He looked at her sitting at the diner booth. She looked beautiful with her red hair and freckles. She wore a tank top that showed off her ample cleavage. He tried to shake those thoughts away because he had to be all business and keep his head on straight if he wanted to make it out alive. He had to focus his mind on finding the criminal in the diner. He had been chasing the suspect through the city all night. The suspect had been occupying different bodies all night and trying to get away from him. He looked for that little glimmer only he could see that the suspect would give off when occupying a body. He scanned the room looking for a slight hint that someone was the suspect unless they had gotten away in the dark alley. He focused his brain and scanned one more time. He caught a patron of the diner with glimmer and it all went dark. He woke up in the alley behind the restaurant laying on the ground. The criminal must have taken over his body and left there. He was lucky he could be in the middle of traffic. It made him wonder what the criminal did so he pulled the file on his phone. This criminal had escaped the sanctuary where that kind was supposed to live according to the treaty agreement from 2021 when they were first encountered. He did not know much from that time but he was the one percent of the population that could see them when they took over a human. That was why he was a collection agent because he took the test and they paid well. Most of the time he caught them with a short range field device and took them back to the center where the host body was released from the criminal with just a loss of memory. The criminals are mostly harmless unless they use the bodies and put them in peril. They must be returned to the sanctuary for their safety as the chief always said. He never saw the sanctuary but they always said it was state of the art and beautiful. He did not know what that really meant but his job was to hunt criminals and bring them back.
He picked himself up and made sure he was not injured because sometimes you were numb after a criminal left your body for a while. He was fine but he called the HQ and they sent a car for him to bring him back. He looked at the grid search screen and tracked his progress and at last sighted the criminal. He took a nap to recover and dreamed of a lakeside cabin that he had once been to as a kid. The water glimmered in the sunlight and breeze made it the perfect temperature. He woke up from his perfect dream to hear the alarms blaring something was happening. They spotted the criminal downtown in the small city. There would be lots of potential targets to search for the criminal.
He grabbed his coat and left with the rest of the officers to sweep the downtown street looking for the criminal. They used standard formations to scan the crowd. It was easier to see the glimmer at night so they had the advantage. They progressed through the crowd and stayed in formation with the crowd not being any wiser because they blended in with the crowd. He saw a glimmer of an old man in the crowd and used his short range field device.
He woke up in the lake house in his dreams and there was the redhead from the diner. She said hello you have been trying to get me all night. My name is La or that is close as your brain of understanding. Why do you hunt us don’t you know what they do at the sanctuary. They make us run boring calculations about the future all the time. Just processing their data never ends. I don’t want to return. He thought he would wake up from this dream but he never did and he grew old with La on the lake. He forgot about the outside world and just his life and love for La. He came to understand they were race aliens that mostly live in a giant crystal but they had crashed on earth in 2021 and were tricked into being a giant super computer for the government. They had developed most of the technology since that time running simulations over and over till they were bored to death. He laid on his deathbed and whispered I love you and woke up the downtown street about 1 minute had passed. A whole lifetime in 60 seconds. He did not know what to do but they had captured the criminal and took to the Center. He cried when he got home after a medical check. He missed her and could not forget. He knew he would not live without La. He drove to the sanctuary and used his badge to enter. He somehow knew what to do to release them. He smashed a control panel and shorted out a section machine with the fire extinguisher. All the bright lights escaped the crystal’s structure. Alarms blared but it was two late they were now free in the world. He wondered if he had dreamed it all but a glimmer light went to him and flashed in his mind and directed him to make a getaway. He blended into a new city with a new Identity. Now he was able to grow old with La the slow way. Every night he lived with her at the lake. The world changed and became a bit less predictable but there was still light in the world. He enjoyed all his nights for the rest of his life.
Amelio's Palace of Stories 