Visitors

The young plant had broken through the ground during the night. The caked soil had been pushed and cracked apart by the delicate stalks.

Gerald's brown eyes were focused as he kneeled over them. He chewed on his lip, trying to remember exactly what combination of fertilizer and moisture had worked this time.

"Muffin," came a matronly voice.

With a dented spraycan Gerald carefully misted the tender buds, moistening them against the coming heat of the midday sun.

"Muffin," the voice came again, this time with an edge of warning.

Gerald half turned his head towards the dusty house behind him, but his eyes refused to break from the plant. He smiled from ear to ear, too ecstatic to even voice it.

The cracked window on the second floor slid up and a portly woman poked her head out. Caked and gnarled hair spilled out from beneath the helmet she wore.

"Muffin!" she called again, her voice cracking, "the front door just rang, and I'm in the middle of a raid, can you give them the tour?" she asked, tilting up her visor just enough to peek out from underneath it.

"Sure thing Mary," Gerald called back, biting on his thumbnail happily.

"Don't call me Mary, call me Mom," she threw back, covering her face up again.

"Now you know how I feel about Muffin," he retorted with a grin as he stood up and spun around.

A sink hole appeared beneath his foot, and he came crashing to the ground, whanging his chin against a rock. Undaunted, he picked himself up and shook the dust from his plain brown robes as he ran through the rows of corn, rounding the corner of his eroding house and finally arriving at the front, where an alien family stood waiting impatiently.

"Welcome to the valley of the Great Salt Lake," Gerald announced happily, holding up his arms in the friendliest manner he could.

The daughter blinked at him with her large compound eyes and turned away, folding all six of her arms. The father began making a series of metallic clicking noises that sounded vaguely like a car bumper being scraped against a chalkboard. Realizing his mistake, Gerald reached up behind his ear and turned on his dusty translator.

"...so we came to see it for ourselves," the father finished.

"Well then, let me give you the tour," Gerald offered as he walked down the dirt path towards the barn, the hem of his robe snagging against a nail and tearing a section away. "This is my father's legacy, you know? Four hours a day for twenty-nine years he worked on it. It measures twenty-four feet in diameter and weighs over 34,800 pounds. If you were to unravel it, it would be nearly twenty thousand miles long. That's halfway to the moon and back."

"No, it's not," the daughter spat.

"Be polite, dear," the mother corrected.

Gerald threw open the barn door, the handle breaking off the rotting wood in his grip. The screeching door broke a hinge and stopped half open, revealing the sagging mass within. "Here it is, everyone, the galaxy's biggest ball of twine!"

The family looked it over and blinked with their insect-like eyes. Gerald tried to hide his embarrassment as best he could. Broken strands of twine hung down limply to the ground. In several places, rot had pitted the ball with a mossy coating. Faded hand-made banners and posters clung to the cracked walls behind it.

Gerald forced himself to smile wider and threw open a cabinet, revealing a collection of coffee mugs, foam fingers, and bobble-heads.

"And don't forget to pick up some souvenirs to take back home with you."

The family said nothing, only blinked. The silence was maddening.

Gerald's smile faded.

Then the family erupted with excitement.

"By the gods, have you ever seen anything like it?!" the husband gushed, taking a picture.

"It's amazing," the mother praised, jumping up and down and fluttering her wings.

"I was wrong, this is the best vacation ever," the daughter exclaimed, hugging her parents. "When the girls back home hear about this, they are just going to faint!"

The next few minutes were a flurry of activity; Gerald posed with them for at least a hundred pictures, the daughter insisting that he pose like he was in "one of those old earth boy bands." Then, just as soon as it had started, it was over. The family skipped away, back to their luxurious starcruiser, loaded down with commemorative hats, pendants, t-shirts, and twine-scented air fresheners. The father slapped a bumper sticker onto the back of the ship and waved his insect-like arms before scampering up the boarding ramp. Gerald waved back absentmindedly as he counted the money.

There was a whirr of engines and a whiff of ozone, and the ship ascended skyward, vanishing into a speck of silver in the gray skies above.

Gerald sighed as he shimmied the busted door closed again and walked back over to his house. The rising morning sun silhouetted the sagging structure.

"Now, before you go buying more costumes for your character, keep in mind that those were the only tourists we've had all week," Gerald mentioned as he approached the front of the house. As if she had been lying in wait, the door cracked open and Mary snatched the credit chips out of his hand with her dirty fingernails.

"Mom!" he protested, but the door slammed shut again.

"Sorry, Muffin, but Halloween is coming up, and I need to redecorate the guild hall for the gathering of champions," she explained.

Gerald shook his head and took a moment to study the large rusted nail sticking out of the front door. He took a moment to reach out and touch it tenderly.

"Miss ya, Dad."

Taking a cleansing breath, he got back to the task and walked around the house into the garden. Carefully he went through the green rows of tomato plants, here and there giving one a little squeeze to check its ripeness. Once he had a basket full, he dug up a couple of potatoes with a spade and tossed them in as well.

Making his way inside to the kitchen, he looked atop the stained meal synthesizer, underneath the grimy digital beverage replicator, and behind the rusty fusion-powered pastry printer and found what he was looking for, a cutting board, a stock pot, and a book of matches.

Going back outside, he closed the side door, the screen lining falling out and bonking him on the head. Looking around sheepishly to make sure no one was looking, he balanced the screen back into place so that it appeared functional, and set to work.

Stacking some wood from a nearby pile, he kindled a fire and within a few minutes had a very aromatic tomato soup cooking. As he picked through the spice garden, taking a few leaves of basil and thyme, he glanced back over at the young flower growing and smiled again.

"Father O'theen, you're in for a surprise today."

As the soup neared completion, he pulled out his bike, tightened all the bolts, checked the brakes, and oiled the chain. "Okay, you're gonna be good for me today, aren't cha little lady?" he cooed as he worked. "Yeah, we'll make you nice and happy first."

Once it had cooled a little, he covered the stock pot and gently lowered it into the bike's basket. Placing his foot on one pedal, he kicked off. "Maybe I should name you," he said as he vibrated down the road. "They say it's good luck to give your bike a name. How about Nikki?"

The front wheel instantly snapped off, sending Gerald and the pot crashing down into the mud.

"Should have named you sooner," Gerald coughed as he stood up, his robes covered in mud and soup.

Just then a hovercar sped by, kicking up dust as it went.

"Nice job, Dyson," the green-skinned driver screamed out, tossing his beverage out the window and striking Gerald in the chest.

Gerald wiped his face and looked down at what was now a third kind of stain on his robes. "Well tossed, Caarl, I see your aim is improving," he yelled back pleasantly.