Part One

The Last Evening Party

CHAPTER 1

Earth. Now days

Max was driving a car, effortlessly and with confidence. His left hand was freely laid on the wheel while the right one was on the warm Jennifer’s knee. Max has been in internship in Yale University and has been living in the US for two years. He had a lot of friends among American youths. No surprise, since he had awesome social skills and was almost fluent in American version of English language. He was originally from Ukraine, and to be more precise, he was born and grew up in a small provincial town. He planned to stay for a while in the States. And then return home. However, it was unclear about Jennifer. He liked her and sometimes he wouldn’t mind if their relationship led to marriage. Sure, there are cultural differences but he was adjusting pretty well in American culture and was considered by Americans to be one of the lads, so to speak.
They met on the beach in Miami last year. Jennifer lied in the long chair and was thinking about nothing. It was a hot summer’s day. Suddenly somebody’s shadow obstructed the sun. She looked up. The young and quite handsome guy was smiling in front of her. He just got out of the ocean and water was dripping down along his tanned and attractive body. He kept smiling and held out his hand.
‘Let’s catch the wave’, he said. ‘The water is awesome!’
The surfboard was tied up to his left ankle.
‘I can’t’, answered Jennifer and took his hand.
‘I’ll teach you. It’s easy. Don’t be afraid. You’ll do it! Common!’
Holding hands they got into the water. Since then they were together.
‘The beer was shitty at Michael’s party’, said Jennifer, ‘I still feel sick’.
Max turned the wheel and the car zigzagged. Fortunately, it was a deep night and only few cars passed by them in opposite direction. Nobody followed them either. They were alone.
‘Stop it’, said Jennifer, ‘or you make me fill worse’. She leaned her head back and put her hand out of the window. In such position she spent some more than a few minutes. Then with her closed eyes Jennifer for some reason smiled. Than did it again and finally said: ‘What a pleasure, as if you are touching the wind!’ and added in the changed voice:
‘How do you like Susan?’
Before answering her question Max lit up a cigarette and tried to remember Susan’s face. Susan for him turned into a many faced dragon. And all these dragon’s faces were laughing, talking and shouting the songs. Why it happened to him Max didn’t know but find out the real Susan’s face among them was not an easy thing for him. Maybe Jennifer wasn’t wrong about the beer. Maybe it’s really wasn’t fresh. He puffed out the cloud of cigarette’s smoke, shrugged with his shoulders.
‘Yes, I remember her. Nice girl’.
Satisfied with his answer Jennifer again closed her eyes.
‘Helen Berkley, you’ve danced with her. Do you remember?’
Max remembered but was slow with his answer. Such a sweet heart as Helen was difficult to forget.
He nodded with his head.
‘So,’ slowly went on Jennifer, ‘She told that Susan and Andy had sex together. Andy, you probably know him, Eric’s younger brother.’
‘Whom do I have to remember, Andy or Eric?’ asked Max.
‘Andy’.
‘Yes, I remember him. We studied together. So what happened to him?’
Jennifer put her right hand out of the window.
‘Helen told me they tried to do it in the elevator. Can you imaging it?’
‘Really?’ Max looked at her with curiosity. ‘And what happened to them?’ asked he.
‘I don’t know exactly. I mean, nothing good came out of it. When every thing was ready, the elevator suddenly stopped, the door opened and Andy fell out in the corridor, just right on the old lady which were waiting for the elevator. She, of course at first was very scared and even screamed. But when she saw the little thing which Andy had not time to hid took pleasure in it. In short she was pleased.
Max couldn’t help laughing. It’s looked like Andy. That jerk always gets in some troubles.
‘What about Susan? How she reacted?’ asked Max.
‘Oh, she’s fine. Dragged Andy back inside the elevator and while he was buttoning his pants told him that was enough extreme for her. And that she prefers more common poses and places, even if it doesn’t look like in some Hollywood’s love story’.
‘As I see Andy has a sense of humor’, remarked Max keeping smiling.
Jennifer moved with her shoulder. She didn’t think so.
Two miles they passed in silence. Max drove a car but Jennifer was half asleep. Sometimes she was thinking if her stomach would manage with that quantity of drinks which got inside it not without her help.
“I drank too much. I’ll not be surprise if I become thick. It’s all John’s fault. He persuaded me”, thought Jennifer.
The night was warm and windless as it often happened in the middle of summer. In the dark sky shone the full Moon. In the distance sometimes appeared and again disappeared behind the dark hills the city’s light. The city where moved in after her graduation the university Jennifer and where came Max to pay her a visit. He was a foreigner as was said above but they truly liked each other, just so happened, even planned get married and didn’t like talk much that Max wasn’t a native guy.
