The Discovery

The highway is black. Black asphalt made darker by a moonless night. A slight breeze wafts by, but there is no sign of life. Trees, or hills, or something surrounds me on each side. Hard to tell in the middle of the night. I think it’s cold out. It’s autumn, and I register the temperature, but I no longer feel it.

It’s funny, my whole life, I’ve had a plan. An agenda on where I was going. Now that I’ve accomplished it, I don’t know where to start again. I need time to think, to plan. Everything has been so hectic, for so long. Fortunately, for now, much of the world is still wilderness. I can disappear for a while.

I no longer feel a real kinship towards man. Not that I ever did, but now it’s even more striking. Although I still have to deal with him. He’s the height of technology on this tiny planet. I just have to figure out how. It’s not like I can just waltz into some close by major city and get a job. Not without a human face. I look down at my sleeve. It glistens, slick and black. Blood stains. Another thing to take care of, although it’s probably the least of my problems.

A Little Background

In college, I majored in engineering, with a specialization in robotics. Not because I loved math, or engineering, although I did do well in them. I think the spark that ignited it all, was my love of mythology and science fiction. I ate up everything from comic books and fantasy movies, to incredible fiction and art. I always wanted to be immortal, like the heroes and gods in fiction. I actually had the idea of building a robot body. It seems like such a delusional little kid’s fantasy now, but I debated how to transfer my essence into this robot body. I tried to think it through scientifically. Would I still have human emotions and feelings in a cold electronic system? Would I still have the essence of what really made me an individual? I figured, build it first, and I’ll figure out the details later. I was that kid that took apart all the electronics in the house. I’d pull apart the VCR, and then try and figure out how it worked. I even had a 9th grade science project on mechanical prosthetics, thinking I was well on my way, a little more education, some experimentation, and I’d be set. I worked out charts on notebook paper, incorporating everything from parts I could get at Radio Shack, to stuff straight out of the movies that I was sure would be invented any day.

I didn’t think it really mattered what I did to my body-smoke, drink, take drugs, whatever, because it was only a temporary shell, the best was yet to come. Reality reared it ugly head in college. Maybe even before. I had rumblings, black thoughts that I tried to shut out with a wave of optimism. But the hard facts were eventually overwhelming. Technology was just not that advanced. Besides, even if it could be, even in private isolated research with the best of materials, who would fund it? Where was the commercial potential? Who, except a few old CEOs, really wanted to live forever? I was floundering, trying to find a goal in life, when the government hired me. I was fresh out of college, and they told me they wanted me to build “surveillance droidsâ€?. Like for the military to send into caves looking for militants and shit like that. It wasn’t the real reason they hired me. That took almost a year to come out. They had to check me out first. Then it all came crashing down, and I wasn’t floundering anymore. I was far too fascinated. They had hired me to investigate crashed alien spacecraft. How they thought a degree in robotics transferred to dissecting alien spacecraft is beyond me, but they gave me work, and a new outlook on life. The pay wasn’t great, but the access to inhuman technology was all that mattered. I was in heaven, a boy lost in a toy store. I probably would have paid them if I could.

I’d encountered a few conspiracy theories, and they all seem to think the government had some secret, shadowy agenda, breeding a master race or some horseshit. That would be far cooler than the truth. I’ve learned that the real inside view is that the government is incompetent. Imagine the DMV running everything. Now imagine there were several DMVs, all suspicious of each other and playing little manipulative games against one another. It’s all like some crazily complex science fiction movie from the eighties, with drama, strange characters, little petty intrigues, and all the other crazy bullshit that keeps most shit from being accomplished in a timely fashion.

As little peons in the military complex, we were way over our heads. Like cavemen coming across an airplane, we were hopelessly behind, unable to comprehend even the basics of how lift and drag were involved, much less what the tools were that countered or encouraged it. And the funny thing is, we were the experts! Everyone else had even less of a clue. I don’t know what the grand agenda of the government was. Protect us from attack? Enhance our current understanding of technology? Build the ultimate weapon? I’m not sure there was a real plan. Maybe just having something unexplained there was reason enough to build a new agency, demand a budget, and pretend to investigate. The military was involved, at least the air force and army were, but they always performed low level grunt work. Guarding facilities, securing crash sites. The NSA wrote our checks, but beyond that, who knows. I don’t even think most figureheads knew what we were doing. Or if someone high up, like the president, knew, they had no idea what do with it. We were the black sheep, the necessary embarrassment. We kept toiling away, trying to figure out what these visitors wanted. Why they were coming to what must be some backwater planet populated by ignorant natives.

