“I’m dirty and hungry and I’ve been stuck in this spacesuit, for which you gave me no instructions, for, what did you say, nine days? And why is there now no time lag?”
“You are nearing earth. Transmissions only take a few seconds from where you are. We apologize for the inconveniences. The Enlightened Ones assured us that all would be provided for.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear.” I considered the irony of that statement coming from me.
“What we don’t understand is how you got so far in such an incredibly short time. You should never have been able to accelerate so fast outward, then change your orbit for a return, especially with all accelerometers reading zero.”
“Well, I have a story to tell. But I don’t want to tell it right now.”
“For now we need you to close all the hatches and panels that you opened. Then lock on your helmet and gloves. Strap yourself into any seat. Your capsule, by which we mean your room with the seats, will be ejected from earth orbit in 23 minutes. You will experience up to four negative Gs as you re-enter. You will splashdown and be recovered by our recovery team.”
“Where will I be then?”
“We can’t tell you that.”
“I don’t know why you expect stories from me if I can’t get any facts out of you.”
I floated off to the forward and sideways bubble. I stuck my head inside. The whole earth spread across my view, brilliant, with infinite details. Somewhere, there, I thought, was my home.
Hatches and panels shut, strapped into my seat in my nasty closed up spacesuit, I waited for something to happen. A bump and a force toward the straps. My head seemed to spin, and then the room. Small bumps, and forces changed directions; a big bump, and then my room became a boat. It was floating up and down, then held and lifted.
I didn’t even get to see the ship. I crawled through the hatch, after removing helmet and gloves. Gloved hands and orange biohazard suits pulled me through a stretched fabric corridor that led to a room with table, chairs, bed and bath, a fridge, and a microwave.
With help I was out of the spacesuit and into the shower. What a relief! I had to sit down in the shower chair because I felt so heavy. Dried and robed, I lay down on the bed. The biohazard guys began searching for an IV site.
“You’re very dehydrated,” one of them said while taking my blood pressure, temp, and pulse. “A little stick,” said another. The fluids began to drip and I shut my eyes. Hours later they offered me solid food.
“This tastes great. I haven’t eaten in years, feels like.” They never told me anymore about the trip. They wanted me to write it all down, from the very beginning. The cornfield incident seemed in the distant past, but I wrote it again anyway. The visions were difficult…the quantum gate and all that it seemed to contain…and to portend. But I did my homework, now that I was home.
Chapter 7 - DRAKE
“Oh my goodness! It’s Jim Drake again! I’m so glad to see you. Actually I’m glad to see anybody with a face. But are you the real or the fake one?”
“I am not the human.”
“Somehow I knew that already. Well, I’m glad to see you anyway. Maybe you can answer some questions. I’ve been to Pluto and back. And now all I see are bio-hooded guys who move me from one place to another and never let me see anything when they’re moving me.”
“It is unfortunate for you that your kind treats you thusly. They have nothing to fear from you. But they are protecting themselves from imagined diseases which they cannot detect.”
“So I’m in isolation, I guess. I’ve been writing all these events, from my own point of view. But I don’t know who anybody is. All I know is that I made a quick trip to Pluto…and it was a dog!”
“We, being an ‘I’ to you, do not understand this use of ‘dog’ with reference to the orbital body which you call ‘Pluto’. However, you did not go to Pluto. You went far beyond its orbit and past the Oort Cloud, home of comets, and on into true interstellar space by means of a quantum gate. Not a conduit, mind you, I know what you are questioning. A conduit would have degraded your integrity. You traveled in a moderately accelerating plasma-driven spaceship, then continued along a hyperbolic solar orbit until a quantum gate arrested your travel. Our quantum gate then moved you great distances very quickly, through principles of entanglement and superposition, that within probability, you had already arrived at your destination. It also showed you some probabilities, out of infinite possibilities, for what your kind may, and in some universes will, encounter. These views were not representations. What you witnessed was actual. Your views were from different vantage points as you moved quickly through probabilities.”
“Well, your quantum gate was scary as hell. I wrote down some of its visions, as best I can remember. But most of the time I try not to think about it.”
“We/I realize that it was traumatic for you. However, what you saw are aspects of your collective existence, created and promoted by you, and by certain groups within, as well as outside, your own collective. By knowing, and understanding, your collective may lessen the more horrible, as you see them, aspects within probabilities for your own experience. Your knowing and understanding also promotes our own determination that your kind should not suffer interference or exploitation.”
“Look, I’m having trouble enough just having to remember, also reliving, all this stuff. So what if I write it down? The men-in-black guys want me to write it, then they take it all to who knows where, and I have to start all over. It may never see the light of day. Nobody is going to believe it anyway, except maybe the builders of that rocket ship. And I don’t know who the heck they are. Or where. It’s sure not the NASA I know. As for understanding, why didn’t you send an astrophysicist instead of me? You think I understand a, what’d you call it, hyperbolic orbit?”
“It was, simply expressed, a solar orbit that would never return to the point of origin. The makers of the rocket you traveled upon are scientists, in collusion with some of the most wealthy of your kind. They extrapolated a need for such a rocket based on their mostly secret knowledge of our existence. But their anticipation called for a team of your explorers, your ‘star travelers’, to spend years traveling beyond your solar system. Instead, they only needed room for you. It is your understanding that matters. That, and the belief of One.”
