An Alien Affair
by Michael P Calligaro
Setham sat transfixed, staring at the missile barreling down on his borrowed scout ship. As it approached, the alert progressed from a quiet humming to a frenzied clamor for attention. Warning lights began to blink rapidly, but Setham ignored them. He never paid attention to the idiot lights. He knew how to control his ship and always hated it telling him what to do.
He waited right up to the last instant before the emergency autopilot would kick in, then he cut the antigrav and threw the stick to the right. The ship immediately began to drop, and as it picked up speed it banked into an arc. The missile raced overhead, tried to compensate, and rammed itself into the corn field below.
After taking a moment to watch the beautiful explosion and the eruption of fire that followed, Setham laughed. "Stupid missile. What pilot would ever allow himself to crash like that?" He kicked on the rear thrusters and thrust the stick the rest of the way to the right, rolling the ship upside down and continuing in its curving arc. At the precise instant when the primitive jet flew overhead, he flipped back on the antigrav. The grav coils, now pointing up, hit the jet with forces it had never been designed to take. Its wing snapped off.
Despite his pleading, Setham's bosses refused to let him equip the scout with real weapons. He had to make do with more creative methods of engagement. He watched the body of the jet plummet toward the burning field then calmly glanced overhead and saw the same corn rushing up to greet him. Expertly, he rolled the ship back over and thrust out of the dive. Then, to get a better view of the wreckage below, he banked left and came back around for another view. On completing the turn, he cut the rear thrusters and let the antigrav hold the ship in place. He idly flipped off the controls and leaned back to admire his handiwork.
The alert eventually realized that, except for the fact that Setham was still behind the stick, the ship was out of danger. It gave one more angry squeal and shut off. With the alarm went Setham's imaginary vision of the wreckage below. This was replaced by reality--acres and acres of corn, as far as he cared to see. "It's pretty sad when you have to make up the only interesting stuff that ever happens to you," he berated himself.
With a sigh, Setham tilted the ship forward so that he could see his real handiwork below. Despite his complicated maneuvers to avoid non-existent missiles and fighter jets, he had cut a perfect figure eight in the corn below. It took a considerable amount of practice to learn to fly a crop cutter this well, and, much to Setham's chagrin, he had had more than enough of that.
In an attempt to work up some more excitement, he flipped on the night viewers and admired his work in infrared. Though he had been defying his superiors for the last few months, this time he was, as the primitives would have put it, "way out in left field." (No one else was around to laugh at his bad pun, so he just giggled.) His superiors had instructed that he cut a circle 100 of the primitives' "feet" across. Instead he had cut two circles, each 300 feet! And by making them touch, he had formed an infinity symbol. The stupid primitives would spend years trying to figure out what it meant.
Then again, if any of his superiors ever bothered to come up here and check his work they probably would have complimented him on the infinity symbol. They never bothered, though. They were too busy with the really important work. How Setham wanted to be a part of that work. He caressed the disabled controls and pretended to swoop down out of the sky to abduct a primitive. Woosh! He'd dive from 1500 feet to 10 in milliseconds, his perfect piloting skills letting him catch the primitive totally off guard. He'd be the envy of all the other pilots. Woosh.
He paused as the despair crept back in. Of course, if he ever graduated from crop circles, he'd probably just move up to cattle abduction. Kidnapping cute primitive females was a job reserved for the highest ranking of his people. Kidnapping a cow was hardly more difficult than cutting down unsuspecting corn.
Shedding the last of his daydream, Setham decided it was time to head back to the base. In one last show of defiance to an uncaring world, he banked right and pushed hard on the accelerator. Nothing happened. Setham panicked for a moment, wondering if one of the idiot lights had actually said something important. Then, with a sigh of relief, he remembered that he had turned off the controls. He flipped the three position switch back to "Enable" and his stomach dropped out.
"What the..."
With an awful scraping sound, the wing caught something and tore off. Alarm klaxons screamed and the navigation panel next to him burst into flames.
