Person, Place, Thing by Marissa Lingen (audio)

In a hauntingly original story from Clarkesworld Magazine, a sentient colony of extraterrestrial beings—personified through a translator subcolony named Camilla—narrates their attempt to understand humanity from a moon orbiting Mars. Camilla, fluent in human languages and deeply attuned to nuance, reveals the emotional and philosophical weight of communication: how humans hide meaning in silence, misuse words, and divide themselves through fear. When their human contacts, Dr. Kira and Captain Daniels, are abruptly exiled by a new human delegation, Camilla realizes that humans are not like them—unified, cooperative, and non-aggressive. The colony’s identity as both person, place, and thing collapses under human division. Determined to reclaim connection, Camilla leads the colony on a mission to Earth to find their lost mentors, even as they face hostile fire from the new humans. The story becomes a meditation on empathy, identity, and the tragic irony that the most advanced form of communication—understanding others—requires the willingness to be vulnerable, something humans struggle with even when they claim to seek connection. The narrative challenges the very categories we use to define existence: person, place, thing. Camilla’s colony is not one but all three—simultaneously a collective being, a habitat, and an action. This fluidity contrasts sharply with human rigidity, where identity is fixed and conflict is inevitable.