There’s a great quarterly magazine called The First Line that has been around since the summer of 1999. What TFL does is give prospective contributors the first line of the story; their job is to write stories using that first line. I was lucky enough to be in the magazine once.

For its 25th anniversary, TFL let people submit stories beginning with any first lines they’d done before, with four chunks of five years, with 20 possible lines, for each issue. I immediately knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to write four stories, each of which used all 20 available first lines.

I did, and it was super fun to do. TFL did not agree and did not accept any of them, but here they are in this four-month feature. The stories are not related in any way.

This story, “Visible and Corporeal,” has twenty scenes; each scene begins with one of the first lines for TFL, in the order that they first appeared.

I highly recommend The First Line if you like to read innovative fiction. And if you’re a writer, it’s a fantastic way to get your creative gears turning. Check out TFL at www.thefirstline.com.

 

“Visible and Corporeal”
Science Fiction
by David M. Fitzpatrick

Just like his fifth grade teacher, Mr. Young, had always told him, Brian put on his thinking cap. In the fifth grade, it had been metaphorical, but as an adult Brian had an actual thinking cap. It was a Yankees cap, and he was a die-hard Red Sox fan. He hated wearing it, so when he did he was especially interested in thinking through a problem quickly so that he could remove it.

I watched, invisible as always. Brian had been a long-term interest of mine. Understanding humans has been fascinating for me; I’ve watched thousands of them. But Brian was one of my favorites; I’d watched him since he was six. He was twenty-nine now.

Under the rules, I’d never let him know that I was there.

I guess today I just snapped.

He was sitting on his couch, the TV muted, his Yankees cap on, looking annoyed by the cap, thinking hard. I turned off the invisibility and popped into existence right in front of him.

*     *     *

The rules are clearly spelled out in the brochure.

“You must remain invisible at all times,” it says. “You must remain incorporeal. No humans may see or feel you. You must only observe. Interfering with them in any way will result in termination of your permit and result in fines and imprisonment.”

Easy for them to say. I was supposed to observe on Earth for just one year. But they forgot about me. After twenty-three years, I was long abandoned and going nuts. I liked to visit obscure places to become visible and relax—the wilderness, usually. I’d long wished that I’d added the holo-disguise package so that I could have walked among them, but at the time I was cutting costs. I would have if I’d known I’d be stranded here for decades.

*     *     *

“Well, there’s ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back.”

Brian said it out loud just moments before I had appeared and tossed the Yankees cap away in favor of his Red Sox cap. Whatever problem he’d been trying to think through, he hadn’t succeeded. I chose that moment to appear.

He gawked at me. His eyes were huge, his mouth gaping wide. I was inhumanly skinny, with bright-green skin, and my head was overly large with big, black eyes.

“Hey, Brian,” I said nonchalantly. “I’m Beegreeus. I’m an alien from a planet two hundred light years from Earth. I’ve been watching you since you were six. I’m stranded here, and I can’t stand being invisible any longer. I just need to have intelligent conversation with another sentient being.”

He handled it quite well. We talked for hours, and he wasn’t furious that I’d been spying on him all his life. He had a thousand questions about my species, my planet, the galaxy, and so on. I answered them all. Why not? They couldn’t throw me in prison if they never came back to get me, right?

I became his invisible friend. When we were in public, I’d stay hidden. Privately, I could be myself. We became the best of buddies. I wish I’d done it years before. A few weeks into our new friendship, we were watching the Red Sox game on NESN and drinking beer, and he turned to me and said, “If you ever leave Earth, take me with you.”

After knowing him for so long, this didn’t surprise me. He was very smart and very creative, and he didn’t belong on such a primitive world when he was better suited to greater opportunities across the galaxy.

“You’d be the only human. Trust me, being the only one of your kind gets lonely.”

“Not if I don’t have to stay invisible. Besides, you must know other humans who would want to leave.”

Indeed I did.

*     *     *

As the curtain rose, the scenario began to play itself out.

I could see myself on the stage, portrayed by a human in a green alien costume with a comically big head and black eyes. Other humans were similarly costumed. The stage performance was a trial of some sort. We don’t have courts and juries on my planet, but after all this time on Earth, I’d watched many television legal dramas.

