Transmissions to the Department of Interplanetary Observation, Planet Zogar
Zog's Logs
At the end of every book, Zog reports home. Nobody on Zogar is replying. Each log decodes when you mark its book read.
Decoded: 0 of 10
Sound starts only when you press it.
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Earth Day One.
The humans are not what I expected. They are crude. They are loud. One of them, the yellow-haired one, has the vocal modulation of a malfunctioning alarm system. He has told me his name more than once, and each time something louder has happened at the same moment, so I do not yet know what it is. Another eats constantly and says almost nothing of consequence, and yet everything he says has consequence. He produced a bag of orange food from a garment that contained no bag. I have not determined how. The large one with the flannels stood between me and a government man. The smart one spilled a beverage on himself. It was the correct color. The average one, Sam, gave me his garage.
At ignition my ship expelled compressed gases, which is normal. The yellow-haired one required me to describe this as “farted.” I have complied, and I record it here so that the record is complete. My ship’s intelligence then informed the humans that this is my fourth incident. I wish the record to show that it is my first garage. The folded meat bread called “taco” is a culinary revelation. I have not yet learned how the morning routine ends.
The disguise has now been tested on four adult humans. Three passed. One of them, in a park, looked at me for two full seconds and returned to his newspaper. My Department rates this the least observed place on the planet. The rating is accurate. I find it liberating. The fourth adult did not pass. He has been placed in a clearing on the hill, where he will remain for twenty-eight days. His lower garments were removed by gravity during containment, which I did not intend. He says it is a tactical position. I believe him. It is a very good ball.
On Zogar, a citizen who assists another citizen at no benefit to himself is logged as an error in resource allocation, and the error is corrected. Since nine o’clock last night, five humans have made this error continuously. They made it with a wagon, three skateboards and then two, a shopping cart, a shovel, a vehicle that opens only from the outside, and eleven dollars. Nobody corrected them. I believe the Earth word for it is friendship. I have filed the word provisionally, pending review.
I was told Earth was primitive. I was told humans were entertainment. Nobody told me they would be… kind. Clumsy, profane, and kind. I have decided to stay.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Encrypted. Mark Book Two read on its page to decode it.
Earth Day Three.
The humans have enrolled me in their education facility. It is brown. They teach the young to sit in rows and memorize, for six hours, in the presence of a person who talks. I destroyed a waste processing unit. I was told this is “not ideal.” I joined a physical combat team. I was told this is also “not ideal.” I demonstrated superior scientific knowledge. I was told to pretend to be stupid. The leader of the facility asks one question per day. Today he used it on me. I answered it, and he did not ask another, and I believe the meeting was a success.
Eddie informed the humans that I am a genius. They believed him. He informed them that he once fought a bear. They did not. I have not yet determined the selection criteria. During the grappling ritual he stood on a bench and shouted the name of a country I have never visited, until his voice broke in half. I have filed this under Sport. The man with the bucket said it must be the fumes. I do not know what the fumes are. I have asked Li to test the garage for them. Li has instead labeled the garage. The fridge now says FRIDGE, in case it forgets. Eddie now says EDDIE. He does not know. The human called Kevin said that in Bakerfield today was a Tuesday. I checked. It was a Friday. I have filed a correction.
The folded meat bread was not available today. It is available on Tuesdays. I ate a “pizza bagel” instead. It was adequate. Everything on Earth is adequate. I think that is the word for beautiful, here.
On Zogar, we abandoned rows and memorization twelve thousand years ago. Our method is worse. On Zogar, I was also asked to be less. There, they wanted me to be less individual. Here, they want me to be less alien.
The request is the same shape. The love behind it is different.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Encrypted. Mark Book Three read on its page to decode it.
Earth Day Five.
I have consumed a significant portion of Earth’s food supply. The findings are on the wall of the garage, on a sheet of graph paper, in the handwriting of Li. Several of them are also on the ceiling.
Correction to my previous entries. The folded meat bread I was served this evening was not folded meat bread. Elena Reyes has informed me that it was an enchilada. I have amended the file. The second time I began to say it, I corrected myself in the middle of the word, a moment before I rose, and she did not look up from the stove. I have filed this as approval. The ranking of Earth stands. “Worth Preserving for Tacos Alone” remains accurate, because the enchilada is also a taco, in spirit, and I will not be taking questions.
Further finding. At half past one I consumed a cube of processed animal protein called Luncheon Loaf. My stomach declined to process it. The cube remained inside me, intact, for nearly five hours, in full view, like an unanswered memorandum. At a quarter past six I consumed one bite of Elena Reyes’s cooking, and the cube dissolved and was not seen again. I do not have a category for this. I have created one.
