Episode 32- The Kill List

Voices.

Voices filtered through dark cotton as I drifted back and forth between dreams and the beginnings of consciousness. Pervasive dread prowled my reveries;  hungry night wraiths growled and salivated as they hunted me.  I pressed hard against the veil between sleep and waking, but could not break through.

"How much do we tell him, Ian?"  said a rough-edged voice.

"It's dangerous to leave anything out,"  said someone else.

"He threw himself across Sissy to save her life,"  said another.  It was Mark, I knew that voice.  "I say we tell him whatever he wants to know."

"Hate to burst your bubble," said the first man, "but he landed on her after bouncing off the floor. That's why he was stretched out across her legs.  You ought to have figured that out, cousin."

Drifting, drifting.  Desperately trying to return.  Terrible phantasms slithered through my torpidity.

"People have to know what's happening," said the second voice.  "To defend themselves."

"With what?" said the first voice.  "Besides, the government will seal this place off in a heartbeat if they know what's under their feet.  They're running all over topside right now.  If they weren't so damned blind, there wouldn't be anything left to hide.  We're the ones doing the hiding from everyone.  For their own good."

They were quiet for a moment and I panicked.  I struggled toward consciousness.

"You know the drill, Enid," said Mark.  "Government would lock this place down so they could weaponize everything they find.  But what's down there needs to stay down there.  Messing with that is liking trying to pick the locks on the gates to hell."

"And you two think if this writer writes down everything that happened we can get it out to everyone without the government shutting it down?  You remember what happened in the Middle East?  Who do you think really controls the Internet?  Ebook, print book, it won't make any difference."

"Maybe," said the one named Ian.  "But we have to take the chance.  People have to know.  This guy writes it up, publishes it and then we see what we see."

"Why don't you do that yourself?" askd Enid.

I opened my eyes to a room filled with blurry lights and shapes just as the other gave his answer.

"Because," he said, "I'd like to stay alive. Whoever writes this up will be on a kill list from day one."

Episode 24- The Guardian

Through the door and into Wonderland.

The door grated closed behind me as I stared in shock at the back wall of the next room.  It was a ten feet tall and twenty foot wide holographic screen of a square-edged tunnel covered with zeroes and ones narrowing to an image of a beautiful woman.

I'd had all I could handle by that point.

On the run from the government, dropped in the middle of nowhere by a Kentucky survivalist, reduced to following a locating device blindly through a dark forest, then forced to witness a horrific battle between dark monstrosities ended by a UFO crash.  The forest bursting into flames as the crash disintegrated.  Running to stay ahead of the flames while following the electronic beacon to this cave while government helicopters circled overhead.

The sliding rock wall, stepping through the door with a flashing skull and crossbones into a room backstopped by a beautiful hologram.  Too much.  Too much for one night.

My mind slipped into cognitive dissonance.

"Welcome," said the image.

All I could do was stare.

Where the hell was I?  What was this place?

"Come closer," she said.

No way.  I was thinking it might be safer to go back and stand in the burning forest.

"Please come closer so that I may further identify you."

My legs were so tired they were shaking.  I felt hot and wondered if my brain was overheating.  That would explain a lot.

I took three steps forward and stopped.  Maybe it was a stupid idea, but there's something about a beautiful woman- even a holographic one- asking you to step forward that can get a guy in motion.

Soft blue light moved over my body.  My skin tingled.  I was afraid to move.

Had I stumbled into a secret government facility?  Had Mark's locating device sent me to the wrong place?  Or was he working with the government?

None of it made sense.

"Come closer," said the image.  "You are approved to enter."

"What  am I entering?" I asked nervously.

"Walk through me and find out," said the image.

I closed my eyes as I walked through the electronic looking glass, terrified of what I would find on the other side.

Episode 17- The Uninvited, Part II

"Is that a rocket launcher?"  I asked nervously.

In the confined space of the van, it looked like a shoulder mounted cannon.  I pressed my cheekbone hard against the driver's side door because my head was too close to where he was aiming.

"Combination of things," he said.  "Controlled pulse cannon, virus insertion tool, software cancer in a tube.  You name it, it does it."

"Okay.  But what does all that mean?"

"No time for that, time to dial.  But don't worry, we're not going to blow anyone up."

With the big-tube contraption balanced on his shoulder, he used his free hand to hand me a piece of stiff paper with a number written on it.  I looked up to ask him what the number was for and noticed him attaching two co-axial cables from his unit to the roof of the van.

"What do I do with this?" I said, holding up the card.

"We don't want government jerk-offs to track our location with all their expensive toys, so you call that number first and listen for three beeps.  When you hear that, you dial the lab's number.  Then you power down the phone, throw it in here and close the lid."

Mark slid an open briefcase toward me with the toe of his shoe.

"Is it lead lined or something?"  I asked.

"Something like that.  Now do it.  Longer you wait, the better prepared they get."

I hesitated for a second, then did what he said.  Got the three beeps then dialed the lab number.  Asked for the head scientist.  His voice seemed odd.   He was too happy.  Right up until I told him to bring the alien artifacts and meet me at the restaurant Mark and I had picked out.

