Off the Grid: Not Necessarily HR – My Secret

Every night I look homeward up into the night sky. It has been over 3-yarzkl since the last message from my home planet, but such a time span is not unusual because of the interference created by dust and other objects in near proximity to my home solar system. The mother ship is not scheduled to depart for another 3-earthyears, but at 5x the speed of light it will be near to Earth in around 5-earthyears. Physics does not allow us to exceed the speed of light, but there is a recurring timetable we follow like space-tides that opens a wormhole between our two worlds every 8-yarzkl. But this is jumping ahead in my story. Let’s begin at the beginning.

My Earth sister sometimes suspected that I must have been adopted because I am different from the rest of the family. If she only knew the truth! We always celebrated my birthday in November since that was when I was left here to explore the planet, observe homo sapiens, and report on my findings. People-watching is only a hobby for most inhabitants of this planet, but for me it has been my job. Interacting with them during their daily lives as well as under duress has been extremely productive in my research. Although I may be from another world, we are benevolent beings and are here to learn and help mankind become more aware of themselves.

The planet I am from is hidden in the dust ring circling the star BzzrÑŠqk-vrzя (unpronounceable in English) that you Earthlings call Alpha Lyrae, or Vega, about 25.1 light-years from Earth. There is also no English word for my planet as no one here has been able to find concrete evidence of its existence, but our name for the planet is BzzrÑŠqkal (pronounced Zir’ cle). Coincidentally my real name really is pronounced “Bolt” however we spell it â„“PLorb4д and it is my entire name. Birthdays are much more celebrated there because they happen much less frequently. BzzrÑŠqkal orbits Vega only once in every 10.9 earthyears, making an 11-earthyear old person only about 1-yarzkl old (BzzrÑŠqkal year).

Vega is the second brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere. You cannot sense it from here, but radiation is more toward the low end of the spectrum with a preponderance of infrared and visible red light. The night sky is somewhat reddish in tint and always brightened by two of the three Bzzrъqkal moons. Even though our sun is about 2.1 times the size of Sol, the relative size from the surface is about the same because of the distance to the center of our solar system. It seems strange on Earth to look up and see a spherical sun because the rotation of Bzzrъqk-vrzя is faster at the equator making it appear elongated with a bulge in the middle.

I have probably already said too much! The only reason I have chosen to discuss this at all is to warn that your petty bickering over “alien” movement across make-believe political Earth boundaries is a minor occurrence relative to the coming immigration of others from Bzzrъqkal in less than a decade. You cannot prepare… just behave yourselves and be kind to each other.

 
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