“We are developing processes for that, Mr. Henson.”
“When? When will you be done developing?”
“We continue to believe it will be done within sufficient time.”
“Sufficient time for what?”
“For you to travel with us, Mr. Henson. There are others who would like to meet you as an example of a species to whom non-interference should be guaranteed.”
“Oh great. And since you’ve already interfered with me... I’m off to the stars.”
“Not to the stars, Mr. Henson. But as a phrase that might explain in the form of an analogy, you are ‘off to see the wizard'.”
I sighed. What else could I do? I shook my head. I bowed my head and prayed. When I looked up, Fake Jim was gone. Now I had The Wizard to think about. And who the heck was going to be behind that curtain?
Chapter 5 - CHOSEN
No more Jim, real or fake. No more anybody. For such an audacious announcement from Fake Jim Drake, nothing further was happening. The men-in-black would come in occasionally and take my writings, but not the ones I was keeping for myself stuffed into my coveralls.
Then, one day that was blending into all the others, Will Smith, or his equivalent, showed up.
“Get ready to go.”
“Go where? Fake Drake has already invited me to Oz. What can you do to top that?”
“Just get yourself ready. I would suggest that you shower and change. Eat a meal. Get ready for a long ride.”
So I did what I was told. I had no idea what to expect from him and my own version of Tommy Lee Jones.
A knock. “Put on this harness. And this headpiece.”
The harness was like the one I wore as I was lowered down the glass shaft. I’m finally getting out of here, I thought to myself. But the “headpiece” was a puzzling piece of work. It was a hard helmet, flat black, with protrusions I couldn’t identify, inside and out. It fit very snugly, especially on my ears, and had what I thought might be a microphone, and a water tube, in front of my mouth. It also had two visors, one clear, and the other completely dark. What’s the point of a visor that you can’t see through?
I snugged up the harness. I didn’t want to fall out of that thing. And set the helmet/headpiece on the bed.
“Headpiece time,” commanded one of the black-and-white voices. I obeyed and felt a pair of hands reach from behind. They closed the clear visor and locked a mechanism under my chin…just before locking the opaque, black visor in place.
“Hey…I can’t see a thing!”
“That is the intention. You won’t be seeing anything for awhile. Now no more questions please.”
I was directed, pulled, pushed, drawn forward, to one side, then another. I felt the harness being attached and then my feet were dangling once again for what seemed much too long.
Wow! I was outside! I felt a breeze on my neck below the helmet. It was warm. But if it was day or night I had no idea. I was handled up some short steps, then into a cushioned seat while belts, or restraints, were attached to the harness I was still wearing. I heard a door slide shut just before a high-pitched whine that was muffled by the earpieces inside the helmet.
Whatever I was in seemed to lift. I felt pushed into my now vibrating seat, and my ears popped. I was accelerating quickly.
We flew…I guess we were flying…like this for a long time. I asked if I could open the visor, or get up, or go to the bathroom. No one answered.
Eventually we came to a stop. I was unfastened and directed/pushed/prodded out of my seat, down the steps, down a lift, and for a walk that was up, down, and around before it was straight. The visor went up…the helmet unlocked. I took it off. Oh gosh! Oh gosh! When I turned around….
****
I was in a giant, and I mean giant, vertical tube or shaft or tower that stretched overhead beyond its girders and frames, beyond its brilliant lights, beyond footways and arms and tubes and connections, men and women, in white coveralls, clamoring about, walking on catwalks, riding on lifts. And everything surrounded the unmistakable inner cylinder, white and dark, painted metal, ribbed and smooth, with protrusions and fins, the great bells of giant engines, wrapped in vapors and brilliantly stark, the greatest, biggest, monstrous...rocket ship...I had ever seen.
I was speechless. Totally speechless. But a million questions ran through my mind.
“Mr. Henson. I’m Dr. Pickering. We need you to go to the ready room where we’ll fit you for your spacesuit. Try not to be overwhelmed. A whole lot of preparation has gone into this moment, which we knew would inevitably come. We just didn’t know who it would be. You are the chosen one.”
“Chosen for what? Who chose me? What? Where? You don’t expect me to ride this…what is it? A Saturn?”
“It’s much larger than a Saturn V. And you’ll be going on a longer journey. But we are assured that you will be safe. When the Enlightened Ones told us that you would not be allowed to use a conduit, but that it was necessary for you to join them, we had to find a way.”
“And they couldn’t just ‘abduct’ me…like the others?”
“This group does not, out of principle, ‘abduct’. You must willingly go to them, in a human device. And you have been invited.”
“Who says this is ‘willingly’? I’ve been imprisoned in a glass hole in the ground. Transported in something I couldn’t even see….”
“Well, yes, we had to get you here at the right time. And safely. The hunters do not want this to happen. They have their own agenda. And it affects all mankind. We desperately need your cooperation. That’s why you are going.”
Yes, to see the Wizard. With the biggest rocket ever for my tornado.
