Alien Abductions (2) : Destiny City’s had an overwhelming amount of reports of strange lights in the sky. No one can get anything verifiable on camera, and the few videos that have been circulating seem like they could have easily been doctored. There’s been a strange uptick in reports of alien abductions, but the City can’t seem to verify anything, and at this point in time it seems like it’s just people looking for attention. However, there’s a temporary ban on civilian-owned drones until this whole thing clears up.
CLICK.
Harvey wrinkled his nose at the TV. It was an older model from back in the heyday of CRT screens and monitors, but it still functioned and it was the perfect size to fit in a specific corner of his room. For the moment he was putting off buying a new one until some kind of holiday sale. The next one coming up was Black Friday so he was hopeful, but not too hopeful. For all he knew between now and then something more pressing might come up and take some or all of the budget for the TV.
Which he was fine with. It happened all the time. He wasn’t rich, nor did he pretend to be. He did his best to try to live well within his means, but s**t had a knack for happening whenever he wanted to try and treat himself to something new. Which, again, was fine. He was used to it by now and always considered it a pleasant surprise when he was able to afford something he’d been hoping to get but putting off out of necessity.
“Aliens, right,” he scoffed as he got up to go make himself a bowl of cereal.
The man emerged from his freezer-bedroom, hair up in its usual messy bun. It was getting a bit longer than he would have liked, however much like his need for a new TV it wasn’t quite so long as to be an immediately pressing issue that he had to deal with as soon as possible. No, he could get away with it until the next paycheck, maybe even the one after, before finally going in for a haircut.
“People need to find other ways to curb boredom.”
With his roommate at work he was essentially talking to himself, but that was more a habit developed at work. He had a tendency to murmur to himself, and it often led to a breakthrough of some kind that would push him through to the next part of his project. So he went on.
“Drones in the sky inspecting the strange lights.” He snorted again as he made his bowl, then disappeared back into his room.
---
Of course, being told not to do something was, to him, just begging him to do exactly that thing, so he set up his drone in the dead of night. As someone who consumed far too much caffeine he had a tendency to be up at all kinds of weird hours, so here he was. Breaking the law, apparently. If his mother knew she’d probably give him an earful, and then stick around to watch him once he had the drone up and running with a live video feed. The man smiled at the thought of his mother, quickly pulled his phone out to set a reminder to give her a call tomorrow to see how she was doing, and then went back to his drone setup.
Once he was done he sat back in the beach chair he’d set up, cooler full of energy drinks and all, and took a closer look at his drone. It was on the older side, sure, and it had definitely seen better days, but it still worked perfectly fine. Despite all of the imperfections on the paint, the various nicks and scratches and scrapes, it still served its purpose, and as far as he was concerned it served it well. Once he decided that it was good to go, he set it down, picked up the controllers, and sent it off to see if he’d be able to glimpse something all the other DC locals could not. He kept his eye on it for as long as possible, but it was a black drone so it disappeared into the darkness rather quickly. He eased back into his chair, popped open one of the energy drinks and took a long swig, all the while keeping his eyes on the video feed.
Several minutes passed with nothing in sight. He kept it up though, maneuvering about the sky without any lighting to indicate its presence. It was a double edged sword—on the one hand something might hit him, on the other he might get caught and fined for blatantly ignoring the ban on civilian drones. He felt far more comfortable with the former so he carried on, taking a huge gulp from his most recently opened energy drink.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, an hour, two hours.
He was well into his third energy drink when he thought he finally saw something. He wasn’t sure what but he narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer to the screen. Closer… Closer…
THUNK.
He scrunched his brows at the sound that came through the speakers.
THUNK. THUNK.
His eyes widened as he realized what was possibly happening and, in a panic, he went back to the controller as fast as possible. Or tried to, anyway. Between the energy drinks and his believing he’d seen something he fumbled the damn thing and it fell with a dull thud right onto his damn ********!” The exclamation was a whole lot louder in the middle of the night, not that he cared.
Something whizzed past his face and crashed into a nearby bush. “Shut up!”
“You shut up!” he yelled back at the night sky before stooping to pick up the controller. At about the exact same time that he straightened up, though, the video was showing the sky getting farther and farther away until finally there was the vague sound of something crashing, and then the video cut.
He dropped the controller again.
His drone was gone.
Harvey looked up at the night sky again, sighing deeply as he quietly cursed the damned news. He could hardly believe it. He’d only done this to spite the rule about civilian drones. He didn’t actually believe there were aliens. Well...he knew a little bit of what was actually out there, but they weren’t aliens. And in the midst of mourning the loss of his drone and regretting his decision to even come out to try and find the reported “strange lights in the sky,” he felt something hard hit him smack in the face, sending him toppling over his beach chair.
“You shut up!”
1051 (gdocs)
