Ian Brown was observing the night sky, near the Santa Ynez Mountain, it was one of the best places for that, the sky was clear, the high topography helped, and the silence of the place was very pleasant, he really liked that place.
Although it was isolated, it was still one of the best spots to watch the night sky.
A light cold breeze even made Ian forget the heat of Santa Barbara, but after a few minutes, the cold wind gave way to a hot one, very hot, it felt like steam from a pressure cooker.
Ian looked up at the sky and saw a metallic sphere, it was large, and the metal seemed to be liquid, yet it stayed solid, not a single drop fell to the ground, it only moved with small ripples, similar to those that appear when we throw a stone into a lake.
The sphere was still in the air, it floated, it had no turbines or anything similar, it floated with some device different from an airplane's.
That was really something interesting, at least that's what Ian thought at the time.
After a few seconds, a second sphere appeared, it was the same size as the first one.
Then, a third one showed up.
The first sphere approached the other two, but the third began to have some kind of problem, because it started moving in a strange way, it was as if it were dancing in the air.
Little by little, the sphere began losing altitude and fell, a loud explosion sound was heard.
Even from a distance, the sound seemed to have been very close.
Ian started running to his car and drove without caring about the speed limit, he was driving fast and recklessly, he was very scared of what he had seen.
A man was on the left side of the road, he started looking at the man and didn't see a truck coming from the opposite direction.
Ian panicked and hit the brakes, but it was so sudden that the car lost control and crashed into a tree.
Ian woke up in a hospital bed, Bianca was sitting in a chair and a nurse was putting some medicine into the IV.
He opened his eyes slowly and carefully, because he felt a lot of pain.
"Are you feeling okay?" the nurse asked.
Bianca stood up from the chair and came closer to him.
"To be honest, I feel so good that it's going to keep me up tonight," he said in a joking way.
At least it was funny to him and to the nurse, who both laughed right after, but Bianca was serious, she looked at him and didn't say a single word.
Then the nurse called the doctor, and he explained the whole situation: two broken ribs and a few small fractures in other parts of the body.
Ian was being kept on strong painkillers so he wouldn't feel pain, and because of that, he was feeling very drowsy.
When the doctor and the nurse left the room, Bianca came even closer to him.
"You were very careless, you should listen to my advice and sleep more, you could also avoid driving late at night in places with so little light, that's dangerous."
"Alright, I heard you, and I don't know if I'll follow your advice, I wasn't sleepy and I didn't fall asleep at the wheel, I just looked at a man on the road, he was near a car in the middle of nowhere, I looked at him and ended up not seeing a truck, and crashed into a tree."
"No, that's not what happened. You fell asleep at the wheel and ended up crashing into a car when you went into the wrong lane, the other guy is in a better condition than you, luckily he was awake and got hurt less, so he was able to call for help."
Ian thought about that, it didn't seem possible.
"Could it all have been a dream?" he wondered.
But he didn't want to talk about it anymore, he just accepted it.
It made more sense than having floating spheres in the sky.
But it had felt so real that he didn't know whether he had dreamed it or actually lived it.
The best thing to do was to accept the situation and stay quiet.
He knew how skeptical Bianca was about these things, even though they had a UFO-themed store together, she still didn't believe in anything.
Little by little, he recovered and was discharged from the hospital.
He was still limited, movements were painful, recovery was taking longer than he was willing to accept, but he was resigned, at least in some way.
He turned on his computer and started visiting some forums that were saved in the browser.
He scrolled through the page until he saw a familiar image, it was a sphere.
The picture wasn't clear, it seemed to have been taken with a cellphone, and the person who took it didn't know how to frame the object properly.
But somehow, he recognized the same sphere.
The place wasn't in Santa Ynez, it was somewhere farther away, closer to Buellton, at least that's what Ian believed, since it wasn't possible to get many details based only on the image.
He commented on the forum post and said that he had seen a similar sphere, and also mentioned the location of the sighting.
Ian then looked at the publication date, it had been made a day after his sighting.
So there were two possibilities: the first was that it was a different sighting, and the second was that the person had posted it the next day.
The second one seemed more plausible.
Ian started to believe again that it hadn't been a dream, but he still had some doubts.
The first was the man he saw, and the second was how the accident had really happened.
There were two versions: he believed in his own, but still had doubts.
That hurt, since he was so convinced that he hadn't fallen asleep at the wheel, but he didn't know how much he could really trust himself.
After a few hours reading posts on the forum, he decided to go to sleep.
The accident had changed the way he saw sleep, he was confused, and listening to Bianca might be safer, or at least less dangerous.