"Right now?"

"Now," I said.

"I might need... hold on."

Permission.

It was the word he almost said.  I could imagine five or six men and women dressed in government issued hush-hush suits hovering over him.

"No, actually I'm good to leave right now,"  he said.  "It will be good to see you again."

The little bastard was rebelling against the machine.  We'd never met.  We'd talked on line and over the phone, but never met.  I'd UPS'd the artifacts to him so no one could ever place me at the lab.  Just in case.  And now, here was my very own scientist trying to warn me off.

After I'd punched the END button, threw the phone in the briefcase and told Mark about what the scientist said.

"They'll put his head in a microwave oven and set it to explode for that," he said.

"Seriously?"

"Get ready to drive when I say go.  Be smooth about it.  Don't draw attention to us.  Don't act like Harrison Ford in the Fugitive.  Just drive down Farmington Road til we hit I-96 and head East til we get to I-75 then head south.

"What are you going to do with that cannon thing?"

"I'm going to lock onto their communications system and follow it up the food chain.  First agent I can sight, I aim, pull and we're connected to their network.  Agent calls into their superior, our software goes with that call and monitors the superior's call to his superior.  The calls will be quick and go straight up the line about this one.  So we stay with them.  We record each conversation so we get a better idea of what's going on and so you can hear it for yourself.  It's good to know what the enemy's thinking.."

"Is that possible?"  I asked.

He grinned and rubbed the back of one hand across the stubble on his chin.

"They'll be loud and clear through this blue-tooth,"  he said, pointing to his ear.  "And lookey here- I'd say you've got some uninvited guests."

I saw the helicopter coming over the top of an office complex.  There were men attached to the runners.

"Ready, aim, communicate," Mark said.  "Now get gone, brother.  Drive like we're on the way to the bowling alley."

"Are they coming for me?" I said.  "This is insane."

"Shut up and drive.  Their black sedans will be here in three or four minutes and when they find out we gaslighted them they'll be closing down traffic.  We want to be in Toledo, Ohio by then."

I was officially on the run.  Emily was dead and the government had the alien artifacts.  There went my story.  Nothing left but to hide out in the hills and pray they never found me.  I couldn't believe it was happening to me.

Mark disengaged himself from his electronic cannon and hung it on a hook that stuck out from the side of the van.  He sat down in the passenger side front seat and buckled up. 

Six black cars passed us before we got to I-96.  I felt physically ill.  I wanted to pull over, get out of the van and throw up on the side of the road.

"So far so good," he said.  "Where's that Bible with the picture of the alien?"

That picture was the only thing I had left.  In today's world, pictures were so easy to fake, it was useless as evidence. Without evidence, I didn't stand a chance of getting my life back.

"Under my seat," I said.  I'll get it."

I found it and handed it over to him without taking my eyes off the road.  I couldn't afford a traffic accident.  I couldn't afford to make any mistakes at all anymore.  I was a federal fugitive.

"It's a Polaroid," he said.  "Haven't seen one of these instant pictures in a long time."

"Does it look real?"

"Anybody can fake anything anymore.  Short answer  is who the hell knows.  We'll run it through the lab and see what we can see.  It's this sheet of paper with writing on the back that's more interesting to me just now."

"What sheet of paper?"  I asked.

"The one with your name on it," he said.

"Give it to me," I said.

"Keep your eyes on the road, ace.  We have to get out of this state before they find us.  You should hear what they're saying about you."

He was pointing to his bluetooth.

"What?" I asked.

"Not now.  Later you can hear it for yourself.  But just so you know, you're lucky you don't have a wife and kids."

"Why?"

"Because they'd be feeding them to the pigs by now."

Behind me, I heard the big Rottweiler get comfortable for the long drive ahead.

Episode 16- The Uninvited, Part I

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*****

The van seemed to get smaller.

I was looking straight ahead at the women on the tennis court, realizing for the first time that Mark was probably crazy.  It was a safe bet that he had at least one gun under his coat and the fact that his trained Rottweiler was lying on the bench seat behind me made me nervous.

But I had to ask the question, so I finally did.

"Why?"

"Why what?" he said.

"Why would a computer program decide I should be killed?"

"You still got that second phone, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I know you think I'm a moonshine swigging hyped-up hillbilly who thinks The X-Files and Warehouse 13 are documentaries, but I'm going to let you get a look at a different world so you'll have a better chance of staying alive.  Now where's the lab you got the artifacts at?"

His train of thought was confusing, but I told him that the lab doing the testing on the artifacts was in Livonia. He brought up a map on the dashboard interface and asked for the exact address.

"Now what we need is a restaurant in a strip mall," he said.  "Like a Coney Island.  Best case it should be ten to twenty minutes from where the lab is and there's got be a shopping center or another strip mall across the street.  We want a busy area with no construction.  This van will have to blend in but be able to get out quick.  No easy throttle points and plenty of traffic."

We scrolled through the map, found out what we were looking for and then Mark kicked the view up to 3-D and looked at the intersection from different angles.

"What you have to remember," he said, "is that the government has military technology in your home town.  Once you get by that, you'll start to understand how deep a hole you're in."

