Aboard the ship now, ‘Samuel’ removed his disguise and dusted off any remnants of the sweat which had plagued him yesterday night.

“So, how’d it go?” the commanding alien turned to meet his subordinate.

“Most peculiar. She would not stop looking at me… looking in my eyes. I had not the faintest clue what she was trying to convey.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking we shift our gears more toward that in the human language department. Humans are peculiar creatures, after all. But even then there are stunning parallels between them and the creatures they think they are above.”

“Like what, sir?”

“The lady you bedded earlier had literally told you verbally she wanted to have intercourse, no?”

“She did… so what?”

“So what? She literally voiced to you, a potential mate, that she wanted to.”

“I still don’t see the significance. At least not in the ‘parallels’ between humans and other Terran creatures you claim exist.”

“Don’t you get it?”

“No…”

“Well, let me help you here… ah, what do you think birds are yelling to each other when they sing? Or, what do you think insects are doing when they release attractive pheromones? What do you think dolphins are doing when they chirp to each other, whales when they bellow? What exactly is it that they’re saying?”

“I- oh…”

“Got it?”

“Yes, yes…” ‘Samuel’ turned around, beginning to walk away from his superior. “Mating calls. You find them everywhere, don’t you.”

“Indeed. No matter how advanced these humans think they are, they still have to yell to each other for it to make it happen, it seems.”

————

Cindy was back in the same coffee shop she had been in, the one where she’d met the piece of ass she’d end up sleeping with. This time, she was accompanied by her friend, who insisted she tell her all about it.

“It’s just… he was so oblivious. I kept throwing signs at him, but it wasn’t until I straight-up said I wanted to fuck that he did anything about it.”

“Tell me about it. Always so clueless,” her friend responded in agreement. “I mean, the way they act sometimes, you’d think they were some sort of, I don’t know, alien species- not someone who was part of the same species as us.”

“I know, right?” Cindy replied. She continued, “Men: The Aliens of the Human Race!”

Her friend erupted in laughter, wittily replying “Don’t tell me that wouldn’t make millions in the box office!”

And as the quips continued, and laughs were shared, it appeared that Cindy was just as oblivious as she thought Samuel had been the first time. She knew not how close she came to the truth.

The ship returned to the atmosphere, invisible and see-through as always. This time, a new alien, ‘Danny’, was sent out. “Initiate Plan B,” the commanding alien said overhead, peering into the store at Cindy with her friend, “let’s try two at once.”

“You sure this is it?”

“Yes, yes, now go!”

‘Samuel’, as he would come to be known, hesitantly strode over to the entry door of the coffee shop, one foot in front of the other.

Come on, he thought to himself, you spent weeks practicing the human method of walking in basic training- so get it over with!

But just before he could slide stealthily into the coffee shop, his fingers trembling on the entrance doorknob, a surge of nervousness swarmed his body and made its way to his mind’s gates, overwhelming him.

He snuck away from the area and immediately turned toward the invisible ship to voice his concerns. “You’re… you’re absolutely, 100% certain, 100% sure, that this costume is working?”

“…Samuel.”

“What? It’s a genuine concern-“

“Samuel. Don’t you think, if the disguise were to be broken, that everyone in the area outside the shop, as well as literally all of the people in this general area, would notice and point it out?”

Samuel exhaled a sigh of contempt and responded haphazardly. “If… if you say so.”

Approaching the coffee shop for a second time, Samuel willed himself to the task and forced his way in. He swore he could feel the burning gazes of every onlooker being branded into the back of his head- but a quick survey around himself disproved his anxiety. He turned back to the front of the shop, his eyes now lazed in relief.

“Oh… for God’s sakes, what are you doing? Just standing there? Get to the task at hand or I’ll just come in myself and do it!”

Samuel instantly shot up straight- an action that drew some attention toward him. But the curious looks and prying stares soon faded into the air as the customers realized nothing of importance was transpiring.

Now newly motivated, Samuel made an order for a cup of coffee and sat at an empty table. It wasn’t long before his name was called to go up and retrieve his beverage.

But, according to plan, Samuel did not return to his original table upon paying for his drink. Instead, he located the table over, where, sat in one of two chairs, was a mostly absorbed woman with glossy red hair and glasses obscuring some of the dimples spread out on her cheeks.

Samuel approached and pulled out the chair in front of her. “May I?” he asked.

The lady pulled off her headphones and stared at him, her attention fully absorbed in his stunning looks. For, to make this conducted case study much easier and more efficient, the alien’s disguise was made much more generally attractive in a way that the aliens hypothesized would stimulate human love and attachment. And it was clear that it was working.

“S-sure, go ahead…” she stammered.

