The Alien Blog

Short Bus got a blog, and it worked: the musical stopped being a pile of notes and became a story you could read, scene by scene, with the songs right there in it. So the aliens get one too.

Same deal here. Each post below is one scene of Our Mission, in story order. Every song idea lives inside the scene where it belongs, in a gold box, with its hook and a starter sketch of the lyrics. Nothing here is finished, and that is the point. When a new song idea shows up, it gets dropped into its scene on this page first, while it is still warm.

Three songs carry the whole show, so they lead the blog, right below this post, each with its own gallery of five frames showing what the number looks like. Start there.

The short version of the story: on Poz, kindness is the weather. Three of its softest citizens, Nilo, Ora, and Pim, are sent to Earth in human suits to learn how humans thrive. Earth startles them, breaks their hearts a little, shows them its mess and its work and its shouting, and then a seven year old named June shares her umbrella, and everything changes.

Storyboards come later. Songs and story live here now.

Every musical has a few songs that carry the whole thing on their backs. Ours has three. The question the visitors cannot stop asking. The umbrella that answers it. And the opening number that launches them all. Each one gets a gallery: tap the arrows, or swipe, to see the number in five frames.

The show still needs its real name. "Our Mission" is the working title and it has served honorably, but Dave asked for options, so here are ten, each with its case. Argue in the margins. That is what margins are for.

• "Poz on Earth" · the whole story in three words, with the pun built in
• "You Looked Wet" · June's three words; the smallest line in the show as the biggest title
• "Not Yet" · the stamp on 843 applications; hope with a waiting room attached
• "Unpracticed" · the final report as a title: Earth is not unkind, just out of practice
• "The Planet of Poz" · the storybook option, says exactly what it is
• "Granted" · the other stamp; one word, a thousand years inside it
• "Some Stayed" · the ending as the title; bittersweet and true
• "Quiet Planet, Loud World" · the contrast the whole show is built on
• "Application 843" · Pim's number; specific, mysterious, memorable
• "The Kindness Expedition" · the mission framing, warm and clear

The arc, as it stands. Dave's shape, sharpened: the visitors come on their mission, they are shocked by how cruel and loud Earth is, then they begin to see the kindness underneath, and they end with compassion for the strange humans. And not everybody goes home.

Act One: The Calm. The show opens on Poz with the narrator's tour: the quiet planet, the waiting room, souls applying for a thousand years to be alive. Gratitude is the ground everything stands on. The town sings "Pause." The crew launches in "A New World," zips into "Human Suits," and falls toward the blue.

Act Two: The Noise. Earth hits them like a wall of sound, and introduces itself with "Mine," its unofficial anthem. Shouting, honking, everyone in a hurry to be unkind in small ways. "Why Do They Do This?" asks the show's big question, and "Granted" answers part of it: these people never had to earn the morning. Then the turn inside the act: they meet Bix, the Pozan who stayed, and "I Love Mess" opens the other door. Earth's chaos is not only cruelty. Some of it is aliveness, and Poz, for all its peace, is a little bit flat. Lowest point: "Take Us Home," sung the night Poz answers that the way home is closed, and the crew does the worst arithmetic in the show: two hundred year lives, at Earth prices.

Act Three: The Practice. A seven year old with an umbrella changes the data. "Drops of Kindness," then the practice: small mercies, copied, spreading. The crew stops judging Earth and starts having compassion for it: unpracticed, not unkind. The final report is filed in "Unpracticed," verdict: worth it. The window reopens narrow, one crossing at dusk. Then the split. Nilo and Ora fly home carrying a little Earth back with them: a crooked star painted on Poz, a song sung slightly off key at assembly. Bix stays on Earth, because he was always staying. June also earns the first Pozport ever issued to a human: kindness as a passport, no thousand year line. And after the credits, one video call, Earth to Poz, two years later.

Three songs were missing; all three are now drafted in their scenes: "Speak Softly," a comedy number where the crew tries Earth volume and fails adorably. "Staying," the goodbye song that is not sad, exactly. And "A Little Bit Louder," back on Poz, weeks later, when the returners teach the whole calm planet to sing just slightly off key.