Setham yanked back on the stick, but the ship did not respond. Automatics switched on and put out the fire while the ship rolled wildly to the left, destroying the other wing. Without wings, the scout ship became an unpredictable missile that smashed into the ground and skipped along the corn field, rolling as it went. * * *
When the craft blasted past his parked car, Trooper Wolden of the Iowa State Police spilled his coffee into his lap. "Holy Jesus! What was that?" He yelled into the CB, "Hey Curtis, you out there?"
The CB cracked and sputtered, almost drowning out Curtis' voice. "Yeah boss, what's happenin'?"
"Get some units to Old Country 10 about a mile south of the Highway 15 intersection. I think we just had a plane crash."
"Damn! Okay boss, on my way."
"And Curtis, call in the locals and have them bring some barricades. I think we're going to have to close the road." Wolden turned on his flashers and drove a few hundred feet up the road to where the plane had passed by. It had badly gouged the asphalt and left a trail of destroyed corn on either side. Wolden parked the car but left the lights flashing so that the others would find him. He grabbed a flashlight and followed the destroyed corn to the crash sight. He almost dropped the light when he got there. The plane looked like a twenty foot, silver cigar with two large scars along the sides where something had been torn off. Even assuming that there had been wings were the scars were, the trooper had never seen a plane like this before. Despite the craft's skipping along and finally smashing into the ground, it seemed undamaged but for the lost wings. Wolden had helped clean up after a plane crash or two and knew that anything traveling that fast when it hit should have been reduced to tiny metal fragments.
Two windows adorned the area up front were the cockpit should have been, but the craft had ended up tilted at about a thirty degree angle with its nose in the air. Wolden could not reach the windows to see in. Searching along the sides revealed the outline of a hatch. While there was no apparent handle or knob, he found a small black plate on the main body. Not sure what to do, he pressed on it. A loud alarm blared and the plate glowed a fiery orange. This worried Wolden and he dove aside just in time to see the hatch separate explosively from the craft and land thirty feet away.
Cautiously, he crept to the opening and shined his light in. The inside of the craft was nothing more than dull gray walls surrounding a cramped room. He'd have to climb into the craft to open the doorway to the cockpit.
"Is anyone alive in there?" A faint reply came back, but he could not make it out. A fear of the unknown swept over him and he considered waiting for the others to arrive rather than brave the strange craft alone. But his worry for the pilot overrode his fear.
The inside of the craft was cylindrical, as would be expected, and only about six feet tall. Wolden was able to steady himself by palming the walls near the ceiling as he climbed up to the cockpit. This door had a latch, but it would not budge. Wolden put all two hundred and fifty pounds of himself into it and managed to force the door open. Despite the multiple strange aspects of the plane, Wolden was not ready for his first view of the pilot.
It was mostly humanlike, with two legs and arms and five fingers on each hand. But its skin was extremely pale and the fingers were too long and slender to be human. The creature slowly turned its oversized head and stared at Wolden with black, softball-sized eyes. It blinked once then spoke in perfect, unaccented English.
"A word of advice, primitive. If you ever decide to play with the controls, make sure the switch is set to 'disable' and not 'delayed entry.'" It then closed its eyes and leaned back against the headrest.
Though the language was his own, Wolden did not understand what the creature had said. However, he didn't much think that mattered; the more important thing was that he was staring at an alien from outer space. He knew it had to be one, as it looked just like the drawings of aliens in the Enquirer. He fumbled about with attempts to talk to it, but it was either unconscious, or ignoring him.
Eventually, he heard a call. "Hey boss, you in there?"
"Yeah, Curtis. I think you'd better take a look at this."
Curtis stuck his head through the doorway saying, "Jesus, boss, what is this..." He stopped mid-sentence when he saw the pilot. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked.
"I think so. Curtis, we're standing in a UFO."
Curtis glanced around and muttered, "Damn..." Then he focused again on the alien. "Is it alive?"
"It talked to me when I first got here, but it's been silent since then. I checked its neck for a pulse and felt something though. Did you call in ambulances?"