It was almost impossible deciphering all the barely legible clues. There were several races that we found, with apparently different languages, and maybe there were maybe quite a few planets involved. Maybe they all were from the same planet, but with different races, languages, and technologies. Maybe they were here for observation? Certainly not warfare. If they wanted to wipe us out, they could have done so easily.

The one cliché of the whole “men in blackâ€? thing that did prove true was the high level of secrecy. Everyone was under constant surveillance. Our only real friends were each other, if you wanted to call our fucked up working relationships friendships. Everyone was overly nice on the surface, but an undercurrent of tension and suspicion tugged at the corners. And people sometimes “mysteriouslyâ€? disappeared. No one really talked about it. We all seemed to assume, or at least I did, that they must have somehow screwed up, or fucked with the wrong person. Not to mention, whoever disappeared seemed to be acting strangely, all nervous and guarded right before they disappeared. At least that was most of the time. Sometimes a perfectly normal co-worker just wouldn’t show up for work. None of this happened that often, but just enough to keep tensions high. There was a kind of unspoken code of silence. You didn’t know, you didn’t want to know, and you really hoped it wouldn’t be you next. We seemed to report to imbeciles, square faced men with a high rank and no brains to back it up. They would nod and grunt as if they understood your theories and discoveries, but you knew your were talking to a wall. It was frustrating, like working in the dark. If they didn’t understand, why were they still paying you? How long could you go on feeding them bullshit until they pulled the plug, or even worse, made you disappear?

Despite the air of tension, the one big advantage the program did have is no one believed in it. Over the years, a few scientists did leave, and some went to the media. They were shunned and labeled as crackpots. A few even came back. Many of them, both those on the outside, and those who came back, “mysteriouslyâ€? disappeared. The government is good at making people disappear. The individuals involved might not know the reason why, but it doesn’t matter. Just following orders. It might sound paranoid, but you can be tracked almost anywhere in the US, and it’s only getting easier.

Most of the labs were eventually shutdown. Popularity often waned. Maybe a new administration more concerned with social issues than some scientific dead end that never seemed to produce results. Many of the installations have become almost abandoned relics. They were still heavily guarded, but more like Fort Knox, less like the Pentagon.

The problem with the alien technology was the same as if a cave man came across a car. We could make some of it work, in fact we could see how some of it operated. But we couldn’t put it all together. We could start the car, or at least a function of it but not build it or even come close to understanding what we were dealing with. I remember hearing about some scientists who managed to start up what they thought was a thruster. Maybe it was really a weapon? Who knows? They managed to destroy the entire compound, themselves with it. It just imploded, a bubble of energy, a brilliant flash, and all that’s left behind of a multileveled complex and a hundred men is a smooth crater surrounded by a parking lot full of cars. We really had no idea what we were dealing with. It was too strange, the technology too advanced. We also had a further disadvantage; it wasn’t made for human use.

The focus on ufos actually followed a cyclical nature. With every new crash there would be a burst of activity. Soldiers would be deployed, scientists would be gathered up, intense study of the newly found objects would follow. Then the debates, the competing theories, which could be neither proved nor disproved, and finally a general loss of interest. Back to things as normal, a new item numbered and categorized and put away in a dusty old warehouse. Parties moved on. Focus of interest changed.

The government always kept a core group of scientists studying the remains, but overall interest would wane and the extras would be reassigned. I was one of the core they kept on. I think the rest thought they couldn’t advance their careers by continually not coming up with answers, so they went on to other projects. Little did they know the government wouldn’t let them advance after that. It was a dead end, a no man’s land from which you never came back. You couldn’t have someone knowledgeable, intelligent, and in a position of authority. They would be too hard to erase if they spoke out or acted up. But that isn’t why I stayed. I was fascinated by this stuff. This was my childhood fantasies come to life. More than that, I saw it’s far reaching, if implausible, potential. Here was finally the technology to grant me all my dreams. I just had to figure it out. Maybe not even how it worked, but at least how to use it. Or at least enough of it to build me another body. One that wouldn’t age and decay like this human one. Far fetched, but this was the closest to a possibility I had. I would be long dead before our technology caught up to what I wanted, if it ever did. Besides, little human governments and agencies seemed pedestrian compared to this stuff. How could some little social groups of squabbling governments worried about oil prices, trade embargos, and other pedestrian fare even possibly equate to something this phenomenal? This unknown and intriguing?

