Theo was having a bad day, and was kidnapped by aliens. Theo researched developmental disorders. He was ambitious and vain. He wouldn’t shout at wait staff in a café, but he would complain about them the whole way home. The aliens dropped him off on a nearby inhabited planet. Theo found himself in a trim green park. Thick trees lined well-travelled boulevards. It was early spring. To all intents and purposes, the planet seemed exactly like Earth, but with maybe a couple of differences. The aliens had made an understandable mistake. Many dogs roamed freely, some associated with owners, who promenaded up and down in the most comfortable clothes imaginable, and some not. Theo recovered himself a little. He made eye contact with someone nearby and smiled, committing an unintentional faux pas. The people on this planet preferred not to make eye contact. Theo turned in a different direction and tried again. He threw out a ‘hello’ like a wobbly discus. A passer-by paused. ‘How are you?’ ventured Theo. He anticipated a nicety, the customary meaningless social ritual – ‘yeah-good-thanks-how-you-doing’. He received instead a forty-five minute exposition on the events of that person’s day and their broader emotional standing. There was discussion of lunar cycles and the behaviour of particular types of seed when subjected to electrical current. Theo was not asked any questions. Many other passers-by stopped to listen out of curiosity. They seemed calm and attentive. Theo found it exhausting, which worried him. He compared his experience to the people around him and started to doubt his sanity. The speaker came to the end of their tale and lapsed into silence. Theo did not know their name. The listeners moved on pleasantly, and Theo felt even worse. He hated watching people leave an event that he was still struggling to understand. He felt alienated by the social code and tired by the unexpectedly lengthy answer. He needed emotional support, not least because he was kidnapped by aliens and dumped in a park on another world, but he did not have the energy to ask anyone for help. Theo worried that if he tried to communicate his needs, his unfamiliarity with local social norms might result in some other stressful experience, which would undoubtedly happen for reasons that he wouldn’t understand and that he wouldn’t have the brain power to decipher. He left the park, avoiding eye contact with everyone along the way. This newly learned behaviour was well received, but left Theo feeling dejected and ever more isolated.

Over some months, Theo began to develop an understanding of the people among whom he lived. He was a researcher. He traced out their social codes, which were not quite like a language. He never fully internalised them, never adopted them as his own way of being. They were rather like a coat of armour, a web of knowledge that he built up over time. He put this knowledge over his interactions in order to navigate through the world. He suppressed some instincts and leaned into others. He was never at ease, but could marshal the behaviours to get by. Interactions remained costly. When he met people, he did not say hello how are you, like he wanted. Instead he forced himself to recite a new fact. He spent much of his spare time creating a data bank of facts to deploy at will. He collated them in a notebook, and each morning committed a new one to memory. His area of interest was a particular species of insect. He had noticed almost immediately that everybody had their own interests and curiosities, which they shared freely and at length. It took him much longer to realise that he was being judged for lacking one. Some people thought he was stupid. Others thought he was just a bit of a flat person, born without the innate drive of curiosity. In order to get along more easily in the world, he had chosen an interest (more or less at random), and started sharing what he learned.

Arriving at work, Theo saw his colleagues gathered around a newcomer. His colleagues were big huggers. They squeezed more than he considered to be comfortable. But he wanted to fit in. He had accepted his place in this strange new world. He was determined to prove he was assimilating. He marched up to the new staff member and gave her a bear hug, hoisting her off the ground and squeezing very hard. She screamed and clawed at him. The room erupted into chaos. Theo was hauled off by his outraged colleagues. He did not understand. He found himself in a disciplinary hearing. A manager was explaining to him that some people did not like to be hugged or touched in any way, and in fact found it very distressing. She spoke as if speaking to a child. Theo felt he couldn’t possibly have known. He could hear his new colleague weeping outside. He felt wildly guilty for hurting her, and foolish for needing things explained so explicitly. He cried a little himself, overcome by it all. The manager left the room, and the glass roof shattered. Theo could hear her shushing the new hire outside. He did not expect to have a job when she returned. He picked glass out of his hair. His cup had been knocked over by one of the ropes hurled down through the broken roof. Paraologists abseiled down all around him. ‘An alien!’ they shrieked, eager to tabulate and catalogue his deficiencies.