Curtis nodded without taking his eyes off the alien. "You mean you touched it?"
Wolden just nodded back. * * *
A reporter and cameraman arrived with the ambulances. The local police did a decent job of keeping them behind the barricades, but the reporter did not make their job at all easy. She had her cameraman zoom in on one young officer's face and started asking pointed questions about the public's right to know and other constitutional guarantees that assured that she should be allowed to roam around and get in the way. It looked like things were going to become ugly if she didn't get a statement soon. So they called Wolden out to deal with her.
He took his time moving to the media scene. His official excuse was that he needed to oversee the safe transfer of the alien to an ambulance, but his real reason was that he hated talking to the media. By the time he arrived, the TV reporter had been joined by a few shady looking guys with pens and pads of paper. Wolden hated dealing with the press even more than the TV guys. At least on video they couldn't misquote him. All of the reporters swarmed about like sharks looking for a kill. They pushed and shoved each other trying to get a view of the paramedics taking a gurney from the field and loading it onto an ambulance. Wolden wondered if people like this just followed ambulances around all night hoping to find something terrible to report. He shook his head as he walked up to address them. "Ladies and gentlemen. I am Trooper Tom Wolden and I was first on the scene here."
All the reporters began yelling questions at once. The TV one was particularly aggressive and shoved her way to the font. "Officer, what was the cause of the explosion we heard earlier tonight?" She stuck the microphone in his face.
"A small aircraft crashed here, but fortunately did not hit anything but corn." He put on his best smile. "Everything is fine."
"How many people were killed?"
"The craft contained only a pilot, who is alive but injured. That is who we just sent off to the hospital." He pointed over his shoulder at the retreating ambulance.
The reporter immediately came back with, "Do you know why the plane crashed?"
"Not at this time. We'll let you know more as we learn more."
One of the newspaper types in the back yelled out, "Officer Wolden, isn't it true that the craft you found was actually piloted by an alien from outer space and that what you are keeping us from seeing back there in the corn is a UFO?"
Wolden should have known better. He should have realized the speaker was not a reporter, but a writer for the National Enquirer. If only the question would have been whether Elvis had been flying the ship. Wolden would have known to ignore that. He tried to hide his surprise, but failed miserably. "No, not at all," he stammered.
This didn't fool a single person within earshot. An amazed silence fell over the crowd and it lasted for a full three seconds. The lady in front recovered first. "Are you saying that you have a flying saucer back there?"
Wolden sighed and nodded. "The craft we found is made out of some material I have never seen before. And the pilot looks . . . weird. That's all I can tell you right now." To show that he meant it, he spun around and marched away.* * *
"Sheriff, I think he's coming around!"
Setham opened his eyes to see some ugly primitive leaning over him. Well, at least he wasn't dead. His arms and legs were bound to a table, but the antiseptically clean room did not look much like one of the primitives' torture...er, interrogation chambers. This must be a hospital.
The first primitive stepped back and another, presumably "Sheriff," leaned over him. "I wonder if he can understand me," the primitive said.
"Of course I can," Setham answered in primitive English, "what do you take me for, a moron?"
Sheriff frowned. "Then you'll have no trouble answering question or two. Who are you? Where did you came from? And what were you doing smashing up our corn fields?"
"That's three questions, stupid. Can't you boys even count?"* * *
Furious with himself for letting slip the information about the UFO, Trooper Wolden cleared up a few things at the scene and drove to the hospital. Perhaps the alien would come to and give them some useful information. It was being held in an operating room to keep it out of sight of hospital staff and patients. Wolden stepped in to find Sheriff Robinson, his face a bright shade of red, pacing furiously. The local sheriff was well known for his temper and Wolden had hoped that he would stay in bed when the call went out. This was just not going to be Wolden's night. The rest of the people in the room, mostly deputies, looked terribly uncomfortable.
The sheriff yelled, "That's tough talk from such a scrawny little wimp."
