This is the first chapter from the first book in GARRETTLANDIA[nation][/nation], who currently resides in the EAST PACIFIC[region][/region]
The Alien and the Human
By: Alfred Wilson
Prologue: xorbel
my name is xorbel, and i live on a planet that you humans may have not heard of yet (since it is probably for military eyes only), hearth. it is a warm planet, an almost exact replica of what you humans may call earth.
yes, I know I’m not human, but i am an exact replica of a human. i’m not green-skinned, or have two antenna eyes, or even one eye. instead, i am pale-skinned, i have two regular eyes, and i have a normal human body. yet, there are two differences. the first diff- erence is that where i live, on hearth, everyone is a copy of someone else on earth, and the second difference is that we are all called dopelganglians instead of humans.
i go to regular school, just as a normal 15-year-old human would, but our education systems are way behind. for example, today in literature, we learned about commas, periods, and other writing tools. we also learned that when you write, you are supposed to capitalize certain letters in sentences. since we’ve only just learned that, i seem to be against that. so, all of my writings are in full lowercase.
now for the weird part. the person on earth that i am copied after is known by the name of brandon mcclain. he too is 15 human years old. i guess that i don’t have to tell you how he looks, since he looks just like me. or is it that i look just like him?
and now our paths will finally cross…
Chapter 1: Brandon
MY NAME is Brandon, and I am a regular human living on the warm, lovely planet that we humans call Earth. I live in Salem, GARRETTLANDIA and let me tell you how much this city has changed so much in the past 50 years. The farms are still here (I live on one so I know this fact), but the city has gotten much larger. So large, in fact, it is about the size of Long Island in New York.
The year is 2072 and I must tell you what a great year it has been. My birthday, March 24th, has passed and my freshman year of high school is almost over.
Now, enough about me; let us get this story started.
Around 6:30 PM on a warm, April Tuesday, I decided to call my girlfriend, Sarah Atkinson. She is the most amazing person I have ever met, well, after my parents of course. She has dark brown hair, and New Zealand grass colored eyes (a dark green color). Sarah is super smart, and I must be the luckiest guy on Earth to be dating her.
She answered on the second ring. “Hey.” She said, speaking with a rushed voice.
“Hi,” I said. “How are you doing on this fine, lovely day?”
“I’m OK, but I am really bored.”
“Do you want to go see a movie?” I asked, hoping she would say yes.
“Yeah sure, you pick the movie. Pick me up at 7:30?”
“That’s fine” YES, I thought.
“I got to go, bye!”
Click, the other line ended.
This movie would be the 21st or the 22nd movie we have seen together. You see, ever since the crappy government finally fixed itself (go Democrats!), and the economy finally mellowed down, the prices for everything fell down. Now, movie tickets only cost 75 cents, so it is not as if the tickets are too expensive to be able to see the movie.
I got in my car, yes I have a car, and since you only have to be 14 to have a fully automatic car, my parents complied into getting one for me. Guess what, it had only cost $150! Isn’t that so cool?
When I arrived at Sarah’s house, I checked the digital watch on the cars steering wheel. The clock read 7:29 PM. I was a minute early. I rang the doorbell outside the house, and Sarah’s father Mr. Atkinson answered the door.
For a first impression, I was very impressed by the way Sarah’s father opened the door and nicely welcomed me into their household. He was about 6 foot 2 inches, and was burly. He was half-bald with three to four inch long, thin strands of brown hair, with the tips of them gray. His beard was neatly cut, almost to the skin and he had thin spectacles on the tip of his nose.
“Good afternoon,” I said. ‘My name is Brandon and I am your daughter’s boyfriend. I am here to pick her up to take her to the movies.”
“ OK,” he said. Then he shouted inside the house, toying with my girlfriend, “Sarah, your boyfriend is here. Hurry up!”
“I’m coming!” Came the angry response from upstairs.
Sarah’s mother, Mrs. Atkinson, then came to the door. She is almost as tall as I am, about 5 foot 7 inches to be exact, and so Sarah must have the dominant trait for tallness. She had a Harvard sweater on and some gray sweatpants.
As she introduced herself to me, she led me through the house to their living room. The Atkinson’s house is very 21st Century, with all the latest technology. They had the 98 inch paper thin TV, which also doubled as a touchscreen to do homework or whatever you would like to do. Their couch was nice too, as I noticed as I sat on it, by request of Mrs. Atkinson. She also asked me if I would like anything to eat before I left, but I declined saying that I was taking Sarah for a quick dinner after the movie (which was true). Then she asked me how I was doing and if I liked the high school I was currently going to.
