The Way of the World

His job was to watch them and, despite the extensive research he’d performed, he was
hopelessly lost.

He was three days into the assignment and, while he had gone into this assignment with
high hopes, he’d also hoped that he wouldn’t run out of material to study within the first week. In fact, when he’d picked up the flyer outside his Humankind Behavioral Science class, he’d figured that he’d make the trip to Earth mainly for the unit discussions. The discussions always seemed to lean toward the topic of Earth—it was becoming increasingly popular these days as a vacation spot since colonization had made it more accessible and digestible to the average population. Pollux was one of the only members of his unit that hadn’t been to Earth, which not only resulted in a terrible score on his Humankind Behavioral Science experiences grade but also obliterated any points that he could’ve made in these nightly conversations.

He’d hadn’t been, his unit members insisted, he couldn’t support any of the arguments he
was making.

So, yes, maybe part of this was about being right—for once—or at least being listened to,
but it was also about school.

The reason didn’t really matter now: he was failing either way. The part that made it hurt
the most was the fact that he’d prepared. He’d been ready. He’d studied both English and
Mandarin, the two most common Earthean languages. He’d read the textbook in its entirety, even though the readings weren’t due until the end of the next orbit. He’d been ready.

Until he set foot on Earth.

Earth was hot. He was prepared for this, of course, in theory, and the hydro-suit he was
wearing—the latest model: skin tight, entirely translucent and worn under the outerwear—helped but reading about the sweltering heat and blindingly clear skies and being in them was entirely different.

Of course, he hadn’t lost his head. He’d found shelter, obtained light-weight clothing, and
scouted a location where he could do his observation hours without being in direct sunlight:
Central Park.

He was there, now, with a strange hat with a protruding brim sitting atop his head. He
was in the shade even without the hat, the oak trees arching high above him casting dappled
patterns over his pants and the sidewalk in front of him, but something about wearing it made him feel like he was doing a better job at blending in.

The park seemed to be in the same state as it had been since the start of his assignment:
crowds of people filtered through dressed in bizarre articles of clothing, swarming in groups or walking alone, laughing with their heads thrown back and their mouths opened impossibly wide or talking in English so rapid that Pollux was unsure that it was even the language that he’d learned at home.

He glanced down at the notebook in his lap, empty except for two notes:

-Humans traveling in groups smile; humans traveling alone don’t

-Where is everybody going?

Figuring out what the humans did during the day wasn’t part of his assignment, though.
His assignment was to analyze them, determine a hypothesis on how they thought, what they
wanted from their life and how their behavior represented these things. Looking at the swarms of humans in Central Park, Pollux wasn’t sure where to begin.

He might’ve sat there for the rest of the day, with an empty notebook in his lap and a
thousand thoughts swirling around aimlessly in his head if she hadn’t found him.

She was the girl who sat down on the bench next to him with enough force that the bench
jolted beneath him uncomfortably. He instantly revised his position on the quality of human
architecture.

She had impossibly dark skin, a brown that reminded him of staring at the night sky
because the smile that split her face, blinding and perfectly white, reminded him of the stars that broke up the darkness. She had a jacket so tall that the collar bumped up against her chin. It was long and his favorite color blue, and he couldn’t help but feel like it was a sign. And, apparently, she had the same hat as he did.

“Nice hat,” she said, reaching out to bump the brim with one of her hands and then
gesturing to her own.

He liked the way she talked immediately because her accent focused on the words like it
had them by the throat, curling and going up and down in various places. It helped him pay
attention, to find the words that he already knew.

And they did have the same hat. She had dark, curly hair that haloed her head up until it
reached the hat, which was squashed down on top of her head. He thought if he managed to keep an eye on her for a few more seconds the hat might pop off of her head and drift to the leaf-covered ground.

The girl was staring at him, and he realized that he hadn’t responded. “Thank you,” he
offered. He didn’t like the way his own accent sounded out loud. He didn’t know why he’d
agreed to this assignment in the first place.

“Yeah,” she said, and turned away from him so that her back was against the bench and
her shoulder bumped against his. He was painfully aware of his light-weight clothing, her long coat. “You from around here?”

His heart stuttered in his chest, and he inhaled carefully, measuredly. Anxiety and hope
clashed in his chest until it was painful—he had an opportunity, now, to talk to a human and to fulfill his assignment; he had an opportunity, now, to make a fool of himself.

“No,” he said, casting a sideways glance in her direction. She was staring back at him,
which startled him. The hat also hadn’t popped off her head, yet, which intrigued him. “I’m
vacationing,”

“Oh,” The smile on her face made him feel at home. He’d noticed that Earth seemed to
have fewer stars in the sky. He supposed that the rest were down on the surface, embedded inside of people like this girl. He liked that thought; his fingers itched to write it down, but the girl kept talking. “That’s nice. I thought you seemed a little lost. I was wondering if I could help another Yankees’ fan out,”

Pollux blinked at her for a moment, both distracted by the smile and caught off-guard by
the sentence, fast and heavy with words whose meaning he couldn’t parse out. She saw the
discomfort on his face, and answered herself in his place. She tapped the hat again. “Your cap.
You really are new here, huh?”

He nodded.

That star-smile reappeared. She got to her feet and, for a moment, he thought that she—
his first semblance of a victory since he got to Earth—was going to walk away. Instead, she
flapped her hand at him, a gesture that he thought meant follow me.

“I have a free hour. Let me get you oriented, okay?”

He hesitated, and she flapped her hand at him again, and he got to his feet. She grabbed
his arm. “Okay, first, you need to get some food,”

His assignment had been to watch them, to learn about them. It wasn’t to figure out what
they do, it wasn’t to play along and mime a human experience.

But, he figured, as the girl looked over her shoulder to smile at him, it couldn’t hurt.