The Worst Job In The World
Time felt like a weighted blanket on Steven Johnson’s shoulders every day. The end of the day couldn’t come quickly enough.
4:59:58
4:59:59
5:00:00
Pushing his chair back from his desk, he gathered his things. His jacket draped over his arm, hat on his head, he bent to pick up his briefcase and headed out. Forty years he had been working in the IRS, and his wardrobe looked like it had been working since the 1950s. While retirement would be available soon, he didn’t look forward to it. Leaving his desk, he passed any others still in the office without any type of farewell. Even if they had worked with him for years or actually attempted to be the first to offer goodnight, they didn’t get any response from him. He just didn't like people. He stepped onto the elevator, as he did every day, and selected the parking garage level.
After the short ride down, Steven walked from the elevator to the same unmarked parking spot he had parked in for forty years. He got into he same Honda four door he’d driven for the last thirty two years. He had to give it a little gas every time to get it to start up, and had to turn the engine over at least three times before it would eventually roar to life, but he didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting a new one. Even with the coughing protests, the car would always start.
With the car in drive he made the same half hour drive home. Half of the time was sitting on the interstate in stop and go traffic. The same news reporter was reading the headlines on the same radio station. He hated it, but knew he wouldn’t like anything else any better. The silence was even worse, so he left it on the same channel. He would often see the same cars and drivers heading in the same direction as him, and would nod if they did, but he had no interest in any of them. Their traffic plight was none of his concern. He eventually found himself on his street and parked on the street in front of his house.
The house was old, with no updates done to it. He did the bare minimum of upkeep to the exterior of the house, and paid for just enough yard work to be done to keep anyone from knocking on his door to ask him about it. He’d had one person knock on his door years ago and never wanted to experience to happen again. He was the epitome of the hermit next door that lived in kids nightmares.
He didn’t want anyone to bother him because he didn’t like people. The only reason he tolerated the job he hated was that he didn’t interact with anyone. He could quietly do his job and go home. As with his hard work, as long as he did what was the acceptable amount of work he was left alone. He preferred it that way. He had been alone for a long time and he didn’t want that to change. The biggest reason, bigger than not liking people, was the secret he harbored.
Once inside the house, Steven put down his briefcase and hung up his jacket. He put the hat on top of the out dated coatrack that sat by the door. His routine led him further into the dim lit house. He kept no gap blinds and shades that let in minimal light, but also kept prying eyes from having any chance to glimpse in. He knew the reaction he’d have if anyone knew what was really going on in his house.
He sat down in his rocking chair and turned on the tv. The next part would be horrific to anyone who would see and hear it. He quickly tugged on his right ear, and with a fleshy pop it came off. There was no bleeding, rather a small amount of thick yellow grease like substance began to leak from where the ear had been. It was followed by a soft hiss that sounded like a hydronic release. His jaw went slack, and as if someone had swung a katana through it, his face began to slide off and away from his head, like a door on a hinge.
As the face swung away from the head another hiss gave way as the chest stopped appearing to breath. It then swung in the same direction as the face did away from the body. If the body opening up like that wasn’t enough to unnerve anyone, the following sound of slow unzipping would make the hairs stand on end. Steven was no normal person. He was an alien.
The openings of the human flesh mech revealed Steven’s true form. The teal colored alien sat in the body taking up roughly half the torso and part of the head. About the height of a toddler, he leaned forward and got out of his chair in the human body and moved to the kitchen. He didn't wear any clothes, as no one of his race had ever seen fit to. Their lack of changing weather on his home world mixed with their general imperviousness to injury and the species complete lack of any external sexual differences made it an afterthought. However, if they lived on earth, he could see the need with different climates.
