Skip to main content

story identification - Employment office encounters an alien masquerading as a human


I'm looking for a story where a guy who has done job interviews for years is approached by an applicant, and because of his experience talking to people (I remember he specifically mentions having done something like 250,000 interviews), he immediately is able to tell the applicant is actually an alien in human form.


He goes on to help the alien understand human emotions & teaches him how to fit in.



Answer



"What Have I Done?", a short story by Mark Clifton, from Astounding Science Fiction, May 1952, available at the Internet Archive. Here is a quotation from the story:



There are others who can match my record in taking case histories. I happened to be the one who came in contact with this fellow. For thirty years I have been listening to, talking with, counseling people—over two hundred thousand of them. They have not been routine interviews. I have brought intelligence, sensitivity and concern to each of them.




Here is a review from Omphalos:



An industrial psychologist prides himself on being able to instantly categorize any person that he meets. In a drugstore one day he encountered a man who had no outward show of emotion, and was thus uncategorizable to him. Intrigued by the possibility of finding a new type of personality he pursued the man and lost him, only to find later that the odd man reported to the psychologist's job agency in search of employment. Excited still by the prospects, the psychologist sat down to interview the man. It soon became apparent to the psychologist that this man was more different than he had originally thought. The psychologist was a SF fan, and had a very open mind. He thought that the man, named Hoffman, was an alien pretending to be a human. It did not help Hoffman that he kept referring to the ten planets of the Solar System.

Still intrigued the psychologist followed Hoffman to a house in the suburbs. Confronted with questions, the owner of the house, an old woman, denied any knowledge of Hoffman. A few months later a Norwegian named Johnson showed up at the employment agency who demonstrated the same curious lack of affectation and emotion. The psychologist pegged him as the same man right away, and Johnson admitted that he was indeed an alien. He was from Arcturus and he was there with thirty other of his species, disguised as humans. They were there to colonize Earth, but they had not decided on how to do it yet. One option was to wipe the face of the Earth clean of humans and start reproducing. The other option, the one they favored as more humane, was to integrate into the human population and mate among themselves while denying humans the right to mate and reproduce, and delude the humans into thinking nothing was wrong until they were gone for good. The aliens were impressed with the psychologist's powers of observation, and wanted to recruit him to teach them how to integrate. If he denied them assistance, then they threatened to just wipe all life on Earth out and start over.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...