"Let's see how long this field can get?" I said. I began whistling a tune. I was still whistling the tune when ten guys joined in. I said "hey dudes, come on, that's not even the tune I was whistling." "Sorry," they said, not only in unison, but in an eerie harmony of monotones. I said, "are you guys aliens?" The tall one said "no!" but the other nine guys had just started to say "y-" Then they all kind of stopped and stared straight forward, holding perfectly still as if somewhere, an egg was being balanced.
I don't know about you, but this made me suspicious. Soon I was casting about for explanations: "Well, are you or aren't you?" "What?" they queried, innocently. "Aliens!" I clarified. "No," came the harmonically monotonous reply, "we most definitely aren't. Yourself?"
"No, I'm not either," I said, for the moment satisfied. (Although, still wondering how much longer this field gets). "Well, that settles that!" I was determined not to bring it up again if they didn't.
"What made you ask if we were aliens?" they ventured. Their voices and eyes all held the very same slightly-hurt note.
"Well, come on guys, it's not that, it's just..." I hesitated, then resolved.
"Okay, you're all wearing identical ill-fitting pinstripe suits, it looks like the exact same suit but it fits none of you.
"But -!"
"Hang on! Don't interrupt for a minute, ok?"
"OK." They were growing increasingly dejected. Their sensitivity to a fashion critique was at least, quite unexpectedly human.
"You all say - for the most part - the same thing at the same time, all in monotone, and the separate notes of each of your monotones forms a rather arrestingly perfect ten-part harmony. The-"
"Where is the offense, in all of this?" said the tall one, in a quailing, almost Mozart-aria-esque passage of wide-ranging melodicism that nonetheless somehow came off as spoken.
"Humans don't do it." I said.
"Oh," they all sighed in unison, shoulders slumping. Man this field just keeps going! But will it POST?
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