“Aw, Welkin, really?” Chloe asks. “The other Unis will laugh at you?” It shakes our head again, slowly this time.
I can’t answer it. I can only think about how dismal it is to be a failure.
“Listen…” Chloe murmurs. Then she quickly adds, “No, forget it. I really shouldn’t.” She pauses again as she drums our fingers on a nearby table. “But then,” she goes on, “it’s only for three days, right? It would be sort of like having a pet, wouldn’t it? Although I’d prefer a kitten to an alien.”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“Well. If you could stop thinking of me as an it—females are her or she— I might be willing to help you out.”
“You’d help me? Allow me to stay and experience the physical form?” This is amazing behavior for a primitive.
“I’m not a primitive, Welkin,” Chloe says. “Man, you have a lot to learn.”
“I do,” I tell it. Her. “Such as, what is a female? And can you hear everyone’s thoughts or only mine? And what is a perv?”
“Wow. This is going to be harder than I thought.” Chloe scratches our head. It feels pleasant. “I think we need some rules.”
“Okay.” I attempt to operate the limb that scratches our head.
“That’s rule one right there,” Chloe says. “I’m in charge of my body. You leave the operating to me.” She glances at a device that displays symbols, then groans. “Right now, I have to get this body ready for school.”
“Is that difficult?” I ask.
“I’ll know as soon I look in the mirror.” She puts our body in motion and exits the sleeping chamber. She halts quite suddenly at the entrance to another room. “I have to pee,” she says.
Her tone suggests this is important, but I don’t understand her meaning.
“It means I’d like some privacy,” she says. “Especially if you’re a guy.”
This is surprising. I’d begun to think Chloe was intelligent in her own way. But she appears to have forgotten a simple fact. “Chloe,” I say, “I’m a Universal.”
She sighs heavily. “Duh. I know that, Welkin. But are you a guy Uni or a girl?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, man. You must be one or the other. You know, male or female? Like, when you’re in your own body, do you, um…” She hesitates, then blurts, “Do you stand or sit to use the toilet?”
Toilet. In English, a receptacle for bodily wastes.
“No kidding.” Her tone is sarcastic.
I’m aware of an uncomfortable pressure building in our body. “I don’t have bodily wastes,” I tell her.
“Yeah, right. Even bugs have to go,” she says.
“But Chloe, I don’t have a body. And I must tell you, I believe that something is amiss with ours.”
“You never had a body?” she asks. “Ever?”
“I am a nonphysical being from another dimension who—”
“Yeah, yeah. Totally weird. I get it.” She proceeds toward the toilet. “Don’t watch, Welkin,” she says.
Don’t watch? I can only see what she sees. Chloe reacts to my thought by closing our eyes. Then she sits and discharges liquid waste. Almost at once, the uncomfortable pressure I noticed is relieved.
“How often does this bodily function occur?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Too often,” Chloe replies. “Lucky you, not having to bother.”
I am indeed lucky.
Chloe completes the toilet task and reopens our eyes. She proceeds to a sink, where she washes our hands. Then she views our body in the mirror. “Ahh!” she moans. “My hair! And is that a zit on my nose?”
I observe my human for the first time. Some body parts are covered with clothing, but what is visible appears to be standard. Chloe is currently focused on only two aspects. First, the hair. She’s ignoring the tiny hairs we have all over our skin. Instead, she glares only at the mass on our head. It appears to be growing out of control.
“Very funny, Welkin,” she says.
I assume the hair mass on our head is abnormal. It’s clearly different from the rest. Possibly some form of medical treatment is required. “Did it sprout overnight?” I ask.
“No. It’s supposed to be there. But it got messed up while I was sleeping.”
“Hmm,” I say. “Will it be difficult to remove?”
“I don’t want to remove it, Welkin. I have to fix it. And this zit!” She leans toward the mirror to study a red spot on her nose. “Strange. Maybe it’s not a zit. It’s itchy. Oh. Frickin’ mosquito bite.”
“Quite right,” I say.
“Okay, Welkin? I can’t talk for a while. I’ve got a lot to do, and I need to focus.”
“Please,” I say. “Carry on with your duties.”
She doesn’t answer. She washes our face. Next, she cleans our teeth with a small brush and a length of string. I enjoy the odor of the paste she uses, but the taste isn’t pleasant. After that, the procedure becomes extremely complex.
From a cabinet, Chloe retrieves several items. Two of them are electric-powered. There’s also a box filled with various chemicals. She thrusts our head under the tap in the sink and wets our hair mass with water. Then she partially dries the mass with a towel. This is followed by considerable time spent untangling the hairs with a comb.
It’s plain to see that the water and comb have subdued the abnormal mass. But, incredibly, Chloe then uses one of the electric devices to blow hot air onto the hair. It soon returns to a dry, billowing state. I feel I should point out an obvious flaw in her process.
“I know what I’m doing, Welkin,” she says.
I decide to withhold judgment.
“Good call,” she says.
“I thought you couldn’t speak during this process,” I say.
“Of course I can,” she tells me. “I just don’t want to.”
I feel slighted, and she says, “Don’t go all emo on me, Welks. I need to focus.”
Ah. Perhaps her duties are more difficult than they seem. It’s likely too much to expect a primitive to do multiple tasks at the same time.
“Jeez,” she mutters. But she carries on. She picks up the other electrical device. It too emits heat, and she applies this directly to the hair mass. Slowly and carefully, she draws the device along sections of hair. Soon the hair is once again subdued.
Chloe further subdues it by binding it at the back of our head with elastic. I can’t help thinking she could have avoided most of the prior procedure by doing this in the first place.
“Not the same,” she mutters. “The ponytail is so I can do my makeup.”
Makeup, it turns out, involves the box of chemicals.
“Some of my stuff is organic mineral.” Her tone is defensive. But she doesn’t say more as she employs fine motor skills to place substances on our skin. There is great focus on the mosquito bite, and soon it is the same color as our skin. Next, the skin above our eyes is colored, and then the lashes are coated with dark goo. Finally, she colors our lips and then once again releases the hair.
“There,” she says, as she studies our reflection in the mirror.
Overall, I can see very little difference. However, I must assume that this is necessary to the health of the human body.
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” Chloe says. “I do it so I look good.”
“Look good?” I ask.
“When you look good,” she says, “then you feel good.”
“I understand.”
“You do not. You shouldn’t tell lies, Welkin.”