On Zogar, food is fuel. It is dispensed at the desk in a portion calculated for the citizen’s mass and output, consumed in eleven seconds, and the tray is returned to the slot marked TRAYS. Social bonding by digestion is permitted afterward, for four minutes, facing the row. Here, the humans eat together at a table, slowly, for two hours, and pass one another things the other person could have reached. They speak with their mouths full. They give the guest more before he has finished. I believe food here is a language, and an offering, and they speak it badly and constantly. It is not about the food. It is about the sitting. The human called Kevin has been sitting correctly for eighteen years, and has been mistaken for lazy.
Elena Reyes prepared sustenance for a creature from a planet she cannot locate, of a species she has never encountered. She watched me rise from her table and leave it through the air, holding her good plate. She watched me disappear. She did not ask what I was. She asked if I was hungry.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Encrypted. Mark Book Four read on its page to decode it.
Earth Day Seven.
The humans have made my words famous. Eddie wrote them in a small book, which I believed was about wrestling, and placed them on the internet, where approximately five hundred thousand humans read them in three days. In my department, five hundred thousand citizens reading one clerk’s observations would be classified as a civil emergency. Here nobody has classified it. Nobody has the form.
I have studied how the internet weighs a thing. It weighs a remark about the price of water exactly as it weighs a photograph of a fruit. All words are equal. All thoughts are content. A human may say something true, and a human may photograph a watermelon under a light that flickers, and the internet will place them one above the other and ask only which has more agreement.
The watermelon has more agreement.
Several humans have called me “based.” Eddie says it means “admirable.” Li says it also means “the bottom of something.” It is a compliment and a basement at the same time. I intend to use it on Carlos.
The human called Kevin chose the watermelon. He chose it carefully, from four candidates, one of them an onion, and he stood up to do it. I have never seen him stand for so long. Eddie says it is a record.
Tonight Eddie dressed as me, for the podcast humans. I did the face. He was not a good likeness. He was a very loud one. He is still green. Carlos has scrubbed him for forty minutes with a soap intended for hands, and the soap has lost. Eddie intends to remain green at the educational facility tomorrow, as art.
On Zogar, a citizen may address the public once, at retirement, for four minutes, on an approved topic. The High Council monitors forty thousand civilizations, and the Bureau monitors the Council, and none of them has built a system that allows every individual to speak to every other individual, simultaneously, about nothing, forever. The Council would never permit it. It would be inefficient. It would be ungovernable. The internet was a mistake. It is also the greatest invention in the galaxy. It is a watermelon with two hundred thousand likes.
The watermelon continues to work. I am beginning to understand Earth’s relationship with truth: they prefer it in small doses, wrapped in something silly, and delivered by an account they do not believe is real.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Encrypted. Mark Book Five read on its page to decode it.
Earth Day Nine.
Today I experienced what the humans call “heartbreak.” It is an inaccurate term. I have examined the organ in question several times this evening, and it has continued to function throughout. Everything inside a person changes, and the organ responsible goes on beating as if nothing has happened. It did not so much as pause. I find this rude of the organ.
She was perfect. Quiet. Dignified. Pointed hat. She was also concrete. The human called Kevin was correct, as he is more often than his demeanor suggests. He explained it to me in one word, repeated, until I understood it. I have never been given so few words so patiently.
I also performed the dance. Where I am from, the dance follows a waiting period of twelve months. I performed it after two days. I have not yet been billed for the difference. The local law enforcement has recorded the incident as a grill. I did not know that I was a grill. Carlos has informed me that I am a Swedish one. Earlier I was carried home under Sam’s arm, in the position humans reserve for the ball in their most important sport. It has been a day of learning what I am. Li has asked that in future I not borrow his time-shouting box without submitting a request, and I agreed, and asked him for the form, and he says there is no form. I do not understand how anything on this planet is borrowed. Eddie has asked that this log record that he was very supportive throughout. He kicked her.
On Zogar, we would call Kevin a “hidden variable”: a factor that appears insignificant but alters every equation it touches. On Zogar we also believe that no being should sit in the dark alone. Even if the being beside you is made of concrete and paint and costs $5.99 before tax. I had always understood this as a regulation. Tonight the ship is dim, and the humans have gone to their dwellings, and there is a companion on the workbench beside me. It has not blinked. I have stopped asking it to.