The show opens quietly, the way Poz does everything, with a narrator and a slow tour. Fields where nobody hurries. Streets where voices stay low. Round houses with warm windows. And one long, calm building where the tour always slows down: the waiting room, where souls are still applying to be born.

The narrator says the thing the whole show stands on. Nobody on Poz got here for free. Every living Pozan waited, some of them a thousand years, through hundreds of applications stamped NOT YET, for the one stamp that said GRANTED. That is why they are grateful the way people are grateful for rain after a drought. On Poz, being alive is not the default. It is the prize.

Open on Poz, and open gently. Round houses, warm windows, neighbors carrying each others groceries without being asked. Doors are held as a reflex. Leftovers travel house to house like friendly weather systems. Nobody honks. There is not even a word for honking. There is a word for the sound a kettle makes, and it is considered quite rude.

The name is the whole culture. Poz. It comes from paz, the old word for peace, and it is pronounced like a held breath: pause. On Poz nobody yells. Feelings get named out loud, calmly, the way Earth people read a weather report: there is some sadness moving through, it should pass by evening. It works beautifully. It also has a price. Poz loves everyone exactly the same, gently and evenly, which is a lovely thing, and a hard thing if you happen to be built different. Hold onto that. The show has plans for the different ones. Pozans also live about two hundred years, because nothing on Poz is in a hurry, including time. And Pozans hold hands. Friends, colleagues, two old men inspecting a garden: hands held, the way Earth people shake them once and let go. On Poz a hand is not a statement. It is furniture. It is just where hands go. Every Pozan can also do exactly one loud thing. The calm a Pozan carries can, in a true emergency, narrow to a point: a pulse that lands in a person like a sudden, splitting headache, plus the overwhelming need to sit down right where they are. It breaks nothing. It harms no one. It just stops the moment, hard, and Pozans consider using it a small tragedy: somebody had to be made smaller to be made safe. Children learn how the way Earth children learn the stove: once, with feeling, and never for fun. Poz also has a word with no Earth translation, the one Pozans say to anyone carrying something heavy, which on Poz is nearly everyone, nearly always, quietly: "Benecerta." It means, as nearly as Earth words can hold it: I see your struggle, and I wish you well inside it. Not after it. Inside it. They say it the way Earth people say bless you, except Pozans mean it every single time, on purpose, with eye contact.

This is home for Nilo, the earnest captain who writes everything down, Ora, the kindness scientist who measures a place in small mercies per hour, and Pim, the smallest, who feels everything first and loudest.

But notice something, because the whole show turns on it later: Poz is almost too perfect. Everything is clean. Everything is in its place. There is no graffiti, because there is nothing to rebel against. There are no messy songs, because nobody has ever needed to shout one. It is a kind planet, and a slightly sterile one, and some quiet part of our three visitors is hungry for something they cannot name.

Remember that hunger. Earth is about to feed it.

Before Nilo was a captain, before Ora measured anything, before Pim had a name at all, the three of them were souls in a waiting room. Because on Poz, nobody is simply born. On Poz, you apply.

The application is long, and the questions are not easy. What will you do with a heartbeat? Name one thing worth crying about. If you are given seventy years, what will you give back? Souls wait in line for centuries. Most applications come back with two kind words stamped on them: NOT YET. Hundreds of applications. A thousand years, sometimes, between wanting a life and getting one.

Every Pozan can tell you their number. Pim applied eight hundred forty three times. Ora, six hundred seventeen. Nilo, four hundred two, and he kept every single one, because he says the wanting was part of the gift. So when the crew cries at a sunset, or at rain on their faces, it is not exactly softness. It is memory. They remember what a body costs.

There is exactly one shortcut, and the waiting room has feelings about it: the Pozport. Granted on the spot to any human verifiably kind to a Pozan. No forms, no centuries. When the crew issues the first one, to a seven year old with an umbrella, the report home causes three souls to faint, politely, in order. Pim, who waited through 843 applications, writes the official objection himself, and then signs June's Pozport in his best handwriting. Some rules are just doors waiting for the right person.

