Chester Chive stood in chains before the High Arbiter and waited.
The chamber was circular and tall, its walls doomful dark stone. Three planet officials sat at a curved table in sun fire robes and the one in the center, the Arbiter, had not looked up from her platinum plate.
"E-7551," she said finally while glancing upward. "You've been found guilty of crimes against our emperor, the tribunal has deliberated."
Chester said nothing. His defense advocate advised him, three holding cells ago, that silence was the only strategy.
"The sentence, execution via laser chamber in four stages," the Arbiter said. She lifted her eyes to meet his; her eyes were a pale, watery blue that seemed to hold a cold careless notion about his fate. "But the Bureau of Outer Worlds Management has filed a petition, and the emperor has granted clemency. You will be exiled to Earth for twenty-five years.
"Earth," Chester repeated.
"In the region called New Mexico. Near a settlement called Roswell." The Arbiter's mouth tightened almost imperceptibly. "You would manage a motel facility that exclusively lodges alien guests. You would be responsible for maintaining the guest ledger, and ensuring no incidents draw local attention. At the end of your term, you would be free to return."
"And if I don't accept?"
"Prepare your soul for death."
Chester looked down at his left arm barcode E-7551. He was one hundred years old, which was not an elder for his kind, but he felt the weight of age in that decision. Earth. He had been to Earth once for vacation forty years ago to appease his then mate. The planet had struck him as inferior, vile and underwhelming. He made a vow never to return.
"I accept," he said biting hard on his tongue.
The Arbiter nodded once and tapped something on her plate for the restraints to fall away. Before Chester could flex his fingers, two guards stepped forward from the shadows behind him and took him by the arms. One of them pressed a cold metal disc against the side of his neck, and the chamber began to tilt at the edges; dizzy dark stone blurring into a smear of gray then blackness.
He woke to an unworldly place scented with Human Particles.
The room was a small square with a low plaster ceiling and a single window that looked out onto a flat landscape displaying a kidney shaped swimming pool. Morning light came through the glass at a low angle, overwhelming his eyes from weeks in a dark hole. Chester was slumped in a wheeled office chair with a tattered vinyl seat. His mouth tasted sticky and dry from transport. On the desk in front of him lay clear sealed packets of documents and a set of keys on a steel ring.
"Hello Chester."
The voice came from a recliner pushed against the far wall. An old man lay there, propped up on pillows that had lost their shape. His face was thin and weary. A faded blanket covered him to the chest.
"Mr. Gable," the man said. "I run this place. Ran it, anyway." He gave a hearty cough. "It's all there in front of you. Drivers License. Passport. Social Security card. Birth certificate. Bank Account with funds. You exist, as far as this country is concerned."
Chester checked the counter. He observed his identity with blurred photos that were synthetically created. He viewed a bank statement with an account number and a credit card with his full name.
"The keys," Mr. Gable said. "Master set. Every room, the office, the storage unit out back. The ledger is in the top drawer."
"These keys are primitive", Chester said.
"Yes, they are. Humans do have key technology, but since this motel was built in the 1950's, it would be costly to have all doors converted. The less technology here the better. We don't need to attract human guests."
"Do you ever have human guests?
"They fly by night here and there. Mainly influencers who are rating the worst tourist motels and putting the videos on social media. Since we remain unattractive and instinctively odd, they stay away."
"What are influencers and social media?"
"I wouldn't want to spoil the fun; you have twenty-five years to figure that out", Mr. Gable laughed.
Chester pulled open the drawer. The ledger was thick and bound in dark leather, its pages soft with handling. He opened it at random and found a column of names written in a script he did not recognize, beside dates that spanned years. Some entries had been made in ink that had faded to brown. Others were fresh, the pen strokes still sharp.
"Our planetary guests come at night, mostly," Mr. Gable said. His voice thinning out. "Check in late, leave early. Pay in cash. Don't ask questions. That's the whole job."
"How many guests?"
"Depends on the season." The old man shifted on the recliner and grimaced. "Summer is busier. Winter, some trickle in. You'll learn the pattern quickly.
"Where is my shelter?"
"You will live here, in the motel office. The recliner here will be your resting unit; there is a bathroom for body refreshment and a kitchenette with a cold unit for food storage and a heat source unit to cook food. Instructions how to use everything in the office and planet manual is in the drawer next the ledger.
Chester looked around the office. The walls were cheaply paneled that had begun to separate. A galaxy themed Roswell Comic Con calendar hung beside the door. Drabby mint green carpet. A window air conditioner wheezed rough. Through the glass, the desert stretched away toward a line of low hills, and nothing moved on the road that ran past the motel.
The motel was laid out in a U shape around a gravel parking lot. Fourteen rooms, each with a numbered door and a single window facing the highway and swimming pool. The paint had once been turquoise but had bleached to a pale, chalky blue. A sign near the road read CRASH INN in letters that had lost their neon glow. The air outside was warm, even in the early morning, and it carried a faint scent of sagebrush, an unfamiliar odor to Chester.
Chester explored the property, trying each door with the master key. The rooms were identical: two double beds, two nightstands and bathroom with a shower stall. The carpets were thin and the curtains stiffened with sun damage. In room seven, someone had left a paperback novella titled Bovine Hills on the nightstand, its cover curled and its pages yellowed.
Room fourteen was different. The bed was made with military precision, the corners of the blanket folded into tight triangles, but the nightstand drawer held a stack of papers. Chester pulled them out and found a maintenance log, handwritten on sheets of lined paper that had been torn from a spiral notebook. The first page was in English; a list of repairs dated from the 1970s: replaced water heater, patched roof leak, termite extermination, pool liner replacement. The second page was in a script he recognized as Vash, a language spoken on two moons in the neighboring system. The third was in something angular and precise that he could not identify at all. By the time he reached the seventh page, he had counted seven different languages, and the repairs they described ranged from the mundane, a broken window latch, to the deeply strange, recalibrated atmospheric dampener in room four.
He put the log back in the drawer and closed it carefully.
Back in the office, Mr. Gable had disappeared, leaving a transitional note and the realization that Chester was now alone on a new frontier.
The wind picked up outside. It came across the desert and rattled the door in its frame, a dry, insistent sound that made the calendar flutter against the wall. Chester picked up the keys and held them in his palm. The metal was cool and solid. Through the window, the sun had climbed higher, and the shadow of the motel sign stretched across the gravel like a long, dark finger pointing toward the highway.
"Death would have been easier", Chester thought.