by Rudy Rucker
“Nature is computing ever and always at the maximum possible flop,” says Perl. “People never surpass Her, they learn only to wonder at Her the more. Like me with dear Goola.”
“Fast forward,” urges Balaam. “Focus.”
“So now I’ll show you the day I learned teleportation!” exclaims Goola.
The saucer angles back into time to show a girl sitting in a field of flowers. She’s dark-skinned and she has flaxen blonde hair. Her eyes are big and alert. The young Goola.
“Oh!” exclaims the Goola in the saucer. “I was so eager then, so tender.”
“You still are,” says Balaam.
The girl’s lips are moving, she’s repeating something to herself over and over. And now all of a sudden she disappears and reappears fifty feet away. She does it again and again, hopping back and forth all over the landscape.
Small and invisible, the saucer gets close to the chanting girl. The words she’s repeating are surprisingly simple: “Turn squeeze lift. Turn squeeze lift. Turn squeeze lift…” Each time she says them, she teleports to a different location.
The saucerians link Frank into the girl’s mind, and he can see that the murmured words are connected to specific mental gestures. At each utterance of ‘turn,’ the young Goola’s view of the world undergoes a kind of mirror-reversal, an inside-out shift. When she says, ‘squeeze,’ this altered visual world is somehow condensed into a shining droplet. And with the ‘lift,’ the world comes back, but with Goola in a new location.
“You teleport with no technology?” Frank asks the saucerians. “Just by doing some kind of head-trick?”
“Oh, there’s technology,” says Perl. “But it’s more like a software than a hardware. It’s a script that Ang Ou invented for the human mind. It has to be programmed in. But once you have it—”
Down in the flowery field, some other children have joined Goola. They skitter about the landscape, appearing and disappearing like sudden raindrops on a river. Like fireflies at dusk. Like shooting stars.
Growing a Saucer
“So that’s how we learn to flip,” says Goola. “Between being solid people and being personality waves.”
“And there’s more,” says Balaam. “Once you can make a body, you can make an object too.”
“Such as this flying saucer,” says Perl, rapping a knuckle on the metallic wall.
“You were able to mentally create this ship?” asks Frank. “From nothing?”
“I’ll show you our take-off,” smiles Goola.
The saucer whirls dizzily and now they’re into the fifth millennium, hovering high over the region once known as Silicon Valley. The year is 4004. Being drawn so very far into the future gives Frank a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.
From the air it looks like pristine wilderness. There’s great flocks of birds on the clear waters of the San Francisco Bay, which extends south beyond the old San Jose as far as the eye can see. The hills are covered with oaks, redwoods, and chaparral. The low-lands are green with grasses and scrub. As the saucer drops lower, Frank can see that many of the trees are in fact homes, and that a lot of the chaparral plants bear edible fruit.
The saucer hovers over a ceremonial-looking round clearing in the woods. There’s a hissing noise and suddenly one, two, three people appear in the clearing, materializing from nothing but invisible higher-dimensional radiation. It’s Goola, Perl, and Balaam. It’s strange for Frank to be with them in a saucer watching other versions of them on the ground.
The three figures in the clearing hold hands. A wire-frame outline of a flying saucer appears around them. Curved surfaces fill in the gaps of the wires, slowly solidifying into something like shiny metal.
The metallic saucer spins, vibrates, and shoots up into the sky.
The Divine Reality
“That was such an exciting take-off,” says Balaam. “But—ugh—it makes me sick to watch myself.”
“Like looking in the mirror too long,” agrees Perl. “Let’s finish up with Frank and be on our way out into the cosmos, Goola.”
“The cosmos,” muses Frank. “Is everyone leaving Earth to be a saucerian?”
“Not at all,” says Goola. “Many more people are into centering. They dematerialize and rematerialize in the same place. And as they do it, they dip into the astral plane. In fact that’s just about the last thing I’m supposed to show you.”
“Eve?” says Perl.
“Yes, now we’re going to take Frank to meet Eve,” says Goola. “It’s always wonderful to see Her.”
