

Table of Contents
Preface

Chapter One...................Revelations

Chapter Two..................Rehabilitation

Chapter Three .................Recruits

Chapter Four..................Rapture

Chapter Five...................Resignation

Chapter Six ....................Resolution

About Gregory Truman

Preface

I am a retired commercial pilot, not a writer. I was compelled to write this report under the circumstances described in the text. Along with recounting these events, I have tried to include relevant conversations and my own thoughts and feelings as they occurred, to the best of my recollection. This report is not a novel or a travelogue and it was not intended to be read by human beings. But what the heck, I decided to publish it.

Chapter One  
Revelations

We would usually meet between 10 and 11am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It was something to do that provided us with a schedule during a long sequence of days that had little other punctuation.

We are three retired foreigners, self-exiled into a small town in the Philippines. We each have our reasons, but they are not part of this report. I'm Canadian, Carl is from the U.S. and Blake is a returning son of the Philippines whose father was German. This country has many western tourists and residents. But no tourists come around here. We live far off the beaten path in the little harbor town of Dapitan on the northwestern coast of Mindanao Island. Not that many people live around here. There are only a few foreign residents like us.

I would meet my friends at our favorite eatery, a four table café that spilled out onto a busy sidewalk in our little town. This was our hangout as we idled away our retirement years, a few hours at a time, on three days a week. We drank coffee and talked, sometimes we argued. With the internet, there were always plenty of topics to discuss. During lulls in the conversation, we could watch the humanity passing by.

There was never much talk about our past. That was all water under the bridge over a dried up river of time on the other side of the world. We had moved on from those times. I know Blake used to be some kind of corporate attorney and Carl was an entrepreneur with some failed ventures but others that were successful. I had been a glorified bus driver.

We have enjoyed this social pastime spent at the eatery for the past few years. We are content to watch the world go by from the sidelines. We have become good friends. I think we agree on most things that are important to us, and fortunately our disagreements have stimulated the conversations.

But I have long been frustrated by an ongoing disagreement I have had with Carl that I wouldn't even mention except that it is relevant to this report. In fact he is the root cause of all that follows here that I am trying to document. I'm not going to blame him for everything, he being who he is, one thing just led to another.

In the same way that I like to think of myself, Carl considers himself to be a rational person, not taken in by extremist dogmas or superstition, and not too far out with conspiracy theories. But he does have extreme opinions about one thing. Carl believes in unidentified flying objects. He thinks they are real spaceships from another planet, even though we both know there is no evidence to support that conclusion. He has explained to me many times that it has nothing to do with belief, because he knows they are real. He claims to have seen two of them at different times in his life.

I was a commercial pilot before my retirement, with 25,000 hours of flying time, and I never saw anything I could not identify or explain. I should have seen at least one of them during all that time in the air, if they were real. I questioned their very existence. I know that people often see what they want to see and are easily fooled. But I didn't know much about the UFO phenomena and I didn't really care about it either. I told him early on that they had been a mystery for many years and whatever we thought about them would only be conjecture. It was a boring subject; we would never know the truth about them so it wasn't even worth talking about.

The three of us know about the light speed limit and the distances between the stars. We knew of the improbability that any aliens, advanced enough to get here, would be expecting to learn anything worthwhile from primitives like us. But Carl told us what he saw during those two instances, ten years apart, profoundly affected his perspective on almost everything. He liked to ruminate out loud about the possibilities. There were a lot of what ifs and could bees that would only lead to pointless discussions. I had no interest in those kinds of conversations. One time, he said to think about all the things they could teach us. I told him that we don't try to talk with ants and no aliens would want to talk with us either, trying to shut down that particular conversation. But Carl would go on and on with his speculating sometimes, and it bothered me. Our arguments amused Blake. He wouldn't take sides. Carl would eventually fall back on the only facts he had. He says he knows what he saw with his own two eyes. And he told me there are hundreds of reports of UFO sightings every year, and gave me some internet sites to look at. I checked out a couple of them. After viewing a few videos of blurry lights in the sky and some obviously photo shopped videos, and reading some unbelievable eyewitness accounts, I remained skeptical of the whole subject. We finally learned to avoid the topic in our conversations to maintain our equanimity.

But one morning Carl broke that unspoken agreement. Looking back, I can see that was the moment to mark the beginning of this story I must tell.

I arrived to find them sitting at our favorite table. They were smiling at me while I ordered a round of coffee. Carl had a squinty look in his eyes. I was mildly curious; they seemed excited to tell me something.

"Well, what is it then?"

Carl began to quietly sing a few words from a tune I recognized, "Hey Mister Space Man" by the Byrd's, from the sixties or seventies. Oh no I thought, not UFO's again.

"You want to tell him Blake?"

"Go ahead, it's your baby."

"Don't tell me this has something to do with Mr. Spaceman Carl. We have exhausted that topic." He cocked his head and laughed.

"Not quite."

He told me that Blake had been visited by a friend, a barangay captain, who told him there was a mambabarang, (a person who casts spells) living out in the forest near Lo-oc. He was a dwarf and he could put people to sleep when they came across him out there. He could put several people to sleep at the same time, and they would wake up thinking they had just fallen down and stood right back up again. But one guy's watch had shown them that more than an hour had passed. The dwarf was gone by the time they woke up.

"Oh boy, here we go." I wasn't ready for another conversation about aliens.

"Just listen to the story Greg. You can criticize later."

After a few people complained about this to the barangay captain, he sent his son out with some of the villagers to tell the mambabarang to stop putting people to sleep like that. Of course they all fell down asleep before they could tell him anything. He stopped talking and smiled at me questioningly. He must have thought he had found something significant. I was afraid he was going to tell me all about it. Here we go again I thought.

"This isn't the end of the story is it? I mean if this is true. You know the people here believe all sorts of nonsense about witches and spooks in the forest." Carl leaned across the table and spoke to me conspiratorially.

"Okay Greg, this is the end of the story and the best part. No one has ever talked to this mambabarang, and no family is missing a dwarf. But many people have seen him and he has a big head with no ears, and big black eyes."

I couldn't help but laugh. These people who believe in UFO's usually believe in aliens too. Carl certainly did.

"You're telling me it's a grey aren't you?"

"He's not gray, he has brown skin" said Blake.

"It's a brown grey then, right."

"Well what do you think it is Greg?" Carl was exasperated that I could not see what seemed so obvious to him. But in the way that I viewed our world, which didn't include an alien Mr. Spaceman; I had to guess there was a schizophrenic dwarf living in the forest with a big head and small ears. And I told him so.

"He's a schizophrenic?"

"If he lives out in the woods with no family around, he probably has mental problems"

"And causing people to fall to the ground asleep?" I said I could not explain that, if it was true, but I doubted that it was.

"Okay, I'm going out there to take a look at him and I want you to come with me Greg." I smiled and said I expected a full report when he got back. I tried to change the subject. Blake laughed and said the two of them had already worked out a plan and I was part of it. He was conveniently excluded.

"You know, I can't walk that far with my bad hip."

I told them I had no interest in searching for that dwarf. But Carl said he had a strong feeling about this story and insisted it was important to find out what we could. I laughed at that too. We all knew that Carl thought he had found an alien in the forest.

He would need back-up he said. He wanted to get video of the dwarf on his smart phone, that's all. I would lag behind and follow five minutes later to watch over him until he woke up, just in case this mambabarang could actually put him to sleep. Blake laughed at what must have been the expression on my face.

I told Carl that I knew he didn't believe a mambabarang had the power to do that, any more than I did, and that I knew he thought the dwarf was an alien, marooned here I suspected. Carl wanted to know how else I could explain it then. These reports were documented at the barangay captain's office.

"Look Greg, when was the last time we had a mystery like this fall into our laps? And we can solve it by simply going out there and checking it out ourselves. We can take a tricycle most of the way there, and then it's just a short walk in the weeds to the creek where the little guy hangs out. We'll be back in a couple of hours. A short hike will be good for both of us. You got a lot on your calendar for tomorrow? Put on your boots and bring water."

Well, I didn't have anything on my calendar for the next day. I don't write anything on a calendar. Each day is much like the day before, unless I can think of something to do.

"Okay I'll go then. It's something to do."

The next morning we met at the eatery at our regular time. We each have Filipina wives, (although Blake's wife died about a year ago) and any variation in our normal behavior arouses suspicion. Before I left home my wife asked me why I was putting my hiking boots in the truck. I told her we were going to look at a piece of property in Lo-oc. A white lie was far easier than telling her the truth.

Blake and I climbed into a tricycle and Carl rode his motorbike. We headed down the road to pick up the barangay captain's son. It was a tight fit in the tricycle; Blake is a big guy. I didn't know he was coming with us. He said he wouldn't miss it; that he was almost as excited about it as Carl was, and that Carl really thought the dwarf was an extraterrestrial alien. I asked him why an alien would be living in a Philippine jungle. He told me he was keeping an open mind about it until we knew more, and would it be less strange if an alien was living in New York City? Sometimes Blake just likes to play with my mind.

After a couple of kilometers on the coast road, we had left our little town far behind. Infrequently we passed a nipa-hut home huddled close to the road. On our left were beautiful pristine beaches studded with coconut palms. A few overturned dugout canoes were visible, pulled up on the sand. We came to a junction with a road headed towards the mountains and there was the barangay of Lo-oc; a couple of sari-sari stores, an eatery, a bakery and a pool hall were clustered on one corner. There were a few other structures scattered down that road, which was unpaved after about 10 meters. Maybe 50 people lived around there.

Blake asked for directions to the captain's house in the Visayan language, and we found it down a short barangay road. The captain wasn't there, for plausible deniability reasons said Blake, but his son was ready to go. The boy wanted to bring a gun, but Carl was adamant; a gun would not be necessary.

With the boy on the back of Carl's bike, we followed the junction road about another kilometer and by then the road was very bad. It was a bumpy ride in the tricycle with the driver complaining about damage to his vehicle, until Blake told him we would pay another P300.00 for the rest of the day. We never should have taken a tricycle this far from town. We turned onto another barangay road at the boy's instruction. Here the land was mostly flat that gently inclined up-hill. Occasionally, we could see a nipa-hut through the scrub with a small field of rice nearby. The road soon became nothing but a motorbike trail and the tricycle had to stop.

By then the forest had closed in around us and further on there were only mountains and forest for hundreds of kilometers inland. Blake said he would wait there in the shade with the tricycle driver until we returned. Carl left his motorbike there, and the three of us began to walk.

The trail soon faded into high grass, but the boy knew where he was going. It was up-hill and we walked more slowly in the heat, flattening down the grass with our feet so we could find our way back to the trail. At the top of the rise the boy stopped and pointed down a gully to a large Acacia tree. He told us to walk down to the tree beyond which we would see the creek and to follow it upstream where we would find the dwarf. The boy would go no further. He said he didn't want to see the dwarf again, that he was a bad man. He told us to remember the tree so we could find our way back to the trail. He started walking back.

We looked at each other and Carl shrugged. He slid into the gully and I followed. I slid part way down on my butt and got dirt on my shorts. I sat down at the base of the tree, wiped my brow and drank some water. I told Carl I would wait there and follow him in 5 minutes whether or not he called on his cell. He agreed and set off hopping over the rocks in the streambed.

There were not as many flying insects that I remembered from other times when I had trekked around in the forest. I was younger then. Been there, done that. I no longer had any inclination to seek adventure. But there I was in the forest again, because of Carl. I went down to the creek and stuck my whole head under the water. It was cold coming from the mountains and it felt wonderful. After 5 minutes, I got out my phone and tried to call him but there was no signal. Great planning I thought, of course there were no cell phone towers nearby.

I started picking my way upstream wondering how far along it the dwarf ventured. How far up was his camp? I hoped Carl had enough sense to turn back if he couldn't find him, before it got too late in the day to find our way out of there. I thought this whole thing could be a ruse by the villagers to have some fun at the foreigner's expense. Feeling annoyed, I came around a boulder and was jolted into the kind of fear you get when wakened from a nightmare.

Carl was squatting on the ground facing the dwarf who was sitting on a rock waving his arms around as if he was talking. But I heard no sound coming from him. I could feel the blood draining from my extremities. I was in shock from its appearance, big black eyes and no ears that I could see.

"Carl!" He held up a hand to silence me and told me to listen to the thoughts in my head; that everything was being explained.

The creature was grotesque. The big head sat on a long spindly body. If it was standing it would be no more than four feet tall. It was wearing a child's old long sleeve shirt and long ragged pants with old shoes that looked too large for it. It wore a straw hat on its head. Its hands looked deformed and were missing a digit on each one. It looked just like what Carl had described to me as a grey, except for the brown skin. I could see right through its thin disguise. It did not look human to me. It had to be something else.

A thought came from outside into my mind.

"I have chromatophores in my skin. I can be any color I want."

There was an alien thought in my mind, and an alien sitting in front of me. I knew then that I was not psychologically prepared for this new reality. I was afraid. Aliens are real; I couldn't get my mind around it all at once. The legs had just been kicked out from under my view of the world and there were no precedents in my experience for me to guess at the outcome of this situation. I've never been the bravest person. And now I'm old, and I don't like big changes in my life. This was going to change everything for me. Whatever else was going to happen, my world had already been turned upside down.

It raised a thin hand and snapped its long fingers. It held a large pair of sunglasses with false ears attached to them. It put them on.

"How's this? Would you not be fooled now?" Its thoughts were in my mind again. God I thought, this could not be happening to me! But it was!

"N- No" I stammered, "yes! I mean no." Was that a trick question? I was way outside of my comfort zone, to say the least. I had never been so frightened in my life.

I must stop here and explain that I am paraphrasing its words. Often ideas showed up whole in my mind and no words were even necessary. Also I refer to it as he sometimes and sometimes as it, interchangeably, because I never did determine its sex, or if it even had a gender.

"Do not be afraid and welcome. I mean no harm to you." Not a voice or words, just thoughts that were not my own. I was informed without words, that it had scanned our minds and found it could converse with us with some expectation of comprehension on our part. It removed the sunglasses from its face. They folded in upon themselves into something the size of a kidney bean. It dropped the bean into its shirt pocket. It's a magic trick I thought; desperately trying to convince myself that maybe he was only some kind of deformed mambabarang.

"Sit down Greg, and be calm." It was more than just a suggestion. I sat down and was calm for a moment. But I had no reason to be calm. I should have been terrified, like I was only a few seconds earlier!

When the visions began they rocked me back on my hands. A thought came that I would take what I could and not worry about the details. There was a flickering light inside my eyes. I could see shapes moving towards me. They came in great globs of disjointed written material trailing appendages of refining information. It was like falling through some giant encyclopedia. But these were fractal like images with too many rabbit holes for me to follow. There was no time to understand any of it before another glob flashed by. I felt overwhelmed.

I saw Carl dimly through those images. I tried to say something but I couldn't. I was still in shock. He was smiling at me, and that made me angry. Now that he was vindicated, having found his alien, he was enjoying this horrible experience he had led us into. Then I felt mental tranquilizers washing away my agitation. I had a thought that Carl was going to take a break. I watched him stand up and stumble down to the creek to splash water on his face.

When I was a teenager worried about my future, my kindly educated aunt told me to write. "Just write Greg." But what can I write about I asked her. She told me to write about what I know. Well, what I knew didn't seem very interesting to me. My life had been ordinary with few noteworthy experiences. That conclusion has followed me into adulthood and I never tried to write anything until now. I've never had any desire to be a writer. But this encounter with an alien is the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me! I feel it's important for other people to know about this. Carl never told me about anyone else who claimed to have had a conversation with an alien, and he would know about that. This encounter could be a unique occurrence. I will have to be the one to try and write at least a bare-bones report describing what happened to us that day. Somebody has to do it, because it's important that other people know. And Carl can't do it because...wait, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Those images were coming at me too fast for me to focus my attention on any of them. When I tried, they resolved into dozens of self-similar things. And then charts and graphs flashed by, maybe one per second with labels on them in a language I couldn't read. I did not have a clue about what I was looking at. Whatever the thing was trying to show me, it wasn't working. I could not keep paying attention to something I didn't understand and I was still very scared. I picked up a small rock and squeezed it until it hurt, forcing my attention onto that. It noticed and the vision stopped.

It wanted to know if I was feeling any discomfort. Yes, I felt extremely uncomfortable. What was it doing to me? I did not understand anything it was sending me.

"Oh that? Don't pay any attention to that. I'm only calibrating."

I could see its thoughts well enough to realize I was the thing being calibrated. My mind was racing. Was it customizing its presentation to what I could understand?

"Now we are ready to start with the background you will need for our purposes."

I thought, what is our purpose here? I was afraid to know. I was just trying to stay calm.

"Education to start with, I think you will enjoy this Greg."

New images flooded into my mind. These were immersive; I was there in the vision. First I saw a star chart and then real stars where I was zooming in on its home world. I was accompanied with incoming thoughts I could understand.

Its planet orbits an M dwarf star in the constellation of Aquila, about twenty light years away. Our human astronomers have named it VB10. They discovered an oversized Jupiter type planet orbiting the star in 2009, and named it VB10b. I saw four other planets much smaller and much closer to the star. They have not been discovered yet by human astronomers but could be within a few years. The alien came from the one with the most water.

All of this would have been interesting to me in another setting. Like being in an audience and watching this happen to somebody else. And the vision was beautiful. I was hanging there in the void with five pink pearls and a glowing coal of red fire. But this was no movie. It was the total control of my mind by an alien. I could feel my anxiety rising again. I had thoughts of my own that were trying to surface. I shook my head a few times and rolled my eyes and the vision melted away. I had to look at its otherworldly face again. It wasn't easy.

"You can see I don't have total control Greg. The easiest way is to make a pause button in your mind, push to pause, and push to start. It's best if you have to walk over to it in your mind, gives you time to reconsider."

It was trying to mollify me. What were those thoughts coming to the surface? Oh yeah, why me? Why were Carl and I chosen to be the victims for its amusement or for whatever reason? We did not give our consent for this treatment. I felt violated.

"You exaggerate Greg. My purpose is benign. I am a scientist. You and Carl are perfect for my research. You will learn more as we go along. We should continue." I had noticed its clothes were second hand at best. What happened to the previous owner? Did he sell his clothes to the alien? I was imagining worse scenarios. I could not look at its face any longer and turned away.

There was Carl, back in his spot. And he was in the lotus position, sucking it all up. He was totally enthralled by this creature! We were in danger! I tried to tell Carl. Then I felt that tranquilizing tide flow through me changing my mental state and I was calm again.

"Push the button Greg." I thought, why not?

I was shown the galaxy, 200,000 light years across, 300 billion stars and more than five times that number of planets. There is indigenous life on hundreds of millions of them, and tens of thousands of civilizations at any given point in time. I was informed that only several hundred of them were capable of travelling between the stars. Most civilizations don't last long enough to achieve that. But it would never get crowded out there; there is always more space with more worlds in every direction.

I was shown that a star spanning civilization has no shortage of energy or resources. Everything needed can be found and exploited without encroaching on any other kinds of aliens. Almost the only thing traded between them is information. There is never a reason for war because there is an endless frontier.

Those are some of the points I remember from that time. But I had nagging concerns that prevented me from investing my full attention. I walked over in my mind and pushed the pause button.

The alien had not moved. It reminded me of the statue of the Black Madonna of Siquijor Island that I had seen in a photograph, very scary!

"We will be here all day if you pause so often."

"I want to know your specific intentions with us." I said that out loud and forcefully too.

"Of course, through this information, I want to give you knowledge you do not have now, and see how it affects your perception of reality and your place in it. Only an esoteric pursuit an ethnologist like me would find important. I appreciate your cooperation. Knowledge is a gift Greg, and you will use it for your benefit. We will be finished within the hour if we hurry along."

"And then we will be free to go?" I looked over at Carl. He seemed to be listening.

"Of course you will be free to go." Then it reached over in my mind and hit the start button.

I still had more questions. I wasn't finished with that conversation. I pushed the pause button again but wasn't working. It had just taken away what little control I had. I don't like being manipulated. I was being forced to watch animated graphs.

I saw populations of different species, growing and shrinking over hundreds of millions of years, some going extinct, others branching into new species. This alien evolved from a long line of reptile like creatures. At a comparable time in life's development on its world, the large reptiles were not wiped out by an asteroid. They lived on for another twenty million years and died out slowly and naturally. The small marsupial like creatures never radiated into vacant niches that did not exist, and remained small like mice. Reptile like creatures still filled most of the habitats on its planet, and its species was the culmination.

The alien must have hit the pause button itself, because there it was in front of me again, pulling up its shirt for me to see that it had no belly button or nipples. It gave me a ghastly smile. It had no teeth.

This whole extravaganza is like a bad horror movie I thought. When I looked at it that way, this could all be happening to someone else in a movie and not necessarily to me. And then I thought, are these thoughts really my own?

"Yes, look at it as a movie Greg. Put some distance to it and maybe you can see it more objectively." It was Carl's thought in my mind, sounded like his voice too.

"I can hear your thoughts and your ruminations are bumming me out."

"Carl! Let's get out of here!" I thought back at him.

"Don't shout" he sent. He told me I should stay calm and think about the great privilege we had been given to learn about these things, things that other people could only wonder about. This was a historic event. Awe-inspiring was his evaluation of our situation. Stay cool he thought. I could see that tranquilizer was working just fine on Carl.

I looked at the alien sitting quietly with a slight smile on its face. It didn't seem to be looking at either of us, but at some point in between.

"Break's over" it sent. I no longer had any free will! If I did, I would have run away from the thing already. But it was forcing me to learn these things.

Its species are social animals like ants and bees are social. They have a queen that lays all the eggs. I was shown a vision of a mud brick city where its ancient ancestors toiled for the city and their queen. I saw columns of soldiers streaming into and out of the city, carrying stone tipped spears. Resources were plentiful, but there were other cities with other queens. It was shown to me that these queens could not tolerate any rivals. Each believed she was destined for greatness. There was always war between the cities, constant war, for these were wars of extermination. If a queen could be killed, the city's inhabitants would die out also. Their ancestral line was finished. There was selective pressure for queens to increase their reproductive rate. The queens with the most solders usually won the most wars. Millions were hatched and millions died in battle. There was selective pressure for their lives to be short. The wounded expired quickly.

I watched as those in vanquished cities died off as the victors moved in workers and soldiers and more eggs from the queen. Transport and highways developed for longer supply lines as the winning queens became more powerful and their territories expanded into empires. I saw advances in weapon technology over time, spinning off other technological achievements. Eventually, after millennia, there were only two queens left. Then, after a last mighty war, there was one queen to rule the whole world. From then on she created only docile dedicated workers with long lives to begin the reconstruction of the devastation.

What followed was a tranquil era of peace and prosperity under the benevolence of the queen. After several thousand years, space flight was achieved to other planets in her solar system and ultimately to the stars.

Long ago, with the help of her minions, the queen had learned how to genetically modify the bodies of her progeny and herself in many ways. She could always control the growth of the population. After the Great War, she no longer produced unneeded soldiers. And, with immortality reserved for her alone, she no longer produced drones or princesses to fight for succession. All available knowledge could be acquired, preserved and encoded into her DNA. It was inherited, and could be partially expressed at her discretion, in each new generation. Her children were hatched already educated and specialized. She had been passing down knowledge for the past six thousand years and there were very few mysteries left in the physical realm. But mysteries in the minds of sentient creatures were plentiful and of great interest to the queen.

I looked for the pause button in my mind and pushed it. It was working again. I told it this was all very interesting but I was tired and needed another break. Without waiting for an answer, I stood up and stretched my back and walked down to the stream. I wondered if it would it try to stop me if I decided to run off right then. But what could I do about Carl? I could not just leave him there, even though a thought from some part of me, suppressed for so long, wanted to do just that. I splashed some water on my face and turned back.

Carl's eyes were open but his mind was somewhere else. I guessed he was on another channel five minutes ahead of me. I wondered what he was seeing that I would see in five minutes. His expression looked like he was watching something unpleasant. This whole experience had been unpleasant for me right from the start. I wanted to end it. I wanted to shake Carl and wake him up so we could get away from there. Impulsively I reached out for him, determined to do it, when I was struck with some new thoughts.

There is nothing I can do but accept this experience calmly, and to expect a good outcome. Let him do his wacky research, he's only an extraterrestrial academic. He said he wanted to see how this information influenced our opinions. So okay, we can do that. I looked at my watch, only twenty minutes had passed, but it seemed longer than that. We can be done within the hour I thought.

The alien seemed to be staring at me intently as I sat down again.

