26 Years Online
••• The International Writers Magazine - Dreamscapes Fiction

Alien Explorer • Gregory Smith A lonely alien reaches out...

She found him stargazing in a wide field alone, barefoot, sitting cross-legged among the sweet-scented clover and the beautiful, twirling butterflies. Flying crows called to one another across the wide field. Twilight was nestling over the land; daylight was surrendering to the night. Stars twinkled brighter and brighter with each passing moment. The full moon hung lazily over the landscape as chirping crickets sang gleefully. Another night was approaching.
“Tommy!” she called, walking her bike to the boy. “I haven’t seen you since school ended. How are you?”
“Fine,” he greeted, startled by her appearance. “Nice to see you again, Jill.”
“May I join you?” she asked sweetly.
“Sure,” he replied. She sat beside him, stretching out her long, tanned legs. “How’s your summer going?”
“Quiet so far. You?”
“Restless,” she admitted. “I miss school. Miss being with my friends. Only so much swimming one can do. I miss learning. Sometimes I feel like my mind is a sponge, absorbing everything thrown at me and craving for more knowledge. Typical child prodigy. While my friends were watching Sesame Street and Barney the dinosaur, I was watching the entire thirteen episodes of ‘Cosmos’.”
 
She laughed, tossing back her long red hair, her emerald eyes sparkling. She had the prettiest smile. She was beautiful for a self-professed nerd: rosy cheeks, deep dimples, and a cute nose that crinkled when she laughed.  It was nice to see her laugh, thought Tommy. In school, in the bustling, chaotic hallways, they passed like two ships in the night.
“I know what you mean,” Tommy said. “Even though the schoolwork is boring and tedious. I don’t want to sound like a snob but …how can I say this without sounding…”
“Too self-assured?” she finished his sentence.
“Precisely,” he replied. "School just isn’t challenging enough.”
“So, why doesn’t your mom get you into a private school with accelerated classes?” she suggested.
“We can’t afford it. We are just about making ends meet as it is. It’s just me and my mother. There’s not much opportunity in such a small town like River Run.”

He gazed at the vastness of the crystal-clear sky. Jill loved how he seemed to drink in the wholeness of it all, how he appreciated each individual star, each planet in view, each unique feature of the universe above them. There was quiet confidence in him, maturity far beyond his fifteen years.
“As brilliant as “Cosmos” is, there’s so much more to the galaxy and interstellar space,” he mentioned. “If only you knew…”
“Do you come here often?” she asked.
“Yes, often. I first came here to find myself. It’s so quiet and serene, away from the town lights. Quite literally, I come here looking for space. I can see the stars outside my bedroom window but it’s not the same.”
“I come here quite a bit myself,” she said. “I love looking at the sky. I’m somehow drawn to the universe.”
“Me too,” he said. “The universe is…home.”
 “I have seen you here before,” she admitted. “I just never had the courage to say hello. You always look so peaceful, so happy here. It’s a shame to disturb you.”
 “Don’t I appear tranquil tonight?” he asked.
“No, it’s not that. I admit - it wasn’t merely happenstance that I was passing by. I was looking for you and knew you would be here. Something told me to find you…tonight. We never get to talk at school since we are in different classes. And don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a…a…crush type of thing. I mean, you are very attractive but…I better stop,” she mumbled, blushing.
“I could use a friend,” he reassured her. “I’m not into sports. I’m not into the typical adolescent activity. I can’t help if the things that interest me, things like astronomy and physics, don’t interest the typical person my age. So, I don’t have many friends from school.”
“We’re both geeks,” she replied. “We need to accept that fact and move on. Friends it is.”
 
