The crane strained with the weight of the 2 ton rock. A bigger crane would have been better but a bigger crane would have been more difficult to get into this remote area of Venezuela.
The load sunk the tires into the moist ground 2 inches. The flatbed pressed down almost to the tires. Gil sprang up to the rock to unhook the cables.
“Make sure that thing doesn’t roll. Chock it good.” Morton yelled from the crane’s cab.
“Right” Gil said, smoldering at the suggestion he’d neglect something that basic. Morton condescending that he needed to be told.
Gil and Morton did not get along and had come close to blows in the past. This job for the Museum, transporting a suspected ancient meteorite, didn't pay much money. Neither man wanted to be there. Working together made it that much worse.
Gil put a woodblock under the rock, dropping low, out of Morton’s sight. Gil suddenly felt faint, pitching into the rock, his face smearing along the iron flecked surface. His yellow hardhat was knocked from his head and bounced off the truck.
“Hey! Genius! You lost your hat. Did you hit yourself in the head?” Morton needled Gil when he saw the plastic hat.
Gil was not worried about the hat. Gil had stopped all worry. He was no longer just Gil.
After millennia, the intelligence trapped in the crystal deep in the meteorite stirred. It had found a compatible life form to possess.
Alien / Gil stood slowly, his head and shoulders just visible to Morton. He placed his hand on the iron rock and it began to glow. The massive meteorite shrank to the size of a ping-pong ball that hovered above Gil’s palm.
“Hey, Gil, what?” Morton managed to say before the dense ball shot from Gil’s hand, into Morton’s mouth and out the back of his head.
Alien / Gil turned to look at the sunset and breathe with his wonderful new senses.
Just as Morton's body landed on the crane controls, releasing heavy cables smashing the million year old alien mind to a lifeless pulp.
