Roswell Invasion, Take II

Mingling with humans at the yearly UFO festival was surprisingly simple for Lupa. Sneaking into the Roswell UFO Museum felt effortless. Like numerous displays, they were practically unnoticed while standing still. Just as their commander had promised, they discovered the replicas that resembled them and morphed into living statues, taking their place.

Following their extensive journey into town, they concealed themselves in plain sight until the museum shut down for the day.

"That bitch almost poked my eye out!"

Lupa turned to glance at Xorn, rubbing his lizard-like head.

"Xorn, when you hibernate, shut your eyes. These creatures believe you are a stuffed representation of hideous otherworldly things."

"If you ask me, it is these creatures who are hideous. No self-respecting Gormian would put foil on their head."

As the streetlights flickered on, Lupa stole a quick glance at him, while the remaining revelers disappeared into the night.

"If my information is correct, they placed the artifact we seek in this building," Lupa said.

"Do we know what it looks like?"

"Mira told me we would recognize it when we saw it. Either way, this place is full of life forms that will not expel us for looking different. Look at those things with bobbling wires stuck to their unevolved skin."

The two stood at the window and watched as those who celebrated the 1947 crash at Roswell were there in full force. Coffee shops and small eateries welcomed them to compensate for the rest of the year's financial shortfall.

Xorn headed for the library. Twisting his elongated neck, his large almond-shaped eyes peered at Lupa. "When I said ‘that bitch,’ I thought you might have given me credit for knowing what they were."

Lupa narrowed her gaze. "Do you believe that is what they are, or did you mean it some other way?”

"What they are," he huffed.

"Ahh, well, those little creatures with yellow heads are called grandkids," she smiled.

Xorn glanced at her while heading to the secret library. "Who would have thought this tiny place would house so much information on life forms from outside this minuscule rock floating in space?" Xorn said.

Lupa pulled out a drawer full of tiny paper cards. "Mira said this place is called a museum. If they knew what they had, they might have destroyed their planet by now."

Xorn sat in a small chair that fits his size and flipped through large, flat stacks of papers with pictures on each page. "These patterns suggest a language, but images don't need translation." He showed her a picture of an image of a giant gorilla climbing a building.

"It has a bitch in his hand," Xorn said.

Lupa shook her head, turning her attention away from the card index file and moving toward the stack of pictures Xorn was inspecting.

"That's a big creature, not a bitch. We should have spent more time learning their linguistic skills." Lupa said.

"Big creature or bitch, look at the thing carrying it. It's amazing there are any of them left."

"Our advanced reconnaissance said nothing about large furry animals carrying bitches up the sides of buildings."

"They dissected our advanced reconnaissance," Lupa snarled.

"Would they be 'bitches’ in the context of naughty?"

"Would you stop with the B_? Never mind. I have seen none of these things while we have taken the place of those stuffed things we put in that small room. It is possible that they didn't kill him but were attempting to save him. We need to find evidence of what they were up to."

“It would be nice if we could understand these strange symbols.”

Lupa continued foraging through the card file while Xorn examined the historical data in picture format.

The library floor was becoming cluttered with index cards, magazines, comic books, and other newspapers recreated from 1947.

"Wow, they have creatures that fly. Look at this bitch with the large squiggle on its chest."

Lupa again tore her attention away from the small cards to see several images of flying creatures. "I think these are pictorial histories. We should take these back to our commander," she said.

Xorn gazed at the towering pile of visual records. He bemoaned the dimensions and quantity of those objects.

"It's a pity we have not developed technology that could somehow capture these images in a format that doesn't use matter."

Lupa stared at him and then glanced around the room at all the intricate pictures from different places. "We should discover this technology while we are here."

Xorn remembered where he had seen them using such devices earlier that day. "Lupa, there was a bastard and a bitch using such know-how today while standing in front of us."

Lupa shot a glance at him. "A what and a what? What is a bastard?"

Xorn smiled as best a lizard-like creature could smile. "Since I was awake with my eyes open, I listened to them as they addressed each other. I can repeat their conversation. C'mon, you old bastard, I'm hungry. Bitch, I paid money to see this, and I am going to enjoy it. Hold your horses."

Lupa shook her head. "You would think that they would address each other differently. If they don't have unique titles, how would they know which bastard was speaking with which bitch? We must be mistaken."

Xorn stopped flipping through the stack of pictures, scratching his head. "There was one person who addressed the other as ‘asshole.’ Do you suppose that is a different breed?"

Lupa shook her head again. "If we get stuck here, we better figure it out. I would hate to confuse an asshole with a bitch," she said.

"Or bastard," Xorn commented.

When morning arrived, the museum was in total disarray. Many of the displays were destroyed. The museum resembled the aftermath of a cyclone.

All of those index cards were strewn throughout the place. The Gormians were completely unaware of humans' high regard for neatness and organization. The once pristine UFO museum resembled a scene from a disaster movie, with everything in chaos and disarray.

Many displays had been disassembled while they searched for the hidden artifact.

The sudden beep of an alarm jolted them back to their hiding spots, where they would wait in hibernation while the hustle and bustle of the business day resumed as usual. They thought they would hide in plain sight and nobody would be the wiser.

After the door opened, normalcy became a distant memory, and everything surpassed the boundaries of the ordinary.

