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This is the beginning to a story I have been working on for awhile. I hope anyone who stumbles accidentally onto this blog will take the time to read and comment. Enjoy :)

He came back to our home, but it was no longer our home. Long had it been deserted by us, long ago had we picked up all we had and left all we knew. Now there it was, emptied of us, and of everything familiar. It was being mined; slowly taken away to other parts of the galaxy to where we were now living, where it could be put to better use. Conflicts were common in the new frontier we had forged for ourselves among the stars. How we thought we would be any better there is a mystery to be solved. The only place that seemed to remain untouched by the wars that raged in the galaxy was Earth. Nobody wanted it. All that came from Earth was rock, rock and bone.

Why he came to Earth was a mystery to me, but then again, I really wasn’t on a need to know basis. I worked on the mining outpost, there was only one mining outpost and it spanned the entire globe, slowly eating away at Earth’s few remaining resources. Enshrouded in a thick dark cloud and intense heat that would have seemed otherworldly to me had I lived two millennia ago. The lights of the mine’s massive equipment illuminated the clouds, changing them from a dark grey to a luminescent purple. This was Earth, this is what we did to it.

I watched him walk through the heavy outer doors and into the security bay. I have to admit I was curious. What could he have done to get sent here? It wasn’t very often that we got anyone new to the outpost, and especially anybody that looked like him, clean shaven and healthy, unlike the usual riff-raff that usually shuffled through those doors, and he was alone. He was on a mission and I knew it, but what kind of mission would bring him here among us? Others would tell me I was paranoid, but I knew that wasn’t it, I knew there was something else going on. It took my constant inquiring but we were soon told by the chairman that he was here serving time for grand larceny and that he had had experience mining on another planet and that was why he was here but I could tell that this was just a cover. That was my take on the situation. Maybe I was just imagining it. Maybe I was just longing for some excitement after being stuck on the outpost my whole life. I had my doubts at times, but deep down I knew something was out of place.

He mostly kept to himself for the first few days, only coming out to eat, and then going back to who knew where or what. This confused me, although not that much as I suspected that there was something else going on anyway, but most of the workers on the mine worked with many others and he was always working by himself. It shouldn’t be this way, that is what I kept telling myself.

I don’t know why, but for some reason the guys were wary of him, they weren’t usually afraid of anything but something about him didn’t seem right to them. I used this as a chance to assert my own theories on the matter, but the guys wouldn’t take to them.

After about three months I learned his name, a process that normally takes about a half hour. This only further confirmed my suspicions. He had a task to complete, and I was going to find out what it was.

fin