The saucer goes somewhere in time: perhaps further into the Fifth Millennium, perhaps back to the dawn of history, perhaps into paratime. Sitting in the shade of a redwood tree by a little stream is a pleasant-looking woman. This is Eve. The saucer hovers before her.
“Hello,” smiles Eve. It’s clear that she can see Frank and the saucerians. Frank feels the calm, gentle touch of her mind.
Eve dips her hand into the stream, then raises her hand up into the sunshine. Her wet fingers sparkle in the light and a rivulet runs from her palm. The flow trickles to a stop, and a last fat drop of water hangs from the side of Eve’s hand.
Something odd happens to the perspective here, and the hanging drop of water looms large and weighty as a moon, as a planet, as a sun. Every fiber of Frank’s mind becomes focused upon it.
The immense droplet shimmers, shivers, and then slowly, massively, it pulls free of Eve’s hand. Its surface is a great play of complex undulations that seem to be happening ever slower in time.
The sensations generated by the drop’s motions extend beyond sight and into touch and sound; Frank can feel and hear them. The touch-sensation of the drop’s motions is as the caresses of a fitful zephyr that’s patterning the air with hollows and whorls.
The sound-sensations from the drop are like a choir of voices, angelic voices that seem to have been singing forever, voices that Frank’s only noticed just now, for the first time in his life, after all these years—his eyes fill with tears of joy and wonder.
The thoughts and feelings sent off by the great water drop intensify. Frank feels as if his mind must come unhinged—and perhaps it does.
He’s somehow located next to space, looking into everything from every side. He sees the veins in Eve’s body, and the innermost rings of the redwood tree. He sees the worms in the ground and the bubbles in the stream. There are faces and forms to go with singing voices, elfin bodies that flutter against Frank. Some are aliens, some are human, some are unknown inhabitants of the astral plane.
Eve’s calm smile floats behind the great droplet, illuminated by the clear light that shines through everything. And Frank knows that the light is God.
“I’m always here,” says God’s voice. “I love you, Frank. I’m always here.”
Frank breathes in the peace and love, the serenity, the wisdom. He will be a better man.
Eventually Frank becomes aware of others around him. His eyes flutter, and he’s back inside the saucer. Goola, Perl and Balaam are looking at him.
Frank And Goola
“There’s one last thing,” smiles Goola. She purses her lips and gives Frank’s lips a little kiss. She smells so good, or is it really a smell? More like a direct tweaking of the pheromone-sensitive receptors in Frank’s nose. Whatever—it works bigtime. Frank becomes powerfully aroused.
“Oh, Goola,” sighs Frank dizzily.
Goola reaches out her hand and undoes Frank’s belt buckle. His pants slide down his legs. Now Goola touches Frank’s aching penis, lightly running her fingers along its trembling length. “Why, yes, it might be lifty to take a little wetware sample from you, hmmm? Just like a good saucerian is supposed to do.”
“Really, Goola,” tut-tuts Perl. “You don’t have to behave as if—”
“It’s what Frank expects,” sighs Balaam. “He needs thi
s for the end of his book. Mektoub. But I say we get it over with toot sweet.”
Goola shucks off her dress, straddles Frank and sits down on his penis, slipping him deep inside her. She kisses Frank full on the mouth.
Outside, the great American West is sweeping by beneath them. Balaam is flying the saucer from San Francisco back to Rapid. The sky is strobing as before, but Frank’s too agog to think about it. He trusts the saucerians to do the right thing.
Although the sex-act feels very good, it doesn’t feel quite—real. Goola’s flesh is warm but somehow insubstantial. Slippery but not wet.
Just as Frank approaches his climax, Balaam maneuvers the saucer back down to the IRC lab, April 9, 1997, and sets Frank down in his office chair. Frank feels the touch of the chair’s wood against his bare butt. He ejaculates. There’s a tiny tingle near the tip of his penis—Goola decoding a cell’s DNA? And then Goola and saucer lift up off of him and bid him the briefest of telepathic farewells.
