***

The silver saucer spins out of control through the cold black of space. As it enters the atmosphere, a red glow surrounds the ship, nearly obscuring it from sight. The impact throws debris into the air for miles, and carves a winding path, gouging the earth deep enough to hit the water table. The ship buries itself, and the ice and snow of passing ages cover and re-cover the alien craft, until its presence is undetectable.

The white ness of millenia of glaciers is broken by the whipping slice of helicopter blades. The chopper pulls up through the storm and sets down in a large field, 50 yards from a silo. A man with sungoggles, a leather bomber with furred hood, a thick beard, and a sombrero steps onto the snow. You follow him out, as does a Merlin Olsen-lookalike and a strungout junkie radio man. Together, the three of you trudge to a barren cornfield, crunching your way through the thigh-deep snow.

The football-star/coffee-salesman rambles on about finding the video footage of the last time, and you offer information about where they might find the makings of napalm. You’ve got a good bet that the Fed Ex or UPS will have those biodegradable packing peanuts that melt in liquid. They taste like unpowdered cheese poofs, or stale popcorn, and stick to walls and boxes when you lick them. Those and some kerosene will make a nice sticky incendiary wad. The junkie talks of nothing but Nefertiti, and how she was really the pharaoh Se______,. You and the man in sombrero take out a length of rope, and start walking in opposite directions.

Soon your party has mapped out a vague loop, somewhat saucer-shaped. As you start to dig inside the boundary of this loop, you realize the videos in your living room are due, and if you don’t get them back before noon, you’ll lose your free rental tokens. Someone shouts across the field that you’re looking really good since the chemotherapy, and you wonder why you stopped the treatments.

***

“Damn!”

Ethan retrieved the receiver from the floor, dragging by the cord until he had a grip. He held the phone to his ear and croaked a hello.

“Please hold the line for a very important message from your bankcard services…”

It took him three tries to return the handset to the cradle. Through fuzzy vision, he saw “8:02,” moaned softly, rolled over and sank back into sleep