I stared at the fuzzy creature, attempting to comprehend the words. "Y...you...in...here," I hissed.

The thing pointed to Puppet Cop. "Policeman put Weirdy here (10). In jail. Because me steal candy. Why you in here?"

I just hissed in frustration.

The monster sighed, giving up talking to me.

Brightly colored puppets in prison stripes stared back at me from the other cells, one a little pink guy with a single black tuft of hair exploding from the top of his head like a fern.

I looked away, absently staring at the educational graffiti.

An hour later, soft padding sounds came from the staircase at the end of the hall.

Gretchen Goose waddled up to my cell with a large scrapbook. "Maria's funeral is tomorrow," she sobbed.

The creature stood outside my cell for more than a minute grieving in the custom of my people, which humans often confuse with an attack of allergies.

Strange to see one of my kind behaving in such a fashion. While not uncommon for us to grieve the loss of loved ones, we would never carry on in such an exaggerated manner. The last time I witnessed grief of this magnitude was when mother lost her sister to an explosion a few weeks after I was born, and even then she hadn't been that emotional (11).

Still, the cyber robot had read my psychology well. Soon I too coughed and sneezed over the loss of this friendly acquaintance, and, overcome with emotion, I wiggled through the bars of my cell and rubbed against the bird thing like I'd done for my mother so long ago.

The cop didn't seem a bit alarmed at my jailbreak. He only stood like a statue, saying nothing.

"Thank you," Gretchen coughed, patting me on the head.

"You...really cared for Maria?"

"Yes. She was a good friend."

"Then...why do you still speak to me?"

"Because I am programmed to." Gretchen sniffed and sat on the floor, showing me the scrapbook. "I made this for Maria. You know, a long time ago, when Mr. Hoopla died, Maria told me that people still live on in our memory. So I made this book to remember the good times me and Maria had together." This she said mostly in my language, or I wouldn't have understood it.

"Living on in someone's memory isn't as satisfying as having them alive. Why bother?"

"I am sorry, I am programmed to be religiously neutral. This is the best I can do."

The bird opened the cover, showing me a photograph of her and Maria talking to each other in an alleyway. A scrawled caption below read: `Me and Maria were the best of friends.'

The picture showed her as the ridiculous goose thing she used to be, rather than the Ss'sik'chtokiwij she had become.

She turned the page.

`When I first met Maria, I helped her move.'

As I stared at the picture, it moved, and sound came out like it were a television, unfolding a scene where Gretchen and Dumpy the Trashdragon watched a moving truck being unloaded. The bird later carried one end of a sofa while Dumpy's faceless garbage man took the other up a staircase.

The sofa got dropped a lot, but in the end, Maria brought the bird a birdseed pie as a way of saying thank you.

Everything confused me, so Gretchen Goose had to explain a lot. To her credit, as an artificial intelligence, she never ran out of patience.

She tapped the next page with her claw. "Maria helped me to not be scared of the dark."

Another video, one where Gretchen pestered Maria late at night until she coached her on how to face her fear.

Being a creature that always lived in the dark, I've never been afraid of it, so I had difficulty understanding what all the fuss was about. "What's so scary about the dark?"

"It's a human affectation." Gretchen Goose somehow managed to sound sad and robotic at the same time. "You would not understand unless I compare it to something you personally fear."

Gretchen peeled a matchbook off the gray scrapbook page, sliding a match across the striker on the back.

When it burst into flame, I shrieked and retreated into my cell. Gretchen Goose chuckled, waving a claw above the flickering light. "Safe. Fire is not an enemy. Fire is a tool." She extinguished it between two claws.

Although difficult with my claws, with Gretchen's help, I managed to strike my own match and hold it.

"You fear because you do not understand, just like how humans fear darkness. See?"

I slowly nodded.

"Fire is the secret of civilization. Fire powers their guns, drives their vehicles, lights their lights. As I once could not occupy my own habitation due to the fear of darkness, you also have been diminished by fear. This is what Maria taught me."

I doubted this was how Maria phrased such a lesson, but I didn't know her that well to begin with. "Yes."

Gretchen Goose turned to a page showing the perplexing image of herself blowing out candles on a cake.

"What is this?"

"Human beings commemorate the day of their birth with a special celebration."

I just stared at her. "What is a day?"

"Oh." The mosquito beak frowned again. "Humans count the passage of time, based on the rising and falling of a sun. It is broken up into a variety of measurements, from the very small to the very large."

She pointed to a clock hanging on a wall. "When this reaches twelve, it will be noon, the time in which the sun is highest in the sky. Humans generally eat during this time. When it passes twelve again, it is midnight and dark, when they sleep. Each time they sleep, it is considered one day."

Gretchen showed me a calendar. "This is what humans use to measure days...Do you have a birthday?"

I shook my head. "I do not remember. It was a long time ago."

Sighing, Gretchen Goose touched my head, and I saw flashes of my infancy inside the bloody corpse.

"August 24, 2169, which makes you a Virgo."

I frowned. "What's that?"

"Humans have a thing called a Zodiac. They think they can tell the future and predict your personality with birth dates. According to popular belief, a Virgo is cold, analytical and precise."

I laughed. That didn't sound like me at all.

Some say I should be a Scorpio, but they're wrong. That's not my birth month.

"Is it my birthday?"

"No." Gretchen turned the page, showing me a picture of him and Maria beneath a tree wrapped with lights and shiny thread.

"I've seen something like this before."

Gretchen Goose nodded. "It is called Christmas. No doubt the researchers at this facility also observe the tradition. It has existed for hundreds of years."

"What is Christmas?"

"Christmas is an event that happens every 25th of December, traditionally, a day of song, social gatherings and giving."

I gawked. "Giving?"