"Oh?" the alien replied. "This coming from the nimrod who feels he needs to bind both my arms and my legs before he can call me names? I'll bet you wouldn't be so brave if I could actually move."
"Why you..." the Sheriff, with death in his eyes, charged at the table.
"Sheriff! Stand still!" Wolden barked.
Robinson paused in his tracks, gave one last glare to the alien, and turned to face the state trooper.
"Who are you to be giving me orders?" the Sheriff growled.
"Why don't you tell me what's going on here?"
It was arguable that Wolden had no jurisdiction here in the Sheriff's town, but Robinson knew the trooper could make his life difficult. He calmed down a bit. "Speaking with the alien has been . . . trying."
"That's only because you're a thick skulled Neanderthal," the alien interjected.
The Sheriff stiffened. Wolden ignored the remark and replied to Robinson. "I see. Perhaps you could wait outside and let me have a try at it."
"It?!" the alien yelled. "Who are you calling an it? I'm a 'he' and don't you forget it!"
Robinson's face cracked into a sadistic smile. "Be my guest, Mr. State Trooper Man." He stormed out, taking his deputies with him.
Wolden turned to the alien. "Now you listen up. You might be able to get away with talking to the Sheriff like that, but you'd better not try it with me. If you don't answer me I'll let the chief surgeon do that autopsy he's been bugging me about. Do I make myself clear?"* * *
The inquisitor towered over Setham's quivering form. All the early torture chambers he had seen on the vid had been damp, dirty places. The thought that they'd use a hospital, with all its pain-inducing implements, to get him to talk sent shivers down his spine. Staring down at him with his beady little eyes, the inquisitor frowned and yelled, "Answer the questions, punk!"
A strange calm came over Setham. He'd never talk, even if the primitive reduced him to a bloody pulp. However much he hated his job, he owed this to his people. "Do your worst, you sadist! You'll never get anything out of me."
The evil man picked up clamp and closed it slowly around the base of Setham's pinky finger. It clicked once and Setham had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. "That was one click," the inquisitor intoned. "This clamp has four more to go. Now tell me where you're from!"
"Where I'm from? Just up the road."
Click. Setham bit harder. "No, not where you're staying, where are you originally from? What planet?"
"That's the wrong question, you stupid primitive."* * *
Wolden sat in a chair on the other end of the room, trying to make sense of the situation. He was asking his questions calmly enough, but the alien had been screaming answers and gasping as if he was being beaten. This last answer made little sense, but it seemed like it actually said a lot. "I don't understand. What do you mean it's the wrong question?"
The alien gasped again and his right hand started shaking. "Where," he said through baited breaths, "is not right."
"Hey, are you all right?" Wolden asked, his voice full of concern. "You look like you're in some sort of pain."* * *
The daydream torture session burst like a bubble. Setham just couldn't work that last question into it. He tried to make it sarcastic, but the concern was unmaskable. Damn primitives, they wouldn't even make the questioning interesting. He relaxed and looked over at the real questioner. He was too tall and his eyes were too small, but he seemed like an okay sort of guy, for a primitive. "Okay, untie me and I'll answer your questions."
"I do not think that would be wise."
He looked back pleadingly. "Look Jack, I'm dying. I've already caught any number of diseases from you. The least you can do is let me go comfortably."
The primitive considered for a moment then shrugged. He drew his gun, pointed it at the Setham's head and unbuckled one hand. Then he stepped back and kept the gun leveled at him.
Setham unbuckled his other hand, then sat up slowly while rubbing his frail wrists. He decided the primitive would probably be more comfortable if he left his legs buckled up. "Thanks. My name is Setham."
True to Setham's thoughts, the primitive put his gun away. "Nice to meet you Setham. I am Trooper Tom Wolden. Why did you crash and what were you doing in the field?"
Setham sighed. "My life's kinda pointless, you know? And it's really boring. So I sorta daydream a lot. I thought I had turned off the controls, but instead I had set them to remember everything I did. Then after playing with them for a while, I turned them back on so I could head to the base and kaboom."
