Lost, Found, and Side Dish of Aliens

Every June, I go to my favorite fishing stream after the school year ends and chill for a week. My wife and two daughters stopped coming with me six years ago when the oldest was a freshman in high school and I couldn’t be happier alone by the creek. Last summer, I made the mistake of bringing both of the girls' boyfriends along, and I will not be making that mistake again, I assure you.

This last year was the most difficult of my twenty-year teaching career, and I had been looking forward to decompressing alone with the fish and wildlife around me since spring break. Either the children are getting smarter or I was getting dumber, and I was stressed. The other possibility was that I was just sick and tired of other people’s kids and their total lack of structured authority.

After nineteen years of teaching eight grade basic algebra, I was moved to AP statistics and I thought I was prepared, but I was not. My wife told me to study after the Fourth of July family get together; however, I rejected her silly notion that I was rusty at simple high school math. She was right eighty percent of the time, and I should have listened, because I paid for it all year long.

I promised myself, and more importantly, her, that I would study the entire summer once the rest of the family went back to their own homes. It was our turn to host the July Fourth family festival, so there was one more stress point added onto my shoulders this summer. I had to cut my fishing trip short, so my wife let me spend some of our secret silver money on fireworks, and I was perfectly fine with only three days of fishing.

Trout Creek fed into the Buffalo Bill Reservoir just outside of Cody and I had spent every year fishing there for over thirty years except for the summer of 2020. I spent that year doing online tutoring and attempting to keep a household of teen daughters from going stir crazy from the shutdowns. I failed miserably, but they made it out of high school and into college in one piece.

After the third day of not catching a single fish, I headed back to the hotel early to rest up for the drive home in the morning. Not catching a fish didn’t matter to me; it was all about the peace and quiet of nature. I had no idea that that same nature was about to call until it did.

As I pulled onto the main road, there was a brilliant flash of light. Not a flash like a nuclear explosion, but the whole area around me increased in light intensity and then faded away. It took twenty-five or thirty seconds for the light to cycle, and my eyes needed time to adjust after it was gone.

When I looked up, a trail of smoke crossed the sky from roughly southeast to northwest right over my head. The sound of an asteroid on a low angle of entry thundered a minute later, shaking the rental car from above. Two minutes later, the shaking of an earthquake tossed the car around the dirt road like a rag doll in a dog's mouth in several waves.

The whole county was freaking out, so it took me an hour to get to my hotel. My key didn’t work, so I went to the office, where the clerk informed me that I was not a registered guest. I figured there was a technical glitch and didn’t think much of it.

Since I had all my stuff with me, I hit the road for Denver and home. When I got home, it wasn’t there. There was literally a different house sitting on my lot and two strange cars in the driveway. At first, I thought I had turned down the wrong block but after checking the address, I was in the right place.

Anxiety filled my sole and I thought I was having a heart attack. I checked the street address once more and sure enough, my home had been replaced or never existed. As I sat at the opposite curb, trying to come to grip with what was happening, the family that lived there came out to their car, and I realized my own family was gone from existence.

I looked around and discovered that the neighborhood was the same but not the same. The houses were different colors than they were when I left, the landscaping was not the same, and the carving of the driveways was unrecognizable. Not that they were different from what I remember, I didn’t even recognize the make and

Was I the same person in the same timeline or someone else? I looked in the rearview mirror and found myself staring back. My heart began to slow and the panic waned.

The only thing I could think of was to look at my driver's license to make sure I was me. Same name, same eyes, same birthday, but a different address in another state. I had another home in my hometown of Boise.

I got a hotel for the night and was noticeably freaking out during the check-in. There was no problem with my credit cards, so I settled down a bit. I had one drink, then two, and then seven and passed out for the night.

The drive to Boise was a disaster and took nearly eighteen hours. The news was reporting on the asteroid impact in Yellowstone and I had completely forgotten about that. The roads were full of emergency crews and people trying to get back home.

Smoke from the forest fires was drifting southeast, thousands of workers were on their way to fight fires, and at least two fractures were producing lava flows. The asteroid hit the edge of the supervolcano's caldera, rupturing the tectonic plate. The scientists were running on and on that we were luck it hit the end and not the center.

GPS found my apartment and I crashed on the couch as soon as I walked in. I was so exhausted that I had sat down, taken off my shoes, and fell over asleep. I didn’t even care that I knew nothing about my apparent home.

The one-bedroom apartment was small and filled to the brim with stuff, but not like a crazy hoarder. It seemed like a lifetime of gathering belongings. I felt weird because my wife was strict on what was allowed in her house and most of this stuff would not have made it through the door.

I began to cry as I turned on my computer to begin searching for my family. Nothing matched her name and birth date. Nothing on any of her family either, so I knew that my daughters were never born.

There were no records of my family on my computer and no pictures in the apartment of anyone other than me. No phone numbers, emails, or texts could be found. The only thing I discovered was a VA disability check in my bank account and a single email for an appointment next week.

The next hour was dedicated to wandering the apartment looking for something familiar. Nothing triggered my memory except for a picture of me with a trout on the line at my favorite fishing spot. Behind it, through the window, the sign for a boob bar captured my attention, and that is when I noticed my stomach rumbling.

“Hey, how was fishing this year?” the young lady at the hostess stand said to me as though she knew me. “We thought you’d be gone for two weeks. Hope you didn’t get caught up in all the crash stuff in Yellowstone.”

“There was a lot of traffic, but I got through it,” I returned. “Had to drive down to Denver and then here. Took me a few days to get home!”

