Author: Ren ElisaBeth

Looking at myself in the mirror, I play with my transimulacrum and turn my human skin up to 100%. I’ve maintained a mostly solitary existence since I came to Earth some 200 days ago, so I have the luxury of turning off my skin at night, or any other time I’m alone.

I smooth out the face, and run my hands over the arms, making sure my scales are fully covered. I quite despise human hair, missing my Galgorian ridges more each day, but I didn’t get a say in this human casing. Sighing, I pull the hair back into a bun again, grab my work bag and make my way out the door.

I was assigned to a city called Middleboro which is one of the most densely populated areas on this planet, the thinking being that I could easily go unnoticed here. The unassuming identity, job assignment at a place with hundreds of other employees, and, as the humans say, homely appearance I was assigned has made blending in easier than I thought. I don’t mind my pseudo-invisibility all that much; I can easily complete my anthropological goal with impunity. However, it has become rather boring.

My days are repetitive, my job – my human job – is tedious and mundane, and not surprisingly it gets lonely when you have to hide so much of who you truly are.

Today, as I look in the mirror, adjusting my transimulacrum and turning my human skin back on, I stop before it gets all the way to 100%. All my parts have changed to human, but some of the details are still phantomly Galgorian.

My skin shimmers just a little when I turn in the light. I run my hands over my slightly shorter hair and faintly feel the bony protrusions I’ve missed so much. My eyes retain just a bit of their spherical Galgorian shape, and are shining a soft purple – a much more Galgorian color than the sky blue my human skin changes them to.
I think about how well The Order has done with erasing my Galgorian roots, painting me human, and blending me into the hub of Middleboro. How I can walk the crowded streets to and from work without anyone I pass so much as meeting my eye, let alone taking a second glance. I decide to leave my transimulacrum at 92% and make my way out the door and off to work.

As expected, even though my skin basically sparkles in the sunlight, and my eyes are exponentially larger than what is relatively average, I make it to work without so much as a nod from another human. Getting comfortable at my desk, I look up as I turn my workstation on and see a fellow employee walking past.

I’ve seen her around, but don’t know her name since she nor I have never made the effort to make that information known. I hypothesize that she is, as the humans call it, shy. She has always seemed nice though, and is one of my favorite humans to look at. She meets my eyes and suddenly stops.

My Galgorian hearts pound inside my cloaked chest as I start to think that leaving my human skin at 92% may have been a bad idea. She tilts her head at me as she approaches my desk.

“You look really nice today.” The first words she ever speaks to me come out in a near whisper, and for the first time since I came to this planet, my human cheeks blush.