Chapter 1
Aubrey and her roommate Shirx watch the hovercraft fly up, leaving him as the only Huxian in the United States. With his sociability and people’s curiosity, it takes some time for her and Shirx to reach their apartment.
Shirx arrived before Aubrey to spend time in the gloosher. Aubrey offered to move in at the same time, but Shirx worried it would be confusing and unpleasant for her. She wonders if her presence would have unsettled him.
Aubrey asks, “Where should we start unpacking?”
“The gloosher is the most important, but food and sleep are the next most-important things to unpack. I saved most of mine until you come because humans need them, too. Or humans unpack something else first?” Shirx’s translator suits him, with a gentle tenor AI-generated voice.
“Humans start with the kitchen and bathroom. I’m going to make sure there’s toilet paper and soap in the bathroom.”
“Should you start there?”
“Nah, the rest can wait.”
Along with ensuring all of Aubrey’s new things arrived before her, Shirx hired a moving company and a cleaner for her old apartment. It felt weird to Aubrey. She declined somebody else unpacking for her because the other plans eliminated the drudgery, and she wanted to support Shirx’s settling in.
“Want to listen to music while we unpack?” Aubrey asks. “It makes it more fun.”
“Sure. I knew about music helping human minds. But does music really help humans move their bodies better?” Shirx asks.
Aubrey taps a Mozart playlist for Shirx’s cultural benefit, rather than her personal enjoyment. “It’s the rhythm, or it just makes us feel good.”
The renovations divided the kitchen in half, with separate appliances. On the Terran side of the kitchen, Aubrey’s dishes clack into the wooden cabinets. On the Huxian side of the kitchen, Shirx puts away his kitchen things and non-perishable groceries. Shirx wraps his four dirty arms around his mobility aid, which rotates on spherical wheels. He puts two things into two places with two arms and picks up two more things with two arms and passes them to his four shorter, clean tentacles, which sometimes pass things between themselves. A tentacle on either side of his mouth is dirty, but the two dirty ones over his mouth were detached recently and installed in his gloosher. Currently scabbed and bandaged, new ones will regenerate.
Aubrey marvels at Shirx’s speed and accuracy, but if in her peripheral vision, it discombobulates her. He notices the music and talks. Though he fumbles occasionally, he holds and sets things as carefully and quietly as she. Her ears need to adjust to his damp flopping sound; the mobility aid is almost silent.
Shirx will study Terran computer science for his official PhD, and has an equivalent on Huxia. He specifically requested living with a musician, and he met several. But he and Aubrey mutually chose each other. To some extent, he comprehends her PhD in music technology, but her thesis on Pythagorean tuning flummoxes him, but he values her thesis more than her relatives do. Before she emphasized the seriousness of earning her degree, Shirx declared her studies an essential part of the expedition.
Huxia sends teams of Huxians to other planets, and Shirx entered a qualification program. Shirx passed; everybody else on his team failed; because the team failed, so did Shirx.
He longed to come to Earth, and Huxia refused to send him alone due to shudikudbub. It roughly translates to loneliness caused by desolation, isolation, and detachment.
Reynard owns a space company and is a multi-trillionaire. Since hearing about Shirx’s predicament, Reynard has sympathized with him, and he convinced Shirx to launch a solo private expedition, funded by Reynard. Shirx agreed, under the condition that, in certain circumstances, Reynard treats Terrans as a Huxian would.
The expedition baffles and shocks Huxians—such enterprises and decisions clash with Shirx’s culture. Somehow, Shirx and Reynard convinced the authorities to lift their ban on the expedition.
Shirx and Reynard’s desire for the expedition confuses many humans and Aubrey, but to some extent, they imagine it. What confuses Terrans is that Reynard inevitably loses money on the expedition, and he has no philanthropic motivation. But he, Shirx, and Aubrey understand it, and the others in the Terran team support them.
To prevent unpleasant encounters, Aubrey and Shirx live in a fancy (to Aubrey) gated apartment complex. Aubrey grew up in a trailer park and, in adulthood, lived in dorms and poor neighborhoods. Shirx requested an average apartment, but Reynard considers a higher-class one more suitable, and he and Shirx compromised. For structural stability and to mitigate water damage if a gloosher pipe bursts, Aubrey and Shirx live on the first floor.