They grew quiet for several moments, each allowing the other to direct the conversation. Fireflies blinked on and off all around them, like Christmas lights on a balsam fir.
 “Where are you from?” she asked impulsively.
 “We moved to Iowa last year from California,” he answered.
“Why Iowa?”
“Oh, we just needed to get away.”
“Oh, sounds mysterious,” Jill said. "What happened? Rob a bank?”
“No, we just needed to get away from the government,” he explained. “As far away as possible. We thought a sleepy little town in the middle of Iowa might be a perfect spot to blend in.”
 From the government? Better change the subject, she thought. Sounds serious.
“Hey, let’s not talk about it,” she said. “You’re here to find solitude, not to be interrogated.”
“No,” he relented. “I want to tell you. That’s why I summoned you here tonight. It’s time we had a talk. “
“Summoned me? I’m not sure what you mean,” she admitted. “But I will say that there’s something unique about you and me. It’s hard to explain.”
“I’ve always been somewhat psychic, so I’m sure there is some kind of connection,” he reaffirmed.

Moments passed as they sat in the moonlight together.
“The one creature here on Earth that I absolutely love are eagles,” he said. “They are so majestic. They don’t just fly - they soar. Over clouds, over mountains, over church steeples, with such ease and freedom. I wish I could still fly. I had that ability…at one time.”
Jill gave him a curious stare. What is he talking about? An ability to fly?
 “There goes a shooting star!” he remarked, pointing to the north. “So beautiful. Even more beautiful close-up. Isn’t it remarkable that what you call the Andromeda Galaxy contains at least one-hundred million stars? And space goes on and on, billions and billions of stars, planets, galaxies, solar systems. It never ends.”
“It is amazing,” she agreed.
 “Do you like astronomy?”  he asked.
“I love astronomy,” she answered enthusiastically. “I want to study astronomy at the University of Iowa when the time comes. My dream is to save enough money to buy a telescope someday. Hopefully by 2061.”
“Why then?”
“That’s when Haley’s Comet returns,” she explained.
“Is that what you call it here?” he inquired.
“’Here’?”
“You know, we do have more in common than you think,” he began. “They considered me a ‘child prodigy’ too. My mother always said how easy it was giving me birth. She said at four months I was beginning to speak words, and at eight months I was using basic sentences. I started kindergarten at two. I was painting and playing music by three.”
“I’ve never known anyone who could fluently speak six languages,” she said. “Well, that’s what I’ve heard around school. Jeez, I have trouble with English.”
“Yes, I speak six languages, plus my native tongue,” he explained. “I knew I was different than other children at an early age. But I never knew why until the birthmark on my right shoulder was explained. I first noticed this …marking…when I was a child, as a sign. A sign of my heritage. A sign of where I’m from. Only then did I realize that everyone from my planet has this birthmark. My interest in astronomy increased a thousandfold. I began to understand why.”

Did he say “my planet”?
“Do you want to see?” he asked, removing his white tee shirt to reveal the birthmark: a symbol, resembling a lotus flower. Not a tattoo but a pattern of several marks joined together.
“Unique,” she gasped. “So, was this what you wanted to show me?”
“We went on a family camping trip one summer,” he explained, putting his shirt back on. “Around a campfire I, inexplicably, began to speak in a language no one had ever heard before. I proceeded to tell my stunned family that, in a past life, I was an inhabitant of another planet. Isn’t that strange?”

Jill stared at him without saying a word.
“I’m used to your reaction,” he said. “I started remembering bits and pieces of my past life. I was a pilot and the spacecraft I flew was extremely complicated to fly. Those ships were meant for travel and speed. We could span the entire universe; we also had the ability to travel through time. I’ve seen the far reaches of the galaxy, Jill. I’ve been to the Oort Cloud and back. Those stars high above - I’ve traveled to many. There are pathways to travel from planet to planet, from moon to moon, like the roads and freeways here on Earth. I’ve traveled those many pathways - alone and with others. I’m not here directly from…well, you have never heard of my planet,” he continued. “In a past life, I was what you would call an alien.”

Jill continued to stare.
“You are afraid of me now,” he said softly. “You think I’m mad. Or maybe I have an overly active imagination. You have a right to feel that way. “
“No," she replied uncertainly, staring into his eyes, " I find you…fascinating. I find you…different. I just don’t understand how? Or why? I’ve read about people who claim to have lived before. When we die, we return to some capacity of life. But always, they are from the same planet.”

