Tiny Alien - The Movie- and Episode Guide

Technical Difficulties Being resolved . . . .

Thank you all for bearing with me while I told the Tale of the Tiny Alien

It has concerned me that when I was done I couldn't figure out how you could read it in order so I offer you this credit reel and the following

Tales of The Tiny Alien Episode Guide

Episode 1 - The Arrival

Episode 2 - The Discovery

Episode 3 - Progress?

Episode 4 - Community!

Episode 5 - Step 3 . . . Prophet!

Episode 6 - Follow that Pirate

Episode 7 - Beyond The Horizon

Episode 8 - Attack of the Meme!!!

Episode 9 - The Band

Episode 10 - Machinery

Episode 11 - Finally

Tiny Alien - the Movie - You're right here!

The ability to see it all one long page with the first one starting at the bottom with the last one at the top:

Tales of the Tiny Alien

I hope you all enjoyed it.

Tales of the Tiny Alien Episode 11 - Finally

When we last left our Tiny Alien, he was being invited to open the Door to the Sleek Dangerous Thing, having been introduced to Hizzoner and the Fixer by the Lead Singer of the Band.  He had knocked on many Doors, he had asked many questions, he knew now that he was looking for something that for him would be the Ultimate Treat and that he would never be asked to go Home again. Is this then the answer to the heartfelt question "Trick or Treat?" Will the Tiny Alien find  way to live in a Land of Tiny Doors where it's only Halloween sometimes, we'll find out  . . . . 

The Tiny Alien followed the pointing wrench of the Fixer and the approving flashes of Hizzoner and made his way through the door at the back of the Sleek Dangerous Thing. Climbing inside, there was a seat at the fron and a seat at the back.  He settled in to the seat at the fron and then the Sleek dangerous thing reared up to twice the height it was before!

The Sleek Dangerous Thing climbed inside his mind a teensy bit and introduced itself, welcoming him on board and asking if he'd like some In Flight Peanuts. The Tiny Alien, never one to refuse a Treat of course said yes, and CLINK! the upper windows shut down and sealing noises squished sealingly and In Flight Peanuts popped up next to him at the same time In Flight Harnesses pulled him back to the seat and the Sleek Dangerous thing warned him that there would be stronger g-forces shortly as they were heading into space, so perhaps he might want to wait to open the peanuts. 

There was stowage for his bag and his raygun and the Sleek Dangerous Thing lived up to its nomenclature by taking the Tiny Alien out for a game of Asteroids with actual Asteroids. 

The Tiny Alien was very impressed and eventually learned enough to use the manual controls to shoot the Asteroids himself. They took a quick tour of the local solar system, since the Tiny Alien hadn't had a chance to sight see on the way in, and buzzed the Empire State Building for Irony's sake, and returned to Hizzoner and the Fixer, although the Tiny Alien was watching the helm readout he still wasn't able to tell how they navigated back or how they were attached to anything on the planet but still it was a good and exhilarating trip. It was so exciting the the Tiny Alien had quite forgotten to open the peanuts at all.

The top cage open and the Tiny Alien popped out raygun in hand bristling with happiness and joy. "That was GREAT!" But the Fixer's head was shaking 

very gently from side to side.

"Are you where you need to be?" asked the Fixer

"I'm not sure what you mean?" responded the Tiny Alien.

"Well then it wasn't the right fit."

"Oh, I think I see. Well you're right, it was an adventure truly and surely and a great game, but it was a little narrow, and the Sleek Dangerous Thing seems like a great playmate, but I wouldn't want it as a roommate, it would probably eat all the leftover roast beast and drink all the water that the Alex supplied without asking first."

Hizzoner indicated, that indeed, the Sleek Dangerous Thing was forever doing things like that.

The Fixer was bustling down a hallway motioning for the Tiny Alien to follow. They stopped in a darkened workshop. There didn't seem to be Anything To See Here.

"You know," said the Fixer, "That the definition of Alien is in effect outsider, and that you enjoy that definition immensely. It is good to be true to yourself."

"Well, it's much better to be a Tiny Alien when everyone else around you is not. Then you don't seem so redundant" The Tiny Alien had reflected on this himself more than once.

"Do you remember what the first inhabitant you met told you?" 

""Please don't spill the Cocoa, it's very hot?'" 

"A little bit later than than that." 

"That 'Everyone here is from someplace else, but it's still nice to have a place to put one's paperwork.'"

"Yes, that's it. Although paperwork shouldn't really take up so much space if you did things electronically or mentally like you should. Please drink this cup of cocoa and then see if you see anything?"

