- "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream
and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
-Douglas Adams
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- The day that the aliens started screwing with your head,
you felt a cool anesthesia creep over your mind, akin to a deep calm before
a great storm. You returned home from work and went about your evening
tasks with the carelessness of a small child at play. In your head, you
could feel the volume of your incessant mental chatter being turned down,
until you heard nothing but your own breathing, rising and falling like
waves crashing against the shore. You recognized your profound sense of
peace as very unusual, yet also familiar, and you remembered a time when
you had experienced it before. Christmas Eve as a small child...the smell
of a burning log and peppermint incense in the air...the taste of gingerbread
on your lips...falling asleep with a vision of Rudolph's red nose lightning
up the night sky.
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- As you lay down in bed, your calm was nearly disrupted
by a pang of anticipation. You wondered, again like a child, "If I
stay up all night, will I catch a glimpse of Satan's sleigh as he ho-ho-ho's
through the night? Will I see his giant red rump as he descends down the
chimney?"
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- You began to drift off to sleep, and just as the sandman
was about to overtake you, your consciousness shifted. Your mind became
extraordinarily lucid, and focused in the present. Yet your body was asleep,
or essentially paralyzed.
-
- Suddenly, you felt yourself rising and walking from bed,
yet somehow you knew that your physical self had not moved an inch. You
strolled through your home to the living room, and with your heart in your
throat in expectancy of what you might see, you drew back the curtain of
the sliding glass door.
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- And in the sky, hung overhead was an object so majestic
yet preposterous, it seemed the sum total of all your hopes, dreams, and
terrors. It was a thing of legends and fairytales, something so grandiose
it must not be spoken of, lest it might overhear. The sight of this wonderful
aberration caused your subconscious to scream out a series of words: alien,
UFO, flying saucer, spaceship. All of these terms seemed terribly appropriate
for what you were gazing upon.
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- Immediately, you realized that the enormous body in the
heavens was not alone; it had brought with it some friends. Big ones that
bobbed up and down like giants skipping rope, and little ones that darted
about like playful kittens chasing a ball of yarn. They spun, whirled,
and boogied a cosmic dance, celebrating their own magnificence, and imploring
their audience below to do the same.
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- You hurried to the front door in this vision/dream/chimera,
and stepped outside. Glancing right and left, you saw your neighbors shuffling
into the night, seeming dumbstruck with awe, mouths agape and eyes bulging.
One arm on every body was extended upward, index fingers pointing to the
sky. Yet the night seemed as silent as a tomb, as though no creature was
stirring, not even a mouse.
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- Suddenly, your heart swelled and nearly burst with the
most peculiar ache of nostalgia. For the sight you beheld undeniably aroused,
at the deepest corpuscles of your being, a sense of FAMILIARITY. If asked,
you could not say where and when you had seen these awesome specters before,
but you regarded their presence as you would a long-lost relative returning
home.
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- You again looked at your fellow sky-gazers gathered on
the street, and felt an intangible connectedness not only with them, but
all other life-forms, on Earth and Everywhere. It suddenly dawned on you
that your entire life had been nothing more than preparation for this moment,
and you nearly wept with gratitude at its belated arrival. Somehow, you
had always known that the everyday world was ridiculously small, trivial.
You could never go back to the old way of doing things, and this knowledge
inspired not sadness, but relief.
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- And out of nowhere, some terrible intruder cut through
your consciousness like a blade. A piercing sound shattered the awe-inspiring
vision, wrenching you from a deep state of bliss with violent indifference.
It was the bedside alarm clock, alerting you that it was time to rise and
face another day in the world of the mundane.
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- You crawled out of bed, and walked to the window. The
curtains were pulled close, and your heart skipped a beat as you drew them
open and gazed upward. For the briefest of moments, a flock of birds in
the sky had looked like something...else, and the power of the dream came
rushing back over you with the force of a train.
