RILE Submission for Blender #32 picasso/alien encounter/desert The sun was unbearable, and Rickard licked his lips in a feeble attempt to prevent them from cracking and bleeding. The dust storm had swept past three hours before; his rover looked as if someone had meticulously polished it on one side. On the other side, where the paint hadn't been stripped away by the abrasive storm, it looked much the same it had when he came from Durango two nights before. His boots sank into the sand as he walked back towards the dig. James had found the tip of an artifact in sector 23, and had wanted confirmation on course of action. What puzzled him was not the fact that he wanted confirmation except that sector 23 wasn't a crucial excavation point; most of the attention was focused on sectors 10 through 13, where cultural artifacts were found in the recon via radioscopy, and 23 was being investigated merely to outline the main sectors and pick up possible fragments. James was crouched there, low over the one by one square outlined by blue string that was sector 23. Since it was on the perimiter of the main dig, he could walk their safely. Sectors closer to the middle had to be examined with a swingarm system that hung the inspector about a foot off the ground. James peered up at him through his glasses; apparantly some of the sand had scratched them up fairly well. "I found this" James said, pointing to a small green-blue fragment poking out of the hard packed sand and clay surface. "and was wondering how to proceed." Rickard crouched down next to him and ran his bare finger over the edge. "Use the duster and try to expose more. If it looks salvagable, extract it completely. Frankly though, it looks like you're chasing after rock." he smiled, and didn't think anything more of it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Durango was the closest town to the dig on Solaris 12, and although paleo and arco technology had advanced much since the 20th century, it still required someone or something to go and dig it up. Robots were used on occasion, but couldn't make the judgement calls like a veteran fieldsman could. It seemed that paleo men (or women, for that matter) had fairly good job security, at least for what little actual on-site work was done anymore. Government contracts came down occasionally, and of course there was always mineral syndicates that were interested in planetary exploration, but the pay was something less than spectacular. Indeed, it seemed as if the most exciting thing that could happen to archeology would be if things stopped dying and getting covered up. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rickard was sitting inside the rover, sending information gathered from the dig to the satlink that would shoot a burst packet back to New Sojourn where the university was located. He was having trouble getting a carrier at first, and then halfway through the transmission it cut out entirely. He cursed silently to himself, wondering if the satlink was down or out of range. His watch said 13:20, which meant that the satellite should have been nearly directly overhead, and it was the Solaris summer, so he wouldn't be getting any undue radio disturbance from the electrical storms that happened here occasionally in the spring. "What in the hell?" he spat, as the rover grew dark. He glanced outside the window, looking for clouds. Not finding any, he turned his attention back to the transmitter that was automatically attempting to find another carrier. Then he looked out the window again, and at the same time realized the problem and the fact that there were going to be a whole lot more. It was as if the entire planet was being covered in a blanket, a blanket that stretched for as far as the eye could see. Infinitely detailed and covered in a red and black coating, the ship stretched for what seemed like forever, shrouding his surroundings in near darkness. And then it stopped. He tore his eyes away from the world that seemed to be hovering above him, and found he was already outside, tugging on James' shirt in an attempt to drag him back to the rover. He glanced at his partner's face; nothing registered. They were both in total shock, and when he turned his eyes once more to the heavens, everything went black. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next thing he knew, Rickard was sliding down and through and around something, with images flashing all around him. Sound seemed to manifest itself as color, and the colors seemed to dance inside his head and roll out over his eyeball and into space again. Then he was sitting, or on his back, he couldn't tell which, and colors began to fade and three figures managed to move towards him. They looked strange, as if all sides of them were attempting to show at once. Like a picasso painting, where the perspective is skewed. He shut his eyes, turning his head in pain from the images. And then the noises stopped being colors, and one of the figures spoke. "You are disoriented. This is understandable. You have desecrated one of our own. This is not understandable. Explain." the voice sounded strange, flat. Like a dalek. "I.. I have no idea." he mumbled through the haze inside his head. Something forced him to open his eyes, and he turned his head to the side again. The colors were gone, and everything seemed normal. There was a small table illuminated from above, and on it lay a skull. It was like nothing he had ever seen, and blue-green in color. The fragment in sector 23. It must be. "We didn't know what we were digging up.. I'm.. I.." he was confused. The images shifted again, and noise turned into color once more. The picasso figures stepped away, and then everything went black again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The transmitter picked up the carrier after a short stutter, and Rickard glanced back to where James was crouched. Just as the last of the data was transferring, James walked over to the rover. "What's the story?" Rickard asked. "That artifact in sector 23? Here." he handed Rickard a small blue-green stone. "I told you were chasing after rock." he grinned. "Let's pack this up and get back to Durango before dinner." James went and covered the dig with the tarp, and slouched into the seat next to him. As he started the motor, he glanced out the window. "Not a cloud in the sky." he said, and James merely nodded as the two of them drove off across the sand towards home.