"Are you alright Greg?"

"I'm fine." I said without words, but I also knew I was not really fine.

"Now you know a little about who I am. But this is just background information. We will soon be getting to the crux of the matter."

I was assaulted with visions again. I saw a great convocation of many advanced species pledging eternal peace between them. The existing consensus of non-interference applied especially to the planets that were independently evolving sentient species, such as our own. Because the alien's home planet is only twenty light years away, the queen was granted a kind of conservator status over our world. No ambassadors would be exchanged. The aliens remained in the background only observing, deliberately obscuring their presence with the help of our own insecure governments. Sometimes accidents and indiscretions occurred that helps to explain our UFO phenomenon.

If I was only writing a story here, I would leave this next part out of it, because it is too unbelievable to be true. It looks like magic to me. I've told myself I would write a complete report of what happened to us during that time with the alien. Actually, I am leaving out more than I'm including. There's an incredible amount of detail I'm leaving out. Much of the content here came to me in a flash or a pulse of a concept. Sometimes I could grasp it but most times I could not. There is much I've simply forgotten. But this pulse stands out because of its weirdness I suppose:

I was shown that the amount of energy used to get here from another star is tremendous, but the cost of that energy is negligible to them. They do not travel through space to get here. They just arrive, in vehicles the size of our family car sometimes. No subjective time is spent in transit. When they return after a few hours from here, the local time back home is the same as it was when they left. That is the magic part. Our physics says all of that is impossible. I was given a brief explanation for this, but it was way over my head.

It gets weirder still. They come here for the entertainment. The majority of our alien visitors like to hang out in Earth orbit watching our television. Only sometimes they fly through our skies to take a closer look at us. They get everything relayed by our satellites. They can't wait 20 years for the transmission of their favorite episodes to reach their planet, when they can just hop over here and watch them now. They prefer heavy dramas and cop shows, other programming and the internet, not so much.

I saw a group of them watching and laughing most of the time. What was so funny? An explanation came to me. Our dramas are like comedy to them; all our passions and anxieties complicating our otherwise simple lives. They are not like us in that way. Feelings don't get in the way of rational thought and action. It was a way for some of them to relax for a short time, away from their obligations. Our antics amused them.

If this was supposed to reassure me, it didn't, and simple lives? I don't know anyone who lives a simple life. And what are the aliens doing with their lives? This was never shown to me. How could I think this was some kindly scientist? Its motives were still unknown to me, in spite of what it was telling me.

Then it was elaborating. There are only a few hundred individuals of the common castes who find us so entertaining. Most aliens, even if they know something about the Earth and humanity, never give us a second thought. They do not care about what happens here. If humanity disappeared, only those few visitors, the fans of our entertainment, and a handful of scientists like him would miss us.

By that time I was getting tired of its ramblings, I thought for it to please make its point. I told it we had friends waiting for us and if we didn't get back soon, they would bring the police to look for us. I was getting used to this thought talking thing.

"Notice the position of the sun Greg, or look at your watch." I did and was surprised to see that it had only been half an hour since I had first laid eyes on the alien.

"You can absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time with the proper instruction. Look at Carl. He is already finished and he's relaxing now." Carl had walked over to a tree and was lying on his back in the shade, with his eyes closed. I could tell he was not asleep because he had a frown on his face.

"Just a while more"

The visions began again. This time they were like apocalyptic movies. I watched as planet bound civilizations were destroyed by massive volcanic eruptions that ruined their atmosphere, or by a huge coronal mass ejection from their sun. I saw another world bombarded by large asteroids, and another that was doing just fine until a nearby supernova blasted it into fiery ruin. I was wondering if it was showing me these things because one of them was going to happen to the Earth.

No, I was told this was to show me that life and civilizations are ubiquitous in the universe. The universe doesn't care. It continuously destroys and creates at all magnitudes and time scales. There is plenty of everything, so nothing is special. Those beings had nothing to do with their demise. It was just bad luck, their time was up.

The movie was continuing with the world death story, different causes but with the same end result. I saw civilizations and whole worlds die from combinations of war, pollution, resource depletion, climate change, by epidemics, some by chemical and nuclear poisons, and some just by chaos and madness. The alien told me they were all trying to get through the bottle neck but had failed. They didn't get off their planet before it happened.

This is about us, I thought. It seemed to be staring at me, its black eyes glistening.

"Of course, that's why I'm here." For a moment I felt something like relief, hoping maybe we weren't destined to destroy ourselves. I was imagining help had arrived.

"Are you coming here to save us?"

That was the only time I heard the alien laugh. It sounded like a croaking frog. It was loud in the silent forest. The birds flew out of the trees. I would try not to say anything funny again. The raucous outburst roused Carl from his meditation and he walked quickly over to where we sat. He was talking out loud.

"Let's go Greg. This fellow is only playing with us." I was surprised at how his attitude had changed. Was this no longer the chance of a lifetime to find enlightenment?

"I am not yet finished sharing with Greg what you already know Carl. Then we can discuss these things between us."

"What's to discuss? We're fucked, and there is nothing we can do about it. He just wants to analyze our reactions Greg, and record them in some kind of ethnography. Let's go."

"You want to sit down and stay calm Carl, while I show Greg the rest of this."

"Yes I do," said Carl in a small voice and he sat down. "But I know you are messing with my mind." Then he was quiet.

The alien turned to me and its thoughts came back into my head. It was specialized in exocultural ethnology. After a lifetime of studying humanity from a distance, it was sent by the authority of the queen to study our transition to extinction. At this late hour, the prohibition against interference with our world did not apply. Now we could speak or write about our experience here if we wanted to, because it would no longer make any difference. I could see myself writing about this encounter with my wife sitting across the kitchen table from me.

My mind had been drifting, trying to escape information overload, but then it hit me.

"Hold it." I thought. "Back up! What was that about extinction?"

"Yeah," said a feeble voice in my head, "That's the whole point Greg. He doesn't care about..... Aghth......" the garbled voice faded away in my mind. The alien had turned its head and was looking at Carl.

"Greg," thought the alien, "Carl has a problem accepting the facts. I hope you can handle them better.

"Extinction is inevitable for all species everywhere. Civilizations return to dust. You know all these things. You know you are going to die, not right now, but soon. You can accept that fact with some effort. Extinction of your species is the same thing at a higher level. It is an unfortunate ending for all of you and just like your own personal death, it was always inevitable. Some go sooner and some go much later. For the biosphere on this world, it's right around the corner." It extended a hand with its palm turned up, as if it were offering me something.

"Hope, optimism and denial are three of the defining characteristics of your species. They are all defense mechanisms that provide survival value sometimes, for the short term. They allow you to act even with the knowledge that your actions are futile. And sometimes you get lucky, but this time you are all out of luck. I can see you have both considered extinction a possibility, but you have denied the evidence of its probability. This is only confirmation of your suspicions. It may give you some comfort to know that most societies at about your level with access to fossil fuels come to their end in a similar way. They overshoot sustainability and collapse. You will get over this news. In fact, this isn't news at all to the few humans who have given their attention to the current information available. It isn't common knowledge yet because your governments don't want to tell you the whole story and you have become accustomed to believing lies. To those who never look or understand, it will come as a surprise.

You have the internet tool. Anyone who bothers to look for the information can find it. And of those who do look, some will still deny the evidence, until it becomes obvious to all those few who are still alive. You all have a lot of denial about this. What is true and real is often a bitter pill to swallow."

This thing is so full of itself I thought. It has no respect for us, although at that moment I couldn't think of any reason why it should. I had a sinking feeling.

"Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Not now, it is far too late. If you had limited your population long ago, instead of breeding like rats in a grain silo, you may have conserved your resources and environment long enough to get through the bottle neck in spite of your other short comings." I didn't want to know about those. I could think of a few things already, ignorance, greed, shortsightedness.... I didn't need any reminders.

I was not enjoying any of this, and who would think I could be? I was hoping this was the end of the terrible news. What could be worse? But the alien had to rub it in. I felt like it was trying to make me hurt inside, more than just for my elucidation.

"You have fouled your own nest and ruined a beautiful world." I was starting to feel sick.

It told me there are tens of thousands of civilizations in the galaxy. Some of them are continuously being destroyed in one way or another, as others are developing. Often they take our route to oblivion, reaching the edge of the petri-dish; their planet, and their planet was all they had.

The fall of a civilization and a mass extinction do not necessarily occur together I was told, but on our world they are happening concurrently. Already we are poisoning the planet with radiation. Soon our inability to decommission over 400 nuclear power plants will kill the entire biosphere for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. But nuclear war or our degraded environment will kill us all much sooner than that. The alien explained that our destiny is common place in the galaxy and no one is concerned about it except those who are directly affected. That would be us. Did it have to say that?

"The bottle neck is nature's way of weeding out the unfit." Now that hurt. I wanted to cry.

"Your star-fairing aspirations lie stillborn in your cradle." I felt that was really over the top.

I was sure Carl would be horrified by the news. I looked over at him to catch his reaction, but his face was slack and his eyes were glazed.

"What's the matter with Carl?"

"I wanted you to get caught up with Carl, without interruption, so we are all on the same page. Do you think you can rejoin our conversation without being disruptive Carl?" I saw Carl take a deep breath. He spoke out loud.

"Yes, it had me muzzled Greg! I couldn't talk even though I had plenty of things I wanted to say. And don't speak to me as if I were a child!"

"In many ways you are"

"You see how he insults us and talks down to us Greg?" He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the creek.

"What are you doing here? What do you want from us?" The thing seemed unperturbed by Carl's demanding tone of voice.

"I believe the last of the survivors will be dispersed groups of indigenous people in a mild climate where there is still some wild game and primitive agriculture, on an island where mass migrations of refugees are unlikely to reach, and where sea breezes and rain will mitigate the heat somewhat. I will collect data on these groups until close to the end, on this part of the island of Mindanao. If it gets difficult for me here, I will move to a smaller island." I thought of the Island of Siquijor; the Isle of the Sorcerers, where this alien would fit right in.

"I am here to collect all the information I can gather and transmit it to the queen. The queen wants to know everything there is to know about everything."

I didn't want to listen any longer. I was watching some birds flying back into the branches of a tree. I wanted to be away from there. I was still afraid even though I knew it was trying to suppress those feelings in me. The adrenaline in my blood had been too high for too long. I know my cortisol level was high also, because the stress I was under I can still feel today as I write about this.

I'm surprised I was able to hold myself together as well as I did. I was passive and polite while my mind was being raped and impregnated with those disturbing thoughts and images. It was all too much for me, too much out of the normal part of my life.

I was looking at the alien looking back at me. I knew it was listening to all my thoughts. Even so, I could not stop myself from thinking about how creepy it looked.

"Sorry." I thought. I couldn't tell if it took offense. And in my confusion, and feeling a new undertow of fear, I asked a question just to get its prying eyes out of my brain.

"What's all that about a bottle neck?"

I heard Carl groan before I saw new images appear, about the Earth this time. Charts and graphs with exponential curves showing me carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, global warming and climate change, oil depletion, soil erosion, fishing stocks, forest degradation, failure of agriculture, loss of habitat, loss of species, loss of icecaps and sea level rise, mutating pathogens, ocean acidification, death of the krill, the coral and the plankton, suicide rates, background radiation levels, debt levels, pollution, population, drought and famine. These were a few things on a longer list of problems. All those curves were topping out right about now, and starting on the steep decline, or incline depending on what was being measured. Explications of the many self-reinforcing positive feedback loops were provided, that were accelerating all of these conditions. There was a lot of information to absorb and I didn't get it all, but I got enough of it to convince me that we are all in big trouble here. Until then, I had not learned enough about the implications of climate change and those other changes that were happening. I didn't realize everything was getting so catastrophic.

"That is the bottle neck" the alien explained. "Extinction often starts out slowly and then goes fast, exponentially."

Also, according to the alien, we failed to achieve competent leadership. Without genetically proscribed, unquestionable authority at the top, we have always struggled among ourselves for dominance. The venal and tyrannical always rise to power. They are self- serving, because we are not in their immediate family. A queen always puts the interests of her children first, we were told.

"If you had established an off planet base your civilization may have continued to mature, perhaps under some kind of matrilineal matriarchy with......."

"Why can't you take some of us to another place where we could continue to survive?" interrupted Carl. I knew he was angling to be one of those chosen to go. He had long ago grown tired of what he saw happening here.

"That has been tried before Carl. You would still lose your culture and be like animals in a zoo. You cannot comprehend our concerns and you would feel inferior and very unhappy. You would soon revert to a barbaric state and become rebellious. And you are too murderous and unpredictable to become our pets. So no Carl, we have learned to let nature take its course."

"You muthafa...." Carl shouted out loud. He was not taking this well at all. I saw him try to bite off that word and the thoughts and feelings around it. He jumped up waving his arms and walked briskly around in small circles. I could see he was highly agitated but trying to get control of himself.

"Easy Carl," I thought at him.

In a moment he was sitting down again in the lotus position with his eyes closed. He was doing a good job of masking his thoughts.

"At least you're not shouting anymore I thought. Try not to do that. You're disturbing the tranquility of the forest for me." He smiled. "In fact, you're bumming me out." I added.

We got a little chuckle out of that and it relieved some of the tension we were under. We both turned our eyes back on the alien trying to believe we were going to make it through this thing okay.

There it sat, silent, inscrutable, with a face incapable of expression, just those implacable black eyes. "Creepy", the thought escaped me.

"Don't worry Greg, you can't offend me easily. But I do take offense at insults to the queen Carl. Otherwise, I want you both to express yourselves frankly. And Carl, masking your thoughts only derails the discussion unnecessarily."

"All right then," thought Carl in a reasonable tone, "speaking frankly, I want to know if Greg and I can have a private conversation without you listening in."

"Why would you want to do that Carl? I would like your independent assessments of what you have learned here today."

Carl told the alien that if it did not allow us to have a private conversation, then he saw no reason why either of us would want to give any assessment at all, or to cooperate with him any further. He wanted to know if we were free to go now.

It said he was not holding us there against our will, but he was so looking forward to this discussion period after the presentation he had just given us. I told it we were exhausted and couldn't really take anymore at that time. I left the door open for it to invite us back on another day, but it did not. Also I told it we would be late returning to our friends who were waiting. We had to go now.

It sat unmoving and silent with its thoughts for more than a minute while Carl and I watched it expectantly. Its stony face revealed nothing. I looked at Carl and could see that we both felt our anxiety rising again the longer that mental silence continued.

Carl finally spoke out loud to me, certainly loud enough for the alien to hear, but it was listening anyway.

"When we get back, I'm going to tell the chief to call off the expedition. We didn't see an alien. The locals told us he moved further up the mountain. And it was only a dwarf who claimed to be a mambabarang who wasn't bothering anyone."

"Right" I said thinking, "Carl, don't start anything."

We both looked back at the alien when it moved. Its fingers started to flutter. Then its hands were flying up like birds. It grasped one with the other and forced them down into its lap. It sat there wringing its hands, like it was worried about something. Well, I was worried too.

"Let's go now."

"Yeah, we're going. But first I would like to hear him try to justify what he has done to us."

"No Carl, let's go now, while he's still shut down." Then its thoughts came back into our minds.

"Gentlemen, I apologize for my lack of hospitality when you first arrived. But as you can see I have little here to offer you. But....."

"How about giving us a gadget, to take back with us?"

"No, I'm sorry Carl. But I want you to know that your visit here is so serendipitous for my studies that I rushed right into my presentation inattentive to the comfort of my guests. There should have been more preliminaries to ease you into my endeavors. You are correct Carl, you deserve a better explanation and justification for what I have put you through. I will do that now if you can stay here for just a little while longer." It paused and waited for us to answer.

"Go ahead" said Carl.

"I have never had the pleasure of communicating with a member of your species face to face until now, although that has been a dream of mine ever since entering this field. I couldn't just walk on to a university campus seeking an educated human to interview. My appearance would cause an uproar that would bring me unwanted attention. I can't even risk walking into a small village. On this mountain, I can pass as a deformed human among the natives, if not examined too closely. But the few interviews I've attempted have all been unsuccessful. These people in the mountains are afraid of me and too superstitious and uninformed to understand my message." It sat up straight and opened its arms wide.

"Now you know why I am so delighted to meet up with the two of you. And now that my background presentation is completed, I am ready to interview each of you individually. I don't want a consensus opinion. You each have a unique perspective."

"It's all about you isn't it!" barked Carl. "What have you given to us except a vision of the apocalypse? And what is so important about our opinions anyway?"

"It is part of my work and my duty to collect this information," thought the alien. "It is important to me and to the queen."

"And why is it important to the queen?"

"The queen does not yet have this information. All information is important to the queen."

"Do you see what we're dealing with here Greg?"

No, I did not, and I didn't want to know what Carl thought we were dealing with, not right then.

"Tell me later Carl. Blake is waiting. Let's just go now."

The alien was wringing its hands again, and I was getting more and more apprehensive.

"The interview is quite short gentlemen. If only you would stay a little while longer." Was it pleading with us now? I was worried about our safety, but Carl was becoming more belligerent. Couldn't he see that this alien was unstable, and we were in danger?

"You want us to speak frankly, so now I am going to give you my frank opinion."

"No Carl."

"You are like one of those ghouls who gather around an accident scene, shoving a microphone into the face of the victim and asking him how he feels. And I don't believe you're a real scientist. I think you're a damn journalist.

"Is your queen so full of information about the universe that she is reduced to studying the final thoughts and feelings of its doomed inhabitants? Well that's just sick. It really sucks, and that's the last of the interview you are going to get from me. And how about you Greg, you want to be interviewed?" I told Carl he talked too much, and no, I was not prepared to give an interview at that time. I needed to collect my thoughts about this whole experience. The alien had stopped fidgeting and nodded its head once as if it had made a decision.

"That was very insightful Carl, thank you for offering that much." Then it turned to me.

"Greg, you will write about this to help your understanding of it, and to fill some of your unproductive days with purpose." It turned back. "Carl, you will...."

"I just want to forget the whole thing." It seemed to stare coldly at Carl for a second. Then it went on impatiently.

"Granted, now, I told you I would not hold you here against your will. But I could make an exception to that if a greater good can be achieved by...."

Whatever it was about to say next, I will never know, because suddenly Carl picked up a fist sized rock and hurled it at the alien.

I was aghast! It took him right in the gut. It let out a loud croak and pitched forward into the dirt.

"Run!" yelled Carl. But I was already ahead of him, bounding over the rocks and down the stream bed. Fearing a twisted ankle or worse I led us up the embankment and we ran through the scrub. I don't think I ever ran that hard and fast in my life. By the time we reached the Acacia tree we were both gasping for breath. I could only manage to say one word as we scrambled up the gully.

"Why?" Only after we had found the trodden down grass pathway and were walking down hill, could Carl bring himself to speak.

"Didn't you see him reaching for his bolo knife?" Bolo knife, what bolo knife? He said he was glad that one of us was observant. I told him the alien wasn't carrying a bolo knife.

"Alien?" he snorted, "that was no alien; it was only a dwarf telling tall tales. I'm surprised you were so taken in by the little charlatan. I'm sorry I had to do it Greg, but he was threatening us with that knife."

I was silent for a while digesting this. Then I asked him what about the visions, the telepathy, and the extinction. He seemed amused by the question.

"You know Greg; I always thought you were a pretty level headed guy. You said you didn't believe a mambabarang had the power to cast a spell that would work on you. But it looks like that little dwarf found something that worked." He laughed.

Well, what I could say? I mean, this man who believed in aliens, just forgot he ever saw one. And me, the skeptic, I knew we had met one that day.

I had to sit down against a tree and rest. I was suffering from cognitive dissonance and physical exhaustion. I drank some water and watched Carl pace back and forth with a scowl on his face. He didn't say anything and neither did I. We were alone with our own thoughts again, unknown to each other. Was Carl's violence justified? Were we ever really threatened? There had been a bifurcation of reality somehow, at least in Carl's mind, and I was envious. There were many things I saw that day I wish I could forget too.

Only later on I thought, (but I don't really believe this) what if my reality had also split? Carl had expected to see an alien but saw a dwarf. I expected to see a dwarf but saw an alien. What if there was no alien? What if there was only the world's most powerful mambabarang?

After we found the motorcycle track and could see the tricycle in the distance, Carl told me he had to throw that rock because these mountain folk were skilled with a bolo knife and we had no other weapon.

"It's okay Carl."

Blake rose slowly from his shady spot under a tree when he saw us coming.

"Well what did you find?"

Carl just waved a hand in dismissal and said it was only a dwarf who thinks he's a mambabarang, but a dangerous one. He gave me a sad look and said the dwarf did seem to have a strange effect on me.

Blake looked at me for an explanation. Turning towards him I silently mouthed the words "Not now" and rolled my eyes in Carl's direction. He looked at me curiously. I told him I was going to write a full report of what I could remember, and I would let him read it.
Chapter Two  
Rehabilitation

It has been almost two months since what we now call "the incident" occurred. I thought what I had written above was the end of the story, and the end of this report. But continuing events have convinced me that it was only the beginning. Blake suggested I keep a journal to record what followed. I thought that was a good idea. So I will begin again.

It was obvious that Carl and I had irreconcilably different memories of the incident that could lead to problems between us. When we arrived back at the tricycle that day, Blake tried to ask us a few questions. Carl said he didn't want to talk about it right then and he had to go home. I was silent, afraid of a confrontation. He and the kid mounted his motorbike and rode away. Blake looked at me impatiently.

"What's going on?"

I told him that Carl and I were both confused about what really happened to us and that I could not answer questions about it either. I was physically and mentally exhausted. I told him I had to get home and start writing. I said it was the only way that I could reconstruct the experience enough for my own understanding, so that I could answer his questions.

"Let me do this Blake. I at least have to make some notes before I fall asleep and lose some of the details. Then I want your help with all of this. I have a compulsion to write about this now. It can't wait."

"I didn't know you were a writer" he said, looking frustrated.

The tricycle driver was revving his engine. We squeezed into that tight space and endured the ride back to town. Along the way Blake said he had one more question he believed deserved an answer.

"Was there an alien?"

"Yes, and that's all I'm going to say about it right now."

"You've got to be kidding." I just shook my head. We didn't speak again all the way back to the eatery, where I had left my truck.

When I got home I was in a rush. My wife took one look at me and didn't see the man she was expecting.

"What's wrong?"

"Where is a pad of paper and a pen?" I knew she could produce them because she used to be a legal secretary and had that kind of stuff around.

I sat down at the kitchen table and started to write. She had never seen me manic before. I waved her off telling her I had to write some things down before I forgot them. It was important I said. She left me alone for a few minutes but without looking up from my task I could see she was growing more impatient.

"What are you doing, writing a book?"

"Only a report dear, I will let you read it when I'm done. We will have to talk tomorrow. This is very important".

She went to bed angry, but I was not deterred from my scribbling. I wolfed down some leftovers from the ref and kept on writing until 2:30 in the morning. I slept for 5 hours with bad dreams that made no sense but I woke refreshed. My wife had breakfast waiting for me. She watched me writing while I ate. She told me she was going to go visit her sister. I hardly acknowledged her. I was obsessed with the writing.

Blake was courteous enough not to call until the next day, but I knew his curiosity would not let him wait any longer.

"How is the writing going?"

"Well, it will never be considered literature, but I think I am stringing together the facts in a semi coherent way that will help us both understand what happened. It's helping me anyway."

"Is it finished?" I said maybe in a few more days. I had started it on the day Carl was singing "Hey Mr. Spaceman", in case anyone else would ever read it.

"Crap, I can't wait to find out what this is all about. By the way, Carl called me and said he wouldn't make it tomorrow. He said he might not come to town for a while, he has a lot of work to do around the ranch." I told him I thought Carl was more confused about what happened to us then I was.

"Maybe I can finish this over the weekend. I will meet you at the eatery on Monday in any case. I'm anxious for your feedback."

"Cool" he said.

I finished my report late Sunday night. I slept like a rock without any memories of dreams. When I came into the kitchen the next morning my wife was sitting at the table with my report under her arm. She said she had read it and gave me a smug look.

"Now you finally know the power of a mambabarang. I hope making you write this silly story is the end of your curse."

Sometimes the cultural gulf between us is just too great to bridge, and any further discussion would have been counterproductive. I took the report and said I was late to meet Blake and that I would eat breakfast in town.

He was sitting at our table waiting. I handed him the manuscript and said it was weird and clumsy but it was the best that I could do. I ordered two coffees to our table and was turning toward the counter to pick out some pastries.

