“I’m Nikos.”
After several minutes of listening to him drone without catching so much as a single word, the shock of it all slowly wore off.
When he noticed Nikos had pulled a flat flask from out of his pants' back pocket, he finally gathered the confidence to speak up.
“That’s quite a mouthful you’ve got there.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Nikos said, taking a swig.
He was a kindred spirit.
“So where the hell are we?” he asked, waiting for Nikos to swallow, and half hoping he'll share.
“This is an underground military base.
Here, liquid courage."
“You guys aren't afraid of the light?
Where are we?”
“Nevada.”
Hmmm.
“That’s what I said when they let me in here. Have you been introduced to what we do here?”
Did he just hear me humming on the inside?
Frank held up the pamphlet from his contract,
giving Nikos an immediate idea.
“Alright…well, there’s quite a bit more to know. That’s the disclosure book.
I know what you’re thinking- this is what every UFO nut is after,”
Frank really was thinking just that.
“…so, if a single copy ever went public…“ Frank thought he knew where he was going with the sentence, but Nikos concluded “…nobody would give a shit.”
That was't what he was expecting.
“Anybody with a printer and a little bit of free time could put something like this together.”
“So that’s your way of keeping secrets?
Plausible deniability?”
“Hey, the ‘truth’ just sounds crazy. In fact, nobody would believe it, unless they understood it. And that, unless I’m mistaken, is why you’re both here.”
Both Frank and Weiss had reserved themselves from speaking at all, especially to Nikos, who Weiss was absolutely smitten by. As Nikos was blathering on and on and on and on, they watched him the way they used to watch saturday morning cartoons as kids and grown adults. Almost none of the new information actually got through to either of them, except they now understood that what they were about to learn would change their work, and lives, forever.
“Do you understand what’s going on?” Weiss asked Frank, for the first time, acting casual.
“I’m still trying to figure out the guy’s name.” Frank assured him, though he was starting to understand a little.
Nikos shot Frank an uneasy look that made Frank’s insides quelch.
“This shit is heavy, gentlemen.
I drink myself to sleep every night.”
Far out. Good for you.
You rock, king of lizards.
Chapter Twelve
Icarus
There was a small crammed space for him to sleep. It wasn’t terribly uncomfortable, but it definitely wasn’t home. He missed his bathrobe the most, and visits to Kathy’s house when her husband was ‘working’ all night long, but at least he could shower and go to sleep.
Few hours later, he was awoken by a buzzing siren.
A wake-up alarm, military grade.
The wall clock opposite the bunk-bed said it was 5am, but with no windows, you couldn't really tell.
His head was throbbing intensely and he started having mild optical hallucinations. Because his surroundings were so plain, shapes started swirling inside of them.
Soon there was no way for him to want to stay in bed with all this racket. That didn’t matter because seconds later, the tall militant bastard came in and shouted:
“Today you will see the the saucers.”
“The saucers?” echoed Frank from afar.
His clothes were clean and pressed on the foot of his bed, looking newer than ever before.
“Saucers? Don’t you have a better name?” Frank asked.
The general didn’t have to think twice about anything he said. Ever.
“I don’t give half a damn what you call them. I call them saucers. They look like plates. See? I should call them plates.”
He shot Frank a smug look of self-appreciation, snottiness and general douchebaggery.
“Follow me.” he barked.
With his bag over his shoulder, he quickly caught up to General down the hall.
He walked freakishly fast. It was only down a several hallways down that the General stopped and waited for Frank to arrive, and when he did, he turned into the room directly behind them. There, several troops accompanied them and opened the next door to a very large warehouse, both enormous and cavernous.
It was an active testing area. Glowing shapes levitated in the air. Each flying craft was a slightly different color and shape. The air was stale and smelled a lot like dirty old plane museums do.
Frank liked that smell.
It was a huge old hangar, open on one side to seemingly-endless system of giant caves.
Rows of glowing lamps came down from the matte black ceiling, lining around what appeared to be stations.
"You'll be piloting these today."
Piloting?
Until that moment Frank hadn't registered Hector's presence. But now that he had, he realized Hector is stupider than he’d ever hoped just by looking at him.
Inside, glowing balls, discs, cubes and points of lights flew about in an organized way.
It was kind of an intimidating thing to be in presence of multiple UFOs at once. Except for the discs, most of them changed shape with every movement. Along the platform below were teams of four guys in tan jumpsuits, signaling the glowing crafts to both land and depart. It was a sight to behold for a sci-fi fan.
Some of the glowing shapes made an a very quiet low-frequency hum.
“No big turrets,” the General said, “or fans, or tesla coils anywhere on their technology.
Ours is useless! Got no way of getting through to the sons of bitches. Alabaster was the only one-”
Frank had to cut in “Was!?”
“Oh you betcha!”
Both Frank and Hector felt befuddled,
and soon the General looked mad and befuddled himself.
