Researcher

The moment I saw Larry VandenAkker at the coffee shop, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I let my eyes slide right over him and back to the menu. But I knew he had seen me. I’d seen his puzzled look as he focused on my face, and the flash of recognition just before I looked down.

I’d been here before, and much too recently. I quickly calculated. I’d last been in this location only twenty-seven of their years ago. How had this happened? I’d been researching this blue-green planet for six thousand of their years, half of that time as a human, and I could recall being recognized only half a dozen times before. And those times were when one of them, traveling their world, had come upon me by chance. I hadn’t made this level of perceptual clock-place error ever, that I knew of. This just reinforced my decision to move on at the end of the cycle.

Again, I had done something irrational based on human influence. Humans have a complex psychology largely managed by chemical cascades in their governing organ called “emotions.” The only way to understand these emotions is to experience them, which is fascinating but dangerous. In order to understand, one has to feel. And emotions are not always compatible with logical thought and action.

I quickly analyzed. I had pulled off the highway into this town based on a human thought-set called “nostalgia.” I had experienced positive emotions in this place, and had come here to re-experience them.

Larry approached my booth with a glass of water on a tray, and put it in front of me. “Coffee?”

I turned my mug up and smiled at him. “Thanks.”

He lingered for just a moment after I had looked back at the menu. As he went back to get the coffee, I saw him say something to two men at the counter, who turned and looked at me. When he brought the coffee, he said “Do we know each other? You look very familiar.”

Adopting a friendly-but-puzzled expression (this is done with the muscles of the face), I looked at him, as if trying to remember. “I don’t think so,” I said.

I’m a Researcher. I understand how to study creatures—their biology and associated aspirational structures—by interacting with them. This was not my first planet, believe me, nor will it be my last, but I find this place fascinating and had lingered here for a long time. I came here to research species that live in liquid, but then I discovered humans, and I was hooked. I go from place to place. Sometimes I establish a life, become a member of the community, and observe. And measure and ascertain and eventually understand before I move on to another place.

Though once I’ve uploaded a body of research I don’t usually keep the memory of the research, I keep just enough to trigger avoidance systems so I don’t visit places too frequently. Something had gone wrong here. Emotion had masked the danger.

Larry was back with a coffee pot, and filled my mug. “Need a minute?”

I did need a minute, but not in the way he meant. “No, thanks, I’m ready. I’ll have eggs over easy, hash browns, biscuit, small orange juice.” (I’ll explain their diet later, believe me, you don’t have time now.) He studied my face while I ordered, and glanced over his shoulder at me as he walked away. He said something to the two men at the counter, and they turned and looked at me again.

I have been many, many people, in many places. Sometimes I’m in a location for just a few hours or days. Sometimes I stay for years in order to form peer relationships with humans, to learn about social units and co-living. I had done that here, I now realized.

On several occasions, including here, I have actually entered into a ritual relationship they call “marriage.” This is an economic and sexual affiliation evolved to protect any offspring the union produces. I have borne children in partnership with human men, and I make sure these children are biologically human so they are equipped to live in this world and even thrive. When I bear multiple children in the same place, I usually take a Souvenir so the research can lead to the expansion of universal understanding. But the primary objective is to live as a human to understand them. Which involves emotions. Which leads to mistakes, and this was a big one.

I considered my options. Too late to simply blink out, to move my molecules elsewhere. I could fake an emergency and leave without eating, get back on the highway, and end my research on this planet. But that would make me memorable. I was going to have to tough it out, behave in a way that my extensive knowledge of humans said would be considered “normal.” And then leave town as soon as I could.

I, of course, hadn’t aged. I had that in my favor. Nobody would assume I was actually her, I hoped. Larry appeared at my booth with a pitcher of water and slowly topped off my glass. At last, he said “You aren’t by chance related to a Jennifer Franklin are you? Or Jennifer.. Mitchell?” My names when I had last been here. I arrived as Jennifer Mitchell, and then in accordance with the customs of this time and place, I changed my name to Jennifer Franklin when I married Charles Franklin. (The reasons for this custom are fascinating, and of course are a demonstration of a particular kind of social dominance, but you don’t have time to hear about it now.)

Now, when Larry asked the question, I looked at him blankly, smiled brightly, and said, “No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“You look so much like her. Of course if she were alive, she’d be a lot older, but you look like she did. I mean, very much. So I just thought you might be… you know, family.”