"What the F…" Heather, the curator of the museum, uttered.

After glancing around the building, she called the owner. "Martha, you need to get down here. Some asshole tore this place up last night."

Xorn whispered to Lupa, "There were no assholes here last night, it was just us."

"Let's listen and see if we can figure out this language better." Much like chameleons, the Gormians became statuesque as the Roswell police arrived at the scene.

"Is anything missing?" The investigator asked.

Martha shot a glance at him. "Are you for real?"

He narrowed his eyebrows and chuckled. "Sorry, Martha, I guess I meant, is there anything obviously missing?"

Closing for the day, all the employees showed up to attempt to put things back together. Xorn and Lupa watched in anticipation, their ears perked up, straining to pick up any sound that could potentially divulge the hiding place of the artifact.

The employees left once everything had been restored. Heather was about to store the broom when she stumbled upon two wax figures of the creatures already on the exhibit floor.

"Martha, why are these two in the closet?"

Xorn had fallen asleep, and Lupa's realization of the problem hit her. Martha walked by the display, her high heels tapping against the tile floor, creating a rhythmic echo.

She stopped abruptly at the open door, her heart pounding as she realized that intruders might be among them.

With a gentle tap, Lupa alerted Xorn to the imminent unfolding of events. 

They stood frozen in place until Martha and Heather emerged before them.

"Didn't this one have its eyes open yesterday?" Heather asked.

Xorn realized they were about to be discovered. His eyes flashed open, glaring at the two humans.

There was an audible gasp as the humans became the statues. Lupa also opened her eyes and stared at the two.

"They're Alive," Heather whispered.

Xorn blinked, this time moving his lizard head closer to her face.

"Would you be the bitch or the asshole?"

Both Heather and Martha fainted.

Lupa peered at Xorn, "I guess we will never know. Grab that thing she has been fooling with all day. That technology is like nothing we have. That must be the artifact Mira sent us for."

Two lizard-like creatures emerged from the UFO museum, standing among the yearly visitors to Roswell.

A couple stopped to stare at them when a person with purple antennas protruding from his head said,

"Guys, those costumes are freaking amazing!"

Lupa and Xorn glanced at them, then at the crowd, and began walking among the other UFO nuts toward the ranch where Mira was to meet them. Very few people thought anything of it, as one was peering at the smartphone like all the others parading around Roswell.

"My feet are burning. We should have waited till after dark," Xorn said.

Lupa turned her attention away from the phone while gazing down the street out of town.

"I think our exit was timely. I don't want them attempting medical things on me."

"We still don't know what to call those creatures."

Lupa scratched her head. "That fat one in uniform kept talking about 'perps.' They must be called perps."

"Well, watch out for that big furry creature. It might eat purple people."

"People?"

He glanced at her. "This audio device told everything about this creature that ate purple people."

Maybe they are called, people. Lupa mused.

The two extraterrestrial beings were preceded by their long shadows as they made their way back to the location of their drop-off.

They were captivated by a billboard advertising an insurance company featuring an alien theme.

"Hey Lupa, they have a picture of a Xylar on that device. I have never seen a happy Xylar before."

Lupa gazed at the billboard. "Thankfully, it's not undergoing dissection. This planet is strange. I hope Mira doesn't keep us waiting."

The Gormian empire would have its first smartphone, the museum's most valuable artifact. It represented cutting-edge technology, featuring a 14-megapixel camera after all.

***

Days later, the museum was not the same. The media covered the story, blaming kids dressed as aliens. Martha was still cleaning up after Heather quit.

Officer Danbury came by to check on Martha.

"Chuck, did you find my phone?"

He had a troubled look, causing Martha to smile. "It's just a phone. Don't worry if you can't find it."

He pulled up a map on his phone, showing where the phone originated and where it stopped.

"Cell phones ping different towers to find the best possible signal, and when the signal changes, they switch to the next closest tower."

She nodded as if she understood.

"Are those green dots pings?"

Chuck nodded. "The close-together ones show that the phone was moving slowly. They were probably walking."

Martha examined the dots as they left the town and headed into the desert close to a mountain range. Several pings clustered closely, followed by three widely spaced ones before a final one that seemed to be at forty thousand feet and climbing.

"Helicopter?" Martha asked.

Chuck shook his head. "Nope, I wanted to show this to you before the boys from DC get here. They are taking all this data and all the pictures from your security cameras. Officially, this was vandalism. Between the two of us, we think it was something more."

"Oh shit, another Roswell cover-up."

With a nod, Chuck suggested, "Imagine it like this: the story will inevitably be leaked, and next year's version of the UFO nuts will surpass all expectations."

"You think?"

Chuck laughed. "Hey, maybe the aliens wanted to phone home. Have you ever thought of that?"

Martha laughed for the first time since the invasion of her museum.

"That long-distance bill will be a doozy. They pulled off the heist of the century. Who else flies billions of miles to steal a smartphone?"

He smiled, “Like it or not, Roswell will see a boost in tourism if this information leaks even just a little bit. This might be a blessing in disguise.”

Martha narrowed her eyes while peering into his face. “Are you suggesting I take to social media before the feds get here?”

Chuck's blue eyes pierced hers. “Martha, I would never suggest you break any laws,” he said while nodding.