Izzy and the blob sit on the bench in the undry room of the Ranch Motel, listening to the sound of the washers running.

  Izzy breaks the not silence. “What other way is there, and why is it personal?” she asked, hugging herself.

  The blob makes a singur eye stalk and looks at her: “My species has the ability to leach selective toxins out of anything organic we touch.” He bulges out the blue section of his body. “For example, this is a small amount of the toxin I removed from you.”

  He extends a blue-tipped pseudopod and squeezes out a white-colored substance onto the bench; it looks like mayonnaise. He extends an eye stalk out the side of himself to examine the substance.

  “I'm not exactly sure what that is, but it's nasty.” He says, “I am a doctor by trade; by name, I am Itxlpixeltixel Glorp Glip Gp Flop of the Tribe of Tup Tup, but you can call me… Dr. Blob.”

  Izzy starts to speak, but Dr. Blob is on a roll: “Or Blob McBlobington, I was once called Emerald Pancake Batter for a week by a woman as well. Well, you get the joke. I am here on holiday for the next 4 of your years.” He extends a hand-shaped pseudopod; it looked human except for the fact that it was just a hand connected to a slender tendril of goo floating in the air halfway between them.

  Izzy reaches out a hand to shake with Dr. Blob. “It's a pleasure to meet you,” she says. Internally she is concerned he will be sticky feeling. But no, he is pleasantly dry, like he has been covered in baby powder.

  “Yes, I imagine it would be a pleasure to meet me,” Dr. Blob wibbles in her direction.

  They fall silent again. The moments pass; the blob stares at her impassively with one eye .

  “So you’re an alien doctor?” She asks, wiggling her feet in her sandals.

  “I am, but now I'm on holiday, so no doctoring for me,” he turns into a lumpy cylinder. “Yes, vacation!”

  “What kind of doctoring do you do?” she asks, watching a pair of her panties get thrown against the washer door, showing a small stain in the crotch. She hides her face in her hands, mortified.

  “Well, you have to understand my homeworld to understand what kind of doctor I am.” He stops talking and just looks at her.

  2 minutes go past; Izzy feels like the tension is sharp enough to cut a tomato without crushing it.

  “Well, tell me about your home world, Doctor Blob,” she begs.

  “If you insist…the oceans are a pale green with life, and we roll around the ocean in family units, filtering out the algae; we leave a trail of crystal-clear water behind us…” The eye on the stalk looks wistful.

  “And somehow your species has faster-than-light travel?” Izzy asks, uncovering her face.

  “Oh yes, that's just what we do in the water; it's how we rex and catch up with old friends.” He says matter-of-factly, The blob turns a faint pink “and procreates.”

  Izzy looks confused trying to imagine how a blob mates. She can't help but imagine a knife coming down and cutting the blob in half, and bam, that's how you get more blobs.

  “Oh, it's not like it's secretive when a dominant bloby finds a blobbington from another family they find attractive; the cousins get together and form a blobbule where they make several blobbits who fight for prominence in a series of games of fitness. Then they fight the pairing in one-vs.-two combat, and if they are able to best them, they become a new blob. Otherwise, the winners consume the remains and make the parents grow bigger,” he wobbles in righteous dignity. “Or we have elicit affairs where we merge blobs and have a baby blob out of bloblock.”

  “What? Why? I just wanted to know about your homeworld,” she says, her face slightly pale.

  “Oh well, the rest of the time we spend on nd, where we build giant pieces of art that are meant to be felt and imitated. A group of blobbits has been building a tower made out of perfectly stacked rocks; st i heard they aret 12 stories tall.”

  “It seems like paradise,” Izzy says quietly, thinking about how violent Earth is in comparison.

  “It is, but then we leave the pnet and go save lives. My progenitors Progenitor 3000 removed, was part of the first delegation to go to another pnet to save a species from itself.” He jiggled in excitement.

  “How?” Izzy asks, her hands grabbing the edge of the bench in suspense.

  “I just got done a few weeks ago cleaning up a microbe that ate all the cellulose on a pnet. Everything turned to pudding; trees melted like they were made of ice cream. It was messy,” he makes three eye stalks and looks at Izzy. “What about you?”

  “I worked a dead-end job at a university moving paper around. The craziest thing I ever saw at work was when someone forgot Mr. Davies birthday, so we tried to make a cake in the microwave. Causing a small fire,” she finishes and looks down to see Doctor Blob had rolled forward and was intently listening.

  “Fascinating, tell me more about your life,” it says, quivering in unpredictable ways.

  “What would you want to know about my life? You have seen the stars, and all I have seen is a minor kitchen fire.” She sighs.

  “I wonder how long it will take you to figure out what we interstelr visitors are here for. We live our own fascinating lives, but you humans… You have lived a unique life,” he pauses.

  “What do you mean?” She says, one eyebrow raised in disbelief.

  “I mean, why do you celebrate birthdays? Why did you make the cake? What is cake? Why would you shoot a weapon at said cake? You have no idea how alien you are to us,” he says, pseudopods waving around.

  “You wear clothes! Not only do you wear clothes, but you wash them. You make entire rooms devoted to it. You make machines to do the bor for you. You hire people to install and fix them when they break. And sometimes you just hire someone else to wash them for you.” His pseudopods waving faster

  Without a word he rolls onto the floor and moves across the floor to the front-load washer. He extends a pseudopod to the seal on the door and flows his entire mass through the nearly waterproof seal.

  She just stares in horror. “What are you doing?” She stands up and looks in, and the drum is just filled with a gooey green substance. She tries to cancel the cycle, but the machine refuses to stop.

  After a horrifying 30 seconds, the green slime slowly turns dark brown, a pseudopod appears through the seal, and the blob is soon fully outside the washer.

  “Are you ok?” Izzy asks, looking at the dark brown color.

  “Yep, one second,” he says and rolls across the room to a drain in the floor, and he squeezes a thick brown sludge into it.

  He wobbles. “My people never invented any of this. We just clean things without thought.” He points to his washer. “I had to use a pstic bag to separate me from the clothing to roll those around in the dirt outside to get them dirty. I wanted to experience what it was like to do undry.”

  “You cleaned my underwear?” she looks askance at him.

  “I did now tell me all about this cake,” he asks her, jiggling with delight.

  “What? Let's go back to the fact that you cleaned my clothes,” she demands.

  “No, tell me more about cake,” he says, rolling back onto the bench. “I insist.”

  “Cake is a moist, fluffy, light bread that is very sweet,” she says after growing tired of the disappointed look on his blob.

  “That's all you know about it?” Dr. Blob turns slightly translucent with impatience.

  “It’s uh, egg flour and milk and baking soda with icing,” she says, looking around, unsure of what he is asking.

  “That sounds bnd; why would you eat that?” he ripples like a stone thrown in a pond.

  “Oh, we put vanil and almond in it, and sometimes we put puddings, jams, jellies, custards, or even more frosting in it.” She rambles.

  “That's enough. It appears there is only one way to solve the mystery of cake. I must find it and eat it,” Dr. Blob says with conviction.

  “You can just get it at the bar, I am sure,” Izzy says in return.

  “Then I shall go to the bar,” he turns opaque again, his frustration clearing. “But first I must finish the ritual of cleaning fabrics.”

  She ughs, “Hey, why don't we get cake tomorrow together?”

  The blob forms a complex polyhedron. “Yes, how about 6? I can pick you up or meet you there.” Dr. Blob turns, makes a sword and a shield, and holds them up. “Who wants cake forever!” he says before falling back into his round state.