He told me about the books he’d been reading, and asked me questions about things he said he didn’t understand. But how do you explain to a person why Late Antiquity embraced wholeheartedly the Christian rejection of the biological and material world? How do you explain such personalities as Saint Augustine or Pelagius? Or Giordano Bruno? How do you account for the fact that the ancient Romans could stamp coins but never invented a printing press? Why did it take so long to invent the stirrup or the barrel? Or the bicycle? How to explain why French and English are so different when the languages evolved so close to each other? We confessed we were both at a loss to account for the dark cynicism of so many humans living in a modern world so full of wondrous progress.

“They can’t know history as we know it,” I said.

We talked of the Bravennans and whether or not they still actively monitored this world, whether or not their film feeds were still flowing. We talked of the mystery of other aliens coming to the planet.

He and the People of the Purpose had the very same speculations as human beings, that alien visitors might actually be walking among us, far more skillfully disguised than we could imagine.

He spoke of his own great and small discoveries, a new luracastria derivative, a synthetic hormone that he thought could lead to increasing the human life span in some individuals for ten years beyond the allotment of their genetic clock.

“Don’t fear me,” he said finally. “Never fear me. What I will do, I will do with respect for what all these beings achieved on their own. After all, they built this paradise without an Amel, didn’t they? Human beings built it, this world of Western Europe and America and England and all the countries of the West.”

“You haven’t been to the East yet,” I said. “You haven’t seen China or Japan or the Levant. There is so much to learn there as well.”

Finally the Replimoid women were there at the curb again with the door of the car open.

He jumped to his feet and came around the table and took me in his arms. “Ah, that this too, too solid flesh must never melt!” he said.

I took his face in my hands and kissed him.

“Amel,” I whispered in his ear. “My love.”

He turned away abruptly, as if it were the only way that he could make the break, and he headed towards the waiting car. At the curb, he stopped. We looked at one another, oblivious to the traffic, the noise, the crowds.

He came back to me and we embraced completely. We were wrapped in each other’s arms. And the scent of his blood overwhelmed me.