Acquisition Failure #77: Emma

Supervisor Kevod pinches the top of his snout in exasperation, all six of his light receptors slamming shut at once. Without opening any of what Earthlings might call his eyes, he gestures at the seat in front of his desk with an auxiliary tendril, wordlessly inviting me to sit.

I sit. The chair creaks loudly in response to my density. 

In a stale gust that unrolls over the desk and across the tender, recently molted skin of my face, he releases the breath he'd been holding as a sigh. "Do you have any idea why I've called you in here today?" he asks me, each of his light receptors blinking back open in turn and swinging wildly until they focus in on me. 

I shrug my four shoulders, my palms open in a gesture that I intend to be disarming. "With all due respect, the whole Conglomerate must know what happened by now. If I'm being honest, I was already expecting this conversation."

For a long time, Supervisor Kevod stares intently at me with four of his "eyes," the other two roving around the room. I hear the vast sacs of his three lungs unfurl and flap inside of his body as he sucks nearly all of the air from the room in another long, deep sigh.

"Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass this whole situation has been?" He actually ends the sentence as my name, which has no human equivalent: when spelled out, it most closely resembles a never-ending string of numbers, like pi. When spoken, it's sharp as a tack, piercing like a jay's scream.

I jump. "You know, I was wondering if you could call me 'Randall,'" I say before I can stop myself. "That's what I went by on Earth."

Supervisor Kevod blinks half of his eyes, his entire focus shifting to my face. "You can't be serious."

On our third date, Emma told me that I had a winning smile; I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by this, nor was I sure whether the characteristic of winning would carry over to my natural visage now that my human suit has been reduced to incinerator ash. 

Regardless, I decide to give smiling a try, all three rows of my teeth flashing yellow in the ultraviolet light of Supervisor Kevod's office. "It's just… I know I messed up big time. I know. But, I feel that the information that I was able to gather is invaluable. That includes the data that I collected from our marketing department, yes. But I also feel personally changed, you see. I'm no longer my old self, no longer–" 

"You are in absolutely no place to be making requests of me. As far as I'm concerned, this meeting is a courtesy to let you know that your time in this department is over. You're lucky I didn't pack all your things in a box and leave it with the security guard. You're lucky I let you into the building at all." All of his tendrils lift like snakes around him, their movement purposeful, slow, and furious. 

I shrink into my seat, the grin wiped clean off of my face. "You're firing me?" I squeak. 

"You're lucky I don't sue you for all you're worth and then some, Randall. Here–" He yanks open his desk drawer with his snout, the hinge creaking in rusted protest. "This is your off-loading paperwork. Information on your severance package, health insurance, a non-disclosure agreement…"

Unfurling his trunk across the length of the desk, Supervisor Kevod transfers the packet into my trembling claws. I take a moment to flip through the pages, giving myself a papercut in the process. Wincing, my blood splotches a millimeters-long line of vibrant green on the bottom right corner of each page as I turn them.

The severance payment is short-lived and anemic. The cost to continue my health insurance is damn near astronomic. The legal agreement at the bottom is so mired up in undecipherable legalese that I'd need a lawyer to help me decipher it; good thing I could never in my wildest dreams afford one.

Supervisor Kevod steeples his tendrils and peers over the top of them at me. "Review everything. Sign it. Get it back to me by end-of-day." 

For a long time, he continues to stare at me, and it takes me a moment to realize that he's shaking his head in steady, slow, continual disbelief. 

Kneecaps wobbling, I use the chair to help myself stand, the paperwork clutched in my claws. Wordlessly–what else is there to be said?–Supervisor Kevod waves me out of his office. 

I don't realize that he'd asked me to close the door behind me until I'm in the parking lot.

***

My assignment had, at first, seemed like an easy one. I was to go to Earth to set up residence in a studio apartment in Brooklyn. From there, I was to log all of my experiences as (ostensibly) a late-twenties, middle-class, suburban-raised, straight-white-cis-man in the part of the human economy that most people vaguely referred to as the "tech industry."

"We have particular interest in whatever information you can glean about the mating and dating habits of the humans," Supervisor Kevod told me on an early-morning transmission during the first week of my assignment. "Prior to the Acquisition, the Conglomerate hopes to bolster its knowledge of the proclivities of humans as it comes to their love lives–the wedding industry alone is worth $70 billion. If we hope for this Acquisition to be a successful one, it's of the utmost importance that we garner as much data as we can."

The Conglomerate Federation of the United Alvanian States–the Conglomerate, for short–is the official term for the planet that I call home. Many years ago, our own version of robber barons, of captains of industry, of billionaires and trillionaires, decided to elect a CEO amongst them that would unite the corporate interests of every territory that had sprung up on our planet. Conglomerate years are much longer than human years, as our planet takes twice as long to orbit around its star as Earth does around the Sun; this stretched the perception of the Conglomerate's authority all the way to ancient times. The way that we felt as citizens of the Conglomerate must have been the way our ancestors felt, and their ancestors before them. For myself and the other people that work and live within the Conglomerate, economic progress played as vital of a role for the continuation of our existence as procreation. 

For a few years now, I've worked within the Acquisitions Department of the Conglomerate. Specifically, I specialize in market research: for any successful planetary Acquisition, there must be a certain amount of buy-in on the part of the planet's inhabitants. 

"We have to know what they want in order to convince them of what they need: to become an extra-planetary member of the Conglomerate," Supervisor Kevod declared in orientation during my first week in my new position. He paused and scanned the room, each of his light receptors landing on us in turn. His eyes would linger on each of us until he received some kind of motion of revelation or agreement: a mouthed a-ha, a nodded head. 