Short in stature, Steven’s body was made up of two legs much like humans. The feet however were rounded stumps with six toes that were tentacle like in nature, spread around the entire foot to provide balance. He had no traditional arms, but the head shape had some resemblance to an octopus, a species he couldn’t be sure wasn’t a distant relative of his own. The two eyes were a large amount of the top of the face and were the darkest black with sparkles of silver all over, as if galaxies existed within them. His mouth was a large set of a light blue lips that furled down in a frown at a natural resting position. The nose hung from between the eyes like a water balloon, swaying as he stepped. As a part of the head, four arms extended out under the chin like folds in the front and the back. They were similar to humans arms, but like the feet had six short tentacles each that served capacities like fingers. The hands rooted around in his fridge for something to eat and quickly found several skin covered fish. He threw them on a plate without any plans to cook it and climbed into the pantry for some additional food.
Quickly he gnawed on the food and returned to the room with his mechanical body, and stood next to the coffee table that had a computer on it. As he touched it, the device morphed into a rock shaped computer, with floating screens above. Steven, who’s real name in his native tongue was unpronounceable by a human, quickly checked his communications and sighed as yet again there were no responses. He allowed it to transform back into a normal looking laptop. He proceeded to climb back into his seat in the human body and flip through the tv channels.
He had been on earth for centuries, after being stationed here by his home world. Spying and reporting on humanity was his real job. He would work an appropriate amount of time before creating a new identity for himself and start a new life with another uninteresting job. It was the only change to his routines, happening roughly every forty years. He would reset the mech suit to look younger and establish himself in the job. He spent the first couple hundred years much more engaged, interacting with humans and learning their ways. But he tired of it over the last hundred years, and had begun phoning it in. No feedback was ever being provided anyway, so he felt less interest in doing his job well.
He watched the news and reported directly from that these days, rather than the direct interaction reports he included in earlier years. The humans advancements had made it very easy for him by creating tools like the Internet, and later AI to summarize things like the need for him. While his tech was advanced, it was not so great at adapting to human tech, so he had to do a little work of his own to translate. But he had more time for shows about the humans he hated on the planet he didn’t want to be on. It was better than passing the years doing nothing.
It was the worst job out there because no humans knew of their race. Spying on bigger threats that knew about his race were the desirable jobs. They never lasted as long as this one had, because the need to extract and be more cautious with communication was needed. He was convinced they had forgotten about him. Adding to the increasing depression of his posting was that rule number one demanded destroying the ship that one arrived in so no one would find it. Eventually someone would pick you up. So here he was, trapped on earth, working jobs that were extremely boring, while his equally boring real job was also running.
With no warning, the computer went off. He jumped out of his seat and slid down the front of the body, only barely recovering from the startle and landing safely. No one had messaged him in over three hundred years. He raced to the computer to pull up the message.
“Earth has been marked for destruction. Local politics have made it untenable and dangerous based on your reports of how humanity responds to things. The decision made will take place within twelve rotations. There is a local agent that has orders to pick you up in ten rotations at the mountain identified as Everest. If you are not there by then, they will have no choice but to leave the area.”
Panic filled his mind as he read the final instructions of the message again. The transmission ended as coldly as Steven knew the peak of the mountain would be.
How would he get there? And what could be so bad to declare a planet’s worth of being wiped out that hadn’t even joined the galactic community? He didn’t like the humans. They smelled foul, and did such frivolous things, but it didn’t mean he thought they should be wiped out entirely. It didn’t quite add up, but what could he do?
His options were limited. He could expose himself as an alien to try to warn humanity, which would not really do much good. It would make the short ending of his life much worse by being imprisoned and studied. There wasn’t much more than a .0001 percent chance they could withstand the onslaught if they knew anyway. With option two he could just sit back, stop going to work and watch all the media he wanted to finish while he waited for his death. Or option three was trying to make the journey. He had roughly two months to get there, so it could be done, but the logistical complications and international travel would be a significant difficulty.
He shut off the computer and waddled back into the kitchen. He climbed the counter and grabbed a bottle filled with amber liquid. One of the few things he had found on earth that he truly enjoyed, was the alcohol humans consumed. It worked as well on him if not better than humans because of his size and makeup. He quickly crossed the room back to his seat in front of the tv, and took a big pull directly from the bottle. Nothing he did tonight would matter. He would make the decision in the sobering light of day. For now, he was going to do his best to forget everything that had put him in this position to begin with.