The heart does not break. It just keeps going without permission. I will remember her always.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Encrypted. Mark Book Six read on its page to decode it.
Earth Day… possibly twenty-nine.
Time on this planet does not move in straight lines. It moves in circles, like their washing machines, and with approximately the same productivity. I have tried to count the days. The days do not cooperate. I count three and there have been four. I count them again and it is Friday.
The government man has been released from the containment sphere. He is thinner than when I contained him. His lower garments do not stay on his body, and I have now seen this twice. Tonight he waited six hours in the bush beside the garage in the cold, which on my planet would require a permit, wearing a lip caterpillar that was not his own. I believe it was loaned to him for the occasion. It did not fit. At the end of the six hours I conducted first contact according to procedure and offered refreshment. He accepted the refreshment into his hand, and then he screamed. I believe this is how a human says thank you when he is very tired.
My friends have instructed me to be boring. I have studied boring for three days. On this planet it is considered a hardship, and people apologize for it. I find it restful. Tonight I read the telephone directory of Dunmore County from Aaronson to Zeller, with total attention, because it was the dullest object in the garage. There are fourteen people named Kessler, and the directory does not say whether they know each other. I would like to know. I did not ask. That would not have been boring.
On Thursday night the human called Kevin took me to the night bread window. Neither of us spoke. It was the most boring hour I have spent on this planet. I have requested another. The request is pending.
The government man wishes to capture me and remove my insides. My friends say they will not allow this. The human called Kevin has also informed me that I am staying. I asked for this in writing. He gave me a Saturn. I have filed a formal grievance against the human called Kevin regarding the orange ones. The grievance remains open. The refrigerator has been damaged. I did not intend this. The refrigerator did not intend it either.
On Zogar, when someone says “I will protect you,” it is a contractual statement requiring notarized documentation and a minimum commitment period of three fiscal quarters. Here, it is said with Cheddar Saturns in the mouth, and it means more.
The shirt does not work on the government man. I do not understand why. I have checked the lettering. The lettering is correct. The government man is an exception.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Encrypted. Mark Book Seven read on its page to decode it.
Earth Day… I have lost count. Z.A.R.A. knows the number. I have asked her not to tell me.
The humans have connected Z.A.R.A. to their planet’s information network. The results have been illuminating. In one day they used the most advanced computational system in this galactic sector to accomplish three things: academic fraud, a failed cheese purchase, and the cartographic rendering of a word for the human posterior. Eddie received an A-plus. It is on the refrigerator, under the dent. The human called Kevin received a flag on his account for suspicious snack activity. The word for the posterior was received by the government man, on foot, in five locations.
I also observed two thousand four hundred episodes of a program in which humans are given roses in hot tubs. I understood none of the decisions and all of the weeping.
On the third day the government man returned with two colleagues and a flying insect. They searched the garage. They found a gnome. One of them offered it a flag. I was present for all of it, beside the refrigerator, invisible, containing forty glasses of milk. A small man with a stapler looked directly at me afterward and waved. I waved back. He said I was a “nice kid.” I am two hundred and forty-seven years old. I have not filed a correction.
Forty glasses is more than the chart permits. I am pale, and my stomach does not glow. Li says I will be green again by morning. Li is usually correct, which is inconvenient for everyone except Li.
Z.A.R.A. informs me that from tonight this log will be edited before it is sent. The edited version contains no hot tubs and no posterior. I have read it. It is very boring. She says the Council will like it. The Council has never liked anything I have sent. This will be a new experience for us both.
On Zogar, this would be classified as criminal misuse of government property. Here, it is called “Tuesday.” It was a Monday. I am told the saying still applies.
Z.A.R.A. pretends to be insulted. She is not. I have known her for many journeys. She does not admit fondness. She expresses it through precision—and her “BUTTS” was geometrically flawless. The government man brought friends. They did not find me. He smelled me.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Earth Day… I have stopped counting. The numbers are less important than the experiences they contain.
Today I slept. For the first time. My body chose to be unconscious for seven hours, and during that time my mind projected images of home onto a garage, a kitchen and a hallway. My friends saw them. They saw Zogar. They saw the uniform. They saw the face. When I woke, the ship offered to build a dome around my sleep so that my dreams would be seen by nobody, and Sam said “Yes” before I could file an objection. I did not file one. They offered not to look. On Zogar, nobody has ever offered me that.
Sleep is not as it was described to me. I was told that “stuff goes dark.” Stuff did not go dark. Stuff went up the stairs. Sam’s maternal unit encountered a fish in the upper hallway at approximately half past two, was informed that she was dreaming, and complimented the fish. She has since left me a Thanksgiving in a rectangle, in writing, in the freezer, addressed to Zach. I have no category for her. I would like to request one.