****
And so I got fitted for a space suit for a ride on the biggest rocket ever built by human scientists. They wouldn’t tell me anymore about the rocket, or who built it, or why, but I didn’t think it was NASA. I asked about training, but they said I wouldn’t need any, that they had been assured that it was safe. I asked how long the trip would take and where I was going. They didn’t answer that either. Other than Dr. Pickering, they were all just technicians, or so they said. When I asked who would be going with me, they said I was going alone. Alone! Why did I need a rocket bigger than a Saturn to go somewhere by myself?
They said the spacesuit was completely automatic, so I didn’t need to learn anything about it. And there was nothing to learn about the ship either. Escape system in case of an emergency? I wouldn’t need it. I didn’t like these answers. I just thought about my cornfield and my wife and how all this seemed so far removed from my prior life. How long had I been gone? Would I ever return?
They gave me some pills to carry for sleep and fed me, for all I knew, my last supper. And then up, up, up an elevator to a catwalk and the nose of the rocket. In the full space suit, I crawled, with help, through the hatch, and into a compartment with 10 seats, all bolted to the vertical floor. The seats were two abreast and they had me settle into the nearest aft seat so I wouldn’t have to climb upward. There was no one to occupy any of the other seats. There were few controls and few other features. It was like being on my back in a tiny movie theater without a screen.
The hatch closed and I was sealed up alive inside my vertical coffin. I could hear launch preparations in the headset. I wondered where everyone was going to go during the launch. There was going to be a hell of a blast off inside that long launch tube, or whatever it was.
Strangely, I couldn’t hear a lot when the rocket started rising. Little noise, a gentle vibration, pushed gently into my seat. It was 15, maybe 20 seconds before I heard the words, “We have ignition.”
And then all hell broke loose. Thundering noise, violent shaking, a crushing weight, my skin being pulled backward by unseen forces. Several minutes passed until the very big “bump” that accompanied loss of the first stage. A moment of weightlessness until the second stage fired up, gentler, quieter, and less oppressive than the first.
This ride continued for a
long while, but it was gentle enough. I no longer heard the launch controllers, and after a relatively gentle bump, there was no longer any sound, vibration, or indication of acceleration. I was weightless. It was incredibly quiet except for a gentle hiss. I wondered what came next.
A voice: “You can release your restraints and open your visor. Be careful moving about.”
I followed instructions and slowly lifted out of my seat. I kicked against the seat and moved swiftly toward the forward bulkhead, or wall, or whatever was in-front-of/to-the-side/behind/under/above me. I caught myself on the headrest of another seat and steadied myself there.
I touched a panel in the forward bulkhead and it slid open. As I floated through it I beheld a room much larger than the movie theater and with glowing screens, complex switches and dials, storage lockers, and a hodgepodge of secured supplies and equipment, none of which were recognizable to me.
There was a small room with a rigid curtain and a toilet, also a shower of some sort. They never taught me how to use any of it or even how to get out of my spacesuit. I grasped my helmet, my gloves; they were going nowhere. All I could do was open my visor.
“How do I get out of this suit? How do I use any of these contraptions? Why is there nobody else here?”
Only silence.
I found a hook and lanyard and fastened it to a ring on my suit. After awhile, and after slurping some water from a tube in my helmet, and then anointing my astronaut diaper, I wrote a few words on a tablet before falling asleep.
When I awoke I was starving.
“How can I get some food here?” No answer. I struggled to move about to look in various lockers. I found some wafers of some type, sealed in plastic. I tore the package open and tasted one. It was vaguely nutty. Better than nuttin’ I thought.
I unhooked myself, propelled forward and to the left, and then turned a ring device to open another hatch, thinking, if this leads outside it’s not a good day.
Instead, I found a metal frame and glass observation section. I floated through the hatch into this glass bump on the side of the vessel. I was close to the front of the spacecraft. A long cylinder extended behind. The sun was already small against the blackness, and I watched it slowly recede. The cylinder darkened. There was a dim blueish glow.
In the darkness ahead I could make out a few stars. As my eyes adjusted I could see more, and more, and then a cloud of light. I saw, within that cloud, the vague outline of a shadow. Was it an oval? It was growing larger…and larger…and…big!
Chapter 6 - THE QUANTUM GATE
There were blueish tendrils writhing on the edges of the chasm. Soon, my ship was enveloped totally until there was only darkness to be seen.
I floated, helpless and in awe. Was this a conduit? A conduit is not allowed, they had said. And why was this not an abduction?
A gentle voice answered, more from inside my head than through my ears.
“This is your test. We are watching.”
“Who is watching? In what way am I being tested, and why?’
The voice was vaguely feminine. “We needed to see you for ourselves. We will attempt to save you from the Others. You and your kind. If you do not destroy yourselves. You must let them know that.”
“But how can they know that? They will not believe me. I have no evidence.”
“You are your evidence. They will need to believe you. At least one.”
“So believing is good…”
“Or bad, or both, or neither. And that is your conundrum. At least one must believe. We will show you what your condition might be and is. It is your past, present, and future according to your concept of time. You are here. But you are already there.”
