Alison casually flipped through the channels of the television.

A bright blue sphere filled the screen. It was a woman in a round blue costume reading the nightly news. Gun violence appeared to be up in the primarily human neighborhoods in the South.

The next channel featured several men in large blue-tinted hamster wheels at the start line of a race track. The track lines were raised to ensure that each individual remained in their own lane. It was time for the summer world olympics once again. Alison wasn’t interested. Besides, Angola usually won anyways.

On PBS, fields of blueberries filled the screen. Yet another special on blueberries. How obvious could their pandering be?

Channel after channel featured blue spherical shapes interacting, singing, fighting. Allison mostly found it annoying, but would watch on occasion if she was bored enough. She often was.

Very few channels catered to human interests these days. Not since the influx of the Ovelut. An alien species that lives in the center of Hoag's Object. They were more derogatorily called “Hoagies”. Their species largely favored blue spherical shapes. Trade with the Ovelut provided earth with much needed resources and, in return, earth had in essence become an Ovelut playland. She walked over to fridge to grab something to eat. Since the Ovelut arrived, many farms found it much more profitable to grow Achi, a fast-growing, nutrient-dense round substance that could sustain Ovelut and humans alike. It was difficult and expensive these days to find anything foods that were exclusively human. It looked like she was out of Achi and would have to go to the store. She hoped none of her neighbors would be out. Her building was primarily Ovelut occupied, but the developers had to allot 10% of the building to humans. In many ways, she was lucky to have won that lottery, but it didn’t always feel that way. As she walked out the door, her neighbor down the hall stood languidly in the doorway of its apartment. It had no discernible eyes, but she could sense that it was looking at her. Fucking hoagie, she muttered under her breathe. She didn’t hate them. She just hated how uncomfortable they made her feel. Why did they have to be so creepy? Why did they have to live here with humans?

Stepping outside, Alison’s eyes glossed over the now-familiar row of blue spheres that dotted the sidewalk across the street. “Dotties,” people called them, though the Ovelut name was something more technically complex she couldn’t remember at the moment. Dotties were decent homes for human families, but they always reminded Alison of port-a-potties. Doctors lived in those, as did teachers, police lieutenants. With the Ovelut’s advanced technology, there wasn’t much use for most human professions, with the exception of the bartenders that served Pyglo–a warm, blue, gooey liquid served in fishbowl-shaped glasses at Ovelut clubs. She had thought about getting a job there, but most of the bartenders were PhDs and she wasn’t. You needed an advanced degree and a willingness to face danger in order to operate the machines and mix the chemicals that made Pyglo the most popular drink on the planet. Both the high it produced and its casualty rate was significant. But you never heard about that on the news.

Navigating the newly-renamed streets whose new names she hadn’t bothered to learn, Alison could hear Ovelut music on every corner, but all her human ears could pick-up was the familiar high-pitched beeeeeeeeep that stretched into infinity. That same noise had signaled the Ovelut’s first visit to Earth, when they arrived, radios blaring, immediately taking over every frequency on the planet. Only a few months later, the internet was filled with content for Earth’s new patrons, Ovelut devices displacing and replacing what had been there before. Human telecommunications was soon obsolete, no longer practical or profitable. Without the connectivity of the internet, Alison wandered the streets most days. There was another human in Alison’s building (had he been a Senator, maybe?), but his job as a bartender meant 20 hour days four times a week.So Alison spent a lot of time alone. She was used to it by now. Besides, they weren’t all bad. With the income brought by Ovelut trade, war had basically ended. There was no need to fight over resources anymore and, odd as it was to eat Achi and watch blueberries on TV, most people had their basic needs met. But there was something missing.

Alison was almost to the store when a man in the alleyway caught her eye. He seemed nervous and shifty. Just when Alison thought to look away, their eyes locked. He motioned for her to follow him and he slunk deeper into the darkness of the ally. The Achi can wait she thought as she headed toward the ally…