Chapter One -Ross

I constantly edit and revise all my chapters so if you see a mistake or have a sugestion please tell me. I've never had anyone review my work so some feedback would be just awesome! Thanks!

-1-

 

 

~What a wonder. What amazing, beautiful thing, the vast emptiness they call 'space.' How I would love, this very instant, to jump on a spaceship and travel the galaxies. To visit new suns and new solar systems.~ Ross laid back in his lawn chair, folding his arms under his head as he gazed up at the night sky. ~One day,~ he continued to think to himself, ~you will free yourself of this retread position and really be able to learn some new things! One day, Ross ol' boy, you will be traveling the stars.~

It was a clear beautiful clear night. Ross’ favorite part about being there was looking at the stars at night. It was a site that he didn’t where he was from. He brought his jacket more snug around him and zippered it up. With a sigh, Ross decided it was time to work. He groaned like an old man as he leaned down to pick up his notebook, exaggerating the move.

Bruno peeked through the attic window and grinned. The image before him had become very familiar to him in the last year. He looked at Ross, lazing on the lawn chair that he had placed on the roof, gazing up at the stars. Bruno fought to hold back a laugh as Ross made a sound, much like their dear old dad, as he leaned to pick up his notebook. Ross's brother looked up just barely catching site of a shooting star.

Sudden movement and a thump made Bruno look at Ross, who was now sitting straight up staring up into the night sky. He looked entirely confused. Bruno choked back a laugh and yelled, "Shooting star, Ross!"

Ross jumped out of his chair, tripping on his notebook that he had dropped and stumbling slightly before regaining his composure. He looked wearily down the slope of the roof to the ground then turned to glare at his laughing brother. "Bruno! I swear you're too sneaky! Only you could come up so quickly behind me without me noticing."

Bruno shot Ross a grin. If only he knew just how sneaky Bruno could be! "You're just embarrassed I caught you letting your macho image down. With all the stargazing you do, you shouldn't be so surprised to see a shooting star." He walked over to Ross and stooped to pick up the notebook. Opening it, he shook his head. As expected, Ross had been writing in his shorthand again. It was just a series of squiggly lines to Bruno. "Why are you so jumpy anyway?" Bruno inquired as he handed Ross the notebook, who took it, not caring his brother had saw his "shorthand."

"Oh, I guess I'm just.. tired. I'll be heading off to bed before I fall off this roof and break every bone in my body."

"It's eight o'clock, Ross." Bruno crossed his arms as he gave Ross a crooked smile.

"A nap then, Father." Ross snapped back sarcastically as he punched Bruno in the shoulder. "You don't have to keep tabs on me, Bruno. I'm a grown man. More than you at least." Before he could do much more than grin, the other had tackled him, knocking him thru the open window and to the ground. The two men wrestled and laughed as the crashed into boxes and random objects in the attic. The match ended in the usual way, Ross pinning Bruno in a very uncomfortable position.

"Uncle!” Ross twisted Bruno’s arm a little more. “I give!” Bruno thumped the fist of his free arm against the floor. Ross started to whistle. “Get off!" Ross got up quickly and without saying another word.

Bruno sat up after being released just in time to see his brother disappear down the stairs. ~What’s wrong with him?~ Bruno thought as he brushed his pants. ~The man has changed more and more since we moved here and started this business.~ Looking down at a new bruise on his arm, and another two on his leg, Bruno concluded his brother hasn't changed too much. He trotted down the stairs and down the hall. It didn't take much effort to catch up with Ross, who walked with a calm, cool saunter. "Ross, I really wanted to tell you something."

Ross looked up from his notebook. Seeing the seriousness in the other man's face, he nodded, "What is it?"

Bruno leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest as he talked, "You know the French couple that is staying over? Well, not to mean any offense, but that are down right weird!"

Shaking his head, Ross began to walk again, "Bruno, I told you when we started this place. We will encounter some strange people. That what you have to expect from housing out of country tourist. They're worse than visiting Florida!"

Bruno laughed as he remembered their last trip to Florida. He doubted there was anyone there that wasn't a tourist and he knew there wasn't anyone sane there. Walking along side his brother, Bruno continued, "No, Ross. You don't understand. They are weird! Now I admit I don't know much about foreign countries, but I'm quite sure France has refrigerators! They French couple are amazed by ours! Like they never even seen one before. The poor lady is afraid of the ceiling fan, and her husband.. don’t get me started on him. I'm going to have to write a book if we get much more people like this couple and those three from Mexico that we had a few weeks ago."

