Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Microstory 808: Diamond in the Rough

When I was younger, I used to hang out with the neighborhood kids. As I grew up, I realized that we weren’t so much friends as our proximity simply made it really convenient. We grew apart when our age differences became more noticeable, and a couple of us moved away. But before then, we liked to sneak into construction sites, and our neighborhood had a lot of them, because it was still quite nascent. One day, we strayed a little too far from where we all lived, and discovered a site we didn’t know about. It was completely cordoned off with barbwire fencing, and warning signs. Now, you have to remember that this was the late 90s, when parents let their children go out for hours at a time. We didn’t have cell phones, and we didn’t tell each other everything. It was perfectly normal for us to be so far from home, and in such a dangerous place. Being the ever mischievous ones, we found a point of weakness in the fence, and broke in. At first, it all looked like any other site. It was particularly large, so it probably wasn’t designated for a single house, but otherwise, nothing was out of place. There were tools leaning up against an office module, a pair of work gloves accidentally dropped on the ground, and various heavy machinery scattered about. Then one of us—I can’t remember which—noticed something shiny on the ground. I picked up the gloves, and used them to brush away more of the dirt, fancying myself a junior archaeology excavator. It almost looked like diamond. But that couldn’t be true, it was larger than a manhole cover. Reena, who had the ability to move particles with her mind, came over, and spread the dirt some more, revealing the diamond-like surface underneath to be even larger than we believed. Glenn grabbed a pick axe, and tried to break into it, but couldn’t even make a scratch. It must have been a diamond. Ralph, our resident mechanic, hacked into all the vehicles, and moved them off to the edges. Reena swept away the rest of the dirt, revealing the full diamond, which was in the shape of a baseball diamond. Knowing we wouldn’t be able to lift the thing out of the dirt and sell it, or something, we ignored our fantastical ideas of greed, and just decided to play baseball on it. I never liked sports, but that was definitely the best day of my life. When we went back the next day, the diamond was gone, having left only a giant crater behind, and a group of clearly confused government agents, who thankfully didn’t catch us. And so here we are at the brink of my upteenth archaeological dig. I think I’ve finally figured out what the diamond baseball diamond was, and what happened to it. Madam, if you would just provide me with the funding we need, I can prove my theory that these diamond structures are ancient spaceships. I eagerly await your response.

Best Regards,

Dr. Herbert Ruff

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