Samuel sat down with a surprising confidence that rivaled his anxiety that had flooded him only moments prior to entering the coffee shop. Though, at least here, he had no reason to be scared. Not only was she a human, and not of his species, but the concept of love as humanity came to understand it didn’t really exist back where Samuel was truly from. So he sat, silently, waiting for something to be said, his eyes locked in hers.

But nothing came to be said. She just stared at him. The table remained in silence as the atmosphere in the coffee shop grew to be more deafeningly quiet. And then, all of a sudden, she began to move her eyes. Not in a darting way, as if she was desperately trying to find something else to look at- no, more like in an almost gesturing way. Samuel was confused by this- disoriented, even. What was she trying to convey by doing this? Was she even conveying something? Was this just some sort of human reflex or behavior that his class had glossed over?

It was all too much for him. So he excused himself to the bathroom and locked the door.

“Samuel, what are you doing?” The commanding alien asked.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what she’s doing. I mean, did you see what was going on? She never said anything. She just keeps moving her eyes around. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Calm down, Samuel,” the higher ranking alien replied, “now, we understand that this is largely uncharted territory. There is much more to be understood in the way of human communications and conversing, and our research teams, unfortunately, have snagged a roadblock here when it comes to eye contact. You’re just going to have to bear it out. Here, why not try initiating the conversation yourself?”

Motivated once more, Samuel stepped out to be met with her waiting gaze- though, of course, he did not know that, He just thought she was staring at him.

He sat back down and thought of things to say. Instantly he thought back to Unit 7, “Human Small Talk”.

“How’s the, err, weather?” he stammered out, “is it treating you nicely?”

“Eh,” she responded, “same as always. Never rains down here in Los Angeles. Are you from here?” she inquired after.

Yes, he thought to himself, I did it! I started the conversation!

“No, no, I’m from,”, a quick pause to think about his brief stint in Terran geography, “Florida. Down there, weather-wise, you never know what’s gonna hit you next.”

She laughed, hard- so hard that it wasn’t really appropriate for how funny his remark really was- and nudged his shoulder, peering at his arm, before looking back up to him, in silence.

Crap, he thought, she’s doing the thing again!

Quickly, he started another conversation. This time, though, it was more bound toward executing the experiment. “Say, wanna get out of here?”

“I’d love to,” she said.

Samuel set down his drink and walked her out of the store. Having now initiated Phase B, he was delighted to see a vehicle already parked out front of the store.

He led her to it, taking out the keys that had been planted in his pocket beforehand. She giddily claimed shotgun as he hopped into the driver’s seat, key in the ignition, ready to take her to the set location around ten minutes away. That should give him plenty of time to talk to her and get some vital information that may benefit his team’s research efforts as a whole!

And, as he recalled his driving lessons in the first part of Unit 3, he waited patiently for something to be said. Anything.

But no. Silence. Even as the car rushed down the road and into the suburbs, it was nothing but her perpetual staring.

Every time he’d try to get something, anything out of her, she’d quickly end the conversation and continue with her meddling gaze. He didn’t understand, nor could he comprehend her and her actions.

Finally, she and him arrived at the location of Phase C. He breezed out of the car, herself latched onto his arm, her eyes cleaved onto his stunning jawline. At this point, he just wanted to get the experiment over with.

“Alright, this is the most important part,” the commanding alien came over his earpiece, “the human mating ritual- or, more specifically, the lead-up to the human mating ritual; how it is started, how it is initiated. This, right here, is what this entire study is about, Samuel. So do not mess this up!”

Samuel silently nodded. At this point, both him and her were sat comfortably on the sofa- her leaning on his arm, him sitting upright. On the television in front of them played The Matrix; and while Samuel was fixated on this, it seemed she didn’t mind just looking at him the entire time.

Finally, Samuel looked down to meet her gaze. It was a heavy stare- eyebrows relaxed, pupils dilated, and her eyes static. Five minutes passed as she kept staring- and, in this lengthy, awkward duration, she had even begun to bite her lip in anticipation. To her, it seemed almost too clear what she wanted for Samuel not to get it. But, meanwhile, he was scrambling around in his mind for any scrap of comprehension at all.

Finally, she gave up, throwing her tank top to the ground, with nothing but a top on. She said impatiently, “are we fucking, or no?”

Finally, Samuel thought to himself, some clarity!

And with that came the final step in the study.

The commanding alien came over the earpiece. “Initiate phase D.”

————

But happening concurrently, Johnathon's world was whirling, spiraling out of control. He felt sick to the stomach, partially tuned-in to what was going on. Could it be just coincidence that every single confusing word that came out of everyone's mouth was also a word that he had played at least once in his motley of championships? Paired with the fact that he was unaware of any of the words' definitions, Johnathon's logical attempts to explain away the peculiar situation he found himself in were overall quelled by an inexplicable onset of paranoia and some gut-wrenching feeling. His kidneys twisted into a knot, his toes curled up at the thought, his stomach was queasy- was that even a word?

