Salamander 1

            I was cleaning the porch windows on a crisp Spring morning when I was approached by a shortish, stocky man. Being approached while working in my neighborhood usually amounts to a waste of time. It’s rarely a bad thing, though.

            It isn’t against the rules to tell you this story, since I was told expressly by my employers that I could say whatever I wanted. No one would believe it.

            I thought that this guy was going to ask directions, or give me some that were unneeded. Instead, he handed me a card, and asked if it would be alright to send me a brochure. He wore a faux leather jacket, and a tightly woven straw fedora with a burgundy silk band. He had a bolo around the tab collar of a white linen shirt. So, you can see that he was fashioned. One thing that I noticed, also, is that his shoulders were particularly wide. I hesitated to take the card, there at the base of the small ladder, and he elaborated. It was a job offer, and if I accepted, I would be ‘handsomely remunerated’. I was a little put-out, but intrigued. Everything slid into place at that point, though. I would receive a brochure. If I disregarded it, then had second thoughts, there was the card. It looked like one for scented candle direct marketing. I may still have it. It has a dark blue background, with a light blue fractal design.

            I didn’t ask how the guy knew my name or what apartment I lived in. Sometimes I miss important details, but when people approach as I work in the yard, I’d rather get it over with, and have them go their merry way. The next day, I received a brochure addressed to me.

            The design and font of the 4 page brochure was striking. It had a font like I’d never seen before. Like that on a 70’s bootleg album from a distant place undergoing a slight change in name here. The illustrations were bright pastel epic. I was drawn in.

            The message was simple enough. I qualified for odd jobs on a distant planet. A six-week stint would bring a simple $20,000. Room and board would be provided, along with the services of a personal android. Also included was leisurely depressurization in moon orbit on the return trip. That was the clincher for me at that point. That day, I searched the internet for reviews or anything, and found nothing. But, I thought that it wouldn’t kill me to respond.

           They held interviews in a first floor storefront located in a dilapidated but homey section of one of our adjoining cities. To let you in on the situation the area is in, for example, I was just happy that they’d leased an unleasable building there. I remember going to that business section when young, and I’d liked it. Now, I’d look at it as the bus I was on rolled through. The American Legion, a classic-looking bank, a lovely fifties architecture brick medical clinic, all empty. It fit the connotations that ‘brick and mortar’ have today.

            There was a small sign taped on the window inside the door at that address. I’d noticed the building during my nostalgic tour on the city bus. It had rotting windows on the second and third floor. The sign on the door read: “Valian-Terran Friendship Society”. Just a whiff of sinister. I wondered if the sign was there from before, if it was an inside name from the last lessee who had been selling items that one would find in a cool basement. From the outside, through the large, plate-glass windows, I saw a few old posters on a wall along the small shop floor. A few comic-book posters, with a predominance of ‘The Incredible Hulk’. But, it was the place. Perhaps they scheduled interviews with a wide space in between, since a lady pushed the door open for me after the first set of knocks, and led me to a back office, where she and the extraterrestrial Blues Brother interviewed me.

            The Valian woman wore white. Like a health care worker secure in her position. It was one-piece and form-fitting. Her shoulders were wide, too. She was fit. But, it was in the back of my head as I spoke to them, answering their simple, small-talk questions, that perhaps they could instruct me in ju-jitsu, for good or bad. But, what I was saying, through my working memory of the interview schema, intrigued them. I was just telling them all that I’ve told you about the neighborhood, that retail section. I wasn’t going on and on, but I was going on. Theirs was a facial expression which was either ‘This is an interesting conversation’, or, ‘What planet did this guy come from?’ Which is ironic. They knew what planet I was from. Where they were from had not yet been addressed.

            She stood behind ‘Jake’ as he continued with the recruiting process.

            “How often have you worked on ladders?”

            That was a question open to interpretation.

            “Oh,” I said, “over a couple of decades, once a month, on average. I don’t go very high on them.”

            Both the lady and Jake raised a calm palm to me.

            “Buildings aren’t very high where we come from,” Jake told me. “The height that I saw you at was high enough. And, I assume that you ‘mow’ the grass and shovel snow where you live.”

            “Yes.”

            “For how long.”

            “About fifteen years.”

            He then got up and the woman took his seat.

            She sat down behind the desk, but before she conducted her part of the interview, she turned to Jake. He had a question for me, and I thought, before I heard a syllable, that it’d amount to a ‘dealbreaker’. But the question was simple. He pointed upward.

            “You say there are pigeons up there.”

            “I can’t see how there wouldn’t be,” I told him. “The windows are gone, and there are a lot of pigeons in the neighborhood.”

            He nodded and began to walk out of the small office. I blurted-

            “There may even be raccoons and ‘possums camping out up there, and this is when they’d be sleeping.”

            He nodded. I felt odd, piling this information on him, but it turned out to be the right thing to say, even though it was rooted in my reaction to a very unorthodox interview.

            “They’re wild, you see, and you may startle them. That could be bad.”

            “I’m not worried,” Jake told me, “but thank you for your concern.”

            Here I was, applying for a position that included ‘Astronaut’ in the job description, and ‘Interact with extraterrestrials’ among the requirements. I didn’t believe it entirely, but I was still amazed.

            “What the pigeons leave behind can’t help but have germs. Oh!” I said, “and there may be bats also.”

            The woman sitting at the desk in front of me smiled at him and mouthed ‘Bats!’ Jake said, “I would be interested in seeing that.”

            Both of them would be going back up there between interviews to dig the bats. Jake left, and the woman turned to me and said,

            “This is good! That’s the sort of information I pass on to Terrans about Vale. I’m Camillia, a job coach with the Valen-Terran Friendship Society.”

            This was the point where some would be looking at hard-copy or display, but she just asked: “You have held a variety of seasonal and temporary positions that could be put under the heading of ‘General Labor’.”

            “Yes.”

            “I know yes. In that position, you used light tools, some powered, and worked in a variety of conditions.”

            “Yes…”

            “And we know your circulatory system is good.”

            “yay.”

             “The question that I have for you,” she said, “is when you were thrown into those messes, did you ‘deal’?”

            I stifled a guffaw, which escaped partially, but she didn’t seem to mind. I remembered the times at work when I was told what, but not why. Reassembling pallets of cinder blocks in a back-lot in the drizzle. Assembling kits of small steel widgets and asking why they weren’t simply put together in the process, then being answered with information on what sort of truck took them to the railway spur, and what route the trucks took.

            “Most of the time. If it’s not impossible, it’s just a challenge.”

            She nodded, and told me that I was with the team. She then gave me some details, like when the group would be leaving, and that it was to a planet with 1.3 gravity, with a thicker atmosphere. Her planet was a ‘meadow’, she said. The name of the planet, and the name for humanoids on Vale had been generated by people on my own planet, and accepted by the Valians.

            What set Camillia and ‘Jake’ apart from other Valians, as I discovered later, was that they were fluent in Earth languages. Later, on Vale, I came across people wearing what we called ‘clips’. Those were translators, but only a few wore them.

            Jake came back and stood in the office door in dark anticipation. I would go home and pack for Vale, but they were going upstairs to check out the bats.