What none of them knew was that the befuddled looks were caused by the collective hum in the air, sending them into forced confusion.
Frank broke the loud silence.
“What happened to him?”
“He died of typhus.”
Knowledge of the untimely demise of his predecessor on the base did not come as a source of comfort and left him with nothing to say out loud.
General detected his worries.
“The gray is just one name for them, but they are mind readers. No-more than that.
They transcend space and time.“
This was a strange thing to hear an old jaded military man say. They were now near the far end of the great hall standing by the third to last station terminals. Thirty two of them total, each station was clearly marked with thick white stripes of paint on the perfectly flat tarmac floor.
Two attending jumpsuits jumped in to await the General’s orders.
“Get these two into jumpsuits.”
Frank and Hector were led away into a small cube in the corner of the hangar. It was a changing room for the personnel.
The inside smelled a little stale but sterile, and so it looked as well. Down the second line of lockers was a large closet, filled with boxes lined up by type;
(shirts, belts, socks, shoes, pants, caps) and by size.
They didn’t radiate quite as much authority or the ability instill fear in people. They were just your typical average forty-somethings. Nothing muscular.
One of the jumpsuits even wore glasses.
They were not unlike Frank and Hector. Ex-scientists.
“What are you?” a jumpsuit mumbled.
Hector didn’t dare speak, so Frank took the initiative.
“I’m a shirt medium, pants thirtytwo thirtyfour.”
“Shoes?”
> “Size ten please.”
Hector was too shy to reveal his dimensions and hoped not to deal with this in front of Frank.
On top of the stack of items with shoes on top, the graying guy in a jumpsuit stuck a large water bottle into the brand new military grade boot.
The jumpsuit smirked at their confused faces.
“You need to stay hydrated.
Operating the crafts accelerates dehydration.
Dr. Weiss?
Size?”
Hector got his set as well: M shirt, 38 pants. He was a little on the heavy side and although he asked for a medium, it was clearly a size too small, but he didn’t care. “Could I get a sweatshirt? I’m cold.”
Whether he was insecure, or whether he actually enjoyed the the snug feeling of tight clothing, he made the jumpsuits suppress laughter all the way back into the terminals. Frank didn’t suppress, but Hector couldn’t care less. He was warm.
By the time they got back to the docking stations,
the General was gone, and the little stations on the open end of the stations had receded into the ground.
It was darker than the rest of the cavernous space.
Two stations were left open for them to get acquainted. Where two big aluminum blocks stood earlier,
dark padded abstract chairs took their place.
It may have been some kind of velvety fabric.
“Now, sit here in this seat.” said the jumpsuit with a gray mustache.
They both did as instructed.
“Now; you put your hands here-“ he pointed to a ball overarching the chair with grab-space for hands.
“-and when it activates, you’ll know what to do. Just picture what you want it to do.”
They did as they were instructed and quickly found themselves enveloped in the black shiny material.
It was like falling asleep under a lead blanket. Frank wondered when it would accelerate.
Right then he saw everything around him, except for his body. He could move exactly the way he wanted. He floated left and even tried jumping, which simply propelled him upwards, leaving gravity behind.
He could even hear everything loud and clear, despite the hissing noise, which appeared to be a constant. Scale was suddenly relative. Inside the chair, he felt bigger than in regular.
“These two are prototypes made by the resident Greys.”
A glowing orange ball that must have been Hector started to drift far away. The jumpsuit stood by to direct them.
“Don’t go off too far just yet.
When you gain great speed, you won’t be bouncing off walls. You’ll break every bone in your body and possibly be puréed.”
Certainly not a comforting notion.
Oh, ole Schwein’s pussying out.
Indeed, Hector was trying to home in back down to the terminal and stay inside the hangar.
Like a schoolboy on a dare, the cocky part of Frank wanted to blast off into the cavernous labyrinth beyond, so he did. Unfortunately, the rational part of him would not arrive for several minutes, and he got lost down a sixth or seventh hall of behemoth stalagmite pillars.
There was no way to know how to get back;
he’d lost his sense of direction about four turns ago.
He waited there for another few minutes, trying to decide where to go. Then he noticed that the caves appear to be the same size - basically square rooms, engineered with the heaviest kind of steel beams he’d ever seen and encrusted with stalagmites.
He tried pushing against the ceiling, which in places was flat as a board, and apparently made mostly of sheet metal. Two ‘rooms’ down, there was a little light coming in from outside. Frank floated over to it and discovered it wasn’t big enough to get through, but he tried touching the stalagmites around the hole and discovered they were made of some kind of soft foam-like gunk. Taking them apart wasn’t all that hard and soon the hole was big enough to squeeze through.
Outside, it was a searing day in what seemed like it might’ve been Nevada by the looks of the horizon.
Covered in a sheet of sand about foot thick,
the surface of what seemed like a dried-up lake was one big, red-hot frying pan. Absolutely no life lived on it.
