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Chapter One: In Which Nothing Happens at First
I suppose it would have been an ordinary day under any circumstances. There really was no sign as the day progressed that anything strange, unusual, or otherwise odd was going to happen. None of the appliances I counted on to start my day failed to work in the manner I was accustomed to. My alarm clock went off when it was supposed to, and my toast did not burn. The hot water in the shower didn’t run out, the hair dryer did not die halfway through drying my hair, nor was my hair harder to comb out than usual. In short, everything went as it did every other day. How was I to know that my life was about to be changed? There was absolutely no foreshadowing, no strangely relevant pieces of information on the radio (as I listened in the shower), no prominent news reports as I flipped through the TV stations while eating breakfast, or strange headlines on the newspapers I passed as I walked to work. Even my work day was as uneventful as it ever was, though it did seem to pass a little bit faster than usual. Perhaps this was the clue I should have recognized, but at the time, it was simply a small blessing in my life. Or maybe there was just no foreshadowing what was about to happen. The world may never know. Not that the world would care, come to think of it.
I was walking back home to my apartment, and was about halfway there when I noticed… it wasn’t exactly an alley. I want to say alcove, but that isn’t quite right, either. All I can really say is that I had never noticed it before, so I felt compelled to stop and stare at it for a few moments. At the end of the alcove there was something moving, and though I had just been thinking about how glad I would be to get home, I entered the alley/alcove to see what was going on. Once I did, things got really weird. I felt like I was in a different place, even though I’d only gone a few steps. And the thing moving at the back was suddenly a lot bigger. My first thought was that it was some kind of bug, although I have to admit I’d never seen a bug quite that large, nor that shade of cobalt-blue, outside of a cartoon. I was considering whether or not to get closer, weighing the likelihood of it being something poisonous, when it turned, and I realized I’d been looking at it from behind. From the front it looked less like a bug, but still not exactly like anything I’d seen before. At least it looked a little more humanoid, though not very tall and without ears or nose. And still blue. We stood there staring at each other without moving for I have no idea how long. As we stared at each other, I noticed that it was wearing a kind of suit, mostly white, but with blue and red accents, and what had made it look so buglike from behind was what I figured was hair, like rubbery dreadlocks or some such style. After another minute, it started to move a hand slowly into the front of its suit and then pulled out a small silver tablet. While still keeping its eyes on me, it did something on the tablet (I couldn’t see exactly what from that angle), and then said, slowly and deliberately, in a definitely male voice, “You haven’t seen me, have you?”
“I have seen you,” I replied, not entirely sure what was going on. “Are you…?” I wasn’t sure how I wanted to finish that sentence, so I started over, “What are you?”
“You have to go.”
I suppose I had been foolish to expect an actual answer, but I wasn’t really thinking straight at the moment. I also didn’t leave. “You’re an alien, aren’t you?” It was the only plausible explanation I could think of, although I really only thought of it once he started talking. Before that, I was still clinging to the “some kind of bug” idea.
“Yes, I am. Now…” he did something on the tablet again, “Please go. ‘Nothing to see here.’” He looked at me expectantly.
I looked right back. “Did you actually just say ‘nothing to see here?’”
“Yes, yes I did.”
“What next, ‘Just the facts, ma’am?’” I wasn’t entirely sure why I said that. Should I have been less concerned about word choice and more concerned about the fact that there was an actual alien standing in front of me? Looking back, I’m a little surprised that I wasn’t freaking out, but then, I would much rather encounter an alien than a giant bug any day. The alien started doing something on the tablet again, glancing down at it furtively. I took a step closer to get a better look, but stopped when the alien looked up at me again.
“What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here,” the alien said.
“Why not?” I asked in turn, “I was just walking home and happened to see you here.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Well, this isn’t exactly the best hiding place. Next time don’t use an alley for your secret alien experiments.” I didn’t know if he really was running any experiments, but I figured the machinery I saw behind him, all of it looking vaguely machine-like and slightly dirty, had to be used for something.
The alien fiddled with the tablet again. I tried to see what he was doing, but I still couldn’t get a good look at it, and I couldn’t get too close, either. “No, I mean, you shouldn’t have been able to see here. How did you do that?”
“How did I…?” I honestly did not know, and told him so. “I just saw you and walked in. What are you doing here, anyway?” I figured that it wasn’t here to invade Earth, as I hadn’t been destroyed by some kind of ray gun (not yet, at least). I’m not really a big fan of sci-fi, so I figured that either he was there for research or some kind of space vacation.
The alien didn’t answer me. Instead, he began to work at the tablet again, and this time I managed to get close enough to see what was going on. Not that seeing it gave me any idea of what was actually going on, either. The alien’s fingers were flying over the tablet, and images and symbols flashed on and off too quickly for me to make heads or tails of them. I bent down to look at it more closely, which is when the alien finally noticed what I was doing. He turned his head to look at me, and then suddenly jumped away. “Don’t!” he cried out, and then “Don’t!” again.
“Don’t what? Look? Read over your shoulder?”
The alien fiddled with the tablet again before finally answering, “Don’t touch this.”
I was sorely tempted to make an MC Hammer reference, but I figured that he wouldn’t get the joke, being an alien and all. Frankly, I only knew about the song myself through pop culture osmosis. Instead I put up my hands in what I hoped was a non-threatening manner and said, “Okay, I won’t touch it.”
“How did you get in here?” he asked me again. “There should be a,” and here he mentioned a string of words (or maybe just one really long one) that I couldn’t quite make out, “over this area.”
