111/398
♫ rcanum clamans ♫
111/398
I enter the corridor where, behind a massive glass pane at the end, the one who summoned me is supposed to be. I’ve been x-rayed, scanned, patted down, had blood drawn, and was interrogated for hours. They’ve archived a cotton swab with my DNA, and my fingerprints. Now that the security checks are behind me, our encounter is imminent. The limited information they gave me suggests that only one of the original five extraterrestrials the US military picked up in the last seventy years remains. And he specifically requested me!
Why the intelligence agency honored the alien’s request is beyond my understanding. Probably a deal. Secret, of course. It can’t have been easy to track me down. The officer who just briefed me treated me with cold disdain. “They communicate telepathically with the scientists,” he said. “Most can’t handle it and go crazy, despite years of training to prepare them for something utterly foreign invading and tampering with their minds.” But if he really asked for me, it probably wasn’t to turn me into a case for the loony bin. I hope.
As far as I can make out in the twilight behind the glass, he is small and wrinkled like E.T. Before I consciously register any details, an explosion in my head hurls me to the ground. While I lie there, twitching helplessly, the detonation turns into massive, glowing symbols that mercilessly sear themselves in all areas of my brain like branding irons. It’s not a voice but a cosmic thunder that tells me to write something down, a message for the world, an unprecedented manifesto, a beacon, and it should begin with…
I lose consciousness.
I wake up at home in my bathtub, with a five-day beard, a pounding headache, and nothing but my memories of the security procedures and the telepathic bomb in my head. I’m missing a few days, and even the leap day this year can’t make up for them. The intelligence agency probably planned it that way from the start: I have no evidence in my hands, and no one will believe my tall tale of being abducted, let alone who I faced in a secret military base in southern Nevada.
But that doesn’t really matter.
I try to write down the message, over and over again. Should it really start like this, with this sentence? Did I truly understand it correctly? My mind is probably too weak and fragmented to capture the manifesto’s full significance and world-altering impact on paper. Nevertheless, even if I might be the wrong person picked up by the intelligence agency, or if he overestimated me, it’s the only chance. Again and again, I start anew.
“I enter the corridor.”
Area 51: 