A cloud, or something like a cloud, erupted within the darkness. From within came immense images, at first vague, then vivid. Soon, I was looking out upon whole battlefields, quickening in procession, on and on from one scene to another. Dark visions of bodies, broken, bleeding, burned…charred wastelands…heaps of death…great cities with their structures twisted and torn, or disintegrated. Shadows upon shadows. Horror upon horror. Humanity upon humanity itself.
Next, I was caused to see frightful conquests from beyond. Their violence preceded views of great buildings created to destroy human life, render it, process it, turn it into food, waste, human pieces, some for disposal, some displayed, and some consumed among luxury.
There were cages and chambers. Naked human families clad in their own excrement were pounded with food wafers for which they struggled and fought in order not to starve. Human parts, especially heads, were preserved and decorated hallways and homes.
“What is this? Why are you showing this to me?” I cried out.
I recoiled in horror. And in fear, a fear that exceeded my desire for understanding, that surpassed my concern for my own death.
“And now, it is yours,” the voice said. “You are here, and you are also there, all of you, now, then, and forever.”
Have I died and gone to hell? Where is all goodness? Any goodness? My heart beat wildly. I would have fainted and fallen, but instead I could only float.
The words, heard or imagined, echoed through my panicked thoughts, “You must believe all this, you and One, for the sake of humankind, within the universe you know.”
The cloud subsided. Only the darkness that enveloped me remained. I prayed to return home. I prayed that all of this was only a dream. How could I write of this? I could not even believe myself.
Then…I was lying in a meadow, on the grass, under a blue sky, with puffy white clouds. Birds flitted from branch to branch; a brook rippled nearby; there were horses. There was even a…unicorn.
I cried. I sobbed and choked and gasped and cried some more.
It was all so beautiful. But I could not believe.
“You have seen enough,” said the voice. “We hope you find this soothing.”
Still sobbing. “I have no sense of it. No time or place. I am nowhere real. I must be totally insane.”
“There is reality and there is the unreal, and they may be one and the same. You cannot understand the paradoxes, the interwoven causations, the quantum gates through which realities flow. The evil and goodness you have visited upon you, and you create for yourselves, the evil that is goodness and the goodness that is evil and how they are intertwined and how neither exist at all.”
“I just want to go home.”
“And so you shall. You have traveled far, and yet, you were always here.”
A female human now floated above me as I lay upon the grass. She was shimmering, or perhaps it was her garments that shimmered. They were completely transparent and light green in color, and yet there was nothing revealed, only a form with no details. She descended and took my hand. I was floating above my cornfield. There were no crop circles or holes. I could see my house. Through its walls I could see my wife. She was no longer sewing.
She was holding a book. It was open to a poem by the poet, Matthew Arnold.
“The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits.”
It continued:
“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore….
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”
The vision, and the fairy, vanished for now. I was inside the frame-and-glass bubble of a giant spaceship. And it was taking me home.
****
A voice inside my headset crackled. “Mr. Henson. Please reply. This is Mission Control. Mr. Henson. Do you copy?”
“I’m here. This is Don Henson. I copy. Over.”
“Mr. Henson. Please reply. This is Mission Control. Mr. Henson. Do you copy? Please be advised that you are beyond the solar system. Your replies will require several hours to reach us
. Do you copy?”
“I copy all right. But you won’t know about it for awhile if what you say is true. How did I get out here? Where did you go? Did you pick up the…the thing?”
There was no reply, of course. Just a continuation of calls which there was no use in answering. Not until they heard the reply I had already made.
I wondered how I got so far away in such a seemingly short time. Was it the rocket itself, or the Enlightened Ones, or both?
I left the bubble and returned to the big equipment room. I pulled myself through the panel into the movie theater and fastened myself to the nearest seat. This might be a long haul yet, and I would need nourishment of some sort, but for now I didn’t want anymore floating about loosely. I wanted something solid under me even if I could only be strapped to a seat.
How far beyond the solar system was I? Communication between Earth and Pluto was roughly 5 hours, I remembered from somewhere, probably from Jim Drake. I wished that I could talk to him now. Fake Jim Drake would do too. But, please, no more voices in my head, no horrible visions, no unicorns or fairies, or beautiful views of home with sad poems. I was exhausted. I turned my headset all the way down and in the silence fell asleep.
When I awoke I was very hungry. How long had it been since I had the nutty wafers? My space suit was running low on drinking water. It, and I, felt nasty inside. I was determined to remove it.
First came the gloves, then the helmet. The unlocking mechanisms for both were relatively simple but not intuitive at all. I’m a farmer, not an astronaut, I cursed to myself. An astronaut with no training. I can’t even fly a plane, and now I’ve been beyond Pluto. That’s still a planet to me.
Mission Control crackled when I turned up my headset.
“Mr. Henson, do you copy? This is Mission Control.”
“Yes, I am here. But where is here?”
A few seconds later. “Mr. Henson we’ve been trying to reach you for 9 days. We heard one transmission from you after all transmissions ceased. Fortunately, we had telemetry except for the 87-minute outage as you passed out of the solar system. Are you OK?”
Angels of the Quantum Gate Page 3