"Where is your base?"
Setham looked at him tiredly. "You know I can't tell you that."
Wolden started pacing. "Then what were you doing before you crashed?"
Setham tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but failed miserably. "Why, my work is of utmost importance to the cause! I was cutting crop circles! You'll see them tomorrow morning."
The sarcasm was not lost on the trooper. "Lots of us have wondered why you do that."
"Yeah, me too, brainiac. But that's the reason."
He frowned. "What's the reason? So we wonder about it?" He paused for a moment then smiled. "Ah, it's a diversionary tactic. We used those all the time when I was in the military. That makes much more sense then any of the wild theories I've read."
"Hey, you're not as dumb as you look."* * *
A huge, black eighteen wheeler pulled up to the barricade. An officer walked up to the cab and the driver handed down a cellular phone. Confused, the officer put the phone to his ear then quickly stood up straight. He talked on the phone for a minute then handed it back up to the driver. He then motioned for the barricade to be moved aside and the truck drove through. When the barricade was replaced the reporters started asking what was going on and why couldn't they go see the UFO. The officer ignored them and stared after the truck.* * *
"Listen, I'm no genius. I understand and freely admit that. Yes, I read the Enquirer. It's entertaining. But do you have to keep harping on me? I'm trying to be patient with you here."
The alien snorted derisively.
Wolden took a deep breath and tried again. "Why is 'where are you from' the wrong question?"
Setham, obviously bored, said "First word's wrong. Try another."
Wolden racked his brain trying to make sense of the cryptic alien. The first word was wrong, but what else could you put in that sentence and still have it work? "Why are you from" made no sense. Neither did "how are you from." "Who are you from" didn't sound right either. Suddenly it came to him. He almost said it, then stopped. Setham was just going to laugh again. Oh well.
"When are you from?"
The alien blinked. "Ah, a glimmer of intelligence from the Cro-Magnon. When do you think I'm from?"
"Wait a minute. You mean you're from another time, not another planet?" Setham gave him a tired look. "Okay, okay, you already confirmed that." He thought for a moment. "Well, you're obviously from the future. But why are you here? It can't just be to cut crop circles and make us wonder about it."
"Well, what does your National Enquirer say we're doing?"
"It says you're breeding with us."
Setham laughed. "Right, and it also says that we're only about five feet tall, are pale, and have large bald heads with huge eyes."
"But you are about five feet tall, pale, and have a large bald head with huge eyes."
Setham looked at him meaningfully.
Wolden sat down. "Why?" he croaked.
"Oh, I don't know Jack. What would happen if your medicine got so good that you wiped out all sickness on the planet?" Wolden opened his mouth but the alien cut him off. "Don't answer that, you don't have the mental prowess to guess. What would happen is after generations of disuse, your immune systems would no longer function adequately." Wolden shrugged. "Trust me. Now, what would then happen if a new fatal virus showed up from space and your medicine couldn't stop it?"
This, Wolden could understand. "Everyone would die?"
"Like I said, not bad for a Cro-Magnon."* * *
The truck pulled to a stop right next to the crash sight. Men carrying weird devices jumped out of the trailer and immediately spread out into the surrounding fields. Curtis asked what this was all about and the driver handed him the phone. He listened to his captain tell him to do whatever these people instructed, shrugged and handed the phone back. "So, what can I do for you folks?" He tried not to look into the driver's huge eyes.* * *
"But how can you breed with us? A dog can't breed with a cat and they're both from the same planet at the same time. You're nothing at all like us."
Setham moved his eyes in what would be a very human expression, if he had eyebrows to raise. "Actually, you'd be surprised how similar we are."
Though Wolden had not been terribly strong in science, he had read enough science fiction to know the odds of that being true. "No way. I just can't believe that a creature that evolved on a different planet could be even remotely compatible with a creature that evolved here."
"Ah, I see. You think that some time in the future we'll come from another planet and visit the earth, then we'll come back in time."
Wolden nodded.
