Alien Artifacts

by Seanan McGuire

  “How do you know where a stream was twelve thousand years ago? I can’t see anything that looks like a stream bed, even a dry one.”

  Dennis peeled open a stick and said, “It’s easier if you look at the aerial photos. It’s hard to see from down on the ground.”

  “I looked at the photos when Dr. Valdez brought them to my house. I didn’t see a stream then either.”

  “Huh.” Dennis thought for a bit while chewing, then swallowed and said, “We found something last week that’s more obvious. It’s not where we’re working, but you’ll be able to see it. Come on.” He emptied the box and stuffed the rest of the wrapped sticks in his pocket, then headed off through the brush. I followed along. I didn’t figure it’d be any more clear than the pictures, since everyone seemed to think those were obvious too, but it was still better than looking after Alice.

  We hiked over to the far side of the plateau, then down a narrow, steep path along the slope. Dennis stopped about halfway down and pointed at the face of the cliff, right next to where we were standing.

  “There, see?” He moved his hand in a big, wide oval.

  I looked and saw something like a blotch. I took a step back—and yes, I was careful of the edge; just because I was nine doesn’t mean I was stupid—and looked from a little farther away.

  It looked like a knot in a plank. The lines the different colored rocks made in the cliff went mostly straight, a little tilted but still mostly straight, except for where Dennis was pointing. There was a splotch there, a wide, shallow place that distorted all the lines around it, kind of like a flattened oval.

  “That’s where the stream was,” Dennis said. “When it was flowing, it cut down through the layers.” He moved his finger along the bottom curve, stopping to point out each layer the splotch penetrated.

  I tried to picture in my mind the water rushing through, like in a pipe, but washing away the dirt and rocks as it went. It made sense.

  There was about twenty feet of dirt between the top of the stream-knothole and the top of the cliff. That was a lot of digging, especially since I’d seen the shovels they were using and they were really small. So the stream—the fossil of the stream—was pretty far underground.

  “How come you’re not digging here?” I asked. “You could dig right into the stream instead of having to get all that dirt and rock and stuff off a teaspoon at a time.”

  Dennis grinned and said, “We’d love to. This isn’t where the camp was, though. Dr. Valdez found signs of human habitation back where we’re digging. If it’d been here, we’d be here.”

  “But there could still be stuff here, right? You said stuff gets washed down the stream and then stuck.” There were different kinds of rocks and stuff there in the cliff face. It was kind of smooth and regular in most places, but the knothole looked jumbled up. I was thinking about finding some neat stuff in there, maybe arrowheads or bones or something. Petrified bones, maybe.

  “Sure, there could. You never know, right?”

  I figured he was lying to make me feel good ‘cause I was a kid, like a lot of grown-ups do. If he really thought there might be cool stuff here, then he’d be digging here himself. But he was digging in the stream himself, just closer to where they thought the Indian camp had been, so stuff did wash downstream.

  “Can I keep anything neat that I find?”

  Dennis ruffled my hair and said, “How about if you show it to me first?”

  I hate when people ruffle my hair, but I didn’t want the “maybe” to turn into a “no,” so I said okay.

  * * *

  I got a trowel from home and went back to the cliff. I didn’t have a sifter-box like they had at the dig, so I just looked real carefully at the pebbles and stuff as I chipped them out. There were some triangular rocks that I thought were arrowheads at first, but they weren’t, or at least they didn’t look like arrowheads when I cleaned the dirt off and looked closer.

  The students at the dig always went really slow, but I got sort of impatient after a while and started gouging stuff out faster and faster. The rock wasn’t all that hard—not like concrete or anything, more like really hard dirt with rocks in it—so around the time I figured it was getting close to lunch, I had a hole in the cliff about a yard wide and as deep as my elbow.

  I thought I’d keep going for a few more minutes before heading back to get a sandwich, when the tip of my trowel clacked against something that didn’t sound like a rock.

