Tellus, A Story (7) “Echo Lake in California?” asked the man. “Lake Lucerne in Switzerland,” said the host sounding disappointed. ‘Where do they get these dummies,’ Bill asked himself again, despairing that intelligent people did not seem to be as smart as they used to be. He turned off the television, it was to depressing. He was considering how a mixture of tightening up a bodies muscles and relaxing them would help the void energy flow through an individual when there was a loud knock at the door. The police came in and arrested him for being a threat to the public health and safety. After his dinner, the president reflected on how well the Neutron bomb test had gone. He slipped his drink as he thought about it. The bomb had been dropped in the African lake in the small country. The press had called it a volcanic gas explosion, that was good for him. The media had blindly followed the statement of the advance scientists that the president’s people had put in place. The bomb had done its work, it had killed off all the witnesses to the low flying plane and it had left the wooden huts, that the locals called a village, standing. The only problem was the brown spots on the skin of the dead and dying natives where the neutrons had passed through their bodies but the local medical doctors had no experience with that sort of radiation. Since they did not know what to make of it they called it burns from the hot gasses. The small Middle Eastern country that had dropped the bomb had also sent in some scientists to check the results with the cover story that they were there to study volcanic action. The Middle Eastern country was rewarded with some new nuclear bombs for protection from their neighbors. ‘It’s all going quite well,’ thought the president, ‘as long as it remains secret.’ He walked over to the mirror to put drops in his eyes for glaucoma. He had learned to pull on his lower eyelid and put a small drop in the cavity the pulling had created instead of leaning his head back and randomly dropping the THC extract like he had dropped bombs in the big was when he had been a bombardier. He smiled when he recalled how the Loaned and Saved money had been legally stolen by the right people over the last ten years and now the statute of limitations was running out for prosecution. He had paid off a lot of political debts with that one and gotten some terrific kickbacks as well. He finished administering the drops and went back to his chair and his drink. The Symbolic Army was being used well, he reflected. They had split a personality off of one member of the army and programmed it to kill that leaking agent. Those psychiatrists who worked for the State Intelligence Team were really good the way they made those things work. The public would be so incensed at the agent’s assassination that they would turn away from what was left of the real political radicals in droves. His people would have to try something similar with the environmentalists, it would serve them right for interfering with corporate profits. The police had arrested William Wright and gone through his private papers as well, he would soon be neutralized. Their people who had infiltrated the Wright organization had mad a lot of trouble for him and tarnished his image forever. That was good, he had to be kept busy so he would have little time to elaborate on his crackpot antinuclear theories. Of course he could not do anything more if he died in jail, the president smiled. It was a lot of responsibility to be president. People did not know the burdens he carried. He could not even tell his wife all that he knew, she would not understand. She would talk about it with her people and eventually it would get out to the press. It was better that only people like himself, who could handle these situations, should know what was really going on. Ken woke Tracey up after they had crossed the Nevada border to get directions from her, it was starting to get dark. She took over the driving and put on another Bill Wright tape. Ken sighed and looked out of the window. Wright talked at length about how the modern politicians were akin to the ancient robber baron pirates, they had the world economy sewed up for their personal profit. All of the requirements to turn the planet into a heaven for everyone were existent but the politicians would never allow that to interfere with their personal agenda. If the people of the world became unified, the game would be over. It was up to the politicians to keep people divided so that business would go on as usual. After Ken and Tracey stopped for dinner at an isolated truck stop she drove the van deep into the country on small one lane roads. The lecture continued, Wright said it was the working woman who had broken up the traditional family. He did not blame them for working because of the current economic situation but the traditional family, as people thought of it, was down to only eight per cent of all families. People should not blame themselves for the failure however, the real cause was that in the last thirty years prices had gone up ten times and wages had only gone up two or three times. They drove around small farms set around the barren hills. Mountain peaks made the horizon look like a jagged line. Wright said that people could not expect their money to go as far as it had for their parents and that it was not a personal failure but