SavagePlanets, January 2022

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT

BY MARGARET KARMAZIN

I took the assignment under duress.

“You’re a disappointment,” states Bomav. “That the only way to put it.”

She regards me with distaste, her big yellow eyes expressing pure disdain. She refuses to wear the black eye covers common to our kind. I suppose they are unnecessary since the lighting is dim in the

subterranean facility.

Born into a World Supervision pod, I am stuck in a vocation vastly unsuited to my temperament. I don’t know what I am suited for, but after headquartering in this facility for hundreds of years and experiencing humans, I guess I might be better at art or writing? Or possibly raising baby animals? But such choices do not exist for our kind, not on any known world.

My purpose is to join my essence repeatedly with a human body and become that person. Essentially, to lose myself in that body’s genetic milieu and transmit information back to the pod for further analysis. It helps us understand this race we monitor, their inclinations and motivations.

“There must have been some sort of mix-up with your fetus,” Bomav feels the need to continue. “You

would be better suited to watching ground cover grow.”

As if I didn’t already feel bad enough. There is no way out of this situation. It is impossible to change my assigned role.

“All right,” I say stoically. “How long must I endure this one’s life?”

Like it matters anyway; after this human stint is over, they will just place me in another incompatible body. The study and supervision of this planet has been going on for millennia and will continue long after I am gone. Indeed, centuries before my birth, our kind has directed the flow of humanity, instigated their religions with holographic events and charismatic leaders. Influenced, of course, by

us in human form.

We have moved them to war, moved them out of war. We have culled the herd with plagues and pestilence, led them out of caves and jungles to farming and civilization and now they teeter on the edge of space travel.

“However long this American human female lasts,” says Bomav. “In this case, we are not requiring you to endure childhood and adolescence. The female body you will occupy ended her physical existence at twenty-four years because of personal stress and bipolar disorder.

“The body is currently in stasis while repairs are underway. We have corrected the genetic disposition to her mental condition and

cleaned up the mess from her alcohol addiction. Afterwards, we will reposition her in upstate New York, far from her sparse family in Oregon, but maintaining proof of identity and full credentials as a registered nurse.

“I don’t know how to be a nurse.”

“Did you forget when you were a Swiss mayor in the eighteenth century, or when you were a French nun in the nineteenth or a Chinese peasant during the Cultural Revolution? How did you know what to do then?”

“The body retains its education, abilities and memories,” I say by rote, “but being a nurse in the twenty-first century is a bit more complicated than a Swiss mayor or interminably praying nun.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” barks my unsympathetic superior. “The peasant’s life before he was tortured in the revolution wasn’t that difficult. Nevertheless you messed it up. The mayor was a bumbling idiot so you couldn’t mess that up. Yet, you did.”

I emit a small squeak.

“This current subject graduated from nursing school and already worked two and a half years in the orthopedic ward,” Bomav continues. “She was relatively proficient at her job but led offline by her malfunctioning brain. Of course, now any malfunction in that area will be due to your own input following insertion.”

“I-”

“Report to Medical, Deenu, where, as before, we will transfer

your essence from your body and install it into the body of Nurse Kayla Davis. Best of luck. Now move.”

“Wait!” I blurt, but Bomav has already turned and whooshed out the door. I feel trapped in an apparently never-ending torture requiring me to adapt to many lives, none of which I enjoy. But then, beings such as ourselves, dedicated to monitoring and instructing immature races, are never expected to feel pleasure.

I report to Medical for the procedure.

As always, my emergence into the human world is a transition from a darkened, sterile environment into a kaleidoscope of distracting sound, movement and color. My head aches from the riot of sensual input. A car honks and I jump, heart pounding.

Hybrids have arranged for me a used, lower priced vehicle and a sparsely furnished apartment in Binghamton, New York. It is a few streets from the hospital where I am working. The hospital is an older structure with easy access parking in front, no unsupervised high-rise parking structure in which, being female, I might have to fight off rapists and other attackers. (I am up to date on their “news.”) Fluffy clouds float in a bright blue sky overhead as I maneuver with trepidation through the sliding doors of the front entrance.

“Fourth floor,” answers the receptionist, “take that elevator over

there.”

I am enduring a distracting flood of Kayla’s memories, though they blur from a residual effect of her former afflictions. I see that the hospital is old but probably recently renovated and decorated in the hallways with inoffensive abstract art.

While my brain functions similarly to the time when I was the Chinese peasant, a nun and a mayor, the structure of their thinking differed from Kayla’s. The nun and the peasant concentrated on “obeying” while the mayor was conniving and focused on cheating. I hoodwinked my contemporaries out of money and stored my winnings like a squirrel in various unusual places.

