by David Larson
The Myth of the Anal Probe
One:
The first sensation that Mike had was that he really had no sensations at all. No feeling of weight, or heaviness, no sound, no cold or hot, nothing. And apparently he was immersed in total darkness. At least he thought he was in total darkness. The thought had occurred to him that he may just have his eyes closed. But for the time being that would be just fine. Keeping himself in the dark would give him the chance to reflect on the past events, as he remembered them, and he could do a little work on getting his bearings back.
He remembered driving down 28 at night on his way home from poker night at the VFW. Sure, he had a few beers, but he certainly wasn’t drunk. Well, not drunk enough to pass out or anything. Then he remembered the radio acting up and the headlights on his truck started flashing on and off. Yeah, that was goofy, but not as goofy as the huge bright blinding lights that came next. Jesus, everything in the cab was washed in this all-consuming, bright white, retina burning light that came from no place and every place all at the same time.
That was what he was struggling with now. What the hell was that light? Was it a truck in the wrong lane? Had it hit him? Was he… well, you know. No, that’s not possible; in fact, by the time the light thing started he wasn’t moving at all. The truck had totally died. And then what? Well, he was there, and now he’s here, wherever here was, and that, as they say, was that.
“Well Mikey” he thought to himself, “You certainly could answer that last question just by opening your freaking eyes.”
Slowly he started to force back the lid on one side. The room, or whatever he was in, was flooded with a very warm and inviting white light.
“Would you like to sit up?” A voice from someplace close to his head said.
Instantly Mike snapped his one opened eye back shut and faked sleep.
“I know you’re awake, Mike” the voice said, “you might as well open your eyes and get this over with.”
Over with…. Oh, sweet Jesus, that couldn’t be good. He started snoring, hoping the voice would get the message.
“Come on buddy,” the voice said. “Why don’t you just open those peepers, sit up and we can have a nice long talk.”
Very slowly Mike started to open both eyes. That was about the time he realized he was floating about four feet off the floor, flat on his back.
“Holy shit!” he screamed as he slammed his eyes back shut.
He could hear a soft laugh coming from the voice near his head.
“Sorry,” the voice said, still laughing “Every time I see that reaction it cracks me up. Do you really think if you close your eyes, whatever is causing you discomfort is going to magically go away?”
“You know, a long time ago we stood guys like you on their head in the corner and bet on how long it would take them to pass out. Unfortunately, that tends to create trust issues, and kind of shoots the entire ‘abduction,’ as your people like to call it, in the ass.”
The voice was beginning to move around to Mike’s feet.
“What the hell happened to your sense of humor?” it said “You guys used to be great fun! Running around naked in the woods, setting shit on fire. Oops, pardon my French. Isn’t that what you say now?
“Come on pal. Slide those beautiful blues open so we can get on with it. I have a date on the Holo Deck in an hour.”
The voice burst out laughing. “I’m sorry dude. We don’t really have a Holo Deck; I was just jerking your chain a little. Man, I never get tired of that one though. Hey, beam me up you Scottish Dick Head!”
More uncontrollable laughter. “Oh man, I kill myself. WHEW! OK, OK, I’m sorry, really, I’m finished now. Just sit up tiger…really…or I swear to God I’ll take my Phaser off stun. OK, really that’s the last one. I’m done now. Really”
Slowly, again, Mike opened his eyes. If nothing else it seemed it would make the voice happy.
“Atta boy. I knew you could do it. And see, no pillar of salt, no demons dancing around with pitch forks, nothing. Now just stand up.”
Mike put one foot down onto what he assumed was a floor and then he put the other one next to it. The rest of him was still lying down. A suppressed nasal snicker snorted from the voice.
“I’m sorry dude, really. You just look ridiculous like that. How about going for broke and snap tall, as they say?”
Mike forced himself upright and standing before him was a man looking very much like a very fit, 40-something, Jerry Garcia. He was wearing a pair of topsiders, no socks, jeans, what looked like a hemp belt, a white raw silk shirt, and puka beads.