I made a face that would be interpreted as sympathy. “No, I’m so sorry. Did she — Jennifer, is that her name? — did she live here?”

And he launched into the whole story, beautiful young woman visited for a couple of days, liked the town, opened a locksmith business. (When I move to a town I always look for a need in the local economy, and that’s what they had needed). She married the handsome high school principal, Charles Franklin, they were the most beautiful couple, they had equally beautiful twin children, a boy and a girl, named Willie and Fern. Jennifer had been driving Willie to a music lesson one day and they both disappeared. Her car was found in the river, and some of their possessions including Willie’s trumpet had been found washed up on the riverbank. But no bodies had ever been found.

“What a sad story,” I said, and found that I meant it. And I suddenly realized why I’d allowed my brain to trick me into coming back here. “What happened to Charles and Fern?”

Larry shook his head. “That’s where sad turns tragic.” They had never recovered, Larry said. Charles was so depressed he couldn’t work, and he tried to keep it together for Fern, but he was in no shape to do it and didn’t have anyone to help. He became so depressed he was almost catatonic and when Fern started showing up at school hungry and in dirty clothes, Child Protective Services stepped in. Charles was just too low then to fight it, he signed away his parental rights, and wound up in an institution for awhile. With no other family to speak up for her, Fern was adopted out of state and no one knew where she was now. Charles had been back in town for many years now, working as a gardener, with no apparent will to do anything more.

That’s what I had come here to find out. It wasn’t what I wanted, or what I’d hoped to hear. I was startled by the thought. I’m a Researcher, and we don’t “want” or “hope,” we simply observe, record, and analyze. But I was feeling emotion, even regret, for the pain I had caused.

While Larry talked, I noticed the coffee shop was beginning to fill up. The two guys at the counter had been on the phone quite a bit, and I’d noticed one of them surreptitiously snap a picture of me. People were looking at me and whispering. When Larry went to put in my order, I was alone for a moment and I was hoping no one would approach me.

But then I heard the door, the coffee shop went silent, and suddenly there he was. Charley was standing by my table looking at me as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Are you a ghost?” he asked directly.

“No, I’m not a ghost. They tell me I look like someone who used to live here.”

“My wife,” he said. “Jenny.” He continued to stand there. We continued to look at each other. “Don’t do it, don’t do it,” I was thinking to myself, but I said, “Won’t you sit down and tell me about her?”

He sat, but tentatively, not like the confident man I had married. We looked at each other across the table. Charles was a man I’d actually loved. I had formed a relationship with him to research the process of romantic love, but it had gone too far, and I hadn’t wanted to leave. Eventually I’d gone to the Mentor, and she had helped me devise the disappearing trick where I’d be presumed dead along with Willie, who I took as a Souvenir. He is now sharing his unique skills and understanding as Will. (Yes, that’s right, the renowned Will was originally my human son.)

In this kind of risky emotion-related research, it is vital to be able to detach at the end of the cycle and offload enough memories to be able to move on and not revisit any strong emotions. I’d always been good at it. But this time, I couldn’t, quite. There is a human emotion called “guilt,” and I was having to fight the desire to let guilt dominate my locus.

I could see the harm I’d done. Charles was in his 50s but looked 70. He spoke slowly, and there was something in his eyes that as a Researcher I wanted to study, but that I found too painful to see clearly.

As he told me about our life together, he became a little more animated, and even smiled a small version of his old smile when he talked about our children and our life together. Then, after a brief pause, he said, “You look just like she used to look, and your voice is the same, too. Larry says you aren’t related to my Jenny, but are you sure?”

He looked so sad. I realized I was experiencing an emotion called “sympathy,” which made me want to give him something. “I guess I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I don’t know anything about my mother’s family, she was estranged from them, and I guess it’s possible I’m a cousin or something.”

He just looked at me, but the muscles of his face raised almost imperceptibly, indicating a positive emotion.

I felt gratification. That’s a hard emotion to explain, but it’s on the pleasure-happiness spectrum, and is related to giving happiness to someone else.

It was so easy, so very easy, to fall back into the emotional patterns, to sit with Charley and feel his feelings and immerse myself in my own. I felt such love for this man, and such guilt that I had destroyed his happy life.

Could I simply stay? Do it again? Marry Charley, maybe have more children, and see what happened? It was tempting enough that I considered it for a moment, just a moment.

