what a farce, indeed!

One hamburger or two? One question or three, up to a dozen—they never end; the staring never ends. The complete looks of disgust are better than the faces that turn away, pretending they never saw, or the women and children who duck into store fronts to avoid breathing the same air.

It was in all the papers, but of course the internet is more accessible these days—even the inexhaustible footage never stops streaming on YouTube. Everybody knows who I am; they all know my story. I will never live it down. I will never be free of who I am or what I've done. If there was ever a valid reason for suicide, I think I've discovered it, my body is newly shorn—I've just come from the groomers. My hospitable alien friends turned me into an alpaca.
For those of you who missed it, my name is Trigg Hatfelt, son of engineers, astronaut for the United Space Emporium, USE, assigned to the fifth fleet stationed in the third quadrant of the Rho Ophiuchi star sysytem. My team discovered the aliens, rather the indigent advanced lifeforms of Breaford, the third planet of Sigma.

They were nearly all light, but for communication purposes donned animal suits in our presence. They no longer had a name for themselves, but Alice called them Morphemes, I don't remember why, and the name stuck. The leader of the Morphemes was a sloth, I suppose they took on a form that most closely associated to their personalities. Also, he was beyond cute, and I'm pretty sure charisma was very appealing to the Morphemes; they almost worshiped aesthetics—which was weird, for it was nearly totally eliminated from their culture. The Breafordians lived beneath white domes a hundred miles round, connected by wireless transport discs. They moved around quite a lot. We weren't capable of using their transportation system, it would have incinerated us down to a cellular level, and was not equipped to put the scattered pieces back together, but we viewed them from our secure capsules stepping onto the silver circles and dissipating. One ghostly form would exit, another would return. We never figured out what the purpose of their constant travel was.

One day Alice, Maurice, and I were ushered into a twenty foot high building in the shape of an igloo; it's white bricks shimmered, translucent, and beams leaked out from the mortar. The Morpheme leader crawled on its belly from a back room, grinning up at us. Finally it reached us and sat at our table beckoning to a solid white wall, and a picture show started. We saw our Earth, at first from afar, then a closeup of continents and shorelines, then forests and cities. I don't know how they obtained these pictures, whether from their own devices or our minds, but it was obvious what they enjoyed, and what we viewed were the most pleasant and joyful scenes of Earth. Leafy trees, clouds big and fluffy, ocean waves of blue crashing in the foamy surf.
All around us now gathered the Morphemes in their animal suits, all of them puffed and fluffy and cute as a bug's ear. Not one of them donned the skin of an alligator or anything resembling a human. They pointed at us, with fingers or snouts, and then gestured at the furry creatures on the white wall. They smiled, I think they were smiling, and we were delighted, entranced. We clapped and nodded our heads. We hugged one another, happy for the connection we were making with such a friendly bunch of aliens. We would be heroes upon our return to Earth.
Well, the Morphemes took our nods and hoots as an acknowledgment of their gesture of welcome and kinship. It was in their nature to give freely of themselves, naturally predicting our desires to be one and the same as theirs. In retrospect, they may have been saying, Look at yourselves—how ugly you have become, with your narrow faces and pale skin. You are herky jerky in your gait, wrinkled and hairless. You wear fabricated skin to cover your ugly bodies—we have seen them—your minds think only of possessions or predicaments to wiggle into or out of. Such a mishmash of incomprehension...won't you be more like us, or if you aren't ready for translucency then be more like your animal cousins. We have seen how you enjoy our company...now enjoy it along with us, and take this gift back to your world.

After our meeting in the igloo, me and the team returned to our capsules and traveled back to our spaceship. We were given gifts that we didn't understand and boarded our craft to blast off of this alien world onto a trajectory that would lead us to the Milky Way and finally Earth, some fifteen years by and by.

All the way home we beamed images of Breaford and the Morphemes to scientists and the people of Earth. All were delighted in our discoveries. Pictures and diagrams of the alien presents were transmitted, and while none knew what they could be or of what purpose, anticipation of their arrival and of our return was felt throughout the colonies by the people and representatives alike.

The day of the return year came, and we awakened from a ten year sleep to an Earth older by several decades itself. We landed to a fanfare and sizzling display of pyrotechnics—people circled our spaceship in never-ending spirals overlapping and surging like waves on a beach. From a distance it was a spectacular view of unspecified undulating forms amidst cacophony, sparks and colorful smoke. Closer we made out human forms of every shape size and color, crowding pushing and waving. They cheered and we called back to them. It was good to be home.
A tunnel snaked into the throng, dividing the people, until it reached and connected with the ship's portal. We collected our belongings and disengaged the airlock to exit our home of the last thirty years. Much of that time we had spent in stasis, so we hadn't aged more than a few months. But the grounded people of Earth had aged the full thirty years, and none of the faces that greeted us were familiar. They escorted us into a secure facility where every part of our persons and gear were radiated against alien bugs and fear.

Alice was everyone's sweetheart—she appeared on every talk show and won every accolade. Even at the end she was adored and a sympathetic personality. Maurice was interviewed infrequently and forgotten; he had a heavy brow and a low guttural accent that was mostly undecipherable. Not long after we landed he returned to his native country and disappeared into the feral landscape where he felt most at home.

I was extensively interviewed and touted as the future of space travel, a modern day Captain Kirk. The ultimate responsibility was mine, and I had delivered. And finally the scientists revealed the gift of the Morphemes to the world. They had spent years pouring over the presents and found them to be nothing but glowing, translucent artifacts of the Breaford world. There was nothing at all mysterious or valuable in the gifts, other than the fact that they'd come from light years away, and glowed. So they went into a traveling exhibit that saw every corner of Earth. Nearly every inhabitant of the planet saw the gifts, felt the glow on their faces or from across the room. Eventually the presents made their way back to the landing site, where a permanent building was erected for their ultimate resting place, a museum dedicated to the Morphemes and the salutations they sent.

Many years hence we received a further communication from the third planet of Sigma: a brief flash of light. They had set a star of their system into supernova, as a message to us, or perhaps a catalyst. I believe it was the latter. Humans across the globe had swum in the glow of a distant star, as they gazed and were gazed on by the gift of the Morpheme; now they bathed in the light of the Morpheme's punctuating present. We received the blessing of those I had visited and concurred with those many decades ago. Now that it has happened, I realize the error I made, and take full responsibility. Little good it does me. I am loathed by every cute guinea pig and pekinese I encounter. Here is a yellow chick, and an otter. A mother giant panda and her koala child shuffle into an ice cream shoppe to wait for me to pass. Penguins jeer at me.

Well, what is an alpaca to do about it? At the least, I know I am admired from afar, by a world of wispy world wandering souls that drift in lazy circles around that bright star, Sigma. My 'people' are readying a rocket now to send me back, the furry opposable thumbed gibbons and adroitly tailed critters. They expect me to explain, to find a cure, to reverse the process.
Honestly, I'm not sure I want to change back to the way it was...I don't much miss the hustle and bustle or the grind. What's with all the saving and primping, why can't we all be chicks and bunnies? Wouldn't it be nice if nice was all we aspired to? Well, I guess I'm going back. And here's what I will do; I'll smile, because that's what an alpaca does best, and thank the happy Morphemes and hang out with my friend the sloth. Hell, sure beats sucking on a bullet, heh?