Earth, meanwhile, hands out lives for free. No forms, no line, no waiting. And some of its people walk around holding the winning ticket like a receipt they never asked for. The crew keeps a page in the mission notebook for this. They call it The Two Voices.

Neither voice is wrong, exactly. One of them just waited longer. And in the middle of that notebook page, in Pim's handwriting, sits the observation that turns into a song: "They did not get a worse gift than us. They just never had to want it."

[Verse 1, the waiting room, soft]
In the waiting room of maybe,
with a number in my hand,
I have practiced being patient
for a hundred years of sand.
Every lifetime has a doorway,
every doorway has a line,
and I stood there with my hopes up,
saying, someday, someday, mine.

[Verse 2, the numbers]
Eight hundred forty three applications,
eight hundred forty three times, not yet.
I filled out my dreams in triplicate,
and I do not have one regret.
Ora knocked six hundred seventeen,
Nilo four hundred and two.
If you ever wondered why we cry at sunsets,
that is why. Now you know too.

[Chorus]
Then one small stamp said GRANTED,
and the light came pouring through,
and I have said thank you every morning
like the thanking is brand new.
So no, I did not just get here,
I earned this heartbeat, honestly.
I waited a thousand years to be alive,
and alive is what I will be.

[Verse 3, Earth, quiet]
Then I heard a human say it,
standing under a gray sky:
"I did not ask for any of this,"
and it made me want to cry.
Friend, I asked for it eight hundred times,
I begged on bended knee.
You are holding a winning ticket,
and you never even stopped to see.

[Bridge, building]
Maybe that is why we came here,
not to judge and not to scold:
to remind the tired winners
of the treasure that they hold.

[Final Chorus, bigger]
Then one small stamp said GRANTED,
and the light came pouring through,
and I will say thank you every morning
like the thanking is brand new.
So no, we did not just get here,
we earned these heartbeats, honestly.
We waited a thousand years to be alive,
and alive is what we will be.

[Outro, Pim]
Application eight hundred forty four:
this life. Approved.

The Poz Council of Gentle Inquiry has a mission, and for once it is not here. It is Earth: the loud blue planet the telescopes keep reporting on, the one whose music drifts out into space and makes Poz scientists cry at their desks without knowing why.

The brief fits on one page. Go to Earth. Wear the suits. Learn how the humans thrive. Take notes. Come home. Two details in the brief are underlined. First, the return window: the crossing home opens once, at dusk on the fifth day, and a verdict is due with it, one box, checked in ink: IS EARTH WORTH VISITING AGAIN? Second, Ora carries the official instrument of the mission, a kindness counter, because the Council likes a number and the mission will be measured in small mercies per hour. The number is about to have a very bad week. Three volunteers are chosen for their softness, which on Poz is a qualification, and the night before departure nobody sleeps, because tomorrow they fly.

This is where the show opens its lungs. The departure song is pure excitement: three kids at the window of a spaceship, except the kids are aliens and the window is the whole sky.

Everything in the wardrobe is the wrong size for everyone aboard. Zips jam. One suit goes on fully backwards to the waist before anyone notices. Pim disappears inside a coat for a full thirty seconds and has to be talked out of it like a scared turtle.

It is the funniest scene in the show, and underneath the comedy is the engine of the whole story: these three are about to trust a costume with their whole hearts, in a place that can tell.

They land where the brief said to land: somewhere quiet, somewhere kind, within walking distance of humans. A sunflower field outside a small town, dew on everything, church bells somewhere far off doing their gentle morning thing.

First impressions, recorded by Nilo in the mission notebook, in his best handwriting: "Earth smells wonderful. Earth is soft. Nobody here knows we are coming, and still the sunflowers turned to watch."

He underlines that last part twice. He is, at this point, still optimistic.

