The Dragon Rider

David went outside to get a breath of fresh air. He took a look up at the Moon, and thought he could see the shape of a satellite orbiting the distant object.
Remembering a method he had seen in the movie Apollo 13, David raised his thumb as far as he could from his body, which wasn’t as far as he would’ve liked. But, nevertheless, it covered the Moon’s figure completely.
He moved his thumb a degree to the right. The Moon reappeared. He did this several times, wondering how an object so small could be so large. Wondering how five men were up there right now, building some sort of house. Wondering how it would be to be up there.
“David?”
David jumped and whirled around. He sighed in relief when he found it was his girlfriend, Patricia McGrath. “Oh, hi Patricia,” he said. “I thought I was the only one out here.”
“I just came out,” Patricia explained. She looked up at the Moon. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
David looked with her. “That there are five men up there at the same time?”
“No,” she replied. “That, for the first time in history, there are men on all three planets ever stepped on. All at the same time.”
David smiled. “Yeah, it does seem rather fantastic.”
Patricia motioned to the house. “We’re about to open the whiskey bottle. You want to join us?”
“Maybe later,” he responded, looking back up to the Moon. “I want to do some more site-seeing.”
Patricia smiled and walked back inside.
David looked closely at the Moon, and could have sworn he could see the Lunar Module in the Sea of Tranquility. He walked back into the house, got a portable telescope, and walked back outside, training it on Mare Tranquilitatus.
Yep. There was the Lunar Module, all right. And there was also an explosion coming from beside it. This was probably one of the astronauts opening a wine bottle in zip atmospheric pressure.
Replacing the lens with a larger one, David pointed the telescope in another direction, to the east. There was Mars, all right. The picture was so clear he could make out Mount Olympus near the equator. That small shadow moving across the planet must be the orbiter module, he thought to himself.
David spent the next several minutes looking at the Red Planet, and decided to see if he could see Pluto.
But as he was turning his telescope, a huge shadow got in his way. He tried to focus on it, hoping it was an asteroid, but it moved too quickly.
He raised his head away from the telescope, trying to see if it was a plane. Then his eyes focused on the shadow.
It was no plane; that was for sure. But he couldn’t quite make out what it was.
Switching to a smaller lens, David pointed his telescope in the general direction of the flying silhouette. He could barely make out the shape of a bird-like creature against the Moon’s light.
Then something separated from the creature.
David tried tracking that specific something with his telescope, but it became larger and larger, until it filled his vision.
He realized what was happening and dove out of the way, as the object came to a hard landing in the spot David had been standing.
David dropped his telescope and slowly approached the object. It seemed to give off light rather than shadow, and David could’ve sworn that it was making a low humming sound.
David groaned when he saw it was just a rock. It was football-sized, and shaped like an egg. It was polished shiny, scratch-less, and blue in color.
He carefully put a hand on it. When nothing happened, he picked it up. It’s lighter than it looks, he thought. He rolled a hand over its smooth surface. I wonder how much I can sell it for?
David turned around to start walking inside and say good-bye to everyone, but couldn’t help but look back and take one last glance at the creature’s figure against the Moon’s crescent, dead shape.
His dreams that night were of green Martians.
 
