Crashed and Confused - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“Uhh... Mom! Dad! Look; quick!” A teenaged boy shouted as he pointed to a burning streak in the sky. His parents quickly emerged from their house.

“This had better be important!” His father stated. He knew by the tone of his son's voice that it was; otherwise his would never have called them out during the hot part of the day. This made him snippy with irrational fear.

The three of them watched the bright streak as it stopped burning and then crashed into one of their pastures.

“What in the world?!” His mother demanded as they rushed to see what had landed on their property. They were followed by the three younger girls in the family.

Once they reached the crash site, they discovered that it was a large cylinder; larger than a person, but not by much.

“There's a door!” One of the girls exclaimed needlessly as her brother was already opening it.

“There's a man inside,” the teenaged boy announced.

Mother and Father exchanged a concerned glance. “Is he hurt? Is he alive?” The mother asked.

“He's alive, but unconscious. I don't think he's hurt...”

“What should we do with him?” The father asked his wife. She responded with a grave sigh.

“I think that – by law – we are supposed to end his life, but I cannot do such a thing... I say we bring him to the market and let them deal with him. Take a few photos of this so that we can prove he fell from the sky if asked,” the mother ordered.

“Yes mom!” Her children replied, excited to have found something so out of the ordinary on their farm.

Later that evening, the family packed the crash survivor into the bed of their truck, and then drove him to the market in the city a couple hours away. They were thankful and yet worried that he had not yet regained consciousness.

“Are you dropping off an unwanted man, Ma'am?” A male worker asked.

“Yes. He was in a large cylinder that crashed onto our property, and we have no use for him. As you can see, my daughters are all too young still.”

“Understandable,” the worker said as he looked over the three young girls in the backseat of the truck. “Does he have a name,” he asked as he looked over the man in the bed of their truck.

“I'm sure he does, only he hasn't woken up to tell us what it is,” the matron of the family stated a bit acerbically.

“As you say,” the worker murmured with a shrug. He signaled for another worker to come help him. They scanned the unconscious man for an ID chip, and were puzzled when they didn't find one. The second worker pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number. A second later, he handed the phone to the first worker.

“Ma'am, we have an unconscious man being dropped off without an ID chip. The family dropping him off claims he crashed from the sky,” the were explained succinctly.

A bored sounding woman replied with: “Then process him as you would any other man. Meanwhile, I'll send for a technician to come give him an ID chip... Wait... If he fell from the sky, is he even alive?”

“Yes Ma'am.”

“Fine, I'll have our resident healer come examine him for any injuries.” The woman indicated that the conversation was over by hanging up.

Randy woke up a while later to find that one woman was examining his naked body while two men stood by... presumably to be on hand if he woke up and needed to be subdued, Randy supposed.

A second woman seemed to be preparing a few surgical instruments.

“Whoa ladies! I don't feel like I need any surgery. I just need to find some fuel for my ship, and then I need to find a way to get back to it,” Randy held his hands up in a gesture that could mean: “Wait,” or it could mean: “I surrender.”

The two women exchanged glances. “He doesn't even speak our language. I guess he really did fall from the sky,” the healer remarked.

“I think I should be able to program the chip to learn his language so that it can translate ans teach him ours,” the technician said.

“Sounds like a good idea, but is that even possible?” The healer asked.

The technician shrugged. “According to the manual, yes. Apparently a strange man who can't speak our language appears on our planet every few years; just enough that the chip has this feature if necessary.”

“I didn't know that,” the healer remarked with a tone of cool!

Randy strongly wished he could understand what they were saying as he watched one of the women fiddle with one of her pieces of equipment. When she was done, she held a vial under a scanner for a moment. Next, she transferred the contents of the vial into a big needle.

“Chip active and ready for implantation,” the technician announced.

“Would you two please hold him still for us?” The healer asked with beguiling smile. The men complied and Randy felt helpless as they injected him with whatever had been in the vial.

“He's in perfect health, except for a couple of bruises,” the healer informed the workers. “You can probably even put him on the market today, if you wanted. However, I would probably wait until tomorrow or the next day to give him a chance to rest.”

“Yes Ma'am,” the workers chorused.

Go to Chapter 3