"Alen"

 

  This one took me a while. I've had the idea in my mind for a while, and could never really decide how to write it. Eventually, I just started writing. This went through five different versions, the range of variation being great to hardly noticable to anyone but myself. This one came alive, so I had to let it live a little. Enjoy! - CM

 

 

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     The star-strewn sky of the New Mexico desert spun slowly above Alen's head. He exhaled the smoke from his lungs and watched as the nebulus cloud joined the darkness. In contrast to the slow spin of the Earth, Alen's head wheeled about at what seemed to be a million miles an hour. He could barely stand up as the shock had gone straight from his mind to his legs. He doesn't remember exactly how he got outside, but there he was, leaning against the desert-dusted brick walls of the observation lab. Green, red, and blue lights blinked on and off at varying intervals from the dishes of the wide array, creating a fluctuating, black-on-black connect the dots game on the nearby horizon. If not for the stars and wispy arm of the milky way, the dishes would not even be distinguishable from the darkness around it.

   

   From the general direction of the Andromeda galaxy, a series of radio blasts had just pinged around the satellites and probes in Earth's atmosphere, down to every space observation site, before traveling back out into space. If it were one blast, that was something not entirely uncommon; Earth gets many of these crashing upon it's shore from an ever-expanding ocean of collapsing stars, quasars, supernovas, and black holes. Besides, they weren't really radio waves; they just appeared that way, the science of the how was something Alen had never learned.

  There was more than one ping and they were intelligent. They were rhythmic and mathematical, but not predictable, especially not by any Earthly understanding of mathematics. Kind of like good music, Alen mused. He knew what they were and what they meant because he was the right kind of “intelligent”.

 

    His knees shook a little and he allowed his body to follow the wall to the ground. He stared at the point between Cassiopea and Pegasus. His mind processed the irony. Cassiopea was vain and arrogant and for this, Posidon punished her by placing her in the sky. It was ironic in that, as punishment, a human was put in a place where Alen longed to be. The pegasus part of the irony is that, much like Alen and yet not exactly, the winged horse doesn't exist.

  Unable to pull his eyes from the barely distinguishable hazy spot halfway between the stars Ruchbah and Sirrah, a spot barely visible to his naked eyes and all but invisible to human eyes, Alen drew and lit another American Spirit and inhaled as much smoke as he could manage into his lungs before getting so light headed that the smoke spewed out like exhaust from a freshly started car.

 

    The message was from home. Home was calling. He was sure of it; however, the message wasn't necessarily intended for him. It was more of a message in a bottle, to use a human phrase; a kind of general “hello” rather than a direct message. Like waving at a crowd from a far distance. It had been fifty years since Alen had last heard such a message in the language yet to be discovered on this planet. Had it really been that long, Alen thought. Fifty years since he'd seen home, since he had crashed here, since he had to run and hide amongst these glib and naive humans, no matter how admirable their intentions.

 

    His mind raced. How could he send a message back? How can he do it without being caught and having to explain that he wasn't exactly from these parts? How long before the military came and the probes and the needles and knives. He may not be human, but all living things can be broken. It was all he could do to not instantly respond to the message as it came into the lab. His people could get here fast, but – even for extraterrestrials – two million plus light years is still a very long way off. He knows his people: even if he had sent a message and managed to hide long enough for them to arrive, they wouldn't risk announcing their presence to a lower civilization like Earth's. They might be close by, but, then again, they might not. A radio message using Earth technology would take far too long to reach his home world. By the time it arrived, he'd have been dead a long time.

 

    Hopeless, he thought. I can't leave and they won't come. Even if they did, he'd not be able to get to them. He was stuck, more now than ever.

 

    He thought about his ship. The damage was so great and the technology here so underdeveloped that repairs were beyond his abilities. He wasn't a rocket scientist, at least by his people's standards. Besides, the military had it. They had it within an hour of the accident. They had his crew...his friends, as well. The meteor impact and subsequent explosion had killed two of them instantly; the rest died in the crash. He had very little time to react and decide: to trust this planet's inhabitants or not. Not long after deciding, he was relieved to know that he had made the correct decision.

 

    The muffled ring of his phone issued from the other side of the wall. Everyone else had gotten the message and were now calling everyone else to see if they had, too. He'd have to get up and answer and pretend to be happy and amazed. He lowered his eyes and stared at his knees and his hands and the cigarette that rested in between his index and middle finger. Tobacco was a small compensation. His planet had tobacco (many other planets had, as well), but Earth's was possibly the greatest in the known universe. The took another drag and carefully attempted to stand. He had to answer the phone and go through the charade until he either found a way home or he died. The latter was the more likely. He got to his feet, dusted off the seat of his jeans, and entered the lab. He did not put out his cigarette. He needed it more now than ever, and sure as fuck no one was going to take anything else away from him.

 

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