“Goodbye,” murmurs Frank. “Thank you. I love.”
The saucerians fade away. Frank is alone in the darkened room with his pants around his ankles, a sticky patch of semen on his shirttail, and his penis slowly softening against his naked thigh. Rather than being wet as if from real sex, the skin of the penis is bone dry.
And then—whoops!—the door swings open, the lights come on, and there’s Helene Lundy staring at Frank, her mouth a tiny ‘o’ of utter shock and disapproval. It seems that although Helene didn’t feel well this morning, she’s decided to come in for work this afternoon.
There’s a sudden speeded-up rush of screaming and jabbering. The Rapid City police actually get called in, but the investigating officer seems to feel, well—some poor geek of an equipment tech jacking off in a locked storeroom on his lunch hour—”It’s nothing to make a court case out of, Ms. Lundy, although I’m sure it was mighty unpleasant for you. I’m inclined to believe Mr. Shook when he assures me that he would not of been behaving in this manner if he’d of thought there was even the slightest inkling of your walking in on him.”
The Black Hills High principal and assistant principal are there to hear this as well. The principal is having trouble keeping a straight face. Helene is such an old maid and Frank such a doofus. This is shaping up to be the funniest mishap of the year. The smiling principal starts to tell Helene to just forget the whole thing and to let Frank get back to his job.
“I bet he’s a professional pornographer!” interrupts Helene. “What else would he have been doing with all that TV equipment?”
“I already checked for porno,” says the investigating officer. “There’s no tapes in the VCRs. Though I suppose Mr. Shook might have one in his coat?”
“No, I don’t!” cries Frank, glaring at the bland, mocking faces. “If you must know, I was using the TV equipment to contact a flying saucer. They took me on a trip far away from here. And a saucer woman made love to me.”
This doesn’t go over well. It’s only been a month since the mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate saucer cult members. The amused smiles change to anxious frowns. And Frank the lowly temp worker is fired on the spot.
* * * * * * * * *
When Frank finished telling me all this, the sun was setting. We were already making our way down the slope from the Devil’s Tower towards our campsite. Although I was incredibly impressed by everything Frank had told me, I felt an impish urge to tease.
“I thought you didn’t approve of people who have sex with saucerians,” I grinned. “Seems like this time you put yourself right on a level with them.”
“It wasn’t just sex with Goola,” said Frank. “It was something much higher. It was a mystical vision. And my wetware’s going across the galaxies.”
“That’s what all the abductees say,” I laughed.
“You know, Rudy, I’m really sick of you,” said Frank, suddenly flaring into extreme anger. “And now, thank God, my part of our book is done and I’ll never have to talk to you again. I’ve been trying to get you to see how rich and wonderful a world we live in, to help you understand a little bit of saucer wisdom, and it’s like you’re intent on just throwing away everything I tell you.”
“I’m sorry, Frank! I take it back! I do understand a little bit. I just couldn’t resist—”
“I am so fucking sick of people like you laughing at me.”
We didn’t talk much more than that. We walked the rest of the way to our camp, ate some noodles, crawled into our tents, and went to sleep.
Chapter Twelve: The End?
That night I had a very unusual experience.
In the middle of the night—this would have been in the early AM hours of Monday, June 16, 1997—I woke and looked up through the tent’s mesh ceiling to the sky. Directly overhead I saw a brilliant point-sized flash of light that moved along a curving bright line and disappeared—the brightest shooting star I’d ever seen.
Before even forming the thought that I could make a wish, I’d made one. If I were going to lie to you, I’d claim that I wished I could see the aliens. But in fact I wished for something that lies deeper and closer to my heart: I wished to remain sober.
I suppose I went back to sleep then, but a little later I seemed to find myself awake and outside. I was in the high grasses of the field between our campground and the river.
In my dream, an actual metal-just-like-it’s-supposed-to-be flying saucer lowered down on the grassy field next to our campground. Time was frozen. The river, which had been babbling before, was still and silent. The headlights of a distant car had stopped moving. In frozen time, the saucer opened a door and drew me in.
