Some stories have a life of their own. I was all set to work on some other stories (which are much further along) when this story came into my head and wouldn't leave me alone. It's a little weird, and rather sad, but it wanted to be written.
Penny was lounging around her apartment, idly flipping through the pages of an old Cosmo magazine, when she got a call from her boyfriend.
"Hey, Leonard, what's up?" she greeted him cheerfully.
"Hi, Penny. Hey, I hate to ask you to do this, but could you go check on Sheldon?"
"Check on Sheldon? What do you mean? He's not at work with you?"
"No, he's home sick... or at least, I think he's sick. I mean, that's what he said, but he's acting really weird."
"Come on, this is Sheldon we're talking about. Weird is normal for him. You're going to have to be a little more specific," she quipped.
"Okay, well, I haven't seen him at all since he told me he was sick. He's locked himself in his room, and every time I knock on his door, he says he's fine. But there's been no sneezing, no coughing, no requests for split pea soup with croutons... I don't know, it's pretty odd, even for Sheldon."
"Wait a minute, Leonard. How long has he been shut up in his room?" Penny demanded.
A long pause, then Leonard feebly offered, "Since... yesterday?"
"Ooh, you are such a jerk, Leonard Hofstadter! Is that any way to treat your friend when he's sick? What if he needs to go to the hospital? What if he's hurt?" Penny cried, feeling a surge of panic.
"Oh, come on, Penny, you know what he's like when he's sick," Leonard whined.
"Fine, but I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for him," Penny growled and hung up on him.
She pulled on a hoodie over her tank top and pajama pants and grabbed a half-full box of tissues from her bathroom before crossing the hallway to her friend's apartment. Trying the door knob, she found it unlocked. A quick scan of the living area revealed that Sheldon wasn't up and about. She made her way down the short corridor to the bedrooms and knocked on Sheldon's door.
"Sheldon, are you in there?"
There was silence for a moment, and then he answered her through the door.
"I'm fine, Penny. Please go away."
His voice, however, sounded weak, and Penny became more worried.
"Sheldon, something's wrong; I can tell. I'm not leaving until you tell me what's going on." Then in a softer tone, she added, "I'm your friend, sweetie. Whatever it is, I'll help you if I can."
There was another lengthy pause. Finally he replied, "The door is locked, Penny. I couldn't let you in, even if I wanted to."
"What do you mean? Why can't you open the door? Are you hurt?"
"I just... can't."
Cursing under her breath, Penny ran out into the boys' living room and rooted around in their desks until she found what she was looking for. It was a long, slender metal screwdriver that she had seen Leonard use when he was upgrading his computer. Tool in hand, she dashed back to the bedroom door and inserted it into the tiny hole in the center of the doorknob. With a few quick twists, she was in.
"I'm coming in, Sheldon," she warned. There was no response. She swung the door open, and froze as she caught sight of Sheldon. He was lying in bed in his usual "mummy" pose, and he looked blue-literally, a pale blue color, just a shade darker than skim milk. His skin also had an odd scaly look to it. She sat down on his bed, and carefully touched his hand. It was icy cold and had a peculiar rough texture.
"Sweetie, what's wrong? What happened to you?" Penny cried.
"I'm sick," he said, not meeting her gaze.
"No, no, no, I've seen you sick before. You sniffle and moan and act like a big baby. This is something else. This is... I don't know what it is, but it's scaring me."
"It was not my intention to frighten you, Penny, but I realized that I needed help, and you are the only one I trust. It was a simple matter to manipulate Leonard into avoiding me and calling you to come over here by letting him think I had a cold or some other common virus."
"So what's wrong with you?" Penny repeated, starting to feel really afraid.
"Nothing... and everything," he replied cryptically.
"I don't understand."
He sighed. "I have a story to tell you, Penny, and I don't know how you'll react to it. I don't know if you'll believe me. But of all my friends and acquaintances, I have calculated that you are the one person most likely to help me, regardless of whether or not you believe me."
His piercing blue eyes held hers fast in a look full of unfathomable nuance.
"I'm not human, Penny," he said softly. His eyes never left her face, gauging her reaction as he confessed his true story, the one that up until this moment, he had never shared with anyone.
