Chapter 1: The Proposal

Dammit! I hate when this shit happens! Tom grumbled as he quietly slid out of the bed. He didn't want to wake his wife Betty, since it was one in the morning. Carefully, his felt his way beside the bed trying to dodge the damn dresser on one side and the blasted TV stand on the other. Many a time he had slammed his knee or shin into them in the dark when nature called for him to go take care of his business.

Feeling along the dresser, his hands found the pants he had taken off before going to bed that night. He carried them with him to the bedroom door. His beloved old dog CJ jumped off the bed and followed him out of the room. CJ (short for Claudie Jo) was a strange mixture of Chow and Pekinese, which made her look like a miniature full-blooded chow. She was a little over eighteen inches tall, weighed in at twenty pounds, and was totally devoted to Tom.

That, in itself, was a little strange, as it had been Tom's daughter who had bought the little furry puppy from one of her co-workers. Claudie had hung around with Tom's daughter Wendi for about a week, and then for some unknown reason had latched onto Tom. She had never looked back, again. The fifty-year-old man smiled to himself as he headed out the back door of the house, to his woodworking shed.

CJ went everywhere with Tom, even to the damned toilet. She never had been house broken with any real training procedure, since Tom hated striking a puppy even with a rolled up newspaper that people swore by. Even so, CJ seemed to know it was wrong and within a week of making Tom her companion, she would walk to the front door and bark to get outside to get rid of whatever nature had waiting in her little furry body.

Tom and CJ walked through the dew covered grass in the back yard to his little wood shed, which was a chore for Tom since the yard was cloaked in the darkness of the night. His feet felt carefully for anything, his son Tommy and his friends might have left laying around from their two-day overnight weekend. Only once did Tom stumble, and that was over a damn ten-foot stepladder the boys had left lying open in the yard.

"Damn! That smarts!" muttered Tom as CJ just grumbled in her throat at her master's painful yelp.

She was very good almost to the point of being scary the way she could read her master's moods and emotions. Tom had to be careful with his words when he was reprimanding his son for whatever was his latest goofy screw up or CJ took it to heart and put her two bits in with either a lot of barking or a occasional nip or two. She never broke Tommy's skin but she let it be known that she considered him her little brother and he'd better get with the boss's orders, ASAP!

Turning the light on in the woodshed, Tom looked at his latest project on the workbench.

"How do I let myself get caught up in things like this?" he thought.

He looked at the beautiful carved podium plaque he was working on. Tommy had started R.O.T.C. this year and his Master Chief had been over-joyed when Tommy had mentioned that his dad could make just about anything out of wood. Tommy had come home with a note asking Tom to come to school the next day and visit his son's R.O.T.C. teacher. Sure enough Tom had let himself get talked into making a plaque for the Master Chief's podium. Although really Tom didn't mind since he was a disabled naval vet himself, also. The problem was, that Tom was a perfectionist and he never did anything halfway.

Looking at the plaque on the workbench Tom sighed and sat down on his little stool. The plaque that the master chief had shown Tom a picture of was suppose to be a anchor with a rope wrapped around it, and two five pointed stars on the top in each corner. It was the insignia of a naval master chief. Tom had noticed the collar pin the master chief had on. It was far beyond what the picture showed of the true insignia. When Tom had asked why there was such a difference between to two, the master chief informed him that no one made a plaque with so much detail as the pin showed.

That was enough for the disabled vet. It was the challenge that he loved, as much as the working with wood. Tom went home and got on the net searching until he found a picture of the real pin that the master chief wore. It was simple for him to blow it up in PhotoShop. Then he had a copy of what he really wanted to make. He hated doing anything mediocre. It just wasn't in him to follow the easy way of doing things.

Before him on the workbench was an exact replica of the true master chief insignia but instead of being one and a half inches tall and one inch wide, it was twenty-eight inches tall and fourteen inches wide. Tom was old school, he started with some oak logs he'd had in his woodpile and split them with his table saw. When they were close he ran his planer over them until they were a perfect match in thickness and width. After notching, and gluing them together, he left them for a few days. Next, Tom traced the blown up picture of the pin onto them and the real work began. Thirty hours of labor later all that was left to do was to paint the anchor solid gold, and the stars and the USN letters nickel.

Tom searched every edge with both his eyes and fingers looking for any area that still needed sanding. He found a few and pulled out his custom made sanding block (a piece of leftover oak) and wrapped a piece of 240-grit sandpaper around it. Focusing on the edge that needed the touch up, he heard CJ growl softly beside him.

