The Alien – Almost Full Disclosure
Velorum was fondling the edges of the sofa’s upholstery. He seemed to be totally transfixed. The tantrum was over, for now. Between him and the couch was a wooden table. It wasn’t large but it was topped by a glass pane. Inside was a tiny Zen garden of stones and gravel. Jack lifted his feet on the table and leaned back in the couch. He was holding his injured right hand in his left. Now he knew the alien’s bone structure was also superior to his.
“So…” Jack started up the conversation once again. “Little Green Men?”
Velorum let out a chuckle and left the sofa alone, shifting his gaze back to the scenery outside the window.
“Well, they pretty much are,” He said.
“Really?”
“How many UFO sightings do you think there are each year?”
“I don’t know… a couple of hundreds.”
“Try thousands. Most of them are bogus, usually the result of misinterpreted views of Venus or a satellite or just having a brain dysfunction. But once in a while, it’s some extraterrestrial entity coming in for a peek. You shouldn’t blame them, you guys have been pretty much holding a red, screaming, flashing light up to the galaxy for almost a hundred years. Most of them are benevolent, part of the alliance or just uninterested. Some of them we have to fight off or dissuade. The Arilou arrive with almost obsessive frequency.”
Jack was feeling the pain in his hand beginning to fade but he still tried to keep his mind off of it, focusing on the alien and his story.
Velorum started molesting the couch again unconsciously. “They came and picked off humans when they felt it was right,” He fixed his eyes on Jack instantaneously. “I’m saying ‘felt’ because it’s the closest approximation. Who knows what they’re really thinking.”
“Wait a minute.” Jack interjected, leaning forward. “They’re still doing it?”
“No.” Velorum said. Although he was attentive to the conversation, his body language’s focus was constantly shifting. “At least, not that I know of. We reckon they stopped when we became aware of them. They dropped us on a Precursor technology cache and we crammed your last few hundred years of development in about a quarter of the time.”
Jack didn’t know what Velorum meant by Precursor but didn’t feel it was the right time to interrupt.
“We went to space around the time you were prosecuting innocent women for witchcraft. We found the Arilou not long after.”
Jack smiled and suppressed a laugh, to think… to know that just about every UFO sighting for the past two hundred years were all nutcases, and a lot of the ones prior were real.
“The first thing they said was that we were an uplifting experiment, an attempt to significantly advance human progress with out affecting the entire human race. They told us we were a brilliant success; they said all the right things. I’ve already said: One of the more advanced races in the sector, hence, one of the smartest. We fell for it, walked in with open arms, and became prey to one of the greatest schemes in the galaxy.”
— from the Fire Tiger Chronicles, a work in progress
Posted in From the Writing Desk by Eran with 1 comment.
מצפה להמשך :)