Chapter 2

DAVID WENT INTO his office early the next day, and immediately opened up an Internet page that showed video clips of the Mars landing the night before. He used an editing program in his computer to take pictures from the video, and then printed them out.
He took the pictures and scanned them back into the computer, and opened up a word processing program to start writing his column. He used the pictures as reference, and after he was done writing it, he pasted the pictures themselves onto the document.
He read over the review, and then sent it downstairs to the editing office.
His eyes shifted slightly, and he saw a thumbnail on the computer screen that looked somewhat like a blue football. This reminded him of the stone he found last night, so he decided to do a Google search to find out what the stone was.
Before he could, however, his phone rang. He picked up the receiver, and murmured a cheerful, “Hello?”
“David, is that you?”
He knew that voice. “Hi, Patricia,” David said. “What’s up?”
“You doing anything this afternoon?”
David looked at the schedule stapled up on the wall next to him. “No,” he said. “I told everybody yesterday to take the day off, and I only came in to review the landing last night.”
“You want to go see that new movie…what was it called?” Patricia seemed to think for a second. “That new Narnia movie.”
David loaded up a website showing the local theater’s showtimes. “Sure. I’ve got either 4:35 or 5:10. Which is better for you?”
There was another pause as Patricia considered her options. “I guess 4:35,” she finally said. “I’m buying the popcorn.”
“I’ll buy the tickets,” David said. “We’ll meet outside the theater at 4:20. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure is,” Patricia said. “Thanks. That’s all.”
“Bye,” David said. He didn’t wait for a response, and hung up.
He checked his watch. It was twelve fifty-nine right now. Might as well go and get some lunch, he thought to himself. He shut down the computer and grabbed his car key before walking out the door.
 
A medium French-fries at McDonald’s. That was always what David Taylor ordered when he needed lunch. He could never explain how, but it always was enough to fill his stomach.
That is, if he ordered it every three hours. He had only done this one day, and he nearly got fired for taking too much time off work.
So this time, he ordered two medium French-fries.
He was extremely careful as he drove through the curved streets. Interestingly enough, Coloradoville was not exactly in Colorado. To be more accurate, it wasn’t in Colorado anymore.
Two years ago, the government had split Colorado into two states, calling the northern end “Sioux.” So, Coloradoville was now at the base of the Rocky Mountains in the United State of Sioux.
David had been tempted to write an ugly column about it, but he was only a junior editor then, and didn’t have the power to get it into the paper. By the time he became the senior editor, it was ancient history as far as America was concerned.
David noticed the gas gauge on the dashboard and groaned when he saw the arrow pointing ominously to the “E”. He started looking around for a gas station and found one with an incredibly low price of three dollars per gallon.
My, how the times have changed.
David could remember a time when the gas was only a dollar and fifty cents per gallon. But that was back sometime before the turn of the century, and he was only a few years old, maybe less.
He found a gas pump that wasn’t taken and got out to start pumping gas. Before he could, however, a man came up to him from out of nowhere. “Hey,” he said, “I was here first!”
The man spoke with an Iranian accent. Nobody else would’ve noticed, but David Taylor knew from experience to learn the accents of everybody he knew. He knew Patricia had a New York accent, and his colleague John Welkins had a Mississippi accent. This man had an Iranian accent.
David raised an eyebrow. “Where’s your car?”
The man pointed to the left, and when David looked, he saw a red car with a dented hood. “It rolled away when I got out of the car,” the man said. “Blasted parking brake wouldn’t work. The point is, you’re in my spot.”
David looked back at the man. “It’s not your spot anymore, sir,” he said sternly. David was never a man to let somebody else win an argument. “I’m here, and I’m going to start pumping my gas, whether you want me to or not.”
The man recoiled slightly, not expecting this change of events. Then he reached into his jacket pocket.
David found himself looking down the barrel of a black pistol. He quickly let go of his stern expression and replaced it with one of fear.
“Listen to me, American,” the man said in a very non-friendly voice. “You think you’re better than me, don’t you? Well, you’re not. If anything else, I’m better than you are. I’d suggest you get back into your car and find another pump.”
David hesitated. That was a mistake.
“What’s your name, kid?” the Iranian asked.
David gulped. “David Anthony Taylor, senior editor of the Coloradoville Courier, High School graduate of Sioux School of Excelled Intrepid Students, graduated top in…”
The man adjusted the position of the pistol.
“Okay, I’m done,” David murmured.
“I want you to remember my name, kid,” the man said. “It’s Resulbic Susikiani. Now, get back into your car, and be quiet.”
David didn’t hesitate this time, and walked straight back to his car and, fighting the urge to start it in fifth gear, slowly drove off.
He slowly relaxed, and started looking for another gas station.
 
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