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- You experienced no disappointment in the realization
that it was all "just a dream," because you were certain it had
been much more. You felt that you had formed a deep bond with an incredibly
powerful and benevolent force, and somehow you knew it signified the beginning
of something enormous.
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- Over the coming weeks and months, you spent your every
free hour learning all that you could on the topic of UFOs and aliens.
Books, radio talk shows, conspiracy websites, movies...you devoured them
with voracious, insatiable curiosity. It was a subject you had not cared
a single wit for prior to your awe-inspiring vision, but you had been awakened
to a nearly unthinkable reality.
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- And the "dreams" continued ceaselessly. With
each nighttime vision, you gained new insight into the aliens' intentions
for humanity. You began to feel confident that they were interested in
mankind's spiritual evolution, and had the power to change our physical
and ethereal bodies in ways that we could not comprehend. This excited
you tremendously, and filled you with delicious anticipation of what lie
in store.
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- But one aspect of the "dreams" made you the
tiniest bit uneasy. You had a recurring vision of yourself as a marionette
dangling and bobbing on a string. Your thoughts did not belong to you in
your visions of ET; it was like your head was an empty hourglass just waiting
to be filled. Most unnerving were the dreams where the aliens stood before
you as glowing, etheric figures, and "helped" you plot the course
of your life. Several times, they had shown you future events that came
unerringly to fruition. When they did this, a series of words beginning
with the letter "p" clanged in your head with inane regularity:
persuasion, propaganda, proselytize, procure. You found this slightly vexing,
but were determined not to dwell on it.
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- Gradually, you became more and more eager to learn your
unique role in the grand scheme of things. One night, the aliens granted
your wish, and gave you a specific course of action. You were to quit your
job and devote your life full-time to alerting humanity to the coming ET
presence. You would create your own website, write articles, and appear
on radio shows, spreading the great news of the aliens' plans for mankind.
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- You were able to perform this task with no effort, and
exceptional alacrity. You discovered yourself to be more articulate than
you had previously imagined. The words poured off of your fingers and from
your mouth as if they required no thought at all. You quickly developed
an enormous and devoted following; within a few months, your website was
attracting millions, you were appearing on nationally syndicated radio
and television shows, and the general public began to believe that the
aliens were real, and would be coming shortly.
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- One night, in the midst of an exceptionally intense "dreaming"
session, the alien you had come to think of as your primary teacher leaned
his bulbous, glowing head close to you, and whispered a single word in
your ear: "Tomorrow."
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- You startled awake with a jolt, jumped out of head, and
headed to your computer. You had to alert the world right away to the stupendous
event that lay just around the corner!
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- By the next morning, your prediction of a "coming
arrival" had created an enormous internet buzz. Twice, your website
crashed from surpassing bandwidth limitations. Millions of people were
so convinced by your message that they skipped off of work, rounded up
their families, and headed to the nearest wide-open space for a good view
of the expected fireworks. You already had the ideal viewing spot in mind:
an enormous public park where you jogged every morning.
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- Just after dawn, you packed up a breakfast and headed
to the park. At a stop light not far from your destination, you looked
towards the adjacent lane, and noticed that a series of cars had been abandoned,
with the drivers standing roadside and pointing skyward, apparently dumbstruck
with amazement. You couldn't see what they were pointing at, but the expression
on their faces was familiar from your dreams. You rolled down your window
and intended to ask them what they were seeing, when suddenly, one of them
screamed in a falsetto voice, "That's a fucking UFO! Those are fucking
aliens!"
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- You had always thought that when the "Big Day"
finally came, you would be overwhelmed, perhaps even terrified. But when
faced with its actuality, you found that the arrival of your "buddies"
was neither surprising, nor fearful. You waited for the light to turn green,
then continued on your way.
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- When you arrived at the park and stepped out of your
car, you saw a gay little throng of at least several hundred, all behaving
like little kids witnessing their first snowfall. Some jumped up and down
or ran around in circles like crazed kittens hepped up on catnip. You gazed
at the heavens, and although the sight had grown familiar, it was as welcome
to your eyes as a desert oasis.
