American dream

“The sky was deep blue. A blue that hurt to look directly into, a blue that threatened to swallow you whole.”

So began Isabel’s tale.”

Wrapped in a light woolen blanket, she sat on a high hill, beneath a tall oak watching her great-grandsons flying their kite. Their shouts and laughter lifting the rainbow triangle higher and higher into another deep blue sky.

A cellphone lay on the grass next to her as she spun her story. Colin Everett scribbled furiously in a notebook, never comfortable relying merely on his voice recordings. His grandmother Roxie would be pleased he still remembered the shorthand she taught him as a child. The skill had served him well as a journalist.

The last of her kind, Isabel was the sole surviving crew member of a Roswell crash landing. Pieced back together at an isolated research lab in the New Mexico desert, Isabel had an alien physiology, but human prosthetics.

It was difficult to estimate Isabel’s age at the time of the crash, but she claimed a generous guess would make her around 104 earth years.

“Do you mind if I call you Isabel?” Colin said.

“Perfectly all right,” she said. “You wouldn’t be able to pronounce my birth name anyway.”

“I’m going to get this question out of the way first,” Colin said, being uncomfortable enough to blush. “How? I mean… you have kids… with an indigenous person.”

“Haven’t you watched ‘Ancient Aliens’?” Isabel said. “We’re all created from the same star-dust, we are all homologous. My Siolara progenitors seeded your planet by mating with your earth women.”

“Seriously?” Colin’s pen hovered over the notebook.

“Of course not!” Isabel laughed until she was overcome with a coughing fit. “Are you daft? Ever hear of adoption?”

While Isabel collected herself, Colin flipped through his notes for another question.

“What happened? What caused your ship to crash?” Colin leaned in, eager for details of some kind of catastrophic crash, perhaps sabotage.

“The pilot was blind drunk,” she said. “Downed an entire bottle of Siolaran brandy, He was totally shit-faced. Only reason I survived was because I was tanked too. Slid right out of my com seat. I was as limp as a dishrag. My injuries were from your military guys pulling me out of the wreckage.”

“Wow, really?” Colin was again stunned by her revelations.

“You’re easy,” Isabel cackled. “I have no memories of that event. Who knows what happened.”

Colin waited. He had hoped for any scrap of tantalizing information, but realized there was none to be had. He and Isabel watched her grandsons playing. He shielded his eyes with his hand, looking up into a brilliant blue sky where he could see the faintest outline of the moon.

“Do you miss your home world?” Colin finally asked.

Isabel sighed, a wistful look on her surprisingly smooth face.

“That was two lifetimes ago,” she said. “I have fully assimilated to Earth. I don’t think I could exist on Siolara today even if I wanted to. The gravity alone would break my old bones in mere minutes, and I’m pretty sure the food would poison me.”

“Did you leave behind family there?” Colin stopped taking notes, giving Isabel his full attention.

“You know, I’m not really sure,” she said. “My memories of Siolara are vague, and getting more hazy every year. I try not to dwell on that too much. I have a family here who I love and who love me. I’ve had a happy life, good friends, wonderful memories.”

“I guess that’s really all anyone could ask for,” Colin said, turning off the recorder.

“It’s the American dream.”