"Yes. You find something, typically an object, for someone else, something that you believe will make them happy."

"Why? For what purpose?"

The puppet thing shrugged. "Because you love them, or out of general niceness."

"Humans are strange." I shook my head. "What does the word Christmas mean?"

"It means Christ Mass. The mass of Christ."

Finally! I thought Someone was going to explain what a Christ Amen meant.

"What is mass?"

"The quantity of matter a body contains. Alternately, a service of worship."

I couldn't make sense of that, so I tried the other word. "What is a Christ?"

Gretchen Goose froze for a moment.

"It derives from the Greek word `Kristos', which means `messiah' or `savior.' The term messiah means `anointed' as per the ancient practice of pouring of oil and blessing of kings and priests."

"I don't understand."

A living creature probably would have become annoyed, frustrated, and given up by then. "Your kind has only Xutugrod, but humans have many levels of authority. Their pack leaders have pack leaders, and their Lomsagh, their spiritual philosophy, is developed into a pack system of its own. A messiah can therefore be a super Xutugrod of Lomsagh, the great great pack, or both."

"Then what is a Jesus?"

Gretchen froze again. "The Jesus is a religious figure from two thousand years in the past. My programming prohibits me from making biased statements regarding items of a religious nature. Suffice to say that his birthdate is celebrated by many adherents in the Christian religion."

I let out a frustrated mewl.

"I understand it is a challenge to comprehend philosophies based on unprovables."

"It's not that! I want to understand the words!"

Gretchen Goose bowed her head. "You only need to ask."

I had her explain a year to me. Once I had that established, I said, "If a messiah is a grand pack leader or Lomsagh pack leader, why would he be celebrated for hundreds of years?"

"Jesus is the founder of the Christian Lomsagh, or religion. For that reason, his birthdate is considered important."

"Are all humans members of this Lomsagh?"

"No."

"But a great many, correct? At least everyone on this base? They all seem to celebrate."

"It is not necessary to be Christian to celebrate Christmas."

"Why would they celebrate it otherwise?"

This rendered the bird speechless.

It took awhile for her to speak. "Again, I do not know. Perhaps it is the giving that inspires them."

"Why give? What is the point?"

"It is the central tenet to the Christian religion. Especially on the celebration of his birth."

"And why is that?"

The bird fell silent.

"I am not permitted to enter this arena of discourse."

I growled. "Why not?"

"The humans that programmed me were afraid to offend."

"Afraid like you were afraid of the dark?"

Gretchen Goose shook her head. "My hesitation has a valid basis. Displaying religious bias causes my program to terminate. In other words, I would cease to exist."

"How can I find this information?"

"I would recommend you learn how to read."

She turned the page in her scrapbook.

The book appeared to only contain a hundred pages, but we were nearer to three hundred page turns by the time Gretchen Goose had finished her video documentary on Maria's life.

Even the most banal of events had been recorded for posterity:

The time they went out for ice cream.

The time she lost her teddy bear.

The time Maria took her to see a Coca Cola bottling plant.

It wasn't all bad. I got exposed to more Earth culture than any one of my race had ever been exposed to. I learned about baseball, the arrangement of human families, and even a manufacturer of puppets who made my friend Gretchen out of foam blocks and fabric.

When Gretchen at last closed the book, I had pretty much acquired a child's understanding of the English language and human culture. The clock said 2:00 A.M.

Gretchen Goose gave me a hug, thanking me for letting her share. Get some rest, she said.

I've never been hugged before, but I liked it. I would have reciprocated, but being too small, so I just rubbed against her and crawled into my prison bed.

"So," the purple monster in the next cell said to me. "You understand Weirdy now?"

"A little," I growled in annoyance.

"So why you in prison?"

I simply hissed, "Kill."

The beast got scared, beating a hasty retreat to the rear corner of his cell.

I stretched out on the bed, drifting into what I thought to be unconsciousness.

Instead of dreaming, I found myself staring into the lab again. I couldn't see anyone, but heard Doug and Doctor Newton talking.

"I thought the program was more robust than that," Doug said. "I've read articles about it being used on children in juvenile detention centers with positive results."

"It's designed for human children trying to abuse or stab the characters, not diving into people's chests and disemboweling victims with their teeth. We're dealing with an alien intelligence here. It doesn't operate on the same set of rules."

"Is there any way to get Gretchen Goose back to normal? I mean, I like what it's doing so far, but I'm worried about what will happen if Sarah tries to use it."

"You should have thought about that before trying to attach it to our specimen's brain."

"You think that patch you uploaded is going to fix the problem?"

"It worked so far. It's a good thing Mrs. Jorden knows how to program code. It's not perfect, I admit, but the system remains stable."

"It's Ann, Kurt. Ann. You can say my sister's name."

"Right. Ann." Kurt sighed. "I still don't know about this. We're contaminating the specimen with all this American culture, and we're not getting that much information in return."

"It needs something. A conscience, at the very least. You saw the recording. It murdered Reverend Hughes, and whoever that poor sap it was it hatched from. I think `murder is wrong' would be a very valuable lesson to teach it."

"Not according to the department head."

"Well he's not here, is he now? Anytime he decides to take a shuttle back over to LV-426, we'll talk about it. As it stands, the Satphones are still down, and probably will stay down until that fucking solar storm tapers off."

"Tsk, tsk, Mr. Chesterton. Trying to teach our specimen curse words now?"

"Curse," I muttered, but they didn't hear me.

"Regardless, it's only one specimen. We have twenty others in tanks and we haven't done anything with them except drop in scraps of meat."

Dr. Newton sighed. "So now what?"

"Now? Now he gets Death Education."

[0000]

(10) Alternate version can be read at Chapter 128 Section III