It’s hard to be an alien living on Earth, I think, as I walk down a street on Earth. It isn’t that the people aren’t friendly. I’m so human looking that I can pass as human and no one even suspects; so they treat me just like another human. (Which is a good thing considering how they’d react if they knew I was an alien. They actually train themselves to react badly: that thing in High School with the frog? And humans LIKE frogs!)
And it’s not that the environment isn’t nice. The air is breathable (I can ignore ozone levels that bother humans), the food is excellent, they produce excellent entertainment. The problem is the loneliness.
Even though humans treat me just like other humans, and a lot of cute girls give me a big smile when I walk by, and I can have friends as well as colleagues. The problem is that I know they are different. The problem isn’t that they treat me like an alien, it’s that I know they are aliens. They never react quite like I expect them to. After this long I can tell they will react consistently and how they will react. It just isn’t the way I react unless I’m trying to react like a human.
I think there should be an alien support group, like a big group therapy session, so aliens living on earth (there seem to be enough of us) can get together and see someone normal, or at least expectedly abnormal. Whatever.
The point remains: It’s hard to be an alien living on earth, and it’s lonely. But I have a job to do. There are people to help. And it’s time to get to it.
I step into the daily planet. “Hey, Lois” I call. “Hey, CK,” breaking up a clinch that is starting to look too energetic.
“Hi, Jimmy” they greet me back.
I’m actually sorry about having to keep interrupting them, but it’s my job and it’s important (or so I’m told). If Lois and Clark were my people, or even lived on my home world, they wouldn’t still be apart. A bunch of us would get together, we’d drag them somewhere, pour half a bottle of schnapps down each of their throats and stuff them in a sauna so they could either strip or swelter. By the time we let them out they’d have been really good friends and ready to announce their engagement. That’s what we’d do.
But we aren’t there (I wish I was, much as I like earth, I’m lonely) and I have orders. Supposedly it’s important to keep them apart until ‘something’ is fixed. I’m not sure what needs to be fixed. My position doesn’t let me demand an answer. When you’ve had to mortgage the entire planet and get a chance to pay off some of the debt you take it and you don’t ask questions that you aren’t permitted to ask. You do your job.
Clark looks irritated, like I just interrupted him about to make out with his girlfriend. I’m sorry for him, but that’s my job. He pulls out a memory stick. “Can you crack this encoding for us?” he asks.
Of course I can. You’d think one of them would wonder how I can do these things, but the answer is simple: I’m an alien from a planet with a highly advanced computer technology. Cracking earth codes is as easy as pi, like reciting the first hundred decimal places.
I’ll help out. That’s my job: help out, keep them apart until ‘something’ is fixed, pay off my planet’s debt for having the ionosphere fixed. I’m Jimmy Olsen: Strange visitor from another planet, with computer powers far beyond human ability. And I don’t wear spandex.
