From the journal of Dr. Merton

I walked into the middle of the field and stuck out my thumb. Then I set down my chair and waited. I had been doing this three nights in a row now. I had nothing better to do. I had a lot of time on my hands. I set up my communicator and fiddled with it. Then something happened, something new. The static stopped. I flicked on the transmit button and pressed the '2 beeps' button. After a few seconds, I got two beeps I transmitted 1 beep, then 1, 2 beeps, then 1,2,3. And stopped.

I revived 1...2...3..4!

I flipped the blue switch with green stripe, and began talking slowly into the microphone.

"Greetings, I am Merton. I am a man of his planet, Earth."

"Greetings, Merton. What is your rank?"

"I am a civilian and a scientist. What is you name and rank? And how do we understand one another"

"That is all irrelevant. We are extracting you for questioning, prepare for extraction."

I turned and grabbed my bag. Then grabbed my phone and sent a message with a request to my co-worker to retrieve my equipment. I may have fumbled the number. I was so shocked. Then a painful tingling sensation over whelmed me and every thing went white...

Our protagonist.

Archie woke to the sound of her phone beeping. Who would SMS her at 3:02 in the morning? She fumbled at the accursed thing until she managed to unlock it and stop it screaming.

Success! Please pick up equipment at cat oval, do not let my work fall into the wrong hands!

Archie didn't recognise the number, but the oval was nearby. Making a decision she crawled out of bed and thought about her dreams. Vampires, cows, vampire cows and swords. Rightio then. She get dressed in her usual clobber. Camo-pants, T-shirt 1 size too big, this time in plain black. She walked out of her room, grabbing her hoodie. She paused, then grabbed her stick. She needed to be able defend herself. She went out the door quietly as she could. She reached the oval and stared. There was a folding chair and some sort of black box on the nearer end of the oval.

She leaped the fence and went over clutching her stick. The folding chair was pale wood, with faded green cloth.

The box was tall enough to reach the middle of her shin, about 30cm. It was black, and had a hinged lid like you get on a tool box, which was open, revealing a control panel with an assortment of bizarre colour coded switches, oddly numbered dials and more buttons of different sizes and colours than any young person should be exposed to. Archie had a lot of trouble not fiddling. There was three screens, a radar and two she didn't recognise. There was a metal handle on each side, and was a lock in the lid. There was a few sliding panels on the front of the box, one was labelled 'INNPUT'. The panels had locks also. They were locked. Archie looked at the lid, and saw that there was a key, which was a cross between a locker key and a car key. There were other keys to. She shut the lid, locked it and removed the key. She turned to fold the chair and noticed a notebook laying on the seat. She picked it up and put it in her pocket. Then she folded the chair. She hooked her arm though the chair and picked up the box.. It was lighter than she'd expected. Then she went back to her house. She reached the door of her house and managed to sneaked all the way to her bed. She shoved the odd box under her bed put on her pjs and went back to bed. She had school tomorrow.