The Passage

by Nancy Lieder

  Helicopter blades can be heard pulsing as the chopper looks down through

  whispy clouds at a broad wheat field, golden in color. As the clouds part the

  crop circle laid into the wheat is exposed. The wheat has been bent at the

  nodes, not broken. Some grasshoppers are hopping across the bent wheat, trying

  to avoid the approach of the noisy chopper.

  A crop circle investigator is sitting next to the pilot of a helicopter. The

  investigator has a video camera up to his face, but has pulled this away from

  his face in order to speak. He has a distinct British clip. Through the

  chopper window the wisps of clouds are still clearing in the early morning

  light. The investigator says,

  What are they trying to tell us?

  The pilot says something almost unintelligible, given the background noise of

  the chopper, and the investigator responds.

  Yes, yes, overnight. . . There’s not a foot print down

  there. We’re the first here. . . This is huge!

  10

  _______________________________

  Red and Martha are sitting on the porch swing just after dusk. It is summer

  and the night is filled with the thrumming sound of singing insects. Red has

  his elbow on the armrest and is holding a can of beer, one foot resting on the

  knee of his other leg. Martha is adjusting her hairpins, and sighs by way of

  saying that at last the end of day has arrived and she can rest as she drops

  her hands into her lap and looks out on the view. Martha points to the horizon

  at her left, at a Half Moon rising.

  Dad, has the Moon ever come up over there? It’s always

  more . . over there . .

  Martha gestures toward the right, more centered in the view from the porch

  swing. Red says,

  Been that way lately . . but not in all my years

  here, no. Damned peculiar.

  Big Tom’s muffled voice comes from within the house, but we can barely hear

  what he is saying.

  . . bath night, kids . .

  Martha springs up and dashes off, with Red not able to catch her with his free

  hand as he gropes to catch her arm.

  Rest awhile. Martha!

  Martha throws a comment over her shoulder on her way into the house.

  He always forgets their ears . .

  Red smiles affectionately at the backside of his hard-working daughter, as

  though he should have known better than to stop her. His gaze returns to the

  rising moon while his face gets somber.

  What’s chasing you lately?

  Red sighs, as though to say that there is something amiss, but he doesn’t know

  exactly what it is.

  11

  -Theories-

  Zack Maya, the editor of the Daily News, moves slowly around his crowded

  office. His baggy pants, wrinkled around the seat and sagging unevenly below

  the knee announcing without fanfare the editor's priorities. The Daily is

  successful, but the margin, as with all products that depend upon the fickle

  public, required a nervous eye. Maya found he had to be a politician more

  often than a reporter, and where this did not set well with his perfunctory

  personality, he had learned to accept this as a fact of life. Some news came

  with a price, when printed.

  Maya eases into his worn leather chair, flipping the pages of a story laid on

  his chair seat with barely time enough to grasp their meaning. Glancing up

  through his bifocals at Danny, who has been watching from his desk and has

  come to lean in the doorway, the editor is brief and to the point. Maya points

  a finger at Danny.

  This won't fly. I won’t print the story. He has no

  proof! It’s just a crazy idea. Can I remind you that

  you write for a conservative newspaper? You could

  start a panic with this stuff.

  Danny frowns and slips into a wooden chair in front of the editor’s desk - the

  defendant's chair, not meant to be comfortable. Danny is listening but we can

  see he's not buying this explanation. Maya continues,

  Who's going to pay the merchants for damages, for the

  riot that this might cause?

  Danny protests.

  It’s a great article. The guy impressed me, and he had

  plenty of sources. We’ve done documentaries before,

  asteroids slinging by and all. I, I didn’t think this

  was any different.

  Maya just shakes his head, looking unblinkingly across the desk at Danny,

  peering up over his bifocals.

  That was maybe, this isn't saying maybe. I can’t print

  this.

  Maya tosses the story across his desk to Danny, settling back into his chair.

  You're not sitting in my chair, Danny, and I'm telling

  you, this won't fly.

  Danny scoops up the story, his mouth opening and closing as he processes and

  rejects arguments, blinks twice, and slowly rises and walks out the door

  without a comment. Outside the editor's office he stops and is lost in

  thought, his face smooth, showing no emotion. Finally, under his breath.

  12

  Bull shit.

  Danny grabs his jacket and strides out of the office.

  _______________________________

  The wooded campus at Brandon University backs up into the foothills of the

  Appalachian Mountains, crisscrossed with trails worn smooth by the pounding

  feet of jogging students and faculty. For those familiar with the maze, the

  trails led to treasures in the woods known to few. Isaac is fishing with his

  cap down, back against a tree along the river. Isaac casts a fishing line when

  a phone rings. He reaches into his fishing bag, pulls out a phone and

  answers.

