“If you’re a travel journalist, does that mean you’ve come here to write about us?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I’ll be writing about everything that happens on this cruise.”

A woman in the front row wrinkles her brow at me. “So that means you’re kind of like the Talosians from ‘The Menagerie,’” she says.

“Talosians?”

“Yes, the Talosians,” she says. She gazes at me for a beat. “You’ve come to observe our behavior like we were animals in a zoo.”

I give the woman a neutral look; I’m not sure what she’s talking about. 

“Season one, episode 11,” the guy in the back offers. “Original series.”

“I guess I didn’t see that one,” I say finally.

Fifty or so people stare at me with a mixture of pity and disbelief: It’s as if I just told them I’ve never seen a sunrise. 

First in a 5-part series at World Hum.