Credit: Emrah Elmasli

It was drizzling outside when the dog trotted in through the bar's open front door and stood there, dripping like he owned the place. I was behind the counter, rinsing and wiping and towelling, and he came over to me, shedding and panting and dribbling. He paused for a good shake, then jumped up onto one of the stools. "Kibble," he said. "And keep it coming."

He was a medium-sized mutt, with a foxy nose and floppy ears. I went over and slid a paper placemat in front of him, put some water in a bowl, and set it down. He looked really depressed, so I said, just to give him one for free, "We don't see many dogs in here." I figured it was the least I could do.

"It was all I could find," he muttered as he dropped his head and drank, sloppily.

"No, no," I said. "You're supposed to say 'And at prices like these, you won't see many more.' See, I said ... "

He looked up at me. "What are you?" he asked."Stainless steel?"

I looked down at my silvery body. "I think it's some kind of carbon/ceramic composite, actually. It's supposed to look like stainless steel, though. The owners thought it went with the bar's 1950s Sci-fi motif. They've got a bunch of bodies out back that look like old movie robots, too, for parties. I just plug in from home and ... "

"Woof!" he said, sharply.

I raised my carbon/ceramic eyebrows.

"Sorry." He seemed faintly embarrassed. "Something this stupid is really hard to control. Still gets away from me sometimes." He panted a little, looking around. "When I first attached myself I can't tell you how arousing I started to find human legs."

I looked at him more closely. "What kind of augment are you? An AI or something?" I didn't think real sentience in animals was legal, after those lions stole that car from the zoo last year.

He shook his head, gradually transferring to a full body shake.

"No, no," he said. "I'm part of an alien invasion force. We're here to conquer your planet."

Bob, who was down at the other end of the bar, looked up. "When you do, see if you can do something about this beer."

"Quiet, Bob, or you get cut off."

"You think this is funny?" the dog asked, looking lasciviously at Bob's right thigh. "A great many of my species will die off if we cannot find proper hosts. This planet was supposed to be full of them."

"Hosts?"

"Look at the back of my neck."

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I looked. Sure enough, there was a black slug-like thing huddled there, seemingly attached via tentacles, or proboscises, or something even more disgusting-sounding, to the spine and base of the skull.

"I am an extraterrestrial parasitical life form," he said, with as much dignity as he could muster, having just licked himself. "It's what we're here for. To enslave you all." He sighed heavily. "We were supposed to be here about two hundred years ago, but our ship had engine problems." The dog shook his head. "Don't ask. We arrived a little late, that's all. You wouldn't think that'd be such a big problem, would you?"

I didn't say anything. Hey, I work in a bar. I know a rhetorical question when I hear one.

He jumped down from the stool and started scratching himself behind the ear. "But then we get here and ... you know, I was the first one off the ship when we landed. Everyone else stayed in suspended animation — I was supposed to latch on to some animal life and ride it to the nearest town. Get more hosts, you know?"

I nodded, not knowing in the least.

"So what's the first thing I hit? Some metal robotic cat-like ... " he ran out of words, disgusted. "I nearly broke a stinger trying to inject my nervous tissue into its spinal cord — hell, turns out it didn't even have a spinal cord.

"To top it all off, I hit some kind of switch in the process, and the thing started following me around and singing. Didn't stop for hours."

I um-hmmmed sympathetically. Sleepy-Time Kitty. My kid had one of those. They're made to be nearly indestructible, I'm convinced, because the designers know full well that at some point adults are going to try to turn them off with blunt objects. A bunch of them wandered off from the factory a few years back. They never did find them all.

"I figured it was just some kind of fluke." He sighed again. "Look, would you mind scratching my stomach? I could really use that."

Okay, fine. I've done stranger things for tips. I went around the counter and squatted down next to him.

"You can see my species isn't exactly built for mobility," he said.
"We evolved to hitch rides, basically. So it took me forever to get to town, what with that damn robot ... thing ... constantly ululating and scaring off every lifeform within miles. Oh yeah, that's good, right there." His leg began to jerk.

"When I finally did get into town I managed to climb a tree, then dropped onto the neck of the first human to go by. Easy-to-access spinal cord; big, prominently displayed head; soft, puncturable epidermis — just as advertised."

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