that the economy had failed them. Tracey drove until she seemed to recognize something. Ken guessed it was a distinctive looking farmhouse that they were approaching. “This looks like the place,” she asserted. Tracey drove the van off of the deserted road and parked it in a gully by a creek. When she turned the engine off it was very quiet. Some cattle were grouped out in the center of the field. It looked peaceful and idyllic. “I have reason to believe there might be some cattle rustling here tonight,” she said sounding amused. “Shouldn’t we get the police?” he asked alarmed. “I mean we’re here unarmed. A truck full of rustlers...” “These aren’t earthbound rustlers,” she replied and pointed to the sky with a sly smile. “Oh, ok. If you say so,” he said in a slightly ridiculing tone. He was beginning to doubt that this trip was going to be of any use to him at all. He was beginning to dislike her because she wanted to use him and keep her distance at the same time. It was not something he would ever do to anyone else. “Look, nothing may happen but I want to position myself out in the field with a camera to get a shot if anything does happen and I want you to stay here with the van, ok?” “Ok. Are you sure you’re going to be all right out there?” “I’ll give a shout if I need you, but look, should something happen, crouch down out of sight so they don’t see you and get scared off.” “Yeah, sure,” he answered rudely and she walked away. “Watch out for ticks,” he called out partly because he was concerned, he had once gotten a cow tick on his body; and partly to try to make her feel a little uncertain. She turned and looked at him for a moment and then she was gone, swallowed up by the darkness. He spent some time looking for her and finally saw her silhouette in the moonlight out by the small herd. Now he was alone in the dark with nothing to do, he felt useless. He was tense for awhile waiting for something to happen. In time he started to feel frustrated and he eventually decided he would have to relax and wait out the night. After all, she was doing the same out in the field. He wanted to honk the horn and try to recall her back to the van but he did not want her to think he was trying to ruin her adventure, however boring it seemed at the moment. He began to drift into semi consciousness as he watched the stars in the clear black sky. He traced out the Milky Way and saw a few meteorites. He heard the soft drone of a large insect off in the distance and swatted at a mosquito. “Dam flying hypodermic needle,” he said softly. The cows sounded nervous and started milling around. The insect noise became louder and sounded like helicopter blades. The helicopter sound slowly drifted off and he felt like he should either sleep or go out into the field and look for Tracey. Suddenly coming from over the hill he heard a loud swoosh, swoosh. The cows were moving restlessly and mooing loudly. He saw the black form of a helicopter hovering over the small herd. As he watched he thought he could see a cow being hauled up with a rope by a hind leg, apparently in great pain. The cow disappeared into the helicopter door. Shaken, Ken sank down in his seat and although the van was parked in the gully he felt it was obvious from the air. The helicopter had no lights on but he could see it gain a little altitude and hover almost soundlessly. He could hear that the prop wash was about as loud as the electric engine, pretty silent for a machine that big. It dropped a little in altitude, hovering over the field. It looked like they pushed the cow out of the helicopter door but just as it started to fall there was a flash of light from the ground. Ken could not believe that Tracey had taken a flash picture of the event, she was hardly being surreptitious. The copter spun around a few times and moved toward the direction that the flash had come from. Ken saw a man climbing down a rope ladder and then back up pushing a female form before him. The copter gained altitude and slowly moved off with the two climbing the ladder. Eventually they were inside the machine and it quickly flew out of sight. Ken sat stunned. He could not believe what he had seen and did not know what to do. It was so dark that he was not even sure of what he had seen. He made the decision to go into the field and look for Tracey before he drove away. He walked out in the field, the cows had scattered around the area, still nervous and skitterish. He walked and walked and called out her name and was afraid of what he might find. Then he saw a dead cow in the middle of a large mud puddle, a couple of its legs appeared to be broken. The cow’s lips had been cut off and its genitals seemed to have been surgically removed as well. He could not see any blood. There were no human footprints in the mud. To someone who had not seen the copter this would look very mysterious. The night suddenly felt very cold to him and he began to shiver. He walked off in the direction he had seen the flash of light come from after the cow had been dropped. He looked around on the ground and saw some human foot prints where Tracey must have been at one time. He followed her footprints and they ended in a muddy scuffle with a man’s boot prints around them. He called out her name a few more times feeling foolish and returned to the van. He still did not know what to do. He did not have a map, she must have put it in her