by Ava Paris
The documentary did a good job of not blaming anyone, instead pointing out what I already knew. The documentary pointed out that these changes happened because we progressed in an unsustainable way. The documentary talked about how we could change our course now though since we understood what we had been doing wrong this whole time - something we hadn’t always realized - and how to undo the worst of the damage. That we now had this knowledge it was powerful, and terrifying for people at the same time.
The answers Attenborough puts forward at the end of the documentary are things that people are already starting to do, but that many will be hearing for the first time when they watch the documentary. The documentary made me cry the first time I watched it, but it also leaves you with a sense of hope, something much of my scientific training had not done. Something which I am happy to see in a documentary of this scale and popularity. There is no more perfect way to present than to show the problem - using some of the worlds most beautiful and striking videography - before presenting the solutions. Solutions that are small and manageable beside bigger solutions. Showing that we can all start taking steps now, which is wonderful news, and gives real hope!
William and I sat in silence and watched the documentary. He took everything in, nodding at the parts about what the science was telling us and gasping at the beautiful imagery Attenborough has collected throughout his career.
When the documentary was over though, I turned off the television and turned to William. The moment I turned to television off, the silence filled the room.
“Well?” I asked him, prompting him to say something, anything at all.
“Well what?” He asked me.
“Well, are you going to pass this on to your team, so they will have something to take back to your home planet?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” He asked me.
I cleared my throat, the nerves were beginning to bite, and bite hard. “I mean that I want to know if you are going to give this to them. I think it shows that humans know there is a choice, and they knew that what they decide will determine what happens to us going forward. It is not our technology that will wipe us out in the end, but our own poor choices should we choose to make them.” I told him.
For a long moment, William just stared at me.
We had all heard again and again - as scientists - that it will be technology that helps us resolve the ‘problem’ of climate change. These words were always spoken by someone who either hadn’t had as much time to think about the complexity and severity of the issue of climate change, or someone who didn’t want to think about these things. The reason for this is because that those people don’t want to see what is right in front of us.
It’s a choice. We either go forward in a way that is sustainable for us and the planet, or we don’t. That’s a choice we and sentient beings are making, not a choice made for us by technology.
William knew this. I knew this. But it was only because of people like Sir David Attenborough that the rest of the world would know this.
But there was something else, and I could see it dawning on him slowly.
“You want me to send this back? Not to go back?” He asked me.
I nodded slowly, the personal point of all of this was starting to hit home and I was incredibly happy to finally see that. “Yes. That’s correct.” I told him.
Slowly but surely, the smile began to spread over both our faces and William reached for me to pull me close to him, to pull me into his arms.
“You’re mine?” He asked me, his lips just an inch from my own.
“I have always been yours.” I told him, and he kissed me.
We shared a deep, longing kiss and when we broke apart we both laughed. Not because anything was funny, we just laughed from sheer relief. We had both been striving towards this moment separately in our own ways, and had both been so scared of what would happen when things did work out, but when they actually did we were both so relieved.
A good thing you’ve worked for feels so much better than a good thing you are just handed, you know?
This had been something a long time coming and now that we were here, and now that we were together and kissing and enjoying one another, it didn’t take long for him to take me to the bedroom.
We had plenty of catching up to do.
Chapter Nineteen
The work that William and I had begun together - work that we had both been interested in - was put to the side. He could already tell me the outcomes. He also told me that a big part of the reason he had targeted me was that he wanted me to work with him, but also that he had read so much of my work and been following me for such a long time that he had seen some patterns.
It didn’t matter so much that he could see patterns that humans couldn’t see yet, or that he knew the outcomes. I still needed to do the work.
“You need to quit academia.” He told me one night as I told him about my dreams of working with the great David Attenborough whose work I loved.
“No, no - I can’t do that.” I told him. “My work is important, and not just to me.” I fixed him with a look.
Hadn’t this guy come to follow my work specifically? Hadn’t he sought me out specially? Now he was saying that I shouldn’t be doing that work.
In answer though to all of my unasked questions he shook his head. “Even before I was in love with you, I knew you were meant for greater things. The only ones who read those journals are other scientists. Your work - your knowledge - could make a real difference elsewhere.” He told me.
He wasn’t wrong. I had known it too, it was just that I wasn’t ready.
Moving out of academia is difficult, especially once you’ve gotten comfortable and done all of the work to get to where you are.
All of those hours networking, emailing, collaborating. All of that unpaid work I put in before I was offered a full-time position. All of that time I spent on my studies, all of that money and energy. I had put so much in to get to where I was.
Even if my job wasn’t exactly my dream job, it was still a job that I loved. It was still close to my dream.
Because he didn’t have to pretend to be anything else, William stopped coming into the university and pretending to be a visiting professor. He told me he had managed to put a memory of his leaving into most peoples minds, and also did something so none of them would expect to ever hear from him again, or feel compelled to reach out to the Swedish university he never worked at.
It made me smile to imagine this Swedish university’s response if anyone did reach out to them looking for him. What do you say when multiple people swear that your professor - who doesn’t actually exist - worked alongside them, went to conferences, and produced results?
I was glad to know none of my colleagues would ever reach out like that.
William was busy with other things though, and was telling me a little about what they were, but mostly I didn’t have much of a clue about where he went during the week.
