It takes planning to go to Earth from Space, how to get in but also how to get out successfully. Reverse parachutes must be prepared.
Abs was monitoring the situation over in France for this. Fern Stalin and Lichen Roosevelt had come and gone, nothing detected with their inferior Star Team detectors, blah (he thinks). Apollo inferred through logical progression of Mercury into Gemini. Abs knew his old pal Virgil was involved at the top (as he liked to say). “Get him on the receiving end the old lemon sucker,” he requested, nay demanded to another underling named Alan, a variant astronaut of the solo kind. Virgil had a sense of humor about it now, since he knew selves were living all over the globe and being born and dying with regularity under different guises and under different circumstances, some long and drawn out departures, some (like his own) not so much. Extreme pain and no pain and all degrees between. Like Archie Reiner in Meat Town. We’ll get to his story soon (or not).
We decided to meet in an alley near the center of town. Virgil said he liked the view of the surrounding Alps here and planned to go skiing with his friends Ed and Roger afterwards. They hadn’t seen each other in a while, he said. Time to go past the pain of betrayal — start healing the wounds of this broken broken world, he declared to me, sincerity showing in his eyes, his facial expressions, his body posturing. Here was a man of integrity, ready to fight for a just cause. If justice involved making a pact with the Greys so be it. Abs himself wasn’t in line with the mainstream thinking of his kind. They were both rebels, hopefully with a cause. Together.
“Something about that Alley,” said Fern from afar, having dreamed about it since their visit. “I think we should go back; take the alien made detectors this time.”
Lichen was up for it. Just had to wrap up the horse subplot.