092016c

It's in the Water

It came ashore at Galveston. Why not? The chance of an extraterrestrial impact at sea is 0.7. Given that the ship plunged into the Gulf, the long Texas coast was, if not practically inevitable, right and proper.

Galveston in mid-September is still hot, but the children are gone: school, work, whatever. When Denise, unemployed attorney working on her skin cancer, felt something crawling on her leg, something hard and heavy walking on a vast quantity of tentacles tipped with minute suction cups, she was alone.

She flicked the critter off with the back of her hand and then stuffed her fingers in her mouth to stifle a scream. They were crawling out of the surf by the thousands.

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Without a break in consciousness she was walking towards her car, the little black creatures almost completely covering her body, save for her eyes, nose, and mouth. There were dozens of them inside her swimsuit. She was not repulsed. In fact, it felt kind of good. She unlocked the car and opened all the doors to let the units swarm inside.

The Denise unit kept the windows up and the air conditioner off on her drive into town. This made the small units more comfortable. The castaway accessed memories held by the Denise unit and permitted itselves a growing sense of satisfaction. A native collective named NASA resided nearby and might have the tools to fix the damaged vessel.

The Denise unit fainted from the heat and slumped forward onto the steering wheel. The car left the bridge and plunged into the bay.

No problem. There were plenty of places the "car" could be repaired. The new unit just needed a little physiological modification and it would be fine.