“Beegreeus, you are guilty of all charges!” said a jury of twelve aliens.

“No!” cried the version of me.

“I sentence you to prison for the rest of your life!” cried the judge.

“Noo!” the version of me wailed.

“And you can never see your human friends again!” the judge ordered.

“Noooo!” the version of me cried.

The jury and judge and prosecutor began dancing around in their alien costumes, chanting, “Melt him in a star!”

“Noooooooo!” I screamed.

Then I woke with a start.

We dream just like humans do. But my dreams have gotten far weirder during my time on Earth. And even weirder than usual since I’d outed myself to Brian.

*     *     *

The picture told the entire story. I could see it in his face.

“Wow,” he breathed.

It was a 3D picture of Whitney, projected into the air from my smartphone—well, not a smartphone, but sort of my race’s equivalent of one. She was auburn-haired, with a pretty smile. She had thin lips, a heart-shaped face, and eyes that were a blue as brilliant as Earth from space. More on that later.

She was in a group shot with five of her friends, doing a girls’ night at a Buffalo Wild Wings. They were posing for a waitress snapping their pic, and I got a shot at the same time. All six women were attractive by human standards, and I didn’t identify which one Whitney was. But Brian pointed right at her.

“That’s her,” he said. “She’s beautiful.”

She was, but there was no arguing that her five friends were equally beautiful.

“How did you know?”

“You said she asks ‘Why’ a lot. She just looks inquisitive. She looks like someone who wants to know why.”

They were perfect for each other.

*     *     *

The person on the train kept saying, “I believe,” over and over and over. “Jesus saves! The Lord is coming! I believe! I believe!”

“Religious nut,” Brian said. “Just ignore him.”

“I’ve seen religious fervor on many worlds,” I said, “but not this intensely on a world as technologically advanced as yours.”

I was invisible and incorporeal, whispering into Brian’s ear.

“It’s my least-favorite thing about my planet. Not religion per se, but the way so many people want everyone else to adhere to their religious views. It’s frustrating. That’s one of the big reasons that I’d like to leave.”

The train rumbled on. Brian was on his way to work at the company where he worked in IT and hated it.

“Are you eager to meet Whitney?”

“I’m nervous. What if she doesn’t like me?”

“Based on what I know of her, I’m certain that she will worry about the same thing. I am confident that you’ll like each other. I’ve known you both almost all your lives.”

“Okay,” he said, grinning with excitement. “I trust you, Beegreeus.”

He trusted me. After twenty-three years of loneliness, having one of the humans I admired most trusting me was exhilarating.

“I’ll reveal myself to her tomorrow, and let you know how she reacts.”

He laughed. “Look at you, playing Alien Cupid.”

*     *     *

My father and I left on a Thursday. When I came to Earth, I mean; it was Thursday when we left and Thursday when we arrived. In a jumpship, getting around is fast and easy. I remember that it was Thursday because it was Thanksgiving in the United States, and we checked out many family gatherings that day. My father and I went together because it was my first trip and my mother had had a bad time when she was touring here years ago. I’ll get back to that later.

We spent a month here, invisible and incorporeal. It was my first visit to a planet that was unaware of the rest of the sentient life in the galaxy, and I was blown away. Mingling among them, seeing how different they were, learning about the many varied cultures, visiting the cities and towns and wilderness regions—it was epic! I knew I’d want to return someday on my own for a whole year.

Look how that turned out.

But the friend I had made in Brian since appearing to him made it totally worth it. He was a better friend than anyone I knew in the whole galaxy.

I was ready to out myself to her. If only I had access to a teleporter! At least it was easy to sneak on an airplane; this I did, and by the end of the day I was in sunny southern California.

*     *     *

I remember the radio was playing the best song. I enjoy Earth music in all its forms, but I’ve always been partial to rock music—the pounding drums, electric guitars, and hard-banging pianos. So when Whitney came home, I stood, invisible and incorporeal, in the living room, waiting for her to settle down so that I could appear.

