ORIGIN: Stars have cores too, don’t they? We have no doubt that our alien will feel right at home in an apple the color of bad blood. Sometimes poison gets between people, creating a chasm, and something dark oozes from it. It eats away at you, welcoming you to the family. Oh, the irony of not being alone in the isolation that is space.
Right: There’s an alien between us. It has an uncanny resemblance to an apple core. That alien has come in its flying saucer to poison all that we share, all that thrives in the space between us. I can’t be the only one whose heart is being eaten away. Please, say that you feel the loss too. Soon, there won’t be an us anymore.
Left: Don’t be so selfish. One look at that teary-eyed alien, and I can tell that it has come to share in our contentment. There is room in the word us for more than you and me.
Right: That’s what scares me. I don’t want room to breathe loneliness into my lungs. I need to feel warmth on my skin. And I don’t see myself in the starless eyes of that alien. Even the lights of its flying saucer are out. They are the color of apple rot. And soon it will spread to your eyes too.
Right: I am still here. The alien hasn’t eaten me yet. You still know me, I haven’t changed. The password to my heart remains the same. I am not lost to you.
Left: Oh, how I wish it were true. But that’s not how this works. The alien doesn’t have to change you. Its mere presence is enough to poison everything. Melancholy has spread to the air. I no longer see you when I breathe. There are no traces of you left, and I can’t find my way back to your heart.
Left: The alien says that I never knew you. That all I ever saw was the starlight you sent my way on the wings of all those paper planes. All the lovely words that are still burned into my mind. The alien says that they are worth less than wet-with-tears paper. Because that’s not what’s in your apple core. The alien says that we are all darkness at heart. That’s why the stars never touch, and we are doomed to never know each other.
Right: …
Left: But that’s not what the nightscape of my mind looks like. All the paper planes you sent hit a different mark, and I connected the dots. There may only be one apple inside your chest, but in my mind you became a whole constellation. Those dot-to-dot lines are what you have made me feel over the years. That’s how we touch. That’s what matters.
Right: …
Left: Please. Say something. Don’t prove that alien right. Don’t let its darkness spread between us.
Right: I hate apple cores. What’s the point of reaching out? Friendship. Love. Family. Society. The apple passes from hand to hand, but there is always a part of you that goes to waste. A piece of your heart that no one wants to eat. And it doesn’t take long for loneliness to spread, like poison, until it becomes the center of your universe. An insurmountable distance between you and everybody else.
Left: Don’t worry. The end of the world as we know it is nigh. Soon the aliens will come to expand our horizons. And people will finally learn to swallow those apples whole.
I’m really sorry, Mister Alien, but your poison doesn’t work on me. I don’t become emotionally attached; I simply don’t have it in me. Loneliness isn’t in my vocabulary; I relish the empty spaces around me. I have never felt the need to reach for the stars, I don’t need their warmth on my skin. The color of my happiness is candy-apple red. Coming out of my shell is not in my plans. People break everything they touch, and I couldn’t be happier with the distance between us.
Why do you show me that moon riddled with holes, Mister Alien? Do you want to change the way I look at the universe? I am lonely, and those stars look like holes too. Is that what you want me to say, Mister Alien? I am an apple. What I have to give and what I keep to myself. I don’t resent the worms anything. Those little pieces of my flesh were always meant for them. People hurt each other, it’s the price we pay for not being alone. But my heart is mine. It’s the only place where I feel whole, where I keep the little things that make me me, not what I feel for others. No worm is allowed in there. They can eat everything else, but they aren’t welcome to my heart of hearts. And neither are you, Mister Alien. You can poison what is meant for others, but not what is meant for me. You have no right to make me feel disconnected from myself.
People aren’t faraway stars. Human warmth is at my fingertips. But I have your poison running through my veins, Mister Alien. Everything I need, everything I crave, feels out of my reach. I am hungry all the time. It’s as if my stomach were dying to burst like a star. It’s as if you had left me no other choice. All I feel is your black nothingness slowly eating me away, but maybe someone else will be able to feel my human warmth. Is that how things work where you come from, Mister Alien? Does selflessness really keep your world turning?
Remind me again, Mister Alien. That’s the universe, isn’t it? Any resemblance to apple rot goes no further than the color black, am I right? Emptiness is a good thing. It shows willingness to let others in. Those pinpricks of light are something to be thankful for. They read, “I am better for having known you.” Better. Better. Better. Unlike apples, people only bring out the best in each other, isn’t that so, Mister Alien? That’s why being all by your lonesome hurts so much.
Let’s park those apples for now. In this world there is no shortage of things that serve to alienate people. And our little alien can’t leave without doing some sightseeing first.
Four walls and a roof over my head to sleep safe and sound every night. This planet is too big. It doesn’t fit in my arms. It can’t be the warm teddy bear that shows me the way to the sweet dreams that make this house a home. This planet can only be a monster on the other side of the door. Fear. Something too big to be understood by a little thing like me. Something too big to ever understand me.
Sure, writing things down alienates people from their own memory. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Memories can’t be trusted, they rewrite themselves. And they don’t even have the courtesy to leave a few ink stains or cross out some paragraphs to let you know that something has changed. Nothing good can come out of rewriting the past. That’s why I leave it alone. It’s why the powers that be gave us books. When reality leaves you colder than outer space, write fiction. You can do whatever you want with the stars, it doesn’t hurt anyone.
I don’t know anything about the natural order of things. I just like circles because they always come back to their point of origin, and there is no end in sight. I am an insecure child. I need that extra reassurance. That promise of tomorrow. I know that the sun doesn’t move in circles, and neither does this planet, but it’s the thought that counts. Days and nights. A time to live and a time to dream. I like knowing that they belong in the same circle, and one won’t devour the other. But first it was fire, and now it’s electricity. Most people seem to have something against sleep. They have no use for tomorrow. They live for today. That’s not a circle. It’s a dot. There’s no movement. Only stunted growth.
What do you want me to say? That we have vanquished the horizon and we are now more connected than ever before? That everything and everyone is just a phone call away, and we have gotten rid of the distance between our hearts? I’m sorry, but I can’t say that. I was happier when people still made eye contact. Out of sight, as the saying goes, out of mind. Only those aren’t my words. I am a child. All heart. I can’t connect with strangers whose body heat I haven’t felt before. Words on a screen and distorted voices don’t mean anything to me. They are as far away as stars in the night sky.