Jennifer was a young, smart and pretty girl born in Taxes. Max once paid her a visit and to say frankly he didn’t like Taxes at all. As for him there was too much dust and faded under the summer’s sun grass. He preferred Los Angeles as well as Jennifer where she moved in and where she became a lawyer in some computer company. Max in Los Angeles studied such subject as management. Also he considered himself as a writer. At list he thought so.
Jennifer moved in her seat.
‘Max, stop the car’, asked she. ‘I feel sick. It’s all bad beer’.
The white “BMW” as a ghost keep going on through the night.
Max didn’t stop their car. For him Jennifer’s request didn’t sound convincingly. In Max opinion she just got drunk that’s all.
‘Max, please, stop the car’, asked Jennifer again. ‘I really feel sick and I need go out’.
Max kept driving.
Jennifer got angry at him.
‘Max did you hear me or not? Stop the car?’ demanded she. ‘Don’t be a fool. I really need go out or you want me vomiting just right here?’ Jennifer quickly put her head out of the car’s window.
Max decided that it would be better to obeyed. He knew that arguing with Jennifer as a rule was the completely useless thing. For that one should have a strong nerve and fresh head. Max at that moment had nothing of it. He just wanted get some sleep.
The “BMW” slowed downed and than stopped on the side road.
‘OK, Jenny but will not be long. For our sake there are no too much cars here. And be careful, please, don’t stay long in the bushes. Who knows may be some where around hid the terrorists.’
‘In the bushes’ Jenny slowly opened the door, came out of car. Bushes! She smiled. What nonsense! She even didn’t mean go inside any bushes. She’s not crazy!
‘Dear Lord. How it’s beautiful and warm.’ she stepped away from the car, looked around. There was nobody around: only Max, she and the strange night’s sounds.
Max opened the door from his side put one foot down on the hot road. Jennifer was right. The night was perfect, warm, and smelt so unusual for the townsman.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Max when he saw Jenny walking on the middle of the road.
Saying nothing Jenny came away. In a minute in a slightly, unsteady pace she came back to their car.
‘Somebody could see you’, said Max with a smile on his leaps.
‘Who? There is no body around here. Well, probably you are talking about your imaginary terrorists in the bushes?’ she added ironically.
‘Not only the terrorists. I mean a satellite, in the orbit. Just try to imagine Jenny, the astronauts made pictures of you and now admiring you. I hope you know what I mean.’
Thinking that he says it seriously Jenny for some seconds looked up. The stars! They always attracted her.
‘I wear a long dress. If they exist on real they could see nothing.’ said she, put her head down and looked at Max.
‘But even they did so, I don’t care. I hope the guys will have some fun looking at the totally strange girl into their devices. It’s so bored be there such a long time. I mean in the outer space.’
‘Jenny, that’s enough. Get in a car. It’s too late. Something may happen.’
‘I’m going, going,’ but in spite of her assurance she kept standing beside the car.
‘Jenny, what’s now?’ Max tiredly rubbed his eyes. Demon, when they get home at last? He couldn’t understand what they lost here and why they still here?
Max wanted to tell Jenny what he thinks and even took her hand with the purpose to do it but Jennifer surpassed him. She pulled her hand out and in a voice full of some idiotic amazement said:
‘Max, look at it. What is it? Is it a new road sign or what? As far as I remember it was not there five minute ago. Or I so scattered minded that didn’t noticed it?’
Trying not to loose his calmness Max switched off the engine, again opened the door and came out of car.
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean “where”?’ Jennifer suddenly got angry. ‘It’s on the side road, like every normal road sign. Or you think it should be hang up in the air? But I don’t understand why it shining?’
Max looked at the direction where Jennifer was pointing to him. What he saw surpassed all his expectation. Actually he didn’t expect to see there nothing at all, just may be some bushes or fallen tree. The cigarette which he lit up before fell on the ground. Dropped he it or the cigarette fell down itself Max didn’t remember. He was standing and looking.
Jennifer without stopping kept talking and talking. She even made some jokes something about Disneyland and their intention to place some quantity of their toys on the side road with the purpose to make them not so gloomy at night.
Then she offered to come closer to that unusual playing machine, drop the coin into the slot and see what’ll have happened then. Who know may be they’ll win some price? Jennifer quietly laughed, tucked up her evening gown and tried to step over the small ditch which separated her from the strange thing.
Probably she would do it immediately but Max’s warning cry stopped her for a second. Alcohol slowly evaporates from his blood and Max begun to see every thing in its true light. Straight before them probably in forty yards was placed some strange object. Just right near the withering, funny curved tree, as firstly it was soaked and than came through the drying machine was standing some a rectangular object about six feet high.