I heard springs creak behind me.  In the rearview mirror I saw the Rottweiler named Patriot was standing up for a stretch.

"Does he have to go the bathroom?" I asked.

"Patriot, sit your ass down," Mark said.  "And according to our on-board computer we're about twenty-five minutes from the strip mall that's near the lab.  That track with you?"

"What?  Sure that's about right, depending on the time of day.  Rush hour it's thirty-five to forty-five minutes from here."

"But it ain't rush hour, is it?"

"Well, no, not yet."

"Then let's make tracks.  When I tell you to, you dial up your friend on that second pre-paid phone you got.  You tell him to meet you at the restaurant we're going to stake out and to bring the alien artifacts with him.  We won't be there. We'll be in the parking lot across the street counting how many feds show up to take you down."

"Do we have to do this?" I asked.

I was already nervous and headed toward meltdown.  UFO's and aliens were bad enough.  Being hunted by the government wasn't something I wanted to think about more than I had to.

"Yep, let's roll."

As I pulled out of the parking lot and left the women in tennis outfits, the picnic tables and the trees behind, I couldn't get the idea of the Secret Enemy out of my mind.  The image of an eye rimmed with barbed wire was too weird to let go of.  I had to find out more.

"What is this Secret Enemy?"  I asked.  "is it  a Secret Society?  Like the Illuminati or the Masons if they were armed and dangerous.  It sounds sort of like Fu Manchu pulling the strings on the New World Order.  Is it something like that?"

The dashboard computer pointed out we should turn left.  That irritated me.  I hated being stuck half-way in evolving technological worlds.  Why bother telling me I need to turn?  I knew cars could turn themselves, accelerate, brake, open and close the doors for us.  Ten more years, twenty more years and nobody would need a Driver's License anymore except the cars that drove them.  If technology would move a little quicker, I wouldn't need some dashboard harpy telling me it was time to turn.  I had enough stress as it was.

"Let's talk evolution," said Mark.

Patriot snuffled like a pig and I almost laughed, but checked myself when I realized it wasn't a good idea to laugh at a two hundred pound Rottweiler when she was only two feet behind me in a van that suddenly seemed smaller still.

"What's evolution got to do with it?"

"Watch how fast you're going.  We don't need to get pulled over for speeding.  Better.  Just try to stay three or five miles below the speed limit.  Now think about this- how much have the birds and bees and dogs and monkeys and human beings evolved in the last two hundred years?"

I thought about it, trying to guess where he was going before answering.   I hated set-up questions.  Always had.  Finally I gave up.

"Not too much,"  I said.  "But the evolutionary process is slow.  Two hundred years isn't anything when you're talking evolution."

"Is that so?  How much have machines evolved in the last two hundred years?  Computer hardware?  Computer software?"

"A lot, I guess.  But what's that got to do with the Secret Enemy?  Are you saying computers are the Secret Enemy?  Like in The Terminator where they are self-aware or something?"

He lifted his thermos bottle up, unscrewed the lid and poured himself a cup of coffee.  The smell hit me the right way at the right time.

"Styrofoam okay for you?" he asked, and reached behind the seat to get a short stack of cups.

"Definitely," I said.

Mark poured me a cup, then passed it over.

"It's still hot," he said.  "Picked it up at the Detroiter truckstop just before I showed up to get you."

"Thanks, I needed this."

"Things aren't like what you're thinking,"  he said.  "There's no grand conspiracy going on.  The Secret Enemy is you and me and what we do and how we do it.  The way we're always building better roads to drive over the edge into deeper and deeper holes.  Machines don't need to think.  There's no artificial intelligence mastermind behind the software decision that you needed to die.  It's just that we're always killing ourselves by bad decisions based on good ideas.   Then they get out of control and turn into good decisions based on bad ideas.  And we get more and more efficient at it by passing it over to software that can't question what we're instructing it to do.  It can't really say, Wait a minute, is this a good idea?

"So when government drones put together their ever evolving event-handling protocols and tell the software what kind of decisions need to be made, eventually the software takes over making sure these protocols are followed.  Computers move along a lot faster than we do, friend.  So the software was making the decision it was programmed to by ordering your death.  Part of the extra terrestrial meets civilian contact module.  You think I'm nuts, I know, but they have event modules for every contingency.  They're always tinkering with them and making up new ones."

"That sounds kind of paranoid," I said.

"Did you know sixteen percent of the people on Facebook aren't real?  They're artificial intelligence modules in place to establish civilian control.  You think that Arab Spring Twitter and Facebook stuff came from real people?  You're just not getting it.  Did you see that Curiosity has a Twitter following?  You know, Curiosity- the robot ship that we landed on Mars.  Think about that.  The government can activate an army of artificial Facebook people to shift opinion when they want people's thinking to go a certain way.  Same way they do with Twitter."

"How do you know that for sure?" I said. "How do you know there really is a software program for handling things like what to do when someone discovers evidence of alien intervention?"

"You have arrived," said the dashboard computer.

