All right. It's got juice. What next?

He practiced the few actions that had gotten responses from Pet Rock. Hm, 'Pet Rock' is a bit clumsy. How about...Petra? Nick liked that better. It was easier to say. Plus, he knew he was going to start feeling lonely at some point, and he didn't have a volleyball to make friends with, so giving the alien device a human name felt like a good move. Better to steer the crazy than to let it wander on its own.

Nick wished he had a user manual for Petra. Aliens probably don't speak English. He wondered if there was any way to make it easier to use this thing.

I made a power source by swiping on the power readout. Can I make a better display by swiping the display itself?

Nick's first attempts in that direction went nowhere. He squinted at the little colored specks, trying to understand them. He cycled through the five options in what he guessed was the power menu. Pinching and zooming didn't do anything. He had to take a break to cope with the frustration.

He'd eaten about as much as he could stand to. His options for activity were really limited. He didn't have much else to do besides sweat and watch the possibly harmful sunbeams creep slowly across the car's interior.

I wonder what happened back on Earth? Nick's mind wandered a bit. Did it make the news? Did a bunch of people live stream an alien invasion? Did all the portals close, or just the one leading here? Is the Army blocking off portals on Market Street? Is NASA trying to send me a signal?

Nick fished out his phone and considered turning it on. I wonder if I can get Petra to recharge my phone? I'd hate to just feed it to her as raw materials, though I might have to in the end.

When he felt that his patience had recharged somewhat, he went back to tinkering with the display. On and on he tapped, swiped, pinched and zoomed. He turned Petra in his hands and examined the color dots from every angle.

Finally, he tried twisting two fingers like turning a knob or something, and that had an effect. He added that to the mix, and eventually he managed to call up a different menu. This time there were four icons arranged in a square. Then he had to figure out what they meant.

One of the options looked a bit like the display face of Petra itself, so he selected it, giving him more options. The first was a big rectangle that looked like a more detailed display. There was an icon in the shape of Petra for scale; it looked as if the new display would be about the size of a tablet, which would be much easier to work with than the tiny area he was dealing with now.

Now the question is, can I afford it? What does it need? Nick selected it and waited for the pixels to stop moving, then the display froze and blinked, indicating (probably) that Petra needed food. Nick squinted, and counted sixteen pairs that needed to match up. Again he started with the apple and the hamburger, and that took care of a couple of pairs that were not far apart to begin with. Next up was the rock, and a pair of gray dots got a lot closer together before Petra “spit out” the rest of the rock.

Grey for stone? Grey for, what, calcium or iron or something? What is Petra getting out of the rocks I'm feeding her?

There was still a ways to go to finish feeding Petra. Nick offered the laptop again, and the alien device ate a large fraction of what was left. That paired up a few more pixels, but there were still five pairs to go. Nick tried another rock, and it got nibbled a little, but apparently it was similar enough to the first rock that there wasn't much to be gained from it.

Nick tried a few things: the carpet, a rag he found in the back of the Explorer, and a tire iron. Petra clung to the tire iron and ate about a three inch length of one spoke before letting go. Nick took careful note of the orange pixels that moved. Orange is iron, apparently?

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There were still three “foods” that Petra needed in order to build the display. Nick tried the plastic and fake leather of the car seat. Not enough. What else do I have to try? Nick fished out the three pennies and Petra ate about two and a half.That shade of beige is for copper. I guess I'm making progress.

Nick went through everything he could think of without opening up the rest of the human food. He had a suspicion that there wouldn't be much of anything useful in the groceries that wasn't already in either the apple or the hamburger. He dug through the bags, even fed the bags to Petra.

The car door was starting to get uncomfortably hot to the touch. Nick carefully squirmed out of his windbreaker and used it to protect himself from the heat. I'm not sure I'm going to make it through the day at this rate. He was starting to sweat heavily. I need water.

Water?

Nick offered bits of his sweat and Petra liked something in it. So he opened one of the precious bottles of fizzy water and poured a tiny bit on the device's intake. No response.

It's gotta be salt or something. Chlorine? Sodium? Something else? Nick tried spit, but it didn't do anything. He stared in frustration at the few pixels that still needed to move.

One of them inched a bit closer on its own.

Huh? What is that, a delayed reaction? He peered at the intake; there was nothing touching it but air.

Air.

Maybe the thing needed nitrogen. Did BigBall have nitrogen in its atmosphere? Probably. The air didn't taste like pure oxygen to him. Wait, doesn't meat have nitrates or nitrites or something? It should have gotten nitrogen from those. So maybe it's not nitrogen.

Nick had no clue what else was in air, on Earth or on BigBall. He kept wiping sweat off and feeding it to Petra while the chlorine counter or whatever it was slowly inched closer to completion, as did the mysterious air counter.

One more ingredient. Think, Nick. What haven't you tried so far? Nick thought of a couple of icky options involving bodily fluids and discarded them for the moment. He wasn't that desperate, yet.

Nick made another pass searching the car, mindful of the sunlight. He was about to give up when he spotted something wedged under the bit of front seat that had crumpled from the weight put on it. It was a small cardboard box. He would never have noticed it if the sunlight were not so godawful bright.

He flinched as a bit of the back of his hand got into the sunlight for a moment. Right through the glass, he thought, suppressing a hiss. It didn't hurt much, but that was from a split second of exposure. Nick was getting really hampered by the need to stay completely in shadow.

It took a while, but he managed to grip the thin cardboard without dropping it, and pulled it free. It turned out to be a good discovery: a box of vitamins. It had probably fallen out of a grocery bag during the tumble downhill. If it's only a tiny amount, a multivitamin might just do the trick... Nick opened the box and the bottle, and fed Petra a vitamin.

The pixels barely budged before Petra let go. Nick tried again with a different pill, with the same effect. A third pill was rejected. Nick was starting to feel really dejected when he picked up the foil wrap that had sealed the bottle and offered it to Petra.

Petra gobbled it up, and Nick carefully peeled every little bit off the bottle. Aluminum, I think? There's got to be aluminum in the car frame, right? Nobody makes heavy iron cars any more.

It made Nick nervous to risk his shield, but he pressed Petra up against the edge of the car door, doing his best to keep the device in shadow. Petra clamped on, and proceeded to eat a handful of the door. When she let go, Nick examined the readout and found to his great relief that the red dots were now aligned.

All that remained was to keep feeding Petra his sweat and waiting for her to inhale enough air for whatever she needed. It seemed to take forever, but finally, Petra started 3D printing the new display.

Even with two solar panels that were now in full sun, the battery charge was dropping. Construction seemed really slow, but so long as it didn't stop, Nick schooled himself to patience. He kept an eye on the power level, hoping that it wouldn't be catastrophic if he ran out entirely before the printing finished. He guessed optimistically that Petra had an automatic feature to pause printing if she was starving for power.

I'm running out of exotic materials to feed the device, Nick brooded. What else do I want to make? I guess that depends on what the new display shows me. The interior of the Explorer was positively sweltering, and the sun was close to its high point. Nick decided to name it the Death Star.

He was halfway through his first day on Planet BigBall, and his survival very probably depended entirely on how much he could get Petra to do for him.