The town is wonderful for about an hour. A bakery. A dog wearing a scarf, in charge of everything. Then the city gets hold of them: traffic, shouting, a man yelling at a machine and then at the sky and then, briefly, at Pim. Comments under a strangers photo, typed casually, sharp as glass. One calm frame in the whole loud hour: at the crosswalk, a small girl in a yellow raincoat, holding an umbrella she does not need yet, watches them the way you watch weather coming in. Pim waves. She waves back, solemn, like a colleague. The crew will not think about her again for two days, which is the show's favorite mistake.

The visitors do not get angry. They get startled, the way you would if gravity suddenly stopped working. And two Earth inventions break their brains completely. The first is sarcasm: humans saying one thing and meaning the opposite, two things at once, a technology Poz never developed. The second is how beautiful the music is, drifting out of every doorway, made by the same people who were just shouting.

Pim asks the question the whole show hangs on: "If they can be this mean, why is their music so beautiful?"

For scale: Pozans meeting Earth humans is a lot like the quietest people you know meeting the loudest table at the restaurant, except the restaurant is a planet, and it is also on fire a little, and everyone at the table is doing a bit. The crew does not dislike it. They are frightened of it the way you are frightened of a wave: respectfully, and from a small distance.

It is also where Pim hears rap for the first time. A kind stranger, meaning to share the best thing he owns, puts his headphones on the smallest alien. The song is called "Mine." Of course it is. Forty seconds later Pim hands them back with both hands, like evidence. There were words in there Poz has never needed. There were words in there Earth has never needed. And yet: his foot is still tapping. It will not stop. June looks at the foot, nods once, and files this under Things To Ask About Later.

[Intro, shouted, over sirens and a beat]
Yeah. Turn me up. All the way up.
This is not a team sport.

[Verse 1]
I do not share, I do not split, I do not do we.
The plan is the money, the money is me.
Started at the bottom, now the bottom is beneath me.
If you are not a ladder, do not speak to me.
Every friend is a network, every room is a deal,
every smile that I smile costs a dollar, for real.
I do not do favors, I do invoices.
I do not hear people. I hear my own voice.

[Hook]
Mine, mine, mine, say it with your chest.
I came for the bag and I will die on the steps.
Top is the only spot, second is a curse.
Me first, me always, me. Welcome to Earth.

[Verse 2]
Sleep is for the broke, rest is for the rest.
I grind in my dreams and I wake up stressed.
Loyalty is cheap, so I never bought in.
I would step on my shadow if my shadow could win.
Love is a luxury, trust is a leak.
Feelings make you soft, and the soft get weak.
So I stack and I stack till the stack starts talking,
and the only voice I follow is the money, walking.

[Bridge, quieter, one honest breath]
Do I ever get lonely at the top of the hill?
The top does not answer. The top never will.
Do I ever slow down? Do I ever just breathe?
Ask me when I am rich. Ask me when I leave.

[Final Hook, bigger]
Mine, mine, mine, say it with your chest.
I came for the bag and I will die on the steps.
Top is the only spot, second is a curse.
Me first, me always, me. Welcome to Earth.

[Outro, engine revving]
Earth. Population: me.

And underneath all of it, one question keeps asking itself, in the cafe, at the crosswalk, everywhere, until Pim finally sings it out loud. It is the biggest song in the show, so it lives at the top of this blog: "Why Do They Do This?"

By day two, the crew has spotted the pattern, and it is not the meanness. It is the tiredness underneath it. Humans work. Then they work on the way to work. Then they answer work messages at dinner, and dream about work, and apologize for resting.

On Poz, work is a thing you do between naps, songs, and long lunches. Here it seems to be the whole ocean everyone swims in. Ora writes in the notebook: "They are not mean. They are exhausted. It may be the same thing, seen from far away."

This scene wants a song built for phones: short, loopable, impossible to get out of your head, the kind of thing a tired person hums at a bus stop and then laughs at themselves for humming.

Two Earth mysteries the crew cannot crack. First: Pozans eat from little measured boxes, one per day, exactly enough, and nobody's weight has changed in centuries. So the Earth buffet breaks their brains a little. Second, and related: the running. They watch a marathon pour past, hundreds of humans running from nothing, toward nothing, wearing numbers so they can prove later that they fled in order. Other humans line the road and cheer, which the crew finds deeply moving and completely unexplained. Ora's notebook entry, underlined twice: "They run very fast, on purpose, for no reason, together. It might be church.