"Carl says there was only a dwarf but he threatened you with a bolo knife." He was smiling when he said it, but I got a little upset.

"You've been talking to Carl eh? This is one of the reasons I wrote that report. Just read it Blake." When I came back with my cheesecake he was reading it with a serious expression. Cheesecake is best eaten slowly and I took my time. Finally he set the papers down.

"My God, what a story!"

"Don't flatter me Blake."

"No, I don't mean your writing style. If it's a true story, it's an incredible tale. What a shock it must have been for you, and then to see Carl deny that it happened."

"It's all true and I lived through it. So you believe it Blake?"

"Well, I can tell this is written by an amateur. You can't be some kind of secret science fiction writer. I'm forced to believe it's true."

"Thank you. And you can see there was some forcing going on by that alien can't you?"

"Yes, like some kind of mind control. The whole story is fantastic. But tell me this; did you see its spaceship?"

I must have sat there with my mouth open for a few seconds. The alien never mentioned its vehicle, nor did Carl or I. We never even thought about it I told him.

"It didn't want you to think about that."

"Could be, you see Blake, this is why I need your feedback."

"And what was its name? You never mentioned it." I said it never told us its name and we never thought to ask. Maybe it didn't have a name.

"Okay then, never mind. The interview didn't work out very well for the alien did it?" I agreed, and said I couldn't understand why, with all its control over us, it let Carl throw that rock.

"But it didn't have complete control did it? You were able to cut off the visions even when it wanted you to continue with them."

"Yes, sometimes." But I wanted to talk about Carl.

"How are we going to manage his amnesia or whatever it is, and what will happen if he reads this report? Will his brain explode?"

"You told us you were going to write a report about your experience. Carl told me not to believe anything about an alien. That dwarf was some kind of mambabarang that put a spell on you. He said he was worried about you." I had to laugh; the irony.

"Carl never believed in a mambabarang's spells before."

Blake knew that too. He said that was one of the reasons he believed my account, because it was the only default position Carl had left for an explanation of what happened to him after he forgot everything. He had to fill the memory hole with something. He saw a dwarf with a bolo knife.

"I asked him about the conversation between you guys and the dwarf. You were gone more than two hours you know. He said it was just a lot of mumbo jumbo magic nonsense, and he doesn't remember much about it."

"He doesn't remember anything before throwing that rock."

Blake and I tried to maintain our tri-weekly meetings, but soon we only met on Fridays. It wasn't the same without Carl.

We continued to analyze my report. Blake was really into it. His insights helped me to see more aspects of it than I saw when I wrote it. After a few weeks we were burned out on the whole subject. We had squeezed everything out of it that we could. Our meetings became depressing events because there was no pleasure to be found in the whole account. We tried to find some meaning to it. What the alien told us was very depressing. We couldn't figure out why it was showing us all that it did, but it felt condescending and it made Carl and I feel small and helpless.

This is typical of the conversations we had that led us nowhere:

"What does it expect us to do with this information Blake? Let's assume it's all true, what can we do about it? I don't see anything we can do to change our course or to undo the damage already done to the world. And there are only three of us who know about this, and we are powerless. What could they achieve by making these disclosures to us now, instead of years ago when this information could have helped us? We would have had time to make changes and avoid these problems." He smiled at my ignorance.

"Scientists knew a hundred years ago that burning anything used oxygen and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that it was a greenhouse gas. But it was a problem for people in the future. We are made to recognize and respond to immediate threats. We don't think much about the long term consequences of our actions. We did not, and I believe we could not make the necessary sacrifices of growth and profits that would have prevented the long term threats that are now upon us. We are not capable of addressing threats further out than a human lifetime. We are not made that way.

"And we don't know if it wanted you to do anything, except agree to be interviewed." He laughed.

"I don't mean to be disparaging, but what do you know Greg, about anything really? What information could you possibly have that would be of interest to them?" He had to stop and think. "So this is not about you personally, it must be generic; any human would do for the interview. Do we have some rare quality they don't have? I doubt it. This may not be so much about us. You were only meant to be part of a survey for an unknown alien reason." He sighed. "No, your encounter was a small piece of something much bigger, that we know nothing about. They are not giving us anything that could help us. We are not important. I think this is all about them."

We could have learned more about the alien's intentions if we had made it to the interview part. But Carl's actions had prevented that. The alien was probably dead and Carl's memory had been disrupted. Our light hearted meetings were over; only Blake and I were left to ponder the unknowns.

We decided not to contact Carl. We were afraid any attempt to help him could do more damage. We hoped that someday Carl would come to us for help, when he was ready.

My wife knows Carl's wife. They see each other every Sunday at church. She told my wife that Carl was having nightmares and wasn't eating right. He was irritable and depressed. We didn't know what to do for Carl so we did nothing.

Then one Friday while Blake and I were gazing sadly into our coffee cups, Carl walked into the eatery. He was stooped and gaunt and looked around suspiciously at the other patrons before approaching our table. The old self-confident Carl was gone.

"Hi guys, am I still welcome here?"

"Of course Carl, sit down, we've been waiting for you", said Blake. "It's great to see you."

"We missed you Carl"

"Glad to see you both. Listen Greg, I want to read that report you wrote about our experience with that dwarf. I've been having a difficult time thinking about it. I think I may have killed the little guy." There was a printed copy of my report on the table and Carl eyed it hungrily.

"You know we saw that incident differently Carl. That was no ordinary dwarf."

"I know, I know, you saw an alien. Lately I've seen an alien in my dreams, so you may be right. That's why I need to read it".

Blake and I looked at each other dubiously.

"Greg's account will shock you Carl. Are you sure you can handle it?"

"It can't be as bad as what I've been going through" He started to reach for it and then gave me a beseeching look.

"Go ahead, but read it all the way to the end before you say anything. It's a little confusing."

He snatched it up and started to read. Blake caught the waiter's eye and ordered another round of coffee. I got up and went to the comfort room (what we in the west call a bathroom or rest room). When I got back Carl was still reading. He had not touched his coffee. Finally he set the pages aside.

"God, I killed an alien!" He started to quietly weep.

"We don't know if you killed it, and it wasn't your fault. It was the alien's fault. You and Greg were both being manipulated".

"It was an accident. If you can believe my version of what happened to us Carl, then you should know that you are not to blame."

"A few weeks ago I did not want to read this. And if I did read it then, I would not have believed such a crazy story." I started to bristle until he held up his hand.

"The funny thing is, while I was reading it just now, what you wrote about was all brand new to me. I didn't remember any of it. But as I moved on to the next paragraph, what I had just read about was back in my memory. Now I know your report is quite accurate Greg. I really did say I wanted to forget the whole thing, didn't I?" He looked at me sheepishly.

"Yes you did, and welcome back to reality." Carl was still gloomy.

"There was no bolo knife. I killed an alien for no reason."

"Oh come on Carl, Greg and I have discussed this at length. What we have here is an inter-species failure to communicate. The alien was in charge. It screwed up. Your reaction was predictable in hindsight. Look here." He picked up my report and started leafing through the pages.

"You and the alien were not getting along. We speculate your initial denial of the terrible news caused you to challenge its dominance by interrupting it. See here, and here." He pointed these out on the pages.

"It got flustered in the end when you interrupted it again, and granted your wish to forget everything without thinking through the consequences. It was rushing ahead with its own agenda. Suddenly confronted with a strange creature, and no memory of how you got to that point, you were shocked and frightened. Your mind saw a bolo knife, and you acted instinctively." Carl was listening to this intently. I could see some hope in his eyes.

"Yes"

"And there is no way to know how that encounter would have ended in another way. There are some hints in Greg's report that it could have ended much worse."

"You both have had time to think about all of this. To me, it just happened as I was reading about it. What you are saying makes me feel a little better. Now that I can remember it all, I think the nightmares will stop." He frowned and put his hand to his forehead. "But if we are really going extinct, I'm probably going to have more nightmares about that now."

"You are stuck with the reality of it, like I am. I wanted to forget it all too you know, but I can see that it made you suffer."

"Yes, and I prefer the ugly truth to a delusion." His face showed a sudden anguish.

"But I still killed the little guy. That was real. I didn't like the message so I killed the messenger!" I could see he was feeling guilty. I hoped he wouldn't start crying again.

"You're trying to rationalize your behavior Carl. That's not why you threw that rock. You were reacting instinctively, out of fear. And it wasn't a little guy Carl; it was a creature, an animal. You didn't kill another human being." He glanced at me while Carl was looking down.

"Besides that, there is a good chance it was only injured and made its way back to the ship for medical attention." Carl lifted his head.

"What ship?"

"How it got here Carl."

"I don't remember anything about a ship."

"We know, I never thought about it until Blake mentioned it."

"You were not supposed to think about it either Carl. You were both under some kind of mind control."

"I didn't think about it until just now. That's interesting, it's ship." He was pensive for a few moments. I thought I saw a spark of the old Carl in his eyes. I felt relieved, the crises was over. I had time to think that he was back in the fold where we would put the incident behind us, maybe just getting back to our normal bullshitting sessions, where we only talked about human problems, and often shook our heads sadly or laughed about them.

Carl actually smiled. He thanked us for our help. He was grateful especially to me for writing it all down so that now he could recall the whole thing. The oppression he felt he was under for all those weeks was almost completely gone he said. He was smiling more now. I was thinking he was coming along nicely and we would soon be approaching normal again.

"Maybe I didn't kill it. I really hope not. I will still feel a lot of guilt about that. It's not easy thinking I could be a murderer."

"Oh God Carl, it's over and you're not a murderer" said Blake.

"Well, I can't prove that I'm not one, but it's possible I can prove that I am."

"What are you talking about Carl?"

"I'm going to go back out there and look for its remains. If there are none, maybe it survived. But if find any, well, then I will know."

"Just let it go Carl."

"Easy for you to say Blake, but you're not standing in my shoes." He turned to me for support. "I'm going out there. I need some closure on this Greg."

I tried to be judicious in my reply. There was intensity in his eyes. The old Carl was back.

"I think he has to do this Blake."

"You've made a remarkable recovery Carl, just since you have been here today. It may help you clear the last of the cobwebs from your mind."

"Well go ahead then," Blake gave me a sly smile. "I suppose you will go along with him Greg. You must be curious too." He was playing with me again. He knew I didn't want to go back there.

"Me? I don't have the issues Carl has. I have no reason to go back." He laughed. We both knew what was coming next.

"He's right Greg. You experienced that horrible incident as much as I did. You were shaken up by it too. I know you've had some nightmares, right?"

"I've only had two."

"You want to have nightmares like that for the rest of your life? It would be better for both of us if we faced our fears. If we go back there now, we will find some closure." I really didn't want to go back there. It was an irrational fear because I knew the alien would not be there.

"The alien isn't there Greg."

"I'm not going" Carl smiled patiently and took his first slow sip of coffee.

"How old are you now Greg?"

"You know I am the same age as you."

"We are both seventy two. At seventy two your time is due. Did you ever hear that expression?"

"No"

"I just made it up. The point is Greg; we are near the end of our lives. Almost the whole of our lives are in the past. We don't have to worry about the extinction. We are old; the lucky ones. We live in a tiny window of time between a past that is dead and a future we will never see. But we are both alive today. We have probably had the greatest experience of our lives, revelations no one else has ever seen, in spite of the horror of it all.

"That was a beautiful spot by the stream. When we see it again that peaceful memory will be overlaid on the darkness of our first visit. It will be therapy Greg. Then we can move on as you like to say."

Damn, he was doing it to me again, talking me into going with him again, like the first time. I knew the alien was either dead or long gone, and my fear was unjustified. And his arguments were sound. Carl could see my vacillation.

"We are still in good shape for our age Greg. It's basically a walk in the park for us, let's go."

We took Carl's Toyota land cruiser this time. Blake stayed home. There were not that many roads and we remembered the way. We got a little further than the tricycle did, but the trees prevented our further passage. Carl pulled an empty rice bag from the back seat and said it was for any artifacts or bones we might find.

He was taking pictures with his cellphone as we approached the stream. The last time we were here, we both had phones with cameras, but we never thought about taking them out of our pockets and using them. We surmised this was just another thing the alien did not want us to think about. Blake said these were things that would have distracted us from its agenda, it was so eager to conduct an interview.

The creek was running higher than when we were there the last time. The heavy rains from the month before had changed the contours of the shore line. The water had been at least a half meter higher and some of the embankment was washed away. The shore was still muddy, with debris piled against the rocks and boulders. Carl took a photo up stream and then down.

"We will never find anything here"

"Maybe not, but as long as we are here, help me look around." He started pulling branches away from the up- stream side of the nearest boulder.

"Any remains could have washed down this far."

"And they have been buried Carl."

After fifteen minutes of checking piles of debris we were back at the place where we had first encountered the alien. We had found no animal remains.

Carl continued to look around up-stream from that place, taking photos as he went. I told him no bones could have washed up-hill. He said the alien could have been injured and crawled towards its ship before expiring. I lost sight of him as he moved behind some boulders.

It was hot. I sat down on the same rock I sat on before and drank some bottled water. The afternoon sun was behind the large trees nearby and I was in the shade. Looking around, I felt no menace in that place, now that the alien was gone. It was quiet, with only the soft sounds of the creek and the air moving through the trees. It was a peaceful place. I felt I had exorcised my demons as much as I could. I was only waiting for Carl to return and then we could head back to town. I heard him yell from some distance up-stream.

"Greg, come here."

I felt a chill. What now? I did not want him to find anything.

He was standing at the edge of a clearing among the trees. The creek had meandered into a kind of lagoon here, where the land was almost flat. There was no water in it now, but plenty of rocks and mud.

"This is where the ship had to be. There are too many trees everywhere else for it to land."

"It set down on all these rocks?"

He said he was sure the ship could land on almost any surface. But the trees would be a problem for it.

"Greg, I want you to do something for me. Get out your phone and start taking photos of this clearing. Take one every three seconds, and count off those seconds out loud."

"What is this all about?"

"It's an experiment. I'll explain it later. The light is good right now." He held his phone up to his face and smiled at me.

"Whatever" I said. Sometimes you just had to humor Carl.

"One, two, click, one, two, click, how, many, click?" Carl was trying to match the cadence with his own phone camera.

"You're doing fine Greg. Just keep going." After another dozen clicks each (I was counting them) Carl put his phone back in his pocket.

"Okay, let's try to find a comfortable place to sit and look at these photos, over here." He gestured to a spot and we sat on rocks facing each other.

"This better be good."

"Now we review our photos. They should all look the same. We look for any anomalies; any one photo different from all the rest."

"Why are we doing this Carl?" He smiled in a self- deprecatory way.

"Oh, I don't really expect to find anything. It's just a little experiment I thought about doing for fun."

"What are you looking for?"

"Well, there is a lot of UFO lore about some of these ships being able to cloak themselves; to become invisible. And there are some photos of UFOs where the person who took the photo didn't see the UFO at that time, only later in the photo. Sometimes the camera can see what the eye cannot see."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's my theory that the cloaking doesn't operate continuously, because it doesn't have to. An image must be presented to a biological eye for some number of milliseconds for it to be seen, not so for a digital camera."

"You think there is an invisible ship sitting out there? Why would it still be here after two and a half months?"

"I don't really, but let's just look at the photos anyway."

We found three images of a saucer shaped craft suspended in the air above the rocks, two from my camera and one from Carl's.

"My God, It's there!"

"I amaze myself" said Carl.

"It's getting spooky again Carl. I didn't sign up for this part. Let's go now before it does something to us."

"It must have us under observation and it has done nothing to harm us Greg." He held up his cellphone with its photo towards where the ship should be and started walking slowly towards it.

"We know you are here, so you might as well show yourself."

I had a flashback to that scene from the movie War of the Worlds where the priest was approaching the alien ship in the same way. He was quickly burnt to a crisp by a beam of energy.

"Come back Carl. You are crazy now eh? This is foolishness!"

Suddenly it appeared, floating in the air before us, a silver flying saucer gleaming in the sunlight. A door opened in the side facing us and a staircase rolled to the ground. Carl looked back at me with his eyes aglow. I started backing away from it, getting ready to run.

"It's an invitation Greg." He was walking right up to it.

"It's an invitation to what?" I couldn't dissuade him. "Well go ahead then, but I'm staying out here."

I watched him climb up the stairs, through the door and disappear inside. He soon reappeared in the doorway.

"Come on up Greg. There is no one inside."

I was freaking out. I was only now starting to get over a terrifying experience with an alien that I thought would be the only one like it in my lifetime. And I was getting over it. But now it was all happening again. I was back in the same place it happened before, with Carl again. How did I let this happen to me? Damn Carl! If I had followed my instincts I would not have been there. I would not have let Carl talk me into going back. I was the fool, but Carl was the cause of it all, and now I had to cope with another ordeal. What would be the outcome this time? I thought anything could happen. Would I let Carl talk me into flying this thing to Mars for him? Hell no!

"Carl! Get the hell out of there!"

In a moment he came to the doorway again and crossed his arms. He looked down at me like he was the proud owner of a fancy new car.

"It's empty Greg. There's nothing to be afraid of."

"What is it doing here Carl? Did you think of that? Who opened the door and lowered the stairs?"

"It must be on standby, we triggered something that automatically opened the door."

"Haven't we had enough trouble Carl? Come down from there and let's get out of here." He gave me a disgusted look.

"Admit it Greg, this is the greatest adventure of our lives. Even if we died here, it would be worth it. We must seize the day and learn all we can. This opportunity will not come again. It's time to be more of a man than a mouse."

That did it. I was angry. I stormed up the stairs and brushed him aside at the doorway. I was more curious than afraid at that point.

Inside it was dimly lit by the light coming in the doorway. Where is the airlock, I thought. There were no windows. As my eyes were adjusting to the gloom, Carl walked past me and began to tug at some apparatus attached to a wall.

"What do you think you are doing Carl? Don't touch anything!"

"Photos can be doctored but if we can take back some alien technology we will have proof of what we found here." Suddenly the door slid silently shut and we were in total darkness.

"You've done it now Carl, we're trapped. You killed us both." A huge voice boomed into the blackness.

"So, you are not only killers, you are thieves." We were in a stunned silence. Carl recovered first.

"Who are you?"

"I am the pilot of this ship and I could have killed you in many ways at any time" it bellowed. "I expected your return to the scene of the crime. You are so childlike."

"Did I kill your master then? It was an accident."

"Not my master, you killed my personage!" it yelled.

"I'm very sorry about that. And now you want revenge on us?"

"I am a machine, I don't have feelings. But if I did, I'm sure I would want revenge. He was a great scholar."

"Why are you still here? And can we have some light?" I asked in a quivering voice. There was light again, brighter than before.

"I hope I frightened you" thundered the voice.

"Yes I'm afraid." I was scared all right, shaking actually. That continuous yelling was quite unnerving.

"I am here because I have orders to continue the mission. I am growing a clone of my personage for that purpose. I must remain here because some of his essence is still in this place and time and must be implanted into the clone when it's ready. It's a tenth dimensional phenomenon you wouldn't understand" it shouted.

"Now, I have been in contact with the queen herself. She is disappointed at the results of the mission so far. It is a bad reflection on my personage that he did not anticipate your murderous attack. He knew your stone throwing ability had been perfected throughout a million years of practice, and yet he was careless."

"We came to that same conclusion" said Carl.

"That does not exonerate you," the voice hollered. "Frankly, if it was up to me, I would leave your bones here in the mud, the way you left the bones of my personage. I may not have feelings, but I do understand justice. However, the queen has determined your disposition. There will be no trial" it screamed. "The queen simply requires your service."

"Could you please turn down the volume of your voice? It's much too loud for us."

"I cannot detect your auditory parameters. How's this?"

"Much better" I said.

"What does the queen want from me?"

"Both of you" said the voice.

I was a nervous wreck by that time. I was actually in fear for my life. Carl was putting on a brave face, but I could see he was rattled also. The only door was still closed, and the air smelled funny. We were hostages held in the bowels of this talking saucer. But now that the shouting had been turned down I was feeling a little better. I started to notice my surroundings.

The inside of the ship seemed larger than it appeared from the outside. A wall on my right bisected the diameter of the disc. There was a doorway in the center opening to the other half. On my left was a semi-circular wall that curved up to the ceiling following the contours of the saucer shape. The walls were featureless other than scattered symbols imprinted on them here and there. The room was completely empty. A lot of wasted space on a space ship I thought. Where were the controls?

"Be seated." A long low couch materialized near us. I realized that I was becoming accustomed to magic, only grateful for a place to sit down. Carl sat down at the other end.

"You have a chance to redeem yourselves in the eyes of the queen and save thousands of humans from extinction." At last some good news, but I was not going to get my hopes up.

We were told that the queen had a problem on another world. Our human abilities as efficient killers would be useful there. On that world the ecology was out of balance. The large reptilian type carnivores had been wiped out by egg stealing omnivores. The top of the food chain was gone. Without them, these fast breeding animals were eating everything else too. They ate plants and smaller animals and dug roots out of the ground. But eggs were their favorite food. Now that the large predators had been removed, their rapid reproduction was threatening the extinction of many other plant and animal species. One of those endangered species was a small theropod type reptile that had learned how to use its tiny forelimbs as arms and hands. They used wooden spears to fend off their enemies but were losing out over time. The queen believed these smart animals were evolving towards sentience and should be protected and the eco- system restored. The omnivores must be culled. That is where the humans would come in.

"You want us to hunt these animals on another world?"

"Yes, killing is one thing you do well." Carl licked his lips in anticipation.

"How many people do you want to take?" "The queen requires a community of around of four thousand of you, to sustain a culture over generations. Save your questions. Think about this for a while."

Carl looked at me like a small boy who had just opened his most wished for Christmas present.

"I'm in" he said. Of course he was in. He had been waiting years for the space people to come down and rescue him. He was what some people called a UFO nut. I pointed out the voice did not say he was included in that four thousand, just to be mean. But I was feeling a little more hopeful myself. This would mean some humans could avoid the extinction on our world, by being somewhere else. Humanity would not end. I realized this was a very big deal. If we could start over, maybe we would do a better job of it this time.

"I'm in too, even if we are not on the list to go."

"Of course we are on the list. The queen needs our help with this. What do you want us to do?" The voice didn't answer.

In the silence I was having second thoughts. Should we just trust this machine? And why was it silent?

"You are very articulate with the English language. As the pilot of this ship, why would you have this ability?"

The silence stretched on. I thought it was not going to answer me. But then it did.

"I have all the knowledge and memories of my personage, including his specialized knowledge of your language." Carl wanted to know if the alien planned to let us go.

"I was not privy to his thought processes, nor do I have what you would call his psychic talents. Those things arise from a biological matrix."

Carl opened his mouth to ask another question but the voice cut him off.

"Enough questions for now. The queen believes you will be eager to help save some of your species from total annihilation."

"But what must we do then?" pleaded Carl.

"Find a disillusioned priest, tell him about your experiences, and bring him here." The outer door slid open, and we were free to go. I was so relieved to breathe the fresh air again and to feel the sunlight on my skin.

When we arrived back in town, we went straight to Blake's house to give him all the news. His helpers were preparing the evening meal so we sat out on the veranda with rum and cokes. He could see our excitement.

"More alien adventures?" We shoved our cellphones at him and told him to scan the photos.

"That looks like a flying saucer."

"That's what it is, and just wait until you hear the rest of this." Between the two of us we filled him in on the whole story. He was getting excited.

"This is a way for some people to survive the extinction. It's like a reprieve at the gallows! Do you believe it?"

"I do," said Carl. "The queen needs some humans because we are good at killing things." Blake shook his head.

"Doesn't it make you wonder though, that this queen would make such an effort to save some lizards from extinction, but is not going to lift a finger to save us from our own?"

"Maybe that was before Carl demonstrated his prowess throwing rocks. The personage made it clear that they have little regard for our other attributes. I think they are indifferent about our survival. The queen just found a use for some of us."

"She is interfering on two worlds now," Blake was puzzled. "This does not conform to their stated policy of letting nature take its course. I think she could be on shaky legal ground here. There may be higher authorities who will question this. It makes me feel so insignificant in the scheme of things. But we must grasp at any straws for the survival of our species, whether it's legal or not. We'll let the queen worry about that."

A helper came out with more ice, and we refreshed our drinks.

"We have to find a disillusioned priest. Why? And how are we going to do that?"

"It doesn't matter why Carl. We must find the priest if it helps to get some people off our world."

"I don't know any priest."

"I don't either" I said. "But our wives do."