"You're about to find out.  Going to see a whole lot of people you didn't invite show up at that restaurant.   Park over there," he told me.  "Where that cluster of vans are.  Be the one on the outside two spaces apart from the rest.  We don't want anyone looking in at what we're carrying."

"They've seen dogs before," I said.

Mark was up and in the back of the van, breaking open cases and making noise.  Every time I turned my head to see what he was doing he told me to keep my eyes on the place across the street.

"Okay, time to make that call to your scientist friend," he said.

I turned to see what he'd put together.

"Is that a rocket launcher?" I asked nervously.

Episode 15- The Secret Enemy

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

I drove.

I'd gotten two hours sleep in a mall parking lot before heading to the Bob Evan's restaurant where I would meet Mark.  The prepaid cell phone was supposed to be my alarm clock, but I didn't need. it.  The sun was heading up high and the driver's seat was so uncomfortable I couldn't have made it another hour.

"Turn there, at the entrance to the park," Mark said.

He'd thrown a rock at the window of where I was sitting at Bob Evan's.  I got the idea and headed out to meet him.  He didn't want anyone at the restaurant to remember him.

His black van had something lettered on a magnetic sign about "Books for the Blind."  The back seat was stacked with plastic cases, a tripod and a medical kit the size of a briefcase.  On the middle short bench rested a black and tan Rottweiler.

"Nice dog," I said.

"Not hardly," said Mark.

"What's his name?"

"Her."

"Sorry, her.  What's her name?"

"Patriot," he said as he unbuckled his coat and got in the passenger side.

"Sure you want me to drive?"

"Get in or I'll tell Patriot you're a commie."

We drove around and I told him everything I could remember since the day Emily contacted me.

"Keep your eyes on the road," he said.

Re-telling the most intense days of my life made it hard to be a good driver.

By the time we got to the park, I was mentally exhausted.  Even with Mark and his dog as reinforcements, I couldn't see any way things could end except with me in a secret government prison or on the run for the rest of my life.  We pulled over to the painted yellow lines that defined the curbside parking and left the engine running.

"Why are we sitting in the park looking at the tennis courts?"  I asked.

"There's good looking women in tennis outfits playing tennis.  Unless my van's on the radar, nobody's going to bother us.  They'll figure we're normal."

The sun was yellow as a happy face button, but a mass of dark gray clouds were sneaking up on it to ruin its day.  A scattering of people wandered the park, feeding the ducks or geese or whatever they were.

"We should have brought french fries to feed the birds," I said.  "We'd fit right in."

He hit a button on the dashboard and the on-board computer screen came to life.  Rows of numbers and then the image of an eye ringed with barbed wire appeared.  It flashed green before disappearing.

"New GPS?"  I asked nervously.

"Here's the deal," he said, turning to face me.  "If that picture would have flashed red, you would have spent the night in a tank of nitric acid and nothing would have been left of you by morning."

My stomach went weak.  I was wrong thinking I couldn't get any more afraid than I already was.

He let it sink in.  Waited until I calmed down a little.

"I'm not going to kill you," he said.

It felt like my heart would never quit beating too fast.

"Thanks," I said.

"But the Feds will if they catch you," he said.

"What was that picture?"  I asked.  I was trying not to think about what he'd just said.  "Is it supposed to be the Feds?"

It was a stupid question.  I just couldn't think of anything else to say.

"One brother to another?"

"Do I have to say the Masonic oath?  If I do, don't kill me because I can't.  I forgot how it goes.  You don't have to tell me what the picture on the screen stands for."

He frowned and stroked the stubble on his chin.

"If anybody needs to know, it's you," he said.

"Okay, what is it?"

"It's our symbol for the Secret Enemy."

"And what is the Secret Enemy?"

"It's the software program," he said, "that ordered your death."

Episode 14- The Survivalist Calvary

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

I couldn't seem to process a rational thought until I stepped out of the car.

Thirty minutes ago I'd seen an alien craft tractor beam up, up and away three thugs and the body of the E.T. I'd run over.  I'd sat there in my car twenty feet away watching it happen like I was a crash test dummy at my first moving picture show.  When the alien tracker took off and left me behind like I wasn't there it took me a full minute to floor the gas pedal and fishtail up the incline til I was back on West Jefferson.

"Where's the cops when you need them?  That's all I'm saying is where are they?"

I was mentally numb enough by that time that I repeated it six or seven times before switching over to my next line of thought.

"Where's Homeland Security?  What the hell happened to radar?"

No answers to anything and I blew through three of four red lights before I noticed I was doing it.

At Fort and Outer Drive, I pulled into the all night convenience store, turned the engine off and went inside while I thought through what I was doing.

I was way over my head and desperately needed help.  I went through my mental contact file while I bought two prepaid cell phones, six energy drinks and a sandwich that the label said was egg salad.

"Anything else?" asked the woman behind the bulletproof glass.

"No?"

"Do you need a bag?"

"Yes."

Back in the car I ate the sandwich and guzzled down two Monster energy drinks.

Time to call the crazies.

"Yeah?"

"It's me," I said.  "No names."

"Me who?"

His voice was a coarse, gutteral demand.

