Echo's Arc

Chapter 9 of 9

Echo woke before sunrise and walked outside to check the lights they'd strung the night before. The sky was gray and quiet. He held his communicator in one hand and watched the path that curved toward the entrance sign. A man was already there, too early, with a leather briefcase tucked under his arm and a notebook open in his hand. He looked up and saw Echo. He smiled the kind of smile that wasn't really a smile, and started walking over. The man set up a camera on metal legs near the stone plaque that read ECHO WAS HERE. He pointed at the plaque and laughed softly. Then he pulled a charred rock from his briefcase. Cracks of orange ran through it like cooled lava. "Found this in a field three miles out," he said. "Doesn't match any meteor on record. Want to tell me what really crashed here?" Echo stared at the fragment. It was a piece of his ship. Echo took off his sunglasses. He looked straight at the man and let him see the green skin, the wide black eyes, the three fingers on each hand. "Yes," Echo said, slow and careful. "Mine. I crash. I stay." The man's pen stopped moving. His mouth opened. He stepped back once, then twice, and bumped into the tripod. The camera tipped and caught itself. He did not laugh. He did not ask for a selfie. His hands were shaking. The man whispered, "You're real." Then he packed his notebook fast and walked away from the plaque, leaving the spaceship fragment on the ground at Echo's feet. Echo picked it up. It was still warm somehow, after all this time. He had told the truth, and someone had finally believed him. But the journalist was gone now, hurrying toward the road with his story, and the event was still twelve hours away.