The next day I asked my wife if she knew of a troubled priest. She said I never showed an interest in any kind of priest before, and why a troubled priest? I said I didn't know why, but Blake had asked me to help him find one.

"He is several years older than me. Maybe he wants to make a confession or something." She looked at me shrewdly and said she knew all three of us were unbelievers but maybe Blake was dying and he wanted to find the Lord at last.

"You could be right dear."

She said she knew of an Irish priest (there are several Irish priests around here) who is an alcoholic and sometimes he was drunk during mass. So he must be troubled, right? His name was Father Robert McLaughlin and he gave mass at the Immaculate Church. I thanked her and told her that Blake would be grateful for the information.

Blake's family roots go back a long way in this area, and he is a well-respected member of the community, in spite of his apparent lack of religiosity. When Blake called the parish, Father McLaughlin was aware of Blake's reputation. Blake invited him to dinner in his home. He said he had some important information he must pass on to the priest. The priest was hesitant.

"If this is about my shortcomings, I am well aware of them, and I am my own worst critic."

"This information is not about you, but it's very important that you know about it."

"Are you sure you have the right priest?"

"Yes, please arrive around seven. A couple of my friends will be here also and I want you to meet them." He gave directions to his house. Although reluctant, the priest agreed to come.

Blake relayed this conversation to Carl and I and we arrived early.

"Be casual and relaxed, but we must find out if and why he is a disillusioned priest." Fortunately we had my report and my journal for him to read. We would not have to rehash our experiences again.

Blake met the priest at the door and ushered him out to the veranda where Carl and I sat. We stood up.

"Father McLaughlin, I would like you to meet my two best friends." Introductions were made. "Please call me Bob" he said.

We began by discussing current events and the many problems in the world. We were all drinking iced tea.

Bob was aware of the new wars, the environmental destruction, the ongoing disaster of Fukushima, the terrible new storms from a warming Earth, the looting of the financial system by elite criminals, energy depletion and its effect on food production, methane eruptions from the permafrost, the tropical diseases spreading in the temperate zones, the poverty, and the food riots. Blake smiled.

"You seem very well informed for a priest."

"I have the internet. I have little hope for our civilization."

Then the discussion turned closer to home. The government increases in rice subsidies for the growing number of poor people here, and the crowds waiting for its distribution. About the stressed middle class whose largest average investment was for a motorcycle bought on credit with high interest, impoverishing them faster, and their numbers clogging the roads and the parking spaces, the population problem, the birth rate.

"I must say that I am not in agreement with the church's birth control policy." I could see Carl growing impatient.

"That could be a conflict for you, being a priest and all." Blake gave Carl a stony look.

"Oh, it is, and I am becoming more disillusioned with other areas of the church doctrine as well. It distresses me immensely." Blake smiled broadly.

"It's enough to cause a person to drink, is it not?"

"I take responsibility for my own actions."

"Good, you're going to need that attitude, excuse me." He got up and left the room. He returned with a bottle of brandy and four small snifters. Bob eyed the label. It was very expensive brandy.

"I wasn't going to drink here."

"Hold on while I do this." He poured into each glass and set them before us. Then he raised his own.

"I'm going to propose a toast. As your host you cannot deny me this Bob."

Carl and I raised our glasses and then Bob reluctantly raised his. He looked at Blake with sad eyes.

"To our future!" said Blake and downed the whole thing.

The three of us took small sips and set our glasses down. Bob closed his eyes savoring the taste.

"Alcohol can be a medicine for too much knowledge. You're going to need more of this before the night is over Bob. Greg, it's time for your report." I slid the report from a bag by my chair and handed it to Bob.

"What's this?"

"The reason we brought you here tonight. You read that through, while I keep our glasses full."

Bob started to read. About halfway through it he asked if it was true.

"We swear it is" said Carl.

The helper brought in four dishes of shrimp cocktail and set the tray on the table. Bob was too busy reading to eat any of it. Finally he finished and set the report down while shaking his head.

"I'd like to get drunk now, but I want to stay sober enough to understand this. How can you swear this is true Carl, if you can't remember it happening?"

"You haven't finished reading." I gave him my journal which was up to date as of the day before.

"There's more?" he said, shaking his head again. But he kept reading. Blake put on some classical music and we sipped our drinks. When Bob was done he gulped down what remained in his glass, and held it out for a refill. His hand was shaking.

"And now this machine wants to talk to me."

"That's right Bob. I'm sorry we had to drag you into this but the stakes are very high. This is about the survival or extinction of the human race."

"This is all so hard to believe." We showed him the photos of the ship on our cellphones. He seemed too shocked to say anything.

Blake served up a sumptuous meal but it almost tasted like sawdust in my mouth. I'm sure we all felt like we were carrying the fate of the world on our shoulders. Father Bob suggested we go to the authorities here and turn the problem over to them. But upon reflection we all agreed, that would only make things worse. The queen could decide she didn't need a few humans that much, after trying to deal with a human government.

Father Bob told us he became a priest because he wanted to alleviate some of the human suffering he saw in the world. If their condition could not be improved here, at least the church offered people hope in a better life after death. Even after his doubts began, he believed that his role was to comfort the suffering people. It could all be a delusion he said, but still, hope gave solace to the living. While he was telling us this I saw his face come alive with an epiphany.

"Now I may have the chance to actually help save the future of all mankind! There could not be a greater calling for a man like me!" By then, Father Bob was feeling the alcohol. He staggered to his feet proposing a toast.

"May God's grace shine upon us as we pursue the redemption of humanity!"

We all stood up and drank to that.

Chapter Three  
Recruits

There were four of us in the land cruiser this time. Father Bob was anxious but happy to get on with his new mission. Blake was unhappy he had to remain with the car because of his hip. I was full of trepidation as usual. Carl was hoping for a ride in a real spaceship.

It sat there in the clearing in plain sight, its door open and the stairs extended. As we approached it, the voice said that only the priest should enter. He turned to us at the top of the stairs with a smile and a thumb up gesture. He stepped inside, the stairs rolled up, the door slid closed and the ship disappeared. Carl was disappointed.

"Heck, I wanted to go too."

Almost immediately the ship re-appeared and father Bob had a beatific smile for us as he seemed to float down the stairs.

"What happened?" we both asked at the same time. Father Bob was ecstatic.

"I went there. It's a beautiful world!" He was actually jumping up and down.

"I saw more wondrous things beyond any religion!" he enthused.

"Like what?" We wanted to know.

"Wait, so I can try to explain it to Blake also" He got down on his knees, put his elbows on a rock, clasped his hands and began to silently pray.

"I thought you were skeptical about a God" said Carl. After a moment, Father Bob told us that God is a small thought. The universe is big and beautiful and real and he was praying about that. As an aside to me Carl said, "Old habits die hard I guess." Bob jumped up laughing and embraced us both.

"Why couldn't we go with you? We wanted to see the new world too."

"I don't know Carl. Let's go find Blake."

"Not so fast!" said the voice from the ship. It obviously had seen too much of our television to use a line like that.

"If you want to see what the priest has seen, you must become his disciples; follow his ways." The stairs rolled up, the door closed and the ship disappeared.

"It's still there" said Carl dejectedly.

"I'm just bursting with information I must share with you. Let's go." I knew how he felt, with my own compulsion to write about all of this.

Walking back the air was hot and still. We were sweating. Carl said we could begin to follow Bob's way with a tall Tom Collins when we got back to town. I told him not to be snide. Bob said he no longer had any desire to drink. We let it go at that.

In the car, he excitedly tried to tell us all that he had seen and learned. It was a jumbled up narrative, and difficult to understand sometimes. He admitted that much of it was confusing to him also, but he kept emphasizing how beautiful it all was.

He said he was shown that the universe is a self- organizing thing over billions of years. He said we had already learned, in a rudimentary way, the self- organizing method of biological evolution here on Earth, but it was all so much greater than that.

"Anything you study closely and learn about always leads to more questions about it. I was shown the universe is layered in that way. Everything is more complicated than it appears at first glance."

"That's pretty elementary stuff" said Carl. "How did you arrive at these insights?"

"I was just infused with it somehow. And it was all news to me."

"Don't pay any attention to Carl" I said. "He's feeling left out because he didn't get to go for a ride on the ship."

"Tell us about the planet" said Carl.

"How long were you on this trip?" asked Blake.

"No time at all" I said.

"Oh, more than an hour I guess" He looked at his watch. Then Blake and I looked at ours. Bob's watch was an hour and twenty minutes ahead of ours.

"Just more magic" I said flippantly. Blake frowned and shook his head.

"Any technology advanced far enough beyond our own, would look like magic to us Greg. It's not magic, its physics, from a few layers further down, as Bob is trying to tell us. You know Einstein didn't disprove the theories of Newton, he refined them."

"That's right! There are layers farther down where the laws of physics are different. Our instruments are not powerful enough to detect those levels yet. I was told that we already know there is something we call quantum entanglement, where particles act on each other at a great distance, as if there is no space between them. This has led some aliens to discover new laws that allow them to communicate and travel without actually passing through the space-time between two points." He said he didn't understand it any better than that.

"And I was told there are new laws we have not discovered at the macro level too. There are distant quasars; the brightest objects in the universe that have their spin axis aligned parallel to each other, even though some have billions of light years separating them. How this happens is unknown to human astrophysicists, but the aliens have discovered these huge forces and have somehow learned to harness them.

"But I really want to talk about other things that happened to me."

"Like your trip to the planet."

"Well yes, I will get to that part Carl, but the most important thing I have to tell you is that I am a changed man, and I know precisely the day when Jesus is coming."

"What?" "What!" "What the hell?"

"I know, I know," said Father Bob waving his hands. "But I really do know, because the four of us and the queen are going to make him come." We were flabbergasted.

"Look, I learned that all religion is show business. How else are we going to get four thousand Filipinos willingly onto a spaceship?"

"Isn't there any prohibition against kidnapping thousands of people from their own world?"

"Oh there is, Blake. Our job is to engineer the consent of the volunteers, which makes it all legal I guess."

"Please explain Bob"

"Jesus is going to come on Easter Sunday. We felt that was a most appropriate time. This is going to be the biggest and best religious show ever! It gives us almost two months to work on it." He was rubbing his hands together gleefully.

"You certainly have changed Bob" I said.

"Yes, and for the better. I will be like Moses leading some remnant of humanity to a promised land. What a role to play! And I will feel no guilt about it being simple trickery. The end result will justify it. We will be saving some of humanity from total extinction." His face was glowing with enthusiasm.

"What if we don't want to be a part of this shit-show?"

"Do you want to see the Promised Land Carl? If you do, you must cooperate with the queen's plan. We can go without you." Carl had always wanted to escape to another world. He started to protest, then thought better of it. The queen held all the power here. Her plan was the only hope we had.

"What about the planet?" Carl asked again. Bob said to wait until we got back to town. He wanted us to take the time to think about the things he had already told us. Carl looked frustrated but held his tongue. Father Bob was clearly in-charge now, an emissary from the queen.

Back on Blake's veranda, his helper brought out prepared snacks and there was plenty of iced tea.

Bob told us the planet was smaller than the Earth with a thinner atmosphere but with a higher concentration of oxygen. There are two distinct land areas, the low lands and the plateau. The plateau faces the moon. A steep escarpment over three kilometers high separates those major features. The planet has a lot less water than the Earth, but the evaporation and condensation cycle is faster. There is a shallow ocean in the low areas with a lot of flat land around it filled with carbonaceous type forests and swamps. There are many kinds of giant salamander like animals there, their evolution hindered by a hot unchanging environment he was told. The high lands are more like a savanna, a lot cooler but still with a tropical climate. It has its own inland seas and rivers. Clouds boil up from the lowlands and the prevailing winds carry them over the plateau where they condense and fall as rain. Bob said he saw many waterfalls, kilometers high, returning the water to the lowlands.

"You didn't really go there, did you Bob?"

"I thought I did at first Carl. It was hard to tell. But now I think it was more like a three D virtual reality presentation. It was like being there. But you are right. The ship must remain here to gather some essence of its deceased personage that remains in the environment near the ship. The clone will receive that when it has developed enough."

"And when will that be?" asked Blake.

"Sometime after Easter I was told. I didn't see it; it must have been in the other half of the ship. Do you want to hear more about the planet?" Yes we did.

"The machine told me that entirely different species of plants and animals live in each zone because of the extreme difference in air pressure and temperature. Although they are all distantly related, it is like they live on different worlds. Only bacteria and a few plants can survive on both terrains. The colonists will not have to engage at all with the swampy lowlands, the problem is with the fauna in the highlands. There are no other large animals left, except some herbivores. We humans will be there to cull the omnivores that look like reptilian pigs. I saw them. They have a snout like a pig but no external ears, and they have a long meaty tail."

"If they taste like pork, the Filipinos will think they are in heaven already."

"But the people will know that Jesus is not taking them to heaven Blake. Heaven is for dead people. The rapture is for the living."

"I don't think the rapture is part of Catholic doctrine, is it Bob?" I was pretty sure about this.

"Who cares, these will be mountain people. Jesus will explain it all to them, and I'm the one writing the script."

"The queen only wants mountain people?"

"Yes, the queen believes we humans are not evolved enough to create any kind of sustainable civilization Carl. We are still basically tribal. She thinks perhaps in another ten thousand years or so we can leave our apish origins far enough behind, and develop into the kind of humans we would like to think we could be.'

"This queen certainly plans for the long term," said Blake.

"Well, that leaves us out. We are too civilized to go."

"Don't worry Carl; the queen has a plan for you to go to the planet. I'll tell you about that later." It was interesting to watch Carl being manipulated. He was usually the one manipulating others. Bob said we had more important things to discuss about organizing everything for the transfer of four thousand people to another world. But we were all tired and there was so much to think about. We were following too many of our own thoughts to make any kind of plan and it was getting late. We agreed to hold our MWF meetings on Blake's veranda and called it a night.

The next time we met at eleven a.m. on a Wednesday, Blake had a prepared lunch waiting for us. Father Bob gave a prayer thanking the workings of the universe for bringing us together to serve creation before we began to eat. We looked at each other, wondering if father Bob was still completely sane. He began to eat rapidly, stuffing food into his mouth and studying a pad of notes while he chewed.

"Aren't you really giving thanks to the queen Bob?"

"The queen serves the universe and so do we Carl," replied father Bob speaking with his mouth full. Some crumbs from an empanada fell onto his plate.

"You all realize, for this to work, we are going to have to lie. I hope you have no qualms about that."

"What is our role?" asked Blake.

"Your role is to lend me credibility when I need it. I will give a mass at the Immaculate Church this Sunday, and it will cause quite a reaction."

We discussed the queen's plan further on Friday. When Jan came home from church Sunday morning she was scandalized.

"Father McLaughlin, that old drunk, told us Jesus is coming this Easter and all Catholics must be ready. Can you imagine? As if he would know. He said an angel came to him and told him this, Ha!" I asked her how the other people in the congregation reacted to this news. She said some, like her, just laughed at him. But others began to pray and shout Hallelujah! And At Last!

"It was disgusting. Some people believe anything a priest tells them." We had planned on this, so I had to tell her.

"You know what's funny dear? I had a dream that an angel told me the same thing."

"What?" you're kidding, right?"

"It was only a dream."

Word soon got around about father Bob's sermon. The church authorities called him in for a conference. Bob didn't back down and the bishop suggested he needed a vacation. He would not be allowed to hold mass at the Immaculate Church again. Bob was not discouraged. He showed up the next Sunday at a shrine to the Virgin Mary in a tiny village further into the mountains above Lo-oc. The people there had no priest of their own, and they hung on his every word. The next Sunday he was there again and the crowd was larger. The bishop called him in again and told him he risked excommunication for his continued defiance. Bob said he didn't care about that, and he would continue to speak the truth regardless of the consequences. He left his priestly collar on the Bishop's desk. The shrine in the mountains was not church property and the authorities could not prevent Bob from speaking there.

There are no wilderness areas in the Philippines. Outside of the cities and towns the land is sparsely settled everywhere. There are few roads and no electricity in the hinterlands. The people there live as their indigenous ancestors have always lived. They are basically hunter gatherers with a little rice cultivation and with a few domesticated animals. Hardly influenced by the Spanish and American occupations, their religion is animist; the belief that sprits inhabit all living things and inanimate objects. The church has made some inroads into their culture where they have integrated some of its doctrines into their existing beliefs. Most have heard about Jesus. Their numbers are only estimates. Their density over the landscape is considerable, certainly in the millions. This became a problem for us.

At our meeting on a Monday, the three of them were discussing the problem. I was taking notes for myself. I was always writing by then, still am. I sometimes wonder why I am doing this.

"I can't go back there next Sunday. It's working only too well. We estimate there were over one thousand people there yesterday. I expect two thousand next week. We will need more room."

"Jesus" said Blake. "Pardon me, but how did they all get there? There is only one road to that place and probably less than twenty people live in that village."

"They walked. News has been spreading by word of mouth in the mountains. None of those people have cellphones."

"What do you tell them to entice them to go to another world?"

"I tell them that Jesus wants to take them to a better world, where there is plenty to eat. That is enough motivation right there. These people are always living on the edge of starvation."

By then, Father Bob had more than a few followers who fervently believed in his angelic vision. He enlisted some of them from his first sermon three weeks before at the Immaculate Church to help facilitate logistics. Some of those people were educated and determined to carry out Bob's plan, thereby earning passage to the new world through their service. Unfortunately none of them would be among those going. Others just wanted to be witnesses to the spectacle; they had no desire to uproot their lives.

"I told my lieutenants that Jesus only wants extended families and clans for this first trip into the rapture. Among their duties are to construct family trees and to get the consent of all those willing to go, statements in writing. With the numbers we have so far, we can be selective."

"This is for the first trip?"

"There will only be one trip Carl. I told you we would have to lie. All four thousand will go at the same time. The queen doesn't want to do this piecemeal."

"So only mountain people will go?"

"Correct, the queen believes the middle class would not make the transition. Can you imagine them leaving their motorbikes and cellphones behind? Those people would be disruptive to the culture the queen will be trying to maintain."

"Then it seems like none of us will be going after all."

"I will be going. By the way, I must report back to the machine to relay our progress on Thursday. The queen asks that you and Greg accompany me. She wants the two of you to physically visit the new world and express your reactions to it. She values your opinion and no one else will get this preview."

When I heard this I set my notebook aside, but I remember this conversation. I had already decided I did not want to go to that planet, not even for a preview. The queen's request for our opinion was an eerie reminder of our encounter with that alien, trying to conduct its interview with us.

"I don't want to go to that planet. And for my wife to go would be out of the question. I'll take my chances with the people here on Earth."

"It's your choice to make Greg. But please come along to the site. We are all still in this together." Carl was eager to go, of course.

"I want you to at least be there when I get back Greg, and Bob of course. This is a big step for me. I'm hoping to have an experience similar to Bob's. I could use some enlightenment."

"You can't talk me into going inside that saucer again." Carl gave me his exasperated look.

"Only in the car Greg, you are only going in the car. For you, I will be returning in an instant. For me, who knows how long I will be gone?" I could not let him know that I really was afraid to even ride in the car to that place again, so I agreed to go, in spite of my better judgment. I seem to lack conviction about my own feelings.

That Thursday, after meeting at the eatery and on the way to Lo-oc, I told Blake I wanted to wait in the car with him. I didn't want to see that saucer again. Blake was sympathetic. He said seeing how I was affected, he was happy to be experiencing this story second hand. But for some reason I can't fully understand, when we got there, I decided to go with them all the way to the ship.

When we came around the bend in the creek I saw two saucers side by side. It brought back all my anxiety. One had its door open and the stairs were down.

We had said our goodbyes in the car so Bob and I each gave Carl a quick hug.

"Go get-em tiger" I said, and with a big smile he turned and walked toward the stairway. The loud voice flew out from the ship.

"Where is the other one? Please approach the vehicle!" I felt like Dorothy, shaking in front of the Wizard of Oz.

"I, I'm not going."

"That's just as well then" said the voice. I was relieved but I felt uncomfortable with its answer.

Carl reached the head of the stairs and entered the ship without looking back at us. In a moment the stairs retracted, the door closed and with a small pop it was gone. It didn't reappear right away and when I asked Bob why it wasn't back yet, he said the pilot can choose to return at almost any time. It was giving him a chance to explain some things to me.

The queen has a pretty good psychological profile on all of us he said. She knew I would not go. She wanted Carl. She used me to help her get Carl out there. She didn't only want his opinion; she wanted to run some tests on him.

"Run tests on Carl? You didn't tell him about this?"

"We're walking on egg shells here Greg. The queen's plan has got to be our plan. She needed Carl and we helped deliver him."

I was shocked that Bob would use deceit even within our small group. A little lie of omission he said. If Carl started asking questions about the tests, for which Bob had no answers, he might have decided not to go, and the queen could decide to scrap the whole project. He couldn't risk that he said.

"And what about your progress report to this other ship? Are you going to do that now?"

"That was just another lie Greg, to get Carl out here. The plan is working on schedule."

There was another small popping sound and the ship was back in the clearing. The door opened and Carl staggered down the stairs. He had a beard and he looked terrible. There was a small bandage on his arm. We rushed over to him and helped him sit down on a rock.

"What happened to you Carl?"

"How long were you gone?" He turned up the palm of his left hand and I could see short lines of ink on the inside of his forearm.

"I kept track of the days here, in case they only returned my body" he said in a weak voice. "It's been eleven Earth days." I gave a cold look to Bob. He turned up his hands with a helpless look.

"What did they do to you?" Carl reached into his dirty shirt and gave me his notebook.

"It's all in there. I'm too tired to tell you everything now. Your journal idea kept me going Greg. That bitch and her machine almost killed me several times."

"Are you hurt Carl?" asked Bob.

"I'm sick, but not as sick as I was most of the time. I need a bath and a good meal."

"You are not too sick if you want to eat. Can you walk alright?" Carl coughed.

"I can walk, let's get back to town. I'm starved. I've only eaten gruel and lechon for more than a week."

"You ate lechon?" Bob seemed to get excited about this.

"Yeah, the roasted little pigs, the omnivores."

"Well, how did they taste?" He was eager to know.

"Quite good actually, but I'm tired of eating it every day." Bob smacked his lips and smiled.

We got him back to Blake's place, and while he showered and shaved, I looked through his journal. I began reading out loud for Blake and Bob's benefit.

Thursday7:10 pm

I've been inside the ship for almost four hours now. I can see the world through the hull, but it won't let me go outside yet. The machine says I am being depressurized and it has had me restrained while running tests on me. I have adhesive patches on my neck and arms. It says they are diagnostic and therapeutic devices. I don't know what it will do to me next. Right now I am eating a bowl of gruel it gave me, it tastes like medicine. I have permission to write for a while, and if I willingly submit to its procedures, I will not be restrained again. I understand, as an experimental animal, I have no rights. It says it will read this journal as part of my psychological evaluation, so read between the lines.

The trip here was instantaneous. I am in a meadow. I can see grass and trees but the colors are all wrong. The grass is a dark blue-green color and the leaves on the trees are purple almost black. The sun is high in the sky right now, but it has a weak orange light making the day appear like twilight on Earth. It's not as bright as our sun. The sky is dark blue; there are some white- orange clouds. I saw a flying reptile high in the sky but no other animal so far. There is a large moon that doesn't move across the sky.

The machine says I must lie down on the couch again for my patches to be changed while I sleep.

Friday3:15 am (By my watch)

I awoke with new patches on new areas of my skin. The skin where the old ones were removed has dozens of tiny blood spots from little pinpricks I didn't feel. The machine admitted it is changing my immune system to deal with the environment outside. Antibodies to local bacteria are being created, modified, and monitored. Bacteria are being sequentially introduced into my bloodstream. Nanobots injected into me are repairing any damage. I am starting to feel sick. I hope the machine wants to keep me alive.

There is nothing to do while it works on me, but watch the panoramic view outside the ship. I have seen some movements against the distant tree line but I cannot see the cause. From the shadows on the ground it looks like late- afternoon now. The machine answers my questions, or at least tells me what it wants me to believe. It says the days here are about nineteen hours long. My watch will tell me nothing about the time of day, but I will continue to use it to keep track of my time here.

The machine tells me it's time to stop writing and to sleep now, and if I don't, it will make me sleep.