“I’m fine,” I replied. “School’s okay, but there are some teachers that I am not liking that much.”
“Sarah also says that.” Mrs. Atkinson shared.
“Do you play any sports,” Mr. Atkinson questioned.
“Yes, Mr. Atkinson. I play baseball in the spring and soccer in the fall.” I played soccer for my high school, made the Junior Varsity team, and recently made the Varsity team for baseball. I am the only freshman on the Varsity team, so a lot of the other guys are jealous that they have been bested by a freshman.
Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson kept on asking me question after question, and I started to get antsy in my couch seat. When are you going to come down Sarah, I thought.
Reading my mind, Sarah walked down the stairs, making Mr. Atkinson jump up and start telling me stuff I am not supposed to do with his daughter, and that conversation was weird. But back to Sarah, it was as if she was in a model commercial, with the hair flowing back, and the lips with red color on them. She had a red dress on; yes, it went down to her ankles, and black 1-2 inch heels. Her light brown hair was in a tight ponytail, and her face had a light touch of makeup on it, not as if she needed it anyway.
“Are we going, Brandon,” she asked.
“Uh…yeah, we are.” I quickly said. As I walked towards the front door, with Sarah’s arm linked to mine, I said goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson.
Right before I got to the door, Mr. Atkinson tapped on my shoulder. “Young man, my daughter had better be home by 11:00,” he stated. “Or this will be the last date you will ever go on with Sarah.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
I then went through the doorway feeling the pressure of Sarah’s parents drift away. I closed the door, making sure it did not slam.
“Hurry up, slowpoke,” Sarah said playfully. When I reached the car and opened the doors she asked, “Now, which movie are we going to see on this soon to be starry evening?”
“We are going to see The Encounter, it’s an alien movie. I also heard that it was actually really good.”
Opening the passenger door, I let her into the car. “That’s fine,” she said. I then closed the door and got into the driver side of the car. Setting the coordinates, I started the car and it started to drive.
“It always surprises me how the car is able to do this,” Sarah says, starting a new, interesting conversation. “It seems like there is someone else that is controlling the car.”
“I know,” I said, agreeing. “Like there is someone else in the world using a joystick and driving the car, at the same time they are watching us like a hawk. They are driving this car, and we do not even know whom it is. We might be putting our lives in someone else’s hands.”
The car soon reached the parking lot next to the movie theater, and it parked itself, without hitting anything. Getting out of the car, I checked my wallet to make sure I had the $1.50 we needed to see the movie. Yes, the money was there. I walked to the other side of the car and opened the passenger door to let Sarah out of the car. She took my hand that was reached out, and stood up. “Thank you, Brandon.” She said (such a polite little thing, is she not?)
We walked to the automated machine and I paid for our tickets to the 8:30 showing of the movie we are going to see, so we had some time to waste.
Sarah and I walked into the building and looked at the upcoming movie posters that lined the walls of the building. Here are the stats of the posters:
• 3 animated movies
• 4 mystery/crime related movies
• 1 wild west feature film
• 2 animal documentaries
• 3 Romantic Comedies
• 1 psychological horror film
There aren’t going to be any good movies for a while.
When the big clock on the wall reached 8:25, Sarah and I decided to start moving towards room number 13. Since the theater room was on the other side of the building, we had to speed walk if we wanted to get good seats and be able to see the previews.
We sat towards the middle of the theater, since we know that’s the best place to watch a movie. At exactly 8:30, the previews started to roll. Now I know that there really going to no good movies in about 3 weeks. Looks like this might be the last movie for a while.
The Encounter started really well, with the aliens arriving at Earth. The main lead actress, whose character is Beth Jones, is captured, tested, and tortured by the aliens for unknown reasons. The main lead male actor, whose character is Rick (you never know his last name), is told to rescue Beth, since she holds vital scientific information about high technological weapons that are hundreds of years ahead of their time. On the first band second tries, he fails and barely makes it back to Earth in the process. On the third try, against everyone’s hopes in the audience, he is captured by the aliens and is taken hostage against the United States. Due to some of the aliens’ stupidity, Beth is able to escape, not knowing Rick is on the ship, and manages to destroy part of the ship. When she returns to Earth, however, the US government sends her back to retrieve Rick and to destroy the remainder of the ship, and she is successful. Sadly, Bess is gravely injured and barely survives the ordeal back to Earth. The movie ends with Bess in a hospital with Rick by her side, holding her hand. The heart monitor beeps regularly for a short time, then the beeps start to get longer, more separated as the picture fades away and the credits start to roll.
