Your name is Eltel 555. You are a Yeerk. And today is the worst day of your life.

You have a chance, they said. Nobody’s tried anything like this before, they said. There’s no precedent for it but that could be good, they said, and under any other circumstances, well… They couldn’t say that you would win, specifically, since nothing like this had happened before, but he would have lost, even if the courts wouldn’t have let you win, specifically.

No. The kids would have been the winners. Except that you lost. They lost.

“Can I have a cigarette?” you ask. You say the words out loud. You like that extra layer of distinction. You like to make the words real, by making them spoken. “Please.”

Thorsten, your host, tells you that you can have a cigarette if you’d like. After all, you’re the Yeerk. You can do what you want. But Thorsten would really, really like it if you didn’t take a cigarette.

Thorsten isn’t addicted to the smokes. You are. It’s a psychological thing. It’s got to be psychological. But you picked it up when that son of a bitch Niceto was your host, when you had to chain smoke half a dozen of them just to make it through the evening. Addiction…

Addiction is a powerful thing. To keep a host functional you sometimes have to give in to it. You weren’t powerful enough to deserve a better host, a cleaner one. You got the trash, the host body full to its eyes with nicotine and with lungs black as coal. You’re surprised that he hasn’t died yet. You hope that he does, and soon, and painfully.

God, so painfully. If you had a sex urge then you’d get off on the idea. If you were given to praying and to a belief in divinities then your whole existence would be a living prayer to the idea that he might develop lung cancer and die, coughing up his own blood. But instead you’re left making comparisons that don’t go the distance because you’re not really human.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

“Please. Just one,” you say, and Thorsten reminds you that it’s all in your hands. Thorsten can’t force you one way or another. It’s your choice. But if it’s all the same to you, if you don’t mind, then Thorsten would like it if you didn’t take a cigarette.

You could smoke down a pack of the things in five hours if Thorsten said it was okay, but he won’t. That’s the point. You won’t violate his powers of choice. You won’t overpower his will. So Thorsten asks you not to smoke, and in doing so he saves you from this ghost or shade of Niceto’s that is in you (he saves you from yourself).

There is not a doubt in your mind that you would spend the rest of your days smoking your hosts to death if you could somehow get away with it. If only Thorsten didn’t ask you not to. There are hosts that sell themselves to that end. Most of them are drug addicts anyway, and they figure that they can pay for their habit by taking on a passenger. But Thorsten has asked you not to, and what can you say to that?

He’s got your back. He’s keeping you sane. Even now he knows the words to say, and he’s saying them. It’s not your fault, you did what you could, you’ll find a way to treat those kids right.

But you’re a Yeerk, you’re one of the usurpers, and you don’t have any claim on them.

Never mind that you were the first one to tuck them in at night. You were the one who read them bedtime stories, who got them proper meals and answered their questions and did anything at all but scream at them until they ran away.

Your greatest failure was being such a good father that your host picked some of it up by osmosis. Not all of it, but enough to want them— or maybe that’s just spite. He can walk the walk now, anyway, which is more than you can say for some fathers out there.

But damn the stars and pull them down— those kids are yours. It wasn’t your face but it was your mind, and if it was his hands that cradled them then you were the one pulling the strings.

Barely fit to take care of himself, the court acknowledged. A deadbeat for most of their lives. More interested in spending his paycheck on cigarettes than on their needs. But you’re a Yeerk, a filthy green-gray mucous-covered slug, and that bigot on the stand would rather that the vilest human take your kids in the face of that.

Your kids, not his. He lost whatever right he had to them a long time ago.

“Joya. Polo. Christoforo.” Each name is like light on the tongue that you share with Thorsten. And they didn’t even give you visitation rights.

“Ask Joya,” you told them. She was old enough to remember Niceto before he became your host, and old enough to understand what makes the two of you different. But nobody wanted to hear from the kid. It was all about Stockholm syndrome and every other pop psych theory that Niceto’s bastard lawyer could pull out of his ass.

Thorsten tells you that things will work out. You’d like to believe him, but you’re decidedly less optimistic than he is. Maybe if you were in Germany. Both of you are familiar with the lay of the land there, even if you technically hail from the Toronto Pool, and maybe things would have gone differently there.

Maybe you’ve got a chance down the line. Maybe Niceto will fuck it up somewhere and the courts will have no choice but to give the kids to you. Except… They’ll always have a choice. They’ll hand those kids off to every broken foster home in the country before they let a filthy slug do it. Even a filthy slug who’s already proven that he could do it.

You loved those kids and dammit, dammit but they loved you too. But nobody cares.

Maybe when they’re older you’ll get to see them. They’ll demand it. Or they’ll just get old and age out of the system, turn eighteen and get to chart their own course.

You’re saving up your money as best as you can, Thorsten and you both, just in case Niceto turns them out on their ears and you have to take over. You’re a good therapist, especially in tandem with Thorsten. You could support them if only somebody let you.

And maybe… maybe they will search you out when they’re older. Or maybe their false father, their body father, will turn them against the father of their hearts, who gave them piggyback rides and played hide-and-go-seek and baked chocolate chip cookies with them.

Maybe, maybe: that’s all you have. And having to understand this, having to come to terms with it, is worse than anything else that you have dealt with in your life.

“Just one cigarette…” you ask again.

The future’s coming. You wish you knew what it would bring you.