An alien in my shed

"We call it The Milky Way," I said. "So how did you get here?" I asked her.

"My ship malfunctioned and I crashed. I'm afraid it incinerated itself, but I managed to get off a distress signal. I shouldn't be stranded here long. I came to study your species. It's rather fortunate we met."

"Well that's good to know. What do you think of us?"

"I don't know yet. I haven't been here long." She hopped onto the chair by the table. Her little legs had some strength, like a cats.

"Well now," I said opening the fridge. "I'll just get out what I have and put it on the table for you." I got out tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, lettuce, carrots, onions, and from the fruit bowl I picked up apples, oranges, plums, and bananas. "Here you go. I don't suppose you need to know what they are. Maybe you have different vegetables and fruits."

"Yes, we don't have the variety here though." She started on a tomato, "mm lovely," she said. She at a banana, skin and all. She pulled a face. "Not so lovely."

"I should have peeled that for you." I smiled at her. She smiled back, When she did that her smile was very wide. Almost up to her small ears. She sniffed and tasted most of the items on the table. She didn't eat much though before she said she'd had enough.

"Thankyou for that. I think we are going to be good friends Tim."

"I think so too. Right well I think the best way for you to get to know us would be on the internet."

"Internet?" She asked. "What's that then?"

"Ah well stay where you are and I'll show you." I said. I got out the laptop and fired it up. "Everything we know is on it." I opened the browser and turned it towards her. "You can type in a query and in a second or two the answer comes up." I said. I chose the first topic 'Great Britain' this is all there is to know of my country. The page filled with text. "When you've read the page you can scroll it down to reveal more."

She grasped the idea readily. Her reading speed was phenomenal. Taking the whole page in just a few seconds. She was glued to the screen for the next hour. I made her some fruit squash, which she sipped occasionally. Pretty soon I realised she now knew more about my country than I did. She asked the odd question so I said that will be on there, showing her how to open another tab. She was there pretty much the rest of the day. I sat and watched for a while, like watching a child explore and find things out. It wasn't long before she started to explore everything else. She was very interested in Einstein, and Newton, and several others. Then she hopped off the chair and walked about a bit, holding her little button nose. "Ok. She said. That was all extremely interesting. I shall give you some of my knowledge later. She smiled at me. Then hopped onto the sofa where I was sitting.

"I show you some television," I said. Switching the tv on.

"Oh we have these," she said. And sat there with some interest. She'd lean forward if anything interesting came on. I put the news on. That caught her attention enormously. "Oh that is sad," she said when a piece on a war came on. "We've come a long way since we fought amongst ourselves."

"I know our wars are so terrible." I said. "But we abhor it, and try to help those affected. Yet people who die in them are held up as heroes."

"That is strange," she said. "And from what I gather, not a lot is achieved through them. We eliminated conflict and now have a police force to ensure peace. No system is fallible of course but ours works. I come from the largest country on my planet. But we have a council, and even the smallest country has equal say."

"We have such a council, but its powers are limited."

"Ah well that's how ours started," she said. "You seem to be well on the way to world peace. You just have to stick with it and iron out your conflicts. The next step for you would be to give your councils more power."