“What happened to your crew?” I asked one day.
“They’re still here.” He told me earnestly.
“On earth?” I asked, and he nodded.
“They will be here for some time, they still have to fix the ship, and maybe reach out to someone to help them. Even if they managed to make contact, it would be a long time until they could be rescued.” He told me.
I had a lot of questions about aliens, but I hadn’t really asked most of them. I mostly let them ruminate inside my mind until they felt too stupid to ask out loud. But this time, the curiosity was too much.
“Are there other alien species that we don’t know about?” I asked.
William grinned at my question. “You didn’t know about mine before, did you?”
“That’s why I am asking.” I said.
William started to chuckle at my response. “You know the answer though, to have asked the question in the first place.”
I looked into his eyes as I thought for a long moment.
William just nodded at me. Patience and love inside his eyes.
“Will you show me?” I asked.
William leaned over and kissed me. “I will show you everything. Everything that I know. Everything that you want to know. Everything that is worth learning about. Every little thing. Everything.”
“Promise?” I asked.
“Promise.” He told me.
Evidently the captain had told William it was fine to stay on earth, as long as he felt comfortable being here. He asked William if he was happy to collect data going forward. Data that he would send to his people at regular intervals. William told him he was happy to share any knowledge they sought.
I wondered how William would send any information across such distances - I didn’t even know how far his planet was from Earth yet - and he told me that where there was a will, there was a way. Always.
Sure, I thought. Knowing just what humans had managed with less computer power than was in my mobile phone. We managed to land on the moon, to send shuttles into space to collect data on our solar system.
I remembered Voyager and how it had lost touch with us, not because it stopped working but because it was transmitting from so far away and the technology was so old. But, that was an old problem. My car had more computer power. The kind of technology that William’s people had was something else. It was far more advanced than ours if it could bring you to earth from so far away and allow you to study humans without humans actually ever noticing.
I was sure they had this. He could work remotely.
William also told me that part of the reason that him staying on earth indefinitely was probably okay was the fact that there had never been a president before. None of his peoples ships had ever crash landed, much less had enough contact with a species in order to fall in love. So, if no-one had done it before, there were no rules about it. Much less rules to say it couldn’t be done. Since they were stranded too, things were a little different.
It was possible, I knew, that they could all be stuck here and unable to leave or contact anyone. I hoped this wasn’t the case and that they could figure it out, but I knew that even if they worked out how to leave now that William had gotten his leave to stay, that he wasn’t going anywhere. He was all mine now.
Over time I grew more comfortable with this, and with William. But I did always wonder to myself how I could have gotten myself into such a situation. If you’d told me that something like this was going to happen in my life a year ago, I would have laughed in your face. It just seemed to be too much.
I also wondered what direction meeting William would take my life in the long-term. Sure, he was nudging me to change my career trajectory, but what else would change? This wasn’t some normal human-human romance after all. This was something, out of this world!
I had to keep pinching myself. I had to keep telling myself to calm down, that I shouldn’t get overwhelmed. It was easy to get overwhelmed in a situation like this. It wasn’t like I could talk to anyone about it either. Who would I talk to about my alien boyfriend? I was sure I would be committed.
Although, if I did talk to a mental health professional about this, I was sure they would just take anything I said on as a metaphor. They wouldn’t believe that I really thought I was dating an alien, I am too smart and stable for that. Perhaps they would imagine I was using this alien stuff as a metaphor for the unknown parts of falling in love, of human relationships, and of other peoples inner lives.
Maybe. Who cares though, because I wasn’t going to talk to someone about this. I was going to give myself time and space. Time and space to work through every big bit of news as it came to me. That was sustainable.
The adventure too was part of the deal though I reasoned as I snuggled into William one night and he changed his arm from skin to scale, because he knew how much I loved petting his scales when it was in that form, and I think secretly too because he liked how good it felt to be able to truly be himself with me, without fear that I wouldn’t accept him.
I guessed my own fears had been silly, and so were his, but neither of us knew that until we had the other confirm that it was all okay.
Maybe it was a little odd, and a little unexpected, a little overwhelming, and a little different, but it was all okay in the end.
In the end, I had him. That was what mattered.
I had the man of my dreams - even though I would not have ever imagined a relationship like this one in a million years - and we were going to grow together, learn together, change the world together.
Even if I didn’t know quite what form that would take right now, at least I knew who it would be with. At least I knew who was my person, and that he was so well suited to me.
Who knew an alien would be my perfect person? Not me. Or, at least not until now.
My dearest reader,
Thank you for taking the time to read my book! Maybe you can help me with something. As I am not a full-time writer, I am a little bit time poor and didn’t want to sit down to write a second in series if no-one would be interested.
All is not lost though! If you made it to the end of this book, you can sign up to my email newsletter and show me that you’re interested in there being another book. I’ll email you when the next in series is out. I won’t SPAM you or sell your email address or anything like that.
If you’re not interested that’s fine. I still want to thank you for taking the time to read my book, I think it’s wild that others are interested in the funny ideas I come up with in my own mind to pass the time and love that I get to share this with you!
Leave a review if you like, or don’t. Just go on being wonderful and supporting others’ dreams and your own. That’s way more important anyway!
Be well,
Ava Paris
