As he watched the lights of the airport disappear below, everything from the past flashed in front of his eyes in a few seconds. Michael would never forget that day; the day that changed his life; the day that he lost a dear one; the day that shattered his most profound faith.
Michael and Daniel were on a routine patrol in their allotted sector that day. What was to happen was not routine. They were chatting away happily like they always did; for almost three years now. Michael and Daniel were field agents in the FBI. But they were more than just that; they were the best of buddies, since the academy. They would trust each other with their lives, and jeopardise their own if need be – way beyond the usual degree that other partners would. This duo was famous for surviving as a team in desperate situations in the call of duty.
“Attention all units! Proceed immediately to sector one-seven, repeat one-seven. Be advised, reports of unusual activity are coming in heavy”, the com unit in their vehicle blurted.
“Unusual activity?!” Michael exclaimed.
Daniel had already steered the vehicle off the road, into the desert sand; sector one-seven was nearby, but still a good fifteen minutes by road; this way they reached in five. They knew when they saw – their unusual activity was a meteorite! The reports would have been of UFO-crazy people flooding in calls to the bureau.
There it was – a solid mass of rock, about the size of their car, covered with deep cavities as seen upon approaching closer. Its surface glittered in the desert sun. Just as they were peering into the innumerable cavities, holes more so, they heard other vehicles coming to the site.
“This is Dr. Johnson from the Physics Department, University of Utah”, said one agent as he came near Michael and Daniel.
After brief handshaking, the PhD. in astrophysics began talking animatedly, without anyone asking any explanation in particular.
“This is what we were tracking for so many days!”
“Tracking? Who? You guys knew this was..”
Michael was cut short by Johnson, “For god’s sake yes! We track all possible
NEOs – that’s Near Earth Objects, and if this one is this big here, imagine what it would have been when it was coming!”
Johnson was obviously excited – more like a kid eying his Christmas present, ready to rip the wrapping apart! By now a lot of crowd had gathered around the fallen meteorite. The agents were busy setting up a perimeter of yellow tape around the object of great scientific value.
“Doctor could you please.. slow down a little..”, the third agent who had brought the doctor along spoke out.
But doctor was in no mood; he continued in his child like excitement.
“It’s just that we at the university were busy working on its trajectory, and other details since quite some time. You see, predicting the trajectory is very difficult, even of such a big ass – pardon me – meteorite, simply because it’s not orbiting our sun, and we don’t have much previous data on it.”
“You mean it’s..” Michael was finding this interesting, but was cut short again.
“Yes! It’s extra solar – not from our solar system! By studying its composition we can..”
Just then, there were two loud sounds in rapid succession; seemingly similar to gun shots. All the agents instantly drew their weapons from their holsters and were frantically scanning the crowd for anyone with a gun. They found none. Just then, Michael noticed Daniel had fallen to the ground, holding his chest. He immediately reached for the com unit in his car.
“Officer down, repeat officer down, request immediate medical backup!”
“Copy that, help is on its way.” The woman at the other end responded.
Her voice was as calm as was possible for her to maintain. An “officer down” is the last thing any dispatcher would want to hear, and this was the most unlikely times of all; the unit was not in pursuit of a suspect, nor was it raiding a hideout, nor was it engaged in a gun fight, nothing.
The day after the meteorite crashed, Michael felt a sudden desire to go out there and simply stand at the same place where he lost his dear friend. The place was still marked by a small flag, possibly by local amateur enthusiasts as a potential place to find a small piece of the meteoroid for their personal collection. As Michael stood there, he could feel the cold wind hitting his face. When he turned to head back, he noticed something sparkle in the sand below. He bent down to pick it up. There were two of those; he placed them on his other outstretched palm and looked at them closely. They were strikingly similar to riffle bullets, but only much heavier. The next day he went to his friend in the forensic department to have his opinion on the objects. Once under the microscope, his friend quickly dismissed it as any bullet. He then had it analysed at a more advanced lab for the objects’ material composition, to account for the abnormally high weight. Michael was speechless when his friend told him that the objects he analysed were of no known metals or alloys; their chemical structure was simply rejected by the computer as having absolutely no resemblance to any of the basic chemical structures in its database, which was exhaustive of all known elements!
“Are you telling me this thing is neither natural nor man-made?” Michael was sounding half mad to himself.
“In a word, yes” came the reply from his friend.
Next day, two days after the meteorite crashed, Michael got news that his friend at the forensic department died in a car accident. Someone also left a note in his car, asking him not to poke his nose into matters; else the consequences would be dire.
For the next two years, Michael would remember those two sounds distinctly. Nine minutes after he had made the distressed call, an ambulance arrived. Daniel was taken to a hospital, later shifted to an unknown location, and a month later declared missing. Michael tried hard to get to the root of everything, but someone high up in the bureau had taken care to tie up all loose ends; he had done a good job. The meteorite was shifted within the hour, to a “secure location” for scientific study; or so was told to the public. Desperate for answers, Michael tried his contacts on the inside, but every time, a dead end.
His most profound faith was shattered – his faith in the bureau.
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