A lizard would turn to crispy bacon in seconds.
It might’ve as well have been the surface of another planet. What once was an underwater deposit of natural clay was now a thick, fine, gray sand, permeated with various little stones.
Fortunately for him, he could fly.
Without touching the flat sand at all, he bounced off upwards and flew through the air, the desert wind cooling him from the scathing sun.
The novelty of flying did not wear off at all.
It was like the best dream he’s ever had.
Floating there in inertia and heading west, he came to the realization that he can use the force of his arms to propel himself up higher.
It was late afternoon, judging by the sun hanging low in the sky. West. Home. That was the direction he took.
He wanted to leave. And he could easily build up the speed, but he would also have to make sure to not hit anything on the way, so he’d need to go up higher.
So far he seemed unaffected by the elements.
Flying made him happy.
It was certainly a pleasant feeling, but perhaps it might not be so good to make a break for it right now.
The best thing to do was to return to the base and leave at the opportune moment. Surely he’d pilot one of these things again. It took only about 20 minutes to get back.
On the way he covered the exit with a few peeled-off foamy stalagmites, so he’d find it again on his next attempt to leave.
When he returned, all the stations were docked to their terminals. All except his and another one near the far end of the floor. All the jump-suits were lined up in a line along the middle, like boy scouts, awaiting orders.
Frank touched down to the terminal he flew from and wondered how he’d go about stepping out of it, when he realized he was sitting in the strange seat and could get out of the chair and walk.
Another craft quickly followed as he made towards the middle of the floor to ask what’s going on. The craft glowed maroon and as it silently landed behind Frank, it turned into the General walking and leaving an aluminum block behind to materialize.
General’s footsteps were heavy; they were stomps really, so when he was about two feet away, Frank jerked and turned around, just in time to have a punch laid in his face with the General’s ham-sized fist.
Chapter Thirteen
Concerning Grays
Frank woke up lying on an upholstered table inside a small room. His vision felt partial at best. When his eyelids peeled opened, he recognized the room as the
‘box in the corner’ of the testing hangar.
Everyone stood behind a window in the other room, smoking cigarettes. As soon as Nikos saw that Frank was no longer out cold, he hurried into the room.
Frank’s head hurt severely and he was extremely sensitive to sounds. Someone placed a large beef steak over his eye.
“About time you woke up. That was quite a punch you got there. I’m afraid this is what it’s like around here. Pure war mongering.” said Nikos smiling,
which made Frank somewhat uncomfortable.
“What did you say your last name was?”
“He even knocked the memory out of you. Papadakis.”
“Okay, Papadakis, is this what you guys do for fun?”
“Well, you did piss him off severely.”
It was true. Frank had no illusions about that.
But Nikos’ voice hurt, and when he finally stopped talking and returned to his station to read what to brief them on, Frank finally had a few moments to look around the lab. The long wall to his left was made entirely of thick glass panels, holding off a water tank so large he couldn’t see the far end.
A huge glowing object not unlike that which emerged out of the ocean earlier, floated i
n place inside the enormous tank.
A quick glance over his right shoulder was the cantina, inside which a freakishly tall person was pouring coffee into a cup. Either a basketball player or an alien.
“So there’s an alien walking around?”
“Yes…” sounded Nikos from inside his booth.
“…but that’s Nor. HI NOR!” he said as he waved at Nor down the hallway in the cantina.
Weiss appeared out of nowhere. Somehow his appearance was so unforthcoming that everyone in the room practically had no choice but to ignore him.
Now was no exception, until he opened his mouth.
“How do they talk?”
Though the aliens had mouths, Frank recalled from his encounter with the puddle that used to be in his freezer, they were so minuscule they couldn’t possibly be very well adapted for speech.
In a sudden fit of snottiness, Frank effortlessly put Hector down. “With an american accent?”
“The Greys communicate telepathically.” Nikos said.
“They read minds?” Hector asked.
“Well, kind of.
So long as you don’t mind that they do.”
This sent Frank into a guilt trip back to the beach where the alien died.
Could that being have read Frank’s thoughts?
Wouldn’t it have been pissed?
Then he remembered the after-effects of his ‘close encounter’.
“Are they….radioactive?”
Glancing over at Weiss who was peering at Nor from behind a pillar in the middle of the room,
he whispered to Frank.
“Not like the one, one you had at home. But the four others in the B wing are.”
Nikos snorted and grinned. “The general’s trying to get them to wear lead-lined vests. Would you believe that?Remember that Rosewell thing? Nineteen forty two? Twelve people died because of that one. Three from radiation poisoning, and then nine from abnormal tumors a few years later.”
Nikos was once again being ignored.
Scraping and shuffling of chairs resounded from the kitchen and then Nor was hunched under the tall doorframe to leave the cantina. For the first time his entire head was in the light. Nor was a tall human with alien-like body and facial characteristics.
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