I had a nightmare once about an alien trapped on Earth. This was the result.
Every night, he looks up at the stars and wonders.
It has been years, as the locals reckon time, since he has arrived at this place. He remembers the day he arrived as if it were yesterday, the day when the starship fell out of hyperspace and crashed on the primitive world. He remembers using the emergency teleport system to escape the crashing ship, knowing that a second’s delay would have killed him as surely as the crash killed the remainder of the crew. He remembers coming to some distance from the ship, scared and only vaguely aware that his life was in danger.
The other memories taunt him, reminding him of when he broke the rules. The human who discovered him had been scared, of course, yet there had been no time to reassure him. It had been easy to reach out with his mind and snare the human, draining his mind of everything that he knew, donning his body as a form of camouflage. The impact of such a primitive mind, senses dulled by drink and lust, had stunned him, leaving him barely able to assert himself. He had crawled away from the crash site just in time to escape the human military, knowing that the craft alone wouldn’t help them. His people were paranoid. The ship’s vital components would have disintegrated when the ship crashed.
He’d broken the rules. To steal another’s mind and body was a crime, one against everything his people, his race of peaceful explorers, had stood for. If they found him now, they would punish him for his crime. The thought taunted him as he stumbled into the human’s life, discovering that human’s shared a vitality that was nothing like his own staid race. They lived and lusted and burned like fire. He’d blended in as best as he could, using a little of his knowledge to ease his passage and ensure that he was not noticed. He didn't dare use any of his advanced science, or even reveal himself. It would attract attention and he knew what that would mean.
The years had passed slowly. The male human body he’d stolen had become old and frail. He’d moved to New York to hide, blending in with the vast number of humans within the city. No one noticed him, or cared, leaving him alone. He wandered the streets, soaking in all of humanity’s deepest thoughts and feelings, wondering how they coped with their passion. Even the ones who thought of themselves as low and depressed lived with more vitality than his own people. Somewhere along the way, he realised, he had fallen in love with humanity. He could never return to his homeworld now. Humanity was an addition.
One night, he saw the girl. She was young by human standards, around seven years old – a mayfly compared to his own thousands of years of life. His human memories saw that she was pretty; his mind saw that she was young and unspoiled. He followed her through the park, waiting until she was alone before coming up behind her and placing his hands on her head. She barely had a moment to realise that she was in trouble before he began the memory transfer, slipping from his old body into the new one. There was a sense of shock and then horror...and he realised, too late, that he had made a terminal error. The child’s mind was unformed, too small and weak to hold his mentality. She tasted so pure and unspoiled, yet she could not host his being. His final thought was of a world so far away that the light from its star had never reached Earth...
Cami pulled herself free of the man’s grasp, rubbing her head as he collapsed behind her. Her mind hurt; just for a second, she had heard someone in her head, whispering great secrets into her mind. And then it was gone.
Every night, she looks up at the stars and wonders...