Kayla is apparently worried that she won’t be able to do the job correctly and wondering if she will ever find a mate. Then it hits me: if she does find a mate, I will have to live through the entire ordeal.

Human sex as a female, possible reproduction, the tedium of daily life and then sickness and death. Why am I doing this? By the time I reach the fourth floor, I want to terminate this existence more than usual and consider the many ways of doing so in this very building.

Someone called the “Nurse Supervisor,” an obese, middle-aged female with obvious arthritis. She takes me briskly into her office. She rattles off rules and regulations, explains the hospital’s policy on scrub colors (Kayla’s are the wrong color), and where to purchase them.

Then she schedules me for the hospital’s mandatory two-day orientation. I will have to wait for the next monthly orientation and in the meantime am introduced to the staff in the wing where I’ll be working. For two days, I am to follow and observe another nurse named Jessica.

My colleagues look up from their paperwork at the nursing station and give me distracted smiles without warmth. I sense that most of them are physically and mentally exhausted. I have not experienced this before.

The emotion in the Chinese peasant and around him consisted of rage and terror and finally defeat. In the nun, it was childish complacency and occasional elation. The mayor was…let us not return there. He was not an evolved human and left me a mess to handle.

One week in orthopedics wheeling around medications to mostly elderly humans having their knees and hips replaced while wearing my new scrubs and they move me to Cardiology!

Panic. Not only do I have to purchase a new uniform, I know nothing of cardiology other than what remains in Kayla’s memory from nursing school. What am I going to do?

Bomav ignores my frantic telepathic messages. I wish I had one friend in the universe to complain to; just one to reassure and comfort me!

“Basically, you will hang IV medications, adjust vent settings and

run codes,” the new charge nurse says.

She too is obese and I wonder why someone who works in this section of the hospital would overeat when so many of the patients are here due to lack of exercise and over consumption. But later I will understand.

Often the temperament of humans who choose this profession is one of helping others at the expense of their own well-being. The resulting stress leads them to consume comforting carbohydrates and collapse from exhaustion later, leaving no energy for exercise.

In addition, well-meaning family members of patients bring in sugary foods for the nurses. I make an intense effort not to join them in their ingestion. By the end of the day, I am depleted and often too tired to bother obtaining colorful fruits and vegetables. And of course, there is no psychological support from my World Supervision Pod who seem to instantly forget my existence once I am occupying a human body.

“Hey Kayla,” a coworker asks as I prepare to leave one day, “some of us are going to Mick’s for drinks and a bite – wanna come?”

The coworker, Megan, is in the process of training to become a nurse practitioner and I see her companion is the physical therapist Aaron that I met when working in orthopedics.

I am not sure what a “bite” is, but why not? My mission is to experience human life, so I answer,

“Yes, thank you,” and follow them out.

Mick’s Bar and Grill is comfortable in the way humans enjoy – dark, cozy, warm. Possibly this reminds them subconsciously of their mothers’ wombs. The only annoying thing is that several televisions blare in the bar section.

The place, though contemporary, reminds me of an inn in my days as the Swiss mayor. Same ambiance, same desperate and tired humans trying to unwind. Perhaps current humans should distribute their working hours to suit their physical natures better since everyone I meet appears to be fatigued.

This was not the case with the nun, though she arose at four in the morning, nor the mayor; he slept nine hours a night. The Chinese peasant, however, got little sleep while being tortured in one of the re-education camps.

The bar is full of humans of both sexes shooting out pheromones to attract a partner. Suddenly, I wonder if I am attractive. As Kayla, I am one hundred and sixty-two centimeters in height, weight fifty-eight kilograms and of, as humans say, of mixed race. Kayla’s biological father was half African and half Paiute. Her mother was Caucasian.

In the bar’s bathroom mirror, I inspect my face closely for the first time. My eyes are large for a human and brown, my chin is little. My forehead is wide and my mammary glands of reasonable size. My nose is rounded and small. I am reasonably familiar

with current human attractiveness ratings which would denote my physique as athletic. My brown hair is full and curly. I decide that most likely, I am probably “hot.”

Around a wooden table, we share stories of ridiculous demands by patients and insensitive doctors and I feel the pleasant effects of alcohol and camaraderie. It is while under the influence of such that I make the acquaintance of a male named Cesar Chasco.

He is tall, slender and muscular with thick black hair. We are almost the same skin color, caramel, though he has light eyes while mine are dark. Right away, I feel an attraction towards this human. This is the trouble with occupying bodies on whatever world we supervise; one experiences physical and emotional urges connected with a particular species.

