Kristen brushed the hair from her glasses and picked up her phone. She held her thumb taught over the keypad. "This is my confession. I've chosen you because, even though you are one of them, you understand me best, as well as any pod person has known someone who is not of their ilk.
First of all, I would like to apologize to you. Since our meeting three years ago in the company storage closet, I have not been truthful about my identity. Our entire relationship has been a deception. That time I told you my antagial sack was irritated and frothing - that was a lie. I don't actually have one. When Ted groped my spore duct at the company Christmas party? I made that up, though he did graze my left boob. Not everything I have told you is a calumny, however. You are my friend and I trusted in your confidence. The laid back woman who gushes over Bertrand Russel and has a near fetish for bald men that is who I am. All those jokes about my pod brood mother, how she knit an apology quilt for her dog, Ret Butler, after she accused it of feigning Munchhausen Syndrome? That happened, she was just a human woman, not a pod person. I also lied about the breed. I told you it was a Boxer mix, but really it was an Italian Greyhound.
I'm am sorry that I have deceived you, and even more so if this knowledge pains you in anyway. Know that I did so only out of self-preservation and not any ill will against you.
For five long years I have lived among your people, watching as you slowly extirpate the few remaining humans. Honestly, I'm not mad about it. Humanity kind of sucked. The world we made for ourselves was too comfortable and depressed for revolution. We were all coasting, waiting expectantly for a job we might hate slightly less than our current one or death, whichever came first. I'm not well acquainted with the great political theorists of pod person literature, but did your Debord or Marx ever predict the Fleshlight? I feel like our guys really dropped the ball there.
I must say that life among your kind has been kinder than among my own. Though you were able to mask your invasion, assimilating our customs and culture near seamlessly before we had a chance to mount a response, I see through the veneer now. You keep up appearances beautifully, like a meek husband tidily
covering up the evidence of his wife's torrid affair(s) lest he have a psychotic break. You mimic violence both physical and emotional. There is no force behind the punches during one of your preordained bar brawls, and all your internet trolling is qualified or equivocated. Even the wars you stage, though grand, have all the brutality of a children's book, the predetermined losers happily laying down in a feigned death. I imagine the the demand for blanks has sky rocketed.
I'm telling you this, Brian, not out of guilt or loneliness, but out of pure confusion and a desire to understand. Your plan was masterful and brilliant. You took over the world without rousing even the most paranoid right wing conspiracy theorist from his bunker. A friend of mine was pontificating to me how Alan Greenspan
and the United Reptoid Savings Bank were up to something nefarious not days before he was turned into a pod person. All that I get. World domination is a timeless dream. But to assume mastery of the earth and then keep things exactly the same?! It sounds more like a fetish than a plot. Are all you pod people just in a perpetual state of climax as you mimic human life? It's like you are a society of tantric method actors and historical reenactors collectively refusing to break character.
Again, it's not really a big deal, as life is generally more pleasant than it ever was, but I am still flummoxed. Now that every human has been replaced by a pod person, why keep up the shit-stained facade? Who is it for that so many of your kind have assumed the trite and terrible lives of the humans before you? Have you no sympathy for the pod children pretending to be pod Sarah Palin's kids? You haven't even brought any new cool foods or technologies. I assumed I would get to enjoy pod foodie culture or pod social media, and instead I get the same old boring shit. Pod shame on you, Brian. Pod shame.
Welp, I guess that's it. I would ask you to not turn me into a pod person, but I know you are incapable of that, being not much more than a bedazzled cog in the machine. I'm not trying to be a bitch here. You have more personality than any pod person I've ever met. Those Tibetan prayer flags strung from your scanner to the picture of Celine Dion on your desk are a nice touch. Hideous maybe, but they do belie some semblance of personality. Anyway, thanks for listening, Brian. I hope pod Kristen is just as much a friend to you as human Kristen."
Kristen quivered with expectation. She stared at her phone, watched it dim and fade to black from inactivity. She had not been this honest in years and the confession flooded her with adrenaline. Her sins laid bare before a hive-minded alien priest, but was he Catholic? The phone buzzed in her hand. It was Brian.
"I'm not a pod person, but I am going to report you to HR for calling my flags hideous. Also, please desist from eating all the almonds from the dish on my desk."
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