//------------------------------//
// Divergent paths 
// Story: Iridescence 
// by Serpent_Underscore 
//------------------------------//

January 18th, 1995

It’d been winter here for too long. Maybe that’s why I jumped at the chance to attend a friend’s wedding in sunny California. Maybe it was the fact I needed something to distract me from the mounting piles of bills and the long nights spent at work, fighting them back. Or maybe it was just fate.

Whatever the reason, I found myself driving through a striking desert panorama just northwest of Las Vegas, on a lonely little stretch of road. Dense black clouds filled the air, and thunder had been echoing across the valley floor for the past few minutes. The scent of ozone hung heavy on the air. A particularly loud crack accompanied a flash of brilliant green lightning that struck a spot near the road up ahead. Then a second bolt of lightning struck the same spot, and a third, and a fourth.

The color alone would have been enough to catch my attention, but even a meteorologically and electrically illiterate guy like me knew that lightning doesn’t normally strike the same spot more than once unless it happens to be a good conductor, in an elevated location, or both, and the stretch of road ahead was neither. Yet emerald lightning flashed angrily time and time again, bombarding the same spot repeatedly for nearly half a minute.

I slowed the car to crawl, then stopped a good fifty feet away from the shallow crater in the asphalt. The windshield wipers swept back and forth as I waited several minutes, then got out of the car and cautiously approached on foot.

A few lazy tendrils of steam and acrid smoke made my eyes smart as I crouched over the side of the depression. Rainwater was pooling there, already a few inches deep. In the center was an oblong greenish orb splotched with sickly yellow-green patches, lying perfectly upright. It was about the size of a large grapefruit and seemed to glow with a faint internal light. It looked for all the world like some movie alien egg- and for all I knew it could actually be alien in origin.

Hesitantly I reached out to touch it. In hindsight it was probably a stupid move, but I was burning with curiosity. The surface was warm and slick, with a soft leathery texture to it. I could feel something moving beneath the surface. Without warning, the shell began to split cleanly from where I’d touched it. I scrambled back, landing on my rear and backpedalling a good three feet away. Something small and black was emerging from the egg, a little horn on its oversized head helping it to cut open the leathery shell. Almost unconsciously, I found myself edging back toward the crater for a better look.

Soon, two enormous blue eyes stared out at me. They were pale and milky, completely featureless except for the glossy reflections around their rims. Although there was no way of telling exactly where it was looking, I could feel its gaze settle squarely on me. I leaned in a little closer and its two spiny ears folded back, its little muzzle opening wide as it hissed defensively. I caught a glimpse of a mouthful of sharp little fangs. A predator of some sort? The creature struggled to extricate itself the rest of the way from its shell, squeaking fiercely at me. It almost reminded me of a kitten, if it was crossed with a puppy, a big black insect, and something else I couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t the greatest analogy, but it was all my distracted mind could come up with on short notice.

One short foreleg poked out of the shell, and then the other. They looked like they were riddled with holes, or rather, like a framework of chitin and flesh woven loosely around the empty outline of a leg.

Twisting its body trying to climb out of the lower half of the shell, the creature paused for a moment before looking at me and making a feeble lunge at my fingers. Its mouth snapped comically on empty air, but the attempt left it unbalanced and it toppled face-first into the pool of water where it began to flounder frantically. With its hindquarters still stuck inside the shell, there was no way it’d be able to get out of the water before it drowned.

I quickly removed my jacket and wrapped it around my hands. I had no clue if the thing was poisonous or not, but either way I didn’t feel like getting bitten by those sharp teeth. Carefully I scooped the struggling creature out of the water and secured it, keeping a firm but gentle grip to prevent it from escaping. It thrashed at first and tried biting the jacket, making panicked mewling noises, but eventually settled down.

I stood up carefully, cradling the wet bundle as best I could. The creature stared up at me intently, apparently having decided that I wasn’t an immediate threat anymore. I tried speaking to it reassuringly as I made my way back to the car, and its ears twitched up in response.

The cold rain was soaking us both, and the breeze that had begun to pick up. I could feel the little creature start to shiver in the 45-degree weather. I ducked inside the car and tentatively eased my grip on the bundle so that I could turn the keys in the ignition and crank up the heat.

The creature shrank back and hissed at the sound of the car starting up, but its aggression was reserved for the dashboard. It pressed itself closer against me and looked up with what I could only describe as an imploring expression, as though it wanted me to make the scary thing go away.

I spoke calmingly to it and smiled despite myself as it hissed a final time at the dashboard and then twisted around so it was facing me, burying its head against the wet folds of my jacket and closing its eyes with a soft chirring sound. Funny, two minutes ago I was public enemy number one, and now here it seemed to consider me to be some sort of protector. Gradually I could feel it stop shivering and its breathing slow down and deepen. I drove carefully, wondering what on earth I was going to do next.

Attending the wedding was suddenly no longer at the top of my list of priorities. I’d still go if I found some way to do it responsibly, but the immediate future was looking uncomfortably complicated. Should I call the police? Animal control? NASA? Just what kind of media frenzy would be kicked up by all this if I did go to the authorities with my find? My mouth went dry as I considered another possibility. What if a government coverup was launched and I was made to 'disappear'?

Area 51 was less than 20 miles from here. I remembered seeing it on the map while looking up directions to Ridgecrest earlier today. I'd never been one to lend much credence to the conspiracy theories before, but this was just too much of a coincidence to just be chance. And if the tinfoil hat brigade was right about Area 51, then it seemed disturbingly likely that various underhanded coverup stories might have something to them as well.

I pressed my foot a little harder on the gas pedal. No, I had no inclination to be buried in an unmarked grave while experiments were performed on the baby alien. But that still left me with the question of what I'd do with the creature now. I had next to no experience with caring for animals, and I had a funny feeling I wasn't going to find any helpful online guides to hand raising aliens from birth either.

I might be able to look up information on caring for orphaned baby animals and try applying it to the creature, but there seemed like way too many ways that things could go badly if I made the wrong assumptions. With my mind occupied with concocting a plan, I drove into the darkness opposite the setting sun. Occasional flashes of light still split the sky, illuminating the undersides of the clouds.

As the minutes passed quietly, I found myself unconsciously stroking the back of the creature's head with my fingers. Its outer shell was smooth to the touch, with a surprisingly soft exterior sheathing a harder and unyielding layer underneath. It shifted position slightly as I touched it, but it had fallen asleep on my lap and otherwise took no notice of me.

I'd work something out. Whatever the difficulties that came our way, I'd face them one step at a time.