The Tiny Alien wondered where the cup of cocoa had come from because it was just himself and the Fixer, but he took it and was pleased that it had marshallows in it. As he sipped it he felt himself to be back on the stoop with the Inhabitant that had supplied him the Else, his alien equivalent of skin prickeled and chills ran little races up and down his approximation of a spinal column. He was overwhelmed with the same feeling he had felt back in Episode 2. It was an immense Feeling,  something a bit like the opposite of homesickness and not quite the same as wanderlust.  It was so big, that the intensity of it filled the Tiny Alien and went right out of him expanding throughout the entire workshop, filling the available space with it's out-of-sortedness. 

The Tiny Alien watched the Something expand and saw It, and seeing It opened the door himself and went right in. 

It was perfect.

He was happy.

And it didn't talk to him at all.

The Fixer looked up and studied the Tiny Alien in his Exosuit and nodded.

Handing the Tiny Alien a care and feeding manual, the Fixer stated declaratively,"Good Fit."

In all of the worlds, in all of the realities, in the Dreamtime and the Meatworld there is NO Tiny Alien that is as happy as our Tiny Alien is, sitting exactly Where He Belongs. 

And Where He Belongs moves with him.

Just the way it should.

The End 

(Mostly)

Tales of the Tiny Alien Episode 10 - Machinery

Everything was going to be all right. When we last left the Tiny Alien he was hanging with the guys from the Band. They were going to take him to the only person they knew who could help him and it would either work or not. We join our Tiny Alien as he finds himself on his way . . . .

He had stayed way into the night and things blurred together because that is what happens when you hang out with bands after the moon sets. He found that he was on a bus with living room furniture, and when he looked out of the window it was almost like being in space, aside from the things that weren't like it. The Bassist was driving the bus, and called out formally "East of the Sun - Half Past West of the Moon, Artificer Centricity!" 

The lead singer was by his side. "Are you ready?" he asked smiling ever so slightly. "There used to be a little river with a ferry, because that really amused them, but then they got very clockworky for a while so they created a road paved with pennies to walk on instead. Here, take this bumpershoot. It's reinforced."

The Tiny Alien declined the bumpershoot and activated the shielding on his ray gun instead. Together they walked down the coppery road. "Why do we need this? " asked our Hero. The explanation came on cue from pretty lilac shaped balustrades. Small copper disks spewed out of the lilac trumpets. The disks clinckled as they bumped off the bumpershoot and force shield landing to the side of the paved pennies. It was pretty, but the balustrade was pretty high up and the Tiny Alien would imagine that it could have smarted if visitors were not forewarned. Of course that might be the point. 

When they got to the door it looked like a perfectly ordinary door, answered by a large light red rabbit in Edwardian formalwear. The lead singer had been about to knock, the rabbit had caught his hand. 

"And good day to you sir, I suppose you will be about to try your luck at the shop? Hizzoner will greet you first and then you may take your chances with the Fixer."

The Tiny Alien wondered what type of chances those might be, but he was quickly distracted by the towering gray electrical being that was flashing lights from the inside and swaying on springs on the outside.  The Tiny Alien was't truly sure of how he knew, but he was positive he was being offered a pot of tea. So he accepted. After all tea came with tea cakes and tea cakes were a Treat and one could not deny one's nature, doubly so here. 

Their host pulsed and flashed at them and shared some cakes and some action potential pastries. A pleasant time was had by all. This of course was Hizzoner who graciously opened the shop door (which was quite gracious because it was two stories tall, and would have posed a problem otherwise). 

Inside was a workshop, a wondrous workshop full of wondrous things. All the things you think should be made but are never made anywhere, might still be made here. And if they weren't made here and you really needed it, it would be likely that it would be made for you when you got here. To describe it in more detail would be impolitic, since it is the most wondrous workshop you can imagine and not the most wondrous workshop that we can imagine. It is quite presumptuous to do the imagining for you. So we shall not.

Please commence with imagining the Tiny Alien entering the most wondrous workshop that ever existed. When you are quite ready, and thoroughly impressed with your own brain for imagining such things, please take another moment, breath deeply and enjoy it. Then, gently, hopefully with a slight smile on your face, continue reading.

The Tiny Alien was there for real and did not have to imagine such a wondrous workshop and he gawked and stared and saw things -- the very things that everyone who ever thought about this workshop had imagined. He was so busy being impressed with such ingenuity that he almost missed the only being that might be able to help, standing on a hydraulic thingie with a giant silver wrench and a determined air. The lead singer made the introductions.

