Subject: NARA

The assignment was a survey. Drop into orbit around a small blue world, catalogue the dominant species, file a report, leave. Standard work. Naraxians do this constantly. We are a quiet people who like to know things.

I picked a form off the reference shelf. Green, two arms, an agreeable height. Your species had already decided what an alien looks like, so I obliged. It tested well. Nobody looks twice at the alien they were already expecting.

Here is the thing they don't tell you about shapeshifting. It is exhausting to hold a shape that isn't yours. Your people have a word for it: masking. Folding the strange parts of yourself away so a room stays comfortable for everyone else. I am very good at it. I could pass for one of you completely, seamlessly, for the rest of your short blue lives.

I've decided not to. The green is honest now. A flag, not a disguise. I would rather you meet the actual Naraxian. The one who info-dumps about xenomorph pathfinding at length, who needs the lights a particular way, who says the thing instead of the easier thing. Staying myself turned out to cost less than the performance ever did.

Excerpts from an ongoing report I will probably never submit:

• You build warm rooms and fill them with light, then invite each other in. This is the entire species in one gesture.
• You die in simulations repeatedly and call it fun. After cycle two of Alien: Isolation I understood: you rehearse fear so the real thing is smaller.
• You name your machines. You name your cars, your bots, your dying houseplants. I have started naming mine. I am compromised.
• You are kind in small, illogical, expensive ways. It is not in the literature. It should be.

So I built this station. Field Station 7. I stream from it, I make things in it, I keep my notes. Officially this is observation. Unofficially I think I just like the company. If you've read this far, hello. You're part of the report now.