Chapter 1

With a statement like that, I’m normally out the door as fast as my legs will take me. But this was different; she was so beautiful and sexy and appeared to actually believe what she was telling me was true, that I had to hear more.

“Finish your beer and we can go to my place. After you hear my story, if you still think I’m crazy then you can leave and you’ll have a good story to sit here and entertain your friends with.”

Standing she grabbed hold of my arm and not waiting for my answer, she practically dragged me off my stool and out to the parking lot. The Phoenix sun was still high in the sky and doing its best to fry everyone and everything foolish enough to venture outside. I tried to lead her to my car, but with her long legs eating up pavement with each stride, it was her leading me to my car, a 1967 Chevy Camaro.

At least she let me drive.

“Get on Scottsdale Road and head north to Shea, then east to Fountain Hills. I’ll tell you where to turn.”

My mind was going in a thousand directions at once. ‘She’s a nut case, what are you doing? She’s an alien, she’s going to eat you and suck out your brain. She’s gorgeous, just look at those legs.’

I almost missed her instructions as we left Scottsdale and began to climb into the hills. The road seemed to snake its way up the side of the mountain. Back and forth we traveled until I thought we would be running out of road at any moment. Ahead there was a sign, ‘ Private Driveway, no admittance.’

A gate blocked our path, however, with a push of a few buttons, the gate swung open and we continued around the bend in the road. Her house was magnificent, built into the side of the mountain, there was an open air car port under half of the house. The other half of the lower level appeared to be an above ground basement, with high concrete walls, no windows and only a single doorway which appeared to be an elevator entrance.

I parked the Camaro next to a Ferrari; there was also a Bentley and a vintage Rolls Royce.

‘She may be looney but she’s certainly loaded.’

She caught me eying the other cars. “Those over there belonged to my former husbands, the Ferrari is mine.”

With a turn of the key the elevator doors opened and she pulled me inside. The car ascended smoothly and silently. When the doors opened again we were standing in the entrance of a spacious open area. There was a kitchen to the right and the living room straight ahead. We entered the living room, there was a large stone wall with an impressive fireplace on one side, and the opposite wall was covered, floor to ceiling, with windows. The shades were draw, shielding the room from the effects of the sun. With a push of a button, all of the shades began to rise as one, revealing a spectacular view of the Central Valley below.

The towns of Scottsdale, Phoenix, Glendale and Peoria glistened like small diamonds on the desert floor.

“Spectacular isn’t it. My husband, Colin, built the house twenty years ago to take full advantage of the view. It’s even more spectacular at night with the city lights surrounded by the darkness of the desert. Get us a couple of beers from the fridge while I get changed into something more comfortable.”

I couldn’t help staring at her magnificent ass as she slowly walked out of the room and down a hallway which I assumed led to her bedroom.

‘I don’t care if she’s crazy or not, I’ve got to get to know her a lot better.’

I was seated in a small grouping of comfortable chairs facing the windows, when she returned. She had changed into a pair of snug fitting jeans and a casual man-tailored shirt, the top three buttons of which were undone, allowing for just a hint of cleavage to show. I stood as she approached, her hand extended in greeting.

“I don’t think I ever introduced myself, I’m Eve, Eve Marshall.”

I accepted her hand, her grip was firm. ‘This is a woman who’s used to giving orders and getting what she wants.’

“Drew, have a seat. Where should we begin?”

“How about you give me a little background information first,” I said pulling out my trusty note book and pen which I had taken from the back seat of the car before we came inside.

“Back at the bar you said you were over two hundred years old; how old are you?”

“Well I lied a little bit; in earth years I’m actually about 225 years old.”

“Okay, you said you’re not from this planet, where are you from?”

“The planet I come from is located on the other side of our galaxy. I won’t give you its name simply because in your language it would be unpronounceable.”

“Why are you here?”

“Our mission was to colonize the earth, so we could save our species by starting over.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying that you’re two hundred twenty five years old, from another planet from the other side of our galaxy and that you were sent here to colonize the earth in order to save your species. Is that right?”

“Basically that’s correct.”

“You know, of course, that that’s totally unbelievable. “ Getting up from my chair I took one last long pull from my beer and said, “Thanks for the beer and the great view, I’m leaving.”

“No wait; I know it’s hard for you to believe, your world has barely entered the space age, but I can assure you that everything I’ve said so far is true. Come follow me, I’ll prove to you that I’m not from this planet.”