"Hullo there, I've brought you a present." The lead singer sort of pushed the Tiny Alien in front of him.

"Yes, he's quite present." The only one who could help seemed to be made of moon and copper, his goggles were gold and his skin was dusty bisque. There was no way to see his eyes but the Tiny Alien was quite certain he was being stared at. He was not sure if he was being squinted at or if imaginary eyebrows were being raised. Possibly both. 

Hizzoner blinked and flashed: "He is the one who fixes things so that they may be maintained." 

"Which things?" asked the Tiny Alien.

"The things that need it." answered the Fixer. 

It was then that the Tiny Alien noticed what the Fixer was fixing. It was olive green and very intimidating but sleek with all sorts of knobs and dials and weaponry. It seemed to be fidgeting under the ministrations of the Fixer. There were driver's seats but the Sleek Dangerous Thing seemed to be talking to the Fixer directly in twirps and tweets and electrical bursts. It was understood somehow by all that the Fixer was repairing an area where the rain was getting in confusing the poor Thing. 

The Tiny Alien thought of all the things that brought him here, all of the desire and crankiness and watches  and tricks and treats and Indie Oracles and hanging out with the Band and Speaking to Old Men on docks and thinking about how much that was really a grand set of things to bring him here. He still wanted something, like a piece was missing. And he told his story to Hizzoner and the Fixer the best way he knew how. With a plaintive look and a slightly lowered ray gun, he looked upward and held out his bag and said shyly, "Trick or Treat?"

And the Fixer looked down from the Hydraulic thingie and clicked a button that opened a door that was on the top of the Sleek Dangerous Thing.

"OK." Declared the Fixer and he turned to the Tiny Alien and gestured with the wrench. "Come on in."

What does it all mean. Is the Sleek Dangerous thing a Trick or a Treat? Is the Tiny Alien a thing that needs Fixing? Is it really the end of the Vision Quest? The answer to these and other questions in the next and possibly final episode of Tales of the Tiny Alien . . . . .

Important but Quite out of Character

Warning - this is something I do not normally do on this blog but it's important. Possibly for me it's the most important thing on the Internet. 

I am going to write about someone else's blogpost instead of fiction or theory or hidden reality. 

This is a public service message to those who mistake the Dreamtime for the Meatworld.

Ready. OK. 

George RR Martin is NOT your Bitch. 

Neil Gaiman said so, and in saying so highlighted the interchange that has bothered me so very much on every internet comments board I have ever read. 

Please note that I didn't do the "Highlight link" common to blogs on either the quote or Mr. Gaiman's name. I will give you the link but I'd like to make my comment linearly first, and then we can get all non-linear afterwards.

The Summary

Some poor gentleman by the screen name of Gareth asked Mr. Gaiman his opinion of a circumstance where Mr. Martin blogs about his work but won't cough up a release date to his readers for his next book. Gareth is in reality both polite and introspective about it, but he is frustrated. He was looking for a reality check to his frustration. 

Rather than reinforce his discomfort in the echo chamber of Mr Martin's comments section, he reached out to what he thought of as an accessible and open peer of Mr. Martin's for his opinion of whether or not his own frustration was reasonable. While it set him up to really be ripped a new one by the ravening hordes of the internet and indeed illustrates the ease of access we have to creators in the incredibly democratized internet world, it does in fact, show that he realizes his needs might not be the only needs involved. I know you're itching to see what he wrote. I'll link to it. I promise.

He asked Mr. Gaiman if the audience actually has too much input into an author's actions because of all the blogging and tweets. And if Mr. Gaiman's readers would think he was "slack" if he announced a book and didn't say anything about it for two years.

However he also asked quite reasonably but still, with a sense of entitlement, if all the blogging and the exposure to his fans meant that Mr. Martin had more of a responsibility to finish the story than someone who didn't engage the public.

Neil Gaiman responded quite accurately - No. George RR Martin is not your bitch.

Ok - that was important to me because I wanted to make sure that Gareth's very real attempt to get a reality check on his sense of entitlement was not dissed out of hand, because it's important ( although weird that he had open access to another famous writer to do it).

Because if you like Mr. Gaiman then you will be all in Gareth's face, and if you think artists are automatons you will be all in Mr. Gaiman's. And honestly, they both deserve more thought than that.