"Hush girl, you'll wake up the neighbors dogs and then I hear about it later in the morning." Tom said softly as he slid the sandpaper carefully over the rough spot.

'I wish I had a better way to get the real gold effect on this oak. I hate to waste all this time and end up with something that comes out half assed, ' he thought to himself.

'I might be able to help you with that, my good man, ' came a voice in the old man's head.

Tom had been through a lot in his life. Most of it had been pretty rough. So he was not easily shaken up, not even at a voice in his mind.

"CJ, when did you start speaking English and why the bloody hell didn't you tell me along time ago?" he asked looking down at his beloved dog.

CJ looked up at Tom expectantly, her master's voice sounded like he wanted something but she had no idea what that was. They were already outside so it wasn't that; there wasn't any food around so he couldn't be asking her if she wanted to clean his plate. So she just gave a muffled bark and sat waiting for him to make sense.

I don't believe that the animal, even as smart as she is, can speak her thoughts directly into your mind, Human, ' came the statement from some other source that Tom didn't see in the shed.

Tom looked around carefully, he wondered if his friend old Jake was playing some kind of practical joke on him. It wouldn't be the first time that the old man had done it, but he was out of town right now, in Houston. Maybe burning the midnight oil was affecting his mind.

"OK, I give up where are you and what do you want? I'm a little too old to be playing childish games, and I've got a lot of work to do here right now," Tom growled into the shed.

"I'm sorry, Human, I was just preparing you for the next step. However, my offer was genuine about helping you with your ... Ah, the plaque thing you're making," came a voice from directly in front of Tom.

Tom watched in awe as a shape began to shimmer two feet in front of him. Soon, there was a tall thin light gray alien standing in front of him. Tom's mouth tried to work but nothing came out. The alien was not quiet as tall as Tom's 6'4" but he was just under 6 feet by Tom's estimation. He was so thin you could see his bones sticking out everywhere. It reminded Tom of one of the anorexic super models that wasted good food so much. How anyone ever came to think that a man wanted a skeleton to make love to, was beyond him.

The gray alien had hands at least twice the size of Tom's and his were considered large for a man. And yeah when he was younger the big hands and big feet got him a lot of girls just to get that out of the way. The rumors were true at least in Tom's case they were.

Shaking his head, Tom wondered how the hell he had got on that rabbit trail of thinking when a damn alien was standing two feet from him.

That would be my doing, my friend. I get the best knowledge of from someone, when I'm in direct contact with them. I meant no offense by it though, and I can help you with that little ... Uh well 'big' problem, also. The alien actually grinned revealing rows of sharp little pointed green teeth. One of its abnormally large black eyes winked at Tom, and it large mouth curled into a smile.

Tom's mind finally accepted the fact that indeed there was an alien standing in front of him, and it had just been rifling through his memories like a damn virus does on a computer.

"OK, then ... uh, Mr.?" Tom offered an opening for the alien to introduce itself to the old man.

"Oh, my, I'm sorry for my lack of manners. I was overwhelmed for a moment from your memory dump into my mind. Your life has been quiet an exciting one, hasn't it? My name is Dregg, and I am here to offer you a new life."

Tom's legs were getting a little shaky by now, so he sat down before he fell down. Pointing at another chair that Tom had finished last week he waited for Dregg to go on. CJ moved over and sat between Tom's feet, which was where she liked to be most of the time. Dregg took the proffered chair and slid it over in front of the old man.

'He is handling this a lot better than the other humans I've talked to over the years, ' Dregg thought as he watched the human regain his composure.

"As I said, I am astonished and overwhelmed at your life, up until now. You have strived to be the best at whatever you take on. Your heart is always open to help anyone that needs help, even to total strangers who didn't bother to thank you for your time. Your mental capacity is extraordinary for a human, yet you never completed the higher learning schools you were attending."

Tom sighed at the statement.

"Well, life has a way of throwing curve balls at you, sometimes. From my memories you would have seen that my wife became pregnant, and had a very serious miscarriage. The medical bills were just too much for us to handle, without me taking a full time job. So my college career had to be put on hold for the time being. Then Betty was pregnant again, and there was no way I'd let my child come into this world needing anything. Add that to more new bills, and there ya go, my skinny gray friend. There's an old country song that says it best I believe... 'I never promised you a rose garden. Along with the sunshine there's got to be a little rain sometime.' In my case, it's been raining a hell of a lot, lately."