I think there’s going to be a second movie, a part two for this one.
When the lights turn back on, and most of the people leave the theater (except the elderly), I look over at Sarah. She has tears coming down her cheeks. “Was it good,” I ask.
She sniffs quietly, “Yeah, it was good. But how…how could they have ended the movie like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the heroine, it seems, is dead; so how could they further the film, or make a sequel to this movie. I just think it was poorly ended.”
“Well, they did need a way to end this movie, and to leave it with a cliffhanger. Also, because this movie was so good, the producers may make the sequel telling what happened to Bess and Rick, and what happened to the rest of the alien civilization.” I said, just as an idea. Maybe I should contact the producers and tell them about my idea. Hmmm….
“I guess that is true,” Sarah agrees.
We walk out of the movie theater, holding hands. I checked my watch as I walked out of the main door. It read, 10:18 PM, so Sarah and I had at least 42 minutes to ourselves, and until Sarah had to be back at home.
“Do you want something to eat, Sarah,” I asked as we reached the parking lot.
“Sure.”
“Anywhere you want to go?”
“Um…David’s.”
“Okay,” I said. David’s is a diner near city hall that sells hot dogs like those that they used to have in New York City. You see, the hot dog business failed miserably about 7 years ago, and all of the hot dog restaurants or vendors had to leave the city to find business elsewhere. So, David Mallow, the owner and head chef of the diner, decided to come to the grand city of Salem.
Taking the car, we got to the diner at 10:30, so we had to quickly order and get our food. I ordered a simple hot dog with ketchup, mustard, and relish; while Sarah had ordered the “everything” hot dog.
We got into the car and as the car drove to Sarah’s house, we ate our food. The drive, as the automated GPS on the main screen of the car said, would take at least 15 minutes.
While I ate the last of my hot dog, I looked up at the starry night sky. I noticed that you don’t see the sky real well in the city than on my family’s farm. When you look up to the sky in the cornfield, you see all the light from the stars breaking into the atmosphere. Millions of billions of stars that light up the sky, making pictures that we connect-the-dots. We have done this ever since the Greeks named and identified these so-called constellations.
The car settled to a stop in front of the Atkinson’s driveway, and we both got out of the car. I checked my smartphone for the time, and it read 10:56 PM. We walked to the front door and I rang the doorbell, since the door was locked.
Sarah’s mother answered the door. “Back already,” she said, teasing us, with a hint of sarcasm. “Why it’s nearly 11 o’clock.”
“Mom, please stop.” Sarah said with a tomato red, embarrassed face.
“Ok, Ok.” Mrs. Atkinson surrendered. “I’ll just leave you two alone to say goodbye.” She then, after making sure the door was not locked, closed the door.
“Thanks for taking me to the movies, and for buying me a hot dog.” Sarah said, after checking that the door was closed.
“Aw, it was nothing,” I said. “That was only the 22—”
“22!” Sarah exclaimed. “It’s been 27 movies we’ve seen so far! How have you not been able to keep track of them?” Now the cheeks of her face were red with fury.
Uh, duh. I’m not a girl so I don’t keep track of those things, I thought. However, what I actually said was; “Uh, I was just testing you to see if you actually knew. I have always been keeping track of how many movies we’ve seen.”
Please, please let this work!
“Oh, ok.” Sarah said, buying my lie.
We then leaned in for a kiss, but were stopped short by the sound of Mrs. Atkinson voice. “Everything all right out there, you just got a little quiet.” She called out from behind the door.
“Mother!”
“All right, all right. I’ll leave you two alone. For now…” Mrs. Atkinson giggled while moving away from behind the door, further into her house.
“So where were we? Oh right, our kiss.” Sarah said, leaning on the wall next to the door.
“Um… It’s almost 11, and you need to be back inside your house, right?”
“Yeah, ok. Well, goodbye Brandon. See you tomorrow at school.”
“Bye, have a good night.”
Sarah Atkinson then opened the door, gave a little wave, and walked inside her house. She left me wondering if lying to her was the best thing to do.