My ship comes in

I was stationed at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. We were using old World War two buildings, buried back in the woods among the pine trees and supposedly long since abandoned to the ravages of time, to study this phenomena. Almost unpretentiously, as if it was just another workday, a new shipment came in. I think it was from Nevada, but it doesn’t really matter. A whole ship. It wasn’t that large, it obviously came from a mother ship, but it was mostly intact. It was strangely elliptical, the surface flat and contoured in long strips that looked like overlapping tiles, a single cylindrical tube projecting from the center and blossoming into a complex latticework of what looked like windows. It appeared to be some sort of survey craft, with weaponry potential, at least that’s a guess by the tube like projections that ended in rough points on either side. It was waiting for us in the warehouse hangar like some docked aircraft when I came in at 08:00. I slowly sipped my coffee, and somehow knew that my whole world was going to change. This was it. The discovery that I had always been waiting and hoping for, but never thought would really arrive. The energy in the air was almost electrifying. I could feel the skin on my fingers tingling. My exterior was calm, almost immobile, but I knew. This was it.

We donned full body protective suits, broke out the hand held radiation scanners, and wandered inside.

It was magic, like entering another world. The floor was smooth, like polished bone, and it curved up on the sides, meeting the contoured walls in a gentle slope. The walls were of a different texture, like a blackened metal knotted and crisscrossed with what looked like cables and support beams, but all melded with the wall, almost resembling speed bumps. They zigzagged up and onto the ceiling, continuing a smooth arc as they descended down the opposite wall. A short tunnel and the passage opened up into a circular central room. Small mounds, almost like miniature rock formations, jutted out of the floor. Most were topped by a central depression, harboring small glistening mounds that were probably buttons of some sort. Most were backed by what looked like a fixed chair, strangely bent and almost organic in its flow. There appears to have been some sort of struggle inside. All the occupants in the central room were dead, lying like large lifeless insects tossed about randomly on the floor. There were five in total, their greenish-white skin glistening above chalk white jump suit collars. The eyelids closed over small, beady eyes, the wrinkled faces broken by two nose holes and a sliver of a mouth. Possibly moved around a bit in transit here, the one lying closest to the far door appeared to have an injury in it’s skull, a chunk of the back was caved in, and a greenish-yellow pus looking substance was seeping out. I could feel the small hairs on my body standing up. This was exciting and terrifying at the same time. Whatever did that I doubt it was the crash of the ship. Stepping over the body, I proceeded down the hall. It abruptly ended at a tunnel headed straight down. Probably when the ship was active there was some force that lowered you down the hole. I figured further exploration would entail rappelling gear, not to mention a firearm, just in case whatever killed that alien was still alive and lurking in the depths of the ship. I walked back out, down the ramp, and went to get supplies.

I was checking them out of the storage room when one of the officers asked me what I was doing. Annoyed, I explained briefly, and he suggested that perhaps I needed an armed escort. I didn’t feel it was necessary, but it was easier to agree than try and dissuade him.