“A what?” I asked, and though he repeated what he said, I still couldn’t make out what he was actually saying there.
“It keeps anything undesirable out,” he explained after consulting his tablet.
“Undesirable, huh?” I knew what he meant, but couldn’t help feeling a little offended. “So it’s some kind of security device.” That made sense.
“Precisely. But you’re here, and that shouldn’t be possible,” the alien told me.
“Well, if you don’t know how this happened, I certainly don’t,” I said, “But, hey, your secret’s safe with me, okay?” I was starting to get the feeling that I’d better get out of there. I haven’t seen too many alien movies, but from the ones I have seen, I knew that sticking around too long would get me involved in the kind of hijinks that I, frankly, didn’t have time for. Or a desire for. “I’ll just be going and let you get one with your experiments or whatever.”
In my efforts to get out of there ASAP, I didn’t notice the small, black hublike thing in the way of my foot until I’d already tripped over it, my foot stinging from the collision. I let out a yelp of pain and the alien made a similar noise. Although I managed to not fall over, I lost my footing anyway when the alien pushed past me. He started to examine the thing I tripped on, and I suddenly noticed that the alley/alcove seemed a lot less alcovey and a lot more like a plain old alley. “What the?”
The alien continued to examine the hublike thing, pressing various spots on it, which lit up when he pressed them. But the alley stayed an alley, and the alien began to look over his shoulder more and more often. In a hurry, he picked the hub up and began to carry it toward the back of the alley, but it must have been pretty heavy, since he wasn’t making much progress.
“Um, can I help you with that?” I thought it better to ask in case he freaked out like he did with the tablet. The alien either didn’t hear me or was just plain ignoring me, which I guess I deserved, since I apparently broke his security system. “Probably can’t buy that at a store,” I commented, not knowing what else to say. I felt like I should definitely get out of there, but I have to admit, I was feeling pretty guilty about the whole thing and didn’t want to leave until I knew he was going to be okay, or at least mostly okay. So I watched as he carried the hub-thing, pulled out various instruments (I think) to work on it, and cursed (I assume) in a language I didn’t know when the hub-thing continued to not work. I did about the only thing I could think of to help out, which was try to block him from the view of anyone who might have been passing by. If alien movies have taught me anything (besides being rife with hijinks), it’s that if the wrong people find out about the alien, then it is isn’t long before the government swoops in decides to perform all manner of deadly experimentations on said alien. And I felt guilty enough just breaking his hub-thing; I didn’t want to be responsible for his mutilation and possible death, too.
“So, what if you can’t get that thing working again, then what?” I didn’t want to disturb him, but it was starting to get late, and I hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch.
The alien looked up from the hub, and stared at me for a moment, apparently surprised that I was still there. He put down the tool he was currently using and picked up the tablet again. After a few moments of fiddling, he answered me. “I don’t know.”
“Will you be all right without it?” Like I said, I was getting hungry, but I just couldn’t leave without knowing he’s be okay.
“I don’t know,” he said again, and went back to working on it. He worked in silence for a few minutes, then picked up the tablet again, and continued, “There was a leak, that’s how you got in. But you knocked out too much when you kicked it-”
“I didn’t kick-!” I started to protest, but the alien just kept talking over me.
“-so it doesn’t have enough left to function properly.”
“Do you have more fuel? Can you fix the leak?”
“No and yes, if you stop talking to me.” The alien put down the tablet and got back to work.
Well, now I was really in a pickle. I wanted to leave so I could get something to eat, but I didn’t want to leave because if something happened to the alien, then it would be all my fault (basically), but I couldn’t ask him whether I should go or not, since he asked me not to, and apparently he needed the tablet to talk to me. So I could see how it would get annoying to be picking it up and putting it down all the time. I decided to just hang tight for the time being and wait until a good time to interrupt him again. But then my mind picked up on something that I probably should have picked up on sooner, and I blurted out, “But what about the fuel? If you don’t have any more, can you get some here?”
The alien glared at me, put his tool down again and picked up the tablet again. He deliberated with it longer than before, so I waited patiently for his answer, hoping the whole time that it would be something that would let me get away. But from the look on his face, I had a feeling that I was going to be there for a while longer.
“I do have more fuel with me, but not very much. I can get more, but it will take some time-”
“Augh,” I groaned, even though he wasn’t finished.
“Why are you even still here?” the alien asked, “I do not need your help, and you have done nothing but hinder my progress.”
I explained about my reasons for sticking around so long, my fear that something would happen to him without a properly functioning hub-thing, and my guilt for being the cause of it.
“Alien movies?” My explanation didn’t seem to have done much to actual explain anything to the alien, but I think my sincerity got across. I hoped it did, anyway. I was starting to get a feeling, the kind of feeling where I knew what I had to do, but I was seriously opposed to doing it. And I knew from experience that in the end, I would do what I was feeling compelled to do, but I wouldn’t always be happy about it.
“If there’s really, really no other option,” I started, and then paused while the alien looked at me, as if he had no idea what was going on with me standing here, starting to make him an offer. But I knew I had to finish, having begun, and so I went on, “until you get enough fuel for that thing to work again, I mean, but if you really want to, or need to, or, you know, well, what I’m trying to say is, since it’s my fault, you can stay in my apartment until your thing is working again, that’s all.” That last part was a bit of a rush, but I got it all out.
The alien looked at me for a moment, then fiddled with his tablet, then looked at me again, a bit suspiciously this time, and then fiddled with his tablet yet again. I waited for his answer, unsure of whether he would take me up on it, or even if I wanted him to take me up or turn me down. At long last he said, “It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to do.”
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