"Well, only the latter part is true."
Suddenly some of the things Setham had said made sense. He had referred to him as 'primitive' and 'Cro-Magnon' multiple times. "Are you trying to tell me that. . ."
"What I'm trying to tell you," Setham interrupted, "is that I'm not an alien. I'm a descendent."* * *
Wolden was still wrestling with the implications of Setham's last statement when Curtis shuffled in with a tall blond man in his wake. The man nodded to Setham then turned to the officer. Wolden gasped when he noticed that the man's eyes, while not as large as Setham's, were too big for a human.
Curtis closed the door behind the semi-alien. "Boss, I talked to the Captain. He's instructed us to give our complete cooperation to these folks."
Wolden managed to tear his gaze away from the newcomer and address Curtis. "Thanks. Wait outside, okay?"
Curtis reluctantly nodded and left.
"Officer Wolden, it is nice to meet you. My name is Hope." The alien's voice boomed out like that of a Norse God.
"Hope?" Wolden asked.
"Yes, my breeders were romantics. But the name is fitting. Let me tell you why." He paused and glanced at Setham. "What has my friend told you so far?"
Wolden glanced at Setham and caught his pleading stare. He considered for a moment then shrugged mentally. "Nothing really. But I've just inferred a few things from your presence."
Hope nodded. "Yes, we have been breeding with your people. I was the first experiment that survived. Let me tell you why it's necessary."
He related the story Wolden already knew. They were humans from the future with no immune systems. All of their population was being wiped out by a new virus and they had come back in time hoping to reintroduce immune systems to their people. Wolden spent most of the story wondering why he had covered for Setham. All he could come up with was that he didn't like getting in hot water and didn't like putting others in it either.
"Do you understand why I'm telling you all this?"
Wolden's attention snapped back to the blond alien. "No, why is that?"
"Our history shows that people of this time believed in UFO's and made numerous sightings, but there was never any official statement as to their existence."
Suddenly Wolden got it. "And I just told a bunch of reporters that we found one."
Hope nodded.
"Well, I'd like to help you folks, but how am I going to explain all that destroyed corn to the reporters?"
Now Hope shrugged. "It was dark and you kept them behind barricades. I'm sure none saw the crash sight. And there won't be any destroyed corn by the time the sun comes up."
Wolden arched his eyebrows. "That, I'd like to see."* * *
Just as the sun poked its head over the corn, the truck pulled up to the barricade. Officer Wolden hopped out of the passenger side and waved the barricade aside. The reporters crowded around him asking questions.
"Everyone, I have an announcement. Last night I had to lie to you. There was no UFO, it was a . . . a weather balloon."
"What?!" cried the reporters. "A weather balloon? You've got to be kidding!"
"Sorry, no, I'm not kidding."
"Then why all the secrecy? And what was that big truck?"
Wolden gave her his best "what are you, stupid?" look and said, "It was an experimental weather balloon. The agency that lost it required that we keep quiet about it until after they were able to get it away. I can not tell you anything more."
"But. . ."
Wolden cut her off. "Please, did you really believe it was a UFO? What have you been reading? Next you'll tell me Elvis was flying it."
Later in the day, a media helicopter flew over and sent down footage of an unblemished corn field. There were no signs of a four mile scar. There weren't even any strange crop circles.* * *
Hope glanced back into the cab, where Setham sat popping antibiotics. "What was the cause of your crash?"
Setham put on a very convincing frown. "I'm not sure. It all happened so fast. I believe it was some sort of controller malfunction."
Hope nodded. "The scout craft are getting old. We'll have to have the remaining ones checked over." He glanced back again and smiled. "When we came looking for you we got a good look at your work. I liked the infinity symbol. Very clever. Too bad we had to cover it over to avoid suspicion."
Setham sighed. "No problem, sir. I can always cut another one."
"No, I don't think so. We've wasted your talents on crop circles for too long. Report to cattle abduction when we get back."The End
Copyright Michael P. Calligaro
All Rights Reserved
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