We Are Aware of the Problem,
and We Are Working on It
by Matthew F. Amati
John Akers left his house to attend his wedding. He carried his vows folded up in his pocket.
His bride-to-be had underlined one phrase: In Sickness And In Health. “We must promise to care for one another, darling, no matter if one of us becomes gravely ill. Or horribly disfigured in an accident. Or worse!”
John Akers glowed with happy thoughts. His partner, so steadfast in her committment.
At that moment, the Syntaxians came streaking through Earth’s galactic neighborhood like bulls in a cosmic china shop.
The Syntaxians let a quantum tentacle carelessly stroke the Earth. It yanked John Akers out of his car and into the Syntaxian vessel. The violence of the transfer reduced John Akers to a puddle of cell residue.
When the Syntaxians saw what they’d done, they were overcome with a neural process analogous to “remorse.”
As John Akers blew apart, the Syntaxians had the presence of mind to preserve the electrical matrix of his consciousness. John Akers lived, albeit in a nebulous, crackly form that would have been hard to explain to his bride.
“I’m on my way to the Unitarian Church,” John Akers’ pulsating electric field said to his rescuers. “I’m supposed to be getting married this afternoon. What is going on?”
The Syntaxians gleeped and frutted. “A fine how-do-you-do,” they vibrated. “We wished to befriend life across the cosmos, in all its unpredictable forms. Now look what we’ve done.”
“Yes, well, if you’d kindly undo it, I’ll be getting along,” John Akers said, wholly unaware of the condition he was in. “Please drop me off at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fairlawn, Ohio by three o’clock at the latest. Or I’ll be in a lot of trouble with Jennifer Stanislavski, the future Mrs. Akers.”
“Give us just a moment,” the Syntaxians frutted. To each other, they gleeped, “This creature has been dismantled down to the cytoplasm. What do we do now?”
“Reassemble him!” came the reply, also from the Syntaxians, who were not strictly individuals, but not entirely collective either. “Put him back as he was, quick!”
“And how do you propose we do that? We don’t know what form his kind is supposed to take! Was he a hydrogen cloud? A pillar of sapient stone?”
“Some sort of meat assemblage, to judge from these drops of muck.”
“So assemble the meat, already! Regenerate his tissue, put him back as he was!”
“In what arrangement? The possibilities are infinite!”
“His original assembly followed a sugar-based programming language, did it not? You must simply read the DNA!”
The Syntaxians picked up blobs of John Akers’ DNA. They held them up to the light, turned them upside-down, this way and that.
“It’s no use! Have you ever seen DNA like this? Like spiral staircases, twisting upwise and downwards!”
“Ahem,” came the crackle of John Akers. “Time’s wasting. My bride will be waiting for me.”
Alarm shook the Syntaxians’ matrices. “This being is scheduled to reproduce! We have interfered with his intended duplication!”
“That’s bad, right?”
“It could be! For all we know, he’s the sole designated reproducer for his entire species! If we don’t figure this out, we’ll be committing omnicide.”
“Mr. Organism,” came a communication to John Akers, “we are working just as hard as we can to restore you...”
Gleeping among the Syntaxians. “Don’t say that! Don’t let on what’s happened!”
“To restore you to your previous location just as quickly as we can take care of a few... complications.”
Syntaxian accosted Syntaxian. “Great, well-done you idiot. ‘Complications,’ that’s hardly reassuring. He’ll be suspicious now.”
“What do you mean ‘complications?’ What’s going on up there? Where am I? What’s happened to my tailored suit? I paid six hundred dollars for that, you know.”
“Wait a minute,” the Syntaxians umpled secretly. “Could these be clues to his shape? Can we puzzle this out on our own?”
“He mentioned a ‘tailersoop.’ Perhaps that’s a dorsal prehensile appendage?”
“He also let on that he normally has six hundred dahlers. What are ‘dahlers?”
“Tendrils or fronds, that’s my guess.”
“Six hundred, oh my, that is a lot. His type must be filter feeders, snatching chunks of nutrient that float by.”
“We are on the right track! We’ll have him back together in no time!”
The field that was John Akers hummed uneasily. “Did I hear someone say ‘back together?’ Has something happened to me?”
