It is well-known that a bus stop bench is the most uncomfortable type of seat in the entire universe. More uncomfortable than the Torture Throne of Rakeor XI. More uncomfortable than The Great Serpent Stool, which slithers away on Sssslasssstern. More uncomfortable than the chairs at the dining room table of your in-laws. Bus stop benches take the cake.

It is on one of these benches, in Brooklyn, New York, that Lana Reed’s unfortunate posterior found itself on.

Lana was average height and average build, with an average nose. She did have stunningly green eyes, which she had always considered her best feature. All in all, however, she was exceptionally unexceptional. She had worked as an accountant for six years, despite how devastatingly dull she knew it to be. The thing was, she often thought to herself, she was a devastatingly dull person who was only destined for devastatingly dull things.

She could not have been more wrong, because something that was devastatingly interesting was about to happen to her.

As Lana sat, she simply stared straight ahead, twirling her short, wavy, blonde hair, with simple thoughts going through her head. These thoughts were interrupted by a very loud noise that sounded like a lightning strike, a tuba, and exactly twelve cows decided to make as much noise as possible at the same time. This sound was accompanied by a very blue flash of light, which was also just a little bit yellow and very hot, but only for a second.

Lana was stunned. She had never felt her jaw drop so low. For a moment, she thought it had dropped low enough to touch her chest, which was practically convulsing due to her heart beating faster and more aggressively than a shopper on Black Friday, and it wasn’t about to slow down. Especially since, once the flash of light had subsided, there was a very large object left in its place. The object had a dome shape and a glossy purple finish. There was nothing to distinguish it or give any hint as to what it was. Lana figured the only reasonable course of action would be to knock.

Whatever made her think that something would answer she could not explain, but she listened to that whatever and slowly stood up. Then she walked toward the object, very timidly, and knocked.

At first, there was no answer. She waited a couple of moments, then knocked again. This time, something responded.

“Hold on just a bit, please!” Were the words uttered by the something that responded. It had a high, friendly voice.

“Oh. Take your time, I guess?” Lana responded without really thinking. She hadn’t a clue what she had stumbled upon, and didn’t want to think about what an appropriate response would be. If she had, she would have had to think for a very long time, and after thinking for a very long time she would have said something foolish like, “What are you?” Or, even more foolishly, “Who are you?”

Lana waited for what felt like an eternity before anything else of note happened. A lot of things that weren’t of note occurred, but those were not noted. Then, the purple dome became a purple cylinder, and in the purple cylinder formed a door that was far too small for an adult human to fit through. That was because the thing that went through the door was not human. It was short and had large, black eyes, a bulbous, bald head, and stubby arms and legs. The thing that stuck out to Lana the most, though, was the deep purple hue that the creature’s skin had.

At first, Lana hadn’t the faintest idea of what to do, so she simply stood. She stood and stared. As she did so, the creature stood in front of the purple dome, very smugly. It was as if it knew what was going through Lana’s head, that it had experienced that exact situation before. Once Lana got this feeling, she decided that she had to do, or say, or think something. Anything at all.

“What kind of ice cream do they have on Mars?”

The alien looked shocked. It clearly did not expect this response to its arrival. Neither did Lana, but she decided to roll with it.

"You are an alien, correct? You look exactly like the movies, except that you’re not green, and the movies don't show what kind of ice cream you guys have out there," she continued calmly.

Though the alien still looked surprised, it responded. "First of all, I am not from Mars, and frankly, I'm offended that you would think that. The Martians are an absolute train wreck, and I don't understand how you humans have yet to learn of their existence."

"I bet it's the government," Lana interrupted.

"What?"

"Never mind. Please continue."

With an odd look, the alien obliged. "Second of all, the fact that the inhabitants of this planet managed to figure out how my species looks without actually ever having contact with us astounds me. I've always assumed that it was just a simple intuition type thing."

"No, it's totally the government," Lana interrupted once more.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Nothing, go on."

"Okay," The alien agreed with a second, odder look. "The last thing is the answer to your question. On my planet, we have exclusively vanilla ice cream."

"That is no way to live!" Lana exclaimed, much louder than she had anticipated, but upon thinking it over for another second she found her response to be adequate.

"I agree with you, but you mustn't tell the other members of my species. They'd probably sing to me," the alien said quietly.

"And that's a bad thing?" Lana asked with confusion in her voice.

"A very bad thing. My people are much worse at singing than your people."

"My lips are sealed, then."

There were a few seconds of silence between the two before the alien appeared to have made a horrible realization. "We have exchanged words for all of two minutes and you've found the only two ways in which your race is superior to my own! Who do you work for?! What is your game?!"

Again, Lana searched frantically for an acceptable response. She did not find one, because she had never been accused of working for someone. That was a very serious accusation, one that she had only witnessed in movies, like the alien, so she went back to simply standing and staring.

In the midst of all of this staring, a thought occurred to Lana. Where was the bus she had been waiting for originally? Then she remembered that she had a place to live, and a cat, and all sorts of other things that seemed really important before whatever just happened happened, seemed really unimportant as that thing was happening, and were desperately trying to become important again now that whatever happened became too inexplicable to deal with, and because it was too inexplicable to deal with, Lana decided not to deal with it and walked briskly away.

The alien didn’t react. It continued to stand in front of its ship with its arms crossed. It glanced at Lana briefly, then moved back through the small doorway. It had to get down to business.