Mike opened his mouth to say something and the man held up his hand, barely able to suppress another wave of laughter.
“Please don’t say it. It kills me every time,” he said.
“Say what?” Mike croaked out.
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Alright, what were you going to ask me?”
“Are you God?”
The man turned his back and was shaking trying to keep from laughing out loud. Finally, he was able to regain some sort of composure and turned back to Mike.
“No my son,” he said with a broad grin, “far from it, actually”.
“Why don’t we sit over here?” He motioned over to a pair of very comfortable looking chairs. “We can relax and I’ll answer all the questions you might have. But first, I’m Bob.” He extended his right hand to Mike.
Mike shook hands with Bob and followed him to the chairs.
“That’s a very interesting custom you people have, the whole hand shaking thing. What amazes me is how universal it is. It transcends so many other barriers. Do you have any idea where it came from?” Mike just looked at him. “No? Well let me educate you my friend. The majority of you are right handed, just like us actually, no surprise there though. Thousands of years ago you would greet each other by showing that you didn’t have a sword, or stick, or rock, or dead cat, or whatever in your fighting hand. Eventually, you started to grab that hand in order to stop any quick-acting shenanigans. Pretty sad testament, wouldn’t you say?”
Nothing
“Close your mouth Mike. Something could land in there. Just nod if you’re getting any of this.”
“How do you know my name?” Mike asked.
Bob leaned forward and rested his right hand on his knee. “We know everything, Earth Man!” He made a wide sweeping gesture with his free hand, and Mike jerked back in his chair. Bob raised both hands above his head. “Do you think we can do all this, everything you see around you?” All Mike could see was a white room with nothing in it but two chairs, himself, and a lunatic. “All of THIS! And we don’t know your name?!”
Bob slumped back in the chair “Relax baby, I’m just bullshitin’ you a little. We got your name off your driver’s license. Pretty crafty, huh?”
“Where am I?”
“Well that all depends on how deep you want to get into the answer. You are sitting in a chair across from me, or you’re in one of the acclimation rooms, or you’re on Deck 2, or you’re on the Douglas Adams deep space exploration cruiser, or…well past that I can’t tell you much. I haven’t been to navigation in a few days, and well, to be totally honest with you, I skipped out on the underway briefing when we left so I could catch a few ‘Bay Watch’ reruns while we were still close enough. But, do me a favor and don’t tell Gary. That guy is such a tight ass.”
“Gary?”
“Yeah, Gary.”
“Am I on a space ship?” Mike asked.
“Basically”
“Then you’re a…”
“Great dancer”?
“Are you an Alien?” Mike asked weakly.
“Ali
en to what?”
“Oh my God!” Mike said jumping out of his chair. He didn’t see a door anyplace to bolt for, and apparently the room was round so he couldn’t find a corner to hide in.
“Please,” Mike had dropped to his knees, “please don’t give me the Anal Probe.”
“Geez, what the hell is up with you people and the anal fixation? As soon as you figure out where you are, you want to start talking about sticking things up your ass. Is that the way you act when you go to a friend’s house? ‘Hey great new TV there buddy. Mind if I stick the remote up my ass?’
“Let me explain something to you clowns. One time, ONE TIME, we have this guy up here and he hasn’t had a bowel movement for like three days. So, we give him an enema, got it, an enema, that’s all! Nothing more sinister than that! Now we constantly have to go through this ‘Anal Probe’ crap. Man oh man, you people can hold a grudge. Get back in your chair”
“Sorry” Mike said.
“Look,” Bob said easing back into his chair. “If we can get past all the ‘rectal phobia’ thing, I’ll start by laying out some information to you and we can go from there. You can ask anything you want and I’ll be more than happy to tell you. Nothing is a secret here. Well, nothing except who has been using the skipper’s head, but that’s not important now.”