Re-armed with rappelling gear, a Maglight, and two military sidekicks, I reentered the craft. Three of the other scientists were bent over alien bodies, with a fourth curiously prodding the sunken bumps on one of the pedestals. It looked so wrong, like animals pushing their snout against some structure or creature they couldn’t understand. I walked past them, tied climbing rope around the protrusion closest to the hall, and wandered to the hole. Tying it around my waist, I gripped the rope with one hand, the Maglight with the other, and started my descent. The downward beam of the flashlight cut a path through the blackness of the hole, a hazy mist disrupting it’s flow with layers of smoke and small floating particles. A few feet down and the beam was bouncing off a polished floor. I touched down and looked up, the faces of the soldiers peering down barely visible through the fog. Untying the climbing rope from around my waist, I let it fall. I turned to face forward, the beam of light cutting a path through the darkened tunnel. It seemed a short walkway, with a gaping black hole of a doorway a few feet ahead on the right. It pulled out my 9mm and slowly advanced, turning to face it as I approached the darkened doorway. The beam bounced over shadowy forms inside. Off to the left, almost jutting out of the wall, were two cylindrical shapes. They looked strangely textured, and a bit like coffins, but with a thick glass like substance covering one, while the other was open, missing the glass lid. To the right were more of those strange, floor based rock like formations. Turning the beam into the open casket, I could see nothing, just a vaguely man-sized space that was empty. I shone the light on the other, and almost jumped! There was a vaguely humanoid form within. The face looked featureless, flowing in curves and bumps like a half finished mask. The only visible features were two closed eyeholes .I lowered my light slowly, following the shape of the body. Smooth and matte black, buried behind a layer of dirty glass. A strange shiver ran up my spine. I didn’t know it yet, but this was going to change my whole world.

I wandered back out, down the hall, and to another dark shaft that fell away into depths unknown. I had no more climbing rope. We were going to need to bring in something a little more sophisticated to explore the ship. But I was here for the first look, and I knew this somehow held my future, I just didn’t know how.

Weeks passed, and we meticulously examined the ship. Ladders to scale shafts, work lights hung everywhere, and a thorough top to bottom inspection. There appeared to be a control room, another smaller one with the strange body, quarters below that were probably for sleeping, and even further below that a room with what appeared to be a holding cell. There was a carcass in there unlike any of the other alien bodies. The skin was blackened enamel like an insect, the hands long and spindly, and the eyes transparent domes. Dual slits for a nose, and a small, protruding mouth. This I hadn’t seen or heard of before. The other aliens we had reports of, even if we had no actual bodies, but this was a mystery. And it was in the holding area. The place with long stalactite looking formations that extended from floor to ceiling and seemed to resemble a cell. I wonder what the purpose of this ship was?

But the real interest, the body, or as I came to understand it, the suit, that was what fascinated me. It seemed almost impervious to harm. We cut it out of its enclosure, dragged it to a laboratory, and tried to run tests on it. Only the skin, it was like a strange metal, smoothly contoured but impenetrable. I broke needles, scalpels; saw blades, chisels, finally resorting to a blowtorch, all of which seemed to do nothing. I used a high-powered laser, tried freezing and then shattering it, nothing. I put it aside for a while to focus on the rest of the immediate surroundings. I examined the room it came in. The curious dual cylinders. The empty one I found had a retractable glasslike cover. Then it dawned on me.

I was drinking coffee at my small house right off the base, reading Newsweek, and a thought flitted briefly through my head. I froze, my mind racing, that early morning boost of caffeine rushing through my system and making my head pound. It wasn’t a body after all! It was a suit! An indestructible suit! I don’t know if it was used for warfare, or exploration of hostile environments, or whatever, but it all made sense now. It was too basic and utilitarian to be a living creature. Where were the reproductive organs? It didn’t appear to have a mouth or nose. Two shallow ear holes, but that and the eyes were the only break in an otherwise seamless construction! That was why there were two spaces right next to each other, one was for the suit, and one was for whoever was going into it! The aliens had perfected some form of consciousness transfer!

It was a wild theory, I really had nothing to back it up, but once it popped into my head, I knew it had to be right. This was it. This was the solution. I couldn’t even eat my morning eggs and toast. I mixed a quick shake, and flew out the door to work.

Like a naïve little child with a new toy, I explained my revelation. I was greeted with skepticism and general disinterest. Yeah, maybe I was right, but what hard facts did I have? What proof? What made my theory better than any of the competing theories? Some argued it was another life form. Others that it was a test mockup, or a manikin. That in particular was a dumb theory. I knew I was right.

I fought enough and eventually got my way. I was allowed to focus on the body, and the room it was discovered in. It wasn’t even that much of a fight. Considering all the wealth of info in this ship, that was one probable dead end no one wanted. Except me. I was like a Neanderthal banging away at a computer, but eventually I was going to write my War and Peace. I was going to solve this.

