Chapter 3

The solar flare erupted at midnight Mountain Standard Time. Unfortunately for Chuck, this particular moment happened to be right about the time that he awoke from his restless sleep. He had only been asleep for a couple of hours anyway, but for a homeless man on the streets of Tucson, that was an eternity. As Chuck opened his eyes, he felt the hunger in his belly. It had never been this bad before, but tonight for some reason, the hunger pangs permeated his entire body. The need for food spread from his stomach to the rest of his upper torso and through his arms and legs. He sat bolt upright and his newspaper blanket ripped itself between his body and the bench he was sleeping on. Tonight he was going to do it. He was going to open up one of those dumpsters behind the Golden China restaurant and find some damn hell eggrolls.

Chuck looked around to see if anybody was near and then he noticed out of the corner of his eye, a soft wisp of cloud against the black starry sky. He turned his head toward the cloud and noticed that it seemed to be moving or pulsating much faster than regular clouds. Then a burst of green and purple light caused him to drop his jaw in fright as the light cloud seemed to grow stronger toward him. He got up and began to run toward the Golden China. He found the dumpster behind the restuarant and opened it up. It stank of rotting vegetables and sweet and sour sauce. The smell was overpowering, but he glanced once more over his shoulder at the alien light cloud and saw that it was changing colors and moving closer toward him. He leaned over the side of the dumpster while holding on to the lid so that it shut when he fell in amidst the decaying remnants of yesterday's all-you-can-eat buffet. He used one hand to pinch his nose and steadied himself with the other on a pile of cold and greasy feeling sponges. He pulled one of the sponges near his face and in even in the darkness of the dumpster, he could tell that these were eggrolls. He had hit the jackpot, now all he had to do was avoid the alien takeover of the planet.

When the atmosphere of the Sun expresses itself in the form of a solar flare, there is not much anyone on Earth can do, but observe and comment on the event. Solar flares are studied by scientists and classified with a rating depending on how violent the event is. The solar flare causes a huge flow of energy to be directed toward the planets in the solar system. When the energy flow gets to Earth, only minutes after such an event, it reacts with the Earth's magnetic field and produces an aurora effect where light can be seen from the heavens. If one is unfamiliar with the causes of this effect, they may take matters into their own hands and assume something else is causing it to happen. Naturally, Chuck assumed that it was an alien takeover of the planet because a few years ago, he had been abducted by aliens and they told him that they would return for him one day. Chuck's abduction occurred in a remote desert area 50 km south of Tucson. It is true that he had been hunting for peyote pods, and that he had attempted to make a peyote drink, and that he had ingested some of this peyote juice which caused him to lose consciousness. But when he awoke from that affair, the vision he had was as clear as any other tortured memory. Four beings had visited him and informed him that they were aliens from another planet in another galaxy. At first, they let him talk and tell them who he was and beg mercy for his life. Then they began to talk to him and give him instructios on what he should do with his time on Earth before they returned to pick him up. Part of those instructions included meeting a man named Toaster in the Wal-Mart parking lot and collecting a package from him which he was not to open, but to deliver to a mobile home parked on the outskirts of town. Once delivered, a bag of alien food and drink would be given to him.

Chuck was astounded at the generosity of the alien beings. He asked why they had chosen him. They told him that it was not them who had chosen him but the Universal Concatenator that had identified and located him for them. The UC had also told them that he was essential to the completion of their mission objectives. Chuck then inquired as to what the mission objectives were. The aliens told Chuck that actually, there was only one mission objective and after much discussion, they decided to let him in on it: collect every molecule of Phosphorus in the universe and deposit it in a secret location. Chuck did not know what Phosphorus was, but he was cool with any mission objective that did not directly threaten his existence.

As Chuck sat in the dark dumpster behind the Chinese restaurant and reflected on his experience with the aliens, he conceeded that it was more of an alien visitation rather than an alien abduction. It was the pre-meeting before the abduction or the abduction planning meeting or something to that effect. Chuck was surprised at how many eggrolls were in the dumpster. How had they found their way here? Did people not like eggrolls anymore? Were these poisoned eggrolls? As these questions raced through his mind, he ignored them because the eggrolls tasted so good. Because they were wrapped and fried which had a slight perservative effect, they tasted like decent, good, clean food except for the fact that they were cold and greasy, but that just gave Chuck something extra to lick off of his fingers.

After stuffing himself, he realized that he did not want to spend the night in the dumpster because the smell of the other garbage was beginning to get to him. He hadn't heard any noises outside of the dumpster, so if the aliens were coming for him tonight, they weren't right here for now. He slowly lifted the lid of the dumpster and peered out into the night. The alien lights in the sky were no longer visible and he proceded to exit the dumpster. Chuck began to walk back toward the park where he had been sleeping. Another evening here on Earth he thought. How many more did he have left?

Meanwhile in a mobile home on the outskirts of town, a bonanza of information had just been automatically recorded. Phosphorus emissions were spiking in several areas of the city. Dr. Talcuin and Toaster were going to have quite a bit of work to do after class to pinpoint each spike in data and determine if the locations corresponded to their previous measurements.