As they reached Ross's bedroom door, Ross patted Bruno on the back, "If you don't like them, stay out of their way. That’s the good thing about this business. We provide rooms for the foreign vacationers. They learn from us as we learn from them. Then they go home and if we don't what to have anything to do with them, we don't have to." Ross grinned a little at his brother then opened his door to go into his room. "Here is the advice from your wiser older bother.. Deal with it!" He slipped in the door and slammed it before Bruno could take a swing at him.

Bruno narrowed his eyes at the door as he thought about what Ross had said, "Yeah," he called out, "That’s what you said about that girl. That.. Annabelle."

 

 

ROSS

 

            I set my notebook on my desk and opened it. After fumbling around in my backpack for a second I pulled out what seemed to be to the untrained eye, a cell phone. I pressed a few buttons on my communicator.

 As I waited for a response I walked over to the far wall to turn up the heat. My room is my sanctuary. Here I could let loose more. I didn’t have to suffer in this cold earth weather, nor did I have to even speak the language, thanks to the well insulated walls. My communicator let out a beep, "Did you see that, Uncle?" I spoke in my native language into it.

Another voice sounded through the communicator as I put it on the deck. It was my real uncle, Uncle Bob. "I saw you trip on your notebook! That was pretty funny. Though I didn’t think you would be the one bringing it up."

I took a deep breath to keep calm. ~This is your chance to show them what you're down here for, Ross. Don't mess it up!~ I cleared my throat and tried my hardest not to sound upset… or embarrassed. "Uncle Bob, I'm serious. There was a shooting star. You had to of seen it. Why wasn't I told one would be coming tonight?"

There was a brief pause on the other side of the communicator. "A shooting star... Ross there are no schedule landings for tonight. I haven't seen anything on the screens here to indicate any ship around Earth. Are you sure you saw what you saw?"

I narrowed my eyes at the communicator. I know it’s not the poor communicator’s fault but I had to give something a dirty look. "Yes! Why would I not be sure? Bruno even saw it. Something landed tonight."

"Unless there's some other technique that we don't know about yet, there’s only two other galaxies that could enter our section without my noticing. I don’t see why they would turn off their cloaks before landing though. Unless they were in trouble…”

I told Uncle Bob the coordinates and possible positions of the landing spaceship. It was now up him to find the ship. After too many "maybes" "possiblys" and "perhaps", I shut off the communicator. My instructions were to wait until morning when Uncle Bob would contact me with coordinates so we could meet.

            I didn't like all the speculations that came from my communications with my uncle. I didn't like not knowing what was going on. Mostly I didn't like earth. Earth was the most annoying planet to work on. Not hard. Just incredibly annoying.

The only reason I was assigned to this miserable planet, instead of my dream position of pilot, was because I am the youngest recruit ever to the organization. With help from my superior intellect... and my Uncle who happens to be my new boss… I was hired on. All I want to do is to travel outside my own beloved planet and explore on my own. Given that would take me awhile to be freelance, but they could have at least given me a pilot gig! I would even settled for being a co-pilot.

I should start at the beginning. I have time. After all, Sun People don’t do well in the dark. Or the chilly nights.

Let me introduce myself. My chosen Earth name is Ross Thompson. I would tell you my real name but then I would have to kill you.

Sorry, I’ve always walked to say that

Actually, the human tongue is incapable of pronouncing my real name. Same goes for my species, so let’s call me a Sun Person.

I think my origin is apparent by now. I’m from the sun in which the Earth orbits around. Once again, to make it easy on your human brain and tongue we will call it the “Red” Sun.

The Sun People of each solar system find it their responsibility to govern and protect the beings of the planets that orbit them. All but one actually, lets point a finger at what I’ll call the White Sun, which would rather let their planets war than govern them. But that’s another story.

A planet is generally in one of 3 categories. First, there are the uninhabited planets. There are the easiest to be assigned to for obvious reasons. This usually doesn’t actually give much opportunity to do any travelling off the sun and mostly involves making sure no ships make any unscheduled pit stops. The only interesting thing that has ever happened to of the Red Sun’s uninhabited planets is when Jupiter’s female inhabitants tried to dump their males on their moon Ganymede (Earthling name) to keep them for breeding stock.

Secondly, there are the planets that have unintelligent life who have not have had contact with the outer planets. This is the category Earth is in. These planets are also usually an easy assignment. All that is involved is to keep an eye on the science of space travel so the Sun knows when to upgrade them and make contact. We also have to make sure no other space traveling creatures try to bully them. Basically it’s an observation job.