Now I'll post the link

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html

My Personal Bit

Here in the House, the residents know that I have been waiting to send an e-mail to Mr Gaiman to ask his permission to use something of his in the Poppetropolis Project. They also know I feel odd about it, because I am intensely aware of the fact that I do not know Mr. Gaiman personally and that I have been more exposed to his work because of Lisa's than the other way around. I have not sent the email yet, at least partially because I know that he is swamped due to his blog and I have no wish to add to it. I will eventually, because I really wish to use that thing and since the internet is open and the Poppoetropolis Project will be there I would like clear permission to use it. But it almost feels like an invasion of Mr. Gaiman's space. I also have to send a similar e-mail to Cat Mihos, who I do know, but it's an odd request and it feels a bit "look at me" and I'm not comfortable with it, although probably in the end not only will both parties not mind, they will most likely forget it within 2 minutes of seeing and/or answering it. 

So it boggles me that everyone is so absolutely sure that the author or artist SHOULD do what they want or listen to them or work on their schedule. Things go the way they go. Gone With The Wind took 10 years to write and has a devoted following and fan fic. JK Rowling's whole life morphed in the decade that she started writing Harry Potter to the end when it was done. Things change in a decade. Susan Boyle started getting flak for dying her hair when she saw herself on TV and realized she looked old. 

Why do people think they own you because they see your image and care? Obama's donors who donate 10$ think they have the right to demand fealty to their ideas because their 10$ got him there. In some sense they are right, every 10$ counts but he needs to listen to the other guy who gave him 10$ that doesn't agree with you and the guy who gave McCain 10$ because that guy is still a citizen. There is a difference between "support" and "ownership".

There is a difference between "I love your work" and "Here we are now - Entertain Us"

And there is a difference between "You entertain me." and "Because you entertain me I can judge you, because you entertain others I hate you"

And of course there is the eternal problem of "He/She/It's a public figure so they asked for it." 

No. They didn't. 

Because IT changed and They are all swimming in the current of that change trying to navigate IT and still do what they are driven to do. 

They are still human and private. Their public lives were never meant to crawl inside their windows and strangle their private lives in the cradle so that their personal ups and downs could be judged by people who want more than what they already offer. 

Politicians should be judged on voting records, artists on art, your lover on fidelity, you favorite actor not so much. 

Artists don't exist to comfort, they confront. Someday Poppets may not speak the language Lisa does anymore, that will mean that she should make something else. I do not need Lisa to make Poppets just because they speak to me. I will wonder and wait for what she makes next. 

The exchange of cash only rents a prostitute for so many hours. Then that prostitute does whatever she/he/it will do without you. The book in your hand is a whore. If you demand that your artist do what you want, you are not a fan, you are a wannabe pimp, attempting to force the artist behave the same way as the whore in your hand simply because that whore pleased you for a few hours. 

I miss some of the sense of being humbled by people who work hard and have talent. I've met some very famous writers and am lucky that I can separate the work from the artist. But the internet causes such a sense of intimacy without knowledge of other people's craft, that it blurs things a bit and people might feel like they know. 

It's a short step from there to having them feel like they know enough to make judgments. I understand. I disapprove. 

I remember when artists were allowed to stumble and fail. It was how they grew.

You do not own the one you like, it is not your duty to destroy the ones you don't. 

Really.

Related things - Mother's Day Edition

I am a daughter, and I am a mother. This is Mother's Day and I was thinking of things that reminded me of my mother, and things that my children say remind them of me, and I started wondering what they mean.

This is what I got my mother for Mother's Day because it reminds me of her:

She took me to museums and botanical gardens and I fell in love with the textiles collections and egyptology at 

the Brooklyn museum before I got out of grade school. 

She read me"O Captain My Captain"  and Annabel Lee as afternoon reading when I was still in second grade.

She taught me that just because you are poor doesn't mean things are allowed to be messy or tasteless. She taught me how to refinish and paint things, and why PT Barnum was right. And she laughed when I tried to change the world but she never stopped me. She created talking toes, and the vanity stool with roses and cherubs where

 I learned how to print my name. She  grounded me outside when I was in trouble. Keeping me from my books, forcing me into sunlight. She gave me a book light over my bed when she found out that I was reading by the red/orange skewed light of my RaggedyAnn nightlight because she knew she couldn't stop me, because she used to sneak a flashlight under her blankets and do the same thing. 

Because of her I know the difference between Rubens:

and Van Dyck

By the way, the woman in the Rubens with the crown of braids cupping her breast looks just like my mother. 

