Through the eyes of Visiting Alien.

a baby shower

The colony has convened to celebrate an organism that has not yet arrived.

a Berlin techno rave

The organisms have gathered in a lightless chamber to be struck, repeatedly, by sound.

a Black Friday sale

The colony has designated one dawn per solar cycle as a sanctioned frenzy.

a coffee mug

The organisms cannot begin their functional cycle without first ingesting a heated liquid, and they have engineered a dedicated vessel for this purpose.

a doomsday prepper bunker

The specimen has excavated a chamber beneath its dwelling and filled it with everything required to continue existing after the end of existing.

a doorbell

The dwelling is fitted with a summoning device: a small illuminated stud beside the primary aperture, positioned at the height of a standing adult's hand.

a first date

Two members of the species have arranged to sit across a small elevated surface and evaluate whether their genetic material should be permitted to combine.

a funeral

The colony gathers to attend a specimen that has ceased.

a furry convention

The organisms have gathered in a climate-controlled hall to become, temporarily, other organisms.

a goodbye at the airport gate

Specimen pair, adult humans, observed at the boundary of a departure terminal.

a grandmother's kitchen

The oldest female of the dwelling maintains a chamber optimized entirely for the application of heat to organic matter.

a group project meeting

a gym in January

a gym mirror selfie

a hospital waiting room

Specimen cluster: sixteen humans, sedentary, arranged in bolted rows facing no shared object.

a house party at 3am

The dwelling has reached a state I can only describe as thermal and acoustic overload, yet the specimens will not leave.

a houseplant

a job interview

Two humans have arranged themselves on opposite sides of a flat surface to perform a ritual of mutual assessment.

a laundry basket

The dominant organism in this dwelling maintains a woven vessel dedicated to fabric it has declared unfit.

a microwave

a middle school dance

The colony has gathered its smaller specimens, not yet fully calcified into adult proportions, into a darkened rectangular chamber and instructed them…

a mirror

a music festival

The colony has designated a fenced enclosure of trampled grass and instructed roughly forty thousand members to converge inside it and stand.

a nightclub bathroom queue

A corridor of the loud dark structure produces a single-file column of females, always females, standing rigid outside a smaller chamber that emits…

a pair of shoes

The organism cannot tolerate direct contact between its lowest limbs and the surface of the planet.

a park bench

a parking lot

The colony has cleared a vast rectangle of ground, sealed it under a black hydrocarbon crust, and painted parallel white lines across it at regular…

a refrigerator

The colony maintains one cold shrine per dwelling.

a revolving door

The colony has installed a barrier that is also an aperture, and the contradiction does not appear to trouble them.

a séance

Six specimens have arranged themselves in a closed ring around a low wooden platform, palms flattened against its surface, smallest digits touching so…

a self-checkout machine

The colony has erected small altars where the human may absolve itself of a communal ritual it once required another of its kind to perform.

a set of keys

The human carries a cluster of small serrated metal tongues, bound together at one end by a ring, and it will not be parted from them.

a shopping receipt

a shower

The organism enters a small vertical chamber, seals itself inside, and voluntarily triggers a controlled indoor rainfall onto its own dorsal surface.

a silent disco

The colony has assembled several hundred specimens in a single enclosure to perform coordinated locomotion, and yet the space is nearly silent.

a spin class

a TikTok live stream

a traffic jam

The organisms have arranged themselves into a stationary river.

a vending machine

The colony maintains illuminated boxes that hoard sustenance and refuse to surrender it without ritual.

a voicemail from someone gone

The colony preserves the voices of the dead.

a wedding

The colony has assembled in a temperature-controlled hall to observe two members bind themselves together with words.

a work call on mute

The human has entered a small enclosure and sealed itself away from its colony to speak with faces trapped inside a lit rectangle.

a yoga retreat

an airport at 5am

The colony has a chamber built for waiting, and they arrive at it before their star has risen.

an elevator

The colony has installed vertical transport chambers inside their dwelling-stacks, and their behavior within these chambers is the most anomalous data…

an umbrella

The organism carries a folded membrane on a rigid central spine, sheathed and dormant, until the atmosphere begins depositing liquid from above.

doomscrolling at 2am

Specimen at rest, yet not resting.

getting left on read

The human has produced a communication and released it into the glowing tablet.

holding a newborn

The colony has produced a new specimen, and the transfer protocol is unlike anything previously logged.

moving out of a childhood bedroom

The specimen is dismantling a chamber it has occupied for approximately two decades.

sitting with a pet at the vet

The colony maintains a specialized structure for the surrender of smaller organisms.

the first night in an empty apartment

The dwelling-unit has been emptied of all soft objects.

the last day at a job you loved

The specimen has entered a state I can only classify as ritual mourning without a corpse.