ALIEN ABDUCTION

The farmer stood in the barnyard with eyes agog and mouth agape. He watched the strange craft hovering over the cow pasture approximately fifty feet in the air and a mere thirty yards away. It looked like a stereotypical flying saucer. It was round and flat like a Frisbee with a dome on top and a smaller dome protruding from the bottom. It emitted a low hum and a searchlight scanned the ground beneath it. After locating a suitable landing site amid the clumps of long grass and cow patties, four metallic legs telescoped from the underside of the craft as it descended. The farmer stood transfixed by the scene unfolding before him. As if in response to some bizarre Pavlovian stimuli his anus constricted, searing pain pulsed behind his eyes, and his nose began to bleed.

As the blood trickled out of his right nostril and over his lips, long-suppressed memories flooded his mind and he began to cry. Memories of bright lights, bug-eyed bulbous-headed demons, and physical pain flashed through his mind like a slide show from a holiday in Hell. All movements in his memories were herky-jerky, as if a strobe light were constantly flashing while monsters from another world kidnapped and tortured him, stealing his memories, his innocence, and all sense of security and well-being. How he hated those bastards.

As the memories flooded his mind like toxic slurry, the farmer realized these monsters had been abusing him his entire life. Sometimes they found him outside like tonight. Sometimes he felt their presence as he walked along a crowded city sidewalk as if they were watching him, monitoring his life. Most often they appeared in his bedroom in the dead of night as nothing more than shadows. They appeared irregularly but they never completely left him alone. They always found him despite his frequent moves. He even lived abroad for a time but they still tracked him down. Of course, if they were from outer space then changing continents wouldn’t constitute much of a ruse.

Typically they came to him at night while he was sleeping. He would awaken suddenly, aware of a presence in his room, paralyzed, but fully aware of his tormenters’s presence. They usually arrived in pairs. As they leaned over him their huge black eyes bored into him as if reading his mind. When they conferred he could hear them speaking despite their lips not moving. Actually they didn’t have lips. They had tiny slits for mouths but those slits never moved. Normally he struggled mightily, resisting the abductors with every ounce of energy he possessed. Sometimes he just wept and prayed for death.

As terrifying as the impromptu visitations were, they paled in comparison to the physical torture he endured from his oppressors. They poked, prodded, and probed every orifice, drilled into his brain, put stinging drops into his eyes, and generally folded, spooled, and mutilated his entire body. They never told him why they were doing this to him. They never even addressed him directly. They regarded him as a specimen, a lower life form.

Afterwards he never remembered being visited. Either they wiped his memory clean or he suppressed the horrors of being treated like a lab rat. The memories were stored deep in his subconscious like thousands of raving lunatics in the hold of a ship, hidden away but not disposed of.

These abductions were probably at the root of his inability to sustain a relationship or to hold a job. The subservience he exhibited when anyone asserted themselves, the feeling of being constantly scrutinized, the low self-esteem, the feeling of dread that overwhelmed him without warning -- all of his inner demons could be attributed to these demons from outer space. Why? Why did they torment him? Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

*

“The crew has located the test subject and have landed, sir,” the Communications Officer reported to the General in charge of the Project.

“Excellent,” the General replied. “Tell them to acquire the target and proceed with the standard examination protocol.”

“Yes sir,” replied the Communications Officer.

After transmitting the orders to the mission crew, obtaining confirmation that the subject had been secured, and the crew was proceeding with the experiments, the Communications Officer removed his headset, stretched, and went for coffee. The General was also getting coffee and the Communications Officer tentatively approached him.

“Can I ask you a question sir?” the Communications Officer asked the General.

“Sure son. Go ahead.”

“What’s the purpose of these experiments? Why all of the physical examinations and the clandestine approach?”

“Well son, let me tell ya,” the General drawled. “We’ve been entrusted with a sacred task. That task is to ensure the survival of the human race and, just as importantly, to ensure that the United States remains the preeminent force in the world so that the evils of Communism don’t spread like kudzu and overwhelm the freedom loving people of the world. As for the clandestine approach, we must maintain absolute secrecy so the commies or some other group of godless heathens don’t get a hold of this technology. If the commies had the ability to travel to the future then it would be game over. Those bastards would enslave the entire human race and we’d all be eating borscht morning, noon, and night.”