Once again, I flush all over when he speaks to me. My gonads en-flame and I sense the urge, common in the species, toward reproduction.

“Cesar is a second-year resident,” says Megan. “What’s your current rotation, Cesar?”

“Neurosurgery. I like it. I might make it my specialty,” he says, all the while boring into me with his startling blue eyes.

Later, after another round of drinks, he leans close and asks me to accompany him somewhere for a meal and to listen to “blues” (whatever that is) in a cellar somewhere. Naturally, I accept. It is my job to experience, among other things, human

relations and from previous lives, I suspect these are mating rituals.

This ends up leading to the physical expression of affection and an intense physical need for reproduction, though paradoxically, I use birth control. Kayla is “on the pill” and Cesar uses a prophylactic. The whole thing is rather amusing and messy, though the carnal drive appears to override all normal senses.

Once we have finished with a session, I wonder what happened to my sanity. Of course, there is no one with whom to discuss this and I do not wish to draw suspicion by bringing up the subject with Cesar. In spite of it seeming peculiar for one being to insert a body part into a crevice in another, I willingly engage in this activity again.

I can imagine what Bomav would say about this. She would approve of experiencing it, but not enjoying it.

I adjust to working in cardiology and become proficient when suddenly they move me to the Emergency Department and now I have to buy another color of scrubs! This appears to be counterproductive, but after all, these are humans, a race still in its childhood. Much of what they do makes little sense as we have repeatedly learned.

Before long, I have worked my way up to a temporary supervising position in the ED, not necessarily due to excellent work, but because no one else wanted it. It involves working more nights but surprisingly, Cesar has another surgery rotation and is working

nights as well.

We find brief periods in which to engage in sexual activity in a maintenance closet as long as the ED is quiet. I was not this sexually questionable even as the Swiss mayor. The nun did not engage in this sort of thing and the Chinese peasant, after being tortured, did not want anyone near him, not even his mate or offspring.

Humans die under my care. I understand that this is part of the job. I have seen numerous humans expire as the Swiss mayor (smallpox, pneumonia, cholera, uprisings, religious wars, stabbings) and more than that in the Chinese revolution. Many people lost their minds as well. But it is a different matter to have your hands inside someone’s body as

they take their last breath.

Is this why Bomav gave me this assignment? To touch death? If so, why? I know perfectly well that humans live brief lives compared to ours and suffer inevitably and needlessly.

“I don’t like it when they die,” I tell Cesar and he laughs.

“Then you’re in the wrong business,” he says.

I have to laugh even though he has no idea how I am forced into it. We are in bed, having consumed pizza and gotten stains on the sheets. We forget all about the food and go back to our usual mating practice. Little do we know that this episode will cause a sperm to meet an egg. We have

run out of condoms and nonsensically gone ahead.

I need to make note of this: after time spent in a human body, self-interest and pleasure often override knowledge. I suddenly realize that after a couple of days, I have forgotten to take my contraceptive medication. And soon will discover, I miss my monthly bleed.

This does not please me. The mayor and the Chinese peasant had children, but they were male humans and did not have to grow them inside their bodies and push them out while screaming. I have seen this on television and in person in the ED before we sent the poor female up to Obstetrics.

“What do you want to do?” asks Cesar, once I have told him about my condition. We are having lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I have grown most fond of grilled cheese sandwiches and bite into one now.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He is looking very attractive. I stare at the raised green veins on his tanned forearms, for some reason finding them beautiful.

“You can have an abortion, you can have the baby and give it up for adoption, you can have the baby and keep it for yourself or we can get married.”

“Get married?” I really wish I had someone to talk to about this. I could call up my human acquaintances from the bar outing, Megan or Aaron, and ask them what

to do, but I would much prefer discussing this with one of my own kind.

But in whom could I confide? Bomav has the sensitivity of a hyena about to consume a carcass. My only other friends are long gone; one destroyed in a rock slide climbing a volcano where we set up a base and the other occupying a Frakine body somewhere

on Kacha III, the other primitive civilization which we are currently monitoring.

My superiors are never interested in how we “feel” about our assignments. They simply monitor our experiences through biochips installed in the host bodies. Since working in my current position at the hospital, I realize that where I stand with my kind is “middle management.”

As Deenu, I have numerous “bosses” over me and drone workers under me so the label fits. Though who do I manage other than myself when away from Bomav? Perhaps I too am nothing but a drone.

If I marry this male human, what if it does not go well? Will this count against me? Bomav said I made a mess of the Swiss mayor since I allowed him to continue his borderline criminal activities.