And then, in the middle of the noise, the week's strangest reading. A wallet drops out of the marathon crowd. A stranger scoops it up and runs, and the crew braces for the theft, and watches him run it straight back to its owner, waving it like a flag. Ora's counter makes a small sound it has not made all day. One. There was one. She writes it down twice, in case it was a dream.

One more entry, from the park, where the marathon ends and a man drops to one knee in front of a woman and the crew prepares to help an injured athlete. He is not injured. He is proposing, and she is crying, and saying yes, and crying. Ora's notebook struggles visibly: on Poz, the Council matches you, compatibility measured to the decimal, and you meet your spouse at a small ceremony with tea, and it works, the way the weather works. Here, marriage is self-assigned. Feelings first, paperwork after. No council, no decimal. "Reckless," Ora writes. Then, after a moment: "Effective."

And in the same park, the crew meets Earth's final boss: a toddler. Three years old, mid-negotiation with a banana that has broken, which is to say it has become two bananas, which is a catastrophe. He screams at the sky. He throws a shoe with real conviction. His parents look on the way Pozans look at rain: this is weather, it will pass, bring no umbrella. On Poz, a toddler has one feeling at a time, names it softly, and naps. Earth toddlers run all their feelings at once, at full volume, in public, like tiny unlicensed parades. Ora, backing away slowly: "He has no regulation at all." Pim, with deep respect: "He is not broken. He is just honest with no words yet. I know things about this."

And then the park provides its graduation ceremony. A sound: small, rude, unmistakably pleased with itself, from the direction of Buster, a man built like a friendly refrigerator who has by now appointed himself the crew's professor of Earth. The aliens freeze. On Poz, bodies are silent. Digestion makes no announcements. Buster, honored to be asked, delivers the lecture of his life: what a fart is, where it comes from, the complete taxonomy, volume, duration, plausible deniability. The crew listens the way they listened in the cathedral. Pim, at last, very carefully: "And it comes out of people's..." "Butts," says Buster, proudly. A long pause. Three aliens, in perfect Poz harmony: "What are butts?" Buster wipes away a tear. "This is the best day of my life."

Later, walking back through the park in a hand held chain, the way Pozans walk everywhere, the crew gets its stares: Earth keeps its hands to itself, mostly, and finds the chain either very sweet or very confusing depending on the starer. Buster considers the matter for exactly one second, takes Nilo's free hand like a man accepting a great honor, and announces to the park in general: "When in Rome." June will join the chain in a few days, without being asked, without thinking about it at all, and it will mean more to the crew than the umbrella. Almost.

And then the park sends its ambassador. A puppy, eight weeks old and mostly ears, escapes its person at a waddle sprint and chooses the crew, instantly, completely, the way weather chooses a town. The crew knows dogs, officially. Dogs were in the briefing books: noble, full sized, dignified in every illustration, a species Earth clearly respects. The briefing books never mentioned the small edition. So when this one comes waddling at them at full sprint, all ears and no brakes, the crew's conclusion is instant and unanimous: Earth also has MINI DOGS, a separate and tinier species, kept secret, presumably for emergencies. Pim, already chosen, already sat upon, whispers the question every Pozan back home will ask for the next hundred years: "Do you... have a mini dog?" The owner, delighted, corrects the record: it is not a mini dog. It is a puppy. "A baby dog," the crew repeats, in the tone of people receiving important news, and baby dog is what they call them for the rest of the mission, and forever after on Poz, where the phrase will outlive everyone at this park. The crew does what Poz training says to do when meeting any new creature: go still, go quiet, let it decide. The puppy decides. It is in Pim's lap before the lap is fully offered, standing on Ora's foot, chewing the corner of the mission notebook with total confidence, and the kindness counter, which measures small mercies per hour, begins to make a small alarmed sound, because a puppy is not a mercy. A puppy is a mercy factory that runs on snacks. Ora tries to write the entry three times and gives up: "It is small and it is glad. That is the whole entry. It is small and it is glad." Nilo, watching the puppy fall asleep mid chew, in a stranger's lap, in a loud park, on a loud planet: "Earth keeps its best people on leashes, and they are not even people." The crew files a formal note that night, unanimous: dogs, as a species, are pre approved.