“But why the medical experiments? They seem a little barbaric. What do we hope to learn from these experiments? Or are we studying the psychological effects on the subjects of being abducted and experimented upon?”

“We’re not concerned about the psyches of the test subjects,” the General answered. “We may eventually add psychological criteria to the battery of tests performed. We may even look for ways to alleviate the mental stress of the testing. We do try to wipe out memories of the testing by hypnotizing the subjects before we take ‘em home. That seems to work pretty well, at least in the short term. To be honest we’re just not too worried about the psychological effects of the testing. It’s a necessary evil in order to ensure the well being of the human race. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Besides, what’s a little pokin’ and proddin’ in the grand scheme of things?”

“What about the costumes? Why dress up the crew to look like monsters?”

“That was my idea,” laughed the General. “It’s a backup plan in case the test subjects start remembering too much. If they start blabbing about what’s happened to them people are going to doubt them anyway, but when they start describing the bug-eyed, bigheaded, telepathic spacemen performing the experiments then no one in their right mind will believe them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the thought of scaring people half to death and causing them physical pain, but, like I said before, it’s a necessary evil in order to ensure the survival of the human race.”

“No offense sir, but I still don’t see how kidnapping and torturing innocent civilians is ensuring the survival of the human race,” said the Communications Officer.

“We’ve done a terrible thing son,” the General began. “When we exploded the first atomic bomb we signed the death warrant of the human race. No matter how carefully the secret is guarded or how responsible humanity is with this awesome power, eventually it will destroy the world. Our experiments are performed in order to monitor radiation levels as well as any genetic abnormalities caused by past as well as future detonations of atomic weapons. We select test subjects at random from all over the world and we test them at various stages of their lives. Once we select them we implant a tracking device so that we can find them and test them when necessary.”

“But if we can travel through time and change the course of future events why don’t we go back in time and make sure the secret of the atom bomb was never discovered?” asked the Communications Officer.

“Because we can’t travel back in time,” said the General. “The past is past. It’s done. It’s etched in stone. You can’t unring the bell. The future, however, is malleable. We can shape it, change it, correct it. Quantum physics tells us that there are an infinite number of dimensions and consequently an infinite number of possible realities. Think of time as a flowing river. You’ve got a canoe that represents our reality. There are several channels in the river that the canoe can flow through. These channels represent possible futures. We can give that canoe a nudge in a particular direction in order to make sure it goes into the best channel possible. Of course, it took us awhile to figure this out. We got the technology from the Roswell crash. That was either a real lucky break for us or a gift from God. If the Russians got their hands on the technology we were able to salvage from those UFOs then we’d be in a world of hurt. I just wish we’d been able to figure out the time travel technology before the Commies got the bomb. Oh well, so long as we’re the only ones with the capability to control the future then we’ll be alright.”

“Who determines the best channel possible?” asked the Communications Officer. “I mean, how do we know which future reality is really best for the human race? I’m not trying to be difficult or insubordinate but how do we know that we’re doing the right thing when we nudge future events in a certain direction?”

The General looked the Communications Officer up and down and considered the questions he had raised. “Future policy is determined by a committee of the finest officers, scientists, and, ironically enough, historians the United States has to offer. The President is the ultimate authority when it’s time to make a decision but he usually relies on the recommendations of the committee. No one is suggesting the committee is infallible. We realize there are potential adverse consequences of every decision. All we can do is try our best and pray that the ultimate goals of peace and freedom are achieved. At the rate we’re reverse engineering the alien technology we found on the wrecked crafts Communism will be stomped out within five years. Mark my words son. By the year 1960 Communism will be defeated and the world will be able to live in peace without the threat of nuclear annihilation. The sixties will be a great time to be alive. They will be the first decade of everlasting world peace. Mark it down, son, mark it down.”