---

Earth Date: June 7th, 2019

Sniffgipp Date: Apple 23

Earth is an extremely cool planet, with all of its greatness. It has trees and flowers and everything in between, as well as giant mountain ranges covered in vegetation and daring animals. Speaking of animals, there are hundreds of thousands of species of furry ones, scaly ones, and slimy ones. Unfortunately, there is also lots of hate and death, which is caused by the main ruling entity (or, more realistically, the race that thinks that they are the main ruling entity). On second thought, Earth kind of sucks. It is nothing compared to home.

---

Lana Reed sat quietly in her bedroom, reading a book. It was one of her favorites, and she always read it when she was feeling lost.

Needless to say, she read it a lot.

It was the story of a woman who disappears and her long lost love reads what occurred in the newspaper. He sets out to find her, succeeds, and there’s a big romantic ending. It was predictable and cheesy and Lana adored it. The story had a way of getting her mind off of things, but it didn’t work that night. What she had just experienced was determined to stay at the front of her mind despite her insistence that it stayed firmly in the back.

Lana had attempted to read the same page of her book several tens of times before she gave up. She put her book down in exasperation, got up, and left her apartment. Once she had done so, she sat down on the sidewalk and hugged her knees. Then, she looked wonderingly at the sky. She was looking very hard for something, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. All she knew was that there was nothing more important than to find what she didn’t know she was looking for.

After sitting on the sidewalk for quite a while, Lana realized something. Perhaps she was not to look for something, but something was looking for her. To investigate this thought further, she stood up and began to walk. Walk to the something that was pushing so hard to stay in the front of her mind that it was propelling her entire body forward. She walked straight ahead, then made a couple rights, followed by one or two lefts, and finished off with one right that felt strangely like a left. That’s where she arrived at the most uncomfortable seat in the universe.

A bus stop bench.

The same one she had just left in a huff because there was a smug alien there and his purple ship.

Except there was no longer an alien or a ship. There was just a man in a suit who was walking the way men in suits walk. Lana hated that walk, but right now she was hating it more than ever. She then moved slowly toward where the spaceship once was and gave the ground a meaningful look. To her surprise, there was something meaningful to look at.

It was titled The Problems and Un-Problems of an Alien Non-Alien Life Form. It didn't look like any book Lana had ever seen, due to its sleek black exterior and the apparent lack of pages. It was clearly a book, despite these odd features, and Lana decided to give it a read. Unfortunately, because of the apparent lack of pages, she didn't know where to begin. Once she had picked it up and examined it further, however, a very small screen was revealed to be in what she assumed to be the back cover. The screen said simply, "password".

Lana was surprised that she knew the password right away. She said "ice cream" out loud and very clearly, which caused a  significant chain of events to occur.

First, the book began to look more like a book when it opened up and revealed several unnecessarily electronic pages.

Second, several men in suits started to run at Lana from every possible direction while yelling about something. It was very hard to tell what they were yelling about since they were all doing so at the same time and some of them had fingers in their ears. It must have been important, though, because they all took their guns from their holsters and started pointing them at each other. Lana then made a horrifying realization: they were actually pointing their guns at her.

Then a third, very extraordinary thing happened: time stopped.

---

Earth Date: June 8, 2019

Sniffgipp Date: Yellow 46

I could use a friend. Friendship is underrated back on Sniffgipp, and it’s overrated here on Earth, but I think somewhere in between the two is the perfect amount of companionship. At least for me. Having the abilities and knowledge that I have, however, do not allow me to make friends. I suppose I could count this book as a friend. I confide in it and it confides in me in its own way. Especially on Wednesdays. Wednesdays on Earth are a truly magical time.

---

The men in suits stopped in their tracks, mid-stride. They continued to exist, and everything else still existed, but it had never done so in the way that it did right now. The entirety of everything was still and quiet. There was no breeze, no rustling of leaves, no distant sound of marriages being ruined. There was just this. This moment.

There was also Lana, who was not affected by time’s decision to take a vacation. Despite this, she was also completely still. She had never had guns pointed at her, nor had time ever stood still (to her knowledge). She was a bit curious why time had done as it had done. Her curiosity was about to subside, however, when the alien appeared from behind one of the suited men.

“Experiencing time standing still is always a bit odd the first time around,” It said casually.

“Did you do this?” Lana asked, stupefied.

“Indeed.”

“Why? How?” Lana asked desperately. She was about to ask “When?” as well before she realized that there was no “When” at the time. Actually, there was no time at the time either.

“I can answer the why, but not the how,” The alien replied. “You were right, it’s all because of the government. Cover-ups, secret projects, their insistence that my race is not welcome here. You knew that, so I wanted to save you from these horrible men. The reason nobody wanted this assignment was because of these men. They do not want to learn, they only want to destroy. Whenever something new comes into their path, they want to kill it instead of learning what, or who, or why it is.”

“I still don’t understand. What assignment?”

“The assignment to study Earth, because my race is interested in knowledge instead of war. No offense to you, of course,” It added quickly.

“None taken. I’m going to go home now,” Lana stated as she began to rush away.

“Wait!” The alien exclaimed, “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“There is something you want to ask me?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Shoot.” Lana said in exasperation.

“Would you like to be my friend?”

Lana did not respond, but instead continued to rush away.

Time started again but the alien did not move.