I suspect you can guess the third category, planets who have mastered the art of space travel and have made contact with other beings. In the Red Solar System, Jupiter and Uranus are the only two planets that have achieved this status. Neptune will be joining them in the near future.

Being a secondary planet, Earth should be an easy task, but it turns out to be an especially annoying planet to work on. This is mostly because of the dominate beings of the planet. You guessed it, cockroaches. The little devils.

OK don’t freak out. I’m joking of course. Humans. How can I put this nicely? To use an earthling phrase, humans are too big for their own britches. Just think about it. They have not explored their own world thoroughly. There is so much they are missing out on, yet they insist on taking the effort to go into space. They have been deemed too technology intelligent for their own good and they are coming dangerously close to making contact to the outer worlds. Good for them but unfortunately they do not have the mental capacity to be able to deal with the idea of whole other worlds of superior beings.

For example, if the Red Sun had not interfered the Earthlings would have already discovered the pathetic creatures on the planet they call Mars. Now the Martians are peaceful, about the size of an earth house cat but they have not even thought of the idea of space travel yet. Martians are peaceful because they are scared of each other. They value their own lives so they built fantastic weaponry to defend themselves. Since every Martians has their own weapon but does not want to die by challenging another with a weapon, they do want to challenge each other in fear of their own life. So they turn out to be extremely courteous and peaceful.

So what would the Earthlings have done if they found a Martian? Well, first when the Martians would have came close to the humans to make contact, the human would have simply attacked. It’s the human’s nature. Then they would have captured the Martians and all of it friends and taken them back to Earth to study them. Thereby upsetting the remaining Martians and all it would take is a return trip from the humans for the Martians to realize where they came from and launch a missile like mechanism that would wipe out Earth all together. Bye-bye Earthlings. Sadly, the earth debris would rip through space and slam into the surface of its surrounding planets destroying them also. Bye-bye Martians. Simply put, humans and Martians are both stupid and don’t think of the consequences. At least the Martians don’t mess with creatures that don’t ask for trouble.

Of course even if the Sun decided humans could be allowed to have the knowledge of other worldly beings, they would not let Martians be the first “aliens” they come across. We, the Red Sun People, would introduce ourselves first. This in itself would be a very bad thing. Humans think they have a control on things and they would not appreciate all the things we as Sun People do for them. The poor things would really be upset to learn about the Sun’s dealing within their own planet and governments. After all, I have to get earth money from somewhere. A cleverly positioned Sun Person into their government could dish out all the money I need for a modest living as a hotel owner.

Point being, one of the primary tasks for the Earth division is to make sure the Earthlings do not discover “aliens” before they are ready. Since I am assigned to live on Earth I don’t deal with a lot of the stuff that goes on outside of the atmosphere. When it comes to human space travel, I only go as far as watching the news.

I stay on earth and simply observe. I am one of three Sun People who monitor the Earthlings in close proximity for progress in their mental evolution. We also monitor the skies for unauthorized landing. These are practically unheard of since the Sun can track any ship that comes within our solar system up until it breaks through a planet’s atmosphere.

The hotel that we have set up is innocent enough. The Sun uses it for a place for visiting beings. This could be anything from a visiting VIP to trusted vacationers, or even the innocent rouge alien who the Sun just needs to place.

Annabelle is the later of these. We’ve yet to figure out where she’s from and she doesn’t seem to know either. We believe her memory has been blocked for some reason, either by herself or someone else. She seems innocent, but we have decided to keep a close eye on her. Currently she is my only long term alien tenant.

I know I would get any visiting hot shots. All of the important visitors would be assigned to stay in my co-worker’s hotel just because of his experience level. I really do try my best to be understanding about this, but on the other hand, I really wish they would give me a chance.

Most all of the creature coming through here (that aren’t human) will be rich families or explorers, all here to just experience earth. All visitors are given a quick and general lesson on Earth and its inhabitants and a warning that any visitor that reveals itself, purposely or otherwise, will be banished from the Red Sun’s vicinity and will be denied even passage through the solar system. Trust me, it can be quite an inconvenience to have to go around a Sun’s territory instead of through it.

Of course all this is unknown to Bruno. He thinks I flipped a lid one day and suddenly decided I wanted to own a hotel. Bruno is obviously not my real brother. He’s a human, simply part of an Earth cover-up story. Both of us were adopted by the same Earthling couple. At that time I was in a young teenager costume. Coming in the young form gives a better background for our cover-up.

In short, that is what I do. You’ll figure out the rest as we go along.