The old, withered widower sat in the high-backed chair, in the tiny room that he called home. He looked around suspiciously and harrumphed to nobody in particular as he raised himself gingerly onto his shriveled, slippered feet. A faint scratching noise came from his back screen door. He hobbled over slowly and raised his pockmarked hand to the door handle. As he did so, he pushed the dusty curtains back from the window with his other hand and peered out into the misty commons, dreading what his hallucinations had told him he would see.
       The curtains made a slight scratching noise as they brushed against the unvarnished wood of the door and the view through the grimy window revealed nothing but a bank of strange, unseasonal fog lingering over the endless plains. The old man sighed and opened the door, wincing at the loud squeak the rusty hinges made.
       "Macy? Macy? Where are ya, my dear?" he called. After he'd called a few times, a mangy cat with an arthritis-influenced limp slunk towards him from behind the salt bushes which fringed his yard. It had nicks in both ears and had patchy fur caused by a growth on its neck.
       He reached down and scratched the loose fur behind the feline's ears. It rubbed against him jerkily and made a low coughing sound in its chest as small clumps of hair fell slowly to the ground. He stepped back and gently pulled the cat inside before closing the door and hobbling slowly to the corner of his lonely shack which passed as a kitchen.
       As the old man filled up the cat's water bowl, the water pipe clattering and gurgling, he wondered what he would do when the cat died. He'd probably die before it anyway, any day now he'd wake up with blood filling up his lungs and his heart banging haywire. He turned his thoughts away from this morbid subject and bent over with a groan to put down the cat's water. Standing there, for a minute or two, he watched the cat lap up some water slowly, the small creature coughing gently every ten or fifteen seconds.
       The old man then hobbled over to the front door and, with a shaking hand, pulled it open and peered gingerly outside. Seeing nothing, he stepped onto the lean-to in front of his house that passed as a porch and laid himself down in the faded blue rocking chair that stood there. The chair itself was there in wind, rain, and scorching sun. It had sat there for ten years and would likely stand ten more years, long after the man himself would be gone.
       A lonely wind wailed across the salt flats, making the rusted letterbox at the end of his driveway shudder and flap, emitting a groaning sound as it did so. The old man shuddered. He'd lived here since his wife, beautiful but fragile, had passed away. In her last days, she had babbled senselessly all day, rocking in her chair by the fire, jumping at small noises. By the time the convulsions had started, it was too late to take her to a doctor. He had buried her himself, alone, in the town's local graveyard. When he buried her, he buried a part of himself with her, and he blamed himself bitterly for what had happened. As penance for what he believed he'd brought on the love of his life, he moved to this secluded hovel in the middle of nowhere and became lonely, bitter, hardened.
       This was his customary schedule: wake up, eat a meager breakfast from the supplies delivered once a month by the ever-faithful delivery man from town, feed the cat, and sit on his porch and brood about his rotten luck in life. Once in a while a tumbleweed would blow from one horizon to another, catching his attention for a small while. Then, he would go back to staring into the shimmering horizon and letting his thoughts consume him.
Today, however, was different.
       As dusk fell, the old man noticed a faint rumbling. Over the course of ten minutes, the sound intensified into a roar and a bright light appeared in the sky, to the west of his house. He watched, rapt with fascination, as the light source in the sky slowly moved towards his general area, shedding smaller beacons which fell slowly and disappeared. Soon, however, the light was so bright that he had to turn his eyes away for the pain in his mind. What happened next, he did not know, for then there was a huge thump and a roaring wind in his ears, and then there was nothing.
       He opened his eyes to the sun rising above the sky - he drearily thought that it must be about ten in the morning, then realized that he was laying prone on the hard ground directly in front of his house. He rolled over creakily and then attempted to stand up, only succeeding on the third try.
       As he stood up, the memory of what had happened last night struck him and he reeled, nearly making intimate contact with the earth again. He quickly stood up straight, straighter than he had for years, surveying the area around his home with a jaundiced eye.
       He fixed his eyes on what seemed like a recent excavation - something looking like a large hole in the ground with piles of dirt heaped around it. The old man hobbled inside and grabbed his walking stick and a glass bottle of water in preparation for his short journey. Then, with the walking stick aiding his arthritic gait, he walked slowly to the hole in the ground.
       When he finally reached the hole - which turned out to be an impact crater - he gasped in amazement, dropping (and shattering) the bottle of water which he had been holding. The entire bottom of the hole, almost a perfect hemisphere, was still steaming slightly from the morning dew which had collected on its glassy surface, the formation of the translucent substance being caused by the vast heat of whatever had landed in the middle of the crater.
       In the middle was a metallic object, perfectly spherical but for the large hunks missing out of the sides. It had different-coloured lines glowing blue embossed in circular patterns on the surface. He guessed that it had been a polished silver at one time; it was now a dirty grey with scorch marks. The sphere was about two feet in diameter, he guessed, or at least it had been before it entered into the planet's atmosphere. He didn't know any of this was true, but that was a reasonable approximation of what had happened, or so he thought.
       In his interest in the crater, he hadn't noticed the jet black sedan, lightly dusted with a film of salt, pulling up quietly behind him. He turned around, as quickly as he could, to the sight of two men in black suits clambering out onto the salt flat. They both turned to him and walked briskly past him to the impact site. He heard them whispering quietly to each other, occasionally glancing back at him and jerking their heads away quickly when they saw him watching them.
       They then turned to him and told him, with no explanation, "Get in the car". The widower knew he had no choice but to join them - what chance did an invalid like him have against two men in their prime? With a resigned sigh, he lowered himself gingerly into the back seat and closed the door behind him. The two men climbed into the front of the sedan and the driver silently started the car and drove off into the horizon.
       Seven hours later, they were still driving. They had stopped at a rest station four hours in to provide the old man with a meal and to refuel the car. An hour after that, they had unexpectedly turned off the highway and onto a dirt road leading to nowhere. The old man had nothing to say to the silent men in the front. His mind was filled with worry and fear - "What will happen to Macy?" was the foremost question in his mind. The fact that he knew they were going to kill him was no question. He knew it, sure as he knew that he had severe arthritis in his right hip.
       An hour after this, the sedan stopped. The suit in the passenger seat turned around and broke his silence for the first time: "Get out". Expecting much worse than this, the old man opened his door and raised himself out of the car. The driver also got out of the car and beckoned for the widower to come to the front. He made small talk with the old man for a minute or so, then changed his demeanour and savagely kicked the old man behind the knees, knocking him down to the ground.
The last thing that the old man ever felt was the barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of his head, and then nothing.
The driver stood up and got back into the car. "Larry, you ever wonder if that's gonna happen to us one day? When we outlive our usefulness?"
The response from the passenger seat was sombre. "You betcha."