I have never been more disappointed in a travel brochure.

Sure, everything they said was “true,” about the food and the air and the gravity and the non-predatory environment. But it didn’t account for how ALIEN everything is. And it’s not like I haven’t travelled.

We’re held up in a pension that’s become a haven for other tourists in retreat from the maddening, incompressible experience of life on Primordia 9.

I just tried stepping out on the porch again and within 45 seconds I started sweating and vomiting again. Luckily poor @Celine Oranges was there to pull me back.

The Psyhigh Underage Drivers' Club has been making good friends with our extraterrestrial cousins -- taking them for drives down along the river and out by the airport, showing them what our cars can do. Doesn't seem like any of them have personal motorized transportation at home, so they like to hang their heads out the windows, tongues slathering, eye stalks waving in the wind. A Snarb was hanging by the tentacles from the roof of Harry Manzanita's Supra sliding in the Amazon warehouse lot.

Snarbs make a really weird noise when they're excited, like a sobbing donkey. And the juice it squirted out ruined the paint on the Supra. But Harry doesn't care. He thinks it adds character. Now the Snarb won't quit asking to do it again!

Super psyched for the dance contest next Friday at the Halloween Ball.

I was trying to decide on my costume and spent hours trying on different ones at the Spirit Halloween Superstore out in the abandoned shopping mall. Headless Gopher, Buxom Cyclist, Werewolf Insurance Salesman, Horny Goat, Blood-speckled Mime, Tia Carrere... none of them were doing it for me. My friends got bored and left, but I was so obsessed I just couldn't stop.

"Bring me more!!!" I cried.

Eventually the clerks had to close up shop and just leave me here.

It's clear the store just doesn't have what I need. I don't want to be some fanciful comedy creature. I don't even want to be a monster.

I want to be you.

So I'll be waiting in the dressing room of the Spirit Halloween Superstore out in the abandoned shopping mall. I'm just going to camp here all night. I'm going to burrow into the walls. I'm going to eat lint and the crumbs from Cheetos bags in the breakroom. And when the doors open at 9am tomorrow and new customers start streaming in, I'll be sizing them up, looking for that perfect fit. Looking for the one who's just my size.

In answer to @Sharon Eye's question about if aliens have ghosts:

Well, Sharon, that depends on the "alien" as you so quaintly put it.

In the case of my people, we inherit all the memories of our family lines, which let me tell you makes things pretty tight inside the old consciousness noggin! From before we're born we're bombarded by generations and generations of memories, voices in our heads, great great grandparents getting in your face and telling you what to do.

By the time we're born we already know how to talk and what our lives will be when we grow up. Everybody spends so much time sorting out who's talking and what's what that all those memories of the dead become just as real (if not more real) than the living people around us.

So, basically it's hard for us to tell the living souls of today from the ghosts of the past. They are so real, in fact, that the people in these memories have legal representation and operate here in the present, and are allowed land and operate businesses. Some of our most famous celebrities are memories and still collect royalties, and some of our largest corporations are owned entirely by memories.

All of our family lines are tightly controlled by the Exalted Council of Hereditary Statisticians, whose job it is to make sure that nobody ends up incompatible histories in their heads -- like two sides of some long forgotten but bitter conflict. That causes a Memory Fault and can take serious memory editing to fix. And nobody's really quite "right" after coming out of a memory edit.

Last year the halloween dance contest was lame. Since it happened to coincide with Undead Homecoming it was a Zombie Dance, and at the zombie dance nobody moves at all. They just tap their toes and wiggle their ears to get in the groove.

So what kind of dance contest can be most fair and open given the wide range of extraterrestrial visitors this year?

I think it's clear it's LIMBO!!!!!

I've had time to think about it, holed up in this guest house with @Rosalie Francis and the handful of other disturbed tourists who've ended up here. I've been watching them drool and shiver in the corners. I've been listening to them whimper under the beds.

They're terrified of going outside. Terrified by life on on Primordia 9. And it's getting worse.

"You can wear a blindfold," I tell Rosalie. "We just need to get to the portal station and we can be back at Psyhigh in an instant."

"NOOOOOOOO!" she wails. "The sounds... the smells... they will get back in my head..."

She starts panting and staring at the floor again.

So I've had time to think about it, spending my days cooped up in this house with these strangers, curtains drawn and towels stuffed into the cracks beneath the doors. Why are they so disturbed by Primordia 9?

I think after they eat some of the food from this planet they'll feel better.

"NOOOOOOOO!" she wails. "You can't go out! No one can! It will drive you mad..."

She starts sobbing again.

God I am getting so bored of her.

I grab the guide book and slip out the side door, looking for dinner.

The Psychic Drum Circle has prepared an excellent set for you tomorrow night at the Halloween Dance Contest.

We haven't played on campus for awhile. We spent the summer opening for The Outer Gods. We played a lot of good shows, but it's put all of us off barbeque for a long time. We're all vegans now.

We’ve had a rough year, with @Caleb IV808's clones @Caleb IV66, @Caleb IV3 and @Caleb IV41 going missing in the caverns. We couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible, since it was our superfan @Cameron Vyzesillus that was kind of at the root of all that. But Caleb was just relieved they finally turned up, which is why we were able to get the band back together for this show, lights and all.

So get your kinks out and muscles stretched and get ready to LIMBO tomorrow night! We'll be playing a shortened 4 hour set so as to make sure nobody stays out too late.

See you there!

Ixtb has long nekks!! Thats y we called Ixtb! Ixtb looks like Ixtb.

So Ixtb win LIMBO no brainer!!! /we go soooo looooooow. Win dance combtest.

So excite!!! So excite, Ixtb eat inteligent slug on damse floor. Then nuther and nuther before Ixtb subdude by anesthesic foam.

Now sleep it off in {untranslatable} Oldsmobile Antares. park behin gym.

Ixtb jus so excite to win! Ixtb neber won anyting b4.

"Just try it," I tell @Rosalie Francis.

She's practically catatonic. Along with all the other travellers holed up in this hostel.

"Nnnn... noooo....no.... the madness! The swirling madness!!!"

I still don't know why I'm unaffected by this environment. Ever since setting foot here, Rosalie became more and more unhinged. It was supposed to be an easy trip, promoted as having one of the most compatible environments for standard-earth humans. To me, the surroundings have been strange, but not so thoroughly alien as to drive me insane. There are beings, and a city, and transportation...

"Just one little taste. Just a nibble. Trust me, it could help settle your stomach."

She looks at it for a moment in my hands.

"It's disGUSTing!!! Oh my god I'm going to throw up again--"

Rosalie heaves, but there's nothing left to come up.

"The guide book says that putting a little piece of the world inside you can help you level off. Just close your eyes and take a bite. It's definitely compatible with our physiology. I had it checked."

And I polished off one myself when I bought it from the folkloric corner shop that sold them. I wasn't mad, but I'd been starving.

"Oh... ok... anything if it will stop this..."

Rosalie winces and squeezes her eyes shut an leans forward. I lift it up to her mouth and she takes a tiny bite. Then, tentatively, she begins to chew.

And chew.

And bite again.

"Oh my god... you're right. I feel better already! I...."

She leans in for another bite. With her mouth full, she asks "What do they call this here?'

"A Philadelphia Cheese Steak," I answer.