  Finding something that soon was pretty incredible. I remembered about not damaging things, ‘cause Dennis had told me pottery and stuff are pretty breakable, so I went back to digging slow and tried to widen the deep part of the hole more. I found an edge and dug around it as well as I could, following the border between the sandstone and the…bone? clay? Whatever the thing was made of.

  By the time I had most of it dug out, enough to see the shape all the way around, I was even more confused about what it could be. It was stuck in the rock a little diagonally, with a sort of cylinder shape, short and fat, sticking out. After some more digging, I saw that the cylinder part widened out farther in and had loops, four, like a four-leaf clover. It took a while to dig those out; the curved parts were sort of skinny, about as big around as my thumb, so I was afraid I’d break one of them while I dug and chipped around it. I did hit them a few times with the edge of the trowel, by accident, but the stuff the thing was made of didn’t break or even crack.

  And as I got the dirt cleaned off of it, the stuff was looking like plastic.

  Weird, right? I knew they didn’t have plastic 12,000 years ago, so while I headed home for lunch I was trying to figure out how the thing had gotten there, whatever it was. Maybe someone lost it and it got covered up with dirt? But if someone had dropped it, on the trail or off the top of the plateau, then it would’ve fallen all the way down to the bottom, or at least onto the level of the path, not gotten stuck there in the wall. Definitely not a couple of feet inside the wall.

  If you left it alone, dirt would build up a little at a time—from wind blowing stuff around, and stuff falling down as the cliff crumbled—but I was pretty sure it would’ve taken a really long time for two feet of dirt to cover the thing, even if I figured it’d fallen onto a ledge or something above the path. I thought about how long it would’ve taken for that much dirt to pile up, and how long ago they invented plastic. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think they matched up, not even close.

  Mom wasn’t around by the time I got back to the house. It was almost one—late enough that she’d probably eaten and gone back to the barn. Dad was there, though, and almost done with his sandwich. His shirt was wet and dirty, and his hair was all plastered to his head, like he’d hosed himself down before coming in. He pointed at a plate on the counter with a napkin over it; it had a ham and cheese sandwich, an apple and a couple of peanut butter cookies. I said thanks and sat down to eat as fast as I could.

  My mom would’ve nagged me to slow down, but Dad just rolled his eyes, finished his last cookie, and headed out before I could tell him about the thing I’d found.

  When I was done, I ran up and checked on Alice. She’d moved a little, a few inches away to the other side of the big rock, but she didn’t move while I watched. I stroked her head with one finger, nice and gentle ‘cause she was sick, but she still didn’t move. I could see her throat pulsing a little, so I knew she was breathing, but that was it.

  I kept her company for a few more minutes, but not being able to play with her or do anything to help her made it really frustrating. Finally I told her I’d be back in a while, then I left her alone.

  The rest of the afternoon I was on the cliff trail, digging out the plastic thing a tiny bit at a time. The sun had moved and there wasn’t any more shade. I was hot and sweaty and wished I’d brought a canteen, but not enough to go back for one.

  Past the clover-things, the cylinder spread out like the end of a trumpet, only not quite as wide. There was a ring of colored things, flat disks about
the size of my little fingernail, around the edge of the flared part. They were pretty dusty, but when I rubbed them clean I could see that most of them were blue, but two right next to each other were yellow.

  They looked like decorations; they didn’t stick out like buttons or light up like lights or anything. I figured maybe there was something on the other side that’d make it make sense, so I kept digging around the edge.

  By the time I got the thing out, it was pretty close to dinner time. I pulled it out of the hole, careful not to break it, and fiddled around with it, looking at it from every side. There was nothing on the wide side of the flare to show why the colored disks weren’t even; the other side was just plain, flat plastic. If it’d ever looked like a trumpet then someone had filled in the inside and flattened it out without even leaving a seam. I played with the loops, trying to see if they’d click or twist or anything, but they wouldn’t move at all no matter what I tried.