Obviously not. I knew my skills as a Researcher had already been compromised by my increasing inability to resist emotion. I already knew everything I had the capacity to learn. Any further study here should continue under a new Researcher.

Larry brought my plate of food, and Charley moved as if to leave. I dared one thing more. “You want to share?” I asked him. This was something that Jenny and Charley had done many times, two forks and a single plate. He paused for a moment, and picked up his fork.

We shared the meal. Most of the other people in the room watched us with fascination. Finally, Larry took away the dirty dishes and brought more coffee. And I asked the question. “Where is Fern now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He told me about her adoption. As he told me the story I already knew, I realized that I deeply wanted Charley to be happy again. It was a very powerful emotion, and I found it irresistible. I also realized that the simplest way to make this happen would be to reunite him with Fern.

There were various ways. At this period of time, humans had discovered how to look at their own DNA and trace familial connections, so they could find each other that way. Or Fern herself could become interested enough to go looking for her father by getting access to her own adoption records. Or, since she had lived in this town until she was seven and probably remembered it, she could come here out of curiosity. Or a completely random meeting could be arranged, something humans would call “a miracle.” I calculated. She would be in her 30s now, fully an adult, possibly with children of her own. Did she want to know her father? That might have to be arranged as well.

Eventually, reluctantly, Charley stood and turned to go. “I hope to see you again,” he said.

I found that I hoped the same, and told him so. I knew it probably wouldn’t happen. Still, as I drove away, I found I was resolved to try to somehow give him back his happiness.

This was highly irregular. I had never before pro-actively tried to make humans do things. I am a Researcher, and I observe and participate, but I do not intentionally initiate programs that will materially affect the direction of their lives.

On the other hand, I considered, my actions as a Researcher had often changed human lives, sometimes tragically, like here, with my last family on this planet. So my intentions hadn’t ever been compatible with the results of my behavior. Could I justify what I wanted to do as restorative?

As soon as I found a lonely spot to pull over, I rearranged my molecules along with the car’s, and I was with the Mentor, telling her the whole story.

Eventually, she said, “You are asking for one more cycle on this planet. You wish to interfere in the lives of two humans, your former family, in order to confer on them a human emotion called ‘happiness.’ You say you are experiencing an emotion called ‘guilt,’ and you wish to repair a human relationship you broke as a Researcher. You are also asking for my guidance in finding the simplest way of bringing them together.” I nodded.

She was thoughtful. “I want to understand more about the concept of ‘guilt.’ Tell me how it is motivating you right now.”

“Yes,” I said. “I feel guilty for creating and then destroying a beautiful family. I feel guilty for breaking Charley’s heart. I feel guilty for taking Willie as a Souvenir, and depriving Charley and Fern of the comfort they might have found together, the three of them. I feel guilty that I left in such a sudden and shocking way. I feel guilty that Fern had no one to take care of her, and had to be adopted by strangers.”

She closed her eyes and I knew she was deliberating.

After a time, she spoke. “You will not be going back. You have already stayed too long, and the influence these emotions have had on your governing organ has gone too far. Your abilities as a Researcher will continue to be compromised as long as you are attached there.”

I felt such a wave of an emotion called “disappointment,” it almost crushed me. The Mentor was correct. I had been there too long. I composed myself. “May I ask, Mentor, will they ever meet?”

She nodded. “I understand your argument about Researchers causing harm when they retreat. We will consider what changes can be made. Meanwhile, in the present moment, with this particular connection, we will honor the intent of your request and bring them together to form a loving relationship, but you may not orchestrate the process.” The Mentor’s face was serious. “In any case, this is not a job for a Researcher.”

“Who, then?”

“Will. He is extraordinary, you know. His understanding continues to grow and grow. I expect great things from him. Meanwhile, he needs the experience of living among humans for a time, so this is a fortuitous opportunity. He will meet and befriend the person who was his human sister. He will reunite those who are left of his birth family. Charles and Fern will find each other.”

That was it. I never went back. I never saw Fern or Charley again. But I know they met, connected, and were a family again. I see Will occasionally, of course, and hear of him even more often. He is truly extraordinary.

After this reintegration cycle, I am returning to my study of creatures that live in liquid. On my next planet, only single-cell creatures yet exist. I will be one of them, and watch them evolve.