When the funeral had ended, each of Ibira's family members came up to me, pounding one fist to their chest and bowing.

After seeing this happen a second time, I felt compelled to return the gesture, but Mr. Qurtoth told me not to, so I just nodded when the did that.

A pair of Tharks carried the body away. I heard they were going to bury it on their planet or something.

Then my coworkers offered their condolences, having already offered it to the family first.

"I'm sorry for your loss," said Osmifa. "I and Ibira were good friends. It was a shame. She was a great warrior and call center agent. I will miss her."

I gave her a nod.

As I was leaving, Sigma dragged me to a corner. Her expression was sad, dejected. I sensed a quiet desperation in those purple eyes.

"I can't be alone anymore. I've got to have somebody with me. Can you please stay with me tonight?"

Remembering what Ibira told me about her hobbies, I stammered, "Gee, I don't know..."

Sigma reached across the table, grasping my hand. "Jason. You can't honestly tell me that you've made other plans for the evening. We're both single. No one's going to care."

I pulled my hand loose, blushing furiously. "Look. Ibir, I mean, Sigma. You're a nice girl, but Ibira just died. I'd kind of like to take things slow for awhile."

Now it was her face that changed color. "Whoa, mister!" she giggled. "I was only talking about hanging out, not riding you like a wild muromsi!"

"I'm sorry, it's just...after what Ibira told me about your games..."

Her green facial coloration deepened. "What exactly did she tell you?"

"Uh, well, just that maybe you intended for it to lead to...(ahem) other things..."

"She always did like to talk."

"I've never known her to lie."

"Well." She cleared her throat, brushing her hair back a little. "She also can get very possessive about things, and maybe stretch the truth a little."

I frowned. "Oh...kay? So, hypothetically, if I decided to go back to your place and `hang out,' what exactly would we be doing?"

Sigma shrugged. "I don't know, talking, eating snacks, maybe playing video games or watching a movie...you like ET?"

"I slept with one, didn't I?"

She laughed. "I do too. I mean, I like the movie."

Sigma took my hand. "C'mon. Let's stop being miserable and do something fun for a change."

I swallowed. "You promise this'll just be `fun fun' and not...you know?"

"I promise," she groaned. "In fact, we'll take it real slow. I won't lay a finger on you until you make the first move."

I relaxed. "Okay."

But her tail slithered around my hips as we walked away from the table.

I decided I didn't mind that much.

I was still depressed about Ibira. As we strolled through the hallway, Sigma appeared to pick up on this, for she muttered, "You don't come across as the forceful type."

I scowled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just saying, it's not completely your fault. You were two consenting adults."

"I know, but..."

"Did you rape her?"

"No! I'd never-!"

"Then it's partially her fault. Maybe more than partially. She was always the fiercely aggressive type, and you seem...less so."

I sighed. "I guess you've got a point."

She unlocked the door to her office, leading me inside.

The idea of alone time with her made me extremely uncomfortable, but she wasn't the only one who was alone. I felt sorry for her, so I agreed to stay. At least for awhile.

"So...um...I'm familiar with half the games you mentioned to me earlier...but the alien ones..."

Sigma grinned. "I know! This is going to be so much fun!" She began opening cabinets, piling a bunch of strange looking devices on her coffee table. "I've got some great two player games I've been dying to try out!"

She plugged some cords into a device that resembled a conch shell, covered in buttons and levers and switches. Pulling a trigger made a hologram appear, the other buttons causing menus and characters to move around.

I experimented with it for a few minutes, slowly getting the hang of the basics of gameplay, a complicated...thing involving the manipulation of swirling psychedelic patterns...amoebas engulfing microbes...and puzzle segments that seemed almost...Freudian.

As I played around with it, she offered me a bowl of Nitqoy. "Vuembi told me you like these."

I frowned at the bowl of multicolored insect bodies and chitinous legs. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."

Still, I actually ate several. I guess it is an acquired taste.

Sigma showed me another game on that same system, but it seemed a lot more like work than entertainment. You were...an alien...trying to make changes in a legal system, and you had to figure out all these rules. When I asked her for advice, she dropped a huge book in front of me, one as thick as a deluxe Oxford Dictionary. Worse, I had to make use of my symbiote just to figure out what it said.

My finger accidentally clicked a button down, and an extra control stick popped out, a rounded one with a curving banana-like base projecting from its far end.

"What's this?" I said as I wrapped my fingers around the stick.

"Not every part is operated by your hands."

"So you use your feet? That's genius!"

Her skin took on a greenish cast. "Um...guess again."

"Your tail?"

That's when I noticed how sticky it was.

"That's the part you sit on. There's another one that comes out in front for two player mode. Want to see it?"

I shuddered, pulling my hand away quickly. "That's...okay."

I wiped my hand on my slacks, pointing to a metal sphere, one patterned all over by circular, round rectangular and irregular jigsaw designs. "What's that thing?"

She giggled. "You'll love that one. Completely hands free!"