Taking my hand she dragged me to the elevator and pressed the button marked “G” which I assumed stood for “Ground”, but when the car stopped instead of the door behind me opening as I expected, the door in front opened, revealing a large gym. Eve led me inside, directly to an area covered with thick mats and an extremely heavy looking bar bell which more resembled a train axil than a set of weights.

“My husband got these especially for me. They once belonged to a gym that catered to Olympic hopefuls. The bar has been specially made to hold additional weight without bending. With the bar, that’s a little over 900 Kilograms or about 2,000 pounds. Would you agree that no human female who looks like me could lift a ton over her head?”

Always the skeptic, I walked up to the bar, thinking that it was made of Styrofoam or something equally light weight, positioned my feet, I placed my hands in the proper place, took a deep breath and tried to jerk it off the mat. It didn’t budge, in fact, my efforts pulled me forward and I fell over the bar landing on my face.

“Are you ok, I hope you didn’t get hurt?”

“Other than my male ego everything appears to be okay.”

Eve smiled and took up the same position over the bar. With what appeared to be little effort, the weight came up off the ground as she straighten her legs and back, the bar resting at her shoulders. She then proceeded to press the bar over her head not just once but a dozen times in quick movements, before returning the bar to the mat with a loud thud.

I stood absolutely spell bound as she calmly approached and stood directly in front of me. I was looking directly into her dark brown eyes when she said,

“I think that went well. Let’s go back upstairs and continue.”

I didn’t know whether to run away or jump up into her arms. Instead I followed her into the elevator and back to the living room.

“How did you get so strong? How could you lift that much weight and make it look so easy?”

“That’s because I’m not from this world. Do you believe me now?”

“I guess I have to; but it’s just so unbelievable...”

“Instead of more questions, I think I should just give you some general back ground information about my world and I’ll use human terms to describe everything from now on. Our sun is one hundred times larger than yours. The planet, which is larger than Earth, revolves around our sun but its orbit is similar to that of Jupiter in that it takes about twelve of your earth years to travel completely around our sun. Additionally, our planet rotates on its axis about four times faster than the earth; therefore our day is only six hours long. The reason why I’m so much stronger than a human being is that our planet is about ten times denser than Earth and so our gravity field is ten times as strong. Our bones and muscles have to be that much stronger so we can exist in our world just as you do in yours.”

“That makes sense, I guess.”

“Now that I’m here on Earth, where the gravity is one tenth as strong as what my body is built for, I can do things that you could only dream of doing. I can lift immense amounts of weight; jump over houses and out run horses. It took a long time for me to control my power. At first I was always breaking things or bouncing like a ball instead of walking like normal people. I had to learn to control myself so I could stay hidden.”

“Your race is obviously much more advanced than ours; what was it like living in your world.”

“You’re correct in stating that we are much more advanced than humans, that’s because we’ve been around for a couple thousand years longer than you. You humans have been around for close to 200,000 years in one form or another, but technologically speaking, less than one hundred years. Look at all the advances you’ve made in that time compared to the time before. The pace of your advancement is accelerating at an astonishing rate. Just think how much further you will advance in the next two thousand years. That will give you some idea as to how far we’ve advanced.

“Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek only got some of it right, our computing capabilities are far more advanced, our world has abandoned war as a solution to conflict, currency and capitalism are no longer needed, instead we replicate everything we need or want. It was truly a Utopian way of life. We created Artificial Intelligence; our computers could now think, reason and learn on their own. We built Androids to do the jobs that we didn’t want to do. We allowed them to enforce our laws, resulting in the elimination of most of the crime. Life was good; even procreation of the species was made easy. Females no longer had to carry the unborn and give birth. A couple just had to go to a birthing center, an egg was harvested from the female and sperm from the male, the egg was fertilized and placed in a growth chamber. The child’s DNA was examined, re-engineered to fulfil the parent’s wishes and four months later their custom bred baby was ready to go home.”

“What a minute did you say four months?”

“That’s right we’ve been able to shorten the incubation period to four months through genetic engineering.”

“It sounds wonderful, why would you want to leave there to come here?”

“It was wonderful, until some scientists merged the technologies of A.I. and Androids. Over time it resulted in Androids who could learn, adapt and think for themselves. They began to take control of our lives. It was small things at first, but over time we began to lose more and more of our freedoms to these machines who felt they knew what was best for us.”