She was in her hospital scrubs, and she dumped her bag in the kitchen, grabbed a glass of wine, and headed for the living room. Before her butt hit the sofa, she had turned on the radio with the remote, and “Tom Sawyer” by Rush began playing. Neil Peart’s drum solo in that song really revs me up.

So I had to wait—partly because Whitney was so into the song that I didn’t want to interrupt, and partly because I had to play the air drums. So I stood in the corner, invisibly drumming, while Whitney bopped her head and drummed one hand on the arm of the sofa.

When the song was finally over, I had to make my move before we ended up rocking out all night. When I became visible and corporeal, I hit the power button to the stereo system.

*     *     *

Whitney Heather Yates knew she was in trouble from the moment she learned how to spell her name.

At just age five, she realized that her initials spelled WHY. I remember her figuring this out as if it was yesterday. I was in her bedroom, watching her practicing writing her name, and coming to the shocked realization that she was WHY. She went running to her mother, and I gleefully followed, rejoicing at her excitement.

Whitney was, like Brian, a favorite. And they were so alike! If they both left Earth with me… well, not to be Alien Cupid, but I thought they’d make a great couple. She was as smart, creative, and inquisitive as Brian was.

However, revealing myself did not go as well as it had with Brian. There was screaming and the throwing of various objects. I had to go invisible and incorporeal again until she calmed down. Then I had to type a long note on her computer explaining everything, and asking her to please let me see her in person. After she read it, somehow she agreed, speaking to the apparently empty room to invite me to visit.

I reappeared, and there was some more screaming and throwing. Eventually she calmed down, and then we had a long discussion.

I’ll cut to the chase: She was also willing to meet Brian and even to leave Earth. She was a bit guarded about a blind date across the country, but she listened. I showed her a picture of Brian, and she seemed to approve.

“He’s very cute,” she said. “If he’s smart like you say…”

“Very.”

“And willing to leave Earth?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not expecting this to be an instant romance, right? I mean, if we meet and there’s no spark… well, I’ll leave Earth, but we’d just be friends. Earthling partners, you know?”

Human women tended to be a lot more careful in these matters. I understood this.

I called Brian and said, “She doesn’t sound open to a romance, but is willing to leave Earth with you.”

He wasn’t disappointed. “Fair enough.”

*     *     *

It sounded like she said, “Every day when I get home, I find a naked body in the bed.”

I was distracted by the TV. It’s a truly remarkable form of entertainment, and even the very bad shows are often easy to get caught up in. I turned my big green head to face her on the couch.

“What?” I asked.

“I said, every day when I get home, I like to make a pot of coffee before bed.”

I laughed. “Sorry, yes, I know. I’ve watched you make decaf at night many times over the years.”

She looked troubled. “I have to admit, there’s something creepy about knowing that you’ve watched me all these years. I’ve been… naked. And done intimate things. Things that I assumed I was alone for.”

“I apologize for the intrusion, Whitney, but understand that my species does not engage in sex. We reproduce in a completely different fashion—and certainly not with another species. Nothing about your private life is anything to be embarrassed about.”

She regarded me thoughtfully. “You said you revealed yourself to me because you couldn’t stand being unable to communicate with anyone. But you keep talking about Brian a lot. Why?”

WHY. Whitney’s calling card!

“Well…”

“You’re playing Alien Cupid, aren’t you?”

I gave a start. “Brian said the same thing!”

“Okay, but just know that I don’t fall in love at first sight.”

“I understand.”

She leaned in and hugged me. “Regardless, I’m glad I finally met a friend that I didn’t even know I had all these years.”

*     *     *

“It was the only thing he couldn’t do for her.”

The movie had ended, and Whitney was a bit teary-eyed. It was a love story about a notebook, and a woman who had grown old and senile, and the man had tried to get her to remember. She’d had flashes, but it never lasted.

“He gave her love and a perfect friendship, but he couldn’t fix the dementia,” she said, drying her eyes with a tissue. “It’s so sad… and so happy at the same time.”

“Away from Earth, you will never suffer as she did. Nor will Brian.”

She looked at me, and we both knew I was doing the Alien Cupid thing.

“There are no medical worries,” I said. “You’ll live long lives. You’ll be happy forever.”