"No names.  I'm the writer.  We met at the bigfoot hunt.  We talked about the first time you saw a squatch.  Then we found the print and the nest."

"Uh-huh.  What was in the nest?"

My mind went blank.

"I can't remember.  I don't know.  Wait, wrappers and an empty peanut butter jar."

"And?"

Shit.

"I don't remember anything else.  Seriously, I don't remember."

"Good bye."

"Wait.  Please, give me a second will you?  I'm under some serious stress here."

"I'll give you a minute."

I pictured Mark and his wife Susie surrounded by guns, rows of computers, and survival food packets in their hand-built Kentucky log home.  Bigfoot casts lining the tables, rottweilers running loose in the yard and a satellite dish big as my kitchen bolted to the roof of their house.

"I'm trying."

"Too bad."

"Wait, I've got it.  Those twisted stick figures, like in the Blair Witch project."

Dead air on the other end.  I checked the screen to see if he'd hung up.

"You a traveler?"

Shit again.  It was a Masonic thing.  I hadn't been to lodge in so long I couldn't remember what the hell to say.

"I forgot how it goes.  I just don't remember.  I told you I'm under a lot of stress."

"You alone, brother?"

"More than you know.  I need help.  I need you to come get me right now.  I'll park the car in the long term lot at Detroit Metro.  I know it's a bitch, but when you get here, you'll never regret it.  It's what you've been looking for and more."

"You got a live one?"

"Not that," I said.  "Better.  Bigger than that.  I'll meet you at the Bob Evans.  I'll walk from the Airport to get there."

Silence.

"Don't do that," he said.  "They got cameras all over the airport.  Park in the off-site long term parking near the Ramada.  It'll take me a while to get there, maybe-"

"I know how long it'll take.  I'll be there."

"You know what you're asking?"

I did.  I told him so and we hung up.

For the first time since the whole thing started, I felt better.  Help was on the way.

He'd get the whole alien artifacts thing.

He'd hide me from the authorities while we worked out what to do.  I needed to contact the scientist examining the artifacts before the government got to him.  No way I was doing that without Mark.  Once we retrieved the artifacts we'd head to Kentucky to hide out in the hills.

If they came after us, we could disappear into Townsend Cave.

Mark and I both had an interest in Townsend Cave.  For me, it was the land my family owned for generations until it was taken from them.  Lots of history there.

For Mark, it was where Bigfoot lived.

When you're on the verge of going insane, it doesn't matter which asylum you hide out in.

Episode 13- Abduction

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

Three men, faces too dark to see beneath their hoods, the one in the center pointing a gun at me.  The other two splitting off three feet to either side.  A cold shiver I couldn't stop.  My skin pimpled with fear.

"It's dead," I said.

"Get the bag," said the one with the gun.

Behind them, highlighted by the lights of a flare stack, I could see the small craft coming closer, getting larger.  It was highlighted by jagged electric arcs that sparked across its surface like a Tesla globe.

The man to my right walked over, pushed me so hard I fell back on unforgiving stones and took the bag back to the man with gun.  I felt a sharp pain in my elbow as it struck something metal.

"Open it," said the man with the gun.

The car engine idled a constant reminder that I could save my ass if only I could get inside without getting shot.  But guys like the man with the gun pulled the trigger fast and first.  Better to stay where I was.

I heard a rustle of plastic as they undid the bag to get a look at what was inside.  I'd already seen the blue skin and big dark eyes and didn't need a second look.  I just needed to get away.

One of the three shone a flashlight on the alien's head.

"What the fuck is this?"  said one of them.

"It's coming," I said and pointed behind them.

And it was.

Descending from the dark sky.  I could feel the hair on my head jump like I was standing too close to a transformer.

A spinning disc the size of an old Buick, coming alive with a surge of twisting electric arcs and headed our way.

"The fuck you say?" said one of them.

Three street thugs looking to do damage, looking to score, suddenly nervous.  It was in the one's voice- the corrosive angry sound of fear.

"Up there," I said, still pointing at the sky.  The sound of electrical discharge and a flash of white-blue light caused me to scramble to my feet.

They turned at the same time and craned their necks upward.  Saw it for the first time.  It was only fifty feet overhead and descending like Judgment Day.

By the time they started shooting at it, I was in the car, had the door closed and my foot on the pedal.  I spun the car in a wide arc.  My headlights lit the scene and I stopped, actually put my foot on the brake when a bright beam shot down from the craft and I saw my tormentors for the first time.  I saw their legs flail as they lifted straight up in the air, screaming like their spines were being pulled through the top of their heads.

The alien body bag floated up after them.

I held my breath and wondered if I'd be next.

Episode 10- Telling the Right Lies

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*****

Cruise control is a wonderful thing when it's raining hard and you're on the run.  Turn the windshield wipers on, drive five miles an hour less than the speed limit, set the cruise control and you're good if you don't do anything stupid.  No need to worry about driving too fast or driving too slow and some cop noticing.  You have to be careful when you're about to be hunted down by the military-industrial complex and you don't know exactly when that timer will start.

