A first contact mission, to test aliens on how they react to stimulus, to see why they do what they do, why some of them roll around on wheeled chairs…by the way, WE are the aliens in this story…
“We’re getting close,” the creature from a planet faraway said to the other alien, but not spoken as they did not converse in speech, but more in sensory vibrations that were felt, not heard. The two creatures had no ears, no eyes, no mouths, so their communication was unique.
“Yes, but I want to do something before we get there. Another study on the soft-bodies that populate this planet.”
If the first creature had had lungs, it would have sighed. “Fine, but not too long. I want to pick up our fuel and get going. I don’t like the way these soft-bodies treat our kind here. They don’t respect rocks the way they should.”
“Especially since rocks are superior beings,” the first one agreed.
#
Ed opened the sliding glass door, and then wheeled up the tiny inside ramp, and rolled over the door track onto the longer aluminum ramp that took him down to the deck. He stopped a couple of feet onto the ramp, and reached behind him to close the door. Can’t let those dratted mosquitoes in. He felt a little sorry for them, because only female mosquitoes bite and that’s just to help them lay eggs. But that didn’t mean he was going to make it easier for them.
He rolled the rest of the way to the deck, and looked around. The night was perfect. No wind, the moon was off doing its thing somewhere else, and there were no clouds. It was, as forecast, a perfect night for watching a meteor shower. As he settled down next to a small table, he looked towards the west, which was where forecasters said he should look. Then his eyes went up to the black sky, sprinkled with stars hundreds of billions, no, trillions of miles away. As he looked at the stars, he marveled that he was looking back in time. The light that traveled to him was from years before. For all he knew, the star he was looking at had exploded or became a black hole long before. He remembered reading once that it takes eight minutes for sun’s light to reach us, so when you look at the sun, you are looking eight minutes into the past. After the sun, the closest star is 4.3 light -years away. When you look at that star you are seeing more than four years into the past. Sort of a time-traveling thing.
You learn geeky things like this when you hear there’s a meteor shower coming, and you play with Google for a bit. Though they call them shooting stars, they are just meteors and asteroids. The long tail is miles of ice and dust from behind the meteor which might be the size of a boulder or larger.
These thoughts went through his mind as he gazed into the night.
Oh, wait, there’s one!
His mouth dropped open as he watched it whisking across the sky, pure white with a long tail and the black of night behind it.
Oh, and there’s another one!
And another!
He had heard there could be as many as twenty-five per hour during the peak viewing time.
Then another one streaked by.
This was so cool!
So graceful. So quiet.
Another geeky thing he’d learned was the meteors were traveling at better than half the speed of a lightning bolt, and nearly eight times faster than a rifle bullet and even two hundred times the speed of sound.
Wow, he loved this. He had a small blanket on his lap, though his paralyzed legs didn’t really feel cold. He had brought the blanket in case he got cold in the night air, but he was comfortable. He had a great view of the night, and the meteor shower was everything that had been advertised.
He kept watching and then something caught his attention. All of the meteors were moving the same direction and the same relative speed, but then one of them slowed down in the sky. He frowned, and concentrated on it, as others continued to streak through the night.
It stopped.
Way up in the sky.
Was this manmade? A drone?
He frowned, and looked at the meteor. Now, it wasn’t moving at all. It was just a blip in the sky, but he could see it.
As he watched, he could see it better. Was his sight improving? No, wait, it was coming closer, directly at him.
What the heck?
His mouth dropped open as it rapidly grew in size on a path straight at him.
A meteor was coming at him!
It was going to crush him and his house!
“Aawk!” he squawked. He wheeled towards the door. Wait, would it be safe in the house? He looked onto the lawn. He could go down the other ramp to the grass and roll away. But how did he know if he wouldn’t escape directly where the space rock would land? Where could he go? Where would be safe?
He looked up again. Now the asteroid was enormous. It had been so far away, and now it was right overhead and still coming at him. He could see the asteroid was a rock, maybe half the size of a football field. It was oblong, sort of shaped like a blimp, but with rocky bumps and crevasses
Then it stopped. It wasn’t approaching anymore. It was just hovering right overhead, maybe a quarter-mile away in the air now, totally defying gravity in its rocky way, almost laughing at the law of physics.