"I was traveling, exploring space in this region of the galaxy, when my vessel crashed onto your planet almost twenty years ago. I wasn't able to rescue much of my equipment before the ship self-destructed, a fail-safe that activates in case of catastrophic disaster on an alien world. Technically, I was supposed to stay in my ship and be destroyed along with the rest of my equipment, but I was over-confident. I believed that I would be able to find a way to repair my communicator and contact my people, and then they would come and rescue me."
"My people have a talent for... mimicry, so I was able to alter my appearance to look human. I needed to understand your world, to learn how to blend in while I searched for a solution. That was when I met Sheldon Cooper. He was fourteen years old when I met him at Texas A&M University. He wanted to solve the secrets of the universe; I just wanted to find a way home. I was fascinated by his brilliant mind. Clearly, he was one of the most intelligent people on Earth. Initially, I hoped that I could persuade him to help me, but I soon realized that Sheldon had a secret of his own. He was terminally ill. His pathological obsession with his health had lead doctors to discover that he had a fatal genetic defect, but unfortunately, it was one for which there was no treatment or cure. He was often too weak to attend class, but his mind could still run circles around most of his undergraduate professors."
"So I took a risk and told him who I really was. Then I made him a deal. I agreed to tell him everything about my home planet and all the other planets I had visited, about space travel and technological and scientific advances. In return, he agreed to allow me to assume his identity after he was gone. It wasn't until later that I realized that he must have been relieved to not have to burden his mother and sister with the knowledge of his death. You see, his father had died just a few months before. He had chosen to become legally emancipated so his family wouldn't be informed about his illness. I didn't understand your culture well enough at the time to understand that his attitude was unusual, to say the least. Fortunately, his detached way of dealing with people suited my goals as well. I wouldn't need to spend a lot of time around his family, and as for friends, he had none. I found it simplest to take on his personality as well. His condescending arrogance kept most people away."
"After I became Sheldon, I spent years studying with the brightest minds on earth, focusing on particle physics, seeking for a way to return to the stars. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that your world is centuries, if not millennia, behind mine in technological advancements. So I moved here, to California, with the intention of doing nothing more than living out the rest of my days in relative comfort. You see, I had realized early on that several trace elements present on Earth are toxic to my kind, although it would take many years for the poisons to build up in my blood stream. When I arrived in Pasadena, I estimated that I had perhaps ten years left. I got an easy job, where I was expected to produce few actual results. The most complex mathematics that your scientists were using were elementary to me, so all I really had to do was to avoid attracting too much notice. That's why whenever I seemed on the verge of a scientific breakthrough, it somehow fell apart. I sabotaged my own career - if you could call it that - so I wouldn't draw attention to myself."
"I've only made two real mistakes since I came here. One was to think that I could find a way off this planet by myself. I suppose I should have just stayed with my ship and self-destructed all those years ago. The other mistake I made was not realizing how quickly I would become debilitated once the toxins in my blood reached critical levels. I can't get up now. My body has become feeble, and I have very limited mobility. That's why I needed your help. I can't afford to trust any of my other friends. I think their passion for science would outweigh their friendship for me, and they wouldn't be able to keep my secret."
He raised his head a few inches off the pillow so he could look her more directly in the eye.
"Penny, when I die, I need you to destroy my body and the few pieces of equipment that I kept. Please, Penny, you must do this for me."
Her eyes had never left his face as he told his unbelievable story. As he finished speaking, she found herself shaking her head, not to deny his request, but just because she couldn't process what he was telling her. If she hadn't seen the weird physical changes that had come over his body, she would think this was a very strange practical joke. In fact, a corner of her mind was still hoping that he would smile and proclaim, "Bazinga!" But as she looked into his eyes, she could read the truth there. She drew in a shaky breath and stood up.
"Sheldon..." She paused. He wasn't really even Sheldon, was he? Well, she didn't know what else to call him, so she began again.
"Sheldon, I need time to think, to process things... I have to go."
With an effort, he reached out and weakly grasped her hand. "Please, don't leave me."
She looked down at his hand, pale blue and scaly, and experienced a moment of complete mindless panic. She jerked her hand away, but as she looked back at his face, she saw her friend, the one she had known for so many years. "I'll be just outside the door," she promised him and left the room quickly.