“Three jerk frat boys came in through the side door ten minutes before opening and took your spot at the bar,” she said, then gave them a harsh look. “Next year, when I go to college, there is no way I’m getting involved in all that Greek life crap. Looks like one big drama fest and I’m having to pay for school, so I’m getting the most out of it, and partying isn’t in the plan.”

“Good for you,” I said with a smile. “Someone is a positive influence on you. Just put me in some corner for today.”

My waitress came over with a glass of water with no ice and a salad with ranch dressing as if she knew what I wanted already. Before I could ask her name, she ran off to the back. Ten minutes later, she brought out my “Tuesday Turkey Club and Mac & Cheese” as though I’m a meal by the day kind of predictable person.

I nibbled on the meal as I was unsure what it would do to my stomach. My wife had me on a special diet for the last decade but it seemed that I was on my own as a bachelor in this world. Thinking about her brought a tear to my eye but no one noticed.

There was only enough cash in my pocket to pay for the meal and leave a nice tip for the service. I got the feeling that the staff liked me but I was not sure if it was because I was a familiar regular, tipped well, or something else. After the waitress cleared my table and set the bill down, she sat down and I wasn’t sure what to do.

“I have a problem!” she began and then paused for longer than I was comfortable with. “Remember I told you my father was in hospice and didn’t have long, well, he passed. I’ve got everything after the funeral and his debt was paid; what the hell do I do with it?”

“Rule of three,” I said without thinking, after realizing that I may be the father figure or big brother type for the employees at this place. “Save a third, spend a third on yourself, and use a third for bills.”

She smiled and gave me a hug as I stood up, which made me flush. Getting a hug from a young woman wearing next to nothing was not a normal thing in my other life. I wondered what else was going to be discovered about this new version of me.

When I got home, I went to the computer and to my bank account. Somehow, I knew the login information and was able to view all of my information. From what I saw in the financial records, I was somewhat frugal in spending my VA disability money but not so much in spending the other money I made.

I had a side business as a life coach, under one name, and as a math tutor under another, which made complete sense. That money was outside of my budget and I could spend it on whatever I wanted. It was beginning to seem that some things were the same and I was still me for the most part.

Six weeks went by and I began to adjust to my new life. I was sad and lonely without my wife and children but also feeling a sense of well-being that I didn’t understand. There was a deep hole in my heart; however, I was not unfulfilled with this life.

That is when all hell broke loose! While I was deep in my own pity party, I was completely oblivious to what was going on in the news and in Yellowstone and knew nothing about what had actually happened. It was not an asteroid, like I thought, but an alien ship that had crashed. Now they, being the aliens, were here to collect their ship and help with the cleanup.

What happened next is complex, to say the least. I will only be giving you the summary version of things, so you will have to forgive me. The aliens came bearing gifts of technology in exchange for silver.

The deal was that only private individuals could trade with the aliens for their technology. No corporations, governments, universities, or foundations were able to engage in the Silver Trade Market. The advanced alien technology was only for the average person who happened to have silver coins and bars.

“Would the new version of me have any silver?” I asked the cat. Oh, evidently, this version of me is a cat person. “Yes, I would but where would I keep it?”

I checked the closets, under the bed, and in all the places I would hide valuables but didn’t find anything. There wasn’t a safe or strong box anywhere to be found, so I sat at my desk and looked around the living room until something came to me. The only thing in the apartment that caught my attention was an unusually large pedestal for the cat’s climbing tree.

Sure as heck, I found a small fireproof box inside the pedestal base with silver in it. Two hundred thirty-three ounces to be exact. Enough to purchase a significant amount of technology from the aliens.

I went into the boob bar on Monday as soon as they opened and sat in my regular spot at the bar. One of the waitresses ran over to me and told me she had seven ounces of silver and asked what to do with it. I told her I had a few hundred and was trying to figure that out one out for myself.

“I’d get the hell out of here if I were you at your age and single,” she blurted out. “Oh, I didn’t mean you being single is a bad thing or that you’re old! I mean off this planet to that all-inclusive place they showed on the news, so I’d never have to worry about anything again.”

My old life was beginning to blur more with each passing day. This new life was not fulfilling in the least, so I decided that she was right and it was time for a new life of my own making. The fact that it was on another planet was difficult to accept but the condo I was purchasing was in a resort with no rival on Earth in comfort, facilities, and technological entertainment.

To put things in perspective, a single ounce of silver was worth $800,000 USD in value. That is the amount of money you would expect to pay for advanced technology if it were made on Earth with all the R&D, cost, and profits. Kind of like how a PC in the 1980s was the equivalent of $4,000 in today’s dollars and I could get a laptop for $200 that was ten times more powerful at a minimum.

I purchased a double master suite condo and two studio condos that were inside units across the hall for one hundred and seventy ounces of silver. Then I spent twenty ounces on a medical package and used the remaining forty ounces on a daily entertainment and meal package. It was basically breakfast, lunch, dinner, one hour at the gym, one activity, and one thousand gambling slash spending credits per day for forty years.

Doing the math, that would be $800,000 times forty ounces divided by forty years, divided by three hundred and sixty-five days, for about $2,200 equivalent per day. For reference, the two hundred gambling slash spending credits were approximately a dollar fifty equivalent US dollars each. If I lived past ninety, I would always have basic food, shelter, clothing, and medical care, so I was better off there than on Earth.

Three months later, I found myself standing in front of my new unit on another planet with my wife waiting for me at the door and the girls in the studios across the hall. They had no memory of how they got there, just excited to be there. I could not explain what had happened but I was happy that I was not going to be alone.

It should have bothered me greatly that my wife was not my past wife and my daughters were not my past daughters but it didn’t. As far as I was concerned, the fact I had them was enough. The only lingering question was whether I actually survived the asteroid impact.