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Here is the original short story, "The Advocate" by Genevieve Valentine, available at Eclipse Online. Story was posted on January 7, 2013.

The Martian Embassy in New York is at the north edge of Midtown along First Avenue, in a grey building set back from the street by a courtyard and surrounded by a high stone wall.

(“A wonderful design feature,” says the aide who shows her around the first day, as if it had grown out of the ground that way, and they hadn’t just bought out an old woman from what had been a stately brownstone, and built the wall overnight, to better protect the emissary’s interests.) (FIrst two paragraphs)

Eclipse Online is a free, online publication. No subscription or sign-up is required. A story is released by Editor Jonathan Strahan every first and fourth Monday of the month and they stay around for a while. Check them out. Each new story will be reviewed separately. The fifth one, "The Advocate" by Genevieve Valentine, was posted on January 7, 2013.

Siphiwe Abasi is the advocate for the Martian Embassy in New York City. She is actually Agent Acting on Behalf of the Ambassador, which is actually a dozen to about fifty microscopic organisms in what she calls a petri dish.

It's actually a put-up-job, with the Mars Administration member nations, Canada, the USA, the UK, Switzerland, Russia, and Japan. But Siphiwe starts treating her job as more than just a public relations gig when she begins to care about the Ambassador. An interesting idea, well executed.

Look for this and more stories at Eclipse Online.