The first thing I remembered was the light.
Not where it came from. Not how long I had been beneath it.
Only that it was everywhere.
White at first, then green, moving through the air in slow pulses. Each one illuminated a
fragment of memory before it disappeared again.
The empty diner.
My notebook hitting the pavement.
Pages scattering beneath a black sky.
The hum growing inside my chest.
Then the feeling of leaving the ground.

---

Eyes open now.
Above me was a ceiling that seemed to have no end. Beneath me, something cold and
impossibly smooth.
I tried to move, but my arms wouldn’t answer.
Shapes passed at the edges of my vision – tall, narrow figures distorted by the glow. They
moved without footsteps, communicating through clicks and tones that seemed to come from
the walls around me.
I wanted to ask where I was.
What they wanted.
How long I’d been gone.
But when I opened my mouth, no sound came out.
Another pulse of green light moved through the room.
And another memory returned.

---

I was rising above the diner.
The town grew smaller beneath me, its streets disappearing into darkness. My body felt
weightless, pulled upward by something I couldn’t see.
Then, somewhere above the rooftops, a cow floated past me.
For one absurd moment, our eyes met.
Mud still clung to its hooves. A numbered tag hung from one ear. Its legs drifted beneath it as it
turned slowly in the light, looking less terrified than mildly inconvenienced.
I recognized the number from my notes.
It belonged to the farmer.
Then the light swallowed us both.

---

When my vision cleared, three figures stood at the far end of the chamber.
Between them was a small object suspended in the air.
It began moving toward me.
At first, I thought it was some kind of instrument. Maybe the device they used to bring me here?
Then it turned in the light.
A watch?

Its rounded shape resembled the craft that had hovered over the farmer’s field – the same
strange silhouette witnesses had struggled to describe.
The same shape I had seen blocking out the stars.
One of the figures raised its hand.
Images flooded my mind.
Then three words appeared in my mind.
Clearer than anything I had heard or seen.
A gift. For Earth.

---

The watch settled around my wrist.
The moment it touched my skin, the chamber folded into light.
The figures stretched into shadows. The hum became deafening. The memories began
breaking apart before I could hold on to them.
The ship.
The cow.
The gift.
Then nothing.

---

I woke on the pavement outside the diner just before sunrise.
My notebook lay nearby, its pages scattered across the parking lot.
According to my phone, eleven minutes had passed.
It felt like days.
For a moment, I convinced myself I had imagined everything. Exhaustion had finally caught up
with me. There had to be some rational explanation for the missing time and the fragments still
flashing through my mind.
Then I felt the weight around my wrist.
Metal.
Glass.
A pulse of green.
I turned it over.
Engraved on the case back was the same impossible scene I remembered from the sky: a cow
rising toward a waiting craft.
And beneath it, a single word:
OVNI.

I came to this town looking for proof.
Instead, they gave me a gift.

— by Matt Black, returned correspondent