"Excuse me for a moment, would you?" Johnathon breezily got up from his seat, pushing it back just as quickly as he had the last time, though notably less ferociously. He rushed to the door, having somehow located the exit without even knowing where it was. But before he could rush out of the restaurant and into the streets, he was stopped by a security guard.

"Sir, I can't knowingly rosterize your exit of the restaurant if you do not phear for your food."

Johnathon, having weaved the definitions of the unintelligible bumbling together decently enough through context clues, wittily snapped back, "Oh yeah? Well where were you when I had my foot up all your waiters' asses?"

Johnathon then shoved past the now astounded bouncer, whose exclamation "My, oh my!" was audible even throughout the external sidewalks parked next to the restaurant. Johnathon ran through the crowds of people and passersby, as they all blended together in wicked blurs of smeared paint. He felt his head rotating three-sixty degrees around his neck as he struggled to keep his balance in the world of unknown.

Though most of his senses were thrown off by his state of disorientation, his hearing seemed acute in eavesdropping on the comments of pedestrians and strangers in regards to himself. As expected, it was all jargonic, messy mixtures of mutilated sounds and words, if they could even be recognized as words. It was now to the point of no return- no longer sounding like a foreign language, seemingly lacking in any form of organization at all!

Some instances of comments Johnathon picked up on in public were, best put into writing:

"Does he gyin alrin? I gix he should wase a hoxilogist."

"Xcizqui me? Do you dize heese?"

"Hoal, someone should bage tazet to the correst potch."

And as Johnathon tried fruitlessly to tune out the noise from his ears, the final straw was when he heard someone say, "Xaqfe hoxly quouat nohat." Not a single word in that sentence was a real, certified English word! It was all nonsense that the Scrabble champion had, once upon a time, spewed so violently onto a Scrabble board that he was deemed worthy of a trophy! Johnathon began even to question his own self-proclaimed expertise in his field. Was he even as good as he claimed to be? Or was he merely a fraud, cursed with the blessing of always being right?

Johnathon hastily pulled out his pocket Scrabble dictionary, leafing through it, page by page, sorting by alphabetical letter- and, to his horror, he was able to affirm the existence of every single word that had vomited out of their mouths.

He began to back up in horror. His hand, losing all feeling, dropped the Scrabble booklet on the ground as the world around him began to spin. Smeared blurs of strangers became large, clumped up mega-clusters of human activity that was vaguely happening around him. Everything became dimmer, dimmer, dimmer... until no color but black was to be seen in Johnathon's visual palette.

---

He awoke in a hospital, drenched in cold-pressed sweat. His head jumped off of his pillow at the sight of the doctor, and he found the energy to muster up a question.

"Where- where am I?"

"You, sir, are in the Berkeley Hospital of Psychological Treatment. Please don't worry yourself- you are fine with us, I assure you."

"You... you talk normal."

"Indeed, sir, indeed."

Johnathon plopped his head back into the pillow, exhaling out a long sigh of relief. Perhaps it was all a dream, or, more aptly, a nightmare. None of it had never happened! Johnathon could resume life normally, albeit, never even laying eyes upon another Scrabble board again.

And as the nurse pierced his numb arm with a needle, drawing blood, she hastily told the admitting doctor:

"His blood seems to be a bit exhenic."

Sitting at the dining table now, Johnathon bestowed the tension from his shoulders over to the chair he was resting in. He had worked up quite an appetite- after all, the brainpower that is used up in frantically scrambling a limited set of letters around needs to be replenished somehow. Fiddling with his dinner fork, the world-renown Scrabble champion grew increasingly impatient as he was barraged with the delicious-smelling aromas of the dishes passing around him; dishes going to the diners two tables down, the diners behind him, the diners in front of him, even the diners sitting at the same table- lord, was every single waiter and waitress throughout that entire restaurant just so religiously devoted to denying him of his food for as long as possible?

And the very moment the diner just to his side received his entree and lifted the cloche, a scalding, wispy, aromatic cloud of steam leapt at Johnathon's face, disintegrating in an instant. Johnathon had just about had it up to that point. Forcing his chair back with such ferocity that it left skid-marks on the hardwood floor, Johnathon stood up quickly, placing his foot on the tabletop. He yelled out stridently, "Are any of you accomplished chefs ready to come out with my food??"

