We’ve been on Esat Ekt for almost four years, yet somehow, we’re still strangers. There’s a distance between us and them, an invisible wall we can’t traverse. I want to break that wall, but I don’t know how. They smile at us, give us the occasional elbow grab, a sign of affection, but there is no warmth, no real connection. It feels like wearing gloves all the time.
We don’t know what we are. No one knows. On the one hand, our species has some of their genetics. By law—their law—that should make us Ekt. That’s why we were made citizens. If that’s true, we can’t leave this planet, ever. On the other hand, only a very small portion of our genetic makeup is affected by theirs. I for one show no signs of genetic interference. None. By that reasoning, we have no business on this planet at all. They don’t allow aliens. The Etyakt region can’t give us citizenship. If we’re aliens, we go home. So, either we can’t leave or we can’t stay. The Great Council of Akitast stepped in to settle the matter, three years ago. While they debate, we remain in limbo. We’ve also become the topic of a lot of debate. Our region, Etyakt, is very diverse. More than half the population is from other worlds, at least in part. They identify with us. They see what happened on Earth, the Ekt killing millions of us, and they fear they could be next. There are a lot of protests. Those in Osk—the population there is much more homogeneous—blame us for what is happening. They want us gone as fast as possible. I think that’s why the Council can’t come to a decision. Let us stay—force us to stay if you ask Vincent—and you anger people in Osk. Send us away and you risk making the part-alien population even angrier.
I can tell that people here are extremely curious, about us, but also by nature. We are living treasures to them, a gold mine of information about a world they know almost nothing about. I’m certain that everyone here wants the Council to call us Ekt. Because if we’re not Ekt enough, if we’re aliens, then we shouldn’t even be here, and every second they spend talking to us risks affecting us in the worst possible way. So they wave at us on the street, chit-chat—it would be rude to exclude us, and the Ekt are anything but rude—but they will find an excuse to disappear if the conversation elevates itself above small talk. They are astonishingly good at it, experts at walking this very fine line. They do it without unease or awkwardness, something we could never do if our roles were reversed.
There are exceptions, of course. Most of them involving Eva. She’s … raw. Vincent and I are constrained by what we think is expected of us. She’s not. She can be rude, always say what’s on her mind. People in Etyakt love her for it. Of the three of us, she’s the only one who’s managed to develop genuine relationships with people. Vincent and I have … acquaintances.
There’s a rift forming between the four of us as well. Eugene only talks about leaving. Vincent doesn’t want to be here either. People here are hesitant to get close to us, but Vincent won’t let anyone in at all. Except for Enatast, and Esok, of course. She really likes him, and I think it runs both ways. If it weren’t for Eva, I think there might be more there. But he won’t allow himself. He won’t betray Kara’s memory—that’s how he’d see it—not with Eva reminding him of her with every breath she takes. She’s so much like her mother. Eva and I don’t see eye to eye on a great many things. She and her father are also growing apart.
Despite all this, I feel right at home here. I hope we don’t go back to Earth anytime soon. I love this place. I love these people. There is so much knowledge here. I remember going downtown when I lived in Chicago. The life, the energy. I could just sit alone on a bench somewhere and feel those eight million lives around me. The same is true here, but what I feel is wisdom, and I find myself bettered for just bathing in it. I’m a child on this planet. The most complex science, the most abstract concepts I can grasp are so mundane on this world, it is almost impossible for the Ekt not to teach me new things. They try their very best, but some things are so obvious to them, they’ll slip into conversations about the weather.
I was foolish enough to think I could be useful when we first arrived. I spent some time with their scientists—they seemed very eager to meet me—but when I explained what I was working on, I could tell by their faces I could just as well have told them I was trying to boil water. They were curious about me, but nothing I could ever do would qualify as scientifically relevant here. I got them to let me use one of their school labs. That only took two years and twelve votes. They are … let’s just say reluctant to do anything that could affect human knowledge in the tiniest way, but I eventually convinced enough committee members that it couldn’t happen in a school lab. It’s the one good thing about never having long conversations with anyone, they never fully grasped the extent of my ignorance. Holy cow! The things their teenagers—they’re not even that old—play with! They won’t let me read a book, but they’ll explain how the equipment works if I ask for something specific enough. It makes sense. If I can devise the experiment myself, it’s probably something I could have done without their help. I wish.
I started with very simple things, things I already knew. That way I’d know if the results made any sense or if I did something wrong. Then I upped the ante, little by little. They always asked for more explanation, to make sure I wasn’t fishing for knowledge. Over time, I found ways to trick them into letting me use more sophisticated equipment. I had noticed what I thought was a hunk of germanium among the samples in the lab. These guys have really good rocks. It turned out to be germanium-76. I told them germanium was rare on Earth, which is true, and that I’d never seen that particular isotope, which isn’t. I told them I’d like to see if it was capable of double-beta decay—two protons turning into neutrons at once, instead of just one. That took surprisingly long to explain—I suspect they don’t intuitively see matter as being made of discrete things—but I did it well enough that they assumed I had seen that happen with my own eyes, and they didn’t object when I asked if I could test their isotope. They gave me a box. Not a nuclear reactor and an underground detector, not a particle accelerator the size of a small city, they walked in with something the size of a shoe box under one arm. I watched them tinker with it for a minute, probably to make it display things in a dumb enough way for me to understand. They explained how the controls worked in baby terms, and they left me alone with it. It took me a good week to figure it out, but today I observed neutrinoless double-beta decay. I didn’t detect it in some convoluted way, I saw it happen right in front of me. I was so giddy, I told everyone I ran into on the way home. They all looked at me funny, as if I were some deranged person screaming: “The Earth is round! The Earth is round!”