I stood there, my jaw working, but no sound came out. Nat and Patrick seemed to be in the same boat. It was too much, in too short a time. I was sure there were a million questions I should still be asking, but my brain just kept returning Error 404. It might be time to step back and regroup. And maybe get some food, as my stomach was reminding me every few seconds. More beer wasn’t out of the question either. I glanced at my friends; our circuit breakers had all tripped. “Look, Sheldon, you’re not going anywhere, right?”

“Not unless you or someone else with the remote directs me to.”

“Does anyone else have a remote?”

“For this ship? No.”

“Okay. We’re going to go home now. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Oh, joy.”

My parents wouldn’t come out to the barn on a Saturday evening while I had friends over, so this was about as private as we could hope for. We had the TV on, with the volume up high, just in case. Just in case what, I had no idea. But if ever there was a time for paranoia, this was it.

I stared down at the beer in front of me, and realized I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. On the other hand, I wasn’t curled up on the floor gibbering in fear, so that was a plus.

“So we own a flying saucer,” Nat said into the conversational silence.

“Own might be too strong a word,” Patrick replied. “If the Gen come looking for their missing ship, they might not bother to clear it with us. Or if we object, they might just vaporize us. At best, we are in temporary possession of someone else’s misplaced property.”

“We could hide it,” Natalie said.

“Sure, we’ll park it in the barn.” I rolled my eyes at her. “There were four floors in that thing, assuming that’s what all the buttons in the elevator are for. Based on the floor we entered on, it’s at least a hundred feet in diameter, and somewhere in the neighborhood of forty to fifty feet tall to fit all the floors.” I stopped and stared into space again. “Huh. I wonder if it’s more spherical than saucerish after all.”

“So, to the list of things to do, we need to add get a look at it,” Patrick said.

I thought for a moment. “And hide it. Or figure out how we can keep anyone else from finding it.”

“Sheldon might actually be motivated to help with that last one.”

Patrick snorted. “Sheldon. That was good, Nat.”

“Focus, please,” I interjected. “Fuel. As in, does it need a periodic refill? I doubt it runs on diesel, so we may have a limit on how much we can use the ship.”