Eventually they would show up at my house in the middle of the night.  Or maybe in broad daylight.  The only news story big enough to cause CNN, Fox News and MSNBC to ride in the same van.  Homeland Security could call me a terrorist or say that I was Julian Assange's nephew.  Everyone would understand why I was taken away in chains with a black bag over my head.

So I didn't go home.

Going home would have been a stupid idea.  A smarter idea was to drive to the house of the best looking female writer I'd ever known.  I needed someone to dump my company on someone until things blew over or I got blown away.  She'd do it.  Not because she'd care I was in trouble, but because she'd hope I didn't come back alive so she could keep it.  She could always find someone else to sleep with, but to take control of a profitable publishing business- that was a permanent relationship.  Good-bye writer and hello businesswoman.

I drove for four hours with only three stops.  Once for gas.  Once to load up on coffee.  The last time to use the bathroom.  Not once did I call Adele to let her know I was coming.  I was done calling anyone- I'd tossed the phone out the window, over a railing and into the first river I'd driven over.  Then I just kept driving.  First time in my life I'd driven over fifteen minutes without music.

Thinking all the way.  Listening to news reports.  Looking out the window and checking the side and rear view mirrors for anything in the sky that shouldn't be there.

I wasn't thinking about what was in the trunk.  I was thinking about how the thing in the trunk would change my life.

No way the military wouldn't own the burned ashes of Emily's farm by morning.  They'd totally control the traffic coming and going for a fifty mile radius before dinner time.  Maybe before lunch.  They wouldn't stop til they'd quarantined and grilled every witness they could find and I sure as hell didn't want to be quarantined.

Three UFO's rising up in the sky.  Three fighter jets vaporized.  I couldn't know for sure that they were fighter jets, but that was what my gut told me they were.  I'd waited in the fog after the three UFO's disappeared, then drove away with my fog lamps on.  Sweating like it was July instead of early October.

When I finally pulled into Adele's  driveway it was three in the morning and her house was dark except for one light in the living that stood just on the other side of the pulled curtain.  She wouldn't be happy with me for showing up without warning  She might not even be alone.  Four plus hours of driving and I'd never even thought about that.  We'd never talked about it, but you can tell when someone's not seeing someone else.
Lot of guys probably thought that's the way it was.

I bent over and picked up the Bible and the photo from the passenger side floor mat, tucked the photo of the creature back inside and hid it under my front seat.  Adele didn't need to know about it.  She thought I was crazy as it was.

There seemed to be no one up except me.  No lights on anywhere except streetlights and Adele's living room light.  She could still be up writing or reading.  Writers did that a lot.  Slept for most of the day and stayed up all night.

I slid on my jacket as I walked up her driveway and made an effort to tuck in my shirt, then straighten my collar.  The whole trip down I'd been working on what to to tell her and what not to tell her.  Keep it simple was always the best bet.

The thing was, I needed cash- more cash that I could pull out of my ATM's.  More than that, I needed someone to take over the publishing until I came back.

I'd killed an old woman and set her and her house on fire.  Trying to get away before anyone knew I was even there, I'd crashed into a strange blue creature and killed it.  Emily didn't need to know about any of that or the three UFO's and what they'd done to the aircraft coming after them.  All she needed to know was that I wanted to offload my company for cash in the middle of the night, and I'd better have a damned good story to explain why.

By the time I pushed the electronic doorbell button, I thought I had it all figured out.  I waited a few minutes and pushed it again.  Things were coming together more clearly.  I had a good story that she just might buy.

But when the door opened and I came face to face with a thirty something red faced guy who looked like he wanted to punch my ticket, I couldn't think of anything to say.

Later I found out that at about the same time as I stood there stammering, a Homeland Security team was going through Emily's phone records.

Episode 6- Emily's Secret

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*****

"Not everything is a government conspiracy,"  I said.

She looked away from me to stare at the oval portrait which hung  between twin strips of peeled and curling wallpaper strips.  Once again I puzzled at the gray-blue tint to her skin.  The lamp near the far wall did little to cheer the living room. Its stand was darkened brass, and the lamp cover looked like a worn doily stretched and sewn onto a wire cage.  I wondered if the bulb was from a time when five to ten watts was considered normal.

My own hands appeared sepia tinged  in the faint light.  Without knowing why, I shuddered.

I looked up again at Emily and was shocked by how fragile she looked.  She was past eighty, and her skin seemed not only pale-blue gray, but faintly translucent.  Old age is both a crime and its own punishment.  In that horrid lamplight, my skin looked older, but hers looked crinkled and clammy as used  wax paper.

"Why'd you come here?" she said.

"You implied that your friend was murdered by the government, but you can't know for sure unless there's something you haven't told me.  And I came here because you asked me, if you'll remember.  I didn't call you, you called me.  Look, I'm spending a small fortune testing your artifacts based on your claims that they're alien.  I'm not rich enough to spend money on projects like this unless I think they could turn out to be real.  Who's going to reimburse me for all that money if they're not real?  So when you claim the government moved an entire town to destroy any clue that these artifacts exist and even killed a man to shut him up, I'm just saying I need proof.  Or enough information to find my own truth.  Whatever you know, I want to know, Emily."

