Mayday, Mayday!

It was a nice June day, so of course everyone decided that it would be a good day for a day at the park. Mr. Genie sat in a lawn chair on a picnic blanket, eating a sandwich and watching Genie and Kiren play volleyball. Kiren was cheating physics a little bit, which is not that hard when you have telekinesis. Genie was also cheating so it was fair all around.

They hadn’t hesitated to invite everyone, and Kaizen was ready for a day like this. He and JJ sat under a tree next to a stack of board games, with them actively playing a game of chess. JJ was actually trying not to cheat, considering the fact he could see slightly into the future when he wanted to. Kaizen doesn’t have any ability, so it would be hugely unfair. Kaizen was currently beating JJ, so it was really tempting him.

“Nothing like a day out, right?” Mr. Genie said to no one in particular.

“You bet!” Genie responded before spiking the ball over the net.

“You guys seriously don’t get out enough in my opinion,” Kiren said nonchalantly, hitting the ball over the net before it could hit the ground. With one final move, Kaizen held his arms up in a victory pose.

“Checkmate!” Kaizen exclaimed, clearly very proud of himself.

“You wouldn’t have won if I used my ability!” JJ said, feigning anger.

“Well that would have been illegal according to the rules of Chess!” Kaizen said, pointing at him with a sly wink. Kaizen looked down at the chess board to clean it up, when he noticed something. They were vibrating slightly. Soon the tremble of the earth beneath them became noticeable, and pretty much everyone stopped what they were doing.

“An earthquake!?” Genie yelled.

“No, look up.” Mr. Genie said, pointing to something up in the sky.

It looked like a very small plane was heading towards them at a very rapid pace. Everyone began scrambling away from where they were to get away from the approaching object. Finally, with one final CRAAAASHHH, the ground stopped rumbling. Everyone looked in shock at the object that just crashed right in front of them.

Genie approached the jet-looking thing cautiously. After he got right up close to the side, he gave it a light tap. The top opened suddenly, revealing a cockpit with a chair and some very odd controls. A slumped figure sat in the chair, protected from getting flung towards the front by a harness. Genie stepped into the cockpit carefully, trying not to hurt himself in the process, with Mr. Genie following closely behind.

Genie pulled a light out of thin air and turned it on. Approaching the body, he could see it was clearly that of an Anthris, with fox-like qualities. The strange thing was, however, that the figure’s face seemed to be obscured by some kind of screen, and much of their body was covered in metal.

Genie touched the fur of their neck, checking for a pulse. Genie could make out a heartbeat beneath his fingers.

“Well they are alive,” Genie said, taking a step back.

“That’s good,” Mr. Genie said, nodding.

“What do you think we should do?” Genie asked, looking at Mr. Genie.

“Try and wake them up I think.” Mr. Genie said. Genie nodded and carefully approached the figure again.

Genie shook them lightly, and they sprung to life. Genie jumped back in surprise, not anticipating that working. The screen on the person’s face had turned on, displaying a shocked and confused expression.

“Where… where am I?” the figure said in a bit of a dazed voice. Their voice sounded like it was being passed through some sort of effect, with it sounding mechanized and synthesized.

“Earth?” Genie responded, a little confused. “What’s your name?”

“Name? Like a civilian name?” the figure said, looking at Genie with a look of bewilderment.

“You know, what you’re called,” Mr. Genie cut in.

“Low ranking military units lack permission to have a civilian name. My superiors tend to call me Unit-2968.” 2968 replied, looking at Genie and Mr. Genie as if this was common knowledge.

“Military? Which military?” Genie said, taking another step back.

“I lack permission to divulge any more information to you or anyone else who is of any other planet,”

“You know what? Maybe we should continue this conversation outside of the crashed ship.” Mr. Genie said while pointing at the outside of the ship, a bored expression on his face.

…

Unit-2968 sat in his ship, bored. They were on their way to some far off planet, required to go there due to a civil conflict happening. Although he remembered nothing before his life in the military, he really regretted joining the military. Not only was it rigorous and dangerous at times, but the majority of the time it was just downright boring. Flying this way and that, not really doing much of anything except escorting important people and negotiating. As a low ranking officer, he just had to stand at the ready while other people talked.

And although people like him weren’t supposed to, he had picked himself a name. Not only that, in his downtime he had found a fascination with a particular planet in the Milky Way galaxy: Earth. As far as he and anyone else knew, it was the only planet in the whole galaxy that had intelligent life. They weren’t spacefaring, so the rulers of Foltair just decided to leave them be.

One day, he actually found a way to patch into their internet. Using some technical wizardry, he found a way to connect to the Earthen internet through his own internal computer system. All it meant for him was porting their protocols to his system. In doing so, he discovered what he wanted his name to be: Code 200.

It was the perfect name for someone like him, being the response code for “OK” in internet browsing. He never told anyone though, out of fear of being reported to the commander for it. He technically wasn’t supposed to have a name, after all.

He snapped back to reality, his hands moving on the controls on autopilot. Looking out his ship’s window, he realized that they were passing Earth on this trip. His face immediately lit up. This was his chance to escape this cursed existence. Considering his options, C2 looked around at the controls and dashboard, looking for something to sabotage.

He looked at the fuel gauge, which was looking rather low. C2 figured if he cut the fuel, it would be reasonable for him to say that he ran out of fuel. If they asked why he wasn’t saying anything on comms about going down, he could say that his communications panel wasn’t working.

With a final bit of resolve, C2 made sure he had secured himself in his safety harnesses, and cut the fuel. The ship, still affected by the forces of gravity, began to float towards the bigged nearby body, which just so happened to be the Earth. As he began to fall faster and faster, C2 closed his eyes. No one was saying anything over the communications that pertained to him. C2 guessed that no one had noticed him because there was no reason to notice him. He was a rather low rank, what reason would they have for caring why he broke formation?

When C2 opened his eyes again, the ship around him was seemingly on fire. It wasn’t melting however, the ships were too protected for that. His descent rapidly continued, with the outcome being rather obvious. C2 saw that he was going to crash in the middle of a town, and deliberately tried to control his dive to taper into a non-occupied space. The ground came closer and closer, and with one final CRAAAASHHH, everything went dark.

…

C2 was sitting in Genie’s dining room now. He had eased up about his name and where he was from once he was out of the ship. C2 wanted to make sure he couldn’t be recorded by some hidden device and reported to the royals. It was very unlikely that a device like that was stored in the ship, but he could never be sure.

“So… what now?” Genie asked him. This brought C2 out of his thoughts.

“I think I want to live here,” C2 responded a little sheepishly. “I don’t want to go back. I didn’t really like the way things were going.”

“I’m guessing the military wasn’t your first choice of job,” Genie said. C2 sat for a moment, thinking that over.

“Actually… I’m not entirely sure about that,” C2 sighed dejectedly, resting his hands on his visor. “I don’t remember anything before the military, before I looked like this.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you always had a screen for a face,” Genie said a little teasingly. C2 chuckled a little.

“I certainly don’t think so,” C2 said, a sad smile climbing up his face.

“Well, why don’t we give you a place to live?” Genie asked, a bright smile on his face. He stood, offering his hand to help C2 up.

“We have all the time in the world, after all.”