You and two of your best friends are hanging out near the woods on the outskirts of the town. You’re home from your first year of college for the summer and are catching up with your friends that you haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with recently.
There’s Jake, who out of your friend group is the one to decided to to go to college. He’s a shorter guy, with longer brown hair, is a bit out of shape, and often wears baggy, casual clothes including a beanie and an oversized hoodie. He’s very impulsive and impatient, but you two have been friends since you were little. There’s Chris who is an athletic guy who went to a mid sized college to join the swim team. He is tall, has short blonde hair, has the body of an athlete, and often wears sport jerseys or athletic clothes. He’s pretty competitive, reckless, but is always fun to be around. There’s also James who bailed on your plans today to help his dad with his work. He’s an average looking guy and wouldn’t stick out much in a crowd. He’s over-cautious, nerdy, is a straight A student, and almost the exact opposite of Chris, and they often get in arguments.
After spending a few hours bumming around and listening to music together, you all hear a loud crash maybe a few hundred feet away from where you’re all sitting. You can see in an open area in a field a good distance away from all of you there is a bit of smoke coming out from where the must’ve been some kind of impact. Chris immediately starts jogging towards the impact site and you and Jake follow slightly behind. After a while, you guys are able to make your way to the site where the smoke is.
There is a sizable crater in the ground and a silver metal sphere with some intricate patterns on the outside. It almost looks like a part of some alien spaceship that crashed down into earth. All of you were silent, staring at it for a while before Jake breaks the silence “So.. can we like touch it or something? I wanna see what it is.” There’s still some smoke coming off of it and it looks like it could be really hot. “It looks way too hot to touch, we might just have to wait for it to cool down” Chris says. You’ve all been hanging out for a while, so by now the suns maybe an hour away from setting, you we’re about to get dinner together right before you heard this crash. “It’s pretty late” you say “If we wait much longer it’s gonna be night and we’re gonna have to find our way back in the dark.”
Chris, who is usually pretty spontaneous, seems unsure about touching this unknown object. Curiosity gets the better of you however, and you reach down to touch the sphere. Right as your hand is about to touch the sphere, the patterns on the outside of the sphere light up green and shimmer. You finally reach down and touch the sphere with your hand. It opens up in half on its own, and lets out tons of cold air and fog. You all step back as the thick fog blinds you all.
Eventually the fog disappears and you’re all able to make out what was in there sphere. Illuminated by a green under light is what almost looks like a mix between a smartphone and a broken gameboy. There is a bunch of wiring hanging out of the device, a few weirdly shaped buttons, as well as a large slightly cracked screen in the middle.
Before you’re even done comprehending what just happened, Jake reaches into the crater to grab the device. As he picks it up, the screen lights up. The screen is covered in a language you’ve never seen before. It sort of resembles hieroglyphics in a way. The only thing on the screen you can make out is a DNA strand, which is stationary at the top of the screen. All you you are fascinated at the device and you’ve all been pretty quiet until Jake breaks the silence again. “So... what do you think it does?” It could really be anything, you think “Maybe it’s like a walkie talkie to call aliens or something, or like a ray gun that sets stuff on fire!” Chris still seems wary and nervous about the device and finally speaks again. “Maybe we should just not mess with it until we know what it is, it could be dangerous. We could research it, or ask James what he thinks about it.” Jake doesn’t seem to like this idea and grunts and says “I would rather just test it out now, it’s not like it’s gonna hurt us or anything.” They both look at you to make a decision on this.