Untitled
by K.T. Bukowski

Date Submitted/Written: April 29, 1999
Author's Web Site*Author's E-Mail

I was asleep, almost as soundly as possible for me.   Any noise awakens me.   This particular noise sounded like a bomb had gone off many miles from my room.  It could have been thunder, or it could have been a loud car passing.  I got out of bed, wrapped a nightgown around myself and went carefully towards the door to the verandah. Seldom did cars pass on our rural street, and it could have been thunder.  If it was, I wanted to see astorm.

I noiselessly slipped out the door and on to the verandah.  The night was mild and moonless, with a breeze that chilled it only slightly.  The sky was mostly clear and starry; a few clouds hovered harmlessly to the east.  A night like it would not permit a summer storm to come and disturb it's eerie tranquility. 

To the north a purple and white light began to flicker. I assumed it was the Northern Lights, and I decided to stay out and watch it.   Settling in on to the hammock that hangs between the big maple tree and a post on the verandah, I swung gently and gazed at the north with awe.     

It is when I happened to glance up at the stars that things got mighty weird.  Above the rooftops of the neighbors' houses, the stars seemed to move.  I gasped, blinked and rubbed my eyes, but they continued to jumble around.  They first circled, then weaved in and out between each other, then formed wavering lines and shapes.  I was staring gape-mouthed and astonished at the sight.  Somehow, I tore my eyes away from them and back to the northern lights.  But the distant, friendly flickering purple-white fires had grown and morphed into a great undulating snake of light and color just a few miles from the hammock in which I sat.  I grasped at the netting and questioned my sanity.  I think I was asking God if I had finally lost my mind when I heard the thunder again and was blinded by a flash ten times brighter than it would have been if I had been struck by lightning.

* * *

I felt like I was under ocean for a long while.  My limbs were floating, and I remember very little about breathing.  After a spell I heard voices speaking in a garbled tongue.  My eyes opened, but I couldn't see anything other than two dark figures that stood out in contrast to the light behind them.  They were doing the talking.  One sounded confused and a bit hopeful, the other was steady, certain, and really irritated.

My vision slowly started to clear, so I looked at the dark figures.  Their heads seemed big and rested on mis-mated puny bodies. After a few minutes of registering this, my brain decided that something was totally wrong and ordered my vision to clear up.  The beings heads shrank and bodies grew, and soon both figures looked normal, though still a little blurry. My ears began to pick up scraps of their conversation, like bits of discussion on a broken ham radio.

"Speed of blah blah  no such blah blah blah asked her blah blah blah in time blah blah opposed to blah blah blah  planet, again," one voice said irritably. 

"But blah blah blah blah again blah blah it blah still are traveling blah blah blah blah blah blah or could life blah blah blah on blah blah blah blah  as it is blah blah ?" queried the other.

The first voice sighed and rang through my confusion clearly. " 'Fraid not.  You know just as well as I do, our attempts end the same way, picking up some hick that goes back and tells the world  they were abducted by aliens that gave them anal probes."

"I resent that," I murmured.  The figures looked at me in surprise.  I could tell they hadn't expected me to talk.

"Told you, so nyah," taunted the first voice.  I could tell it was a he by this point.

The other, a she,  whispered back to him, "Whoa, it wore off," Then she turned and gently asked me: "What do you resent?"

"Being called a hick," I muttered. 

I saw the she give the he a savage pinch, and the he gave a shout of shock and pain.

"What was that for?" the he asked the she in an aggrieved tone.  The she left his question unanswered.  Instead, she continued to interview me.

"Where are you from?"

Now, this struck me as a very stupid question.  At the moment, I thought I was somewhere near my house in my home town.  I told them first the name of my town, then the name of my state.

The she looked at the he inquiringly.  The he nodded his head.

"That was one of the States before the Cleft.  What year is it?" he questioned me.

Now I knew the were stupid.  I told them the year in an exasperated voice.  The he nodded again.

"Almost a hundred years before the Cleft," he mused.

"I thought you failed history."

"So I did...."

"What the hell is the Cleft?"  I muttered

"Don't worry about it," the she said.  "You'll be either dead or senile when your government collapses."

I didn't worry to much about it.  Instead, I began to wonder where I was.  Then I started to wonder why I hadn't worried about that earlier.  My surrounding looked liked a large, empty, modern office.  I was sitting in a chair that felt kin to a La-Z-Boy.  Above my head, square lights gave the room comfortable illumination.  There was a large window to the left of me; outside it was nighttime.  I recall being mildly disturbed at the sight of the large, full moon at the corner of the window and was only slightly relieved when it moved out of my range of vision through the window.  The he and the she were very clear in my vision by this point.  The he was a tall, surly, bored-looking young man; he wore a strange, casual looking outfit and something that resembled a baseball cap.  The she was of medium height and build, perpetually smiling, with reddish hair pulled back in a braid.  She donned an outfit similar to what the he wore.  I was put at ease by their normal appearance, though still totally bewildered. 

I realized the she was asking me a question.  "Do you have a name?" she was asking.

"Miriam. Who are you and where exactly am I?" "You may call me Sidney," the she said, "and he is Cecil though he may request you call him something else."

"I ask you call me the All-Knowing, All-powerful High Eminence."