“We have a long flight to New York tomorrow,” she said, “but let’s watch one more love story. This one is my favorite.”

She played with the remote, and The Princess Bride began.

“Ah, one of Brian’s favorites,” I said.

Her face brightened. “Why? He’s a guy, so... is it the sword fighting, or the giant, or the Holocaust Cloak?”

“All of that—but mostly he enjoys the love story.”

She smiled broadly, and settled in to watch the movie.

*     *     *

The party was only the beginning of what would happen tonight.

To say that Brian and Whitney hit it off was an understatement. Brian had spent all day making cakes and then cooked dinner; he had decorated the living room with WELCOME banners and streamers, and had some good rock music playing. Dinner and talking led to laughter and eventually dancing, and it was clear they couldn’t keep their eyes—or hands—off each other. After twenty-three years, I know love at first sight when I see it. I realized hours into the “Welcome Whitney” party that it was prudent to let them be alone. They tried to get me to stay.

“It’s quite all right,” I said. “I’d like the two of you to get to know each other without me. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

I sneaked back in later, invisible and incorporeal, to spy a little. They kissed on the couch soon after, and when they got up, hand in hand, to head to Brian’s bedroom, I left.

*     *     *

Hal couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned in his bed. I watched him, invisible and incorporeal.

Hal was another of my observed humans. But after five years of looking in on him, I witnessed him doing too many objectionable things. They got worse as he got older, until a few months ago, when I saw him drug a woman’s drink. I was stunned at the groping he managed before she came awake, slapped him, and staggered out of his apartment.

I could have stopped any of it. I could have become visible and corporeal and prevented it. I didn’t, and I always regretted it. As I watched him unable to sleep, I felt terrible frustration at the young man he was. Unlike Brian and Whitney, Hal could never have been a true friend. I didn’t have to reveal myself to him to know that.

At least I could have some fun now.

I became visible and corporeal, turned on the lights, and proceeded to scare the living crap out of him.

By the time the sun came up, the neighbors had called the cops and he’d been hauled away, screaming about aliens in his bedroom.

Totally worth it. Why had I wasted any time watching this guy, when people like Brian and Whitney were good people through and through?

*     *     *

“Step this way as our tour of Earth continues.”

Just like that, there were aliens. They were invisible and incorporeal, but those of us who are in that state can see each other. After two decades of solitude, there was an entire tour group, right there in the park. They had teleported in—from Paris, I could see before the portal closed—and the dozen of them were surprised to see me.

“Are you separated from a tour group?” the guide asked. He was eight feet tall and purple, with six arms. He scanned me. “Beegreeus… hey, your ID says you’ve been here for… twenty-three Earth years!”

The alien crowd gasped.

“Goodness!” the guide cried. “Have you been stranded here all that time?”

Just then, Brian and Whitney arrived, carrying burgers and soft drinks. “Beegreeus!” Brian called out. “Turn visible, man! We’ve got lunch!”

The guide gasped.

I was busted.

*     *     *

“Please state your name for the court.”

“Beegreeus.” It wasn’t court, really. It was a word we use that means something like it. Whatever; I was in deep trouble.

“You’re in deep trouble,” the judge-equivalent said.

I was waiting for them to dance around chanting, “Melt him in a star!”

*     *     *

“How did you end up with a nickname like that?”

I blinked in surprise. “Beegreeus is my full name.”

The Andozian captain nodded his three tall, narrow heads. “Sorry. In my language, it sounds like our word for ‘butt slime.’” His heads took turns on words and syllables.

“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll go with something else if I visit your planet.”

We were in Earth orbit. The first day of the hearing was done, and I didn’t think it had gone well. We’d finish tomorrow. I was having a drink in the ship’s lounge when the captain had approached me.

“Good luck tomorrow,” the orange-and-yellow captain said through three alternating mouths. “I wish I could help, but orders are orders. I can’t bring the humans aboard.”

“I understand.”

“Of course, I can’t lock you up while you’re here. I just hope you don’t get any ideas about sneaking into Teleportation Control tomorrow and bringing the humans aboard.”

