David Policar 1995
Thomas Rudy kept himself firmly rooted to his chair as the candidate arranged itself and its atmospheric polarizer compactly across his office.
This was no mean feat on either of their parts -- the candidate was a Vedan, and though it seemed of below-average mass and kept its extrusions politely interwoven in the helical mode, it still occupied most of the available space. Rudy was strongly tempted to stand and minimize the height disparity, but the ETI seminar had stressed that Vedans didn't share human dominance patterns, and he didn't relish the idea of conducting the entire interview on his feet. Besides, it was eye-level that really mattered, and the closest thing the Vedans had to eyes were the tympana distributed seemingly at random on their radial stalks.
In fact, the lack of eye contact disoriented Rudy more than he had expected. He covered it by refreshing the candidate's file on his datapad, selected "personal, casual" from the comm options, and began his interview routine.
"Welcome, thanks for coming. Are you comfortable; is there anything we can get you before we start?" Rudy's warmup script probably had no effect on this candidate, but it had become a comfortable habit for him over the years. He felt mildly nauseous as his commset transposed his words into the proper shockpulses, but that faded once the focusing elements kicked in properly.
The uppermost extrusions in the Vedan's helix twitched and engorged in a rapid pattern. "Nothing... thank you," came the response from Rudy's mike, "Happiness... happy is... I am happy to am... to be speaking. With you." The synthesized voice had no inflections, but Rudy could imagine the frustrated tones he'd so often heard from candidates struggling with English. A minimal proficiency was a requirement for immigration, but passing the TOEFL was a far cry from carrying on an informal conversation -- particularly when the sounds themselves had to be transduced from a completely different medium.