But as humans say, what the hell?

“We’ll get married then,” I tell Cesar. Megan as my maid of honor and Cesar’s sister and Aaron are bridesmaids even though Aaron is a male. I tell people that I

have no relatives and apparently, they believe me.

Meanwhile, Cesar finds a place in a neurosurgical residency and we have slightly more money. The baby arrives (not a pleasant experience) and somehow I survive. During the delivery, while blind with pain, I scream curses at Bomav and everyone asks me afterward who this person is, but thank the Universe I have the wherewithal not to explain. They would not believe me anyway.

“Here is baby Mia,” says the nurse, handing me a pink wrapped bundle while Cesar takes photos. I am to apply the infant to a mammary gland, which I do but it doesn’t function correctly. The hungry baby becomes fussy. Finally, she succeeds by sucking her tiny gummy mouth on the nipple, causing me a mixture of pain and pleasure.

Life goes on and after a couple of months of sleepless nights, I return to my job in the ED. Because I am methodical and used to working long hours, they promote me to Charge Nurse. Meanwhile we let our nanny go and use the babysitting services provided for staff at the hospital.

“You bought three gallons of chocolate almond ice cream,” notes Cesar a year later as he steps out from the shower. “I saw it in the basement freezer. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

There is indeed something. My very inconvenient monthly menstruation has stopped and a test has confirmed my fears. I don’t answer him; he reads the look on my face, something humans are

relatively skilled at and a good thing, since they have thwarted their telepathic abilities.

He smiles broadly (the hominidae baring of teeth to show submission, in this case, submission to fate?) and says, “Another rug rat, I like it! Let’s have ten more!”

No, just no. Taking on an assignment is one thing, imprisonment and torture another. “I think not,” I tell him, but he is dancing around the room naked with a towel on his head.

The second one is born, a little wiggling male with straight black hair and giant dark blue eyes. He almost looks like a pod hybrid with those eyes. He is very strong and pulls on my mammary glands and by the way he grips them, I postulate that he will be a determined individual who might run for a high political office.

Our family lazes about in bed on a Sunday morning (I have two months off from work again) and I allow myself to feel pleasure and peace, although I know such things are fleeting. Indeed, I am correct when two weeks later, little Liam suddenly expires from SIDS.

We had placed him in his crib after a feeding around eleven at night. When I fell asleep but wasn’t awakened some hours later by his usual cry, I sat bolt upright in the bed and jumped to go check. I screamed for Cesar when I saw he was not breathing. I started CPR, but to no avail. Cesar tried too but gave up, blinded by his tears.

So…this is the human

experience. I am truly not fond of it. The Chinese peasant had to endure humiliation and torture but his wife and children were spared. In fact, they survived to old age. The nun lived stupidly and happily and died in her sleep. The Swiss mayor, horror that he was, lived to his eighties and died from choking on a piece of pork.

And now for no reason, this perfection of nature Cesar and I created perishes in his safe little crib right next to us in the night. I scream at the Universe, I long to kill something and then after a while, I want to hide in a dark room and drink alcohol. Instead, I make myself rise from the ashes and return to the ED.

Of course, we have no sexual interaction for a while and I don’t want it. I feel depressed, depleted. A colleague warily suggests “it might help to see someone,” but I decide to let myself go on feeling miserable since it might earn me some points with Bomav in my debriefing. To know how humans feel when their hearts break, I will explain.

“We have a beautiful daughter,” Cesar reminds me and he is right.

Mia is growing like a sprouting plant and will soon enter preschool, a pathetic form of education which I plan to supplement with secret and superior teaching, though Bomav would not approve. The hell with Bomav! What does she know? What do any of them know?

“And we can have more,” Cesar adds.

Silence while I ponder this. No,

I think. “I do not want more,” I answer him.

He seems letdown but he will have to live with it. Secretly, I meet with one doctor I know, a female, and inform her that I want to have my tubes tied. I tell Cesar I have ovarian cysts and need surgery.

He looks slightly suspicious but then is sympathetic and I go ahead with the procedure. He never knows that I underwent sterilization. Bomav does not intervene, but then she never does. Only afterwards when, as humans say, she “reams me a new one.”

They expand the ED with added rooms and beds, and honor me with a raise in salary. Most of my pleasure now is derived from work. The work is tedious, but occasionally someone comes in with a distracting problem like the girl who pierced her eye lid herself and made a horrible mess of it. Or the man with schizophrenia who had welts on his back that spelled out “WHAT?” We laughed though probably we shouldn’t have.