“Mr. Organism,” came the reply, “we have a casual question that we are asking for no particular reason. On what portion of your anatomy do you normally carry your photon-sensing apparatus?”
The pulsations of John Akers reached a high frequency. “Why are you asking that? Has there been an accident? You had better tell me what’s happened, or else.”
“Nothing has happened. There is no situation.”
“No situation, my left foot!”
Excitement arose among the Syntaxians. “Left foot! He’s given us the answer! The ocular sensors, they must go on the port-side locomotive extension.”
Akers buzzed. “Well? I’m waiting.”
“Mr. Organism! A small issue has occurred, but do not frut! We are aware of the problem, and we are working on it. All will be well.”
“Now listen,” John Akers frutted, “you fix whatever’s happened right this minute, do you understand? Or you — whatever you are — you’ll be hearing from my attorney.”
“Ah! Another piece of the puzzle! They receive aural signals through an ‘adorny.’ Like the ‘adorny’ with which the amphibians of Rigel III interpret atmospheric tremors.”
“Rather like a giant membrane, yes? A great fleshy sail sort of thing?”
Having received no further updates, John Akers now lost his temper entirely. He unleashed a tirade comprised of colorful invective that was unfortunate for Akers’ future intimate prospects in terms of anatomical imagery.
The Syntaxians were delighted. “The last piece of the puzzle. The reproductive organs! A clear picture emerges!”
“Surely that can’t be right! So grotesque an arrangement. How would that even function?”
“It is not for us to judge the practicality of Life’s infinite configurations!”
The Syntaxians got to work. They reassembled John Akers, or what had been John Akers, according to their best guesses.
“Success! Mr. Organism! Good news! We will punctually return you to the site of your bonding ritual!”
“About damn time!”
The Syntaxians placed their fully repaired organism before the doors of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fairlawn, Ohio. As they sped away, they tuned their audio receptors to the reaction from the happy congregation.
“Such joy they radiate to see their brood patriarch arrive!”
“Such high-pitched joy. Rather piercing!”
“They are persisting in their expressions of happiness. Ten whole minutes, and the peals of delight have hardly abated!”
The Syntaxians reassured themselves that the best of intentions can make up for any momentary carelessness. They streaked onwards, bent on making the universe a happier place.
* * *
Jennifer Stanislavski Akers was finally, after a significant period of adjustment, able to look full-on at the love of her life. At this thing wearing her husband’s wedding band on its tendril.
John Akers’ tailersoop wagged piteously. His six hundred dahlers wafted with hunger. Jennifer sprinkled fish food over them. It had taken a while to figure out what the reconfigured John Akers could eat.
She spoke into John Akers’ adorny, which quivered at her words.
“Something awful’s happened, darling. You’ve changed — may I be frank, and say hideously? But we agreed — ‘In Sickness And In Health.’”
John Akers made a noise like guppies turning inside out.
Jennifer Akers said, “Let’s just hide this from the neighbors, shall we?”
The sky shook with a roar like boiling chainsaws. Following in the wake of the Syntaxians, here came the Corrigendians, cleaning up, as they always did, the messes of their error-prone cosmic cohabitants.
“Dear, dear,” the High Corrix said to his subordinates. “Another Syntaxian bungle. Scans show they’ve rearranged one half of a breeding pair with spectacular wrongness.”
“Pitiable!” the Number Two cried. “Such absurd anatomy! Hideous asymmetry! How can the life-force persist in such a bizarre biomorph?! To work, fellows!”
The Corrigendians retrieved the mangled Akers and began rearranging it to match the other. “This goes there, and that goes here. Careful with that tailersoop. Oh, how could the Taxies have got it so cattywompus?!”
The Corrigendians set the repaired Akers spouse gently in the dwelling. They sped off, congratulating themselves.
“Jennifer!” John Akers blerped. “They’ve changed you, too!”
Jennifer Akers wagged her tailorsoop. She batted her adorny at John.
“Darling!” she glugged. “You’re quite the handsomest man I’ve laid eyestalks on! How did I not see it before?”
“And you are lovely as a May morning, my dear! Let us make a joyous life together!”
And that’s what Mr. and Mrs. Akers did, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, and to hell with what the neighbors thought.
Copyright © 2026 by Matthew F. Amati