“The skippers head?” Mike asked weakly “what is someone doing with the skipper’s head? Did they cut it off?”
Mike swallowed hard
Bob was laughing uncontrollably.
“No,” Bob finally said as he wiped a tear off his cheek “Not that kind of head. His bathroom. Someone keeps pooping in his bathroom and doesn’t flush.”
“Where was I?” Bob snorted one last chuckle. “Cut it out,” he said to himself, “oh yeah.”
“First, this is a ‘space ship’.” Bob made the finger quotation marks in the air. “And we are from, well, let’s just say from someplace other than your solar system. Next, we snatched you from your car.” Bob held up his hand. “And before you spit out the obligatory ‘why me’ the fact is you just happened to be in the right, or wrong, place in the right, or wrong, time.
“As for what are we going to do with you, well, that’s kind of complicated.”
The blood instantly drained from Mikes face, as it went looking for someplace safe deep in his chest cavity, and farther from the vicinity of the mad man sitting comfortably in front of him.
Bob rested a reassuring hand on Mike’s knee. “Not complicated like that old buddy. We’re going to talk is all, and I don’t mean that in the whole Hitler and ‘it’s just a shower’ thing. Really, we’re going to have a conversation. Then when we’re done we’ll drop you off wherever you want to go. OK?”
Mike nodded apprehensively.
“Just one thing though,” Bob went on. “You can never eat ice cream, use the word ‘Bolero’ in sentence, or wear the colors green and yellow in the same week ever again. Got it?”
Mike nodded.
“Lighten up Melvin.” Bob said “I’m just jerking around. Well except for the Bolero thing.” Bob winked.
“OK then” Bob said slapping his knees. “Let’s get started.” Behind him a giant picture of space materialized on the wall.”
“Is that a window?” Mike asked.
“No, dickhead, it’s a television. I use it for my slide presentation. Christ, you people need to get out more.” Bob got out of his chair and walked around to the screen.
“This is a picture of our solar system. Hundreds of millions of years ago we developed ‘near planet’ space travel, and man was that cool. Unfortunately, after a while this got to be boring.” The picture next to Bob turned into one of what looked like an astronaut sitting on a crate, picking his nose. “So, long story short, we developed deep space exploration.” The next picture was one of the same astronaut jumping up in the air with a look of total joy on his face. “Once we perfected the whole magnetic drive thing we were zooming around space like wild men, exploring this frozen shithole and that desert wasteland. And do you know what we found?” The screen went blank. “Not a damned thing.”
“Now, I know you are going to find this hard to believe, but we are pretty stress free at home.” The screen was back on with a picture of a bunch of people hugging each other. “We have always been vegetarians. Killing for food never made a lot of sense. We don’t fight or argue, and we have never had a war. The concept of your politics and religion make no sense to us. We don’t need laws and rules telling us how to treat each other, telling us not to screw each other over. We all work together for the common good and betterment of each other.”
The picture was now one of a lab with a lot of scientists in lab coats, working. “Consequently, with all that time on our hands, we have been able to make great advances in our civilization. Then one day, somebody got a bright idea” the screen now had a picture of a man from the nose up with a light bulb above his head. “Why don’t we start looking for places that can sustain our type of life forms and start to populate other planets?”
“Nice graphics,” Mike said.
“Hey butt-wad, just remember which one of us has the interstellar space ship here.” He pointed back at the screen. “May I?”
“Sorry.” Mike said.
“As I was saying,” The picture changed to a man and woman holding hands and smiling in a beautiful garden filled with animals and birds that all seemed to be in perfect harmony with each other. “We actually found several planets that were much like our own. We made a few alterations. Long story short, we dropped off our colonizing crew and the rest is blissful, and I might add, very successful history.”
“Then you found us?” Mike asked.
“Not exactly ace, then we found your planet. For all practical proposes it was the most perfect place for colonization we had ever seen. It was exactly like our home planet. We just had one problem.”
