If she knows where to buy one, they have plenty of human money now.

Did they steal that too? 

They made it? Which is only kind of stealing it. They think the human money supply was a bit too low anyway and this will actually improve the health of the economy.

Huh.

Have they interviewed other people for this? Marian (a little sheepishly) admits that she is new and not that experienced and maybe they want more people. But also she thinks most of her colleagues would either panic a lot more or be set on believing it was a prank of some kind. 

Most of the applicants were turned off by - probably by the aliens not knowing how exactly job searches are supposed to work, they think that's what went wrong there. With her help they can maybe design a less suspicious hiring process.

Ooh, probably. Marian is twenty-two and...not the most experienced at how things like job searches are normally done by adults...but she did notice some weird things and she can try to help. - Can she call Lacie to ask for advice? She thinks she can ask in a non-suspicious way, Lacie knows she likes getting involved in things even when they aren't strictly her bedside nursing job. 

Yes! They now have a phone emulator set up here in their underground bunker.

Marian does that, and then starts planning a book list for her shopping trip in Vancouver. They should go to the university library, probably.

...Can she see their computers? Her dad works with computers and they have a big Macintosh desktop at home but she couldn't afford her own when she moved out. 

The computers are in that metal boxframe thing over there, the one about the size of a chair. They're submerged in a liquid that dissipates heat and she cannot really look at them. She could look at some of the things they do?

Sure - she doesn’t want to look at the insides, that wouldn’t be useful because she doesn’t know enough about computers, although she’s sure her dad would love to look if he knew about the aliens. (She’s assuming she can’t tell her parents or friends about this?)

It would put them in danger and put the whole operation in danger if they were seized by Yeerks. She will have to tell them the cover story about the rural Alaska hospital.

Nod. 

Marian spends the next few hours making her book list and asking the Andalite doctor questions as she thinks of them and eventually asking to look at all of their medical machinery, oohing and aahing appropriately about it. She calls Lacie once she knows Lacie will be home from her shift and says she's volunteered to help the new rural hospital with their hiring process, where should they post job ads to get more applications and what should they say in them. Lacie seems very proud and gives some nonchalant advice. 

Marian tells them they should call newspapers in more cities, especially ones in the US that have good medical schools. She isn't sure whether the Yeerks would get suspicious if they start grabbing lots of people away, but probably she can get away with claiming a family emergency and cancelling her last week of shifts. (Marian isn't at all sure she can get through a shift and act normal the whole time when she knows about aliens.) 

They want to do everything they can to fly under the radar but there are some cities where they've verified there is minimal if any Yeerk presence, by now, and they can advertise in those. It's so helpful to have advice from a human who is from this world! They shapeshift human, grotesquely, and get on the phone to place more ads.

Cooooooool! How does the shapeshifting work? Is it something their species evolved to be able to do or is it technology? (This is honestly the most hallucination-like part so far but if they have a plausible biological explanation for it then Marian isn't inclined to suspicion.) 

It's technology! It would be pretty much impossible to evolve to do because it involves storing an astonishing amount of information. The morphing technology builds templates in hyperspace for forms you might want to shapeshift into and then you can swap your existing form for one of those through concentration.

That's so useful if you're trying to do undercover spying on aliens! And way less creepy than the Yeerk way of being undercover humans. 

It is very useful. They understand humans somewhat less well than Yeerks, starting out, but you can learn that stuff from TV and asking people things if you're not an evil monster.

Serious nod. "You can ask me as many things as you want." 

How does medical certification works? Why are people racist? Is the President really in charge of America or is it one of those polite legal fictions in which case who is? Same question but for Canada. And China. Are soap operas fictional? They know that Superman is. Why do humans sometimes have cats and dogs. Why'd they stop going to their moon. Why was the decision made to allow the Rwandan genocide. Does the United Nations...do anything?? Why are there homeless people?

Aaaaah that is a lot of questions, can she write them down or something? Also some of them make her wince. 

"Humans aren't always...good at things," she admits. "I don't know why no one stopped Rwanda, but - probably there was politics, and there wasn't someone whose job it was to stop it, or who - was powerful enough and also cared? I don't know. It's stupid. I think it's the same for homeless people - I mean, it is a hard problem, I did a public health rotation at a group house for drug addicts and they're terrible to live with, a lot of them are schizophrenic and think the government is out to get them so they'll refuse to live in a house even if you give them one for free. Or they'll rub shit on the walls or something. But...it's bad and it should be fixed anyway even if it's hard." 

Marian is suddenly feeling embarrassed on behalf of her species, and - that she never thought about it that way before, not really. Not as problems that should be fixed, instead of - just the way things are because the world is complicated. 

The Andalites are distressed about the drug addicts and schizophrenics who are terrible to live with! They don't ask followup questions about that. They can instead ask most of their questions about television, and about what seemed off about their job interviewing process, and about who she would Yeerk first if she were evil and a bodysnatching alien.

Marian can't help them much with television, her parents don't believe in television and never owned one. She frowns and thinks for a long time about the Yeerk question. 

"How long does it take to put a Yeerk in someone?" she asks. "Would it look really suspicious to other people - does it make people behave suspiciously afterward...?" 

It takes only a few minutes. The process would look incredibly suspicious but once it's done the Yeerk can imitate their host perfectly.

"Hmm. Well, I think they wouldn't be able to get the President right away, then, he would have a lot of bodyguards, but I assume they'd try really hard. They'd want to get people who would be alone with lots of other people for normal reasons and could put Yeerks in them. - Maybe hospitals? I might just think that because I work at one, but it'd be so easy to put Yeerks in all my patients without anyone noticing. Umm. And then I guess they'd want humans who are powerful or know important things or have a lot of money. So, government agencies. I bet some of them would be a lot easier to get than the President. And if they got enough of the President's security people they could get him too, eventually." 

They are worried that they're well on their way to that, or already there. - though they don't think it's too late, they reassure her. Humanity has a very good chance here.