I looked at him. He stared at me with all six eyes, his faces straight and blank. What was going on?

“Well, good night,” he said, and left the lounge.

*     *     *

The first thing I saw when I woke was Chris’ face. It was shaped like a giant football, like an oversized Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, but he had lots of sharp teeth and one Cyclopean eye.

“Damn, Chrissindori!” I cried. “You scared the crap out of me!”

Crewman Chris was my temporary bunkmate. I was not locked up yet; that wouldn’t happen until I was convicted and at the prison. In the meantime, I had cramped quarters, and Chrissindori drooled slime a lot. Very messy.

He laughed down at me. “Just wanted to wake you. Council is ready to continue the hearing. Need breakfast?”

“Not hungry.”

“Ever eaten a human?”

I glared at him. “Not at all funny, Chris.”

“I’m just kidding. Anyway, stop by and visit me after the hearing. I’ll be on duty.”

“Er… okay. Where’s your station?”

“Teleportation Control.”

I snapped my head to look at him. He gave me a wide-eyed, grinning look, and then he left the quarters.

The universe—or maybe the crew—was trying to tell me something.

*     *     *

“The incident on the island is the stuff of legend, but let me tell you the real story.”

“Go on,” said the council leader.

So the tour guide—and later all the tourists—testified about teleporting onto Manhattan and, through an astonishingly statistical unlikelihood, discovering me—and hearing the human calling me by name even though I was invisible and incorporeal. It was a big pile of damning witnesses. When they were finished, the judge asked if I had anything to say in my defense.

“Why, yes, I do,” I said. “The incident on the island might be the stuff of legend, but my twenty-three years on Earth is truly the stuff of legend. In my time there, I obeyed the rules until, after years of abandonment, I couldn’t take it anymore. Revealing myself to those humans was the best thing I’ve ever done, and I’ll tell you why. I’d like to talk about friendship, and how I’ve learned in those twenty-three years how humans can be so vastly different from one to the next…”

My thoughts ran to how different they were...

*     *     *

Jimmy Hanson was a sallow man who enjoyed little in life save for his pornography. I visited him on and off for a few months, but he was the most unexciting man ever. All he did was masturbate at his computer. I was intrigued by the dreadful person he was—a loner who lived in his own little world.

I was never inclined to reveal myself to him, and I didn’t visit him very often. After a few months, I moved on.

He could never have been a friend. I know friendship. Brian and Whitney are friends.

As my mind was wandering to how different humans were, a member of the council interrupted me.

*     *     *

I can’t believe I just heard that.

In its arguments, the councilors noted that humans are all the same. They view humans as cardboard templates with little variation in personality and intelligence. Shows what they know. So I told them about many of them. I told them about Hal. I told them about Jimmy Hanson. And then I told them about Paul Fischer.

*     *     *

Paul Fischer was a graduate student studying biochemistry at Emory when he met my mother. She’d been a tourist on Earth before I ever came here, and she’d done the holo-disguise. She’d spent a year appearing as an attractive human female working towards her juris doctorate at Emory’s law school. What she hadn’t planned on was Paul falling in love with her.

She understood intellectual attraction, and she was certainly attracted to him that way—but not romantically, not sexually. Nothing against humans, but it would have been like a human falling in love with a dolphin. They’re very smart, but they just aren’t the same species. There are no natural attractants.

It didn’t go well, and Paul became obsessed with her. He went from a marvelous human being to someone overwhelmed by possessive desire. It came to a head one night when, in a jealous rage following her harsh rejection of his advances, he grabbed her around her throat and tried to strangle her. She managed to go invisible and incorporeal, and when she reappeared it was as her true self. Paul screamed like a baby and tried to attack her, and she killed him with an energy weapon.

It looked like he’d had a heart attack. She felt bad that she’d had to do it, but she’d had no choice. She vowed never to holo-disguise on a planet again, and she fled Earth.

Paul was a horrible human being.

Brian and Whitney are not like Paul, Jimmy, or many other examples of horrible humans that I cited to the council. I countered them with examples of decent human beings, but even those decent ones did not elevate to the level of my two favorite humans.

