The Days I Spent as a Guest on Earth

[Don't read...]

During a major interstellar mission, the top-of-the-line starship piloted by the young Q mysteriously disappeared.

The Federation published a statement criticizing Q, calling him the worst creation of the Center for Life and the worst starship pilot in nearly a century. He was responsible for the first and only failure in the glorious record of the H-M32 model starship, because he also managed to make the ship disappear.

*

When Q woke up, he found his tentacles wriggling among a mass of crystalline, glistening white. Nearby gathered a group of minds with faint energy signatures.

The minds of these alien lifeforms chattered, sending out one noisy energy wave after another. Q curiously received them.

"Is he a monster? Why does he look different from us?"

"He must be one of those evil tentacle monsters from cartoons. Look, his tentacles are blue! How scary!"

Q silently pulled back his little feet and tucked them deeper into the snow.

"We're ghosts. Ghosts aren't afraid of anything, and he can't hit us."

Q wiggled the parts of himself that were exposed and showed his agreement.

"Huh? It looks like he can hear us!"

"No way. Unless he's a ghost too. Hey, if you can hear us, nod. If you can't, shake your head."

Q tried to make sense of the information he'd received from the group of minds and figure out what to do next, but he seemed to lack the kind of thing called a "head" in this alien culture.

Q thought he should have a mimic form. He'd always believed that taking on a mimic form would weaken his true body's abilities, but when playing with friends (yes, the information he'd just learned included "friends" and "playing"), he should look like them.

Thirty seconds later, a vaguely human-shaped thing appeared in front of a dozen little ghosts.

"Head," Q said.

(So alien lifeforms communicated using spoken language, he thought. But why didn't they just use brain waves? Turning thoughts into words would lower their dimensionality according to the laws of the universe! And it would use up more energy! It was terribly inefficient.)

"Do I look like a person?" he asked.

The little ghosts stared at him in amazement and fear, stammering, "A little. You watched us and made yourself look more like us!"

Q nodded awkwardly. After taking on his mimic form, his limbs felt so unfamiliar that it seemed like none of his cells would obey him.

Head: Make it a little rounder.

He needed thick hair that reached his ears. Hmm, it could be blue, just like his tentacles.

And eyes...

"Can you make your eyes like mine? My eyes are gold, but nobody else has eyes like mine. They say the color is weird," said one of the little ghosts, clutching a doll.

Q obediently made his eyes gold.

"Wow! You look like a giant doll! You look so soft and fluffy!" The little ghosts curiously floated closer, looking him up and down. "Can we touch you?"

What cute aliens! Q thought.

What a fascinating little alien tentacle monster! the little ghosts thought.

Reading Guide:

A story about an alien child exploring Earth. The general tone is probably a cute fairy tale.

The family and friendship storylines are both important. I'll try to keep it close to science, and anything unscientific is something I made up.

P.S. (The supporting characters Li Ge and Nan Yu are a couple, but they don't get much page time.)

Bosses, click into my profile to check out my upcoming novel: Sorry, I'm a Player

Theme: Love is the most romantic thing in the world.