especially good fit for this program?

 

As I sit here in my living quarters, inputting these answers, I guess I can think of lots of people who might be a better fit.  The families with money to take the alien to the places in our world that are still beautiful.  Places with waterfalls, lakes, and piped in rain.  I ’ve heard they still exist in some areas and the top 1% get to immerse themselves in those lakes, feel the spray of the waterfall on their bare arms.  But when I was 13, I watched E.T. in the movie theater.  Later, I watched more gruesome depictions of extraterrestrials, like those in Aliens, but my heart stayed with that waddling big-eyed, neck-stretching E.T.  At night, even though I was 13 and knew better, I held up my finger to the window and searched the sky.  I imagined my finger lighting up like Elliot’s and I reached it up toward the stars in search of an alien.  Decades later, I know she’s up there, her own finger shining brightly.  Please send me my alien. I need to meet her.

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Your application will be reviewed, and you will hear from us in four to six weeks. Should your application be selected for further consideration, alien placement will be contingent upon a home visit to ensure you can provide adequate facilities.  This includes a fully functioning hydration pod, as aliens cannot adjust to our arid climate.  You will also need to demonstrate bandwidth and networking links capable of reaching the alien’s home planet.  Your signature will be required on our “Liability Waiver Contract” where you will agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Alien Exchange Program should you personally befall any harm from or as a result of actions taken by the alien.  Thank you for your interest in the Alien Exchange Program.

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Originally published in The New Guard.

 

I love this piece because even though it's been five years since its original publication, it still feels just as relevant, both to the state of our society and to me personally, as it did then. It still feels as though we are searching for a connection that has proven difficult to find in this environment of fear and distrust. I had so much fun diving into this darker theme using the format of an application.

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Naomi Ulsted photo.jpg

NAOMI ULSTED writes young adult fiction and personal essays.  She is the author of The Apology Box (Idle Time Press, 2021).  naomiulsted.com

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