"Ibira wasn't joking about your hobbies," I muttered. "You got any system that doesn't in some way involve sex?"

Sigma picked up a rounded green cylinder, twisting one and as she shortened and lengthened it in a suggestive manner, then tossed me something that looked like a button ball from a tree - with actual buttons. "It's not sexual, but you may have to read a few things."

And she gave me another textbook, along with some popcorn and a cup of hot chocolate.

She was right. No dirty surprises this time. I just...didn't understand how to play it. You had to get a creature through a 3D maze full of complicated puzzles involving history, math, science and sociology, requiring you to wade through the textbook. Worse, you only had a short amount of time to figure it out or the characters would think poorly of you, relationships would change, and you'd miss out on important game segments. No save points, no reset, everything happened in real time.

Another game was similar, but you used wireless barbell shaped control sticks.

I eventually gave up and went back to stuff I was familiar with, such as Toejam and Earl for her newly acquired X-Box.

Sigma sat down next to me, leaning on my shoulder as she helped me blast enemies with Funkify notes. Her tail curled around my waist again.

I was fine with the tail at first, even when it flopped between my legs, but then it curled around my inner thigh.

"Sigma," I scolded, prying it off me.

She chuckled, letting her tail drop on the floor.

After awhile, we put down the controllers and opened a bag of chips, watching ET. Barely paying attention to the film, I told Sigma about the good times I had with Ibira, and she told me about the great food she brought to potlucks (something I found incredibly hard to believe), the hunts they'd had in alien swamps and deserts, the amusing and embarrassing incidents between her and less than understanding coworkers.

We cried, then we laughed.

As she was drying her eyes, I brushed away a loose strand of hair from her face, and she leaned over and kissed me on the lips.

It was chaste enough, so I kissed back.

That was when she slipped me some tongue.

I pulled away quickly, causing her hurt and confusion, but the last thing I wanted to do was make the same mistake twice in a row. "I can't. We can't...This isn't right. We should only be friends."

"Oh?" she pouted. "And why is that?"

I explained my reasons, the commandment against fornication, the JF-1 disease, the fact that we had barely been together any time at all.

She sighed and nodded.

We spent the rest of the night playing Animal Crossing, returning to our separate beds shortly afterwards.

The next morning, she was at my table, smiling as my Ikran flapped over to her shoulders and pecked at her plate. Soon the little guy was sitting in her lap, allowing Sigma to feed him scraps while she rubbed his head. Like any dumb animal, he seemed to have forgotten his other pet parent completely.

When she caught my glum expression, Sigma's smile faded. "I know. It's hard. I saw you two eating here like this every day."

An awkward silence followed.

"Hey, I hear they're doing to final touches on the US Bank building. You're going to get to go home! Isn't that exciting?"

"Yeah," I said half heartedly.

She sighed and looked down. "What did Ibira tell you about the Lajazwa?"

She looked up, noticed my confused expression. "The Qozisa rite of marriage. What did she say about it?"

"I...She said that it's...ridiculous that a person has to remain faithful to a spouse when they're dead."

"And you agree?"

I nodded. "Why?"

"No reason."

Another uncomfortable silence.

"Do you think things would have been any better if I had waited until after marriage to have sex with her?"

She shrugged. "Your sperm would still have killed her."

"Would it?"

"Jason, it's not some magic thing that you can just ward away with amulets and rituals. We're talking about cells being infected by a foreign agent."

I stared at the table. "I guess you're right. I never should have slept with her."

Another conversation killer.

Sigma tried again. "Hey, I hear Dennis is leaving today. They've got the call center up and running so they don't need him over here anymore."

I gulped. "What about you? Weren't you with Ibira on the US Bank project?"

She nodded. "I really don't want to go back."

"Oh? Why not?"

She just looked at me.

I pointed to my chest.

She nodded.

"You're leaving your job. Purely on my account."

"Let's just say I'm a romantic."

"I have to warn you. I'm not."

She waved her hand as if to dismiss the thought. "You don't know what you're talking about. I've heard what Ibira's been saying. You just don't know!"

I still thought she was completely wrong, but I know very little about the female mentality, especially when they're from another planet. The only response I could come up with was, "Wow."

Sigma was right. When I arrived at the call room, Dennis wasn't there.

Instead, the vaguely gendered Necel greeted me at my drum, apologizing for the manager's departure when I felt it deserved a standing ovation.

Necel didn't review my calls or anything. I just got to work.

As I exited my drum for lunch, Dennis stopped me and shook my hand. "It's been good working with you. We didn't always see eye to eye, but I think at last I'm beginning to understand where you're coming from, and why you do the things that you do."

Not comprehending, I just meekly nodded and bid him farewell.

From that moment forward, I would find myself laying in bed late at night, wondering what the hell he meant by that statement.

What changed? Why did he suddenly understand?

Did this coincide with objective fact?

That heavy statement notwithstanding, I found myself in a much peppier mood. I worked my calls and departed for lunch with an added bounce to my stride.