  Danny is leaning against the edge of his desk, phone in hand.

  Yes Professor Isaac, this is Danny at the paper. ..

  Well, I want to do the story but my editor says it’s

  crackpot stuff and The Daily is a newspaper of

  integrity .. But I know we’ve done stuff like this

  before. Do you happen to know why he won't publish the

  story? .. I know the place. I’ll be right there.

  _______________________________

  Isaac is fishing with his cap down, back against a tree along the

  river. When Danny arrives, in jeans, he is breathing heavily from the climb.

  He fishes a notebook out of an inside pocket within his lightweight jacket,

  and flips the pages, having tucked a pencil stub momentarily behind his right

  ear. During their conversation, Danny is alternating between believing what

  Isaac is saying and wanting to deny as to take it seriously is to be

  frightened, so he is coming up with plausible explanations for what Isaac is

  laying out. Isaac is familiar with this type of reaction and counters this by

  just laying out the facts until they are overwhelming.

  Danny . . a friend of mine at a large observatory has

  been tracking an incoming object, but has been told to

  keep mum about it if he knows what's good for him.

  Says this has been going on for over a decade, what's

  reported to be Planet X for many years. It comes

  through the Solar System every 3,600 years or so and

  pretty well tears up the Earth. Well, that's the

  rogue planet I was telling you about. It’s real! It’s

  inbound! And none of us is ready for it, that's fo
r

  damn sure. And that's precisely why the government

  doesn't want the public to know about it. They're not

  ready for it either.

  13

  Danny had been expecting this. The editor rejected his story too quickly,

  barely reading it.

  Who’s asking him to keep quiet and why?

  Isaac lifts his pole and flips the line out into the shallows again before

  answering. Danny is relieved to be having a discussion over the issues, but is

  nonetheless taking this all in but not yet willing to buy it. Isaac says,

  The government doesn't want the public to know about

  it. They're not ready for it, and they don’t know

  what to tell people. So they lean on people to keep it

  quiet. Observatories don’t come cheap, they’re built

  by big money. Universities get government grants. And

  the government can always come in and say it’s a

  national security issue.

  Danny is confused. Why is a passing planet special?

  National security, like, don’t cause panic? They

  didn’t do that for the Near Earth Asteroid scares,

  they were all over the news, TV and everything. How is

  this different?

  Isaac explains - those on top fear losing the upper hand.

  These asteroids either wipe life out or pass by, black

  or white, but this monster passes by and causes a pole

  shift, the globe survives, but civilization is pretty

  much wiped out, crashes. That’s what happened during

  the time of Moses. Egypt lost their slaves, they

  walked away, and Egypt was in chaos for centuries.

  This is what they’re really worried about. They’re

  worried about the working man questioning their

  masters, gaining the upper hand. They’re worried about

  mob rule.

  Danny is beginning to connect the dots.

  They think it’s going to happen? This thing is coming?

  For sure, this is for sure? Boy, that explains Maya

  jumping on me. It was like somebody had leaned on him,

  like he knew more about it than he was telling me.

  It’s not just a theory, says Isaac.

  My friend says they were looking for it, they found it

  and now they're tracking it.

  An astonished Danny says,

  They found it? They found it? Where’d they find it?

  Isaac gives the long suppressed history, the discovery of Planet X in 1983.

  14

  In 1983, they were sending up infrared cameras above

  the clouds, in those days they didn’t have the Hubble,

  and were looking toward Orion because astronomers have

  known there’s something out there, something pulling

  comets and planets in that direction, some

  gravitational force, and by gum, they found it. Scared

  the heck out of them, and it hit the papers before

  they could squelch it. Was in the Washington Post,

  front page, in 1983.

  But Danny is still missing the point.

  Damn! But I don’t understand why mob violence will

  ensue. I mean, so this thing passes. Why would

  civilizations crash?

  Isaac points to the extent of devastation that accompanies a pole shift.

  It doesn’t just pass. Take a look at mountain

  building, fresh mountains like the Rockies or the

  Himalayas. If all we’re having is a few quakes now and

  then, what would drive those mountains thousands of

  feet in the air? What force would overcome the

  resistance?

  Isaac glances sideways at Danny, gauging his skepticism to be slight. Like

  most young people, he is loath to let go of his idealism, not believing the

  government would lie to the people. Isaac is familiar with this resistance

  and these arguments, and takes them in stride. Danny says,

  Uh, well quakes drop buildings, and ..

  Isaac quickly interrupts,

  That’s from the shaking.