We would go to the museums and I would see pictures of the old masters and I would ask "Mommy is that you?" and she would laugh, mostly because they were invariably the ones who were naked. But what it meant in real life as I got older is that I knew my mother was one of the most beautiful women in the world. Because througout history painters who were worthy of being in museums , all throughout time and fashion found women that looked just like my mom and painted them.

She let me read anything I could get my hands on, she ignored me to finish reading her book. She taught me to cook, she built me a dollhouse that I destroyed because I was too young to understand it. I've spent the rest of my life trying to fix it as soon as I was old enough to realize what I'd done. I learned how to make miniature furniture from kits in junior high and was refurbishing the dollhouse itself in high school when it was destroyed in a fire, lost forever, with no further chance for redemption.  There is no small part of that going into Poppetropolis. 

We are older. Life is complicated, art is complicated, home is complex and many layered and so are mothers and daughters. There are sometimes that we are more alike than others, and there are times when we are completely alien and opaque. Our lives are intertwined at the base but so far apart at the branches that from a distance we might not look like we are in the same garden at all. But because of her when I read about the Queen of Hearts Rose Garden I see the NY Botanical Garden in my head, because she let me be in that image.

When I was in that garden I was sure I was Alice and if I were in that garden now, my children would  be sure I was the Red Queen. The truth is no matter which garden I am in, Longwoods or Duke, or Winterthur or any other,  when I walk it's grounds I will be my mother's daughter, as surely as all Odalisques, are secretly my mother. 

I recognized her immediately when I took my art history class. Exotic, arcane, pretending to be easily understood, more than slightly naughty, full of words and practicality and politics and art, subject to judgement, censorship, fantasy and interpretation. 

Here in the Dreamtime, the machines will wrap these words in nibbles and bytes trapping them more permanently than amber. Skittering fragments of a daughter thinking of a mother.

It is the artificial day they gave us instead of the vote, to prove we didn't need to interfere in the male sphere. This is something that is true. That there is this day is still a worthy thing. Mothers are bigger than the narrow definitions that men and children try to place on them. That is also true. That something is worth celebrating. Regardless of how it came to be, you can rejoice in the value a thing has now. I learned that from my mother. 

Tales of the Tiny Alien Episode 9a - The Band- Encore

By Popular Demand here at the House . . . . 

An appearance of The Moon's Fire Eating Daughter in concert.

Apparently, lack of concert pictures took away from the last Episode, according to some residents. The text for Episode 9 is right under this post, if you haven't read it yet.

Tales of the Tiny Alien Episode 9 - The Band

When last we left our Tiny Alien he was being escorted to the Band having been given a Pass by the a Ninja In Fake Pants.  He had been in the tiny basket on the very tall pole, he had survived the Bad Puns and the Meme, and ignored the cries of an underinsured  Director. He was on his Way. .  . 

Together they travelled from the Corner of Sky and Sea. It was quite the adventure with sailors with curved swords and seamonster fixations,  and sea saltwater taffy, and various storms and various calms. When it was over they finally arrived somewhere on the coastline of what might have been Ireland, except for the fact that it wasn't.

In all the time they had travelled together, it had never occurred to the Tiny Alien to ask what a Band was. Possibly that was because the Ninja reminded the Tiny Alien of the Alex, but without the whole "what happened to the law of gravity" effect. The Ninja never altered physics, but he also didn't speak much and the Tiny Alien wasn't about to disrupt that, because secretly he was afraid that if he did, the Ninja might change time and space too, and really, one being like that per story is enough. However, the side effect was that the Tiny Alien found himself at building with a shiny laminated Pass that had his picture on it, in front of a Door with two giant beings that were dressed in black canvas and stretch cotton sporting bicepts the size of the Tiny Alien's head and a lot of decorative skin dye. 

He stood tall and declared "Trick or Treat, or Else!"

"Aw gee, aren' you just the cutest thing." One of the large beings bared his teeth while looking down with a clipboard. The Tiny Alien knew that the tooth baring was friendly, but where he came from clipboards with papers on them did not bode well. The one with the clipboard nodded at the other one, who opened the Door. The Tiny Alien then noticed that while the Ninja had gotten him right up to the two black clad beings there were long queues of other beings snaking around the building some of whom were looking very unpleasantly at him. He also noticed that the Ninja was no longer there.

"Excuse me, but I am new around here, could you please tell me what a Band is?" he asked the kneecap of the being escorting him through a series of bluegray lit hallways.

"A Band is the way that people who've had to put their dreams and identities in quiet safe places get to live their dreams vicariously through the tiny group of people who put the real world and paying bills into a quiet safe place so that they can create music. "

"So the Band is a group of aesthetics?"

