The park was built on a flattened hilltop that was once the location of a major historical battle. What this battle was or when it was waged few people knew or cared, much to the irritation of local historians, but this is often the case with life on our little sphere of existence.
The man mused over this as he sat and waited. He had not chosen the hilltop park because of any historical significance but because of the view, which was almost unrestricted in all directions making it hard for anyone to creep up on him. A fact that realistically meant little in the situation he was to find himself.
He sat with a small knapsack wedged between his feet, its top zippered tight and he peered back and forth along the footpath. He looked exactly like the type of man who young mothers would watch and police officers would pay attention to.
Not really the look he was hoping for, though thankfully he was unaware of this.
A shadow fell over him and he squinted over his shoulder and into the light.
A tall man stood over him, his tailored suit was black as midnight and his impassive face was half covered in black sunglasses and all this was topped with a stern looking trilby.
This was obviously another man who thought he was blending in.
“Good evening, Mr Jones…” The tall man stated with lips that barely moved.
“That’s not my name…” The seated man replied, he had pulled the bag from between his feet and was holding it against his skinny chest like a shield.
“For the purpose of this conversation it is Mr Jones; you may call me… Mr Smith.”
Mr Smith manoeuvred around the park bench and sat beside Mr Jones, his movements were economical and birdlike, and this drew attention to his blade-like nose that threatened to cleave the sunglasses in two.
Mr Jones looked around them and frowned; he could easily see in all directions for what seemed like miles.
“Where did you come from?” He almost whispered, but Mr Smith completely ignored him, his face betraying nothing.
“You have something to show me?” Mr Smith asked, again without any noticeable movement of his lips.
Mr Jones hesitated, glancing down to the bag clutched protectively to his chest. His eyes were a little wide, comical and a little theatrical as they darted back and forth as if watching a game of Pong.
“If I wanted to take it Mr Jones I would have done so already.” Mr Smith said, and then after a slight pause he smiled a smile that, one can only assume, was supposed to be disarming and friendly. His too even, too large teeth gleamed, and Jones thought that other man might go for his throat.
Jones hesitated for a moment mesmerised by all that enamel before opening the bag and taking out a small laptop computer. He held it a moment in both hands and reluctantly looked up at the tall man, thankfully the smile, if that’s what it was, had been removed from his face as if cables had been cut. Jones held out the tiny laptop with both hands like a tribute to an ancient king.
Mr Smith took it and peered at it blankly for a moment.
Mr Jones reached out and hit the power button.
Mr Smith looked at the screen for a few moments as it booted. On the desktop was a folder labelled “images” he navigated to it and then tapped a key, a moment later he tapped it again then begins tapping it in quick movements with exact timing, the movement regular and crisp like a metronome.
On the tiny screen a series of photographs flicked by, a sky with clouds rolling by and a strange object caught in them. The object moved closer and closer until details on its silvery hull became increasingly clear. Eventually a porthole like window could be seen, as figures moved back and forth between each frame of film.
“How did you come by these Mr Jones?” Mr Smith asked as he cycled through the images.
“I was doing time lapse photography for an amateur film.” Mr Jones replied.
“Your own film…?”
“No, certainly not…” Mr Jones seemed genuinely upset by the accusation that he might have creative leanings.
“And has the film maker seen these images?” Mr Smith asked.
“No one has seen them.”
For a few more moments Mr Smith clicked through further images.
“How many images is there Mr Jones?” He asked.
“Almost three thousand…”
“How many images of the object Mr Jones…?”
“Nearly all of them…”
Mr Smith frowned slightly and made a quiet noise of irritation that sounded a little like the cluck of a hen. It seemed that this could be taken as an emotional outburst for this man.
He abruptly closed the laptop and passed it back.
“Girgenop..!” Mr Smith grumbled quietly.
” Pardon…?”
“That was clumsy of me, sorry.” Mr Smith replied. “This is an embarrassing situation Mr Jones. Awkward for us and disconcerting for you too, I imagine. But it is good you contacted us.”
“So, what do we do?” Jones asked, shifting nervously.
“I would hope I could… persuade you to part with these photographs… along with the memory of the event…?”
