Thomas' Dog
Visiting Thomas was such a hassle. First I had to go into a decontamination room were everything I had on me would be disinfected, which seemed pointless really because I had to take off those clothes anyway, put them in a plastic bag, and put on some sterile scrubs. Then I had to go through several layers of identification: my retina would be scanned, along with my finger prints, blood samples would be taken, and I would have to put a series of codes into different machines at every stage. But as much as I hated it, I had to admit it was necessary, we couldn’t risk anything hurting Thomas. Thomas was an alien, of course, although these days he preferred to be called a “non-human person” when his species was relevant and simply “a person” any other time. He had been chosen by the bureaucracy of his species to be a sort of ambassador to humanity, a situation which had presented many challenges. For one, his species just announced he was coming one day, giving the human bureaucracy...