The Interplanetary Visit

The Object from Above

The tall young frenchman stood at the corner of the shopping complex next to the entrance of the public washrooms. Dressed completely in white with white leather shoes, a white coat, a white shirt and milky-white sunglasses, he looked like a spy. A cigarette dangled in his mouth, smoldering, as he tried to blow smoke out from his ears. His nose twitched. The ammonia smell from the lavatory was over-bearing and irritated his nasal senses. Even the burning tobacco smell from his low-quality cigarette could not displace it. The young man slowly straightened himself, and walked away rudely picking his nose as if it hid diamonds. The right side of his coat was completely purple. He had foolishly leaned on the wall that had a big-enough-for-you-to-read sign that read "WET PAINT!" He strolled along the shops looking like a complete fool while picking his nose and putting whatever diamonds into his mouth unaware of the crowd's sneers. He smiled back politely and was more than slightly puzzled when they looked away in disgust.

With his ego acting up, he thought while finishing his diamond mining process, Ah, my handsome and cool looks have finally earned me some recognition. Hmm, I'm too charming to be walking down in such a female dominated place. Those girls must be fighting hard to resist me. Look at them smile at me! I wouldn't want to be stalked by twenty thousand girls... But before that, I better vacuum clean my nose, perhaps a nose job would do. With that, he flicked the last mined glittering "diamond" away.

Nonchalantly, the man tossed his cigarette behind him, expecting the cigarette to fall into the trash can by the escalator he passed.

Unfortunately, his eyes were in their proper places—the sockets, and the cigarette fell onto the floor right before a poodle that later sniffed at the cigarette and scurried away, its nose twitching and in danger of dying from lung cancer, as well as being labeled "Cigarette-Smoking Dog."

The man walked out to the empty and over-charged car park, making his way towards a white convertible of some unknown brand.

"BEEP BEEP BEEEEP!"

He looked around, and seeing no one, he took off his sunglasses and stared straight at it. Folding the sunglasses gently and rubbing the center rim from left to right flipping a microscopic switch, he gently touched the right lens in the center with his index finger.

Immediately, the left lens illuminated the words, "Fingerprint acknowledged!"

A man's face came on the small screen of the left lens.

The man wore sunglasses like him and like him, he had an extremely neat hair-do. It was a slightly older version of the younger guy and clearly in his early 30s.

"Hey, bud," the 30s-year-old man said. "We've got a case.

Suspected pod from Jupiter. It landed right onto an uncharted mysterious island on the Mediterranean. Our computers are calculating the exact co-ordinates of our visitor as we speak."

The man looked around the parking lot again. There was no one except a cockroach that lay squashed somewhere out there. Getting comfortable, he leaned against his car door and softly replied to his friend through his sunglasses, "So, how do we know it's from Jupiter and why are we on this assignment? Is every one of our other colleagues not amongst the living?"

The older man stared back and sarcastically answered, "Hey, buddy, I thought you had more substance in that thing you call a brain. If you had kindly read our handbook from front cover to back cover, and not front cover to front cover, you would have known that it was always deduced that Jovian pods are usually larger than the other pods and their technology, on a more advanced level. We weren't able to detect this little visit until the pod crashed, which probably damaged the pod's stealth ability. Besides, it would be extremely exciting for us to actually make contact with the first Jovian artifact... You do want to be 'Employee of the month' don't you?"