Alien Invasion of Privacy

In the movies, the aliens are the ones watching. Here, the alien is the one being watched.

Six cameras cover his small house, inside and out. Anyone can watch him, and almost no one does. The date decides his day, and it runs on your local time.

The title was a joke when I started, but what the cameras record is a life. He wakes between two and three-thirty every night. Some nights he scrolls his phone in the dark. Some nights he stands in the light of the fridge. There’s never anything new in it. He waters a plant. He writes in a diary. He rehearses a smile under a taped-up note that tells him to be normal. Is any of this alien to you?

Once a year, there’s a cake with one candle. He blows it out and doesn’t eat it.

If you open a camera and wait, he sometimes lifts his head.

It’s a single self-contained file that runs whether or not anyone is watching.