He stopped trying to move, and sat in his wheelchair looking with wide-open mouth shock at the enormous rock.
Looking around frantically, he hoped, wondered, prayed that someone would appear and either explain this or help him out of whatever delusion he was suffering from.
As he looked around, something began happening. He was slowly beginning to rise in the air. What? In shock, he looked down. What was happening? To his amazement, he saw that he was floating, still in his wheelchair. His wheels were not on the deck. They weren’t on anything. It was like he was a balloon, just slowly riding the air.
“Eek!” he screeched in a high-pitched sort of feminine voice. He didn’t care how he sounded.
And now he began to rise faster, heading towards the enormous rock floating overhead. There were no beams or lights or anything else. He leaned over to look down at the ground receding away, half expecting to fall out of his chair. It didn’t happen. The floating seemed secure and stable.
As he went a hundred yards high, then two hundred, and kept rising, now he feared that if this, whatever, gravity-defying thing stopped, he would fall to his death.
Another wimpy sound escaped him.
Then he was closer to the space rock than to the ground, and a hole started opening in the rock. Just round. It was as if the rock itself was shapeshifting in a way rocks didn’t, at least when they weren’t in their liquid state.
He kept rising, heading for the hole.
Now he was there, and he could see inside the hole, cave? Inside was yellow, or orange, a warm light. Was this rock abducting him?
He had time for one more not-so-manly squeal of terror, and then he was inside the cave, a tunnel he saw now. He was inside an asteroid!
He whipped his head around, and saw the opening was closing. Meanwhile, he was being gently lowered to the floor of the cave, which was smooth. He touched down with barely a wobble, but his wheelchair kept moving, as if an invisible being was smoothly pushing him along. He tried to grab the wheel handles and stop the forward movement, but whatever was pushing him was stronger than he was.
Then the tunnel ended, and now he was in a large room inside the asteroid. He looked up, and saw the rocky ceiling, matching the rocky walls and some other rocks just sitting in rocky patience.
There were two large gray-colored balls on the ground, about four feet tall. They looked like, well, bowling balls, but without the finger holes or the Brunswick emblem, and they were dull colored rather than glossy.
They didn’t look threatening, so he looked around some more, and there was nothing.
Just the balls.
Then the balls started rolling at him.
“You see what I mean?” one space creature sort-of said to its companion. “This soft-body creature rolls like a more advanced being. The other ones move on weird appendages. But not this one. It rolls.”
“It is sort of weird,” the second agreed. “And part of this creature, the part that rolls, is made from the product of rock. Maybe this is worth a study.”
They were not communicating with any sound, so Ed heard none of this. All he saw were two large rock balls that rolled around him, as if they were studying him.
“What is happening?” he shrieked.
#
The rock beings continued. “I noticed when I studied these creatures that the ones that roll are treated by others of their kind differently. They are assisted in movement, as would a leader, and they are given preferential treatment. They are allowed to be closer to places they inhabit or visit. No other of the creatures that move on appendages do the same. Just this one race.”
“They must be more advanced than the others,” the other answered.
The first nodded without nodding. “I suspect so. I want to do a study on this one.”
It rolled around closer to Ed, whose eyes widened in alarm, which the boulder didn’t notice because it didn’t have sight.
“I wonder how they communicate,” it said. “I see the small ball on top of it, and it seems to move. It seems they ingest food that way.”
“So primitive,” the other said.
“And it opens when they communicate. I wonder if somehow this is part of their method.”
“Well, we know they don’t communicate the way we do,” the other said.
“Yes, as you said. Very primitive. I don’t think our kind was ever that way.”
“So, what kind of test are you going to do?” the second one asked.
The first one stopped rolling. “I’m going to see if it’s possible to disconnect the alien being from its rock-rolling part, without injuring it if possible. Or see if it is, in fact, a natural part of its body.”
“Their bodies are so weird,” the other one said.
“That’s for sure. Anyway, I’ll start the test now.”
It rolled towards Ed.
#
Ed watched, still unable to move his wheelchair. It seemed as if these boulders had sentience, and as if they were moving on purpose. There was no hill, and they were able to roll in first one direction, then another. But there was nothing on the balls, no eyes, no ears, not even a butt hole. There were also no drawings, diagrams or anything else. Just round and gray.