  Isaac is pondering a mountain building scene, where flat rock snaps and starts

  to angle upward at a 45 degree angle, climbing over foothills nearby, climbing

  up into the sky to the height of a Mt Everest. He says,

  I’m talking about picking up a mountain and driving it

  up, up, thousands of feet. Whole mountain ranges, up.

  And look at the issue of Ice Ages and wandering poles!

  We just don’t get it, we don’t get it! You know the

  last Ice Age had ice over France, 11,000 years ago or

  so, but at the same time the grasslands of Siberia

  were warm and lush! Now, what did the Sun do there,

  blink on for Siberia, and off for France?

  Isaac pulls his line in and slings it back out again, both men quiet for a

  moment. He says,

  It's going to be a pretty rough ride, son.

  15

  Isaac is envisioning a mammoth is standing in grasslands, snow and howling

  winds descending. The mammoth is backing away from the direction of the winds,

  trunk high as though trying to defend itself, eyes crazed with fear at the

  maelstrom descending. The end of the trunk has grass with buttercups in it, as

  though this were a sudden event, mid-munch for the mammoth.

  Mammoths were found flash frozen in Siberia, been

  frozen like that for thousands of years, with

  buttercups in their stomach. Buttercups, where there

  isn't a blade of grass for hundreds of miles, now.

  The Earth turned under them, son, and moved them to a

  polar zone. They weren't the only species to go

  extinct for no obvious reason. They've been dozens.

  Playing the role of protester, Danny is still trying to lay out arguments.

  Danny’s eyes are shifting from side to side as he rapidly searches for

  rational explanations. Danny is chewing his lower lip slightly but is clearly

  running out of arguments. Finally, he says, weakly.

  Well, the ice formed over France because, uh, um ..

  Isaac keeps up the pressure.

  Makes no sense! Potsdam University documented that the

  axis of the world shifted, pulling Germany South,

  during the Jewish Exodus. The crust moved. The crust

  moved! Pull that back and you’ve got Greenland over

  where the N Pole is now. Got it? The crust moves, and

  during that last Ice Age, France was the N Pole,

  that’s why it was frozen! We don’t have wandering

  poles, we’ve got a wandering crust.

  Isaac flips his line out into the river again, easing back against the tree

  trunk, knowing the argument has been won. Danny, now almost relaxed as he

  realizes he has lost the argument, is giving in, but is reluctant to admit

  defeat to someone in his father's generation. He says,

  Is that why the weather's gone nuts and the compasses

  don't ever seem to work right anymore?

  Isaac is still not done laying out his evidence, and has no intention of

  laying off.

  And then there's the tidal waves, whale bones found on

  hills 400-500 feet above sea level in Ontario. In

  Sicily there's bone piles in the rock crevices that

  include just about every animal in Europe and Africa,

  all broken into bits as though the waves carried them

  there and smashed them into bits against the rocks.

  Danny protests. Surely there is another explanation for tidal wav
es in our

  past.

  16

  So maybe a meteor fell, like what killed the

  dinosaurs, fell in the ocean and caused a giant tidal

  wave.

  But Isaac has more.

  Chief Mountain in Montana took an 8 mile trip over the

  plains, and the Alps have moved hundreds of miles

  overland. We're talking about slabs of rock thousand

  of feet thick. What force is moving those mountains?

  Danny tries proferring the standard explanation for massive geological changes

  in the Earth's past.

  Oh, that happened millions of years ago.

  But as with all the other protestations, Isaac has the trump card.

  Niagra Falls is running in a channel that's less than

  4,000 years old, son, and several lakes on the West

  Coast have existed for only about 3,500 years. Sound

  familiar? Scientists have known for some time that

  the ocean level dropped 20 feet world wide,

  simultaneously, guess when - 3,000-4,000 years ago.

  Finally, Danny submits.

  Holy cow! This is big! Why wouldn’t they let this out?

  They warn people about floods, about hurricanes, stock

  up for the storm, and all. How is this any different?

  Having reached the end of the game, the contest between generations put aside,

  Isaac admits his own weakness, shows his softer side to Danny, as the argument

  is dropped and has become a discussion. He says,

  Put yourself in the shoes of the people in charge,

  Danny, and look at the list of your worries. One,

  there’s no way after the crust moves and all the

  cities are dust to house and feed the citizens. So

  they get into thinking about saving a select few, and

  the few always includes them, of course. They’ve built

  bunkers, you can be sure, and stocked them well, and

  the heck with the taxpayer. This is why that story

  gets resisted. You can believe they’ve got their

  guards at the newspapers watching for it. Gets shot