Reminiscence

The revelation

Telling nothing happened is not right; something did happen. The door of the room I stayed opened suddenly. Relieved, but scared, I hurried out of the room. In the living room, all my friends and my cousin were waiting for me; with another girl and an older man. I gasped. It was Rosy and if I weren't mistaken, her father.
"Rosy?" I whispered." How on earth…" she did not let me finish.
"'How in the universe did you find me?' is more appropriate" she told me with a small smile.
"Hold on, what's going on?" Dan asked. He looked lost.
But Rosy appeared not to have heard him or at least pretended to do so. "Did you make the discovery?" Rosy asked me looking directly at my eyes. I nodded. "Say it loudly, Shany, so every body can learn the truth" Rosy told me kindly.
I took a deep breath. The extraordinary intelligence and calling people as humans… suddenly, everything was making sense. "You are not a human" I whispered.
"Then who is she?" someone asked me.
"An alien" I replied.
Dan laughed anxiously as if waiting for someone to tell him it was the April fool's day. "You are out of your mind, right?" then he asked me.
I ignored him and kept looking at Rosy. "Yes, my father," she motioned towards the man who stood beside her, "and I are aliens" she confirmed.
"Okay, but why are you revealing yourselves now?" Dan asked her casually as if he had just discovered that the sky is blue. He looked unimpressed.

The explanation

"Shall we go sit and talk afterwards?" Rosy's father spoke for the first time.
Rosy and I nodded in unison and took seats. Unwillingly, others followed us and sat. Rosy's father was the last to sit.
Then he cleared his throat. "Our home planet is called 'Magma', and it's in a far off galaxy. It's a developed planet. I'm like what you call a scientist in your world. A colleague of mine, twenty years ago, discovered a method to change our outer appearance at will. It is a very complicated process where our DNA is converted to other creatures' DNA. I will not bore you by telling how it is done" he said kindly looking at our faces. "Anyway, I too invent a lot of new things and my hobby is space exploration." He chuckled. "My daughter and I go exploring other planets in the universe when we have free time…"
"The islands you told me about," I asked Rosy, "were not at all islands, were they?"
"No," Rosy replied, "they are planets".
Rosy's father continued his story as if there weren't an interruption. "As I was saying, we travelled through the universe exploring and about thirteen years ago, we discovered Earth…
"It was inhabited with species of advanced minds, not like ours, but closer. My daughter and I had a sudden urge to find about these species. So, with the aid of my colleague's technique to change appearance, we changed ourselves as humans and started to live among them.
Living with humans was quite interesting that we stayed here for more than ten years. I chose my profession as a scientist and my daughter enrolled in a school as a young girl.
Ten years passed. We had to return to our home planet in an emergency. We stayed there for a year and returned to Earth. I continued my experiments and Rosy stayed to help me…
"I discovered a way to travel through time. Again, I will not go into specifics as I can see your eyes are about to close any moment." he smiled again looking into our tired eyes.
"Any how, this time traveling is possible from a mere touch of the person who wants to travel through time." I heard a low whistle from Dan. Rosy's father continued. "We experimented this on ourselves, and it was very successful, but we wanted to test on humans too. But I didn't know how to do so, without gaining attention from humans. That is when Rosy told me about her human friend, Shany.
"I apologize; I placed microphones in your previous house and waited for the right time." He said looking at me apologetically. I winced.
"Then I learned that your family was shifting to another place, we placed 'bugs' in your new place too. The most appropriate time came when your mother suggested inviting your friends for the weekend.
"We bought this house and quickly set up the house and other things to lure you all to this house. We changed every door knob in this house as sensors to your touch and they were directly connected to my main computer upstairs. From there, I was able to send out your memories to the TV screens in those rooms. Shany's memories were carefully selected by Rosy" he grinned at Rosy who was grinning back. Then he looked again at us no longer smiling. "The experiment, it seems, quite successful" he concluded.

Certainty and Uncertainty

We all were silent for a moment. At last, Dan spoke. "As much as I don't want to believe you, I have to believe you" he said to Rosy's father. Others nodded in agreement. If they didn't shake their heads, I would have thought that they were about to cry. But then again, my face too must have looked the same.
"So, this is just an experiment" I whispered trying to grasp every thing I heard that night. But on top of everything that dawned on me, part of me was glad to see Rosy.
"I'm afraid it is" Rosy's father replied. "And to see my best friend" Rosy said to me flashing a sudden smile.
"Okay, are you going to show your real appearance?" Dan asked.
Rosy's father looked uncertain. "We better not" he said at last.
"Why?" Amanda asked.
"Scary?" some one asked.
"Something like that" Rosy's father said.
"Come on, let's go" then Dan said.
"That's a good idea. You all should better go now." Rosy's father said.
"And don't worry about your invention, we will publicize it no time" Dan said as he got up to go.
"I think not" Rosy's father said quietly.
"Why not?"
"You'll see"
"Whatever. Let's go" Dan called us.
"Are you going to stay here?" I asked Rosy.
"No I'm sorry, Shany. We have to return to our home planet" she said sadly. Then her face brightened. "Hey, we might someday meet again".

Epilogue

The next few minutes were a blur. I remember vaguely going to our house and sleeping.
The next morning was confusing. I remembered everything happened that night, but I was not so sure if it was just a dream or not. I asked others about it, they did confess that they had a strange dream, but nobody remembered what it was. I guess this was what Rosy's father meant by saying "you'll see". But apparently, I am the only one who actually saw.
Maybe for the sake of friendship, Rosy must have urged his father not to erase my memory, or maybe she wanted me to remember her good bye, which she couldn't give me three years ago.
My reminiscence ends from here; though five years have passed since that incident, I still don't stop looking through the window at that house every day, waiting Rosy to meet me as she said she might.