The one came closer and approached without any form of malice.
Ed leaned back in his chair anyway.
Nothing happened.
But then, no, wait, something did happen.
Ed felt something, a twinge if you will, along his spine
“What the …?”
There was no pain.
Then something else happened.
His body began to raise from the wheelchair, which stayed anchored onto the rocky floor.
“Aagh!” he cried.
As he rose higher, gravity did touch his legs, and now they fell below him, as he now was floating a few feet in the air, his legs maybe a foot above the ground.
“What’s happening?!’
The physical sensations continued in his spine, and then something else started happening. He began to feel his legs.
#
“You see,” the first boulder said to the second. “The creature can be separated from the rolling-rock product. I wonder if they added this part to themselves.”
“It’s very interesting,” the other rock agreed.
“And when I scanned this creature, I found internal changes, which they might have done in order to precipitate becoming more advanced rolling creatures, like our race.”
“You are saying they damaged themselves on purpose, so they could become more advanced like us?”
“Yes,” the first one said. “Watch, I am correcting the internal changes. Let’s see what happens.”
#
Ed was floating just above the ground, but now, he could feel his legs. He tried moving them, and in the first time in half a decade, his legs moved when his brain directed them to.
“Wait? What? I can move?” he said in shock.
Then the gravity floatation started going away, and he dropped slowly to the ground. And now, instead of his legs failing to support him, they allowed him to stand.
“I’m standing,” he gasped.
“I’m standing!” he shouted in glee.
The rocks seemed not to notice his joyful shout.
Ed took a step towards the boulder, which easily backed away.
“I can walk. I’m healed!” Ed roared, his voice echoing in the cave.
“You fixed me,” he said to the rock in wonder. “You’re amazing! I … you … I mean. I’m so thankful!”
#
The rocks watched the weird creature move.
“Yes, now it seems to move like others of its kind,” the first one said.
“So creating a device from a rock product is a deliberate adaption they are using to become more advanced?” the second one said.
“It would appear that way,” the first said.
“Very interesting,” the other replied. “Hey, we need to go get our fuel from the volcano. Are we about done here?”
“Yes, the first one said. “I just need to undo what I did, so it can go back on its path to becoming a more evolved creature.”
#
Ed had no idea what they were thinking, doing or even what they intended. He was just ecstatic that they had cured him.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he cried at the boulders, which didn’t respond at all. But he knew they were the reason he was recovered now.
He could walk. Run. He was no longer a paraplegic. He looked down with scorn at his wheelchair. His home for half a decade. Then he flipped it off with both hands.
So done with being in a chair. He might never sit again.
Then, suddenly, gravity let up around him again, and he found himself rising a few feet into air.
“Wait, what’s happening?!” he shouted.
He was suspended in the air, and now he felt sensations in his back again. “What are you doing!”
“Aagh!” he cried again. “Don’t do this! Please!”
Then he lost feeling in his legs.
No!!!
Gravity took hold again, and now he was carefully lowered somehow into the seat of his wheelchair. He couldn’t move his legs anymore.
“Stop! Please! I’ll do anything!”
Then he was in his wheelchair. It started backing into the tunnel behind him, and the two boulders just sat, unmoving, but attentive, somehow it was as if they were watching him. He tried to stop the chair, but couldn’t.
“NoNoNoNoNoNo!!!”
Then he was backed out of the enormous asteroid, and was floating back towards the Earth.
“Please don’t!” He was crying now. Tears gushing.
He tried shaking his wheelchair, but it just moved steadily back towards his home.
But he didn’t want to be there. Not like this.
“Please,” he cried again, this time just a whisper.
He watched with pleading eyes as the rock got further and further away. Now he could see the cave-like entrance on the rock beginning to close in the fluid molten way it had originally opened.
Then it was just an enormous rock.
It slowly started to move away, and then it picked up speed.
“Come back,” Ed gasped.
And then it was gone, flying away with the speed of a comet.
“No,” Ed whimpered, as his wheelchair softly landed on his deck.
“Please,” he rasped.
#
As the asteroid shot off to go fill up its fuel at the nearest active volcano, the one boulder said to the other. “That was certainly interesting.”
“Yeah,” the second one agreed. “And good thing you were able to restore the creature afterward. I’m sure it appreciated it.”
END
