Art Pact 15


"The thing is," Marsh said carefully. "The thing is... I absolutely can't help noticing that you appear slightly different from your... uh, your profile."

The figure on the other side of the table shifted uncomfortably.

"It might have been a slightly old picture," she admitted.

"I... well..., uh... how to put this?" Marsh fiddled with his cutlery. "It's not so much the age of the photo. I mean, I'll admit my own picture was, that is to say - it's a couple of years old, and it may have been taken from a flattering angle."--he touched his mole self-consciously--"But it's - as I say, it's not so much the age of the photo. It's the fact that you don't appear to be..." he waved his hand.

"There wasn't a space for species on the form," said his date. "I read the terms and conditions quite carefully, there wasn't anything about having to be a human. I am over eighteen!" it insisted.

Marsh ducked his head slightly, realising that everyone at the surrounding tables was now looking at them. How they hadn't been staring all along he had no idea - perhaps this was a regular occurrence at this restaurant. But his date's agitation was starting to wake the other patrons up to the reality that there was some kind of alien robot at the centre table. Marsh let his gaze sweep around over the array of gawping faces that surrounded them, each one fixed in an amazed expression, mouths open and eyes popping.

OK, he thought let's run with this.

"Allysa - would I be right in thinking that that isn't your real name?"

"That's true. I picked it when I first came here, something easier to pronounce, you understand."

"Oh, so what's your real name?"

"Leanne."

"Oh. That doesn't.. Uh, never mind. Where are you from originally?"

Allysa folded up one of its many polished ovoid limbs and made a gesture that Marsh thought was supposed to be a head scratch but which actually made him think of a transformer attempting to eat an ostrich egg.

"Well, our ship came in at Southampton."

"I mean - before that?"

"Oh, well! Bombay!"

"Actually I meant - uh, before that?"

"Oh, I see. You mean..." one of the other ovoid limbs pointed directly upwards. Allysa leaned forwards conspiratorially, and its buzzing voice smoothly diminished in volume as it spoke. "You mean up there? You mean when did I come here."

"Yes, yes. Here, Earth!"

"Oh! Sorry."

Marsh leaned forwards and raised his eyebrows. After a few seconds Allysa made a noise that sounded like a diesel engine coughing.

"Oh, you mean you want me to tell you! I'm sorry, I can't do that."

"It's a secret?"

"Well yes, I suppose so. But I mean I literally can't tell you that. I can't - pronounce the word? Or no, that's not it. I can't hold it in my head. I can't say it, that's the short story version. They won't let me."

"Who?"

"My parents. Sorry, it's such a cliche, talking about your parents on a date. You must think I'm one of those girls with issues."

"No, that's not - I don't think that at all," Marsh reassured it. "At all." He blushed, realising that he had put a little too much emphasis on that. Allysa looked around, and Marsh too the opportunity to study it a bit more carefully. Its head was a larger ovoid, but one that was similar to its limbs - egg-shaped, a sort of dull white colour. Slanted blue slats covered the front of the shape, the pointed end of the egg, so to speak, and were the only signs that distinguished the head from the other limbs apart from its size. Marsh hadn't seen any of them moving, and he'd been looking at them under the assumption that they were some kind of eye. What if they were something else, he suddenly thought. Perhaps he'd been staring at Allysa's ears all this time - or worse, perhaps it had genitals. No, it couldn't have genitals, surely - a robot, even a weird alien robot, wouldn't have genitals, right? Plus, if there were any problem with that, he was sure that Allysa would have told him about it. He'd have mentioned something to a date that spent all evening staring at his groin, certainly.

He briefly wondered again if Allysa were actually not a robot, but an alien person, but another look at the auxiliary ovoid hanging by its head ruled that out. Whatever he thought about aliens, he was sure that their heads needed to be attached to their necks physically, and that they didn't have floating cubes hovering beside their heads.

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