“He looks as a play box machine as I am a kettle or a fridge,” suddenly thought Max. “Well, why I called it “He”? Only by chance or it’s really “He” but not “It”. “He” – it’s mean a creature. But if it’s a creature, so it’s mean….” On that point Max forbidden himself keeps thinking on. May be Jennifer was right, it’s really some a trick. Because if she is wrong, well, its looks like they met here some alien or something like that! Max from such thoughts felt himself completely exhausted. But in a few minutes he came to the conclusion that it really was some strange creature but not the object. Why he was so sure about it he didn’t know. Just he knew it. That’s all.
The creature looked like a solid, rectangular slab of dark yellow color. No head, no hand or feet were visible. It was only the solid body, of yellow light covered by some strange black and brown and also sometimes red spots which were slowly drifting on the creature’s body in all direction. At night, in the Prairie it’s looked fantastically.
The creature, Max noticed lately stood on the square platform of gold color which shone with yellow light. In a few moments the unknown creature slowly made a step in their direction. He moved only on his platform but the platform itself moved also covering with its solid surface the ground and some small rocks. In the places of contact at once appeared the deep blue light and rocks began to melt. Max looked at it with his widely opened eyes. He was shocked. At first he thought that it was somebody’s joke but now he was sure that all that was happening with them was on real.
But such assurance didn’t make him feel happy. Of course he how he thought knew what it was but all these looked so unusual that he couldn’t admit it aloud.
Jennifer did it.
‘Max it’s an alien! And we’ve got a contact with him. Or we are going to do it. Do you think it’s good or bad?’ she pointed with her hand little aside. ‘Look, there is his space ship.’
“Well, more likely some kind of hallucination. Probably we’ve got some drags with the beer and as a result we see now what we really see.” thought Max looking at the direction pointed by Jennifer.
The nearest hills, part of highway, their car, the alien and they both suddenly were plunged into the purple semi-darkness. In one hundred yards from that place where Max and Jennifer stopped their car, for their misfortune, on the thin bushes, on real was landing the alien’s space ship. Some other definition Max in his condition simply was unable to choose.
But than he was caught with the saving idea that it may be was not the ship on real at all! And it was not the alien also, because the alien by his sudden appearance broke down the whole every daily routine. Max understood that if he accepts the idea with the real alien it would be mean that he must make some decisions on the subject what they have to do now. But he was not ready for it. He just was tired and wanted to get some sleep. That’s why he caught with both his hand for the idea that Jennifer and he by chance stopped their car just right in the place where some movie company was filming their new science fiction movie about the alien’s invasion on Earth. And now from the bushes come out somebody of studio’s staff and asked them leave the scene because they don’t fit the producer’s screen play, landing of the aliens, for example from the Jupiter in the Taxes’ prairies, with the following annihilation of the nearest humans’ settlements. Then as it often happens almost in all blockbusters will appear some a superhero with his also brave girlfriend and swaying with some iron stick will drive away the unbidden guests. Max so believed in it that didn’t wait for appearance of some imaginary studio guy and aloud called out “Hello”. Nobody answered him. The aliens’ ship still hung in some feet over the cracked ground.
What was she looked like you may be ask? Well, telling the truth Max didn’t know. He before in his short life didn’t meet the aliens’ crafts or ships so often that he could judges of this matter as the specialist. For him the ship was enormously big. It had some four or more hundreds foots in the diameter and the shape of half ellipsis with the two parallel platforms which were stretched near by the basic body of the ship. And a mile or two at full length.
The upper part of the half ellipsis was burning with the purple light. The middle one was reflected by the yellow and blue. The bottom of the craft was absolutely dark. Only from time to time there were appeared some white luminous strips which without any noise drifted on the surface of the ship. The ship hung in the air as the mountain and it seemed that in any minutes she was ready to get down and crushed them so easily as the boots or sleepers does it with the ants or cockroaches.
Jennifer said something.
Max asked her to repeat what she said.
‘What is he doing?’ asked Jennifer quietly. ‘It’s a perfect ending for any party…Aliens…’ She looked so shocked that only slowly shook with her head.
‘I don’t think the morning exercises? It’s look like he calls.’
‘Really? You mean us?’
‘Probably us.’ Max had the feeling that he felt asleep on his feet but forgot to close his eyes.
‘If he calls we’ve got to go.’ seriously said Jennifer and came to the alien who just was finishing his third step.
‘Jenny!’ called out Max following her.
He understood he was making the mistake, may be even fatal but he couldn’t help stop it.
 

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