Home World

“Excuse me sir, but could you tell me where I am?” 

The young man’s eyes were glazed when his stumbling progress stopped and he faced me. His countenance exploded in delight as he responded, “Oh, man, you are not from this world, it’s like I needed to meet an alien…”

“What?”

“I never met a blue man in person. Awesome!”

“Could you tell me where I am…on earth I mean?”

The young man wrapped his arm around my shoulder and said, “The more important question is where did you come from?”

I understood. He wouldn’t accept me without knowing my origins, as awkward as that might be. “I came here from another galaxy, a long way from here.” I realized that my ability to speak with this stranger, enabled by my universal translator, couldn’t bridge the gap in our life experiences.

The young man lit a cigarette and said, “Bring it on, dude!”

“What?”

“Tell me about your home planet. What’s it called?” 

I had to think a moment before responding. “Eclectic. I come from another galaxy, a planet where everyone does whatever they wish at any moment. Is that how it is here?”

The young man took a drag from his cigarette and said, “It can be pretty crazy, but I don’t know if it’s like Eclectic…I mean, that’s wild. Tell me more.”

“Let me see…on Eclectic people don’t have physical bodies so we don’t have houses to live in, or offices where we go to work, no freeways or metros—”

My companion stepped back and asked, “Are you like ghosts? Did you come from the afterlife? That is way cool!”

“Not at all. What I mean is that it isn’t like…this. I don’t have to walk to get around, so we don’t have roads or highways, no cars. We move between places by…hmmm…I just have to think about where I want to be.”

“I get it, like in Star Trek, with the transporter and all. Cool. What about trees and shit like that?”

“We don’t have any trees or plants on Eclectic. No wild animals either. What I mean is that life didn’t evolve like here, with bacteria and plants and animals and intelligence. We just skipped straight to the top of the evolutionary ladder, and became virtual beings, but grounded in reality–not ghosts…”

“Is Eclectic a planet, you know, like earth?”

“As far as our scientists can tell, we live in a subset of dimensions from the eleven that define the multiverse we share with you. There are no planets.”

“Do you have a family?”

“Yes. I have a partner and two children. We live in a beautiful sphere surrounded by a sea of blue methane, sparkling with effervescent bursts of red.”

“Why are you here?”

“I am an explorer.”

“So, you guys have like a NASA or some shit?”

I had been briefed on this universe, so I answered, “Yes, exactly the same.”He threw the cigarette into the street. “Cincinnati, Ohio.”