Friday 11:32 am

I'm sick. I've been up and down for hours, heaving into an alien toilet. It's too small but little robots clean up the mess. The machine (which claims to be a medical doctor) says my sickness is to be expected. It had me drink a cup of gruel that tasted like what urine smells like. When I asked if there was piss in it, the machine would not answer directly. It called the drink a therapeutic cocktail. I threw it all up almost immediately. I didn't make it to the toilet. The machine ordered me to get back on the couch. I was feeling weak and did not respond right away. A little flying cattle prod kept poking me until I was lying down again. A long tube snaked down my throat and fluid was forced into me. At first I thought I was being water boarded, but the tube was in my stomach and it was filling me up. Then the liquid went right through me like liquid plumber in a clogged sink. The little bots had plenty to clean up. It left me gasping around the tube for a moment. It said it would remove the tube if I drank another cup of something different with no piss in it. I indicated I had enough liquids already that day. I felt more fluid flow into me, and that's the last thing I remember.

Saturday 12:06 pm

I guess I slept for more than twelve hours. I awoke being cleaned by small machines. I was given another bowl of gruel and it tasted a little better this time. It's staying down for now, although my guts ache. I have a slight temperature which the machine says is a good thing. It's says the nanobots in my blood are keeping down the inflammation, and that is a good thing too.

Today is supposed to be a day for me to rest. I've been able to update my journal through yesterday. That was not a good day for me. But today I can report that I have seen the little theropods that Bob was telling us about. They keep approaching the ship from the tree line and then retreating again, but they get a little closer each time. They have their wooden spears strapped to their backs and do not appear to be aggressive. The machine says we are fully visible. It has no reason to hide. It's says the creatures must get used to the presence of the ships because they will be arriving to support the humans here for a while until we can support ourselves without the queens help.

Time to change my patches again, after that some more gruel and then an enforced nap, even though I don't feel that tired right now.

Sunday 2:30 am

It looks like it's about noon outside. I still have diarrhea but not so bad this time. The little lizards have left a package wrapped in large purple leaves right outside the ship while I was sleeping. The machine says it is an offering and after another change of patches and a cup of gruel tea, I will be allowed to go outside for the first time and open it.

I did go out. My legs were a little shaky going down the stairs. It felt like about 30 degrees C. The air smelled different but not unpleasant. I could see about fifty of them out from the tree line watching me. Inside the leaves was a steaming pile of roasted meat. I noticed a heart, a liver and maybe some brains. There was a haunch of lean meat on a bone also.

"Eat some, but not too much" said the quiet voice from the ship.

It smelled like pork and tasted like it too, better then lechon and even better than a pork roast from the States! After three days of nothing but gruel, it was delicious. The lizards watched me gravely while I ate. It was so good I wanted to eat more but the machine said I had enough. I wanted to bring the package back into the ship but I was told to leave it there and get back inside. I looked back at the ship floating in the air and gleaming golden in the sunlight. They must think I'm a God, I thought.

Back inside I found what looked like a plastic box filled with metal arrow heads. The machine told me to take it outside and leave it by the meat package. Where are the brightly colored beads, I asked. It wanted to know what I meant, but I didn't answer.

Another patch change now and it wants me to sleep again.

Sunday2:47 pm

I must have slept for another twelve hours. It was twilight outside but I didn't know if it was morning or evening. This watch is totally useless here. It got brighter so I knew it must be morning again. The machine wanted my attention. It doesn't even let me wake up properly and I've had no coffee for like three days. I was so hungry I slurped down a bowl of gruel not caring about the taste. In fact I asked for more but it wouldn't give me any more.

Lying on the couch while it applied its ministrations, I noticed through the transparent part of the hull, that the two packages I left outside were gone. I thought about that meat and my mouth was watering. It still is when I think about it. I hope those lizards come back with more. I'm starving here!

The machine said I was going to build my nipa-hut today. I told it I didn't feel well enough to do any construction work. Then I got scared. I wasn't going to live here in a nipa-hut was I? Just for a few days says the machine. It said the hut will be left here when we leave. It will become a shrine where the God lived. They will study it and try to copy it. They will see it keeps out the rain. It will help get them out of the trees and they will want to live like the Gods. It will give them pride and increase their consciousness. They will find a bamboo like plant, if one exists, for their own use and for trade with the human colonists when they arrive. I was thinking this queen must think she has everything all figured out.

The machine said we would wait until after dark so they would not see the actual construction. I don't know how to build a nipa-hut I said, and there is no bamboo. A trolley rolled into the room from another part of the ship and on it was a dark gray cube. There are the materials, and it will build itself, said the machine.

I looked at that gray cube and touched it. It was soft and warm. Okay, I thought, I'm going to be like Greg and just accept the magic. I was suddenly tired again. I lay down on the couch and went to sleep.

Sunday 10:20 pm

It was late afternoon when I woke up. A while ago they came with another leaf covered package. About a dozen of them were pulling a sled made of woven branches. They don't know about wheels I guess. But they sure know how to cook a pork roast!

With the machine's permission, I went down the stairs and opened the leaves. I snatched up the best lechon I ever ate. I was ravenous and tore at the tender meat. Quickly satiated, and with grease dripping from my chin, I held up the haunch and waved a benediction over the crowd of little carnivores. I hoped I was acting like a God would act. They got down on all four legs and just looked at me. The machine let me bring the rest of the meat inside and from now on my diet should improve.

Sunday 10:50 pm

It was as dark as it gets by then, and time to get to work. The trolley moved the gray cube down the stairs and placed it on the ground a few meters out from the ship. It returned and moved back down the hallway. I walked down and watched as the cube began to melt. Two tendrils of the material moved out at right angles to each other and soon there was a rectangle of the stuff on the ground. Vertical posts began to grow at the corners and......

I stopped reading when Carl came out clean and shaved and dressed in some of Blake's clothes, ready to go eat somewhere. He said he didn't care how he looked. He wanted a pizza and some beer. Blake stayed home. His dinner was waiting for him. The three of us took Carl's car to the only pizza place in town. One of Blake's long sleeved shirts covered the wound on his arm.

We were the only party seated outside under an umbrella. We didn't want to be overheard. Bob and I were salivating to hear Carl's story, more than for the pizza.

"Okay tell us everything, starting with the arm"

"A lot happened in eleven days. It's all in the journal. I can smell that pizza."

Bob and I looked at each other.

"Where's the journal?"

"Uh, it's sitting on Blake's coffee table."

"That's another good reason to have a journal; you don't have to keep telling the same story over and over again. You guys can read it all later."

"Well then," said Bob, "just tell us how you injured your arm."

Carl sat back in his chair and sighed.

"That queen is a vindictive bitch. She chose me to be her guinea pig. The little lizard people thought I was some kind of a God. They seemed to adore me. And here I thought the ordeal I had been through so far was worth it; being the first human to make contact with those scaly little aliens. I felt like Christopher Columbus or something. They brought me flowers and fruit. They made gestures like they wanted me to follow. One day the machine said I could go with them. So I followed them into the trees and beyond was a clearing with a pile of rocks in it that they wanted to show me. They must have thought it was something special. I tried to act like it was special to me too. They just stood around with their new arrow heads on their spears and looked at me. I was trying to think about what I should do next, what a god would do, when one of them stepped forward and stabbed me with his spear. I ran back to the ship and got on the couch. The machine dressed my wound while I berated it for letting me go with the little devils. It said they only wanted to see if I could bleed, and that maybe now, they would not see me as a God.

"You see, the machine didn't know what would happen to me anymore than I did. And it didn't care. It was just another experiment with the lab rat. And that's the story" he finished.

"They could have killed you," I said, "to see if you could die."

"Yes, and that reminds me Bob. They want you to take eight thousand people now."

"Why take eight thousand? Four thousand isn't enough?"

"Well, the machine said that after exposing me to the microbes and the lizards, and there were other things it wouldn't tell me about, the queen thinks there will be some attrition."

I asked Bob how he felt about promising those people a better world when some of them were going to die there soon. He said he wasn't going to care about those who would die, we all die anyway. He would care about the ones who lived. They would be the future of humanity. I was beginning to think Father Bob was as cold blooded as the queen.

The food arrived and we ate in silence. There were many things left to consider, but none of us felt like talking about them that night. We made excuses and found our way home to the security of our own beds.

The next morning, which was a Friday, Bob sent me a text asking me to attend a meeting he had called for some of his lieutenants.

"Bring your truck; we will need it going to Lo-oc and beyond." I knew that he meant going to that little hamlet up in the the mountains. I didn't want to go.

"I have made other plans" I sent. He texted me back.

"There is only one plan Greg, You must do your part. You don't want the blood of all humanity on your hands." Putting it that way, I knew that I had no choice.

I have an old Nissan four door diesel pick-up truck. It has some rust but the engine and tires are good. It was designed for Japanese size people. I had moved the track the front seat sets on, so I could push the seat back far enough for me to get into it. There is no leg room at all for back seat passengers. Only one person can ride back there. I would insist on only four people in the bed of the truck. The going was mostly up-hill and I didn't want a big load. At one time I carried sixteen Filipinos and myself in that truck, some of them children of course.

Bob had moved into an unfurnished studio apartment after losing the rooms the church used to provide for him. I saw it was truly unfurnished with only a sleeping mat, a hot plate, a mini fridge, and some kitchen utensils. He told us he only needed the room for another couple of weeks until we all rose up with Jesus. There were four other people there, three men and a woman. These were a few of the hard core true believers that remained after the church had tried to discourage those in the congregation that were succumbing to Father Bob's heresy.

Bob chose the person to ride in the cab with us. His name was Reynaldo. The other three piled into the truck bed. Reynaldo was gushing with enthusiasm about the second coming. I had to listen to him and Bob in a religious discussion most of the way into the hills, until Bob changed the subject.

"Tell Reynaldo about your dream Greg." I guess this was Bob's test of my acting ability.

"I had a dream that an angel came to me and told me Jesus is coming this Easter." Reynaldo's jaw dropped and his eyes got big.

"Just like the angel that came to see Father Bob!"

"Well, Father Bob's angel was real. Mine was only in a dream."

"What did it look like?"

"Um, you know, white with wings." Bob nodded sagely and said it was probably the same angel.

The dirt road ended at the village. It was only a few scattered nipa huts that I could see. The ground was muddy and disturbed from all the people who came there the week before. The small shrine to the Virgin Mary was nearby on a little knoll.

As only happens in a remote place, the little children came running out to greet us first. A few adults stepped forward and began to speak with Bob in Visayan. He speaks the language fluently, and I could only stand there understanding none of it.

An old man was their spokesperson, and he didn't appear happy to see us. Bob took out his wallet and gave the man a thousand pesos. He told Reynaldo and me to do the same. He said we would soon be leaving for a place where we wouldn't need any money. Three thousand pesos is equivalent to about sixty five U.S. dollars. Bob said it was for the damage to the village and fields caused by the crowds from the weeks before. The other three people with us were not asked to give any money because Bob knew that three thousand was enough. I am sure those mountain people had never seen that much money at one time. The old man smiled and the others laughed, and we all became best friends.

We were ushered over to a bamboo arbor and seated on log benches around a rough-hewed table. A woman brought out a pile of fried bananas. A man carried over a plastic water bottle filled with a white fluid. I knew it was tuba, fermented coconut milk, an alcoholic drink that people with no money at all can enjoy, if that's the right word. It tastes awful, and I think the rest of our group would agree, but Bob told us all to drink some so as not to offend our hosts, the lady in our group excepted.

Father Bob was in deep conversation with the old man, with others chiming in now and then. I ate a lot of fried bananas to avoid drinking much of the tuba, and tried to smile rather than grimace at the taste of it.

Reynaldo translated for me. Father Bob was describing the exact place where he was told Jesus would descend from heaven. Reynaldo said that place was nearby, and we had to find it. Everyone was listening to Bob attentively. Most of those villagers were signed up for the rapture already. Several young men began to laugh and spoke animatedly while pointing off into the hills. Bob turned to us and said we would take a look at it. They may know the spot he said.

It seemed like most of the village followed along with us as we followed those who knew where we were going. We climbed up branching trails to a small hill. At the summit I could see over the forest to a large meadow planted with rice at the near end. A low ridge of forested earth enclosed the other side, more mountains beyond.

"Perfect," said Father Bob. There were no English speakers nearby, so I asked him if he knew that place was there.

"Of course not, I only described the kind of space we require to hold eight thousand people. This will do nicely."

On the way back, Bob was instructing his lieutenants and the villagers on how to direct all the people coming on Sunday to that place. It would be his last sermon before the following Sunday, Easter, when they would gather there again for the last time.

There was much to do during the coming week. Bob had already told the pilgrims to bring the possessions that they would need in the new world. These included: weapons for hunting, but no guns, fishing gear, tools, rice plants and the contents of their gardens, all of their chickens, bedding, pots and kitchen utensils, and their small shrines and religious objects. All these items must be carried to the site of the rapture event with however many trips back and forth it would take. They were also told to bring their own dogs. The people and the dogs would be the only mammals in the new world. They were told not to bring other livestock, cats or pigs. Bob had promised them plenty of lechon would be provided.

I delivered our group back to Bob's apartment, were they would continue to plan for the exodus. Bob walked me back to my truck. I told him I would not attend his sermon on Sunday. That was okay he said, but I must be there to record the lift off on Easter. He was very serious and I could see he would brook no argument. I agreed because I knew I could not document this story and leave out its conclusion.

I stopped by Blake's house on the way home to fill him in on the events of our trip to the mountain village, and to pick up Carl's journal. I wanted to know what else had happened to him during his visit to that planet.

Blake was excited to tell me his news:

He'd had a land-line conversation with Carl. On Saturday Carl was taking Bob to the saucer site for his last meeting with the machine. The big news was that Carl was going to leave in the exodus with Bob and all the others.

I was surprised. I thought Carl had had enough of being a lab rat for the queen. And what about his wife, I asked. Blake said she would not be going. Carl told him their relationship had been falling apart since this whole thing began. She could not accept his stories as the truth. How could Carl, she wondered, who was not religious at all, follow the ravings of a nutty priest? The rapture does not even exist in Catholic doctrine she said. Besides, she could not leave her extended family behind. They were middle class, and most had only heard that father Bob had been disgraced, but not the reasons for it. And she was not going to talk to them about what her crazy husband believed. Carl told Blake that he would not need a wife much longer anyway. All his property was in her name already, and good luck coming after him for abandonment. He wanted me to keep his journal. He said he knew better than to let his wife read it.

I was feeling events were sneaking up on all of us. Now Carl was leaving too. Our old world was ending, and not just metaphorically. Blake said he envied Carl. He was beginning a new life of learning and new experiences in his old age. He said Carl described a beautiful planet.

"You have got to read the rest of his journal Greg. It's a story in itself. But it doesn't have an ending. Carl will live out that ending, but we will never know about it."

"No, we won't know anything from a hundred and eighty seven light years away."

"You could make up an ending for it if you wanted to Greg. You know, extrapolate from the material he wrote about in his journal." I told him I was not into writing fiction and I was having a hard enough time trying to get to the end of this report.

"Maybe I can end it after the lift off." Blake said he wouldn't miss that for the world. He didn't want to just hear about it. He wanted to see it for himself.

"We will see this thing through to the end together then. But how will you get there? It's quite a long walk."

"My son will bring Carl's motorcycle, and if need be, he can help carry me the rest of the way. We will sell Carl's bike later and give the money to his wife."

"Isn't your son religious?"

"Most of the people there will be religious Greg. My son doesn't know about any of this. I drafted him. He and all the other people there who witness this event will have to handle it somehow." I had to agree. This was going to blow the minds of many, regardless of their religious beliefs. I could not imagine what this was going to look like to them.

"It's going to be quite a spectacle. Most of those watching will be there to see Father Bob humiliated. They may go mad seeing this actually happen. It could affect us badly too."

Blake poured more brandy into my glass and we began a depressing discussion of the latest news. By that time we could see the problems in our world were increasing rapidly. The terrible flooding in some parts of the Philippines and in the rest of South East Asia left even the mountain people with a sense of foreboding. We could all see the storms were becoming more powerful. Ice storms and the extremely cold weather in the U.S. and Europe that winter still convinced many people there that the Earth was actually cooling and not warming. Common sense told them that. But they didn't bother to learn that the plumes of polar air and unstable weather were the result of a warming arctic.

The Increasing number of methane eruptions from the permafrost and the northern oceans were no longer being reported in the press. We had long ago realized that most people don't want to know unpleasant facts affecting their future, and their governments don't want to tell them. These days, governments just want to keep a lid on all the growing instabilities.

The effects of the Fukushima radiation being blown in over North America were beginning to be felt, with weakened immune systems, spreading diseases, still births, and cancer. Pesticides and land use were killing off many species of insects There were mass die offs of birds and fresh water fish reported, for those interested enough to look for those reports. On the shores of the Eastern Pacific, purple waves were depositing dead fish, seals, walruses, orcas, and all kinds of smaller sea creatures onto the beaches. Many fishing boats were not going out to sea. There were not enough fish left to catch.

"What's that about purple waves?"

"Hydrogen sulfide metabolizing bacteria Greg, it's the beginnings of a Canfield Ocean. Look that up. Search for it on the internet, you have time to do that." We moved on to other calamities.

The whole world had recently slipped further into recession. The financial system was in a mess everywhere. Based on growth and debt, interest on loans could not be paid without borrowing more money. But the collateral behind the loans was losing value and no more loans were being made. Central banks were creating new money and buying everything, trying to prop up the markets, but bankruptcies and defaults were still increasing and supply chains were being interrupted. Civil unrest was spreading everywhere. Blake and I agreed, the colonists would be leaving none too soon. As Carl would say, this thing is going to blow.

Crop failures had been increasing every year, because of the drought, the heat and the unseasonal storms, especially the grain crops. Cattle herds were being slaughtered; the cost of feeding them had made them unprofitable. Only rich people could afford to buy beef. In poorer countries people were eating the seed corn. Food production could not keep up with the demand, and prices were rising fast. I went home with quite a buzz on and attempted making love to the wife, trying to find some comfort there. Blake had told me that it has always been this way; knowing too much can hurt us, while idiots are usually happy people.

Father Bob called the four of us together for the last time two days before Easter. Two of us were leaving and two of us were going to stay. He reminded us that this journey was planned by the queen not for the benefit of humanity, but to help a threatened species on another world. He believed she saw us as deeply flawed creatures destined to destroy ourselves. He saw no disagreement among the three of us with the queen's analysis. Bob said in his last meeting with the machine, he asked some questions. It told him that Carl's throwing arm had convinced the queen that human males could turn the tide in favor of the lizard people. The colonists would be a breeding population of allies that only incidentally allowed for the continuation of the human species. They would be kept at a sustainable hunter-gatherer level for thousands of years, and their inborn hubris, the ultimate cause of their failings here on Earth, would be bred out of them, one way or another.

"It's the queen's ongoing experiment you see. We live by her grace." Carl gave us a brittle laugh.

"You're using a religious term there Bob. Are you sure the queen is not your new deity? I would say we live by her whim. And even if some of us survive we will never be free again. We will have a directed evolution; un-natural selection like cattle. We will never be natural wild humans again."

"Yeah," I said, "and look where that got us so far."

"We've never been free while civilized Carl, even before that. We have always had masters" said Father Bob. "But there is a bright side to this. Even if it takes our people ten thousand years to build a civilization again, we will not destroy ourselves or our world again. I don't think the queen will allow that to happen. This is her project."

"Yes," Blake agreed. "The queen probably thinks you are all like children who will need guidance. She cannot just let the children run wild, now that she is responsible for bringing all of you to that world. I don't like it, but maybe you will need a mentor this time, to help get our species through adolescence. None of us have ever known more about growing up as a species than our contemporaries did, in any age. We can't seem to organize ourselves in an equitable way. We're all born into this dog eat dog world, and only learn how to grab all we can for ourselves, like children. We've been flying blind. There haven't been any grown-ups around to help us find our way, until now.

"It's too late to have an unadulterated human culture. I would suggest you try to ingratiate yourselves into the alien's culture if possible and with the theropods too. She seems to care about them. Be useful and learn, and if things work out in the right way Carl, your descendants may be able to pass through that bottle neck and reach the stars someday. Their lineage will be human, seeds from this Earth."

"A sliver of hope, eh?" Blake gave Carl a sad smile and shrugged.

"It's better than none." I think he was trying to give Bob and Carl a little pep talk before their journey, but then he kind of went off the rails. He had been drinking heavily.

"There are some other things I've been thinking about. This queen is introducing new invasive species into that world, three different kinds of vertebrates and many new plants. And those chickens have mites and the dogs have fleas. What about the bacteria in our gut? How well has she thought this through? Does she have advisors? Or does she think she knows everything? Can she know all the consequences of her actions? Have her god like powers gone to her head? Is she insane? She can't be omniscient. Does she make mistakes and then try to correct them? You better not solve her omnivore problem completely because she won't need you after that." He put his hand to his forehead.

"Oh hell, don't listen to me. Who else needs a drink?" He said even the queen could not know anything certain about the future.

I didn't understand why Carl would want to go back to that place until I got home and read the rest of his journal. By that time I was tired of writing this report. And here I am still writing it. Who is going to read it if we are all going extinct? And if somebody does read it, will they believe it? It all seems so pointless. My wife already thinks I'm crazy; always writing in what she tenderly calls my bullshit report. She wants to read more of it to confirm her opinion that I am still under the spell of a mambabarang. But I'm not going to let her read it. She hates negativity, like most people I guess. Well then, this report is not for her or for them.

And I'm not going to include the rest of Carl's journal here, just enough to help explain his decision to go:

Day 6:

The machine says the moon goes around this world every nineteen hours, the same length as the day here. I can see a large crescent high in the eastern sky right now, about ten degrees from the zenith. It sits there in the same place, never moving across the sky. It is tidally locked to this world, and this world is locked to the moon. Each shows only one face to the other. But the phases of the moon change very rapidly. What I call the morning moon, half illuminated, wanes into smaller crescents and fades into the light of the sun and disappears in the glare by the middle of the day. It appears again in the early afternoon and the crescent grows again on the other limb until there is a half- moon around sunset. It grows fuller during the night and then there's a full moon at midnight, a full moon every night! I am often awake at that hour because my diurnal sleep rhythm is chaotic. What a magnificent sight it is! The bright amber light appears larger than our Earth's moon; even though the machine says it is smaller. It appears larger because it is closer, like the moon Charon must appear from the surface of Pluto. It wanes again towards morning. It never gets completely dark here. At night different kinds of animals are out and about, another ecosystem entirely. The creatures living in the lowlands, on the other side of this world, have never seen the moon. Here there are small birds and flying reptiles that eat fruit and insects. There are no bats of course. In the day time the birds are larger with long pointed beaks and teeth. They fish in a small river near here. Some plants flower in the day time and some at night. There always seems to be a gentle breeze blowing, often with low clouds and light rain. It is a strange but beautiful environment.

Day 9:

The marauding omnivores came through here again yesterday. They are like a herd of wildebeests but come in smaller groups that pillage this area once every few days. The plants seem to recover quickly, maybe by co- evolution with the pigs. The lizard people try to run them off by poking at them with their tiny spears. They can't throw a spear worth a damn; their arms aren't made for it. I am doing what I can to help them. I made a spear for my size with one of their metal arrow heads at the tip. I killed four little pigs the last time they came through here. The boys are in awe of my throwing ability. The only way they can ever kill a piggy is to corner it and stab it to death with spear thrusts.

They have flint and can make fire. They shape their spears with stone tools. I used my Swiss army knife to shape mine. That knife is pure magic to them. I am the alien now.

The machine says the colonists will use the metal tools they bring with them, but they will not be replaced if they are worn out or broken. It seems we will adapt or die trying. I made a primitive bow using twisted strips of piggy gut as a bow string. It doesn't work as well as a toy bow from Earth, but it gives the fellows the idea, and they are working on it. I also have been working on an atlatl for myself to use. They're trying to copy that too.

When I get back I am going to research bow making on the internet. After that, maybe I will learn how to make a crossbow. I am going to bring steak knives to give to the boys the next time I come here. They will have swords. I will bring some books on metallurgy and other subjects when I come back.

They are outside the hut now, waiting for me to lead them into battle against the pigs. I feel like some kind of superhero.
Chapter Four  
Rapture

My narrative continues:

Easter Sunday dawned bright and clear the way I always thought Easter should look. It was going to be a very special day for many people here on this part of the island, and long remembered by some who may never want to talk about it.