The town also has a beach, and every Earth song makes the beach sound like a lullaby, so they go. Poz's seas are warm, flat, and considerate; the water waits for you. Earth's ocean does not wait. Earth's ocean has been doing push ups since the beginning of the world. Pim walks in bravely to exactly knee depth, reads the first wave as a greeting, and is returned to shore in several directions at once, wearing seaweed. He comes up spitting and astonished: "It is SALTED. The whole sea. Who seasons a sea?" Ora stands him up in the shallow, lying down part of the water and writes the entry with a shaking hand: "The brochures are lies. Beautiful, popular lies. The water here has a personality, and the personality is a wrestler." Pim, wringing out his sleeves, thoughtfully: "Again?"

It happens in an alley, of all places. A wall that nobody has cleaned in years: graffiti over graffiti, chalk stars, torn posters, paint running in colors Poz does not allow indoors. A kid is adding a wobbly star. A bin is covered in stickers and at least one declaration of love.

The visitors stop like they have found a cathedral.

Because here is the thing they could not name back home. Poz is kind, but Poz is sterile. No mess, no mistakes, no songs shouted slightly off key just to feel them. Earth is loud and broken and covered in paint, and it is alive in a way that makes their chests hurt. Pim hugs the sticker covered bin. Ora takes a photo of a crack in the pavement like it is a mountain view. Nilo, the captain, the rule keeper, picks up a brush.

And that is when a laugh comes off the fire escape, warm as anything, and down climbs Bix. Bix is Pozan, from a survey years ago. He filed exactly one report (it said, in full: Earth: messy) and never got back on the ship. The wobbly star is his tag. It is on half the walls in town. He has been waiting years to show somebody from home why he stayed, and he does not waste the chance.

Because Bix never fit Poz's weather. Back home he was the one with a new idea every morning: a louder festival, a crooked garden, a shop that sold nothing but surprises. Poz was kind about it, the way Poz is kind about everything, and firm: please lower the idea, Bix. Please straighten the garden. On Earth, nobody has ever once asked him to straighten anything. He has started eleven businesses here. Four are still open, which on Earth counts as a triumph. He is, by a wide margin, the happiest Pozan alive, and the only one who is not going back. What he does not say until much later: a Pozan who stays past his window gives up his place, and coming home means the line again. The whole line, a thousand quiet years of it. Bix has done that math every day for years and chosen the loud life in front of him every time, on purpose. It might be the bravest thing in the show, and he does it whistling. His assigned match back on Poz was, by every measure, perfect: compatibility ninety eight point six, a lovely person, kind eyes. He thinks of her sometimes the way you think about a house you almost bought. Earth taught him the difference between compatible and chosen, and it ruined the decimal for him forever.

Bix has a tour, and he has been saving the loud part. He takes them to a place called Guitar Center, which he calls Guitar World, and by the end of the visit so does everyone. Poz has exactly two kinds of music: musicals and classical, and it has had both, unchanged, for a thousand years. In Guitar World, a kid of about twelve is testing an amplifier, and he is shredding, and the sound climbs the carpeted walls like weather with opinions. Nilo's notebook gets one line, underlined until the page tears: "A child is making lightning confess." Ora does not even raise the counter. Some things are not mercies. Some things are just glory.

[Intro, spoken, Bix, delighted]
You are standing in my cathedral.

[Verse 1, Bix]
I came down on a survey a long, long time ago,
with a clipboard and a checklist and a suit white as snow.
I was meant to take some pictures and be home by the fall,
then I turned a corner in an alley and I saw that wall.

[Verse 2, Bix]
Back home there is a law for art: it hangs straight or not at all,
and the paint comes in one color, and that color is called Wall.
But here the paint is screaming, here the colors fight and kiss,
and the star is never perfect, and I live for this.

