Bryce shut his bedroom door to dampen the street noise. As he slid the dusty cover off the wood box he had pulled down from the top shelf of the closet, he took a deep breath. He'd never opened the box before, but he knew what it contained when it had arrived in the mail a fortnight after his father had passed ten years ago. Having always been poor, it had been the only thing he had anticipated he would inherit.

It looked just as he'd remembered it as a boy. 

"Don't tell anyone I still have it," his father had told him, holding his prized possession up to the oil lamp to admire its shine. Bryce was twelve and had just been returned to his father's custody by the state for the third time. His father was never 'quite right in the head.' Or so the authorities said. 

To keep Bryce, his father was supposed to dispose of this most treasured object and take the pills that the doctors had prescribed. Bryce saw his father spit out the pills after the public health nurse left, but he would never tell. As eccentric as his father was, the children's home was a far worse fate. 

Sure, Bryce wore tattered clothes, and they lived in a dilapidated house, but his father made sure he had a hot meal every night, even if it was just a boiled potato.

The workshop was a secret too. Up in the attic, Bryce's father would tinker with his treasure at all hours of the night. If he wasn't at work perfecting it, adding wires and metal patches here and there, he was out on the roof staring at the heavens through his telescope, his only other prized possession. Bryce was allowed to sit and watch his father as long as he didn't say anything. He often fell asleep in the corner of the workshop on a dirty old wool blanket. If he awoke and found his father gone, he would drag the blanket out onto the roof where his father was glued to the images his telescope afforded him of worlds beyond. 

Bryce and his father would huddle together under the wool blanket and Bryce would learn the names of the various stars and galaxies. 

The telescope rolled off the roof and shattered along with his father's spine when Bryce was 17. His father moved into a care home for the infirm and Bryce moved to the city in search of work. He visited his father on weekends and holidays but they never had much to say. 

Bryce pulled his inheritance out of its padded case and the metal gleamed in the light from the building across the street engulfed in an inferno. The shrieks and yells outside grew louder as lasers from the alien's ship began detecting and uploading people's brains, leaving behind bodies crumpled on the ground. 

Bryce put on the helmet and flipped on the power switch.