We started early to get there before most of the crowd. First I drove my Nissan out to pick up Carl at his ranch. On the phone, we agreed I would honk once and he would come out of the house. I certainly did not want to face his wife. Carl was leaving for good. He threw a duffle bag into the back of the truck. He said most of his gear was already at the site. Then we picked up Blake at his house. Carl hopped into the back seat and Blake rode shotgun. It was a full load in the cab. We planned it that way. Father Bob would have to ride in the back with two of his followers plus Reynaldo. They were laughing and singing as they piled into the back, exclaiming about Jesus and the Lord. I had to get out and admonish their exuberance and remind them that standing and jumping around back there could bounce them right out of the truck bed, on the bad roads we would be taking. Father Bob just smiled indulgently at me. This would be the last time I had to haul those people around.

I was in a melancholy mood that morning knowing my best friend was leaving forever. I asked him how he felt about that. He said he was anxious to get back to where he was needed in the last days of his life. He would miss his wife and his best friends but he believed it was the right thing to do. He would be helping Bob and the colonists and helping those theropods too. I could never care that much about some alien animals. I wondered what could motivate a man to give up everything he has in this life to become a savage on another planet. Although the rest of us will be giving up everything we have soon enough. Thinking about it now, maybe he made a reasonable decision to go, given our current situation. But it would not be my choice.

Blake told us about several large fires burning in Manila and in other cities where there was no response from the fire departments because of all the civil unrest in those areas. Martial law had been declared. The banks were all closed and supermarket shelves were almost empty with no deliveries of food expected. Blake and I agreed that Carl's prospects looked better than our own. We all thanked God, or whatever, that we were old.

Bob tapped on the roof and we stopped to let off one of his people in Lo-oc. Except for Father Bob, his companions wore red t-shirts with the words official monitor printed on the front. They all carried lists of those enrolled for the rapture, and cards given as passes to the inner areas of the meadow for those destined to meet Jesus. All the others there would have to watch from the surrounding hillsides.

In the village we left another of his lieutenants. The six of us who were left began our hike up the trail toward the meadow. There were other monitors in their red shirts at intersections with other trails where people were beginning to stream in from the mountains. Blake's son rode Carl's bike up to the village and had joined us there. With his arm around his son's shoulders on one side, and me helping on the other, Blake managed to make it to the top of the little hill overlooking the meadow without too much discomfort. Carl and Bob and Renaldo continued down the other side. The last I saw of Carl up close, he was dragging his duffle bag while in earnest conversation with Bob as they descended.

Blake and his son and I found a spot where we could see the entire meadow through the trees. His son, Bill, unloaded his back pack producing a table cloth for us to sit on, rolls of French bread, cheese, salami, apples and a bottle of wine. Blake was always prepared for lunch.

Looking down, I could already see hundreds of people milling around. Father Bob had seen to it that a circular perimeter fence made of chicken wire encircled most of the meadow. It must have enclosed more than two hectares. Inside of this fence there was another concentric fence about two meters in. The area between them was a no man's land. There were five chicken wire corridors at points around the circumference that led between the two fences manned by official monitors. Placed against the inside of the inner fence were enclosures for animals and piles of personal belongings. Beyond were groups of families and clans of the chosen sitting or standing, while in the center was a platform made of stacked empty cases of San Miguel beer with a wooden floor on top. Reynaldo stood there with a bullhorn welcoming the multitudes and directing traffic. Father Bob sat off to the side in a chair appearing to be silently praying. Near the platform I spotted Carl. He looked up at me and waved. I waved back.

Other people were wandering into our area, looking for a place to sit and watch the show. They were a rowdy bunch, dressed mostly like people from town. But there were only a few places where they could see down below through the trees. Most of them had to move lower and closer to the action where the trees thinned out. I thought we had the best spot. We could make an easy exit back to the trail when this was over. Those below us would have to funnel themselves up hill to where we were, to find it.

Like us, others around us were spreading blankets and unloading provisions to make this a special Easter occasion. Other than cock fighting, not much excitement happened around our little town. Whether or not Jesus arrived, this would be an event to remember.

Of course, most of the spectators were there to watch Father Bob fail to deliver. They wanted to laugh at his heresy and his humiliation. Some of those near us were laughing and joking around already. I saw a small group close to a man where money was changing hands. Blake told his son to go over and find out the odds. He came back and said they were ten to one against Jesus coming. Blake gave him one thousand pesos and told him to put the money on Jesus. Bill stood looking at his father with a shocked expression.

"You don't really believe that crazy old priest can predict the second coming of Christ do you?"

"I do" said Blake. "I have inside information."

"You? You are the most unreligious member of our family. I mean you never even go to church, so how would you know?"

"Trust me, I do know" His son was incredulous.

"Well I'm going to put down my own money betting against you."

"Go ahead and lose your money then" The boy stalked away angrily.

"That was kind of mean."

"There is no way I can explain any of this to him. He will have to see it for himself like all the other people here."

"And they will see a false reality" Blake smiled and said that may be all any of us ever see.

The central part of the enclosure was filling up with mountain people. They sat quietly with their families and clans, subdued by the noisy crowds outside the perimeter fences. Most of them had never been in a crowd of people, or even seen one, especially one of this size, until Father Bob had gathered them all together.

Blake said if we were going to eat, we better do it now, because it was getting late. He used his knife to slice the salami and cheese. I opened the wine. Bill pulled paper plates and three wine glasses from his backpack. Blake would not drink wine from plastic. We ate our lunch with the other festive onlookers. Everyone seemed happy to be there.

I watched Bob near the stage conferring with a group of his lieutenants, sending runners to the wire gates and back again. I looked at my watch. It was ten thirty eight and getting warm. Father Bob did not want them waiting around for long in the hot sun. That was why Jesus was due to arrive at eleven a.m. sharp.

He took to the stage then and lifted his arms in a benediction, or just for silence, I don't know which. It only made those outside the perimeter raise the volume of their derisive voices and catcalls. He adjusted the bullhorn enough for those inside to hear him but it was difficult for the rest of us. He was speaking in the Visayan language anyway, which I don't understand.

"What is he saying?" Blake tried to listen above the tumult.

"Something about no paradise while we still live..... Jesus will provide a second chance for those devoted.....hard work..... New world..... etcetera." He stopped talking and looked around.

"I must say, I'm a little worried about this crowd."

The food and wine began to sit sourly in my stomach. There was an undercurrent of unease I could sense in myself and in those around us. No one knew how this unprecedented event would be concluded. But the hour was approaching with momentous finality.

I looked at my watch. It was ten fifty three. I saw father Bob send the rest of his staff, except for Reynaldo, hurrying off towards the gates. I knew they had all been told they would be coming on the next trip. That was just another lie among so many. Setting the bullhorn aside, he motioned for the pilgrims to stand and then bowed his head praying. I could not hear his voice with the crescendo of voices rising around us. Those in the enclosure looked nervous, the children wide eyed. What have we done I thought.

The staff, reaching the gates, helped the other monitors roll up the wire corridors to the outer perimeter fence. They all stood outside of it now.

A shadow passed over us like a cloud covering the sun. But looking up, everyone could see there was no cloud, only a darkening with the sun shining dimly through it. A column of white light illuminated father Bob on the platform. He looked up and everyone followed his gaze. The column ended in a haze about one hundred meters up. All conversations were hushed, and except for a few gasps and exclamations the crowd grew silent. I heard someone nearby moan.

Some pointed and laughed or cried or screamed as they saw a figure begin to slowly float down the column of light. It was Jesus for sure, looking just the way we all expected him to look, with shoulder length brown hair, a light beard, and a handsome face. He was dressed in shining white robes that flowed around him in the breeze. He was looking around and smiling, his open arms encompassing all of us.

The people within the enclosure were smiling up at him with trusting faces. They were used to believing in magic and the miraculous. Those outside the fences had very mixed reactions. Some fell to their knees clasping their hands in prayer. Others were jumping around waving their arms and screaming in joy or madness. Some were sitting on the ground silently weeping. There were others turning away, looking up towards us in panic, and pushing their way out of there. There was hysteria in the air.

"I think it's time to leave" said Blake. But I couldn't leave just then. I had to witness this thing so I could finish my report. How could I miss the ending? But I badly wanted to leave also. I told Bill to get Blake started down the trail, and I would catch up. He quickly stuffed everything into his backpack and slipped it on. We both helped Blake to his feet. I looked at his face and saw he understood. I had to watch this.

I looked back again and saw the apparition slow and then stop its descent about five meters above the platform. The thing looked down on those mountain people with such a compassionate countenance, that it almost made even me cry. Then it descended further and held out a hand towards Father Bob. It looked just like that painting of Jesus lifting his sinking disciple from the Sea of Galilee, as Father Bob rose into the air and was pulled into its embrace. It released him and he floated rapidly up the light column and disappeared into the haze. Then, turning its outstretched arms palms up, and making a lifting motion, all the people in the enclosure rose into the air. Only Bob got a hug. The Jesus thing slid to the side as the people rose higher and into the haze, blessing them as they passed. I saw a baby slip from its mother's grasp. It didn't fall but continued to rise with the rest of them until the mother snatched it back again.

More of the spectators were deciding not to stick around for the final scene. Although some stood frozen with their mouths hanging open, the majority were just trying to escape, rushing up the hill towards me. This did not look at all holy to them, but like something diabolical.

The ground began to shake. There was a groaning sound from the Earth. A fissure opened up in no man's land and ran between the fences and around the enclosure. The whole field was pulling itself free of the earth. Above the screams of the maddened mob I could barely hear the barking dogs and the squawking chickens as they rode up in their cages atop at least three meters of top soil and into the murky sky. The whole thing held together in one piece dropping only a few small clods of dirt as it lifted away and was gone.

The sun brightened and I saw nothing else in the sky. Below me was a wide hole in the ground where Bob and Carl and all those people had been only a minute earlier. It looked like a bloody wound against all the green surrounding it. People were screaming and running. The outer perimeter fence was still there cordoning off the pit. Those still around it were getting up slowly or lying there not moving at all. They had been trampled in the rush to get away. I knew the queen would consider them as collateral damage. She didn't seem to care much about human beings. There were relatives or friends around some of the still forms calling for help. There was little I could do for them. I had to find Blake.

People were rushing passed me. Those coming towards me had madness in their eyes. I was wondering how they would integrate this experience into their previous lives. It was not going to be easy even for me, and I had some for-knowledge about what was going on.

Running down the trail with all the others I saw people falling out to the sides in exhaustion. I saw Bill waving me over and Blake sitting there nearby.

Going downhill was much easier and faster for Blake. The people around us were mostly in shock and didn't feel like talking. Blake and I would talk about it, but not in front of Bill. Others were hysterical and couldn't stop talking. Bill was one of those.

"My God, I don't believe it! I mean I saw Jesus come down but I just can't believe it! How did you know dad? We just saw a miracle I guess. But is it true, what we saw? I mean I'm so confused! What happened after we left Uncle Greg? God! I saw people rising into the air!" I knew Blake wanted to know also, so I told them what I saw happen.

"Jesus! I mean sorry Lord, but he took a piece of the ground too, why?" I told him I didn't know why.

"But dad, how did you know?"

"I only knew Jesus was coming, not anything else."

"But how did you know that?"

"It came to me in a dream." Good one, I thought, that should shut him up. But I was wrong.

"Oh, but he is coming back for the rest of us, right? I don't know if I'm ready for this. I mean are we all going to heaven? Now, while we are still alive? I don't understand. I don't know if I want to go. I mean I'm starting college this year. I can't even go to college? It isn't fair dad."

"How many times have I told you Bill? Life isn't fair."

"Well crap, after 2000 years and he has to come back while I'm alive? Shit!

"Well," I said trying to be helpful, "think of it this way, there are more than seven billion people in this world. If he's going to take only eight thousand at a time, he might not get to you before you are an old man." Why stop lying now I thought, and it was only a white lie. Most likely, Bill would not live through his college years.

"Okay, yeah, but why not take everyone all at once, I mean good Catholics anyway? It doesn't make any sense dad!"

"How many times have I told you Bill...?"

"Yeah, I know, life doesn't have to make sense."

Bill found Carl's motorbike where he had left it. He gave Blake a ride to my truck parked farther down, and Blake and I had a chance to talk on the way back to town.

"Goodbye Carl, I hope the queen does a better job at your end then she did here. It was a disaster Blake! How many people, who saw this happen, once they get over the shock, are going to believe that this botched imitation of the second coming of Christ was the real thing?"

"Hollywood would have done it better, from what I saw. But I'm surprised they took the soil too. There are bugs in that dirt."

"It was a piss poor production for an advanced race of beings. There were people killed down there Blake, in the stampede. I'm afraid of the blow back from this. Thank God none of the cameras in their cellphones were working or this would be all over CNN by tomorrow morning. Nobody in their right mind is going to believe this monstrosity was the second coming of Christ. It was more like a nuclear bomb!"

Blake told me to calm down. He pointed out that the queen's plan had nothing to do with entertaining the plebeians. The second coming was only meant to manage consent for the collection of eight thousand volunteers. She didn't care about the effect it had on those of us who remained behind.

"The church will cover this up. They don't want the controversy." I told him good luck with that.

"Eight thousand people have disappeared, and there were several thousand witnesses."

"After all the time you have been here Greg, you still don't understand Filipinos. The church will explain everything to them."

I dropped Blake off at his house and hurried home. My wife is still at her sisters and I have had a chance to write about what happened today. I was hoping that after this event I would be able to end this report. But I am sure there will be consequences that should be included. My wife had left me a note. There was no food in the house to prepare my dinner. I found a can of beans though.

There were consequences. By Monday morning the police had heard many reports of something strange that happened in the hills above Lo-oc. They were preparing a task force to go out there and investigate. Those reports sounded too spooky to just send a couple of officers. Plus they had reports of injured people in hospital.

Blake called me over to his house that morning to help him talk with Bill. Bill was having a difficult time coping with what he had seen. I asked Blake what he was going to tell him.

"As little as possible, he can't handle the truth. Please Greg, help me give him some temporary comfort. He is driving me crazy." I said I would try to help.

They were waiting for me on the veranda.

"Tell Uncle Greg what's bothering you the most Bill"

"Well, I just don't believe it was the real second coming. It was all wrong. It happened so fast. I mean it caused a panic. I don't think Christ would let that happen. And he took only mountain people, they aren't even Christians really. It just doesn't add up." I had to give the kid some credit. He was right, the pieces didn't fit.

"You're right Bill. It doesn't fit our expectations of what the second coming should look like. But what are we referring to? Have you found anything in the scriptures describing the rapture?"

"No, that's just it Uncle Greg, we've been looking, my friends and I who were there, and we can't find anything about it."

"Well, as far as I know Bill, there isn't anything in the bible telling us what Christ will do after he gets here, other than help us prepare for judgment day. Isn't that right Blake?"

"I think you're right, but I'm no bible scholar."

"I'm not either Blake, but I know the rapture is a Protestant concept. There is no Catholic doctrine of the rapture."

"Then what the hell just happened? I think it's all phony. That means it is the work of the devil, don't you think? That's what me and my friends think." I was starting to enjoy this. It was like teasing a kitten.

"We don't know anything for sure, Bill. But if the Lord truly works in mysterious ways, well, it could be that too." Bill yelled and jumped up from his chair.

"Sit down Bill. Greg and I don't know any more about this than you do." Blake gave me a hard look. I was thinking what smooth liars we had become, after so much practice.

"I talked to Chief Flores this morning. They are sending a task force out there to find out what happened. He asked me if you might like to tag along since you will be applying to the police academy in the fall."

"But I'm not applying to the police academy in the fall."

"Well you could be. This is a chance for us to find out more Bill. There will be others tagging along, and I want you to see what you can find out just by looking and talking to people. Then you can tell Greg and me what you have learned."

"What can they find out? I don't want to do this dad."

"Just listen and ask questions. Look at it as a job. I'll give you one thousand pesos for your effort. They are leaving after lunch, so go down to the station and talk to Chief Flores."

"Two thousand pesos dad and I'll do it."

Bill returned in the evening and told us it was a chaotic scene up there. Only a few witnesses of the event had enough fortitude to return to the site the very next day but they all wanted to talk about what they saw to the other tag-alongs, and especially to the police. Unsurprisingly, their stories didn't completely match. There were arguments. Finally the captain in charge told them to take all their reports to the police station, and to stand back while they investigated the scene. The police are used to hearing confabulated stories. According to Bill, they walked over to the chicken wire fence and shook it. They inspected the collapsed gates. Then they stood near the edge and stared into the pit, scratching their heads. When they came back, they wanted to know who cordoned off the scene with chicken wire during the night. The witnesses among the group all agreed the fence was there before it all happened. Bill said the captain looked at them with suspicion, as if they were all part of some conspiracy.

I explained to Bill that the police are trained to look for natural explanations for events and would shy away from the super-natural ones.

"Just let him talk Greg. Were there any media or reporters there?"

"There was dad, at least two reporters I think. I mean we all wanted to know what the police thought happened there, if they didn't believe us. Captain Ortega said it was a continuing investigation and he didn't want to speculate about it. One of the reporter guys identified himself from our paper. He asked Ortega when the department would release a statement to the public. Ortega said probably within the next twenty four hours." So, tomorrow night there will be a police statement. That should be interesting.

Chapter Five  
Resignation

When I got home I saw my wife was still at her sister's house. There was no food at our house, but luckily I had a snack at Blake's. I sat down and caught up on writing this report. Then I turned on the television.

On CNN they were talking about the ninth year of drought in California. The harsh fast moving winter storms did little to provide relief. They dropped a lot of rain in a short amount of time over areas burned by the terrible wildfires during previous summers causing massive flooding and landslides. There had been severe damage to water retention infrastructure. Reservoirs behind the dams had been filled with silt washed in by the heavy runoff from the burned over landscape. Though often appearing full, they retained very little water when the drought returned. Strict water rationing had not helped. Many of the wells in the state had run dry. The water table had dropped hundreds of feet. There was not much snow pack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Tanker trucks were hauling water from Lake Tahoe but could only provide a few drops into the ocean that was the entire State of California. Some trucks had been hijacked. Many small towns were completely abandoned. For the sixth year in a row no crops had been planted in the Central Valley, which used to be called the bread basket of the nation. The trees in the orchards were all dead. Millions of people had left the state. Millions more are leaving now, in worse shape than those who left earlier.

After two months of martial law the only areas where National Guard forces were still deployed were in the San Francisco bay area and on a sliver of land in Los Angeles from Santa Monica down to LAX and south of the 405 freeway. And they were spread thinly. To the north of the 405, what was left of L.A. looked like a war zone. Much of it was a burned out waste land from natural fires that could not be controlled and by arson. The fire that came through Griffith Park took out Hollywood and Culver City. That didn't matter much, nobody was making movies anymore and no one was going to movie theaters. The velocity of money had slowed to a crawl. What was happening to the people of California was worse than any apocalyptic movie Hollywood could have dreamed up. The money there wasn't worth much, and what the people needed like food, they could not buy. Everything had been looted weeks earlier if it was not protected by men with guns. Most of those fleeing the state were increasingly desperate and starving.

The bordering states were suffering from the drought also. The refugees were not receiving a warm welcome into Arizona or Nevada. Thirty eight states were under martial law so far including those two. I saw earlier clips on television of ugly scenes outside of Phoenix and Reno. No one was heading to Las Vegas; it had been abandoned for lack of water. There was only a trickle of water left in the Colorado River.

There had always been some resentment against Californians in the sparsely populated states around it. Maybe that was because California had once been so prosperous and they were envious, but mainly it was just because there were so many Californians. The Metropolitan Area of Los Angeles used to contain more people than ten other western states combined. Less than half were there now. Public transportation had been commandeered by the Federal government. There were no commercial flights or trains, only roads leading east promised escape to a better life. To the west was the Pacific Ocean, to the south was Mexico with its own disasters, and to the north there was only more California. The only escape was to the east through the Mojave Desert.

At first they arrived in the bordering states by car. It was like the dust bowl of the 1930's in reverse. Refugees were fleeing to the east, out of California, not towards it. Each wave was more unwelcome than the last one, becoming a bigger burden on those other states stretched resources. It started with signs at the borders. "Fornies go home," and "border closed to commefornians." An exceptionally unfriendly sign said "We neuter Californicators." Soon there were clashes between armed civilians and between civilians and the National Guard at the borders. The Californians didn't bring much with them as they fled, but many did bring their guns. Americans have plenty of guns.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was deployed about two weeks after the National Guard, late to the disaster as usual. They brought regular army troops with them. They set up tent mini cities and feeding centers along the interstates trying to head off the hordes before they reached the desert. No one wanted to stay in these camps for long, and after a meal and a rest they headed eastward again. The petrol stations along the way had all run dry and deliveries of fuel had been curtailed. But no one wanted to turn back to the devastation they had left behind. Many abandoned their cars and continued on foot.

This is awful I thought. Those poor people were choosing death in the desert rather than to live in California.

There were news crews embedded into that migration, sitting in their off road air conditioned vehicles with the cameras rolling. And there were news drones overhead. It looked like a zombie apocalypse army to me, and I suppose it did to anyone else still privileged enough to sit and watch television. Already they were hot, their clothes stained with sweat and grime. They carried all they could in packs on their backs and in suitcases. Those were being abandoned as they had to start carrying their children, leaving a trail of debris behind them. When the cameras zoomed in, they looked beaten down and afraid up close, not like zombies. From what I've heard, zombies don't have any fear. These were human beings who could see that the world was ending, for them anyway. And before we are done I thought, we are going to take almost every other living thing with us.

I had strong feelings of despair and resignation watching this. Despair for the built in flaws of humanity that have made us collectively responsible for this failed experiment in evolution. We must have always carried within us the seeds of our own destruction. I know Blake doesn't agree with me on this, he says the problems are recent. Not all of us are to blame. Rapacious capitalism, concentration of wealth and fossil fuels are responsible. I was resigned to our fate by then because whatever the cause or causes, there was nothing we could do about it. And, as I learned from the alien, this was no big deal at a cosmic level; it was just another dead end.

I turned off the television and looked around for something to eat. There was nothing. I forgot to go to the market yesterday. Jan usually does the shopping but she is still at her sister's house. I don't want to turn on the television again and I don't feel like writing anymore right now. I am going to bed. Maybe I can dream within a world that used to be.

In the morning she called me from her sister's, and wanted to know how I was doing, and if there was any food in the house. She scolded me for not going shopping like I said I would.

"That was foolish of you Greg because Joy and I just returned from the market. There is hardly anything left. It was crowded. People are buying everything. There is no more pork. I got some of the last of the chicken, no more fish. There are no tomatoes. There are only scraps in the produce section. Haven't you been listening to the radio?" I told her that I just got up; that I was up late last night. She knows I don't listen to the radio; it's all in the Visayan language.

"Some men with guns have taken over a ship at the port. Many men and they shot some soldiers who were guarding it. They told the police to stay away or they will shoot some other soldiers who surrendered. More soldiers are coming from Dipolog. The radio said the ship is full of food and stuff to supply the stores here. But the men who took the ship say the food is only going to the army and it's not for the people. They say they are doing this for the people. I don't know what to believe. If I had more money I could have bought more food. I'd tell you to go down there to buy something but I know there is no food left by now." I told her to come home. I missed her and it's safer here I said.

"There's no food there. What are we going to eat? There's no rice left?" I told her there was no more rice and she said she preferred to stay and help her sister. She reminded me that her sister had children to feed. She said I could get some food from my rich friend. I told her I would try.

And that was exactly my plan. I felt like I was starving by then, well, not starving yet really. I had only missed dinner and breakfast so far. I asked her to come home soon, and called Blake.

"Sure, come on over and have a meal Greg. We have plenty of food."

Driving over to Blake's house I noticed fewer motorcycles and cars on the road. The price of fuel was skyrocketing higher again. I had not been planning any long road trips, but I imagined my truck loaded in the back with food, and Jan and I in the cab driving out of town. But I knew there was no place to go. We would end up as refugees too. I decided we would do what most people were doing; hunker down at home and hope the conflagration passed us by. The government calls this sheltering in place.

Okay, I'm going to get negative here, (I can never let my wife read this report!) because this is not some passing storm we are all going through. Whatever we had, we will never get it back again. No more blue skies ever. We are living during a mass extinction process, until we don't live anymore. This is what I was thinking at that time, and I haven't changed my mind. By the time I arrived at Blake's house I was hungry and in a foul mood.

"Everything is fucked" I said as he met me at the door. He quickly led me inside.

"You won't believe what's happening."

"If it's more bad news I will believe it." I followed him to his office and he sat back down in front of his screen.

"Those guys don't stand a chance."

"Yeah, they are stuck in the desert with no food or water."

"Who is stuck in the desert?"

"The Californians, haven't you been watching CNN?"