[Chorus, everyone]
I love mess, I love paint on the wall,
I love big mistakes and the wobbliest star of all.
Home was so clean that nothing could grow,
I love mess, and I did not even know.

[Verse 3, Bix, the tour]
I love soup with no recipe, I love songs off key,
I love a garden that decided what it wanted to be.
I love chalk on the sidewalk washing off in the rain,
I love a plan that went sideways and a beautiful stain.

[Bridge, quieter, Bix, almost tender]
They keep sending ships to fetch me, and I wave from the roof.
My home is a planet of perfect, and Earth is the proof:
you do not need a perfect world to be happy in your skin.
Sometimes the crack in the pavement is where the light gets in.

[Final Chorus, full company, bigger]
I love mess, I love paint on the wall,
I love big mistakes and the wobbliest star of all.
Home was so clean that nothing could grow,
I love mess, I love mess, now everybody knows.

[Tag, Pim, singing proudly off key]
I love mess!
[Bix, warm] See? He is a natural.

And then the rain comes, and the day gets long, and a suit seam rips at the crosswalk in front of everyone, and for one bad minute the whole town seems to be laughing. It is not, mostly. But the crew is tired, and wet, and far from home, and tired people hear the worst version of everything.

There is one more thing about that walk back, the thing none of them will put in the report in so many words. A man having the worst night of his own, loud and getting louder, decides the three small quiet people ahead of him are the problem, and he does not stop at words. He shoves. Nilo steps back. Ora says stop in every register of calm Poz owns. He shoves again, harder, and Pim, terrified, does the thing: the pulse. The man sits down on the pavement all at once, both hands on his head, blinking like the world changed channels: "Whoa." Nobody cheers. Pim drops to his knees beside him, horrified at himself, apologizing in two languages, and stays there holding the man's water bottle until the headache lets go, twenty minutes later. The man cries a little. He apologizes too, to the pavement, to Pim, to the night in general. Before they help him up, Pim takes his hand, very formally, and says the word: "Benecerta." The man does not understand it. He understands the hand. Some part of it gets through anyway, the way warmth gets through a wall. The crew walks him to his corner before heading home to the ship. Ora's entry, filed before the signal is even drafted: "He kept coming. We asked in every calm we had. Why do humans walk into the fence?"

Back at the ship, Nilo drafts the pickup signal with a shaking hand. Ora counts the days kindnesses on one hand and has fingers left over. It is the lowest point of the show, and it is honest: sometimes Earth is a lot, and wanting to go home is not a failure. It is just a feeling, arriving on schedule, like weather.

They press send. And Poz answers, in the calmest voice in the universe: the crossing home is closed. Weather on the route. Apologies. Please enjoy Earth. The door will reopen when it reopens.

The ship does not warm its engines.

What follows is the crew doing the worst arithmetic in the show. If that door stays closed for decades, they will grow old HERE. Pozans live two hundred years, and they waited a thousand of them for those two hundred, and Earth spends a life at a very different exchange rate. What is a hundred and seventy five on Earth? What does it cost? Bix, over the phone, explains Earth medicine: you pay every month in case you get sick, and then you pay again when you get sick, and then a third amount appears, called a deductible, which no one can deduct. Ora, faintly: "That is not medicine. That is a subscription to worry." Nilo, doing sums in the notebook, very quietly: "At these rates we can afford to be a hundred and forty. After that we will simply have to be careful."

And then, outside, in the rain, somebody knocks on the hull.

It is June. Age seven. Owner of one yellow raincoat, one umbrella, and no hesitation at all. She has seen the three strangers standing in the rain with their suits coming apart, and she has done the most ordinary Poz thing in the world: she stopped.

Asked later why, she gives the whole show its thesis in three words: "You looked wet."

The crew stands under that umbrella and understands Earth the way you understand a song on the second listen. The kindness was never missing. It was just quiet, and handmade, and carried by people too busy doing it to announce it. Nilo picks up the radio, and cancels the pickup himself, out loud, in the rain, to nobody.