bag and taken it with her. There seemed to be no point in waiting around, he did not especially want the helicopter to return for him. He drove onto the road and went back the way they had come. He did not know if he should contact the police or the press of if anyone would believe him at all. Should he report a kidnapping or a disappearance? Would they charge him with murder if she was never found? What if she was found mutilated in some mud puddle? He was in a quandary driving a vehicle rented in her name. She had got him into this ridicules situation, perhaps he owed her nothing. As far as he knew, no one else knew that he had been with her at all. He could just wipe off his finger prints and abandon the van back in the Bay Area but that was not what he wanted to do. As he was trying to decide, he drove along and saw a closed country store with a pay phone and passed it by. He wanted to report the incident but he did not want to do it on a phone and have to wait around in the dark for the authorities to show up, he wanted to keep moving. He decided he would find a sheriffs office and report this in person because it would take some explaining. He drove along wondering where the next town was and he noticed at the side of the road a high fence with coiled barbed wire on top. There was another fence that ran parallel to it leaving a pathway about ten feet wide between the two fences. There were some small rusty signs proclaiming that it was a military reservation and all unauthorized personal should keep out. It looked so old he thought it must be an abandoned base from the last world war. He looked at the fence as he drove by wondering if he was going to end up in prison when something caught his eye. It was the silhouette of a black helicopter of the type he had seen before. It flew out of the military reservation area and toward the hills. Suddenly Ken had an idea of where Tracey might be. Would the police believe that she was captured by the military and that they were responsible for the cattle mutilations? Now he was confused again about what to do. He continued driving down the road until it finally curved away from the fence which went off at a right angle where a little creek appeared. He turned the van around and followed the road that ran along the fence until he came to a little guard house and a gated entrance. The guardhouse was empty and the gate had a sign on it that said that the base was closed, but the road that lead into it looked well traveled. He passed the fence where the road curved at the creek and drove a few more miles before he came to the truck stop that they had dinner at earlier, it was still open. There were some cars and trucks and military vehicles parked there. He felt hypnotized by the road as he drove along in his shocked state. As he watched the center line go by in his headlights a wild idea entered his mind. He was already feeling trapped by his situation so he felt he had little to lose. He turned around and drove back to the truck stop and parked the van where it would block the view from the restaurant. He got out of the van and looked in the back of the army trucks, in one were some large boxes. He went back to his van and found a lug nut wrench with a pointed end. He climbed into the back of an army truck and pried open one of the boxes, it was full of sleeping bags. He started taking some of them out but then he heard foot steps. He lay down on the truck bed and stayed quiet. The truck cab doors opened and slammed closed, the engine started and the truck began moving. Ken broke out in a cold sweat, it was not to late, he could still jump out. The truck seemed to be heading toward the military reservation. Like it or not, he was going along for the ride. He looked out of the back of the truck and saw there was no one behind them. He began throwing sleeping bags out of the truck and into the ditch at the side of the road hoping no one would see them. He took enough of them out of the box so that he could get into it. He pulled the top of the crate down and took the time to try and make it look sealed. He put some of the sleeping bags on top of himself. The truck was moving slowly, he felt so tired from driving all day. He closed his eyes to rest them and was soon sleeping. He woke up, the truck was moving slower. He wondered if he should open up the box and take a look out. His neck hurt but there was nothing he could do about it. The truck slowed and stopped. Ken waited breathlessly until the soldiers left and he could not hear them anymore. He started to open the box and it made a creaking sound. “What was that?” one soldier asked another as they were walking by. He could hear one of them open the tarp on the truck and close it again. “Nothing I guess.” Ken held his breath and was as quiet as he could possibly be. The enormity of his stupidity was beginning to dawn on him. His aching neck was a reminder of how vulnerable he was. He felt like he could be going to his execution. He was trapped in a restricted zone and if he was not very careful he might soon be under military arrest. Perhaps he could sneak off of the base, maybe he should go and turn himself in, but somehow he did not feel that would be the best course. He was disappointed in himself that he had gotten himself into this mess with no real proof of where Tracey was. Eventually he slipped from the box and looked out of the