Herman the starfish was in there, and Steffi the piece of rope, and some of the iridescent beetles Frank mentioned from before. They were kind and friendly. There were other aliens too: orchids and cacti, crystals and flames, lobsters and lizards, clouds and whirlwinds, all of them chirping and smiling and crowding forward.
Oddly calm, I asked how they all came to be in the same saucer. Frank had always seen only one kind of alien at a time.
“We’re from even further out in the dimensions,” a sea cucumber named Jean told me. “We’re from the time beyond paratime. Where everyone ends up.”
“Are there any humans aboard?” I didn’t see any, but I was kind of hoping to get a look at Goola.
Reading my thoughts, a beet named Gordo gave a cryptic answer, “She’s not here yet. Not yet yet. Not yet yet yet. Three more levels.”
The aliens told me to be sure and finish Saucer Wisdom. To not be scared. That they’d watch over me, to the extent that they could. “And just trust God,” was the last thing the aliens told me. “God will protect you. God’s always there.”
When I woke up in the morning, Frank Shook was gone. No trace of him remained—and strangest of all, the tent of his I’d been sleeping in was gone as well. I was lying there on the bare ground of our campsite in my sleeping-bag, with my glasses, clothes and water-bottle on the dirt at my side. The money from my wallet, some three hundred dollars, was gone. Oh well. The vision had been worth it.
I wandered down towards the river, into the field where my dream had taken place. I felt an odd lack of surprise to find a spot where the grasses were flattened in an approximately circular pattern, whirled around as if by a small tornado. Black crickets hopped everywhere underfoot.
I packed up and got in my rented car. My plane home wasn’t till late that afternoon, so I went by a Safeway to get some food and cash with my credit card.
In the Safeway, my thoughts turned to the superfluity of the endless Midwestern Safeways by the interstates, the Safeways and their identically polite checker girls with Norwegian oooo sounds in their speech. And the superfluity of the identical old farmers and farmwives, spry and cantankerous, making the best of things. The endless glut of these people repeated over and over with the same expressions and opinions, they
seemed to me like a field of flowers. All the same. In a way this bothered me, in a way it didn’t. Why not repeat, after all, that’s how fields of flowers are, all the same, and it’s just a Romantic error to expect the windrows of humanity to be anything other than fields of people, the same pattern duplicated and reduplicated. Nature likes repeating herself.
And as I thought of the reduplicating flower-flesh of humanity, I could fully see how deep a disinterest the aliens have in us. The aliens have as deep a don’t-care feeling about us as my feelings upon seeing yet another squirming black cricket in the river field where I walked and wondered that Monday morning after my dream of the saucer from beyond time.
I haven’t heard any more from Frank Shook. I have no idea where—or when—he is. Perhaps Finland? I have a feeling he’ll turn up again some day, so I’m saving his share of the Saucer Wisdom money—minus three hundred dollars—in a special account. My agent and I made several attempts to look up Peggy Sung, but we could only learn that she’d moved from Benton to either Orange County or to mainland China. And as for Frank’s ex-wife Mary, the phone number she gave me doesn’t work anymore, I don’t know her last name, and nobody in San Lorenzo seems to have any idea how to find her.
Some friends and I pooled our video cameras and TVs and tried to reproduce Frank’s alien-attracting technique, but we couldn’t get it to work. We saw a lot of odd images, but that was about as far as it got us.
In any case, I’ve come to like thinking about aliens; I sometimes even imagine that I really did spend a few minutes in a saucer that night by Devil’s Tower. It’s a fresh, spaced-out way to look at the world. A conceptual high. I often think of a UFO perched watching at my shoulder, and it makes me feel glad.
And no, I haven’t been stopped from telling this True Story, and you reading this, no, you aren’t letting anyone stop you either, you’re in on the secret now, you’re in the Big Time, you’ve learned Saucer Wisdom.
The aliens are all around us, and you can learn to see things as they do.