In the year 2000, the Creator of Planet Blizorping put two Blizorps in sleeper pods to travel to Earth. Toward the end of their journey, a meteor smashed into the spaceship, sending each Blizorp hurtling to Earth in his or her own ejection pod. Their paths diverged, and they ended up thousands of miles apart.<

Fortunately, each one landed in a bassinet in the nursery of a hospital. Unfortunately, they did kill the newborns who had been lying there before them on impact. Fortunately, no one noticed. The Blizorps wouldn’t see each other again for many years. The first Blizorp, Xx-ahtl, remembered The Creator’s warning: “It doesn’t matter if you get lost. You’re the only Blizorps there. It will be obvious when you find each other again.” The second Blizorp, Jennifer, forgot she was a Blizorp at all.

Xx-ahtl found Jennifer decades later. When he realized she didn’t know she was a Blizorp, he set out to show her everything she’d missed out on: the Blizorp Commandments, their 10% explorer discount on all Blizorp apparel, Blizorp apparel, and all of the correspondence to and from Blizorping updating the rest of the Blizorps on their mission—the mission! Jennifer didn’t even know she had a mission with the humans.

After a year of preparation, Xx-ahtl reached out to Jennifer. He’d studied her. He knew everything she liked and everything she didn’t. It was easy for her to trust him. The hardest part for Xx-ahtl was pretending he was a human. He’d done it for decades, but it was particularly hard for him to pretend to be human with someone who was, to him, so obviously Blizorp.

“Jennifer?” he asked one night after a game of Monopoly—a game he hated because he was, as all Blizorps are, socialist by blood.

“Yes, Xx-ahtl?” Jennifer responded.

“Have you ever thought much about my name?”

“Xx-ahtl? No. It’s cute. Why?” It’s important to note here that Jennifer pronounced Xx-ahtl “Paul.”

“The first two letters of my name are my number, twenty. I am the twentieth Blizorp of Planet Blizorping. And you, Jennifer, you are the twenty-first. Your name is X-X-I-A-H-T-L-A. Xxi-ahtla.”

“What in the world are you talking about, Xx-ahtl?”

“I don’t expect you to understand right away. It’s strange to me that you forgot, but the memory must’ve been lost in the collision. Look.” He showed her photos of the two of them as babies. They were together in their sleeper pods, the first nineteen Blizorps cheering them on in the background as they launched for Earth. Jennifer took one of the photos, pretending to examine it for minutes longer than it took her to remember everything. She was the twenty-first Blizorp of Planet Blizorping, sent here with Xx-ahtl decades ago.

“Oh, my gosh,” she exclaimed. “How did you find me?”

“It was easy. Our unique Blizorp traits influenced all the little decisions that led us to the same Glooken."

“Glooken?”

“City. Once I saw you, I knew you were Blizorp. It’s obvious.”

“It’s obvious?”

“Of course. Let me ask you something. When you wake up, what’s the first thing you do?”

“I stand on my tippy toes on the footboard of my bed and long to be held by my creator.”

“The humans don’t do that.”

“Noooooooooo you’re joking.”

• • •

Jennifer was excited to learn about who she was. She and Xx-ahtl walked around together in vintage Blizorp apparel. They were the coolest Blizorps on the planet. Jennifer met the nineteen other Blizorps over Tele-Blizoom, the Blizorp communication channel: “Do you also see three-dimensional dodecahedrons when you close your eyes?” she asked, naively. “What about the innate sense not to trust any of the humans? Wait. Is this why I have a tail?”

The Blizorps laughed through the call that transferred to FaceTime after they’d enjoyed forty minutes free on Tele-Blizoom. “Yes, yes, yes! You’re a Blizorp, through and through.”

Jennifer turned to Xx-ahtl, grateful finally to understand herself. “Thank you for making me a part of something.”

“Don’t be silly,” he replied. “I just showed you who you already were.”

“What if I’m not good at it?”

“Impossible.”

Jennifer shook her head, which prompted Xx-ahtl’s “You’re a good Blizorp.”

She shook her head again. And again, Xx-ahtl countered, “You’re a good Blizorp.”

• • •

Jennifer was enamored of the Blizorp world. She dedicated all of her thoughts to the Blizorps. The more time she spent with them, the more she understood herself.

“Xx-ahtl! Did you know we’re the first experimental explorers?!”

“Haha, of course I know that.”

“They told me to ask you about the mission.” Jennifer probed.

“I’ll explain tonight. I’m late. I need to go.” Xx-ahtl responded, nearly speaking only to himself.

Jennifer thought Xx-ahtl’s behavior was strange, but she didn’t really care. Blizorps look out for each other. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well. Jennifer express-shipped the newest Blizorp zorps for Xx-ahtl. Zorps are something between jorts and zilookz.

