Code Talker

lisa stathoplos from Slay Me, My Hapless Darlings

Code Talker

Let’s face it. She was piecing it together from the beginning. Newly human — deep, ebony eyes, lush, dark lashes, just days in — critically evaluating her situation from her nest in the crooked elbow, summing up, assessing. Plump, rouge cheeks swelling and deflating like tiny bellows with each desperate pull on the meager breasts grown for the occasion. Her consternation confounding in one so tiny.

Six days in, her study’s complete, her report ready. Every waking moment, keeping her sage gaze on me, the imposter, the dangerously incompetent one, masquerading as maternal, safe, she waits for her moment to contact superiors, rabbit ear her biscuit tin wireless, relay her alert of their bungled blunder. She cries incessantly. It’s all in code. I fail to break it. I wonder if she’s getting through?

It gets worse as time goes on. And, better. If better is assimilating her original data and coping with the communication breach that’s left her stranded here. With me. For now. I envision the translation of her early cries bouncing through interplanetary space seeking the Origin Place.

“Get me out of here! It’s no good —  no clue what she's doing! When can I return? I can’t, no, won’t, trust this human for eighteen years!”

At about three years in we arrive at a semi-comfortable detente; I learn diplomacy, she risks attachment. We have fun. She shelves her transmitters, internalizes her initial discomfort, and we acquire a rhythm. And memories.

But, a second human arrives. This throws everything off kilter again. She frees her mystical radio equipment from its classified lair, tries again more fiercely to summon her ilk. No Alpha, Bravo, Tangos for her, no NATO phonetics. Her code, indecipherable. I still can’t crack it. Can’t read its thumbprint. Am I this dumb?

At ten years, we’ve both accepted our plight. For me, she’s everything — well, she and the other, younger, human are everything. But her? Shrouds envelop shrouds, sheaves upon sheaves of layered mystery.

There’s a severance at ten, too. Doesn’t help a thing in the end, though I thought it would. She’s biding her time more obviously now. “Eyes on, keep your distance.” Her unspoken creed. The deceits — small deceits for freedom, of course, nothing dramatic — increase. It’s to be expected, I tell myself; I did the same when I showed up forty two earth years ago. Now, though, others here appear to share her codes; they’re shifting analytics, adding characters to their numerics. I’m ever more isolated, ostracized, lost in analog.

I talk to friends, read books, seek counsel, try to understand, but every time I get close to unearthing a clue, get close to a Navajo blueprint for new language, she pulls an Alan Turing and switches up her crib again. She’s always three or four code breaks ahead of me. I’m hunting and pecking on outdated ciphers; my Enigma machine has a bug in it. The messages I do get are cryptic at best, riddled with riddles and puzzles all missing more than one crucial piece.

I try to let go, ride the waves, figure, one day, we’ll sync up, sort it all out, maybe — just perhaps? — be friends?

It never happens. Turns out, we’re both aliens in an alien world. When we talk — each in our own canon — the other scrambles meaning; discord ensues. We gamble on a few novel decoders — her picks; they all fail. These two aliens ne’er the twain shall mind meld. Best to keep a calculated distance, stay on guard. At least, that’s how I think she sees me. Charge d’affaires at best — lowest diplomatic rank. Like I said, she pieced it together from the start.

For my part? I long to cradle the little alien, love her, nourish her, engage. Nurture lifelong connection. But, life’s already been long. So I let her go, let that dream go. Every now and then I tap out some dots and dashes on my archaic appliances. Ancient, fragile equipment, failing for rust and dust, creak as I crank out careful communiques.

Sometimes, there’s a kind of balm in this strange Gilead. I hear echoes of my long past soundings. The semaphores pick up my wayward transmissions, send them glancing back to claim me; sonar blows brush me, like once distant smoke signals lost in time, let me know I tried.

Copyright © 2025 lisa stathoplos/ Slay Me, My Hapless Darlings