“We were already there.”
“Man, you guys certainly have evolved into a bunch of myopic shits haven’t you? Do you know why you freaked out so bad when you came to in here? Because you clowns think you have all the answers, that’s why.
“You actually think that if it’s in a history book it must be fact, or if you were taught it in school, or church, that’s just the way it is. You look back into your own past and laugh when you read that some of the greatest thinkers of their time were persecuted, chastised, imprisoned, and even tortured by the church for saying such wild things as the Earth is round, or it revolves around the sun. And now you actually have the audacity to think you have all the answers.
“Let me tell you something. There actually is a library on my home planet that is FILLED with shit Earth people don’t know. And right next to it is an annex filled with shit Earth people think they know but actually don’t.”
“Jesus!” Mike groused, “I’m sorry. I’m trying to cooperate here, wherever here is, so how about cutting me a little slack.”
“Yeah, I know.” Bob said gently. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.
“At any rate, what we found were a whole bunch of carnivores with real crappy attitudes.” The next slide was what appeared to be an actual photograph of a bunch of dinosaurs tearing the hell out of some other, smaller dinosaurs. “This caused us some real heart burn. We aren’t a very aggressive people and we don’t kill for the sake of killing. We debated this problem for nearly 200 years.”
“Oh my God” Mike gasped, wide-eyed, “how old are you?”
“I’m 42, Mike. Our life span, not surprisingly, is the same as yours. We don’t think in the moment. We think out problems as critical as this for as long as it takes until we come up with an answer that will work for the very long term. I think you people are involved in a war right now that could have been circumvented with a little more talking and cooperation.
“That being said, we decided that the best thing to do was sterilize the worst types, let them live out the rest of their lives, and step quietly out of the picture.”
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br /> “Sterilize how,” Mike asked?
“The normal way of course. Wait until they are sleeping, then sneak up on them, cut their nuts off, and run like hell.”
“Really?”
“Of course not numb-nuts. We used localized medical radiation from a very long distance.”
“Oh.”
“Eventually the problem took care of itself, with help from us, and we made ready with our first colonization trip to earth.”
“Hey, hey, hold on!” Mike jumped out of his chair.
“Yes.” Bob said smiling.
“Are you trying to tell me…”
“Yes?”
“Oh man, that’s bullshit! You…we…us…and you guys. Creation? Early man? Ah, horseshit! This is a joke, right? Where’s the camera?”
“And while we’re at it,” Mike asked incredulously “How is it that you conveniently speak English?”
“I don’t,” Bob answered. “We inserted a small chip into your temple. That’s the thing you keep scratching.”
Mike absently reached up and ran his index finger along a space on the side of his head that felt like a small ant bite.
“Non menici den atlla poncharni!” Bob said insistently, “Konanrno exponcharni.”
It sounded like Bob was speaking a language that floated someplace two-thirds between Italian and Hawaiian.
“What?” Mike asked.
Bob reached over and ran his index finger up on the same area on mike’s temple.
“I said,” Bob repeated, this time in English, “stop dicking around with it. That’s how you shut it off. It’s a translator just under your skin. I speak and you hear in a way that you can understand.”
“Notice,” Bob went on “I said understand…not comprehend.”
“Is that why when you speak it’s like watching a foreign movie with bad dubbing?”
“Interesting correlation,” Bob said “but…yeah. You’ll get used to it eventually.”
“Come with me brother. I want to show you something,” Bob said, putting his hand on Mike’s shoulder.
Bob walked up to the wall and a door silently slid open. Bob turned to Mike and motioned with his index finger. They walked out into a long curving corridor, that was the same bright, antiseptic white as the room they had just left. A few men and women passed by and smiled warmly at Mike. As they reached the end of the hallway, a door slid open revealing what was unmistakably the flight deck of some type of space ship, complete with a giant front window that clearly showed they were someplace in outer space.
