The Finale. . . “Confessions of a Traveler: The Observations of Alien 597” Part 5

6 min readDec 19, 2021

After getting sick with healthy food, someone at the hotel suggested she try some real food, and so she visited a restaurant that served BBQ. It was a place where they ate parts of other animals. She had seen a furry animal outside the restaurant, which was very cute and it communicated by barking, and wondered if this was the animal she would be eating. She ordered her food and a man disappeared into the smoke, as he opened the pit. She wondered if he needed a spacesuit to go in to get slices of brisket and ribs, so he wouldn’t die from smoke inhalation, but the man had no such protection, and even mentioned, “If you’re not choking on smoke, then it’s not a good BBQ place, just keep driving.” Her eyes widened as she saw the ribs on her plate. She was horrified and curious at the same time. She saw someone at another table give a piece of rib to the cute furry animal.

“Uggh,” she said to herself. “Feeding the animal one of its own.”

There was a billow of smoke coming off of the top of the restaurant, and she had seen on the TV box that there was pollution infesting the planet. She wondered if the BBQ pollution was contributing to this, and she would have to ask one of the scientist back home. She wrote on her algorithm. Human’s obsession with BBQ might be destroying the planet.

Alien 597 walked from the BBQ restaurant to the beach that was nearby and sat on the sand to see if this beach felt the same as it did back home, as she yearned for return and nostalgia. She saw the same furry animal from the restaurant, which she found out was called a dog, and in this case, a puppy, running along the beach. She wondered if it was running away so it wouldn’t be eaten. She watched it run toward the water, and then away as the water came in, and she found herself questioning why she was here in the first place. She had been impassioned by discovery and to figure out what is was to be human, so she could live vicariously through the experience. But that was not happening. Everything was silly here, she thought, and the people were silly too. She saw the waves crashing down, bubbling up into a foam, and she imagined being one of those bubbles, lamenting she was one of many, and in no control, just thrashing back and forth.

She got up and wiped the sticky sand particles off of her, and she was about to head to her transport to go home and report her findings, when she heard a yelp. A cry. A child? No. A puppy. It had wandered too far in, and had been swept away in to the ocean. The cry got louder, and she walked toward the water to save it. She couldn’t save it from being eaten, but she could save it from drowning, and she walked past waves, which she fought hard against. The crying got louder, as she moved deeper into the ocean. A wave knocked her down though, pushing her back to the beach, and she got up quickly and hurried back into the ocean. When she located the creature floating in the water, it was no longer crying, and had its eyes closed, as if sleeping. She reached her hands out to grab it, when a wave knocked her down. She was able to get her feet to touch the shallow ocean floor momentarily and took a deep breath. The air had been knocked out of her, and she no longer saw the puppy. Another wave landed on her, and she was now underwater. She could now see those same bubbles up close, and hear them muffle her hearing, as they became one within her. She opened her eyes again and she mistook the sky for the blue water. It did not occur to her that she could not swim, as she had seen people swimming, and figured it was a natural instinct all humans had, including her, since she looked human. She moved her arms and legs uselessly, and water began seeping into her mouth. She felt pressure in her nostrils, the pain in her lungs became unbearable, and each gasp let in more water, until she could no longer move. Her body gave up, and she became lifeless, like a feather in the wind. She floated lightly in the water, until there was complete darkness. She had become one with the sea, one with the bubbles. She had become one with the vast ocean.

She opened her eyes and a group of people were looking down at her. Immediately, she tried to sit up, but they stopped her.

“Thank you,” she mustered out. “But you can leave me alone now,” she said coughing.

She sat up, a tangled mess of hair and cloths. A few feet away from her, she saw the puppy, no longer sleeping, and she rose to her feet and tried to compose herself.

“Are you okay?” she heard, and she hugged each one of them, before walking away.

“Thank you again,” she said.

She could still hear them, but paid no attention. She turned and glared at the puppy once more, who was no longer blissfully dreaming forever, and she continued walking.

She looked at herself in the mirror in the nearby public bathroom, and saw the blood vessels in her eyes enlarged, and she tried fixing her hair. She grabbed a napkin and began wiping the water off of her arms. The old mirror painfully distorted her face and she looked eerily alien. Finally the mirror image cleared up, and morphed from blurry into herself again. At this moment when she saw herself clearly, she began crying and sobbing uncontrollably. She was now human, and nothing was as it seemed. She slowly composed herself, and managed to give a slight smile at the mirror. Note to algorithm. It didn’t matter if the world around her was still moving. She was going to continue her research and hope lightning struck twice.