back of the truck. He was apparently on the military base behind a couple of plain looking wooden buildings where there were several military vehicles parked. It was pretty quiet, he looked at his watch and saw that it was about two AM. He could not stay in the truck forever so he climbed out and looked around. He needed a hiding place until he could figure out how to get off the base. He walked around the side of one of the buildings and saw some guards in front of a nearby building. He backed away from there and saw that a man hole, set in the pavement, was open. It had a barrier around it and signs that said Keep Out and Danger. He looked down the hole and saw a ladder that went to a dry cement floor about twelve feet below ground. He decided to take a chance and climbed down the ladder, at least he would be out of sight for the moment. He found himself in a cement corridor. He could hear a pounding of large equipment running somewhere below, a type of big engine he guessed. He could almost picture a giant fly wheel turning rapidly, the air was vibrating from the compression each stroke. He walked along the corridor until he came to a grated metal cat walk. It overlooked a huge collection of pipes and banks of gauges and dials. He could see down many floors of this. He did not understand what the machinery was for as there was no large corresponding building or factory on the ground level. It was like an underground factory that seemed to be self running, at least he had not seen anyone down here yet. He continued down the metal stairs, at least no one could hear him over the loud thumping, all he would have to do was to stay out of sight. He moved quickly down the rest of the ladder steps and into the shadows of the boxy equipment. Down at one end of the vast hallway Ken saw some shadows moving along the wall. Someone was coming so he backed deep into the ductwork not paying attention to where he was stepping. His foot slipped over a sharp edge. As his body started to fall he grabbed a pipe to hold himself steady. Some technicians in white lab coats passed by in the hallway of large machines and did not notice him. Ken pulled himself back onto the level and looked down the hole he had almost fallen through. There was a vast amber lit chamber below. It took him some moments to analyze what he was seeing before he could make sense of it. About thirty feet below him he could see tanks of red and yellow liquids and there were pipes running everywhere. He did not understand what he was seeing, it was like no technological process that he could identify. There were things floating in the tanks that looked like bodies, he found it difficult to comprehend. One part of him was deeply afraid but another part was coldly curious. He wanted to leave the area and yet he was intrigued and wanted to explore. It was warm but there was an odd fetid smell that repulsed him. He mad his way cautiously back to the hall of machinery and worked his way down it, the way the technicians had come, staying in the shadows. He found a stairway and went down toward the tanks. He came to a cloak room at the bottom of the stairs and donned a lab smock, hoping that if he was seen at a distance he would appear to fit in. H felt something heavy in one of the pockets. He walked out toward the tanks and heard some foot steps so he hid behind a tank, under a pipe. A man was checking the tanks, looking into them and making notes on a clipboard. Ken was sitting on something that made him feel uncomfortable but he did not move until the man left the area. Ken stood up and looked at the floor, it was flat. He felt in the smock pocket and found a small headphone with a microphone attached to a small box. It was labeled ‘Translator’ and it had a volume control. He put it on but he heard nothing and thought maybe he had broken it when he sat on it. He took it off and looked at it again and found an off and on switch and a switch labeled transmitting and receiving. He turned it on and set it on receive and hand heard a lot of shouting. He turned the volume control down. There were voices talking to each other but it sounded so strange, it must be the electronic processing in the head set he reasoned. An odd rumbling ominous voice commanded, “Did you clean tanks six and seven? It is imperative to keep conditions there sterile.” A more normal sounding voice answered, “Yes, they’ve brought in more lymph, we can proceed to refill them.” “Very good, we will try the new starter in them. Continue with your duties.” “Yes.” Ken did not know where the voices were coming from, the people must be near, he could hear movement at the far end of the building. It was really scaring him that there was something untellurian about this but he could not quite put his finger on it. The odd voice came across the receiver again. “Is the human gone?” “Yes he is out of range,” another similar voice answered. Suddenly there was a blast of information coming across his receiver. It seemed to be a torrent of words layered with double meanings and obscure connections. It entered his brain as if it had been shot there, a hodge-podge of symbols, each one separate and distinct but so rapid and intense that it was beyond his ability to sort it out. It left him weak, fortunately it did not last long. He removed the device from his head and turned it off. He sat stunned for fifteen minutes or so as he tried