But by the time Xx-ahtl got home, Jennifer was asleep. He had to leave early the next morning, so he left her a note: “Thanks for the zorps. Let’s talk mission tonight.”

Jennifer was confused. Since learning she was a Blizorp, she and Xx-ahtl hadn’t spent more than a few hours apart. Why would they? They could communicate best with each other. Blizorp brains experience a wider breadth of emotions than human brains. Humans could never really know them.

Xx-ahtl met up with Jennifer that night. “You didn’t need to express ship the zorps. That’s really bad for the galaxy.”

“We’re literally the only two beings getting things shipped cross-galaxy.”

“Let’s talk mission. As you know, we were sent here as an experiment. The Creator wants to know if Blizorps can survive among humans.”

“Oh, that’s awesome. Is The Creator happy with the results?”

“Well, there are no results yet. You could survive among the humans. But I’ve been relying on the Blizorp world this whole time. They want me to branch out into the human world.”

“I can help you! I know all about the human world. This will be easy.”

“I can’t have you help me.”

“What?”

“I know you’re a Blizorp. It’s no different than calling home all the time. I know you. They want to see if I can live like a human.”

“Oh. Okay.”

• • •

Xx-ahtl’s behavior became increasingly erratic as he forced himself into the humans’ world. He often left Jennifer alone for days at a time with no warning. As quickly as Xx-ahtl showed Jennifer the Blizorp world, he left her there, alone. Jennifer had been alone for decades, but this was different. She was missing something.

One night, Xx-ahtl showed up unannounced after a few days away. Jennifer was excited to see him. She was really happy. “Guess what?” he asked her. “I told Willa about Blizorping.”

“What?!” Jennifer was shocked. “Why would you do that?”

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “She thought I was fucking with her. Also, taxes are so evil.”

“Don’t do that, Xx-ahtl. If they find out about us, then we’ll be under a whole nother set of experiments—from the humans. And I don’t think they’ll respect our privacy. Do they even have HIPAAZORLAKSILOG here?” She paused, waiting for Xx-ahtl to chuckle at her joke. She obviously knows they call it ‘HIPAA’ here. But the silence stayed silence and the laugh remained unspoken. “And we probably wouldn’t see each other much,” Jennifer added.

The next morning, Jennifer woke up first and balanced on her footboard to long for her creator, like always.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Xx-ahtl shouted, throwing Jennifer off balance and causing her to crash into the hardwood floor.

“I’m just longing,” she whimpered after sitting up. “What do you mean?”

“That’s so weird. Don’t do that.”

The outburst forced Jennifer’s realization that she hadn’t seen Xx-ahtl long in a while. She hadn’t seen him long, or talk to the other Blizorps, or clip his tail.

“You know, sometimes I think you’re becoming less of a Blizorp.”

Without skipping a beat, Xx-ahtl snapped back, “What the fuck is a Blizorp?”

• • •

A lone tear traced the lone Blizorp’s cheek.

She swallowed her cries and stuttered, “It-it’s why we have tails. It’s why we see three-dimensional dodecahedrons.”

“You have a fucking tail?”

“No.”

Jennifer and Xx-ahtl stopped talking after that. Xx-ahtl, who started spelling his name P-A-U-L, spent all his time with the humans. Jennifer kept in touch with the Blizorps. They promised that once Paul proved he could live among the humans, the two of them could travel back to Blizorping and stay there. “He doesn’t know he’s a Blizorp,” she’d plead.

“You didn’t either,” they’d remind her.

Without Paul’s help, Jennifer didn’t always know how to reach the Blizorps, and they eventually lost contact. She missed Blizorping even though she’d never been. None of the humans understood her. Paul had been right: whenever Jennifer tried to explain she was a Blizorp, everyone thought she was kidding, until she talked about it for long enough that the humans thought she was crazy. Sometimes she thought so, too.

• • •

One day, Leah introduced herself to Jennifer. Jennifer wasn’t herself anymore, but she didn’t mind Leah. Leah was nice to her.

“I have to tell you something,” Leah whispered. “I know you’re a Blizorp. I’m a Phlooog. We’re right next door. We all know about the experiment.”

Jennifer said nothing. Leah was probably just saying what she thought Jennifer wanted to hear. She probably wanted something, and that’s why she was being nice. Jennifer didn’t want to learn about another wonderful world just to lose it again. “I’ll be careful,” she thought.

“You know about me?”

“Of course. I could tell as soon as I met you. Phlooogs are the same species, just a different planet.”

“Really?” Jennifer didn’t believe it.

“Yup.” Leah confirmed.

“How many Phlooogs are on Earth?”

“Oh, billions.”