couldn't understand what he was saying at all. After he left, a woman came up to the microphone and started singing with a terribly synthesized track. She sounded awful.
"Ugh," Mary said. "I wish she'd stop."
Phos chuckled. "Don't humans sing for fun?"
"That isn't fun," she said. "That's a disaster."
He looked at the singer. "It's fascinating to me, all the things you humans do for recreation. You sing and play instruments, play sports, climb mountains, dive in the ocean, act, play games, race. Oh, the races you have! Everything from horses and cars to goats and lawn mowers."
"Lawn mower racing?" she asked. "There's such a thing?"
"Apparently," he said. "It has a small but fiercely loyal following."
"Huh," Mary said. "Lawn mower racing. Who would've thought?"
"Exactly!" he said. "Humans come up with such amazing ways to amuse yourselves. You never cease to astound me."
"We try," she joked. "So, you don't need to eat and you don't need to sleep. But you can translate. And you can heal, like you did for that boy at the hospital."
He thought for a moment. "I wouldn't say I 'healed' him. I just addressed some bad energy that was inside him."
"Bad energy?"
He nodded. "Disease is energy just like anything else. But it's a detrimental kind. Human doctors use energy to treat it. I just did it more accurately."
"That's so cool," she said. "Oh my gosh! You can heal all the kids in the cancer ward."
He hesitated. "No, I can't."
"Why not?" Mary asked. "Do you not have enough energy? What if you just healed some of them? Like, the ones that really need it."
"I want to," he said. "But I'm not supposed to."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"It's…complicated," he said. "I'm sorry I can't explain beyond that."
Mary said nothing. There were kids who were sick and he had the ability to make them better. How complicated could it be?
"Can I ask you something now?" he asked.
"Okay," she said.
"These human emotions are remarkable," he said. "I'm learning so much. But is it possible to turn them off?"
"I don't think so," she said. "If there was a way, I'd like to know, too. What emotions have you had so far?"
He thought for a moment. "Surprise. Confusion. Hurt."
"I'm...sorry about that one," she said.
"No need to apologize," he said. "Because not long after that, I experienced Happy."
"Good." She smiled. "What about love? Have you experienced that yet?"
He cocked his head to the side. He was doing that in a more natural way now, not so abrupt and robot-like. "I've been confused about that concept. Love."
"How so?" she asked.
"By my observations, I don't think 'love' is an emotion," he said. "It doesn't make sense to me."
The awful singer finally stopped, but then a young Korean-pop-star-wannabe got on the stage and was worse. Why they were doing this bad concert during the lunch rush was a mystery to Mary.
"Let's go," she said. "My ears are going to bleed."
They tossed their empty sandwich wrappers in the trash and began walking down the street. It wasn't less noisy there, because people were walking everywhere. When Mary and Phos tried to cross the street, a man on a moped almost hit them.
"Watch it!" Mary cried. "Man, I can't stand Vietnamese people."
Phos wrinkled his brow. "Why?"
She shrugged. "I mean, not all of them. But so many of them are jerks. There's this lady who owns a convenience store, and she always rags on me about not knowing the language."
"Why don't you learn it?" he asked.
"I have enough trouble with one," she said. "Besides, you have to admit, it's an ugly language. Like that lady at the store? She sounds like an angry duck."
He laughed. "That may be what she sounds like regardless of what she's speaking. But it's a really beautiful language. There are many great poems written in it."
Mary shrugged. "The people still suck."
Phos smiled. "Let's walk over here."
She followed him, and they came to a massive lake. It was a little quieter there, which made the walk pleasant as they headed for an old temple nearby. Inside, they saw the statues of two women with their arms raised. From the way the display was arranged, they looked like they were important people.
"Who are they?" Mary asked.
"Hai Bà Trưng," he said. "The two Trung ladies. They were sisters and they were warriors. They fought for freedom against Chinese oppression around the first century. They're heroes."
Mary stared at the statues. "They were Vietnamese? And they were girls?"
"And queens," Phos added. "Vietnam wasn't called 'Vietnam' back then, but it was here