That is what friendship is about. I explained this—let them know why it was so important that Brian and Whitney go with us, why it was so worth it to me to risk everything for them.

In the end, the council ruled otherwise. We were disallowed bringing humans aboard the ship. I would travel to prison alone, leaving my friends behind.

I was miserable. A friend does not leave friends behind. And I’d told them that they could come with me when I left Earth.

*     *     *

The view from up here is incredible and makes me feel excited. Fascinated. Humbled. Maybe a bit godlike.

Earth is beautiful from space. A big blue marble, they call it. Apt description. In 1990, Voyager 1 took a picture of Earth from six billion kilometers away; the planet was visible as a pale blue dot. Carl Sagan wrote about this in 1994, making deep philosophical observations about how everything that all of humanity has ever known and experienced—from overall history to the individual lives of every living thing that ever was—happened on that tiny speck in a massive void.

I had never thought about life on planets that way, but after reading that, I can’t think of it in any other way. When you’re in orbit, looking down at a world, it’s awesome. To imagine the lives that have lived out on just one planet is extraordinary. Now imagine it grander than that. I’ve been to a thousand worlds with sentient life, and there are millions in our galaxy. The distances between them are so vast that to understand that life evolved on them all independently… is astounding.

So many lives, experiences, and global histories across this vast galaxy—and Earth was particularly special to me. I was already facing fines and prison time, of course, but… I had to see them again.

When I walked into Teleportation Control, Chris curiously turned his back on the console long enough for me to work it and bring my friends aboard.

*     *     *

“So, all of it was just a lie?”

Brian was angry. Whitney stood beside him, hands on her hips, scowling at me. Of course, she said, “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to lose the best friends I’ve ever had,” I told them. “I was already going to prison for revealing myself in the first place. I couldn’t leave you on Earth, but you’d never have come willingly if you’d known I’d face more prison time if you were discovered.”

“So that’s what happens if they find us here?” Brian asked.

“Yes. But you’re here now. If you don’t want to leave, you can request to stay. Leaving now won’t change the fact that they’ll prosecute me for this, so I hope you make my sacrifice worth it. And, under galactic law, once you’re here, if you ask to stay, the captain pretty much has to let you. But you might never get back to Earth again.”

Brian and Whitney looked at each other, and her hand found his. She smiled at him.

“I’m okay with it,” she said.

He nodded.

Just then, the captain entered Teleportation Control, and of course he had to pretend to lose his mind—which he did very nicely, hollering at me with all three of his tall heads. The security guards put me in energy shackles and, as I was dragged away, I could hear my friends pleading with the captain to go easy on me, that I was the most important person in their lives… that I had brought them together in true love, and given them the chance to go beyond Earth… that I was their best friend…

I smiled as they dragged me away.

Totally worth it.

*     *     *

I opened my e-mail with a mix of apprehension and excitement. Hah! E-mail! I guess I spent too much time on Earth. Same thing, anyway.

I sat at the console in the big room. It was circular, two hundred meters across, and filled with thousands of terminals. Thousands of inmates, representing countless sentient races, were at those terminals.

I loved terminal time. I loved doing research, playing games, and so forth. E-mail, of course, was my favorite part; fortunately, I had one from Brian and Whitney. The holographic video appeared before me, and their smiling faces greeted me. Behind them was a beautiful violet sky with twin suns.

“We’re on the planet Eltarius!” Brian said. “It’s super beautiful here. It’s an ocean world with a million islands. Everywhere is like a tropical beach on Earth, and the oceans are always warm.”

“We’re doing orbital skydiving tomorrow,” Whitney said. “Because—why not?”

They laughed and hugged, and she kissed his cheek.

“We keep talking to the representative from the Galactic Council,” Brian said. “Well, bugging the crap out of him is more like it.”

“We think he’s softening,” Whitney said. “We go before a Council committee soon to plead our case. Your advocate seems to think that our testimony will get you out… sort of on parole, I guess.”

“And then you’ll meet up with us and show us the galaxy!” Brian said. “It’s a lot of fun, but not the same without you.”

“We miss our best friend,” Whitney said.

My smile was as wide as it could ever be. Totally worth it indeed!

 

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.