All of this is how I came to find myself sitting across the table from the woman that I'd been assigned to convince to informally be my mate, bound together by a loose set of shared customs and assumed social responsibilities that are acknowledged only verbally: my girlfriend, you might call her. We stare at each other over the top of a colossal floral arrangement as a four-piece band plays so-so covers of popular human music. Even with her face partially obscured by a massive, pastel pink peony, her expression registers as the common human state of incensed, irate, or, most accurately, pissed off. 

Since our meeting a few Earth-months prior, Emma–that was the human woman's name–and I had evolved into what the young people on Earth refer to as a situationship. From the confines of our situationship, I was able to instigate and record a plethora of useful data for the Conglomerate: the length of my weekly reports were easily double or triple what they had formerly been for prior assignments elsewhere in the galaxy. 

"In the first week of 'dating,' as the humans call it," I wrote in my first report back to Supervisor Kevod, "Subject E replies to my text messages with an average response time of thirteen minutes, four seconds. In the second week, this response time has decreased by an average of four minutes, nine seconds. Subject shows irritation when I take what she considers 'too long' to reply: an average response time of five minutes, thirty-six seconds seems sufficient."

"Subject E shows a strong preference for clear liquor and dry white wine. On dates–which she often insists are dinner dates–she reminds the server multiple times that she cannot have dairy, she cannot have spice, she cannot have gluten, she cannot have sugar. She sends items back–to the bar or to the kitchen, respectively–an average of 1.3 times per date."

"Subject frequently scrolls social media on her handheld communication device, intermittently commenting on the appearance and/or promiscuity of other female Earthlings in her feed. Subject expresses pleasure when I agree with her, and disdain when I either disagree or am of a neutral opinion."

"Subject has received a summons to the ceremony of legal formalization of the sexual relationship of her friend: a wedding invitation, I am informed. Subject visits an average of 7.4 websites a day in search of a dress for the occasion, and insists that I buy a suit. When I inquire as to why I should have to buy a suit as it's her friend that's getting married, she looks at me dumbly and blinks two-and-a-quarter times before informing me that, as her plus-one, I will need to be suitably dressed for the occasion. (Note: a plus-one is an individual–usually a sexual or romantic partner–that accompanies the mating ceremony invitee to said ceremony.)" 

***

Emma kicks me under the table with the toe of her patent leather pump. 

"Did you hear a single word that I just said?" she asks me, her voice low. Her arms are crossed protectively into her seat; she slinks back into her chair like her housecat does when he's contemplating whether or not to pounce. 

Wordlessly, I smile and shrug my shoulders. Honesty is the best policy, or so I've heard at least a dozen times since I moved to my assignment on Earth; I decide to answer honestly. "I wasn't paying attention."

Emma widens her eyes in disbelief. "Oh, so you're finally admitting it out loud? Fascinating."

I cock my head to the side, unsure of how to read her meaning: her words are complimentary, but her facial expression is feral. Her face flushes, her breath quickens; when tears well up under her eyes, she hesitates in blinking them away. Twin rivulets stream down her face, drawing near-parallel lines in her foundation.

"Do you even love me?" she asks. 

Her voice is barely audible; I lean in to better hear her. 

"You don't, do you?"

"Don't what?"

"Oh, my God. Randall. I can't believe you. We're at a wedding, for Christ's sake!"

I frown, confused. "What has that got to do with anything?" The palms of my human suit grow sweaty as I sense that I'm losing control of the situation.

"What has that got to do–Randall, I'm thirty-one years old. I want to be married one day–I deserve it! Don't you want to eventually wind up married?"

I think of every diamond commercial that I've seen in preparation for my assignment on Earth. I think of how they feature glittering rocks with the promise of financial security, of romantic attachment, of forever. I think of divorce rates, of custody battles, of legal fees. I think of fidelity, of sexual monogamy, of having the same so-so mating relations with Emma for the rest of our lives.

I think of being with Emma for the rest of my life. 

A high-pitched whistle emanates from the inside of my head and out from my ears. The ringing wraps its claws first around my cranium: my head is a throbbing ache, my thoughts a constant roar. Black edges my vision before entirely shrouding it, the borders shrinking in time with my arhythmic, erratic pulse. 

"Oh, no," I squeak. 

Oh, no indeed. 

"Each of you will be wired with a protection mechanism," Supervisor Kevod instructed us during orientation. "These are only to be engaged in times of absolute, complete danger. Please use it only in times of absolute desperation: as much as the Conglomerate wishes to ensure your safety, we also wish to reduce any threat to the future health of our Acquisitions."

***

The high-pitched ringing in my head doubles and triples in volume until the entire room is enveloped. Over the span of a few seconds, I am surrounded by a multitude of inquiries of what the hell is that? and are we being attacked?

The screaming comes next, but it thankfully doesn't last for long. The reception hall is filled with billows of gas: toxic to humans and some large cats, but otherwise harmless. The screams turn to gasps, the gasps to chokes.

Thunk. Thunk. Body after body falls to the floor. 

I continue to sit in my chair, eyes closed. Breathe in, breathe out, my therapist had instructed me during our last visit. It's only a panic attack. It'll pass.

Inhale, exhale. During that panic attack, I must have bumped or nudged or dropped or tapped the protection mechanism: maybe I'd fidgeted with it too much in my pocket, or maybe the anxious tapping of my foot had set it off.  

It's okay, I tell myself. We have insurance.

It's okay. I'll get assigned to another Acquisitions case. 

It's okay. In a few days, it'll be as if none of this ever happened. 



Surely, Supervisor Kevod will understand.