It is Time for Me to Return to my Home Planet

It is Time for Me to Return to my Home Planet

“This world is getting more and more boring, dreary and predictable every day. I think that it is time for me to return to my home planet before I go completely crazy. It couldn’t be any worse there than what we have here. What do you think guys? Should I return? In case anyone of you wonders, I have my means of transportation stored in the back of my garage.”

Steve’s bar mates were silent for a few seconds, and then a couple of them started to laugh. One of them asked him whether he thought the people of his home planet would actually want him back. He might receive a bad reception, as he never buys beer for his mates. That cannot make him popular on any planet.

 Another one of his bar mates, Arthur, replied with “I know a good one that you might like.” This surprised Steve and the others a bit, as Arthur was not usually one for making jokes. In fact, he hardly ever spoke in the bar at all, unless someone asked him a question. He had joined the others at the bar because he worked at the same place as three of them So Steve gave him a nod of the head, and a bit of a smile. Arthur did not even smile back, but Steve didn’t expect him to do so.

The smile soon left Steve’s face, but his friends were still amused by what he had said. Ever since his divorce four months ago he had seemed perpetually unhappy, even in the bar, where he had once been the life of the regular Friday night party. At least this bad attempt at humour seemed like a gesture from the old Steve – joking rather than his more recent sulking, and sneering in silence.

A Strange Visit to Arthur’s House

The bar was about to close for the night. The bartender had given them ‘the look’ indicating that they all should leave. The last two of the bar mates to leave were Steve and Arthur.  Arthur, who made very few such overtures of friendship to any of the others, asked Steve if he wanted to go to his place, to talk about what he had said, and to meet his wife. Steve was not in a mood to be alone just yet, so he responded with a nodding of his head, and followed Arthur out the door of the Toby Jug.

           Not much was said as the two men walked back to Arthur’s place, which was a short ten minute walk away from the bar. Steve just followed Arthur’s steps, as he had never been to the fellow’s place before. No one he knew ever had done so.

           When they arrived at Arthur’s house and he introduced Steve to his wife Agatha.

           Then he said the strangest thing to his visitor. Steve was told that the two of them had actually come from another planet. That was why he was struck by what Steve had said in the bar. Then his hosts both rolled up the sleeves of their shirts. Except for the hand and the wrist, the colour blue shone from both of their arms. His stare was quite obvious. “And you might not want to see our feet. You see, they shine as a bright red. You might need sunglasses.”

           Arthur then told their story of landing on earth in the 1960s. It was kind of a crash landing, disabling their vessel from being able to make a return flight. Fortunately, this landing was not serious enough to harm either one of them physically, only psychologically. They had monitored earth television from the United States and Canada for earth years before their flight (their years were much longer), so they knew quite a bit about the English language and the ways of people living in North America. Both had talked their way into obtaining jobs, so that eventually they could leave the forest in which they first lived, and could afford to rent an apartment and to buy clothes that were less ‘alien looking’ than what they had been wearing. They told the staff of the place where they bought their clothes that they had been filmed in a movie about space travel, a movie that would only be showing in Britain, and wasn’t scheduled to be seen in North America. They rolled up their sleeves to show the ‘blue paint’ that had been applied to their arms, and said that they had been told not to wash it off until all of the filming for the movie had taken place. They decided not to show the staff their feet. They would be too hard to explain. Arthur always wore thick socks to work just to be on the safe side of things. And he never went to the office pool parties.

           Arthur had named himself after English science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, just as his wife Agatha had named herself after Agatha Christie. They had both seen movies based on their stories. They were known in their neighbourhood as ‘the Clarkes’. Their mission had been to investigate the question of whether people from their planet could breathe the air to be found on earth. At the time there was some concern about the state of the atmosphere surrounding their planet. It turned out that there was no need to worry about that. The two travellers never learned this however, as the crash had destroyed their devices for both giving off and receiving radio messages. They just hoped that all was well.

           Arthur said to Steve that he knew the feeling that Steve had expressed about wanting to return to his home planet, even though in his case it was just a metaphor, not an actuality. He had seen Steve’s arms often, as he usually wore shirts with short sleeves or long-sleeved ones rolled up high, so he knew that his bar mate was not from Arthur and Agatha’s planet.

           The Clarkes needed and wanted to have an earth friend that they could talk to openly and to which they could ask important questions about living on the planet Earth. They felt that he would be one who would understand their position best of all the earthlings that they had ever met. They believed that home was not always a birthplace, but could be a feeling, and they and Steve could work towards that feeling together.