I love little Mia. She is growing taller every day, but something left me when Liam died.

“I don’t know how you expect me to go without sex forever,” Cesar says one night.

His face is flushed and I almost feel as if he might strike me. But he never does. He works very hard and deserves to enjoy himself when he is home. I know this but cannot make myself get in the mood for sex.

After a while, he stops bringing it up. He goes to a gym, loses weight and sprays himself with perfume. It takes me a while to understand and when I do, I feel a numbing anger but I cannot change my behavior. It feels as if I am trapped in quicksand.

Then Mia gets into trouble at nursery school for throwing tantrums. I realize I have to pull myself together before I seriously impair her development. I do as my colleague suggested and “see someone.”

This has to stop after two sessions. When the therapist begins to dig into my psyche, what will she find? That I am not of this world and beyond her understanding? Most human therapists lock themselves into rigid materialistic world views, but I cannot take the chance that she finds out what I really am even if she would deny it to herself.

A human plague predicted decades ago arrives to shut down a large part of society. The ER fills up with people young and old gasping for air. We mask our faces and buckle down.

Human scientists labor to create a vaccine but the current government sets up roadblocks to distribute it. Religious fundamentalists declare the vaccine evil.

I expect to hear something from Bomav, but nothing comes and once again I remember that part of my mission requires no outside contact. Human emotions from elation to suffering must be “genuine” and unadulterated. They do

not allow me to see the course of my life so I do not know if I will die young or live to “old” age.

One night, for the first time since Liam’s death, I feel an urge to engage in sexual relations. Cesar is surprised and goes along with it, though with little excitement. By now, undoubtedly, he is seeing another female. I think I know who it is, an OR nurse.

With all that is going on in the ED, I don’t experience the jealousy one might expect under ordinary conditions. Cesar seems bored and listless. The next morning, he is febrile and mentions a mild sore throat.

“You need to call in sick,” I tell him and he argues with me. As he raises his voice, he has to stop and cough. “It’s nothing,” he insists.

“Then get tested!” I bark.

I feel like beating him with a stick as he goes off to work refusing to get checked. All day I am impotently enraged. As I get Mia ready for daycare, I feel panic as I touch her small, firm body. So fleeting is human life; she could die any second just like Liam, and then what is the point of living?

Two weeks later, Cesar dies in the ICU. They don’t allow visitors other than those who work there due to the pandemic, not even his wife. Before they intubate him, he calls me but says nothing about our marriage, only to tell Mia he loves her.

Once again, I have failed. A bad mayor, a destroyed Chinese peasant, a childish nun and now

an inadequate wife. It is indeed strange how I feel so numb about Cesar’s death. What is wrong with me?

His family does not, thank the Universe, demand an in-person funeral and organizes a virtual one. Naturally, I participate, but while doing so, I know I will have little contact with any of them henceforth. They dislike me, which is understandable. I am not, in human terms, very “likeable.” They probably all knew about our “dead” marriage.

“Take a couple days off,” offers the Chief Nursing Officer, but I turn him down.

The ED is in disaster mode from all those dying from the pandemic and work keeps me from brooding over my failures. I witness humans leaving this world and my heart hardens. My days consist of grueling work, maybe two hours with Mia and then we sleep. My love grows for her more each day. The deadness inside me slowly softens, becomes a small flame which I nourish with Mia’s sweetness and kisses. She no longer throws tantrums.

“The vaccine will arrive this morning,” a hospital spokesman informs us and by afternoon, we are lined up to receive the first dose. Several refuse it.

It amazes me that they work in a medical system and hand out medications daily, all created by science that they normally trust, but now they won’t let themselves be protected from potential death. I understand what Bomav means

when she tells us how childish humanity is, especially when I observe such behavior.

My sole concern is protecting Mia. She has lost her father and brother and I am determined to live in this body until she is an adult, on her way professionally and hopefully with a good companion. All my concentration will be towards

those goals.

Bomav and my kind slip from my consciousness and interest; I rarely think of them and after some time, not at all.

Sixty years later, Mia is an accomplished author. She became a nurse practitioner, married a physician’s assistant, had two sons all while writing a medical mystery novel. Then she wrote another one, had two grandchildren and currently lives outside of Pittsburgh with her husband.

She helped me move out to live near her fifteen years ago. I live in a very nice senior living complex. I am half deaf and have macular degeneration. Frankly, I’m ready to hang it all up. I’m not afraid to die and am pretty sure there is something after, not sure what, but something.

I seem to have a vague memory of being someone else before I was born, but who or what that was, I don’t remember.