Michelle accepted her award and a peck from the former Best Actor. Then she plopped the Oscar down on the podium and, beaming, waited for the applause to die down. It took a while. Then she began to speak.

"Oh God," Miranda said. "This is really it."

"Before I do anything else," Michelle said, "I need to thank one person, my agent, Tom Stein. He's way up there in the balcony. Hi Tom!" She waved enthusiastically, which got a big laugh. I waved back.

"Shut up and get to it before the orchestra cuts you off," I muttered under my breath.

"Tom's probably muttering at me to get to it before the orchestra cuts me off," Michelle said. "He always did look out for me.

"This award means more to me than you could ever know," Michelle continued. "It's not just my award. It's the award of Rachel Spiegelman, who saw hatred of the demonized 'Other' destroy her world, and dedicated the rest of her life to making sure that we saw men, all men, as brothers, regardless of their color or their creed.

"It belongs to Avika Spiegelman, who looked beyond my physical appearance to allow me to take the role of a lifetime. It belongs to those who initially protested my getting this role, because they came and gave me a chance to perform it, and realized that while I did not match Rachel's appearance, I did match her heart. Over and over again, I have seen people of all stripes look beyond the appearance, look beyond the otherness, and see what it was that truly connected us all.

"And now I'm wondering if you, all of you, every one of the billion people worldwide who are watching this show, can take one more step.

"You see," Michelle said, "I am not who you think I am. I am not what you think I am. This face is a mask. This body is a pose. Who I am and what I am is something you have never experienced before."

At this point, people had begun to start whispering. Some of them were worried that Michelle was about to launch into some odd New Age screed about togetherness. Still others began to wonder if Michelle was going to use this worldwide podium to announce she was a lesbian or a Scientologist. But some noticed that the bottom of Michelle's dress had suddenly gone crystal clear. And so, for that matter, had Michelle's legs.

"I'm wondering," Michelle said. "This award tells me that you believe I have reached into myself and touched some fundamental humanity, some common bond that ties us all together. But could I reach into myself and find this fundamental humanity if I were not human?"

By now it was unmistakable; from toe to armpit, Michelle had gone totally clear.

"What if I told you that that which makes you fundamentally human is something that you share with another people, a people so different from you that they might appear strange or frightening at first glance. A people who might terrify you from appearance alone. Could you make the jump, and understand that inside, they are not so different at all?"

Michelle was now completely clear. As if she had been replaced by an indescribably delicate and beautiful figurine of hand-blown, iridescent glass. She moved away from the podium and stood in full view of a billion speechless members of the human race.

When she spoke again, her voice rang out, amplified not by electronics but by her own crystalline body.

"Could you accept that another people, so unlike you, and yet not unlike you at all, would offer you their hand in friendship? Because, my friends, we are here."

We never did find out who won Best Picture that year.

On the whole, people took it rather well. The only place that rioted was North Korea.

The fact that an alien had managed to sneak past humanity, pose as a superstar and win the Best Actress Oscar had the desired affect of showing the world that the Yherajk were an essentially benign race — after all, if they had been a warlike people, they could have overrun us with their spaceships, or at the very least have fielded a football team and tried to win the Superbowl instead. Winning the Best Actress Oscar was the most non-threatening, yet high exposure, way to introduce one species to another.

The other point that came across was the point Michelle made in her speech — despite the differences, we were in many ways just the same. Michelle wouldn't have been awarded the Oscar if she had not been able to create such a believable performance as a woman and a human. It was only afterwards, after all, that people realized she wasn't human.

Michelle made it easy for most of humanity by meeting them halfway; although she remained transparent, she also retained Michelle's body shape rather than reverting to the basic Yherajk shapelessness (or smell). She did her job as a true bridge between our peoples — clearly alien, and yet, human enough for most people to accept her.

The only unpleasant thing about Michelle winning the Oscar came later, when some Academy members petitioned to have Michelle disqualified as the Best Actress winner. Their rationale was that not only was she not really a human, there was no way to determine that she was, in fact, female.

The Academy voted down the proposal in the interests of interspecies peace. Michelle kept her Oscar.

Roland, who never discovered if he had won Best Director or Best Picture, consoled himself with his Best Editing Oscar, and the fact that Michelle's alien status gave Hard Memories the Oscar Bump of the ages. By the end of its run, Hard Memories grossed half a billion domestic and another billion and a half foreign. Before video and cable. Roland, whose gross points were now worth $400 million, went on to make the Krysztof Kordus film without Michelle's money. He paid for it himself out of petty cash.

Roland wasn't the only one raking in the fame and fortune. The day after Michelle unveiled, Jim Van Doren walked into the offices of the New York Times and plopped down a story about life on the Yherajk spaceship. It was picked up by every newspaper on the planet; shortly thereafter, Van Doren received a $6 million advance for a book on Human-Yherajk relations, which, as it happened, he'd already co-written with Gwedif. It was rushed into print so fast that the glue was still wet when the books hit the stores. It stayed at the top of the bestseller lists for the rest of the year. It's still there now. You wouldn't believe what he gets in speaking fees these days. I don't and I'm his agent.

Beyond Michelle, however, the Yherajk decided it was best if they stayed in their ship for a little longer. They realized the value of having Michelle, for the short run, be the contact between our peoples. The rest of the Yherajk went the go-slow route, answering e-mail from scientists, politicians and common people alike, and communicating with the world through their Web site and their AOL forum, letting leak, bit by bit, information about the Yherajk's true nature and appearance. By the time the majority of the Yherajk land on Earth, humanity will have had enough time to absorb the fact of their differences.

Of course, humanity was still impatient. Fortunately, patience is a Yherajk trait. Soon enough, they said, we will come visit your planet, and you will be invited to our spaceship. And then our peoples will truly learn all we can from each other.

Governments and self-appointed ambassadors sent e-mail back towards the Ionar, saying When? When can we visit?

You'll have to check with our agent, the Yherajk invariably signaled back.

Which leads back to me, sitting in my office, with my headset on, lightly bouncing a blue racquetball off the pane of my office window. Talking to my most important client, who was, and still is, and will probably always be, Michelle.