"I get everything over the internet Greg. I don't have time to watch television. I'm watching the decontamination efforts on the beaches right now. There are big problems everywhere but California is getting hit hard."

"Those poor people"

"Yes, well, take a look at this." He clicked and scrolled down a row of tiny images.

"Almost everyone with a smart phone owns a drone these days, there's an app for that. They are illegal to fly in many areas but the laws cannot be enforced. They are flying everywhere now. Controlled from the phones, the videos they take are displayed on their tablet screens. They upload those videos onto the internet and I can download them from the satellite. There are thousands of new ones every day. We have eyes everywhere now."

There was a video from a drone we were watching as it flew down the coastline. The high tide had left the beaches covered near the water line with dead fish and marine mammals.

"It's fascinating to watch our interconnected systems break down Greg. When one system breaks it throws a wrench into other systems. Our interconnected systems are disconnecting." He turned to the screen. "This video shows an example of that. Let me narrate this for you, so you know what you are looking at."

"I'm really hungry Blake."

"Yes, but this will only take a minute." Then he looked at my face.

"Okay then, go tell the helper to prepare whatever you want to eat, and then come back here."

I almost ran to the kitchen. I think I scared the helper. I ordered ham and eggs, hash browns and pancakes with honey. I grabbed a couple of bananas and headed back. Blake had paused the video, but he started it again as I sat down.

"The marine ecosystem has completely broken down. The result is the mass extinction of all the creatures dependent on that system. There are huge volumes of hot oxygen depleted ocean water now. Most of the plankton around Antarctica have died. There is probably not much left alive in the North Pacific except bacteria and those giant jelly fish the Japanese have been fighting for years. They seem to be able to tolerate the heat, the bacterial blooms, the pollution and the radiation. They are almost everywhere in the oceans by now. All the life in the oceans is being digested by those creatures and by bacteria.

"Well, those bacterial blooms are the cause of all the new epidemics sweeping across North America. There are millions of sick people there now Greg, sometimes from previously unknown bacteria. The mountains of bacteria in the rotting corpses along the coast are being constantly bombarded by Fukushima radiation, and they are being carried by the wind across the continent. There are many mutations and some have become human pathogens. And of course the people's immune systems have been weakened by radiation already. Well, the government has decided to burn the carcasses on the beaches.

"Look, the drone is flying south and it's now passing Point Dume. See the heavy equipment there piling up the bodies? Now I'll fast forward closer to Los Angeles. Do you see all the fires on the beaches? Those white dots are prisoners and army personnel in hazmat suits working there. The drone is moving lower now. Do you see anything strange in the picture?"

"Yeah, those men aren't wearing their suit helmets, only gas masks."

"That's right, the suits are not refrigerated. It's about thirty four degrees C. down there, plus the heat from the fires. They would cook if they left their helmets on. That is what I meant when I said those guys don't stand a chance. Radiation is concentrated in those animals at the top of the food chain. Burning the carcasses is releasing even more radiation into the atmosphere. It's a lethal dose for the men working there and it's an exercise in futility. People are more afraid of disease then radiation because disease usually kills them faster. They are simply choosing a slower death. But it's not for those men. They have less than a month to live." He shook his head sadly.

"It's all so depressing. And it's happening much quicker than I expected."

"Yeah, like exponentially."

The helper finally arrived with my breakfast on a tray. Eating became more important than talking. Blake gave me a weak smile.

"You are wolfing that down. How's your breakfast?"

"Muff" I said. He sighed and went on.

"It's bad in the eastern U.S. also. I've been watching too much of it. Many are dying from the heat and humidity and it's driving the rest of them mad. The food riots are over. There is nothing left to steal. But there are armed gangs raiding private homes looking for food. Some are well defended. There is a lot of shooting and killing. Many of the police are the best organized gangs and they are doing the same thing, just trying to feed their families. People can't even bury the bodies now, there are too many snipers." He stooped in his chair and put his head in his hands.

"Hell Greg, it's not easy watching all this. Those damn Americans are not going quietly into the night. They will struggle until the end. They have always lived on hope, the poor bastards. Not at all like the Japanese." I took a sip of coffee and set the tray aside. I felt much better after eating.

"Those Japanese seem resigned to their fate, although I have not seen much about Japan on television lately."

"There are plenty of things happening you won't see on television Greg. Yes, it's resignation. They have been beaten. They have to give up. They can't escape their islands. Everyone is sick or knows people that are sick."

"I know the death rate is increasing. There is no cure for what they've got."

"Right, but did you know they are shutting down the hospice care centers now?"

"Really, they must be overwhelmed by the number of people."

"No Greg, people don't want to go there. They want to die at home with their families. The leading cause of death is suicide not radiation. Or it's murder suicide when the whole family goes together."

"You mean the children too? That's barbaric."

"Actually, it is the rational civilized thing to do Greg. There is no rioting and looting in Japan. Unlike the Americans they will not struggle and suffer while waiting for the inevitable. Many don't want to leave loved ones behind to mourn them. They say that their major regret is leaving their remains for others to clean up. They are still civic minded right up to the end. They are a proud people. Most use a painless poison." By then Blake was crying, and it was contagious.

"The government has responded by setting up euthanasia centers, where the State will kill them and their children. Each will have an urn with their ashes deposited in a Shinto shrine, so very tidy. I've seen some videos of families waiting in line at these centers, they are smiling. They still have their dignity. The children don't know of course."

"Damn it Greg, it should have been the Japanese colonizing space. They could have done it too. Now it's too late for all of us."

I decided right then that it was time to end this report. What are we doing? I thought. Are we examining the debris of a collapsing civilization to satisfy some kind of morbid curiosity? We are helpless in the face of this monumental tragedy. We might as well just get drunk or take some heavy drugs. That would be better for our psychological health. I wiped my eyes with my hands.

"Do you think there are any bars still open Blake? I feel a real bender coming on." He laughed and composed himself.

"I have a better idea." He rose up and fetched his expensive brandy.

"It's one o'clock in the afternoon" I said. "We're starting early." We lifted our glasses in a silent toast and emptied them in one swallow.

"I want you to stay here tonight Greg. I know you have nothing at home. It's not going to be a good night for you to be driving across town."

He said he knew about the standoff at the port, but he had been following so many reports coming in all morning from other places in the world, that he couldn't keep up with it all. He expected the internet to go down at any moment. Nothing had come out of China for two weeks, and since yesterday nothing was coming out of Europe except direct up-links to satellites. He said we were losing our eyes and our ears. He would focus on local events tomorrow.

I told him I'd seen enough. It was too horrible to watch all the details. We knew the outcome already. He agreed and by the third drink we decided that for us, the internet was gone. We would not use it anymore.

Then we began to speculate about Carl and all the others. How were they doing in the new world? Blake laughed and said Carl had told him that since he was the first human to arrive on that planet, he claimed the right to name it. He paused and I waited.

"He named the planet Carl's World!" We both laughed uncontrollably and had to set our drinks down to keep from spilling them.

"There never was a shortage of ego in Carl" It was hard to stop laughing. We missed Carl a lot, and we got a little maudlin about it. He smiled ruefully.

"I think he will become something like a shaman or a witch doctor; their source for knowledge. That duffle bag he took was full of books."

Blake refilled our drinks and said it was a smooth operation by that queen; all those volunteers transported to the new world in less than a minute. The top soil and all the creatures in it would be spread around and planted with rice and vegetables. Most of those people would survive and with unlimited lechon, they should be happy. I was getting depressed again.

"It's a new beginning for them and an ending for us."

"Yeah, well." He raised his glass. "To the future of Carl and our species!"

We finished that round. Then we sat in a morose silence for a while looking down at our hands. Finally I thought of something.

"I know we agreed to not look at the internet, but I'm curious about what's happening to those Californians I saw on television. They are still stuck in the desert. Nobody wants to take them in. We might as well catch the last of the internet if it is still up and running."

"Do you think we can handle it?"

"I'm feeling fortified now. I can take some more bad news, and you?"

"Let's try it." He booted up his computer. It didn't take long to find some current drone videos of the situation. They were flying over hundreds of groups of refugees scattered over the vast desert landscape. Most were sitting down now, looking at their tablet screens.

"You know, I was totally unaware of this. I've been watching other things. I can't keep up with all the news traffic on the internet."

Behind the human swarm were lines of soldiers and hundreds of military trucks and buses moving forward and picking up the stragglers. Most were climbing into the trucks willingly and the soldiers were giving them water. In videos from the news channels, the talking heads were telling us this was an unprecedented humanitarian rescue operation.

Many kilometers further towards the Arizona border was another line of trucks and soldiers disarming the more determined vanguard of the swarm, and they were being loaded onto trucks also. Some were being carried on stretchers by soldiers. We couldn't tell if they were dead or simply exhausted. The newscasters said all those people would be taken by train to well stocked and staffed FEMA camps, where they would be well taken care of.

We watched clips of them embarking onto the trains. These were not cattle cars, lest people watching get the wrong idea, but shiny new coaches with comfortable seats and large windows. The news people were happy, and the people on the trains looked happy too. Many were smiling and waving. Blake choked on his drink.

"Well, it looks like everything is going to be alright then."

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" we broke into another fit of hysterical laughter.

We didn't find much to say after that. He told me our lunch was getting cold and shut the thing down. I was ready for a late lunch even though I had only recently eaten breakfast. And I still had dinner to look forward to. Blake is a true friend I thought. He is sharing his limited food supply with me.

While we were eating, I got a call from my wife. I knew it was her because she had already sent me a text that I didn't answer because I was feeling too intoxicated. I thought then that I couldn't wait for the day when the cellphones stopped working. I pulled the phone from my shirt pocket and swallowed.

"Yes dear"

"Where are you?"

"I'm at Blake's house."

"You are eating!?"

"We are having a late lunch."

"A late lunch!?" I had to hold the phone away from my ear. She was loud enough for Blake to hear.

"How can you be eating when your wife and her family haven't had anything to eat since yesterday? How could you do this to me? I'm your wife for God sake!" I knew I was in big trouble and I was at a loss for words. Blake quietly told me to tell her I was bringing food over to her sister's house right now. What a save I thought, and what a true friend.

"Really? And bring some money too. I have nothing!" she disconnected.

"That was beautiful Blake." I thanked him, but I told him it was not right for me to take food from him that he and Bill would need. He suggested we finish our meal and then he would show me something.

He led me down to his garage. It was a two car garage but his only car was parked alongside of his house. The garage was full of all kinds of food.

"I took your alien's message as the truth, and stocked up a few weeks ago. There is at least six months of food here, maybe a year." He said he didn't believe anyone would be needing food in six months, so he could afford to share. He had me make two piles. One of them I would take to my house.

"If you want your wife to come home, you must have some food there."

Each pile got one fifty kilogram bag of rice and a twenty five kilogram sack of mongo beans, a bag of potatoes, one of carrots, one of onions, four heads of cabbage and two dozen eggs. Then he added twelve small cans of corned beef, some coffee and sugar. To the one going to my wife's sister, he included four large packages of bulad (dried fish).

"I want to keep this food a secret if possible Greg. Your wife and her relatives must believe this is a one off deal. I have no more food here. I needed Bill to help me accumulate this stuff, and I swore him to secrecy, but I don't know how long he can keep his mouth shut." I told him I could keep a secret.

There was no bulad in my pile because he knew I would not eat it, unless I was truly starving. But he added some canned fruit, then some bread and frozen pork chops from a freezer he had against the wall.

"Tell your wife there is no more food where this came from, but we will keep looking for more. Take your food home first, before you take the rest to her sister's house."

I backed my truck into the garage and we loaded everything into the bed. Blake had a tarp we threw over it all, and we weighted down the corners with rocks from his backyard. He suggested I get back to my house or to his before it got dark.

"There is a bad moon arisen," Blake said he could always count on me for a positive comment. But then he said that fear actually has a lot of survival value for people in our kind of situation. He looked me in the eyes, slapped my back and said good luck.

There was practically no traffic. Two army trucks with soldiers passed me going the other way towards the port. It seemed they all gave me hard stares as they passed by.

I was thinking, if I was stopped by soldiers, they would probably confiscate my food. Then, beyond the few vehicles ahead of me, I saw another army truck. It looked like a roadblock. I turned off the highway immediately and took neighborhood streets to arrive at my house. I went inside and grabbed a roll of large plastic trash bags. I unlocked the backdoor and went back out the front to the truck. I looked around. I have neighbors across the street and other people could pass by and see what I was doing. There was no one around at that moment so I started transferring the food from under the tarp into the trash bags. I carried the bags, two at a time, around the house and in through the backdoor. If anyone was watching, they could think I was transferring garden supplies to the backyard.

My paranoia was increasing. Was Blake right? Was this a good thing? It didn't feel like it was at the time. I locked the doors and paced around the house checking my rapid breathing and heart rate. I put most of the food away. I didn't want to go back out on the roads. But the food for my wife's sister was still outside in the truck. It could all be stolen. I wanted to curl up on the couch and make the world go away, but I knew that wouldn't work. I realized I was getting sober and that was not a good thing. I had a bottle of Tanduay rum in a cabinet and I drank two shots of it. Her sister's house wasn't that far. I can do this I thought. I took some cash I had stashed away and drove over there without incident, except for a car load of young men who looked me over but did not follow me.

They were all in the yard waiting for me. The sister's gave me a somber look when I glanced at them while trying to back up the truck close to their front door. The children were laughing and yelling and running towards me. They knew they would be eating soon. The women tried to keep them away but they were swarming into the back of the truck and pulling off the tarp. When they saw the small pile of food, I was watching their faces in the mirror. It was like the best thing they had ever seen in their short lives. And maybe it was. It was food for them to eat. It was better than Christmas, a big holiday here, even though Santa doesn't come to the children of the Philippines.

By the time I got out of the truck it was half unloaded already. The women, one at each end, carried the sack of rice into the house, I waited. The kids carried in the rest of it. When the women came out, they left the kids inside waiting for the rice to cook. My wife gave me a hug and a kiss, and Joy smiled and wanted a hug too. They couldn't wait any longer to ask me where I got all the food. I told them it was from a warehouse that had been emptied by now. The lying just kept getting easier.

Joy thanked me again and went back inside. Jan snuggled up to me. I asked her if she wanted to come home yet. She said her mother was there now, and she had to take care of her too. Maybe she could come home in few days. I told her that I had food at our house and she said maybe she would come tomorrow.

She looked at me appraisingly, as if she detected some unexpected resourcefulness in me, during this time of crisis.

"What's happening to us Greg?"

I told her it was complicated, and things were only going to get worse. That's me, Mr. Sunshine. But it was twilight by that time and I was trying to get home before it got dark. She pushed away from me and sarcastically said that she could always count on me to cheer her up when she needed it most. The children came running out laughing and smiling and waving their thank you and goodbyes. I shoved ten thousand pesos into her hand. If there was any food for sale it would be expensive. I hopped into my truck and drove away from there. I couldn't look at those children any longer. They were all so thin. At least there is no obesity problem in this country. I think that was my first positive thought that day.

On the way home I realized I was not sad or angry, I was happy. I was happy because my wife was not coming home tonight. I love my wife. I've wanted her to come home all this time, but not tonight. I am happy because I have a chance to update this report. So much has happened today, and it seems important to me to record these events. I don't know why, but I feel proud of all the writing I have done. It may be an exercise in futility, but I have a feeling of accomplishment. I am finished writing for now and I don't have enough energy left to fry one of those pork chops. I'm going to bed.

I awoke during the night to the sound of automatic weapons fire, from the port I supposed. I didn't want to wake up for another day of these problems, so I went back to sleep. Finally, the stupid tune I picked as a cellphone ringer woke me up. It was Blake checking up on me. He wondered why I didn't call him to let him know I made it home safely. I told him I forgot to call because I was busy writing this report. He said at this point there were other things more important than my report. I seemed to be obsessed by it he said. I agreed that my writing had become a habit but it was something I could do during these terrible times and that it could be important. He laughed and said he thought I was still under the spell of the alien. I had to think about that. And I'm still thinking about it.

He told me that the gunfire I heard during the night was from the army assault on the men holding the ship at the port. There were dead and injured on both sides. It was all over the local radio and television news.

But it wasn't being covered by the media in Manila. Blake said the media gatekeepers didn't want people to know the true scale of the problems. There was so much going on in many other places that we would never even know about if it wasn't for the internet. They would have to shut it down soon, to reduce the panic.

"They don't want people to think it's the end of the world or something."

"Heh- heh" We both expended a sick little laugh.

He said the gunmen were right about one thing though. The ship's cargo was being loaded onto army trucks and transported to the garrison in Dipolog. The food was not for the people of Dapitan. He invited me over for breakfast. He said there was more we should talk about and there was not that much time left. I didn't want to miss breakfast at Blake's house, but I told him that Jan was coming over sometime that day and I didn't want to miss her. I wanted to avoid contacting her by phone and let sleeping dogs lie. She was either coming or not, and I didn't much care which I said. Blake said he didn't believe that I didn't care. He said she would come just before dinner time and she would probably send me a text before then. He asked me what I was going to serve her for dinner. I told him some of those pork chops he gave me, potatoes, and coleslaw. He asked me if I had butter and sour cream for the potatoes. Of course I didn't. Did I have mayonnaise and pineapple for the coleslaw? I said I had some olive oil. He laughed and said he had all those things and I had better come over and get them. She had not been home for over a week and I should want to impress her. If I cared I said. He told me to cut the bullshit and come right over.

On the way, it was raining. There were not many people around, but there were plenty of motorcycles and cars parked on the sides of the roads with makeshift for sale signs on them, the print dissolving in the rain. Many people needed to raise cash to buy food if they could find any. I pictured those vehicles sitting there unmoving for hundreds of years, rusting away in the rain.

I felt guilty eating the great breakfast Blake's helper had prepared for us, with so many people beginning to starve around us. Blake said he could not share the food with many others without being robbed. It was a shame he said, and he truly believed there would be food left in his garage after we were no longer around to eat it.

While we were eating he asked me if my report was almost finished, and what I was going to do with it when it was. I said I thought I would finish it soon. I was editing it on a thumb drive and planned to upload it onto the internet. He said it was getting late to do that because the internet was going to crash. He wanted to know who I thought was going to be around to read it. I didn't know the answer to that question, but I told him that my focus was on finishing it and putting the report out there.

"You really don't know why you're writing it, do you Greg?" I couldn't come up with a good reason why, but I conjured up a good rationalization.

"It feels important to me Blake. Sometimes I feel like there is a monk, like from that book A Canticle for Leibowitz, waiting to find my report hundreds of years from now. It will help to explain a little about what happened to us." Blake smiled at this simple conceit.

"There won't be any people hundreds of years from now to find anything. We both know that. So what is the point Greg? I'm not trying to be discouraging. I'm trying to find out the true motivation for all your efforts."

"Well, what do you think my motivation is?"

Self- satisfaction, he said, and I agreed. He laughed because he said I agreed so readily to that suggestion.

"No Greg, did you ever consider that your motivation could have been implanted in your mind by the alien? It told you to write, remember?" No, I had not considered that, and I rejected the idea vehemently. He laughed longer that time.

"Your defensiveness confirms my suspicions Greg. You are writing that report for the queen." I became upset and remained in denial. I claimed my motivations where my own. Blake was conciliatory and said that he could be wrong. He told me not to think about it, if it upset me so much. Then he invited me down to his garage to select some food for my dinner with Jan that night.

Along with the ingredients for the potatoes and the coleslaw he gave me a canned ham, a frozen apple pie and a bottle of wine. Did I mention that he is my best friend?

By the time I left for home I was feeling much better. I was looking forward to the dinner with Jan and anticipating her excitement when she saw all the food. Shortly after I arrived she called me. She said she would come around four pm. She asked me what we were going to have for dinner. I told her pork chops, potatoes and coleslaw. She actually squealed like a little girl when she heard that. I decided not to tell her about the apple pie and the wine just yet. That would be a surprise. She loves surprises, the good kind anyway. I set the pie out to thaw. Later I would warm it in the microwave oven. I was busy for a half an hour or so preparing the meal. I would fry the chops after she arrived. I picked some flowers from outside and put them in a jar in the middle of the table. There was nothing left for me to do but wait.

I was a little nervous by then about our coming evening together. Our relationship had been stretched thin by recent events. After pacing the floor for a while, I decided to turn on the television to catch up on the news even though I really didn't want to. It was just something to do while I waited for her.

I watched Night Line or some program like that, which showed me the area of the great drought that now stretched across North America through the Mediterranean all the way across the Middle East and into India. There was famine and war everywhere. I could no longer make distinctions between the many antagonists. Typhoons were still devastating countries in the tropics. It was late in the season for them, but Luzon was getting hit again. The southern hemisphere was fairing a little better, but there are not as many people living there. There were serious problems everywhere and no one felt safe. Methane eruptions were increasing from the northern oceans and from the tundra, rapidly heating the atmosphere and melting what little ice remained in the Arctic. Although sparsely populated, some people were unfortunate enough to be living in a small town sitting on top of one of those erupting pustules, leaving a caldera two hundred meters across. Little evidence could be seen that a town had ever existed there. They had video from a drone fly over so they just had to run with it, a new life threatening worry we could add to our list, and to our imaginations. Everywhere health care systems were overwhelmed by the sick and the dying. With their immune systems damaged by radiation and famine, many were succumbing to resurgent and new pathogens.

I knew I should not be watching this. I wanted to be upbeat and cheerful when Jan arrived. I shut it off, and that was probably the last network program I will ever watch. We are already having rolling brownouts here, and I expect the power grid will go down soon.

I sat there thinking about what Blake had said. What really was my purpose in writing down all these observations and musings from my puny perspective? And what good is a manuscript that will never be read? It became increasingly obvious to me that continuing this project was meaningless. I felt deflated. What I had thought could be important somehow, was not important at all. I had to set those thoughts aside when I heard her motorcycle at the gate.

I don't want to write anymore tedium about our relationship. Except to say that I tried to act cheerful and overall, I think the evening was a success. She seemed happy to be with me and impressed with the small amount of food I had received from Blake. We drank the wine, and I cooked the pork chops and served them sizzling at the table for my hungry and appreciative wife. I put a lit candle on the table and turned out the lights before I brought out the apple pie. She laughed and clapped her hands at the surprise. It was a romantic evening for both of us. But I think we were both trying to recapture moments from the past, when we still believed in a livable future.

In the morning she was off early to take care of her mother and the others. I gave her the rest of the frozen pork chops to take along with her. There was a text from Blake on my cellphone asking me to call him when I was free to talk. I called him on the land-line. He asked about the evening with Jan. I told him it went well and she had just left. He said he was glad to hear that because loving those around us was the best thing we could do right now. He wanted to know if I had seen last night's edition of the local newspaper. No, I had been busy with Jan. It had been almost two weeks, but finally there was a statement issued by the police department about the investigation of the incident on Easter Sunday near the barangay of Lo-oc.

Before he got rolling on the story he interrupted himself to say that, by the way, they finally crashed the internet. So okay, we were expecting that. No one would be around to use it anyway. He reminded me that it was invented as a way to communicate during and after a nuclear war. The authorities had been trying to shut it down for days, and they finally succeeded, at least in our part of the world.

"So there go the eyes and ears for your report."

"That doesn't matter to me Blake. No one is going to read it now. I'm going to stop writing; it's all been for nothing."

"Are you sure about that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well Greg I...Oh never mind." He started to read the police statement to me, but I wasn't listening.

I heard what sounded and felt like a bubble popping in my brain and everything came together in a moment of clarity. My assignment was almost complete. Blake was right all along. I could suddenly see the full charge put upon me. I was to write this report and deliver it when finished to the alien's clone waiting for it back on the ship. These revelations set off a torrent of thoughts and feelings within me. It was enough to prevent me from paying much attention to the police statement that Blake was continuing to read to me.

I couldn't begin to explain what had just happened to me, so I made an excuse that I had to go to the comfort room and I would have to call him back. I spent some time trying to reconcile my conflicting emotions. They boiled down to feeling resentment against the alien for using me without my consent, and a feeling of relief that my writings were going to be read by someone or something somewhere at some time. Even if it was only for the queen, my efforts had not been completely useless.

I had a powerful thought. I must bring the report to a conclusion, and take it to the cloned personage waiting for me in the mountains. And I had to do that right away. I felt an urgent need to bring it there immediately. I had to calm myself down. I fetched the bottle of rum. Any urge to see that alien again, could not have come from my natural state of being. Looking at that thing had always terrified me. But I was being summoned. I felt like a fish on a line being reeled in by that creepy little alien. It still had control over me. I'm not going out there I told myself. I could see that clone was not controlling my drinking. And I knew I would not drive out there if I was drunk enough, and I was right. I drank enough rum and I didn't go.