In response to objections to Shirx moving in, Reynard imitated Huxia by compensating tenants for moving out, or, if they opted to stay, he pays their rent and utilities, and the arrangement adds to the controversy. The new tenants pass background checks and generally provide social support, either directly by interacting with Shirx or by willingness to live near an extraterrestrial.
People ring the doorbell to greet Shirx and Aubrey; more visitors than if two humans moved in. Tenants, Shirx, and Aubrey say roughly the same things every time.
Most visitors ask Shirx about the gloosher. He and Aubrey had rehearsed responses to common questions or topics. Their immediate upstairs neighbor, Warren, consistently complains about the noise and refuses to leave his home. It is a quandary for Shirx and worries Aubrey.
In the blue living room, Shirx hangs his hammock and cushion and arranges Muxian cushions on the floor. Shirx asks Aubrey if she approves of her hammock and cushion’s locations, and she does. While preparing for the expedition, he had insisted that she scan her body shape and choose the colors. Aubrey eases into her plaid chair, and, to her surprise, it is the most comfortable chair. For a few minutes, she relaxes while Shirx studies his plant’s care guide and decides how to position them. Then she eagerly unpacks her music things.
A cleaning service trained in exo-cleaning sends that day’s cleaner; somebody comes daily to control microorganisms in most of the apartment.
Happy to deliver “traditional moving-in food” to an extraterrestrial, a delivery man leaves with a selfie of himself and Shirx.
Aubrey sits in her red cushion with her pizza on her lap. “Are you sure your pizza isn’t contaminated with capsicum?”
“It’s been near capsicum, but it should be O-K,” Shirx says, as if spelling, his natural voice a beat ahead of his translator.
Her grocery delivery comes. She and Shirx order from the same store, but the separate delivery times prevent handling one other’s food.
Once Shirx puts away his belongings—three times faster than Aubrey, a normal speed for Huxians—Aubrey listens to modern classical music through headphones. The doorbell rings. She tells Shirx to pretend that he continues unpacking. Huxians relax in a new nest as part of the moving-in process, while humans would think Aubrey works hard and Shirx lazes around. Fortunately, both planets share the concept of social lying.
A little old lady introduces herself as Ethel. She asks, “Didn’t the preparation team unpack? They were so busy.”
“They set up the gloosher, deep-cleaned, and decontaminated. I have a biological need to physically settle into the apartment,” Shirx says.
Everybody else had given him an odd or non-understanding look, but Ethel seems to consider it normal. Aubrey wonders if she will empathize with Shirx as much as a roommate candidate would, and decides to meet Ethel again.
After a supper of sandwiches, Aubrey brings her cello (Squire), music stand, cello chair, and music into the living room. It is the first time Shirx has seen an instrument in person, and he has said the synthesizer resembles a computer rather than an instrument.
Shirx sits in his cushion and sprawls his tentacles through its grooves. As Aubrey shows off Squire’s timbre and range, colors flash on his skin, and faint smells drift from his scent glands.
“You can play Squire,” Aubrey says, “if your tentacles and arms are dry.”
Shirx rubs them with his kitchen towel and holds them up for inspection.
Aubrey holds Squire upright. Gingerly, Shirx presses a string and draws the bow, with a sound like Aubrey pressed all her fingers on the string. The vibrations bother his tentacles, but he enjoys tapping on Squire while Aubrey plays; he can pluck the strings. When Aubrey bows in different directions, he cannot hear the difference.
“It’s too late to play now,” Aubrey says.
“I’ll hux-dance!” Shirx says.
The Huxian word for hux-dance cannot be reconstructed by the Terran voice-box. Shirx hangs from his ceiling obstacle course scarves and artificial reproductions of nature, and he pushes the furniture aside. To dance The Beach at Dawx, Shirx combines the props and motion, scent, and color; dispensers release scent and Huxian lamps light the living room.
Watching Shirx, Aubrey feels like she is on a Huxian beach. The marvelousness overwhelms her. Since the smells linger, she cannot forget the performance as she would if the stage emptied. Shirx performs meteorological variations of The Beach at Dawx until he wears out.