I was on this project for 10 years. 10 long years in Fayetteville, North Carolina, white trash capital of the US. 10 years of sweltering summers in a small, redneck town in the south full of nothing but small stores, pawn shops, and strip clubs. Full of GIs at Fort Bragg, walking around pumped full of testosterone and brimming with youthful swagger. Just looking for some excuse to act like animals and fight or fuck. Maybe I’m making it sound worse than it really was, but small town southern living wasn’t for me. I joined a local boxing gym, working out my aggressions and frustrations in a way that didn’t win me many friends. In fact, I didn’t really have any, not what I would consider real friends. I kept my distance. I just couldn’t connect with people around me. I’d go out with girls, but just for the raw animal sex of it. I know there are real people out there; I met some of them when I lived in New York, but maybe this time around I didn’t try. Maybe I’m too elitist, I missed up north and I just didn’t want to put anymore into Fayetteville than I had too. Besides I was way too occupied with the work at the lab. I’d spend hours there, running test after test, rummaging through books, the Internet, the microfilm library, whatever I could find. The days piled up on each other, passing with frightening quickness. Seasons came and went. I spent 10 years of ups and downs, through changing administrations and general waning interest. So many times I thought I had it and wound up with nothing. Any other job where you keep not coming up with answers, and they fire you. But this was good old Uncle Sam. As long as you look busy, they tend to leave you alone. At least in a field with as little results as mine.

I began a nubile, about a year on the job, and left a veteran. We had other crashes come in during that time, mainly little pieces that were salvaged here and there. But I stayed focused. Too focused, actually. It was an obsession, and eventually led to my discharge. I fell out of the political game. Began to insult superiors. Little men with even smaller minds, that just happened to be in positions of authority. I wasn’t feeding people the bullshit they live off of, and people grew to dislike me. Especially those that outranked me. Not that I said anything too offensive. I maintained a constant, slightly sarcastic wit that seemed to grate at the very idiots it was aimed at. It was brilliant, they would be mad, knowing I had in some way talked down to them, but not being able to adequately vocalize just what the insult was. I figured it didn’t really matter. No one else wanted this work, and certainly no one else had as much time in, as much hands on experience, as me. People would get hot at the collar, pass me over for promotion and raises in pay when they came up. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care. This was all or nothing as far as I was concerned, and I was going to make something work.

Eventually they found a way to get to me. They took me off the project. Just like that. After ten years and some odd days, I was just replaced. Ordered to hand over all my materials to some fresh faced jerk-off straight out of college. Transfer to Virginia to work again on military surveillance drones. I tried to quit, right there on the spot. It was made clear to me, with some less than subtle hints, that quitting wasn’t the best course of action. A few coworkers I got along with dropped some more, mostly rumors and hearsay, but it was enough. I was mad, but not stupid. So I played their little game. I let them pay to move me to Virginia. I even took a pay raise to compensate for the increased cost of living, not to mention the aggravation of taking on a new assignment. But I saved my money. I had plenty left over from my days in North Carolina. I didn’t blow it on strippers and hookers, or a family, like everyone else. And even with my stagnation in the raise and promotions departments, I made more than enough.

With the move to Virginia, what had been a distance, barely formed idea became a quest. I lived frugally and saved my money like never before. I played their game, living in a little apartment and stockpiling money for the next three years. I was good at my job. In fact, some of those troops in Afghanistan used my surveillance robots to explore caves for terrorists. But my real mission was to prepare. I went to the target range every week. I worked out every day. I biked to and from work. I took JKD classes in DC, even though it meant a long drive several times a week. I rebuilt a CJ5 jeep from the ground up. An AMC V8, headers, Flowmasters, EFI, t18a tranny, lift kit, warn winch, Superswamper tires, roll cage, Detroit lockers in 9 inch ford axles, the works. I rented a space in a local garage, a privilege that I hear is becoming less common as owners become afraid of lawsuits, but I had a twist of luck. The guy I bought the Jeep from knew a mechanic, and recommended me. The grease monkeys working there were more than helpful in the building up of my project. I joined a local four wheeling club, and practiced using my truck in action. Rock climbs, river fording, mudding, it was all par for the course. I made friends on the team who were impressed with my zeal for hitting new terrains and my endless tech questions. But I had to know. Everything had to be just right; there was no room for error. I rebuilt an old mustang, the guys in the garage seemed to really like that, and drove it down to southern Virginia. I parked it in a strategically located clearing between trees, storing an extra optima battery and a couple gas cans in the trunk. I bided my time.