Conversations stopped abruptly, heads turned his way, and everyone's gaze was set upon him at this moment. He could feel their shaming eyes branding themselves into the back of his ignominious skull. And, with an audience suddenly emerging from as far as the eye could see, Johnathon began to reconsider his actions. Should he sit back down and act as if nothing was out of the ordinary? Should he excuse himself and find the exit? Logic and convention stormed his mind, stating that clearly, the former two were superior to any other action Johnathon could muster. But the mind of a hungry man is not dictated by logic and convention, no; Johnathon's outburst was purely emotional, and, at that point, so was his entire train of thought. Perhaps he was acting a bit irrational, sure- but, being the top Scrabble champion in a far-off, little-known place referred to as the entire world, Johnathon felt he deserved a bit more respect. Or, at the very least, he certainly deserved to get his food on time.

And as more emotions welled up in the bottom of his bosom, Johnathon found that the words were bubbling out of his mouth quicker than he could even attempt to control it. "I mean, it's only the top-rated, number one, globally recognized and esteemed Scrabble champion talking here, in an emporium full of other Scrabble players? Do you all have no respect? I'm certain you all know how difficult a game Scrabble is to play, let alone to master!"

In his last statement, however, Johnathon was a bit disingenuous. In all truth, he found Scrabble quite easy and simple. He simply had what seemed to be the entire backlog of all known words in the English dictionary stashed away, just resting on a drawer in his brain somewhere, as well as every single blend of consonants and vowels that could just barely be recognized to even be a word. Simply put, Johnathon made it look so easy that it appeared no matter what configuration of vaguely organized letters he willed onto that board, it would always be considered legal. Some even jokingly speculated that he was just willing words into newfound existence entirely every time he eagerly took his turn.

And in being so professional, it seemed Johnathon had now convinced himself that it was his right to act like a babbling moron in the middle of a relatively small cafe. And, as it became ever more clear that he was not going to sit back down until his food was there on a silver platter, the waiters reluctantly pestered the cooks in the back, who, in turn, hastily whipped together a noticeably more lacking-in-quality, blander, more lackluster dish than the other patrons had received. And, when five minutes had transpired, the unenthusiastic waitresses paraded his table, his entree carried along with them.

Johnathon finally sat back down, courteously scooting his chair back under the table before instinctively reaching out his hands to receive his meal. The waitress who wielded his mighty dish, while hesitant in truth, acted as if she were honored to hand him his bounty. Johnathon's mouth was already watering, and he began to smack his lips. But, just as he began to consolidate his clasp around the metallic tray that supported his sustenance, the waitress suddenly recalled a step of the food-giving ritual she had forgotten to enact. And so, to Johnathon's starving dismay, she reflexively pulled it backward, and opened her mouth in query.

"I'm sorry, sir, but before I give you your food, I must ask: would you like salt with that?"

Johnathon couldn't even be bothered to articulate a verbal response, only shaking his head no at the question. He would have forgone that step too, if he were telepathic. He was too hungry to bother putting more effort into declining her offer.

"Are you sure, sir? It's quite exhenic."

Johnathon was prepared to affirm his stance yet again through means of no more than a simple head movement, but he was caught off-guard by that last word she used. Exhenic?

Johnathon remembered playing this word in one of his many tournaments (of which he won, of course). He had played it off of his opponent's last word, combining the letters X, H, E, N, I, C with a preexisting E for a total of 19 points. He wasn't sure of its definition, but he knew it was an English word- at least, it had to be, or the scorekeeper wouldn't have counted it, right?

"Come again?" Johnathon asked rather politely, a surprise to all the diners gathered around and staring at him.

"Exhenic? Lacking salt?"

This cleared up things in Johnathon's mind for a while, and he finally found the energy to answer to her previous question verbally. "Oh, then, no thank you dear. I don't need salt."

With that, the waitress departed, the head-on collisions between her steep high-heels and the cold hardwood floor echoing all around the room. No matter how many times he ran the word through his head, something still felt wrong in his gut. There should have been no reason for this feeling to arise, with the waitress having explained it and everything- yet, it was still there. Johnathon sat in silence, pondering, not even bothering to touch the same food he had once been vociferously pleading for.

And, with Johnathon silent, and no other out-of-touch diner willing to stir up a scene, chatter naturally resumed as diners' gazes returned to those around them. Fifteen minutes pass, and with all of the diners passionately chatting, eating, and overall having a good time, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary- except for the fact that Johnathon's visage had turned a shade of sickly pale.

Noticing Johnathon's clear unwellness, the diner next to him, who also happened to be in the top #5 for best Scrabble players in Australia, tried to poke fun at this in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Well, Johnathon? Won't you enhulse in the meal you so passionately argued for?"

"Huh?" A disoriented Johnathon answered, his voice hoarser than an uncleaned stable.

"Your xazhin? Won't you eat it?"

Johnathon stared at him with wide eyes, unblinking.

"Well, I wasn't quanoned we were having a staring contest!" And the patrons around him erupted in hearty laughter.