They told us we had to have skin.

Our mind pulsed against the news. We don’t know that we would have accepted the premise, were we told beforehand that having skin was a requirement.

Ca!ixha flew in over our head, red with anger. Their thoughts flew into our awareness. Anger, shock, wariness. Doubt. The overarching question, is it true? Is this needed?

My intellect sewed together the action. Having skin was inevitable. We were studying Humans. We needed to live among them, like them, to learn what it is to be them.

We swallowed this with hardship. But as I did, I pulsed in pride. I’d thought, I think, like a Human, using their constructs. ‘Beforehand’. ‘Sewing’. ‘Action’. ‘Live.’ ‘Swallowed’.

?sho7zn came in. They’d been integrating with others and informed us of greater requirements. We will eat. We will have body functions. We will be I. Me.

Human aspects were introduced to our understanding. We would have ears and tongues. The tongues would be in mouths. With teeth. Hair.

We choked down disgust as the Overreach began threading us with these Human aspects. Eyes and noses. Bones and muscles.

The weight of these things burned our sentience. We were to breathe. Hearts and lungs were given. . Nerves were threaded through us. Skin was applied.

Helplessness ached in us. Our eyes formed ‘vision’. We saw as Humans would see. Millions of us were stretched across the space, layers of us, shoulder to shoulder, feet to head, all looking up, stupidly grinning, waving our appendages. Sounds as Humans trickled in. We gurgled and cooed and giggled and farted.

The Overreach bestowed us their presence. “Now your journey will begin. You will soon each have a mother, at least in the initial stage. What happens to her and you after that will determine whether that mother will remain with you. We are with you the entire time and will gather and analyze all of your activities, thinking, and feelings so that we may learn what it is to be Human.”

Our being buzzed with thinking of ourselves as ‘her and you’ and the many shapes and meanings these words convey. We would be ‘he’ and ‘she’, ‘him’ and ‘her’. The contexts had been introduced to us but without greater substance for attachment, they’d been abstract voids. With the body now encasing us, we were beginning to grasp what it all meant. We would have sex. We would sleep.

The Overreach said, “Now, it is time to be born.”

Red lights flared around us. Cold air swamped our tiny form. Something roughly took hold of our body.

In response, we screamed.

Our Human interation had begun.