Earthling Explorers tended to be repugnantly opaque, not to mention uncouth and slow to understand the simplest things, but at least they could supply me with acclamatory feedback: "Oar, you cut down trees more prettily than anyone else in the universe!" (Except they would put this sentiment in their own words to achieve the effect of sincerity.) Then I would once more feel joy in changing the face of my planet, and would know that my life had Direction.

All I required was someone to assure me I was not wasting my existence on meaningless busy work.

I waited for someone like that to come along. And eventually, he did.

Being Roused By A Small Orange Alien

One day, I awoke to find an alien creature shouting into my face. "Are you Oar?" it yelled in the language of Explorers. "Come on, baby, wake up. Tell me if you’re Oar."

"I am not a baby," I answered. "I am forty-five years old."

"If you’re Oar, you’re older than that. You should be forty-nine by now. Are you Oar?"

"Who wants to know?"

The creature leaning over me was neither glass nor human. However, it was approximately human-shaped, with two arms, two legs, and a head. The head did not have normal ears; instead, there were two bulgy balls on top of the skull, like puffy mushrooms growing from the scalp. For clothes, the alien wore a white short-sleeved shirt, gray short-legged pants, and tan sandals, all of them stained with spills of unknown origin. The creature’s scaly flesh was not transparent like mine, nor anywhere on the pink-to-brown-to-black spectrum of Earthlings. Instead, the skin was a shade of orange that grew darker as I watched: from tangerine to pumpkin to an extremely burnt ocher.

This struck me as thoroughly foolish — an alien who can change color should endeavor to become clear and beautiful, not more opaque and unattractive. But the universe is full of beings with Different Views Of