Then Nilo does something the crew has never done on any world. He takes out the little stamp pad that glows, and following a protocol older than the ship, he grants June a Pozport. P-O-Z-P-O-R-T. It is a passport to Poz: any human who is verifiably kind to a Pozan may visit the planet anytime, no application, no thousand year line, because on Poz a witnessed kindness counts as an application already approved. June accepts it with the seriousness of a head of state and asks the only question that matters: "Can I bring a friend?" Nilo, stamping it twice for emphasis: "That is the entire point."

Rule 2, observe only, does not survive contact with gratitude. The crew starts small. Holding doors, with far too much ceremony. Returning dropped things with both hands. Complimenting strangers with such total sincerity that one man has to sit down.

Then comes Saturday, and the big store, and the show's favorite disaster. The crew holds every door, with ceremony, for everyone, including each other. A queue of kindness forms. People begin holding doors for the door holders. Nobody can get in and nobody can get out; the entrance becomes a cathedral of courtesy with a line out to the parking lot. Poz kindness, it turns out, does not transplant straight. It has to be Earth shaped. Fortunately their local expert is on the scene, and June, age seven, demonstrates the Earth version: quick, casual, no bowing. Kindness at walking speed.

And something strange happens by the afternoon. The town starts copying them. Not because they are impressive. Because kindness, witnessed up close, is contagious in a way that shouting, thankfully, is not. Ora updates the notebook in capital letters: "IT SPREADS."

The Pozports start going out too. Nilo issues them with the gravity of a head of state: one to the man who had to sit down from a compliment, one to a bus driver who waited, engine off, for a running grandmother. By evening, four humans in one ordinary town can visit a planet that a thousand years of souls are still applying to enter. Nobody on Earth finds this especially strange, which the crew finds strangest of all.

There is one more hard talk first. Nilo tells June everything: the ship, the suits, Poz, all of it. She considers this for a long moment and says the line that ends every argument Earth was having with itself: "I know. Your zipper is on your front."

The window, when it finally reopens, reopens narrow: one crossing, at dusk, no extensions, verdict due on arrival. The ship lifts at dusk, in the rain, because the show believes in symmetry. June waves until the window is a star, her Pozport held up in her other hand like a ticket she fully intends to use. On the dashboard, in a little pot, rides the glowing flower they gave her and she gave back, because on Poz a gift you keep alone is only half a gift.

From orbit, the crew files the final report, and its last line is read aloud at Poz school assemblies to this day:

"Earth is not unkind. Earth is unpracticed. On Poz, kindness is the weather. On Earth, kindness is a choice, and that makes it braver."

And at the very bottom of the report, the box Nilo has been dreading for five days, checked at last in his best ink: WORTH IT. Underneath, in smaller letters: bring earplugs.

Appendix C of the report is one line long: "Farts: small, honest thunder. The Council will want a demonstration. We recommend Buster."

Post-credits. Two years later. A video call, Earth to Poz, while the credits roll.

Bix (on a rooftop, paint on his hands): "It is still a crazy place. I mean that as a compliment now."

Ora (from Poz, very calm): "We painted your star on the side of the school. It is slightly crooked."

Bix: "Slightly crooked is perfect."

Nilo: "We also sang your song at the assembly. Slightly off key."

Bix (quietly): "Then Poz is healing nicely."

Pim: "When are you coming home?"

Bix (looking out at the loud, messy, beloved city): "Pim. I am home. But save my seat in the waiting room. You never know."

Weeks later. Poz, at morning assembly, and the returners have brought something home in their luggage that is not on any manifest. Nilo has a crooked star painted by his door now, slightly crooked, and nobody has asked him to straighten it. The whole planet is quietly waiting to see if anyone sings a note wrong on purpose. Ora is about to.

Nineteen songs and counting. The big three lead, because they carry the show. The rest follow in story order. All of them are ideas right now, sketches in gold boxes, waiting for melodies. That is what this blog is for: ideas land here first, and the good ones grow.

Got a song idea for the aliens? A scene? A line June should say? This blog grows by drops, one idea at a time. The film version lives on E2 at e2.life/ourmission, the trailer is next on the list, and storyboards come after that, when the songs settle.