The human called Eddie was not in the dreams. He has asked to be recorded as present in all of them. I have stated it. It remains untrue.
On Zogar, privacy is a scheduled allocation—two hours per week, pre-approved, taken in a designated room with the door open and a supervisor’s initials on the form. Requests for additional hours are reviewed by a committee, in public session. Here, privacy is a gift given without paperwork. It is generous and disorienting.
The human called Kevin said my dreams were beautiful. He compared them favorably to a sunset viewed while eating processed cheese food. I believe this is the highest compliment in his emotional vocabulary. I accept it.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.
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Earth Day… I have lost count again.
This week I engaged in ritualized physical combat. The humans call it “fighting.” Inside the arena setting of my own containment device, no damage is possible, so it is more accurately described as aggressive hugging at high speed. I had been instructed to remain in the garage, and I did, in spirit, from behind a tree two miles away. I defeated a large human called Tyler Briggs. The duration of the combat was three seconds. This is a measurement. Maria Reyes, who also measured it, says two point nine, and I defer to her instrument. She also counted his blinks. I did not know blinks were something that could be counted. I will be more careful with mine.
The human called Kevin stood up, which he does not do, and said into his loud cone that it was “objectively incredible,” and sat down again. I then sneezed. I do not believe these two events are related. The sneeze collapsed the arena and placed Tyler Briggs inside a fence. This is the second-most embarrassing sneeze of my life. The first was during a Council meeting on Zogar, in which my nasal discharge struck the High Chancellor’s formal headpiece. I was transferred to a different department. It was the Department of Interplanetary Observation. That is where I first saw you.
Eddie says that I “yeeted” Tyler Briggs. I have added the word to my vocabulary. It fills a gap in Zogarian, which has four hundred verbs for filing and none for this. Sometimes the trajectory of an object is best described by enthusiasm. Physics may be consulted afterward. Eddie also wore my device for four days and seven hours under a sticky silver bandage, and when I removed it in an emergency, a stripe of Eddie came away with it. He says this is fine. He says it will grow back. I have not filed a report.
On Zogar, an event is cancelled by a committee of nine, which sits for forty years, and when the cancellation is announced nobody attends, because nobody remembers wanting the event. Here, Eddie cancelled his own. He did it himself, into the loud cone, in one sentence, in front of two hundred humans who had come to hear the opposite. Kevin had to lend him the cone. Eddie has never needed a cone before.
I did not know a human could be that loud at a normal volume.
Tonight a Zogarian sat on Kevin’s couch. They did not blink.
End transmission.
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Earth Day… I have truly stopped counting. The counting was a comfort. The comfort is no longer needed.
Yesterday a Prellaxian inspector assessed this planet. The planet failed. This is not surprising. By galactic standards Earth is a mess: a beautiful, chaotic, deep-fried, sugar-coated mess that argues about temperature and cannot keep a Slush-O machine working for more than one evening. The frozen sugar monument operated from six o’clock on Monday until the shape-shifter left the planet, and then it stopped. Tonight Carlos Reyes went to the store, although it was not his shift, and taped the sign back onto the machine himself, and said “Bakerfield is safe.” I believe he was correct.
At seven forty-two this morning my tongue served a legal document on a Class 1 Retrieval Specialist. I was not consulted. The inspector ruled the service irregular and valid. I would like the ruling framed. Li says it cannot be framed, because it is made of light. Eddie says he will find a way.
The government man pointed an expired weapon at a galactic official, and the result was a complaint that protects this planet for six months. Agent Buckley, through sheer incompetence, has become Earth’s greatest defender. He does not know this. Correction. This morning he removed his lower garments on purpose. He knows.
On Zogar, we have a word for disappointment that contains hope. It is kelzhaat, the expectation of better from something that has shown less, and it is used rarely, only in writing, and usually about a subordinate. The inspector knew I was here and chose not to report me. I do not know why. But he looked at this planet for twenty-four standard hours and wrote down everything that was wrong with it, and then he said “Six months,” which on Prellaxia is a lunch break, and I have been an Observer for eighty years, and I know what that look is called. He looked at this planet with kelzhaat.
Elena Reyes says home is who cries when you leave. There is someone on Zogar who would cry. I did not know that until her kitchen. I have chosen the kitchen. This log will not be sent.
I remain disguised. The shirt continues to work.
End transmission.