As I dug into yet another slice of pepperoni flavored Pandoran horse meat, Sigma leaned over my table and said, "So...no more half naked late night walks through the compound?"

"Nope. I told you how Ibira helped me."

She smiled. "Ibira told me you also had an aversion to human females."

I shrugged. "Pretty much."

She unbuttoned a couple buttons on the front of her dress and pulled the fabric down, exposing a thick clump of cream colored fur. "Nonhuman enough for you?"

I sunk lower in my chair. "Maybe?"

She fluffed the hair out playfully. "What say we get together later tonight, and, um, do some things?"

She had said the last part while suggestively sliding a finger beneath the third button.

"It was bad enough that I committed fornication the first time. I won't do it again."

"Ibira told me you mentioned that to her."

"Yeah..." I wasn't sure I liked where this was heading.

"So you want to marry me."

"I... don't know about that yet."

"Okay, then. Hypothetically, you would have sex with me if we got married first."

"Yes."

"Even if no babies happen."

I frowned. I didn't exactly have a bible passage saying anything about marriages with space aliens, so I didn't know how that was supposed to work.

"Even if the wife just ends up dying."

"What? You have a death wish or something? Why would you want to sleep with me if you knew that my stuff would kill you?"

"Because I don't want to live anymore." She said it with a straight face. She seemed to be dead serious.

A silence fell between us as I tried to formulate a response.

"But, I mean, there's plenty of reasons to live. I mean, this job is kind of cool. We get to go exploring on alien planets and talk to aliens and..."

She smirked a little, but then her sulky expression returned.

"If I were gorgeous like you, I wouldn't feel suicidal at all," I said. "I just don't get it. You have a tail and stuff, which I'm kind of envious of, even."

She smiled. "That's sweet. Even if my tail is always getting closed in doors and pinched by furniture. But it's not just that. It's the fact that Ibira's gone. The fact that my family is all gone, and that all I can get are crummy little jobs like this one, and expenses keep piling up so I can never get anywhere."

"There are others who are worse off than you are."

"There's always someone worse off than me."

She fell silent, and I just stared at her, trying to come up with some better words of encouragement. "If this life were easy and trouble free, we wouldn't want to go to heaven."

"Exactly. Is it so wrong to want to get there faster?"

I sighed. "I'm not going to do it. I learned my lesson with Ibira. I don't want another death on my conscience."

Before she could utter another word, I pretended to check my watch. "I think I'd better go back to work."

She frowned. "Sure..."

When I returned to my drum, I kept thinking about how suicidal Sigma was, and how she might possibly want to do away with herself at any moment, maybe even while I was doing calls.

I pushed the thought aside and kept plugging away until dinner.

To my great relief, Sigma was alive and well. Worried for her well being, I sat down and ate with her, hoping my continued presence would keep her from doing herself in.

She seemed cheerful enough, petting Dino and feeding it scraps, but I could tell there was a glum person beneath that exterior.

We ate in silence for a long time.

At last, my worry got the best of me. "Sigma, are you going to kill yourself if I don't...kill you my way?"

Her whole demeanor brightened. "I might."

I've heard that Asian business people have a way of mastering the art of postponement. They will tell you they will come to a decision about a business deal at the end of the day tomorrow, but the decision is that they need to deliberate further, and they won't have a decision about it until next week at that same time. And so on, possibly forever.

This is what I was thinking about when I gave my response: "Fine. Let's talk later tonight, after my shift, and I'll think about it."

She seemed overjoyed.

With a sigh, I bid her farewell, and I returned to a few more grueling hours of calling alien customers, discussing weird bills and selling stuff.

When my shift ended, I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach, coupled with a lust I knew I shouldn't be entertaining.

I went downstairs, changed clothes, and met Sigma at the door to her office.

She now had on a shiny red outfit, made of some leathery material that rode even higher on her thighs than the dress she had on previously. "So...Did you think about it?"

"I did," I said. "Um, how about tomorrow?"

Sigma frowned. "Fine. How about we play a game instead?"

I shrugged. "Sure. What game did you have in mind? Viva Piñata?"

She pointed her tail into the room. "Come in. I'll show you."

"Do you have any of that marshmallow popcorn stuff?"

I stared as her tail pulled the door shut and locked it.

I paled. "What are you doing?"

"You'll see."

I definitely didn't like where this was going.

She gestured for me to sit in the swivel chair in front of her desk.

"I don't get it. What is this?"

"I want to show you something special, but you've got to promise me you'll keep it a secret. Do you promise to do that?"

I furrowed my brow. "I...guess?"

"Pull your chair back a little and turn it towards me."

"Oh..kay?" Twisting my lip in puzzlement, I did what was asked.

I watched with confusion and unease as she strolled in front of me, unzipping the top portion of her dress.

"Wait," I blurted. "I thought we were going to play a game."

"We are," she said in low breathy tones. "It's called Plugging the Joystick into the X-Box."

"What?"

"C'mon, baby. Let's make some Bunnycombs!"