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- The Ships were so numerous and so varied in shape, it
was difficult to focus on just one at a time. There were glowing, egg-shaped,
red-white-and-blue fuckers that shimmied up and down in ridiculous, illogical
movements that made the eyes dizzy. There were silvery, bullet-shaped speed
demons that shot across the sky with terrifying abandon. There were enormous,
plain looking "saucers" made ostentatious by their enormous size
-- a couple of these behemoths looked huge enough to hold three or four
Soldier's Fields. On two occasions, their bottoms opened up like the mouths
of giants, and out came little baby saucers that circled their "mother"
like children at play.
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- You took a seat on the grass next to a nice-looking couple
wrapped in each other's arms, their eyes alight with wonder. You noticed
they had a TV planted in front of them. On the screen, a cable news network
was broadcasting footage of the biggest news story in the history of the
world. They cut to their studio, where a shell-shocked news anchor was
interviewing a noted UFO skeptic. His eyes glassy and his face ashen, the
skeptic stated that there was "certainly a logical explanation for
this," even claiming that the bombardment of alien spacecraft might
be some kind of "weather phenomenon," such as ball lightning.
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- At one time, people like that clown annoyed you tremendously,
but now he just made you laugh. The truth was undeniable, and the world
would never be the same.
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- Suddenly, the earth began to vibrate, and a wave of electricity
seemed to coarse through your body, creating a tingling from your teeth
right down to your toes. You looked up, and saw one of the red-white-and-blue
egg shapes descending from the sky. This particularly craft was more familiar
to you than any of its companions. It pulsated and shot off little blue
orbs every which way. And it was clearly headed in your direction.
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- The craft did a little dipsy-doo and came to a dead still
hover less than a hundred yards overhead. A collective "Ooh,"
was expelled from the crowd, and some people could do nothing but clap
their hands and laugh like loons. And it dawned on you that whatever you
had spent your entire life waiting for was about to happen.
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- And then a voice, the same velvety intonation that had
whispered so many instructions in your head, issued for you its final command:
"Regret nothing."
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- Perhaps a millisecond later, a blue light shot out of
the craft and enveloped the embracing couple next you. Suddenly, their
tongues lolled from their mouths, their eyes rolled up to whites, and their
heads fell slack like lifeless dummies. Somehow, you knew that they had
not been killed, but just...changed. The people they had been were disintegrated
in the blink of an eye. What they had BECOME, you were not sure, but you
found that you were not the least bit bothered by this.
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- And from the sky, one after another, egg-shaped crafts
descended like bombardiers, shooting their blue lights at the humans below
with an almost sexual urgency. But even as bodies fell limp left and right,
no one seemed inclined to run or resist. Deep down, even the ones who KNEW
they were in danger did not really BELIEVE it. They had anticipated the
great "Arrival" as the fulfillment of their most precious hopes
and dreams, and they could not turn from this dream even as it became a
nightmare.
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- You spotted a craft zigzagging above the park, and knew
intuitively that this one was for you. And like a dam bursting its store
of water, a flood of memories washed over your consciousness, making your
head reel and nearly knocking you over. It all returned to you, and the
sense of familiarity became KNOWING. You had been through this cycle many
times before, transplanted on worlds and living amongst the life-forms,
fully believing yourself to actually be ONE of them. Being alerted to your
mission through dreams and little clues, and procuring the planet's life-forms
for...whatever THIS was. How many times, on how many worlds, had this drama
played itself out? Hundreds? Thousands? This did not seem important, because
you had always fulfilled your most sacred command...to regret nothing.
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- Head titled back, lips curled in a wolfish grin, you
spread your arms wide in a gesture of submission, and waited to be taken
home.
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- THE END
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- The above tale is of course a work of (formulaic) fiction,
and was heavily derived from countless movies, books, and old Twilight
Zone episodes. Its author, Michael Goodspeed, is convinced that if and
when the day of the arrival is upon us, the aliens will most likely be
friendly. But then again, don't take his word for it.
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