“I don’t understand even that! And, I could have used a lot more training. And maybe a bit of choice in the matter.”
“You did choose to visit with us. Yes, you were subject to strong persuasion from your own kind. Your kind which even now is secretive to you, and fearful. Neither you, nor they, can understand that you are all influenced by what you saw as an effect of the quantum gate. Like you, they are both here, and there, simultaneously.”
“I agree that I don’t understand. Where is here…and there?”
“You have already seen both. It is our opinion that more may be detrimental, even harmful.”
“That’s for damn sure. I want to go home.”
“That is to come, and to you, very soon. We/I hope that you, and they, will be ready.”
****
Pickering’s men, or whoever they were, removed the black hood from my head just long enough to push me through the door from the backseat I’d been riding in for miles. In the darkness, I never saw into the car, but I did see that it was long and black.
I noticed the breeze, the warmth, the cooler air that came in tiny puffs. There was a road, a driveway ahead, a short walk toward a porch light. A house mostly dark, dimly lit from inside. My god, it’s my house! I walked up the drive, and climbed to the porch. And then, even though it was my house, I rang the doorbell.
Sue answered. She was almost angry.
“Where have you been? Why didn’t you call? I was about to call the police. Rob has been looking for you. I told him I thought you must have gone over to his place, but he said he hadn’t seen you. Rob….”
“It’s been a long time.”
�
�Well, you usually don’t just leave and stay gone overnight without letting me know something.”
“Overnight?”
“Yes, overnight. Now you’re acting strange. Come in for heaven’s sake. You look a mess. Your clothes…your hair. Have you been sleeping in the woods?”
“It’s been a long time.” I repeated.
“You look a mess. Now come in. You owe me an explanation.”
“I went to Pluto.” I knew this was a dumb thing to say.
“Huh? You look like you’ve been hunting with Pluto and got lost! Do you need food? Go shower and put on something clean. I’m calling Rob.”
All I said was “OK.” I went in, showered, and changed. I thought, I’m always in some kind of disheveled condition.
When I came downstairs, Rob was there.
“OK, buddy, where the heck have you been? It’s not like you to create a big mystery.”
“How long have I been gone?”
“How long?” A very puzzled look from both Rob and Sue. “You were gone from about noon yesterday till late this evening. You do know that? Right?”
“It seems longer.”
“Are you all right? Do we need to take you to the hospital?”
“I was gone a long time. Much longer than that. I think I was abducted. Kind of. Did you see the oval? The circles?”
“Oh lord,” replied Rob. “It’s Drake who’s into this crop circle nonsense. Have you been hanging out with him again? Ovals?”
“You’re not going to believe this. Any of this, are you? I don’t know what to say. I’ve got to write it all down again. They keep taking what I’ve written. I have no evidence. And you won’t believe me. Sue, don’t you remember sewing at all?”
“Sewing? I made a new quilt out of scraps. Is that what you mean? I finished that two days ago. Now where did you go? If you don’t remember, we need to know that.”
“Give me some time. I’ll write it all down. Again. I’ll let you read it. Some of it.”
Sue and Rob exchanged glances but didn’t say much more. I ate some leftover soup. It tasted really good. Rob left, and I lay down on the sofa. I quickly fell asleep and stayed there all night.
****
I woke at daybreak, still in my clothes. I immediately got up and walked to the cornfield.
Nothing was disturbed. The corn looked completely normal. No crop circles. No holes. No passage of time at all that I could tell.
“I’m going to Drake’s,” I told Sue.
“Are you sure? You haven’t eaten. No coffee. You’re not going to get lost and disappear again, are you? I swear I’ll call the police if you don’t get back soon.”
“I’ll be fine. I really need to see him.”
I drove down the bumpy overgrown dirt road once again. There was the cabin, as before.
“Jim. Jim!” I shouted.
“I was expecting you,” came a voice through an open window.
Jim directed me to a chair. He straddled one himself. I kept trying to look through the windows at his back porch.
“So where have you been, Mr. Donald Henson? In two days you been wandrin’ the universe?”
“Just a part of it. And now I’m tired. OK, so what happened to the oval and the circles and the glass cave and your precious pinks and grays and men-in-black that operate giant spaceships from inside tunnels or mountains or wells or whatever that was?”
“I don’t have many details, Don. Not nearly as many as you would like. I don’t know anything about giant spaceships, but they made us leave your cornfield. The men-in-black, as you call them. We don’t know who they were. They sealed the shaft. They’ve sealed all the shafts everywhere. There’s no sign that anything ever happened…anywhere. All the records are gone. Time itself appears to have been collapsed, or was extended and now it isn’t. We were in the glass cave for weeks. You’ve been gone for a long time. That has turned into…since yesterday.”
“I can’t accept this, Jim. There is…stuff…I’m supposed to pass on, or so they told me. From the quantum gate. For all mankind. Who knows? Who will believe without any evidence.”
