Catch of a lifetime.
My name is Alan May, and a year ago, anyone who knew me would tell you that Alan May was a confirmed bachelor. I wasn't; I was so painfully shy that I simply could not utter a word to a woman. I'm not that good at making conversation with anyone. If that anyone had tits, I was lost. If you can't talk to a woman, you can't chat them up. I was a lonely, confirmed bachelor.
I didn't go to discos or parties. If I went to a pub, it was for a pint and the high point of my social activity, a game of pool with my only real friend, Neil. I have known Neil since my mom dropped me off for my first day at school. Neil is my polar opposite. gregarious, funny, and the life and soul of any party I love the guy to bits; he never stops trying to get me fixed up with one of the sweet young things that swarm around him.
My dad died before I was born. He was a collier. He died in a mine collapse. Not having a dad as a kid wasn't good, but it wasn't the reason I was shy; that was just the real me.
I went fishing. I went fishing on my own, and I would walk miles to be on my own. I liked fishing. I took photos when I was fishing, and as you don't have to talk to a camera, I became pretty proficient at that.
One day I saw four fox cubs playing on the far bank of the river where I was fishing. Then I saw the vixen watching them. She knew I was there, but she knew the river was keeping her babies safe. I was completely engrossed; I must have taken fifty or sixty shots, and then the bank I was sitting on exploded.
When I came around, I was in the river just a few yards downstream of where I had been sitting. Most of my fishing gear had gone, and my camera and the bag I kept it in, along with a couple of lenses and a flash gun, had gone. I was faintly surprised I was still alive.
There was a big hole in the bank just behind where I had been fishing, and inside was a black sphere. As I got my feet back on dry land, it started to open like a very round oyster. I was, to be honest, so scared that I was on the verge of shitting myself.
There was nothing to be scared about, though. No one inside, no weapons of mass destruction, not even a weapon of lone fisherman destruction.
However, I could hear a voice--two voices, in fact.
"Holy fucking shit, Gerry. The bastard things crashed on Terra 3 on system TQ 316--36. Oh fuck, it's a Cat 4 planet with a strict no interference order.
Oh fuck fuck and triple fuck. There is a being sniffing around it."
"Hit the self-district button, Harry."
"No, mate, he is almost touching it, and the scout is activated.
"What gender is it, Harry?"
"Male, I think. Sometimes it's hard to tell with these fuckers."
The voice called Harry shouted. "Oi buddy. Are you a guy or a tart?
"Do you mean me?"
"Oh fuck, are there more of you there?"
"No, I don't think so," I replied.
"Well, of course youΒ then."
"In the pod, there is a companion bot. You can have it if you want."
"What is it?"
"Fuck sake, buddy, it's called a companion bot because it's a bot and it's a companion."
"Sooner or later, your people will be advanced enough for us to send a watcher out to you. Probably just after you stop electing congenital retards as your leaders. Then we may invite you to join our intergalactic trading block. We usually send a bot out with a watcher. We had already sent this one out when there was a problem with the watcher."
"Just to be totally upfront, she will remember everything, and we will be able to download all her memories."
"I'm confused; is she a robot, a computer, or a living being?"
Bit of each really, robotic skeleton and drives. The skin, hair, fingernails, and sub-dermis are all artificially grown and maintained. The brain is a pure computer.