Chapter Three: Travelling To...

[the_siobhan]

When people from the Embassy introduce me to Newcomers they say that it was months before I left my apartment. That's not technically true. It took me a couple of days to gather my courage, but once I made it back to the groudn floor I discovered it was possible to travel through the city via the local train network. I would find places where I could sit and watch teh foot traffic and drink a coffee or eat lunch and imagine that I would just get a job greeting newcomers to the city. An awful lot of the core city is inside but there are also tons of terraces and rooftops open to the outside and I became adept at sniffing them out. Sitting outside with my coffee or my beer felt like a victory even if I were just looking at stacks of muti-level highways or the glossy exterior of apartment blocks.

There was a terminal in my apartment that had the importnat city infomation prominantly displayed on teh main screen. The embassy information was the first link listed. So it was true that it was months before I finally clicked on the embassy link. The terminal displayed hte directions I would need to get my appointment and offerd me the option of a personal assistnat to get me there. I clicked on the button that said, "decline".

On the day of my appointment I showed up at the designated time for my train. The trains that took passengers to the embassy were busy enough that they had assigned seats and I held my ticket at the ready in case anybody asked for it. Nobody did. There was a flood of people through the door that worried me at first but everybody quickly filtered towards their assigned sections. I was so nervous that I was watching for my exit well ahead of time and so I was out of my seat and standign next to the door when we finally reached my platform. People who live in hte city visit the embassy for the first time at a very young age, so when I got off hte train I was surrounded by classes of young children being herded by ther teachers adn teh occasional parent. We were ushered by harried interns into a Hallway.

I had been intimidated by the scale of the city since arriving here. In a place where the main train station mihght have hundreds of tracks and where a single apartment might be three stories tall, I spent months until I finally thought I had managed to make the adjustment to a diferent scale of living.

I had no fucking idea.

The Hallway was... maybe hundreds of feet wide? I have no idea. I know that the people on the other side looked like ants.

I know that it had a ceiling. I also know that I could see clouds below that ceiling. I have no idea what that means in terms of masurements.I started walking. In part to get away from teh school kids. In part because I figured that was what was expected of me. In part because I genuinely had no idea what the fuck else to do. So there I was, trucking along wondering what the shit I was doing there. And then one of Them walked down the Hallway.

I felt Her before I saw Her. You ever had that experience where you meet somebody for teh first time, and you exchange a few words, or they just happen to be wearing the tshirt of your favoure band or they somehow have a tattoo or a button or a haircut or something that makes you think damn, this person gets me. This person is cool. It was like that. Except the emotion just plopped itself in front of me without a person attached to it. So natuarlly I start lookinhg around.

And then I look up...

and I get this... apology

And there she was. She looked like... I have no other way of saying this, she looked like a giant flea. She lifted a foot to move forward and her foot alone was taller than my entire body. And yet I didn't feel any fear. I was looking up at her adn I could see that she had six legs and multifaceted eyes and my strongest senstation while staring at this completely alien being was She knows I"m here and she would never hurt me. Her body was translucent adn I could see through her limbs but when I tried to stare through her torso the multilayers of her body blended toghrhre until I couldn't differnetiate her from the white walls behind her. I knew she could crush me in a second if she wasn't paying attention. And I also knew that she wa measurinmg each step careflyy as she went by. And she was sorry because she knew she was freaking me the fuck out and she really hoiped that we could be friends.

I exited teh Hallway wth my mind reeling. I had met one of hte aliens. And apparently I could speak to them.