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“No, it’s fine,” Alfie said, the strangeness of the meteorite only building his excitement to study it more closely. “You’re the composition expert, so tell me. What’s it made of James?”

“Beats me,” James said irritably, beckoning for two nearby assistants to come over and help with load-in. “What the hell you think I called you for?”

 

 

2

 

ALFIE DOLLIED THE large, latched titanium case through the front double-doors of his slate-gray home, the 201 freeway roaring above and behind him as he weaved the hand truck through the entry and into the carpeted living room, rumbled over the linoleum kitchen floor and slowly lowered the hand truck’s wheels down the basement stairs to his lab, step-by-step, careful not to jostle the docile contents, despite knowing the case’s interior padding held the meteorite firmly in place.

He set the case in the middle of the lab floor, turned on all the lights and ran back up the stairs, nearly bursting with anticipation. He was sure this would be the Big One that finally raised his profile to national, if not global, heights. He imagined the grants pouring in, the book offers and, inevitably, the substantial raise in salary from the university. That’s if they could even keep him, of course! He had, after all, always enjoyed the idea of an ivy league professorship, and there was always MIT. Why not dream big?

Outside, Alfie locked up the Jeep then ran back inside, where he hurriedly closed and bolted the front door. As he flipped the deadbolt he gave a last look through the door’s small window. His front yard, a large half-acre weed-riddled thing surrounded by a low metal fence, and the giant, adjacent vacant dirt lot that served as his only neighbor, were both as empty and quiet as ever. Chastising himself for his paranoia, he turned and strode deliberately for the underground lab.

Midway to the basement stairs, he changed his mind and went through the living room to the glass double-doors leading to the rear of the property. He checked the backyard, found it clear, then locked the sliding doors and pulled the brown woolen curtains closed, robbing the room of light, leaving him in musty darkness.

He went through the rest of the house, pulled every curtain, closed every blind. On his way to the basement, he activated the door alarm, the one he usually only set when traveling.

Just in case.

 

 

ALFIE HAD CONVERTED the basement a few years back, having realized he could get more work done – without prying eyes constantly peering greedily over his shoulder – in the privacy of his own home. He’d installed a reinforced metal door with a load bar lock, put up fluorescent lights throughout, drywalled over the exposed beams and painted it all a stark, clinical white. He’d built in an industrial washing station at one end of the open room, an end-to-end stainless steel countertop along the adjacent wall, mounted cabinetry, and purchased two mortician tables that he’d wheeled together to form a workstation in the center.

It was upon the mortician tables (thoroughly steel-brushed and sanitized once purchased) that he placed the meteorite for inspection.

Alfie checked the two digital cameras mounted inside the lab – one above the counter, one on the opposite wall – and made sure they were recording to a two-terabyte cloud drive the university provided. Satisfied everything was in order, he donned goggles and surgical gloves and approached the foreign object. He shifted the rock – just a bit – so it rested easily on the table, without any wobble, and prepared for testing.

Using his lightest hammer, he chipped a fragment off the side of the dusty black rock, then another, and another. Enough to get started. He put the respective samples in their own enclosed petri dishes, labeled them One, Two and Three. He walked them to the counter where his equipment was set up, including a microscope (on loan from the university), a series of acids and solvents, brushes and fine tools and other refined equipment, some of which was his, most of which he had borrowed and not yet returned.

“One more, I think,” he said, wanting to test a particular oxygen generator mixture on a clean sample. He turned, hammer in hand, back toward the meteorite. And froze.

A thick, wriggling, maggot-like creature, white as a sunken corpse, slick with moisture and peppered with dusty black residue, protruded from a crack in the rock. From the exact spot where he had chipped away.

At first, he assumed the thing must have been somehow attached to the exterior of the rock, something he had missed while packing and pulling it from the crate. Something James missed while taking his measurements and weights and pictures? he thought. Fat chance.

He stepped closer to the meteorite and spun the table slightly on its smooth wheels, wanting a better view of the rock’s surface without having to touch it. He fully expected to see the worm sticking to the side of the strange object.

But it wasn’t.

It was obviously – quite unbelievably – pushing its way outward from inside the vessel.

“Impossible,” Alfie said aloud, his mind already racing for explanations, scientific rationale of how the worm might have been trapped inside the meteorite… possibly trapped under years of sedimentation, perhaps as other materials had slowly built themselves up around the surface, somehow trapping… alive… this creature? Or did its initial heat melt surrounding matter to its core… or maybe something burrowed itself into the rock… laid eggs…

Alfie knew how ridiculous it all was even as he thought it.

Not, however, as ridiculous as the alternative. That the worm had been living inside the rock for, what, five-thousand years? That it had been inside while the thing hurled through space for who knew how long? Impossible! Ludicrous! Nothing could survive, especially something that appeared to be in its larva state… just recently hatched…

Unless.

Unless there were dormant eggs inside the meteorite. Somehow… suspended. And then, perhaps… just perhaps… when supplied with a certain life-giving element… namely oxygen… a trigger.

Alfie bent over, his face less than a foot from where the larva slowly, persistently, pushed itself through a small, almost invisible, crack in the shell. A clear, syrupy residue leaked down the black surface of the rock as the larva continued to thrust its way into the world. Into our world, Alfie thought… and the ramifications of his discovery suddenly exploded in his mind.

His back straightened. Behind the goggles, his eyes went wide. His body had gone a tingly sort of numb all over. He realized, with stunned wonderment, what may have just happened inside the basement of his home.

His home. In his laboratory.

Alien life, he thought dumbly, drunkenly. He smiled, almost laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the potential reality.

“I’ve discovered alien life,” he said out loud, testing the words, the idea. Maybe I have… He looked at the worm once more. Nothing else made sense. He knew it in his heart, in his scientific mind… there was no other possibility.

Like a stretched piece of elastic, his thoughts snapped into place, his body rediscovered its nerve endings, and the whole world glowed with brilliant possibilities. “HOLY SHIT!” he screamed, and spun in a circle, dropped the hammer to the floor, ripped off his goggles and howled at the ceiling, “WOO-HOO!! Alien life, baby!”

He laughed loudly, hysterically, then caught himself, realized he was drooling, breathing heavy, his heart pounding. He wiped his mouth, stared at the worm still extracting itself, his face hurting from idiot grinning. He rubbed his stubbly cheeks.

“Get a grip, Alfie,” he said, realizing there was a mile of testing and analysis before even considering such a wild claim. He would have to be sure. Unequivocally, undeniably, positively sure. If he revealed his finding and was wrong he would be the laughing stock of the scientific community. He would be done, finished. So yes, he must be absolutely sure…

Oh, yeah… he thought, but what IF!

“I’ll be famous,” he said, addressing the visitor, who didn’t seem to care or notice Alfie’s state of pure exaltation. “I’d be the most famous person in the world,” he said, slowly and surely, tasting each syllable as it rolled off his tongue.

“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to calm himself, to slow the rush of blood to his head, the adrenaline-fueled pumping of his heart, and focus as best he could. “First things first,” he said, and took a deep breath. “My little friend, I’m gonna need you to put on your game face.”

Are sens

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