  I was looking at the flat round end, feeling around to see if I could find any little bumps or cracks with my fingers, when the flat part suddenly flashed. I yelled and dropped it, not really scared but just a little startled, you know? When I picked it up and looked at it all over to see if I’d cracked it anywhere, I saw that there was only one yellow disk on the other side of the flare.

  Maybe it was a flashlight? Or no, the light had only lasted like half a second. Maybe it was like a photographer’s flash? A photographer could’ve come here some time—a long time ago, before I was born—to take pictures of the plateau and all, and dropped one of their lights. I’d seen old fashioned cameras in movies, and knew they had separate flashes that the photographer held in one hand, away from the camera, so that made sense.

  The sun and the shadows told me I’d better get home fast if I didn’t want to get yelled at, so I ran, with the trowel in one hand and the flash-thing in the other.

  * * *

  After dinner, I went up to see Alice again. I found her sitting really still in her tank, in the same place she’d been at lunchtime, with her legs pulled in close to her body. When I picked her up, she was colder than usual and kind of hard. I called Dad to come see, hoping she was just asleep or something and trying hard not to cry.

  Dad came up and poked her with a finger, then put his palm on her back for a few seconds. He said she was dead.

  She must’ve died that afternoon, while I was digging in the cliff and having fun. I knew I couldn’t have done anything, that even a vet probably couldn’t have done anything for a toad that old, but I felt awful about it anyway, like I should’ve been there with her. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known she was sick, or just getting old, or whatever it’d been.

  Dad went to get some newspaper to wrap Alice in. He was going to throw her in the garbage, but I got mad and might’ve yelled some, and said I wanted to bury her. He yelled back at me for mouthing off, but Mom came and calmed him down, and said I was understandably upset. She’d never really liked Alice—she wasn’t afraid of her or anything, she was just more into horses than toads—but she knew about pets.

  Mom brought me a square box, a nice one that’d come with a fancy ashtray she’d gotten for Christmas, and some tissue paper. I made a kind of a nest in the box with the crinkly paper and put Alice into it. I put the lid under the box to carry them together, like I’d seen Mom do sometimes. I wanted to be able to see Alice while I did the funeral; I could put the lid on right before I buried her.

  I remember I handled her really careful, even though I knew nothing could hurt her anymore.

  We went out to the yard, me and Mom and even Dad, although he was sort of glaring at me like he was still a little mad. I got the trowel from where I’d left it on the porch, and the flash-thing was there next to it, so I took that too. If I was right about the one yellow disk meaning there was only one more flash in it, I figured there wasn’t any better reason to use it up than Alice’s funeral.

  While we walked down to the far side of the yard, to a patch that never got dug up because it was by an oak tree and nothing else would grow there anyway, Mom asked what I had. I said it was a flashlight I’d found up by the grove.

  “Did you ask Dr. Valdez’s permission to take it?” she asked. Her voice sounded a little worried, like she was thinking about getting mad.

  I said, “No, but it wasn’t in the same place she’s digging. It was over by the cliff, in a spot Dennis showed me.”

  Mom glanced at Dad, who said, “That’s not an Indian artifact. The natives didn’t make flashlights, not thousands of years ago. It’s probably just a piece of trash someone lost up there.

  Mom nodded kind of slow, then said to me, “Well, we gave her permission to dig wherever she wanted up there. At least show it to her tomorrow.”

  I nodded, too, and said, “Dennis told me to show him anything I found, and I promised I would. I didn’t today ‘cause it was time for dinner. I’ll take it over tomorrow.”

  That was good enough and we got on with Alice’s funeral. I dug a hole big enough for the box, a couple of steps away from the oak. I said the Lord’s Prayer, ‘cause that was the only one I could think of right then. It was like my brain had emptied. Mom started talking and said some things about how Alice had been a member of the family, and how she’d been a companion to my dad when he was a kid, and to me, and how we’d all miss her. That was pretty nice of her, considering she’d never really paid much attention to Alice when she was alive. I think she just wanted to make me feel better.

