XV. Don’t Watch Our Alien Movies.

There's a particular kind of dread that doesn't come from danger, but from being watched too long. Noticed too closely. You start wondering what it is they're hoping to find, and if you've already failed to perform. Eventually, you just try to look busy.

Stillness feels suspicious...

---

Four figures loomed, shaped like haunted trombones and glowing in aggressive teal. Beings, presumably.

One blinked with its elbows. Another wore Crocs, with socks, as if deliberately hostile.

“We are the Extraquaerentes,” said the one at the center. Its voice was fractured, as though several machines were attempting to speak at once and had been denied consensus. “You have been selected for advanced analysis.”

Of course I had.

Had I volunteered for this? No record of such a decision existed. And yet, their presence implied that my selection had been known, and accepted, long before now.

Still, I raised my hand. Not in defiance, but in bureaucratic courtesy.

“I feel compelled to inform you,” I said, “that I am not the appropriate choice.”

They did not object.

One tilted its head like an IKEA lamp uncertain of its own assembly.

“I am not the human you’re looking for,” I said. “I’m not even a functional example of me. I weep at small inconveniences and remain overwhelmed by correspondence. I am not resisting. I am disqualified. Also, I think I’ve had this conversation before. Maybe a dream? Maybe Thursday? Hard to say. Crocs this time. Bowler hat last.”

The aliens didn’t respond.

Probably because there’s no Extraquaerentes word for yikes.

One of them opened a glowing tablet.

I hoped it would catch fire.

I cleared my throat.

“You're looking for understanding. A glimpse of meaning. But I can only offer fragmented behaviors. Compulsions. Echoes of unprocessed memory.

If you watch our films, you won’t learn who we are.

You’ll learn who we’re afraid to become.

You want insight? Here it is: don’t watch our alien movies.”

They looked intrigued.

Mistake number one.

I tried to reason, fast and panicked:

“You’ll start with Spielberg, soft lighting, bicycles. Next thing you know, it’s Ridley Scott: chest explosions and moral collapse. You’ll go from aww to AHH in under two films.

And once you see how often we cast you as mucus-drenched murder slugs or noble, misunderstood metaphors for loneliness and late-stage capitalism? You’ll spiral. You’ll start reading the online comments.

Don’t.

You’re gonna need therapy. And not the holographic kind.”

The same one nodded and slowly descended.

(No chair. Just, hovered lower.)

“And it gets worse,” I said, now in the breathless cadence of someone trying to prevent a car crash in slow motion. “We’ve got people who think your kind are disguised as CEOs. We’ve got basement-dwellers with more cultural sway than our government. You’ll end up on a T-shirt next to Bigfoot. Possibly kissing.

You’ll be someone’s Halloween costume. Possibly sexy.”

I waited.

Still no questions. Just the dull hum of something enormous and indifferent.

“The problem,” I said, “isn’t that I’m unworthy of study.

It’s that you’re trying to analyze a system that’s already collapsed inward.

Our culture is feedback. We analyze ourselves to the point of paralysis.

We dress you in latex and fear you. We give you subtitles and pretend to love you.

But we do not want to be understood.

We want to be watched.”

A silence fell.

But then again, perhaps it had always been silent.

I couldn’t tell if they were thinking or simply done.

The lights in the room dimmed, as if the ship itself had become clinically depressed.

And then,

a single red light began to flash.

“Abort,”

one of them muttered.

---

I landed softly in my kitchen moments later.

Toast: room temperature.

Banana: still overripe. Existentially so.

Ceiling: suspiciously normal.

Later,

though I did not see it, I imagine an entry was made in a ledger far beyond my reach:

Earth: Red-Flagged. Noncompliant. Observation terminated.

Specimen: Disoriented. Unremarkable. Possibly recursive.

I resumed my meal.

There was no other task to complete.

And honestly,

they got off easy.

For what it’s worth,

-Charlene Iris

One thought at a time.

One truth at a time. 

Because some epiphanies stay with you.