She jerked her head toward the front porch window when something crashed into the bushes beyond the porch.

"What was that?" I asked.  "A deer?"

Emily stared at the window, then stood up and took a step in its direction.

"I'll go with you," I said.

"Sit down," she said.  "I can't look after you and me at the same time."

From a cabinet near the front door she took out a pump shotgun and a box of shells.

I was about to repeat that I would go with her when she jacked some shells into the gun, then turned around and pointed the barrel at me.

"I said sit down," she said.

She kept her eyes locked on mine while I considered my options.  Sitting down was better than getting shot.

"I just want to help," I told her.

"Then do what I tell you."

I was about to protest, but right before I did, I closed my mouth and kept it shut.  The barrel of her gun was steady.  It was pointed right at the center of my body mass.  I finally sat down, but she made no attempt to open the door.  She stood there staring at it for eight or nine minutes.

"Aren't you going to go outside?" I finally said.

A flash of painfully bright light  flared outside the curtain.  I threw my hands up to my face and dropped to my knees.  The air was filled with a rushing, gritty noise like a butcher's saw ripping through bone.

"Emily, what is it?  What's out there?" I shouted.

She didn't answer me, but a few seconds later, I heard the first shotgun blast.

Quintelex Objects to Extraterrestrial Profiling

It's not hard to see why Quintelex is upset.

Quintelex is the first extraterrestrial entity to run as a presidential candidate in US history.

It seemed like the Regulan's entrance to the race would successfully show the American commitment to diversity and civility in political discourse.


Then Democrats and Republicans started passing out tinfoil hats to prospective voters.

"It keeps their mind control rays from fusing your neurons,"  they explained as they gave them away, never mentioning Quintelex by name.

Quintelex maintains these election year tactics are a form of profiling.  Both President Obama and Mitt Romney deny this.  President Obama claimed that giving away tin foil hats was just another "unique jobs program developed by his administration.  Someone has to make those tin foil hats," he maintained.  Republican nominee Mitt Romney would only say, "I like shiny things."

Undaunted, Quintelex's team maintains that the tinfoil hats are evidence of polarizing partisan pejorative profiling.

To see if there is any truth to this accusation, this reporter interviewed Dr. Rhebus Downthenose of the Chicago Institute of Annoying Behavior.


"Dr. Downthenose," I asked,  "is focusing on a candidate's planet of birth another form of profiling?"

"You see, you just had to ask that," he shouted and jumped up from behind his desk to double power-fist the air.  "Your kind always does."

"My kind?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, your kind.  Sit down."

He pointed at a chair across from his desk.

I sat.  My kind always did.

"So professor, is it true that the American people are profiling Quintelex just because he's an alien?  If so, does he really have a fair chance?"

"You see, this?"  he asked, holding his right index finger up in the air.  "It is known in certain parts of Detroit as a passage opener, or nose-picker.  Regulans do not have an index finger.  Quintelex therefore cannot pick his own nose.  He isn't like us."

"Why thank you, Dr. Downthenose.  I think that answers my question."

"Where's you tin-foil hat?" he demanded.


"I'll be leaving now," I said as I got up from the chair and edged back toward the door.

His eyes narrowed.


"You have to protect yourself from their mind control rays," he said in a menacing tone.


He rose from the chair slowly; a look of manic intensity flushed his pinched face.


"They bombard us with their thoughts constantly.  They take over our way of thinking.  Always displacing our thoughts with theirs.  You can't hide from them."

I closed the gently but firmly behind me.  From behind the frosted glass I could hear the doctor ranting about how they were always bombarding our minds, displacing our thoughts with theirs.

The thing was, I wasn't sure if he was talking about Democrats and Republicans or aliens.

My cell phone rang.

It was that special ring reserved for out of state political telemarketers.

Constantly bombarding our minds.  Replacing our thoughts with theirs.

Now that I think of it, how much difference is there between the thoughts of politicians and aliens?

Facebook and the Regulan Plan

Regulans are new to US politics.  

In fact, on their planet they don't have politicians.  Quintelex, having just thrown his hat in the ring for the 2012 presidential race, is anxious to be just like any other earth candidate.  So he brought his three key advisers (pictured above) from his home planet of Regula to help get his campaign off the ground.

Their first task was to hire Democratic and Republican operatives to teach Quintelex how to be sarcastic, angry, condescending, and, most important, to lie.

Unfortunately, Regulans are genetically incapable of lying.  President Obama and contender Mitt Romney will be forced to carry that burden alone.  Both seem up to the job, according to the most recent computer analysis conducted by a team of Regulan Tarot Readers.

Since training Quintelex in lying and smear campaigns was ruled out of the question, this allowed Candidate Quintelex's three advisers to concentrate on developing a plan to save the US economy (which will soon have a credit rating lower than most lemonade stands) and restore a sense of fairness and understanding to the American people.  Quintelex was clear in his telepathic instructions- do not develop a plan like either the Democrats or the Republicans.  Neither of these parties is much to write home about- particularly when you live 135 million light years away.