Tommy sighed deeply. “It’s a mystery to me as well. Very early on, I began to have flashbacks to my former life. Normally these flashbacks disappear.  Mine have only gotten more intense. I know what happened to destroy our civilization on my planet. There was a nuclear war. Everything was wiped out. Everything was gone. Those lucky enough to be on missions… they returned to…nothing. Even on my planet we had war. Even on my planet, there was no peace. We had all this advanced technology, advanced compared to Earth. We simply took our civilization for granted. Then we threw it all away in a matter of seconds.”

He remained silent for a moment, searching the sky for an answer.
 “I don’t know how an alien became a child of another planet in this solar system. I was an Explorer. I do remember visiting Earth several times as an Explorer for our planet, visiting in ships built for exploration. I have vague memories of crashing…dying here on Earth with a co-pilot, Lieutenant Tramadol. Vague flashbacks of being carried away to a military hospital. That’s where I succumbed to the severe injuries. That might explain why I returned as a child of Earth. When I was younger, I thought I was sent here for a reason: to warn others. To tell the story of how civilization on my planet was destroyed, not by another civilization in the galaxy, but from within. That’s why I felt comfortable speaking out, to warn others of our fate. I certainly did not come to talk about our peaceful life back home. My world was not an example of peace. We are a warning of what will be without peace.
He smiled a little, studying her reactions for a moment.
“My parents didn’t know. My poor mother. She accepted my ‘delusions’ as just that. How could they ever believe they had conceived a child who had lived a past life…in another solar system? Well, after the camping trip, my uncle, who is a university professor of mathematics, was so enthralled by my tales, he mentioned them to someone, who alerted the newspapers, and before we knew it, the government was contacting my mother. They wanted to question me, analyze me, study me. Especially when I mentioned there had to be others on Earth… the forgotten ones… who were in flight during the wars and ended up here. I can’t believe that I am alone. Sometimes I can’t believe I am totally alone on Earth,” he said slowly.

“It must be terrible to feel alone, in a strange world,” Jill said. “To feel all alone in the universe. I can imagine it must be devastating.”
“When I was being questioned, I was in quite a quandary: I needed the government officials to believe me if I wanted to share my story of nuclear obliteration on my planet to the world,” he said. “My message had to be heard before it was too late. So, I drew them star charts; I told them of a secret inside the Sphinx in Egypt, a secret my ancestors left which would change this world. I told them many other things about life in the universe, trying to convince them of the truth. However, I also considered- what if they do believe me? Would they see me as a threat to civilization? Maybe I was a scout for a larger invasion, with the purpose of cultivating this planet for our own.”
“Like in the movies,” Jill stated. “Earth versus the Flying Saucers.”
“Exactly,” he said. “What if they held me captive, in a laboratory or a prison or a mental hospital, for years? My mother needed me more than ever after my father died. So, I refused to cooperate anymore. They couldn’t hold me, so they let me go. We left town before they reconsidered my freedom.”

“That’s why you came to Iowa…to escape,” she concluded. “I understand everything now. There’s so much more I want to know. Like, was there music on your planet? Did the inhabitants believe in a God? What was your food like?”
“I wish I could remember more about home,” he said, exasperated. He sadly gazed up to where a faraway star could barely be seen by the naked eye. “It’s so…distant. Home is so far away.”

Glancing at his watch Tommy stood and said, “Look what time it is! I better get back. I need to take out the trash before bed.”
“That sounds too funny. An alien taking out the trash,” she laughed.
“Mundane but necessary,” he remarked.
“I’ve learned so much,” she said, getting to her feet.” I would love to see your telescope some time.”
“Of course. Let’s plan on it,” Tommy replied.” I’m glad to have found a friend, someone who can relate.”
 “More than you know,” she said, hopping on her bike.
 “Tommy, “she called back, sliding down one strap of her tank top, revealing a familiar-looking birthmark on her right shoulder. "You are not alone anymore.”
“I know,” he replied. “I told you that I’m psychic. It’s good to see you again… Lieutenant.”

© Gregory Smith 5.7.25

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