"More like functional hedonists, they do everything so everyone else doesn't have to. What kind of Band you like depends on which dreams and identities you have. But each Band that forms and stays together long enough to perform encapsulates someone's dreams, and gives those dreams forms and voices. Or bears witness to their experiences. When a Band makes music, the music makes the audience feel like themselves for a small period of time until they have to go back to what everyone else thinks they are. But in their hearts, they know that the Band knows who they are for real. And if the Band knows, why then they are real. Whichever Band it is. The closer the music is to their inner selves, the bigger fans they are of the Band."

"So which Band is this?" asked the Tiny Alien, wondering if he was real since he had never heard a Band. Then he started wondering which Bands the various people he had met liked. Then he realized he didn't know any Bands, so that was a particularly short-lived thought.

"This Band is called "The Moon's Fire Eating Daughter" which frankly, I don't get, and they've been travelling underground playing local gigs for a while, but this is a big break for them, but they know it's just for a little while. No one who sees them tonight will know them when they go back."

The Tiny Alien thought this was very odd, but couldn't figure out enough of what the Gentleman in Black was saying to ask the right questions. On the whole, it sounded like the Band might be just the kind of thing to help him find the Ultimate Treat. 

Finally the winding but angular hallways stopped. They were let into a room that was beautifully lit and filled with food and candy and couches and video games, but no one was there. The Gentleman in Black opened up another door and there were five beings roughly the height of the Tiny Alien all humming and joking and clearing throats while typing away on tiny keyboards and in the corner was a stressed looking woman pacing back and forth on a miniscule communications device.

"Dude, you made it" said one of the five gentleman with what looked like oversized chopsticks in his hand. They were all wearing black, they all looked very intense but happy. He soon came to learn they were "getting ready for the gig".

It seems that part of the deal for the concert they were about to play was that they had to leave their fates up to the Powers -that-Be, and keep trying Come-What-May. In the course of the leaving and the trying, the Powers-that-be, let them know that there would be an Alien, and he would need to Redefine Things. 

The lead singer sat him down and said many insightful and poetic things to him, the accordion  player who was being stifled by playing lead guitar instead told him about the many ways to compromise when working in a team, the bassist told him about Jazz and the keyboardist invited him to the sound check. 

That was when the Tiny Alien heard the Band, and they were Very Good, but he realized that they weren't His Band. They were singing someone else's dreams, but their songs made him think about that other person's dreams and experiences and the Tiny Alien felt like he could understand that other person in a way he wouldn't have if he hadn't listend to the songs. And that, as the drummer would say, was really rather brilliant. 

After the sound check they went back to the beautifully lit room with all of the Treats and no Tricks to be seen anywhere. They laughed and sang and the Tiny Alien taught them some tunes from his world and he sang the Indie Oracle's song for them and they took copious notes. 

The lead singer told him that after the concert, they would introduce him to the only person they knew who could help him, but after that it would either work out or not. The keyboardist suggested that if it didn't work out he could always write a song about it, because you never know where a song might lead you. And then, just like a dream where time moves too quickly when you are enjoying yourself, it was time for the concert. The Tiny Alien got to watch from the lighting control area surrounded by the comfortable whirrs of technology and randomly blinking lights. 

And if you can remember the very first time you heard live music played well with a whole bunch of people who were there because they liked the music, then you should think about that time. Then it will almost be like you were the Tiny Alien, who was listening to live music with other beings for the first time ever, and living in that moment so completely that he might almost be you. That first Band might not have been your Band, but they will have changed a small piece of you forever, in an opening sort of way. 

Almost like you were a Door. 

And when it was over, the Tiny Alien hung out Backstage and was able to talk about the music, and the Band got to ask what they sounded like to someone who had never heard a Band before. And everyone got to feel special to the other ones. Which the lead singer declared meant that it was a Good Gig, even when everyone forgets later. But the Tiny Alien suddenly knew that he was never going to forget, even if the Band did, and that not forgetting was one of the reasons he had been given the Pass. 

Settling down into that comfy thought he plumped up a pillow on a random couch an relaxed into it, setting his ray gun on "mild". He would leave it to the Band. Whatever else was going to happen next, it was probably going be OK, since he was with the Band.

Stay tuned for the next Episode when the Tiny Alien meets the only person who might be able to help. Will it work out or will our Tiny Alien have to take a class in music composition? We'll find out in the next episode of Tales of the Tiny Alien.