  I put the box into the hole, then picked up the flashlight thing and aimed it down at Alice. I said something about how Alice would be going to the light in Heaven, where God would look out for her forever and never forget about her or leave her alone, and then touched the yellow disk. It flashed really bright, and I heard Mom and Dad shift suddenly, like they were startled, but they didn’t say anything.

  The disks were all blue. I pressed them all just to check, but nothing happened. That was okay; I had a better flashlight in my room. I thought about burying that one with Alice, but I’d promised to show it to Dennis, so I put it down out of the way, put the lid on the box and picked up the trowel.

  I’d just pushed some dirt down into the hole when the lid popped up off the box and I heard Alice croaking. I screamed ‘cause I was really surprised, and maybe a little scared because Alice was supposed to be dead, or I’d thought she was dead and it was like a horror movie or something, like she was a vampire frog rising after death.

  Mom and Dad had yelled too, and that made me feel a little better. Mom moved the box lid and picked up Alice. She was squirming and moving and definitely alive.

  Mom said Dad must’ve been wrong about her being dead. He said anyone would’ve thought that, she was stiff and cold like she was dead and how was he supposed to know? He couldn’t really argue much when she was hopping around, though, so I just left them talking about it. I took Alice and ran into the house and upstairs and fed her, since she hadn’t eaten in so long. She ate three crickets and a bunch of ants, and I petted her with one finger and told her she was the best toad in the world.

  * * *

  The next day I showed the flash-thing to Dennis. Dr. Valdez was with him, but she just glanced at it and then went away to order the students around.

  Dennis went with me to the cliff and I showed him where I’d dug it out. I’d been careful enough that you could put the thing back into the gap it came out of and see that it was the right shape and all. He stared at the hole for a long time, then the flash-thing, then the hole again. He frowned like he was mad about something, but he wasn’t mad at me, or at least he didn’t yell or anything.

  I said he could keep the flash-thing if he wanted. Since it didn’t work anymore, I didn’t feel really bad when he said thank you and took it. He went back to his digging in the stream bed and I went back to the house.

  I took Alice out onto the lawn and played with her all day, helping her catch bugs and building mazes out of old planks for her.

 
; * * *

  When I got older I did a few internet searches to see whether Dr. Valdez, or Dennis—who later became Dr. Johnson—had ever published anything that mentioned the flash-thing I’d found. Neither one ever did.

  I wasn’t really surprised. After all, claiming to have found an alien artifact down in 12,000-year-old strata wasn’t exactly a career-enhancing move, even if you had the artifact. It didn’t work anymore, and I don’t remember seeing any seams or anything on it, where it could be taken apart without breaking into it. I suppose they might’ve tried X-rays or ultrasound or something similarly non-invasive, but if so they never published the results.

  Neither one is around to ask anymore. Dr. Valdez died of complications from diabetes in ‘85, and Dennis had a fatal heart attack while working on the Great Zimbabwe dig just forty-five years ago, in 2018.

  Me, I’m getting ready to celebrate my hundredth birthday in three more weeks, although you’d never guess it if you saw me. I don’t have many friends anymore, but that’s all right. It’ll be a private party, just cake and crickets for me and Alice.

  THE OTHER SIDE

  S.C. Butler

  When I was two years old, I cried after falling off a dolphin in the playground because I was trying to climb to the top of its cement tail. When I was five, my father took me on a submarine ride at an amusement park, but I cried then too, because I didn’t like the fact the submarine went down. And when I was seven, I cried when both my parents dragged me down off the roof of our apartment building, where I was happily trying to climb onto the fire escape of another, taller building. But when I was ten, and my mother took me on my first airplane ride after she left my father, I didn’t cry once. Pressing my cheek tight against the plastic window, I craned my neck to see the other side of the sky.