to reconstruct the conversation into some meaningful order that he could understand. The communicators had been outer space aliens talking to each other in their native language. They did not use words, they spoke in a series of concepts. Ken had heard a plot, so vast and insidious that it was taking him sometime to believe that it had passed through his mind. It had something to do with changing the Tellurian environment so that the alien species could live here and they were cloning helpers in the tanks. They could transmute cow parts and fluids into other creatures. He felt ill and tried to stop thinking about it. His mind would not rest and kept sorting out bits and pieces of the alien communication. They had talked in whole images and he was slowly breaking down each image into its component parts. They had talked of how the environment of Tellus was changing. The ozone layer was being destroyed and the enhanced carbon dioxide layer was holding in the heat better and this would accelerate the heat death process. They had been covertly programming human culture to terraform the planet. It might take a long time, but they were patient and lived very long. They had traded the government some simple inventions for the use of this base. They were secretly influencing the politicians to kill off the environment and consequently all of the people. It was against the alien’s desires to directly kill of the humans but if they could fool them into accelerating a natural process and commit mass suicide that would be acceptable. Ken felt compelled to get out of there, he checked to see if anyone was around and then put on the translator again. He did not hear anyone on it so he left his hiding spot and headed back the way he had come in. He walked past an open area of the floor and looked down to the next level to see another room full of tanks. He looked in one and saw Tracey’s body floating just below the surface of the viscous fluid, at least it looked like her to him. The shock of this made him angry and grimly he determined to leave this place alive to avenge her death and to tell the world about what he had found. He crept back to the cloak room and left the smock he was wearing and the head phones so they would not be missed. He moved back down the hall of machines, somewhat in a daze from the flood of images still swirling around in his mind. He went back up the metal ladder and poked his head up out of the man hole to see if there was anyone nearby. He could see the sky was starting to get lighter in the east. He was still stuck with the problem of being on the base illegally. He did not see any soldiers but he spotted a storm drain and climbed out of the manhole. He walked across the pavement feeling unsteady from his experience. He had the strangest feeling that he had just emerged from a womb and was newly born and he resisted the desire to go back to the tank room again. He looked into the drain and saw a ladder that went down to a five foot wide pipe. The idea of going underground again appealed to him. He pulled up the grate and climbed down enough to replace the grate and then continued descending to the bottom of the ladder. It was dark in the pipe, he had to bend his six foot long body over to walk. Water flowed past his ankles, he decided to walk in the direction that the water was flowing. He hoped there were no sink holes in the pipe or a flash flood, he wished he had some light. As he moved through the total darkness of the tunnel small visions seemed to boil up in his mind’s eye. It was as if listening to the alien voices had planted small movie in his memory. There were too many to play at once so they revealed themselves one after another. He knew what the tanks were for and what was in them and how they related to the mutilation of the cows. The aliens used the cow blood as symbolic life energy. Although it was now ‘dead’, it still held the potential energy of the once living animal. Since the blood was symbolic of life energy the aliens could absorb this energy and use it as food. They used the cow’s heart to symbolically pump the life energy to the cow lips which symbolically drank it. The aliens did not consume directly but instead consumed in the form of the residual potential energy. The aliens had no real substance of their own but were a sort of concentrated thought form. They would hold their ‘hands’ over the tanks to draw in the life energy. At the same time they were monitoring radioactive particles in the cow blood and wanted samples from all over the country which was why the cows were picked at random from a schedule of various places. The bodies were left behind to scare off investigators and to act as a subtle lesson that this could have easily been a human body. The cattle genitals were used to symbolically procreate real physical entities that the aliens used as helpers in their project. The orifice flesh was blended into the vats and became a medium to create tough and flexible physical beings that the aliens could direct at will. They extracted the lymph from the cow’s blood to grow clones which absorbed molecules of nutrient matter through their skin. The clones were rudimentary grey beings without sex glands or a nose and were used as drones. Then there were other clones that looked like human beings which were used to replace real humans in key positions.
Copyright © 2007 Michael Potter |