At first Clint thought it was a shooting star. But it got brighter and brighter instead of streaking across the sky. For a moment, he feared it was coming straight at him! But, whatever it was, it's path took it into the nearby woods - a near miss.
From his house here at the edge of town, where the woods began, Clint could easily see the resultant glow dimly through the trees and bushes. Fearing it might start a blaze, he grabbed a flashlight and a shovel. Moments later he was wending his way through thickets and around trees. Using the light in his hand to watch for roots and stones that might trip him, he worked his way toward the glow, praying that the fire might be small enough that he'd be able to handle it with a simple shovel. The fact that the ground was moist was a factor in his favor.
He wished he'd taken an extra moment to race into the house and grab his cell phone, in case he needed to call for help. After all, his none-too-muscular body didn't promise that he'd be able to perform heroic efforts pounding out flame or trying to dig out a fire break. With his physique, plus his glasses and interest in science and video games, he might as well have been wearing a label 'nerd' on his forehead. But maybe, just maybe, if he managed to put out what could've turned into a forest fire, some of the other students in his high school might give him some grudging respect. Not his fellow nineteen year old Seniors, of course. He'd never expect that.
He sensed he must be close by now, and hadn't twisted an ankle or anything. Finally, the beam of his flashlight revealed a gouge in the forest floor - a shallow trench heading to his left. At the end of it was the glowing thing, and there was no sign of fire or smoke. Clint inhaled quickly, and couldn't detect the smell of anything burning, either. Now that he was close, he discovered the glow wasn't uniform. Rather, it seemed to brighten and lessen a little, almost in an irregular series of pulses.
Cautiously, he approached it, switching the shovel to his right hand in case he needed to use it quickly and accurately, while transferring the flashlight to his left. After staring at it for several minutes, he planted the blade of the shovel into the forest loam to free that hand. The object was smaller than he'd expected and he couldn't feel any heat radiating from it, even when he held his hand waist high over it. Slowly lowering his hand until it was about 6 inches above the glowing thing, he still felt no warmth at all. "I assume you got hot, streaking through our atmosphere," he murmured. "But you're small, and half-buried in cool, wet dirt and loam. Plus, I have no idea how long its taken me to reach you, so I guess it's possible that the heat dissipated quickly."
Clint wanted a closer look under better conditions than this gloomy forest, so he dug up a shovelful of the cool wet earth from under the object, with it resting on top of that mound. As he started to laboriously retrace his path back toward his house, he found that the weight of the dirt threatened to tip the shovel forward and dump its load. So he had to 'choke up' on the handle so much that his grip was actually where the metal shovel blade was attached to the beginning of its handle. The shovel blade bumped his thigh from time to time as he took each step forward.
"What are you?" he asked rhetorically, in a voice almost as quiet as a whisper. His scientific curiosity was so piqued that he kept glancing at the object as he moved. Unfortunately, he was paying more attention to it than to where he was placing his feet. He tripped over a root and began to fall forward. Instinctively he dropped both shovel and flashlight to free his hands to brace himself for the impact. But, almost of its own volition, his hand darted forward and snatched the object right out of the air. Perhaps his quick working brain had calculated that he might otherwise lose it in the undergrowth!
The impact didn't harm him, but he mentally hissed, once he realized he was holding the glowing thing against his bare skin. He steeled himself for possible pains - burning, stabbing, or other unknowns - to register on his hand. But nothing happened. The object apparently caused no damage or harm that he could detect! Sighing with relief, he stood up, and gave his clothes a cursory brushing with his left hand as he tried to look more closely at the thing cradled in his hand.
Impatient now to see it in good lighting inside his house, he closed his fist around it, grabbed the shovel and flashlight and made it to his back yard with no further incidents. His parents had gone out to dinner, and his sister Judy was studying for her Junior History test at a girlfriend's house. Mentally, he didn't refer to her as 'Judy' though - lately he'd taken to using the nickname 'Jugs' since she was now stuffing her breasts into 36 C cups. Needless to say, Judy was not thrilled being called that, which is precisely why he continued doing it. After all, she retaliated by calling him 'Clutz' all the time. It was just something that siblings do.
Clint was therefore delighted that no one was there to disturb him as he went into the kitchen. Placing the item on a paper towel, he carefully washed and dried his hands, then moved the paper towel and its burden onto the kitchen table under the bright overhead lights that were there. A little dirt was still clinging to the pulsating object, so he brushed it off with scraps of paper toweling. The enigmatic object paid no heed to its cleansing, and merely continued emitting irregular bursts of light. Even the color of the light was hard to define. It's surface was smooth and a little oval, with a few barely discernible bumps, more easily felt than seen.
After perhaps a half hour of examining the pebble-like thing, Clint still hadn't a clue as to what it was, where it came from, its composition, or the source of its glow. He even pulled out the special radiation detection add-on for his Arduino to check for any harmful radiation with negative results. Sighing, he decided to store it in a sealed glass bottle in his dresser for overnight, planning to check it in the morning. He fully expected that the glow would be gone by then.
He was sitting on the sofa, watching a SciFi movie when his parents arrived. They'd picked up Judy from her friend's place on their way home, so the house went from solitude to bustling with people in the blink of an eye. Judy didn't say much, merely heading for her bedroom where she'd undoubtedly spend time on her smart phone until mandatory bedtime.
"Don't forget you have school tomorrow," Clint's mother reminded him unnecessarily. "Off to bed when your movie's over, right?"
"Yes, Mom," he dutifully replied. But his mom and dad were looking at one another amorously after their intimate dinner, and already heading for their bedroom. Clint could guess what was going to happen in there next, but he blocked such images thoroughly from his mind. Intellectually, he might understand that parents still have sex, but viscerally, he couldn't deal with the idea of his own parents doing that. Especially since he was still a virgin - the girls he knew at school, if they deigned to acknowledge his presence at all, treated him like a distant friend.
The next morning, Clint was gratified to find that the pebble-like thing was still blinking. Elated, he took it with him to school. He showed it to his best friend Jimmy, another nerd, since he thought he'd appreciate it.
Jimmy indeed was suitably impressed. "Whoa, dude! What is that? Where did you get it? How does it work?"
Clint gave him the backstory, and explained all the tests he'd run. They both remained mystified, and neither could find a pattern in its blink rhythm. Clint pocketed it as Jimmy left for the computer lab.
But as he prepared to head for his study hall, he saw Skylar Henderson coming down the hall toward him. Clint felt his throat go dry. Skylar - tall, lithe, blonde, blue-eyed, queen-of-all-she-surveyed. Even in his mind, as he viewed her, Clint stuttered. "Sh... she's n... not a cheerleader this year, because her... her... b... br... breasts grew too much." As a nerd, Clint could appreciate the view of those mammaries - even bigger than his sister's - as well as understand how their sudden growth could alter her center of gravity, and make many cheerleading stunts awkward, if not downright dangerous. But it hadn't changed her popularity, except by enhancing it.
Almost shaking, because he really liked Skylar, but knew she was way, way out of his league, he thought, "Maybe she'll think this thing I found is at least interesting. Maybe it could be the start of some sort of friendship?" He didn't think there was much chance of that, but at this moment, Skylar wasn't surrounded by her jock friends, or her 'in-crowd' girl friends. He decided to take a chance, and hoped that his armpits weren't showing sweat stains.
