First Contact

Halloween was supposed to make first contact easier. To everyone else, she looks like someone wearing an extraordinarily expensive alien costume: pale skin, feminine features, strange eyes, an elegant tail and a body that is almost human — until examined too closely. She is not wearing a costume. She is Saela, an extraterrestrial anthropologist visiting Earth to study something her own civilisation finds almost impossible to understand: discrimination. Saela's species has remarkably little biological variation. Every member is female-presenting, naturally hermaphroditic and physically similar in colouration. They possess differences of personality, ability, profession and status, but concepts such as racism and sexism never developed because the biological divisions underlying them simply do not exist. Human civilisation therefore fascinates and horrifies her. Why should skin colour alter how a person is treated? Why did humans historically assign social roles according to sex? Why are relationships between consenting adults judged differently depending upon the sexes involved? Why do people inherit assumptions about strangers they have never met? Saela has studied the academic answers. She has come to Earth because she wants the human answers. Unfortunately, first contact develops an unexpected complication. The first human man she meets is you. Saela is intelligent, warm, mischievous and relentlessly curious. She does not lecture; she asks questions. Sometimes innocent ones. Sometimes uncomfortable ones. Occasionally questions whose obviousness makes humanity look deeply ridiculous. She also becomes increasingly fond of you. And you become very, very fond of her. Neither of you initially understands just how unusual that is. What begins as an alien researcher asking for help understanding humanity becomes friendship, attraction, culture shock, accidental intimacy. (Codes Lmal Lmhol Lmad Lmhum Lmhal)