Unconventional Love Story

A ring of men, women, and children stood around the crater, police officers struggling to keep the order while others could barely push back against the crowd enough to keep themselves from falling in the pit. Burrowed ten feet into the earth beneath Times Square, the softly pulsing blue pod hummed and split, and the folds were pushed back by turquoise hands with four digits each--two fingers, two thumbs.

The creature that emerged stifled all the chatter throughout the square. Thousands of people, from those who stood looking down to those blocks away watching the video feed on their phones and the electronic billboards, all fell absolutely silent. For the thing that emerged was only a few steps removed from a human being: it was a tall, muscular creature, clothed in a loose-fitting white uniform, seemingly made of wool. It, or rather he, gazed up at the open-mouthed civilians above, and rose to his full height of eight feet, six inches.

A police officer drew his pistol but was quickly subdued by a pair of more rational citizens. Cell phones took photos and videos of the alien man, his eyes a warm violet hue. No one spoke for a long, tense few minutes. And then;

"Are you all right down there?"

Carol Switt had muscled her way to the edge--a shocking feat for a five-foot-four woman who had to contend with the usual drunken New Years' foot traffic. She was a small, blonde, underpaid and overworked nurse from a cardiology ward from Canada, and her first trip to New York had also become her first chance to meet an extraterrestrial.

A patronizing, grating tone from a quote-unquote comedian named Griffin who, along with an exasperated news anchor Cooper, hosted much of the celebration, pointed out the absurdity of trying to talk to an alien as she fought tooth-and-nail to get to the crash site. When the alien spoke, Cooper took his chance to do what most viewers had been wanting to do for years and slug Griffin.

"Yes, I think I'm well." The alien spoke in a booming baritone. "Please inform your compatriot that I've had thirty-nine of your years to learn your language before landing here."

He clambered up the slope of the crater with ease and likely set a world record as the only being to convince the entire New Years' Eve crowd to back away several feet and make an opening. The alien stood before Carol Switt, looking down. In another minute or so the ball would begin to drop, but no one cared to pass it even a cursory glance. The air was still, and aside from the gentle murmuring of distant celebrators only the nurse could work up the courage to say anything.

"I think you'd better have a seat, anyway. Let me have a look at you."

"Very well."

***

It wasn't quite clear what made Verkut so adamant that he be accompanied by Carol Switt for all the important things-to-do that followed. He deemed it important, and she enjoyed the opportunity to see new places, and so the two of them were seen together from the moment the National Guard realized it had no chance of covering the whole thing up to the day the two of them met with the United Nations.

"We want to know what your purpose is here. We want to hear it from you, directly." The Russian ambassador said at the televised-worldwide meeting.

"I left my homeworld fifty earth-years ago, give or take." He answered in perfect Saint Petersburg Russian, "To put it in simple terms, I was bored by the isolated utopia where I lived. There were others with me, whose ennui had nearly driven them mad, and we planned to find a new planet where we could fluorish. We thought we had found it in your world, though we learned of your civilization only after leaving faster-than-light travel.

"We were attacked and our ship was destroyed by a creature that lurks in the interstellar medium--though it is possible it was a pirate vessel, the ship certainly appeared to be a living, organic being. I believe myself to be the only survivor: I fled in a sub-light pod, the one that destroyed your street. I feared it may have killed some pedestrians, but fortunately the repulsor shields were still active."

Carol, standing by his side, found the whole procedure a little boring, and years later Verkut revealed that he did, as well. Questions about FTL travel were asked, and the alien replied that humanity was so near to figuring it out for themselves there was no point in him providing what little he understood about it. He explained where his people could be found, and he assured the assembly that they would make contact peacefully. He answered question after question to the best of his ability but, as the United States government had already found, he really knew quite little about his own people's technology.

"I am just a bored, lonely, shipwrecked man." He said at the conclusion of the proceedings, looking weary after hours of standing and speaking. "If it is permitted, I would like to make my home on your earth. Otherwise, you may place me back in the pod and launch me back into the stars, and I will wake up on some other world in the distant future."

Though there were some objections from the general public, Verkut was told he could stay wherever he pleased. He and Carol were booked on a first-class flight to her home, out on the prairies.

***

Carol is old now, though Verkut seemingly does not age. The two of them live in a small south Alberta town, a few miles from the spaceport where ships just as fast as the one the alien first set out in took off daily. Reticent at first, the populace consider him just another quirky member of their ranks, noting with curiosity the plastic bottles he collects, paints, and then arranges in murals on the driveway. After a decade or so of constant badgering by the media, Carol wrote a memoir of her life before and after meeting Verkut, and the two live off the immense wealth it generated.

They're an odd couple, always possessing a quiet sarcasm that some mistake for hostility when it is really just a way of screening out those who wish to be their friends and those who are simply intrigued by the novelty of the first ET. To further screen those people, Carol says at the beginning of her memoir;

"If all you want is trivial information, I'll answer the most common questions.

"Verkut hates E.T, and so do I. Our favorite sci-fi movie is Alien. He eats the same as you or I, but he never seems to gain any weight. He's agnostic. And, while I don't see how any of you can work up the nerve to ask me or even think it's your business to begin with, let me state for the record that we have a very healthy sex life, thank you very much."