I couldn’t quit my job without arousing suspicion, and possibly a little trip from the FBI. So I took a vacation. A month long vacation. I suited up in my apartment. It must have made me look like some special ops agent, black BDUs, combat boots, pocketed work shirt, a holstered gun, sheathed knife, and utility tool secured by a thick military nylon belt. I looked in the bathroom mirror and felt like Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. I even mouthed the words “You lookin’ at meâ€?? But all in jest. Travis was a movie character and had a screw or two loose, living in a state of muddled confusion. I never felt so clear in my life. I knew what I had to do, and this was Darwin in action. Natural Selection. Either I won big time, or I would live a life in prison. If I didn’t die first. It was almost frightening, yet exhilarating at the same time. I had to do this.

I started fairly late intentionally, even though I woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep. Too much excitement was coursing through my veins. I held out my hand, trying to keep it still, and could see it shaking slightly. Anticipation, mixed with a nagging fear, was eating away at the corners of my mind, constantly reminding me that if I was wrong, or a little unlucky, my life was ruined. Minutes seemed to crawl, and I anxiously waited until afternoon, not wanting to roll into Fort Bragg too early and arouse suspicion.

I finally left, a little earlier than I probably should have, but I couldn’t wait anymore. I hopped in the Jeep, and started the long drive back down to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I hoped any cop that stopped me would see the giant truck, hear the accent I picked up in North Carolina, and figure I was just some good old boy headed out to the wilderness to four wheel and camp. I even had camping supplies in the back of the jeep as an alibi.

The drive down south seemed to last an eternity. Every road sign, every stoplight, they all seemed to multiply, appearing in unprecedented numbers all with the goal of slowing my journey. I turned on the stereo, then turned it off, then turned it back on. All I had was the radio; I wanted this as untraceable as possible. And as we all know the radio is shit. The banality of the bad songs was made even worse by the almost palpable tension in the air. I turned off the radio again.

The common road scenes of late night bombarded me. Sparsely populated interstates, corridors of black asphalt, brilliantly lit up briefly in front of me by headlights, the walls darkened blurs of tree and underbrush. The traffic picked up as I neared cities and died down as I re-ventured into the wilderness, ebbing and flowing in a grand tide of people moving about like worker ants, following the contours of their daily maze. I would start to wander off in thought about how pessimistic I had become. How much the normal, everyday life of the majority of the human race was anathema to me. Like nails on a chalkboard. It’s not that most people were inherently bad, that’s giving way too much. They were like dumb animals, blindly following emotions and cravings they barely understood but chemically felt compelled to obey. That wasn’t everyone, there was hope, people that made me sit up and pay notice. Real people with real ideas and thoughts, but it was depressing how few they were. I’d catch a glimpse of a more populated city, a blur of hundreds of lights and motion off to one side of the freeway or another, and snap out of it. It’s hard not to think in black and white terms. There are a lot of gray areas, but they will only get in my way right now. I can’t waver, can’t let emotions creep in. They are just chemical signals to activate base animal instincts, and I’m stronger than that. My thoughts would change course, and instead of being broad and metaphysical, I’d think of the immediate task in front of me. Scenarios rushed through my mind. What if I failed horribly? What if I burst into a bunker was taken by surprise and overpowered? I could almost see a film in my head. Uniformed figures, dark and sullen, standing over my prone body. Bright overhead lights blinding me as they shoved cold steel barrels in my face. They probably wouldn’t shoot me right then and there. They are always too curious. Of course they would recognize me. Which would be even worse than anonymity. They would have an angle; think they knew what made me tick. But that wouldn’t be enough; they’d have to know everything. I don’t know what would be next. Would they torture me? I wouldn’t be surprised. Bring in some CIA experts; inject me with drugs to make me more malleable? Who was I working with! What was my ultimate goal! And you know what? I don’t even think it would matter what I told them. They would have an answer they wanted to hear. And eventually, after a lot of pain, I’d find out what it was. The negative thoughts and wild scenarios weren’t helping. I needed to pay attention to the road.