“And if you couldn’t?” Mr Jones asked slowly.
“My colleagues are not as… amenable as I am Mr Jones.”
For a moment Mr Jones sat in silence, his gaze dropping to the laptop, apparently in thought. When his gaze returned to Mr Smith his eyes seem to have hardened, his back straightened, he seemed changed.
“That was used in the wrong context.” Jones said in an uncharacteristically firm voice.
Mr Smith stared at Jones a moment, a slight frown marring his stone like face.
“The word ‘amenable’,” Jones continued, “but, of course, English is our second language, isn’t it?”
Mr Smith opened his mouth to answer and then stopped abruptly with a sharp intake of breath. He looked down and saw a small half disk with two points, like the crescent of a quarter-moon, pressed into the flesh of his stomach
“Don’t worry Mr Smith, for the moment we need you alive.” Jones said and fired the weapon.
In the distance people would say that they saw lightning that day, though there were no clouds in the sky and rain hadn’t fallen in weeks. Anyone in the park might have said the same and swore the lightning had hit somewhere in the park. People closer still might have said that this lightning hit a specific person on a specific bench.
They were all wrong of course; the authorities explained as they talked about swamp gasses, freak atmospheric disturbances and weather balloons, these people saw nothing because there was nothing to see.
Mr Smith would agree with that statement, because Mr Smith wasn’t seeing much of anything either. Even though he had regained consciousness he wasn’t entirely sure that he had done such a thing.
Regain consciousness that was.
The sound around him was muffled and his sight was obscured. He could hear what appeared to be random sounds: the scraping of metal on metal, a heart monitor monitoring two hearts, the shuffling of feet over a metallic surface; but it was all sound recorded from inside a filled bathtub.
He woke in darkness but was soon bathed in light.
A single bright light abruptly glared over him, filling the room with harsh lines filled with nothing but blacks and whites. A spherical object bobbed back and forth over him, almost perfectly round with a small conical protrusion where a chin might be, and Mr Smith knew exactly what was happening to him.
“Good evening, Mr Smith, do you have something to tell me?” Mr Jones voice drifted to him from a speaker somewhere to his right, detached and tinny and Smith realised he was probably in a hermetically sealed room, which didn’t bode well.
“Where am I?” Smith muttered; he knew uselessly.
“We can take what we need from you Mr Smith, if you are not amenable to my suggestions. “The voice drifted to him again, it was artificial and if Mr Smith had emotions, he knew he’d be afraid.
“That was the correct usage of the word “amenable” in case you were wondering.” Mr Jones said, and Smith could hear a smile in his voice without entirely understanding it. One of the things so mystifying about these creatures was this thing they called humour.
“We need the staging ground for your fleet, that’s all Mr Smith, it’s a small thing really. “
Smith slowly shook his head, or tried to; it didn’t move far.
A sigh hissed from the unseen speaker and above him the spherically headed creature produced a strange contraption that glinted in the light. It was shaped like the jaw of a Scarab Beetle, a gleaming chrome horror ending in multiple sharp edges.
“As you wish, Mr Smith… As you wish…” Mr Jones said and with a muffled click the speaker was turned off.
Gloves are smeared in a blue fluid marred with speckles of black as they are stripped of thin fingers and placed in a silver furnace. Mr Smith does not watch this; his eyes are on the report in front of him, scanning through the questions and answers that have each been paired with a collection of biometric responses. He hears someone approaching but doesn’t look up.
“Do you have what we need?” The figure asked.
Mr Jones shakes his head slowly, not expecting the data they required but still frustrated by its absence; he sighs with exasperation. The tall figure of Mr Smith is folded into a long silver bag and sealed; Mr Jones, small and slight of frame, ignores it.
“No… But I almost admire their tenacity.” Mr Jones muttered looking up at the newcomer. His face is as stony as Smith’s now dead gaze. His lips pulled thin in dull anger.
“Though sooner or later they’ll understand…” His thin lips curl into a humourless smile; its edge cold and hard. “That the Earth belongs to The Martians.”
And his eyes glow a sickly iridescent yellow.