The ship landed in an open field about 100 yards from my house. I wasn’t sure what to do. What if they were hostile?
I decided to call the police. Probably a bad idea, I thought. It was 12:30 on a Friday night. They would be getting calls from all the crazies, but I couldn’t just sit there with this huge spaceship sitting there.
“So, Mr. Dion, you say that a spaceship landed near your house?”
I knew, by the tone of his voice that if I persisted, I was going to find myself in the psych unit at St. Francis Hospital.
“Oh, I’m sorry, officer. It must have been a nightmare.”
Maybe they would take off, I thought. There might have been some mechanical problem that had to be repaired. They spotted Earth, found an open field …
There was a knock at my door. I feared it might be the police. After all, my call must have sounded a bit delusional. I opened the door. An alien was standing there. He looked like us, except for long fingers and a small head, smaller even than Sammy Sosa’s. Amazingly, he spoke perfect English.
“We need your help,” he said. “We just stopped here to pick up supplies. Do you have a store nearby that you could take me to?”
“What do you need?”
“Just some toilet paper, potato chips and a few cans of baked beans.”
“You eat that stuff?” I asked.
“Well, not the toilet paper, but we like the chips and my friend Org loves pork and beans.”
“Sure, we can get that stuff at the store down the road.”
“We must hurry, though. When we stopped at Mars, they warned us to be very careful here. They said this was a dangerous place.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sure, we have our problems, but it never occurred to me that we had such a bad reputation on Mars. Heck, I didn’t even know there was any life at all there.
“They actually told you that?” I asked. “What exactly did they say?”
“They said that your leader is a megalo-something; I can’t remember, but it sounded bad. Also, they said there was a good chance your people would use nuclear weapons; that your planet smells bad, your money is almost worthless, you have wars everywhere, and there is a place called Wall Street where stealing is legal.”
“Hey, slow down! We’re not that bad. These Martians must think they know everything.”
“Actually, there’s more. They said that you send garbage into space, that you planned to send nuclear waste as well, that your animals do not like you, that humans kill each other routinely, and your leaders pay for abcdifij with strange women …”
I knew what he meant. They probably didn’t have a translation.
We pulled into the parking lot, and before long, he was at the register, trying to pay for his stuff with scraps of newspaper. I saw the frown on the cashier’s face, and I quickly pulled him away.
“No, no, you need cash. Those pieces of paper are useless.” I guessed that he thought our money was worthless, so why not try newspaper scraps?
“Oh, I get it,” he said, as he waved his hand over the ATM machine. Money started pouring out and didn’t stop until the machine was empty. “This should be enough, right?”
“You can’t do that! It’s stealing.”
“But I thought stealing was allowed on your planet?” Now he looked like he was going to cry.
“No. It’s only OK for people who have a lot of money already. But if you need money, it’s illegal. In fact, the more you need money, the more you are punished for stealing.”
He waved his hand again, and the money disappeared back into the machine. I gave him $20 to pay for the supplies. With the change, he bought a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets. He was unlucky. They were all losers.
“I just don’t understand. Org wins all the time.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. These people were scratch-off addicts. No one was going to believe me. “We need to get out of here,” I said. “I’ll drive you back to your ship.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. Do you have a cellophane?”
It took a few moments, but I figured out what he meant, and handed him my cell phone. He punched in a series of numbers.
“Org? Yes, I remembered the toilet paper, and I got those beans you like. And scratch-offs? Wait … Friend, can you lend me $20 more? I’ll send you cash. Do not worry. I must get these for Org.”
I gave him another $20. He bought the scratch-offs, punched in some more numbers on my phone, and suddenly disappeared, along with my phone.
Strange people, I thought. Who would ever guess that aliens from outer space had a thing for scratch-offs? A week later, I received a plain brown package in the mail. Inside were stacks of hundreds, $10,000 altogether. He kept his word.
I was glad that we never got visits from those Martians. They were arrogant, opinionated and misinformed. If only they had an e-mail address.