TALL WAR

"Don't wet yourself," my mother-in-law Corkabee says. "I almost did." She looks me straight in the eye, something she usually doesn't do unless I am under suspicion for a misdeed. I cower instinctively. Then she unloads her bombshell. "There's a spaceship in the Potomac." I stare at Corkabee. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. So, I do what all young men do in similar circumstances. I repeat what she just said.

"A spaceship crashed in the Potomac?"

"It didn't crash," my mother-in-law corrects me. "Authorities say that it was designed to land on water. To splashdown. It looks like it came in hard, though, and sustained some damage."

"On the Potomac?" I say dumbfounded. I am amazed and frightened. A five hundred year old spaceship has landed on the Potomac River. Which means that inside that ship are the first full-size, six-foot, original humans to show up on Earth since the Downsizing.

With a little bit of luck, they all died on impact.