I had a dream that there was this lady who was, like, a world renouned expert on Mongolia, and in particular, some specific small ethnic group in Mongolia. She was doing a lot of work to, like, help preserve their language and culture before they got gobbled up by the creeping hegemony.

She had this boyfriend. He was waay into her. He was an engineer and he lived in New York. His big hope was that one day the two of them would get married and live in New York.

She never acted like she was that into him. She seemed like she was dating him because it was easier to date him than to not date him.

She was very focused on her work, though. The boy comforted himself with the thought that this is just what she was like. She was not really ever going to be into love, and would never be that enthusiastic about their relationship, but he figured that she loved him as much as it was possible for her to love anyone, so he was going to be content with that, gosh dang it, because he loved her enough for both of them.

Once, she was doing some fieldwork in Mongolia, and he kinda invited himself along and she noticed that he seemed to think this was some big romantic trip.

Indeed, out in the majesty of nature out there in Mongolia, he revealed that he had been studying the language and culture of that ethnic group that she studied. He revealed this by proposing to her in that people’s language, using their customs.

She furrowed her brow and stared at him.

Then she said:

“Look, I’m gonna level with you. I don’t really care about Mongolia or these people all that much. My deal is that, when I was a little girl, I saw a UFO, and it looked like it was going to crash on Earth. But any time I talked about it, people acted worried about me, like I couldn’t tell fantasy from reality. But I know what I saw. I figured the only way I was going to solve this was to quietly study it on my own and not talk about it. I calculated that the UFO crashed in Mongolia, so I got my PhD working there, as an excuse to do a bunch of fieldwork, so that I could go out and look for the UFO.

Well, I found it. I know where the UFO is. I’ve been there several times, but there’s only so much I can learn from it. I can’t open it or take any samples, and it has no writing on it or anything. It’s a total mystery. In fact, we’re very close to the site right now. But the thing is, this time, I found another UFO! It is still flying, and it looks like it’s doing a search pattern around the Earth, looking for the crashed UFO. So here we are. And as soon as the mothership is able to see us, I’m going to set off these flares, and help them find the crashed ship, and maybe I will finally get to meet these aliens.”

The boy was shocked to hear this. They’d been dating for several years, and he liked to think that she would be comfortable telling him whatever was on her mind, but here he finds that the main driving passion of her life is something that she’s kept hidden from him and never talked about. But he had to admit, he was pretty sure she was having a hard time telling fantasy from reality.

But she looked at her watch, and then set off a whole bunch of flares that she had rigged up around the site.

And then, much to his surprise and her delight, the alien mothership descended. It scanned, and found the crashed UFO, mostly buried by the crash.

The mothership activated a tractor beam and began to lift the crashed UFO.

She grabbed hold of it, waiting to be carried up to the mothership so she could finally meet these aliens.

He tried desperately to talk her out of it:

“Look, you don’t know what’s going to happen when you get up there. You might die. You might never come back to Earth. Please, I know I’m less exciting than this, but please choose to live a life with me. You know what that is going to be like, and you know you’ll live and be comfortable with me in New York.”

But she did not let go of the UFO. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I loved you.” But he knew she was just saying what he wanted to hear because it was going to be the last thing she ever said to him.

The end.