Free Gifts From The Stars by James Octavo

Chapter 1 –
California

     
    Out of a California forest,
more than a dozen whooping and hollering people come running. They
each carry colorful gem-like crystals of various sizes from pebbles
to baseballs. All the pieces sparkle with various colors and
intensity of colors from aquamarine, minty cubes to lemony citrine.
They have diverse shapes from hexagons to spheres to
octagons.
    Even dogs carry the
glistening pieces in their mouths, running toward a clearing where
other people sit at wooden picnic tables.
    “Let's see what you got
there,” a white-haired man says while his dog runs to him with a
orange cylinder. Behind the dog, a teenager with a yellow pyramid
follows and falls exhausted on the bench.
    “You won't believe this,
gramps,” the boy says as the man takes the cylinder from the dog's
mouth.
    “There are thousands of
these in the woods. Everyone's picking them up. What do you think
they are?”
    “Hmm. It feels like a gem.”
He pulls out reading glasses, squints his eyes and rubs them. “I
must be seeing things. They look like the crystals I saw on the
news yesterday.”
    “On the news?”
    “Yeah. People at a Pacific
beach thought they were rich when they saw baubles like this
washing ashore.”
    “Were they?”
    “Don't know. The news lady
said they brought some to a gemologist. But still no
answer.”
    “Where’d they come
from?”
    “No one knows. They first
thought they fell off a container ship.”
    The teen taps on his phone.
“They don’t say anything more about it on the ‘net.”
    “Let's see the one you
picked up. Maybe the material's different.”
    As the other people approach
the tables with their objects, they gather around the white-haired
man.
    “Okay, you're the chemistry
teacher,” a lady in the crowd asks. “What are they?”
    “Don't know. Some look like
precious stones. But they could just be industrial gems or common
crystals.”
    “Well, come back with us.
You need to see this,” she says, pointing to the forest.
    Hiking back to the woods,
the teacher sees the reason for the excitement. Spread over the
forest, thousands of the objects blanket it, turning it into a
bright polka-dot patchwork. More eerily, others stick in the trunks
of trees as if they grew from them like moss or mushrooms, giving
the woods the look of a magical fantasyland.
    “It almost looks like a neon
autumn leave fall.” The teacher leans over to pick up more of the
gems.
    Hundreds of trees glow with
the bright yellow, orange, and green shapes attached to
them.
    “This can’t be right,” the
retired teacher says. “I can understand a joke on one tree. But how
could it be done on this many?”
    “And they don't look like
someone placed them,” his grandson says. “There's no seam where
bark begins and a crystal starts, like they sprouted.”
    “Don't talk nonsense,” the
older man says. “These are mineral or artificial in
nature.”
    “I tell you, I tried to
remove them and they won't budge. It's like the tree and objects
are one.”
    “You're right.” He pulls
hard on a blue sphere impaled in one of the trees. “But this can be
done with plastic mixtures.”
    “No. Not when there's
thousands of them. Think of the work needed to place each
one.”
    “Whatever it is, we’re not
going to understand it.” The teacher rubs dirt off a red ruby and
raises it to the light.
    “How about calling Aunt
Nora?” the grandson asks.
    “She’d be the one to ask.
With what I tell her, she might bring her whole department out
here,” the teacher says, noticing people fighting over the
objects.
    “Even her goofball boss
Dan?”
    “Well, he’s her boss. And
they do like each other.”
    The next morning the group
of scientists arrive at the California forest, now crowded with
food vendors, curiosity and wealth seekers digging, trading and
searching for their own rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The
scientists at the site, some with suits and ties, others wearing
lab coats over suits,