by Gerome Toppling

I chose the name Gerome Toppling based on what I had come to believe was an acute understanding of the typical human mind. My, what breathless creatives I find them to be, such that their names are often so evocative as to be utterly worthless to trade upon, on their own. In fact, to be socially endowed here, the simpler name is often considered best. Too simple, though, and you don’t stand out. John Smith will simply not do. But John Trout is easy to understand. Evocative, to be sure, but not as much as Wellington Thistle, who in some circles might be whipped with reeds.

I make my trade as an experiential journalist. Having recently completed a series published under the name Social Lobster (at least this would be the title in English), about my time on Xatar-6V9, as it will come to be known here, I began my next mission as I do them all. I proceeded to throw a Zalangian Mud Dart into a dimensional projection of the nearby galaxies and discovered this, my dozenth destination, called by the locals “Milky Way.”

As is typical, I chose the least-inhabited land I could for my ship, the Pohling-1, to take anchor in. Any such spot should still be walkable to something resembling civilization, however, so I chose Antarctica, near the planet’s South Pole. Not understanding that these life signs I had detected were for science teams of no more than a dozen, I found myself having to adapt quickly to answer their endless survival-centric queries. Eventually, as my absorption of the English language passed for cold-induced stupor, I managed to squeak out a few simple words. To wit: “Which way is Frog Hollow?”

“Too specific,” you might well say to this, but I have found, in my travels, that exceeding specificity combined only with brevity breeds more helpful curiosity than any other such combination of precision and verbosity. Never mind that I hadn’t heard of a Frog Hollow on Earth, but, such as every town has a Main Street or a High Street, every planet has a hamlet of some size that translates exactly to “Frog Hollow.” It was not only worth a shot, it was a necessity to continuing a pattern, the disruption of which would bring about certain anxious dyspepsia in me. Nevertheless, I remained positive of my certitude.

Pulling out almanacs, this intensely bored and clearly sexually frustrated/repressed group began looking up Frog Hollow, gathering blankets and hot drinks for me, and aggressively touching my thighs. I believe this was intended for my comfort, but my internal organs having yet to shift to acceptable local norms in terms of positioning, I promptly wet myself. Near Rigil Kentaurus this could get you killed. Here, it meant I was offered much too many pairs of pants at such blistering speed I began to metabolize my most recent meal in double-time and began to feel what I was shortly thereafter told was “light-headed.” Such in-the-moment translations save me the energy I often need to get from place to place, as I would otherwise have to do the verbal work myself.

“Connecticut!” one of them yelled, their perceived ferocity startling me. This is, of course, how I came to discover that even Earth’s sharpest minds are desperate to be seen as retaining their mental acuity, no matter how great their accomplishments. Here they were, given free room and board and plenty of room to think and vacate their bowels, and they were reduced to mere children. Certainly they each awaited a hero’s welcome and a parade with shredded garbage thrown at them, but they scarcely seemed to realize their place in society. 

My fear only subsided after it was explained to me that Connecticut was a territory of a country named United States, and not the slur from my home planet I’d come to know it as. Knowing that, in all likelihood, I couldn’t run into another member of my own civilization here, the idea of traveling to a slur became instantly rather funny. No one here would use it against me, as they’d either gotten it out of their systems entirely here, or it was a stolen and anglicized indigenous word. It would be impossible to tell which and, like these exemplars of humankind, I considered it best to assume what made me happiest was the truth.

Heading to Connecticut, though, would not be the easiest trip, as I was informed that a ship had just left the continent toward another, called South America, leaving me in this cold wasteland for at least a few more weeks. When I considered going back to my ship for snacks, the leader of this particular group, who called himself Coulton, stopped me in my tracks, and sat me down. He explained slowly (though by now I had twice his vocabulary) that heading out into the cold would surely mean my death. While I had the necessaries to make that impossible, I felt it best to play the part, much as I was uncertain about eating food that was essentially reserved solely for maintenance of a base caloric human intake in case of an unpredictable disaster.

“We call these piss cakes,” Patricia told me, which she clarified to be based solely on the taste and smell and not the ingredients of the food. I understood that the near-rhyme with “fish cakes,” which they actually claimed to be, was intended as a joke, and so I attempted a chuckle. I clearly chose the wrong frequency with which to do so, as Patricia promptly fell asleep from a standing position, but I managed to catch her and wake her up by reversing the frequency of my laugh. Waking to my making this noise in such a manner (unhinged jaw, scream), though, did send her into a fugue, so I put her back to sleep with another titter and she woke up comfortably, unharmed except for the fugue, in her own bed the next morning. The piss cakes were okay.