When I awoke, I had a hangover and it was dark. I had slept away the whole afternoon. I opened the canned ham and made a sandwich. The urge to visit the alien was not so strong. It looked like the fish was being given a little more line to run with for a while. So my priority now is to finish this report and get the whole thing over with. It took me an hour to bring this report up to date. I want to include the police statement that Blake was reading to me. But I don't want to talk with him yet. I feel humiliated for being such an unwitting tool for the queen, something Blake could see, but I could not. I have decided the verbatim statement is not required here. I can remember the general drift of it:

Police investigators learned that on Easter Sunday a religious cult led by an ex-communicated priest had held a rally in the mountains above the barangay of Lo-oc. Witnesses claimed that thousands of people had disappeared during that rally after a mysterious event occurred. Witness testimony was often confused and contradictory but all seemed to agree that a bright light came down from the sky that resulted in a crater six hundred and sixty three meters in diameter in the place where the people, mostly mountain people, were gathered. The investigation was continuing but a tentative explanation was that a meteor or another unexplained meteorological event occurred at that location to cause the sudden loss of life. A spokesman for the church in Dapitan said it was unknown if this was a tragic accident or retribution from God for heresy. He recommended that we should end any further discussions of the event, since in either case it was simply an act of God. But we should continue to pray for the departed souls. There was no mention of Jesus.

All tied up and put to bed, case closed! If only all our other problems could be made to go away so easily!

I'm current in my reporting now. I'm going to stop writing this and go back to bed. I'm discouraged and I don't feel well. Carl was right about the sick machinations of that queen. Well I'm sick and tired of being the instrument providing the grist for her perversity! I'm done being her little plaything. I quit. I'm fresh out of any hope, optimism and denial. It is time to end this so- called report.

All this time I believed I was writing this for the benefit of another human being reading it someday. I had thought maybe it could somehow help that person cope with the magnitude of our situation. I can see now, that was only a rationalization to keep me writing. The queen will probably be the only reader, and that is depressing me. If I knew in advance it was for the queen, I know I would have written it differently, or not at all, actually. I'm done with it. If anyone is looking for a human like conclusion to this, you won't find it here. I doubt the queen cares about that, and frankly, I don't either.

END

Chapter Six  
Resolution

It's the evening of the following day and I'm feeling better. Needless to say, I'm still writing. I'm trying to believe it has become my own habit now. What I have written above is the report I will deliver to that clone, but not until it makes me do it. To hell with what the queen wants. I'm writing this for myself. I have made copies of what I have written so far and who knows; maybe some other humans will read this someday. It's possible.

I awoke this morning to the ringing of the land-line phone. That relic of the twentieth century was forcing me to get up and walk into the other room to make it stop ringing.

"Are you sick?"

"Only in my heart and mind but physically I'm not so good either. What time is it?"

"It's eight am. You never called me back."

I explained to him about my epiphany during our last phone conversation, when I realized I was working for the queen. About following my implanted programming that made me write about all of this, a compulsion to write about anything it seems. I was never given any instructions about the contents of this report. And I told him about the summons in my mind to finish it and to surrender it to the creature waiting for it out there. And I told him how I was being driven to bring it there immediately, and how I had to get drunk yesterday to prevent myself from going.

"Are you close to finishing it?"

"You were right Blake; I've been such a tool for that queen. I ended it abruptly after learning how I have been used. I'm sick of the whole thing now. I just want it all to be over, even though I dread going back out there."

"And what is the big rush? Why do they want it right now?"

"Hell Blake, it's because we are sitting on top of a powder keg in a tinder box, and it's all about to blow up! There is no more time!"

"Maybe, but they seem anxious to get your report. Maybe it is important to the queen after all."

"And we were told that all information is important to the queen."

"Well, that's just it Greg. How important is it to this queen? It seems to me, the queen is an information junky; it's her life's blood. What do you think your report is worth to her? She went to some trouble setting you up to write it."

"It's just another data point to her. That's the way I see it Blake."

"Yes, but she may have a tremendous need for it. And you have not been compensated for your work."

"What are you suggesting? I should ask for payment?"

"Why not, if it's valuable to her she should be willing to pay for it, maybe a lot."

"Pay how? Money is no good now."

"We will have to think more about that. Come on over for breakfast."

While eating we tried to think of something to ask for as compensation for all the writing I have done. Could we ask for world peace? But they would have to change us too much to accomplish that. We both felt we were too old to start a new life on another world, or to leave our loved ones behind. What about a cure for radiation sickness? We believed that even alien science would not be capable of reversing that kind of damage. Cash or gold was useless. We finally settled on a massive food program to feed the starving people. Even though they were dying anyway, starvation is a terrible way to go. Maybe we could get the queen to relieve some of the suffering, but I was doubtful about that.

I asked Blake if I could use his printer and he led me into his office. I plugged a thumb drive into a USB port and his printer made two hard copies of my report. Those were for me. I would take the report on another thumb drive to the alien.

"Okay then Blake, I'm off. I can't resist the urge to go any longer."

"You must try to resist for as long as you can. The alien knows you are late already. You are not a lap dog, or a fish on a line. You are a sentient being like they are."

"Damn it Blake, I've been resisting this thing since yesterday. It's like a worm tickling me inside my brain and it's constant. I want to scratch it but I can't. The only way to get rid of it is to answer the summons and submit my report. Do you think that I'm looking forward to dealing with that alien again? It frightens me Blake, on a visceral level. There is no way I would face it again if it wasn't for this damn thing in my head. It is forcing my compliance. I want it out now. I have to go Blake." I was already standing, and then he stood up.

"Alright Greg, we still have more to discuss, but we can do that in your truck."

"You are coming with me?" I had mixed feelings about that. He would slow me down, but I was grateful for his company. He walked into his kitchen and came back with a water skin on a strap across his shoulders and there was a salami sausage sticking out of his pocket. Leave it to Blake to always have food nearby.

"Take those thumb drives out of your pocket and leave them here on the table."

"What? I must take one of them. It has the report on it."

"We are not fish on a line Greg, but we will let the alien think we are. Let's talk on the way there. I don't like to see you suffering like this."

"And what about your hip, do you think you can walk that far?"

"I'm ready to do this. I may have to lean on your shoulder sometimes, but we can take it slow. It's a shorter walk than it was to that rapture place, isn't it?" Take it slow? But I was in a hurry. He could read my feelings on my face.

"If we get there by noon or one o'clock, it won't make any difference." It made a difference to me, but I didn't say anything about that, even though my brain was itching terribly.

"You are going to need better shoes than those." He smiled and said his boots were by the door.

There was very little traffic since martial law had been instituted. But there were army trucks and a road block on the highway leaving town. The soldiers were checking ID's of passengers on a Ceres bus stopped in the traffic lane, and they waved us around it. There was another road block at the turn off at Lo-oc where we were not so lucky. The soldiers asked for our ID's and wanted to know where we were going. They looked in the back of my truck and under it. I said we were going to look at some property for sale in Lo-oc. It was all I could think of at the time. That story had worked on my wife. The soldier looked at me suspiciously. He must have thought that only crazy foreigners would want to look at property while the country was under martial law. But he had reason to be suspicious. The NPA and other insurgent groups were becoming bolder and were operating in our area. I'd heard of questions raised about foreigners funding those groups. I was sweating. The last thing we needed right then was to be taken by the army. I could feel a full blown anxiety attack coming on. Then Blake asked the soldier to call barangay captain Reyes and to mention his name. The corporal looked at Blake sternly, and then began a methodical search of his wallet. He finally decided not to disturb the barangay captain and let us pass. It took me a while to calm down somewhat, but I was still nervous about meeting an alien clone of an alien that Carl had killed. I believe I was justifiably nervous about that.

I drove the truck to where we parked the last time I was there. As we started our walk Blake told me to keep thinking about the report on the thumb drive in my pocket, and to let him do most of the talking. "Right" I said. We had made some plans in the truck.

The first little hill was the most difficult for Blake, but we made slow steady progress up the stream bed. The urgency and the itch in my head were diminishing the closer we got to the ship. My report is on the thumb drive in my pocket I thought. As we rounded the large boulder in the stream bed, there it was with the stairs down and the door open. To me, it had a malignant look floating there. It didn't belong in our world. But then I remembered that we are the cancer around here. I thought about the report on the thumb drive in my pocket.

Blake was staring at the ship. He said it was astonishing to see it there with his own eyes. I was anxious about meeting the alien again. This could end very badly for us.

"Welcome gentlemen" said the voice from the ship. My report is on a thumb drive in my pocket I thought.

"Please leave your weapons there before you approach the vehicle."

"We have no weapons."

"Your companion, Blake is it? He has a knife and a dense unidentified object in his pocket." I have a report on a thumb drive in my pocket, I thought.

"It is salami, a kind of food, and my Swiss army knife to cut it with."

"Please leave those items there Blake, and then you may come aboard." I thought, what about the thumb drive in my pocket?

"Bring the thumb drive" said the voice. Blake and I exchanged glances with our plan in our eyes but no thoughts about it. I visualized myself handing over the report on the thumb drive to the alien. It was there at the door to welcome us.

"Come in, come in. It's so good to see you again Greg. Good day sir" it said to Blake, and swept its arm for us to enter. I noticed the door closed after we were inside.

The face was the same but it had gray skin now and it no longer wore the country bumpkin clothes. And what a big bald head it had, without that straw hat to hide it. It wore a black coverall with a silver collar. It had a high voice like a child and it spoke softly, unlike the authoritative voice of the ship. I guessed it was trying out that voice for the first time. I had never heard the original alien speak. It seemed we were dispensing with the telepathy that got it into so much trouble the first time I was out there with Carl. Even though I knew this clone was identical to the original personage, it looked different. Without the straw hat and the brown skin, it looked less like a bug eyed insect. Except for the eyes and the missing ears, it had the face of a child. I thought that this copy of the original alien wearing nice clothes that fit looked a little less menacing, but only a little.

The interior of the ship was completely different than it was the last time I was inside it. The partition dividing the ship into two halves was gone. We were inside an empty shell with the contour of the outside hull. There were only three comfortable looking chairs and a low table in the center of all that space. The lighting was dim and reddish, infused from the blank walls and ceiling. And the air smelled fresh and sweet.

"I have refreshments this time Greg. What would you like to drink?" It spoke with a little girl's voice. Blake and I looked at each other, and then Blake said we brought our own water and it would be enough.

"Ah, I can sense the mistrust, but it is understandable. Please be seated. May I ask why you are here Blake?" The chairs were comfortable. Mine began to slowly knead my back. It felt good. I thought about the report on the thumb drive in my pocket.

"I am Greg's friend and advocate, and I wanted to meet you. You are the clone of the original personage I take it. I have read Greg's report." The alien seemed to look at us curiously for a moment. Then it looked like it was trying to smile.

"Yes, I am identical to my progenitor, the same person really. At least that's the way it seems to me. I remember your other friend killing me Greg. It was a very unpleasant experience. But I realize it was an accident that I brought upon myself. I don't want to make that kind of mistake again." I didn't like this turn of the conversation, so I tried to change the subject.

"How have your interviews been going? Have you done any lately?"

"That project has been discontinued. I am here to receive your report Greg. There are a few others like me also collecting testimonials from different places in this world."

Blake asked it why my report was so important to the queen. But the alien assured us my report was not important at all. It was only another first person account that the queen collects in her reservoir. Looking at me, it leaned forward across the low table and quietly said that maybe the queen would even read my report. It said she is sometimes interested in the man in the street and the human interest point of view. So that's it then I thought, my report is only meant for the queen's amusement. Then I thought about the report on the thumb drive in my pocket.

"Why don't you put the thumb drive on the table Greg?" it asked me sweetly. "I can instantly send the information to the queen. I know she will be pleased with it."

By then I was feeling anxious and afraid. I was having trouble controlling my thoughts; afraid all my thoughts were visible. I could not maintain the deception any longer. Let's get this part over with I thought.

I had to stand up to reach into my pants pocket. I leaned over and set the thumb drive on the table. But as I pulled my hand away from it, we could all see it was not really a thumb drive. It was a small plastic cigarette lighter, about the same size and shape as a thumb drive. I contrived to look as shocked as I could while remembering that I left the thumb drive on Blake's table. The alien stared at the lighter and then looked up at me. Its big eyes got even bigger. It was glowering at me.

"Did you think you could get away with this kind of subterfuge?" it squealed. "What are you trying to accomplish?"

"We would like to discuss compensation for Greg's report before we deliver it to you. We would lose what little leverage we have if you already possessed it." The alien's mouth was hanging open in a very human like expression.

"Where is the report? The queen is going to be very upset when she learns of this."

"The report is in a safe place and we certainly intend to produce it for you once we have settled on the terms."

"What is it that you want?" Its voice was high and shrill. Blake leaned back in his chair and unscrewed the cap of his water skin. He held it out offering it to the alien, who just stared at him, then he offered it to me and I declined. He tipped his head back and squirted water into his mouth. He coughed once, cleared his throat and began to speak.

"I imagine in your society all your labors are voluntary, in service to your queen. But on our world, as you should know, we get paid for the work we do. At your insistence, Greg has worked long and hard on his report and he should be compensated. I would also guess that our meeting here today is being recorded and the queen will review our request." He paused until the alien responded.

"Of course, so what is it that you want then? I'm sure the queen will want to pay you something to be fair, if it is within reason."

"Okay then, Greg and I are here as representatives of a dying sentient race. We are petitioning the queen and the higher authorities of your galactic confederation to save our species from extinction even if you can't restore our collapsing world. We understand your position of not wanting to interfere in this process as nature takes its course. It is something commonplace to you. Our position is that by not interfering and preventing the extinction of a sentient species, your policy stands in contradiction to your very own nature. Intervention into natural processes is what sentient creatures do all the time. Other animals may be victims of nature taking its course, but we, including the human race, are able to channel natural forces for our benefit in a most unnatural way. But since we all do this routinely, it is natural for us to interfere in the natural course of events.

"We believe you have the power to save sentient species from extinction and we question your motives for allowing this to happen to them. Survival of a species through the bottle neck seems to us an arbitrary threshold used to confer membership into the galactic community. All species reaching this threshold have the potential of reaching the pinnacle of development your race has achieved. The fact that some of us have failed to establish an off planet extension of our civilization before our home world is destroyed in the bottle neck, seems to us a capricious test for determining a species' suitability for survival. You have the power to save us. You have demonstrated that power to us on a small scale when you removed thousands of us to another world for your own purposes, but we will need a larger gene pool to propagate our species.

"We recognize we are primitive sentient creatures, only a few thousand generations removed from our animal origins, but as you have admitted, we have potential. Given a few hundred more generations we will have shed those childish and brutish instincts we carry that have stunted our development. But right now we need some help.

"At other times all of the advanced races must have been close to where humans are now; facing the bottle neck. With different circumstances those races have made it through. Do you value yourselves so little that you tacitly approve of the extinction of others so much like your own ancestors, when you have the power to prevent it? How can you look at yourselves in a mirror? How can you take pride in your galactic civilization that treats fellow sentient beings in this way, the willful avoidance of your responsibility for extinguishing a line of sentient creatures stretching back over a million years of evolution that will be forever lost as a facet of the galactic community?" The alien had sat motionless listening to this, but then it stood up waving its arms around.

"I see your point Blake, but what you ask is impossible. The queen wants me to remind you that she is impatient to read Greg's report. She demands that you produce it now." I looked at Blake. I was getting nervous again.

"Demands?"

"A queen doesn't make requests Greg." He turned back to the alien.

"The report will be produced after the end of the negotiations concerning the compensation. That is the way we do business here."

"Blake," I said quietly," we are not making any friends here."

"This is not about friends Greg, this is business." He spoke sharply to the alien.

"The queen is listening to this conversation right now, is she not?"

"Yes, of course, but...."

"I would like to speak with her directly." It waved a hand at Blake's impertinence and sat down again.

"That is not possible, her vocal organs are vestigial. She sends her thoughts through me."

"Hmmm, okay then never mind.

"Furthermore, as representatives of the human race currently trapped in the bottle neck, and unlikely to emerge from it on our own, we demand, if I may use that word, that the queen and the other galactic governing bodies responsible for this existing policy, convene to discuss and change said policy, that now results in the extinction of sentient beings, to reflect the higher values of a galactic civilization." I had never heard such long winded statements from Blake. I felt fortunate that my attorney was with me, defending the human race.

"And, regarding the urgency of the situation our species is facing at this very moment, those authorities will immediately embark on emergency measures to rescue and re-settle our gene pool onto another planet or planets suitable for our habitation, before another extinction of a sentient species results from your misguided policy of letting nature take its course, when you have the power to change the outcome."

"Are you finished?"

"I am, for the moment, yes."

"The queen wants to know what all of that has to do with the compensation you are asking for."

"All of that is the compensation we are asking for."

"The queen tells me your demands are rejected. She asks you to consider something less grandiose for your compensation."

"In our situation there is nothing else of value we can ask for. If our terms are rejected, the queen will not be able to read Greg's report. I'm sorry, but we want to leave now." The door of the ship remained closed. The alien looked at us incredulously.

"My personal advice is to not antagonize the queen."

"And what does the queen say?"

"Nothing, she is in conference. She wants you to wait." There was a heavy silence.

"How long is your report Greg? Is it comprehensive?" Just a shy little girl asking, if you didn't know where that voice was coming from.

"It's far too long. I was compelled to work day and night to complete it. It should be worth a lot to the queen, she commissioned it."

"Yes, yes, maybe so. You made some good points Blake, but you have to be more realistic."

"I am being realistic. She wants the report and we want to live. We should have an agreement."

"Ah, the conference is over. The queen says she was most persuasive on your behalf and the council has agreed to consider your request. Unfortunately even if the policy is changed, it would come too late to save your species. The logistics involved would take many weeks. Most of you will be dead by then. She commands you to turn over the report to me now and to accept the inevitable."

"The hell with that, we will destroy the report before that happens!"

"You should not have said that Blake," like a petulant child. "The more information is withheld from the queen, the more she wants it. She is angry now."

It suddenly screeched and put its head down with its arms covering its head. Large tears splashed onto its coveralls.

"I am new at talking!" it wailed. "I have been reprimanded! I am shamed in the eyes of the queen!" Blake pounced on this apparent weakness.

"Listen, I know that most of us will be dead of starvation within another two months, so you better start working on it now. Tell the queen to drop a food generator, you must have those, right? Put it in Rizal Park in Dapitan, large enough to feed the whole town, with instructions on how to use it, before this weekend, and we will not destroy the report. When food generators are falling from the skies around the world, and we can check on that with short wave radio, we will surrender the report to you then. And make sure you keep the power on around here. Now open the door and let us out. You will never see that report without our help, and without you helping us all you can."

I thought he was asking for way too much, and I don't think we know anyone with a short wave radio. But I knew that you always ask for more than you expect to get when you're negotiating. Something he said seemed to work because the door slid open and the alien looked up at us with tear filled eyes.

"Please don't destroy the report," it sobbed. "She says the generator will be in the park by Saturday morning." I was starting to feel sorry for the poor little thing. Then I watched it wipe tears from its eyes with its tongue. I was no longer sympathetic; I just wanted to get away from it.

I was already outside when Blake turned in the doorway and told it that if we detected any bugs in our brains, it would take only a moment to destroy the report, and to just wait for us to return, after we saw some results. I hurried down the stairs but Blake took his time. He picked up his pocket knife and the salami.

"Good thing it's still sealed in plastic or the ants would have got it"

We walked back down the stream bed but soon sat down on rocks near the water. Blake used his knife to cut open the plastic.

"Whew, all that made me hungry." He handed me a fat slice of salami.

"You know, even with all their superiority, they negotiate like little children."

"I don't think the queen does much of that. She usually just gets what she wants. And that clone is still wet behind the ears, so to speak. It has more to learn." I chewed on the salami and drank some water out of Blake's water skin.

"Do you think that council will approve transferring us to another world?"

"I don't know Greg. I'm sure they would not take us all, but with that harpy breathing down their necks, they may take some more of us. I wonder what else we could get for your precious report. I could have asked them to restore our biosphere, but I'm afraid that most of us would have to die sooner for that to happen." That was a scary thought. We would have to be careful if we asked for anything else. I looked upstream to see if anything was following us. I urged Blake to start walking again even though I knew he wanted to rest. I didn't relax until we were in the truck driving back to town.

Without Blake I would have meekly surrendered my report to that clone, and received nothing in return, except for the cessation of the itching in my brain. It was gone by then. How different things would have been if he didn't come with me that day.

He was silent watching the empty beach go by as I drove us up the coast road. We both had plenty of things to think about. Then he said that the queen's insatiable craving for information must be a powerful obsession. She had probably read all of the books in The Library of Congress and consumed every other bit of data that was available electronically. Almost all objective knowledge had already been cataloged, from this and other worlds. He said he believed that the only information left to be found, beyond the value of a bus schedule, must be the subjective constructs from other sentient minds.

It was right after the internet crashed when I was summoned, the only other way the queen could access my report, and she still could not get her mandibles on it. She must be starving for information I thought, my kind of information. I could feel my ego inflating a little, and I needed that. Heck, I was feeling magnanimous. For a little extra compensation, I would even be willing to turn over the rest of what I've written here to the queen, along with my report, when that day finally comes. But Blake had other ideas.

"She wants your report real bad." He was laughing. "We have our hooks in her now. She is the fish on the line, ha, ha, ha."

"Isn't this dangerous Blake? Think of all the things they could do to us to get the report."

"I don't think they are thugs Greg. That high council is watching her by now, and turnabout is fair play. She will be forced to make a deal if she wants to read your report, ha, ha, ha." I didn't understand.

"But we already made a deal with the queen, for a food generator."

"She doesn't know where your report ends, does she? We will give her the first couple of chapters and call it the whole thing. After she is well hooked on it, we will tell her there is more. She is an addict for information. They told us in the beginning that she wants to know everything there is to know about everything." He was contemplative for a while, gazing out at the ocean.

"But she can't personally know what it's like to face her own immanent death and the extinction of her species. She can only experience that vicariously through testimonials from mortal beings like us. I'm only guessing, but I think this is what she wants from your report. She must have been driven by curiosity to accumulate all the knowledge she has so far. But what we feel and know, about what is happening to us, are things she can't know. Your report and the others like it are the closest she can get to know those things. It must mean something to her. It may look to us like a petty preoccupation for a queen, but heh, this queen is alien. I think she could be frustrated.

"She can't die without extinguishing her entire species. Maybe she can't make another viable queen. Maybe she wants to die after living for six thousand years, who knows? But if she wants to read more of your report so badly, and I think she will, she will have to bargain for it. You just keep on writing Greg, ha, ha, ha."

So it looks like I will be releasing this report incrementally to the queen, my biggest fan. Ha, ha-ha!

I was in a good mood when I got home. I called Jan and invited her over for dinner to finish the ham. There was apple pie left over too. I told her not to worry; we were going to be alright. She didn't ask me how I knew that, she just wanted to believe it was true. But actually, I was only trying to cheer her up.

Happy endings are found in fiction and fairy tales. All of us, forced to live in the real world, know there are no happy endings for any of us, even in the best of times. But some people can't handle the truth if it conflicts too much with their own belief system. They will reject the facts and deny the evidence. Many would rather let the future come upon them as a complete surprise, than to let go of their delusions. My wife may be a person like that. A belief system is the hardest thing for a person to change.

But because it is only human to pretend and to hope for miracles when the future looks bleak, I can write a happy ending for this sad report. Call it literary license or believe it or not. It shows that I am also, only human.

We had a lovely night together. It was like the old days. She did believe me, and I was not about to disabuse her of our happiness. In the morning, I began loading the truck with most of the food at our house to take to her family. She became anxious to know what we were going to eat without any food at home.

I had been thinking we could get used to eating gruel, if we had nothing else. But now, I'm expecting more alien magic. There is a chance we can order ice cream, or even fried chicken.

I invited her to meet me for lunch on Saturday.

"Not here, in Rizal park at noon." I could see the questions in her eyes that would be difficult for me to answer. She made me laugh.

"It's a surprise" I said. "And bring the whole family, and bring the neighbors too."

About the Author

The author is retired and lives with his wife in the Philippines.

Connect with Gregory Truman

Comments are welcome. Please send them to my e-mail address: gregorytruman40@yahoo.com