“See what we mean, Don. Self-evidence. You’re all you’ve got. You know what happened. You know the truth. And a few will actually believe you. Unfortunately, most of them will believe what isn’t true just as easily.”
“What was the thing, the one in space? Beyond Pluto? The quantum gate?”
“Not many know about the quantum gate. It’s another means of transportation they use, other than the conduits. But more than that, they use them to see possibilities and realities, which are all one and the same, within and without space/time. They work because we are already there.”
“Already where?”
“Everywhere. Everyone. Everything.”
“Are you talking about alternate realities?”
“You can think of them that way. But they are not really alternate. They aren’t separate. You’re the cat in the box that’s alive and dead at the same time. Except it’s for all time. You’re dead and alive and in and out of the box and you’re a dog in another box on the other side of Pluto, both dead and alive, and in between.”
“I always wind up on the other side of Pluto. And it always makes me feel…goofy.”
Chapter 8 – CRATER
I started visiting Drake almost everyday for awhile. We had lots of discussions, but he didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know by now. My corn did well. The harvest was a good one. No one eating that corn would ever know the drama that went on in it, around it, above it, and under it. Just to be sure, I bought a Geiger counter. No radioactivity. That was good. But it was more lack of evidence. I had the DNA tested. That was as expected. I had my own DNA tested. And Sue’s. And Rob’s despite his initial objection. No anomalies. They told me I should have a long life. I told them I was already dead.
Life had become routine. I had written a short book about all these events. But it stayed in my computer. I never let anyone read it. They’d all forgotten my disappearance that one night.
But I went out at night and stared at the sky. How far had I gone? Where did I go? Were there still pinks and grays and conduits, and the enlightened ones who were protecting us from the hunters?
One day there was an interesting picture, on the internet. It appeared to be the crater of a volcano in Antarctica. It was in an area so dry there was no snow. Someone had climbed, established a base, and then, using equipment that looked like spacesuits because it was so cold, they had climbed to the crater’s opening. There they dropped flares at first and later lights. They could see what looked like equipment inside, girders and pipes, far below. They roped down as far as they could. Girders had collapsed upon each other. There were scars of some sort on the walls. They had to leave because the weather took a turn for the worse, no snow but temperatures too low to continue. No one had ventured there again.
Was it my crater? My mountain? Did I launch from there on my journey to the quantum gate? The quantum gate, with its lesson of be all you can be, and then some. But you already are.
I wondered about the fate of mankind. We are already living and dead, full of hope and awaiting our doom. From without, from within, and does it matter? The voice in the quantum gate said we couldn’t be saved because we were already there, and yet if we believed, if One believed…. Well, how’s that for a paradox?
After my corn had been harvested, I rented some movable drilling equipment. I learned to operate it myself. I kept poking holes in my field. The consistently negative results poked holes in my story, or holes in my head where the memories seeped out.
I started investigating what it would cost to go to the volcano in Antarctica. So far I couldn’t afford it. But maybe Jim’s group would consider it worthwhile. Besides, lately Drake was seeming human again, so I thought I would ask him.
“We have no funds for such a venture, Don. Besides, there have been no more sightings, not anything real anyway. People have lost interest. Not even abductees w
ant to talk about any of this anymore. I guess that’s a good thing, if it’s all because the harmful ones are being kept away.”
“But the crater has girders, equipment, scars or burns like some great blast or explosion….”
“Or launch took place from there? I know what you are thinking. And it makes sense. But we can’t afford an expedition. Why don’t you look for the men-in-black instead?”
“Where do I start?”
“I have a name, a number, of someone who might know something. We can talk to him. I’ll try to get in touch.”
It was the first time I ever saw Jim Drake’s basement.
Monitors, keyboards, radios, electronics I could not identify lined the walls, the tables, the shelves. CDs carefully indexed and filed, maps, and other documents. There was a treasure trove under that cabin. And nobody I knew ever knew that any of it was there.
“Well, you are a man of mystery, Colonel Drake.”
“Not as much as you, Captain Pluto. Now, let me see if I can find Jake Southby. He knows everything!”
Bits and bytes of codes and ciphers spilled from one of Jim’s computers. They pinged here and there in ways I didn’t understand. The big flatscreen monitor displayed white symbols against a black background. The symbols finally became English letters followed by whole words.
“Hi, D. This is S. What’s up?”
“Know anything about volcanoes at the South Pole? Craters with equipment and the like?”
“I read the report. Too bad they had to quit too soon. Sounds like a real mystery if it’s true. There aren’t any volcanoes in that area that I know of.”
“Any other history for that area?”
“Hmmm…a guy named Pickering disappeared down there some years back. Astrophysicist. Went to explore building a telescope in the clear, dry air free of light pollution with some great views from the southern axis. His whole group disappeared though. Nobody heard from them again. Nothing else but rumors.”
“What kinds of rumors?”
“Lots of exotic supplies being shipped in under very difficult conditions. Major machinery. Then some guy came back from there almost dead. Had been power sledding back to an established camp. Acted scared half to death too. I’m not sure he made it. But he was mumbling about a giant spaceship and aliens, of course.”
Angels of the Quantum Gate Page 4