Instead, Quintelex demanded a scientific plan based around what Americans actually do.  Once the Regulan computers figured out what Americans actually do versus what they say they'll do, Quintelex felt discovering a realistic solution would be simple.

And it was.

Today he unveiled the new Regulan Facebook Plan.

If elected president of the United States this year, he will immediately implement this comprehensive plan.  Congressional approval will not be necessary since they will be replaced with Facebook Likes and the new Facebook Don't Likes.

Yes, under the Regulan Plan, Facebook will replace American politics.

No longer will there be such a thing as illegal immigration or legal residency.  Only those people with a sufficient number of likes will be allowed to stay in the country and this could change at any moment based on their Facebook status.

Income will be completely fluid as well, and will be distributed according to the number of Facebook likes an individual has achieved.  Poor people could become wealthy overnight if enough people like them.  Wealthy people could become overnight paupers seeing their income distributed to more popular individuals.

Justin Bieber will, of course, be excluded.


A peculiar aspect of the Regulan Facebook Plan is that plants, animals and imaginary characters would have the same rights as people if they received enough Facebook likes.  The reasoning behind this aspect of the plan was really a nod to American culture.  Quintelex felt that if corporations are considered citizens, trees should be, too.


Some in the media protested that trees should not have citizenship and due process- they're not human.  Then again, neither is Quintelex.

Initial reaction to the Regulan plan was mixed.

Most of his audience were too busy texting to hear him anyway.

Now You've Done It

Your family and friends were right.

You write about your writing too much.

You spend so much time Facebook spamming the rest of the world about your writing that you missed the call.

No one who works for the government ever answers their phone, so they called you.

They were looking for the insurance carrier that would take care of the damages caused to their saucer by our planet's unmanned spacecraft.  Space is a dangerous place and everybody is supposed to have insurance.  It wasn't their fault that our space probe didn't have enough brains to recognize an intergalactic stop sign.  And now someone has to pay for the replacement dilithium crystals.  So they called you.

But you were so busy writing about your writing on Facebook.that you missed their last peace offering.  They are a peaceful race from a peaceful planet and like to resolve things peacefully.  But, as the designated Earth representative, you were writing about your writing and didn't answer your phone.

What's an alien race with a grudge to do?

Maybe you should take a breather from writing about your writing long enough to realize that the planet's in danger without you.

Or maybe just pay attention to your family and friends.

It's summer, don't you know?

Put away you laptop and your electronic friends and engage in life.  Writers who don't live life to the fullest have no business telling stories to the rest of us.

Besides, we're all still dodging alien death rays because you wouldn't take the call from the planet Regula.

Rogue River Robots

Sometimes you take the dare, sometimes you run.

 I took the dare.

The dare was to write a novel with the title "Rogue River Robots."

Now I just have to figure out what it's about!

So I'm going UFO hunting  this summer to get some ideas.

I'll keep you up to date with posts and photos.

If I you don't hear back from me- watch the skies...

Boyergate Flash- Aliens Arrive in Vincennes, Indiana to Sign InterGalactic Treaty with Notorious Plagiarist!

Looking Around

for

"The Great One"

The town of Vincennes, Indiana became instantly famous today with the confidential admission of a city official that an entepreneurial mission of Aliens from the Snicker's galaxy has arrived to sign a contract with the city's most notorious and prolific plagiarist.

This reporter was priveleged to interview the lead alien negotiator.

In response to my first question, "Hello, what is your name?" he responded "$@&***(^"

A thirteen year old boy with strawberry blond hair was called in to run the alien's answer through Google Voice and Language Translator, which rendered it as "I'm a good boy."

Further calibration of the Google translator gave us this version, "Where is the Great Plagiarist of Vincennes, Indiana?"

"He's running late," I told him. "It's hard work creating fake identities to hide behind when you're selling stolen work. And it's time consuming when you have to lie to the authors, claim a mob of cyberstalkers is after you, tell people your computer was hacked, and even pretend it's not your fault if you inadvertantly used their stories. He'll explain it to you when he gets here."

"$$-^^^^_+!!!," said the alien.

The teenager translated, "Maybe he said goody goody?"

"Why do you want to be trained in the art of plagiarism and copyright infringement?" I asked.

The alien ambassador grew excited and waved his arms up and down while making a hooting noise. His entourage did the same. It was like they were having an extraterrestrial orgasm and quite embarassing for an earthling to watch.

"Wow," said the kid. "They're saying that there's been no theft on their world. They never thought of stealing until the Great Plagiarist contacted them with a potato powered radio transmitter and offered to scan all of earth's books and give it to them for a percentage of the proceeds when they sell them throughout the universe."

"How much do the authors get?" I asked the kid, who duly ran my request through the Google Voice and Language translator.

After my question was translated, the aliens responded with a raucus chorus of owl sounds punctuated by all of them pointing at what I think were their crotches.

"What?" I asked.

"I think they're busting a gut," said the kid.

Suddenly, I realized why it was worth it for them to travel all the way across the galaxy to consult with the Great One of Plagiarism and it made me mad.  With any luck, they would take the great plagiarist back to their own planet to study.