"I'll stick with Cecil, thanks," I said.  Then I turned to Sidney.  She seemed the more normal of the two.  "So, where am I?"             Before Sidney answered, I noticed a dim crescent of light from one side of the window.  I was slightly alarmed at this; I thought it was the moon, but the moon had disappeared from the other side of the window.  When looked at it, I saw Earth instead, and was relieved for half a minute.  Then it dawned on me that if  my home planet was out the window, it couldn't be under my feet where it belonged. 

"Man, this just keeps getting weirder."

"Miriam, you aren't at home any more."

Well, duh, I thought.

"If you want me to be more specific, I believe we are currently in orbit around the Earth.  On the good ship Zeus 7.  In the year you said you were from.  Doing nothing important."

"We're from a time much later than your time," Cecil informed me. "Some hundred years, more or less."

This perplexed me.  "So... you guys travel back in time just to abduct people."

"Oh, no, that's not the way of it at all!" Sidney was laughing.  "No, we've been trying to travel to other planets using 'light speed', and we keep traveling back and forth in time instead of out there in space.  It's really annoying."

I narrowed my eyes. "That still doesn't explain why I am here. On your, uhm,"  I was suddenly inspired.  "On your Intragalactic Time Machine."

"Say, I like that," Cecil mused.  "Intragalactic Time Machine."

"You know, that sounds a lot better than Zeus 7," Sidney contemplated.

I was just mildly annoyed; thus I cleared my throat.

Cecil looked at me confusedly.  "What?"

"Why am I here?  Where do I come in in this story here?  I think I deserve an explanation as to why my planet is there and I am not on it."

"Oh, yes, well," said Sidney, "That is one of the ship's designs. When it senses a planet, it picks up a life form automatically.  We really don't know much else about the ship. But we're learning"

"Uh, why did they let you operate it?"

Cecil tipped his hat up and grinned. "New space program.  Really low standards."

I raised an eyebrow.  This didn't sound promising.

"We weren't just grabbed off the street, if that's what bothers you," Sidney explained hastily.  "We were trained a bit.  But all we know is a few things about this.  Like the auto-abductor's side effects, right?"

"Picking people up causes confusion, disorientation and hallucinations in them.  I s'pose, when we put people back on Earth, it hasn't worn off and they believe they were abducted and probed by aliens." I couldn't tell, but I swore a giggle escaped Cecil's mouth.

"Do you probe them?" I was truly, albeit morbidly, curious.

"No," Sidney said.  "It's just the product of the travel and a sick mind put together.  And in some cases, drugs.  We seem to pick up a lot of hippies."

"So why am I not hallucinating?" I queried.

"Because you're not a hippy?" Cecil offered.

"No, really."

They both shrugged.  I was thinking that it was really great to have someone to clear these things up for me.

The Earth was in the center of the window by then, fully illuminated.  I really hoped I was dreaming.  It was at this point I decided to pretend I was. I closed my eyes.

"Do you want to go back home, Miriam?" Sidney whispered. "Quiet.  I am only having a very odd dream.  I can't sleep if you keep talking to me." The nerve of some people.

"Here," said Cecil, offering me a glass. "Drink this. It will put you back to sleep."

"Yeah.  Then we can send you back home."

Opening my eyes, I took the glass Cecil proffered.  It was filled with a brown liquid that smelled horrible.

"This smells like whiskey,"  I said disgustedly.  " I can't drink this, Cecil.  I'm a minor."

"You're not on Earth. Technically, you aren't underage here."

"Where did you guys get it from?  What kind of 7-11's do you find in space?"

"We swiped it off some drunk person.  It's utterly disgusting, but it'll put you right to sleep.  Trust me."

Sidney was giggling.  "I remember that.  We told him we were messengers from God sent to tell him to reform or he would go to hell. We were really into messing with peoples'heads for a while."

"Glad I missed that."

"It was last month," Cecil smiled broadly.

I held my nose and drank the contents of the glass.  It tasted worse than it smelled.  I grimaced, cringed, swore  and vowed I would never consume alcohol ever again. 

"Do me a favor," I managed to say between gags.  "Never give me that again."

"I don't think we can.  There's none left." Cecil said, turning over the empty bottle with a disappointed expression.

Sidney frowned.  "Dang it!"

Then I began to get drowsy.  The room blurred.  Sidney and Cecil were conversing, but their words were garbled and nonsensical.  I closed my eyes again, and felt like I was floating.  I was soon sound asleep once more. 

* * *

I woke up on the hammock as the fires of dawn were being lighted.  Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I stood and walked into the house.  Then I stopped walking and looked back at the hammock.

"Why am I outside?" I murmured to the dew.

Then it all came back.   The noise.  Northern Lights.  Hallucinations. Sidney.  Cecil.  Anal probes.  Bad booze. 

What a strange dream. 

It wouldn't do to try to convince myself that it was real.  Everybody was prone to strange dreams every now and then.  And there was nothing wrong with waking up outside in the middle of July. So I had convinced myself as I stepped back into my room.

As I pulled the T-shirt I planned to wear that day over my head, I noticed a little white corner sticking from the pocket of my nightgown.  It was a note:

"Miriam, We figure your the incredulous type, so, no, you didn't dream it.  Sidney and Cecil"

I could feel my eyes widen as I read it.  In record time I slipped my nightgown back over my head and crawled under my sheets.  It was really time to go back to sleep.

*author's note: sometime in the future, i plan to write a much longer story to follow this one. and if i ever think of a title, i'll tell ya.  i'm open for suggestions.  also, i have never been anal probed.  but there is a first time for everything...*