First Contact

Roy’s pants were filthy, and these were pants in the British sense, not American. Wearing nothing but his crusty briefs that were once white, back when man first colonised Mars, he made his way through a path carved out of discarded takeaway cartons and empty packaging, finally making it from his bed to his work station.

Once slumped in his chair, which disgustingly also functioned as a toilet, he considered brushing his teeth before logging on, but then noticed it was a Wednesday, and he only brushed his teeth on days starting with ‘T’ or ‘S’, so panic over.

He took a quick smell of the contents of a bottle of milk left on his desk, ignoring the slightly acidic aftertaste which left his mouth all tangy.

It was time to log in, so he got himself comfortable knowing that he would not be moving for the next 8 hours, and clicked the MinerCore icon that took up the entirety of the screen.

He received visual input, the countdown in the top right showing when the hand over would take place. At ten seconds, he took control of the joysticks positioned in each of his armrests and waited.

“All yours, Roy. Eight or Twelve?”

“Thanks, Kumar. Only eight hours tonight, pulling twelves next week. See you at the Christmas party.”

Pleasantries over, Roy shuffled in his seat, trying to sink his massive frame deeper into it, then powered forward.

He was piloting the Arload 2.2, a space drone designed to search for valuable mineral deposits of other planets and moons within the Solar System.

Currently, he was on his way to Titan, and in five hours he was scheduled to enter through its atmosphere, a first for mankind.

Two years ago, he had been a bus driver who got sacked for eating snacks whilst driving and nearly having accidents. His ballooning weight and increasing difficulty getting into the driver’s cab was also an issue, but not one that was officially mentioned.

Roy fell into a slump. One day, he saw an advert for drone operatives. After some impressive bullshit using photoshop and some impressive bullshit using his mind, he had a pilot’s cv with photos of him in the cockpit to prove it.

He thought back to that day as he sat in his chair, thinking how easy his job was compared to how much he got paid. All he had to do was keep pushing forward and follow the arrow on the screen. It was a job that needed only one hand, so Roy made good use of his other, either using it to call a food delivery, or eat food, or wipe his arse after making use of his seat’s special feature.

Two hours away from Titan, Roy got a call. “Hello?”

“Roy, how’s it flying?” It was his friend Jacob on the other end.

“Heading for Saturn now, can see her up ahead.”

“Cool, man. What’s she look like?” Jacob asked.

“Just round with some rings.”

“Cool, so listen. Do you wanna come to Groucho’s tonight? I heard they’ve got a two for one on.”

Roy only left the house on days beginning with ‘W’, so he was okay there. “Sure, see you there at seven?”

“Seven it is. Ciao for now.”

Roy had started salivating at the thought of eating at Groucho’s, even though it was still hours away from becoming a reality. He stared at the beauty of space before him, willfully ignorant of the majesty that he was fortunate enough to witness. The saliva made its way down his chin, channeling through his beard before dripping on his bare torso and forming a gross puddle in his belly button, which up until that point had been a safe haven for many pieces of fluff, but were now left to soak in this man’s mix of saliva and sweat.

Had he chosen to truly see, he would have beheld Saturn in all its glory, the planet only surpassed by its rings, layer upon layer of coffee colours, moving ever so slowly around and around. Or the many moons that danced before him, nor Jupiter, a speck that slowly became a smudge. And he never used the rear-facing camera to look back at Earth.

He was watching what he considered to be a cult classic, Pixels 3, for the fourth time when he entered Titan’s atmosphere and didn’t register that the onboard sensors had detected a large deposit of a titanium alloy, and was plotting a path, with ETA in 20 minutes, which was coincidentally the same time Roy’s shift finished as well as the end of Pixels 3, which Roy had timed to finish at the same time as him.

For the first time Roy noticed mountains in the distance, and the planet’s harsh and hostile terrain. He paused his movie to take a quick look, before engaging autopilot and hitting play.

Five minutes before the end of his shift, the stranded aircraft came into sight, a tiny beacon shimmering in Saturn’s reflection.

Three minutes before the end, had he cared to notice, the drone flew over a scatter of connected pod like structures.

One minute before the end of his shift, and now the stranded aircraft took up all of the screen, a logo clearly visible on the tail wing.

Roy was too busy waiting for the post credit scene to come on, thus timing perfectly the end of his shift. He didn’t hear the onboard computer:

Scanning, logo…my calculations show that the origin of this aircraft is Earth, before the continents had completely separated and formed. The aircraft is human in origin, circa 100 million years old, roughly from the Cretaceous Period.

The end credit scene finished at the same time as the aircraft opened, and a strangely looking human stepped out waving in his spacesuit.

Roy checked it was time to finish, turned off his screen without so much as a glance, and went to take his weekly shower in preparation for Groucho’s.