“’Oh, no,’ my uncle sighs. ‘Leave the bats alone.’
“’It’s just exploration,’ my dad says hopefully.
“’Don’t eat the bats,’ Twizzle pleads.
“Soliloquy nudges me in the ribs. I lean closer to her and she whispers, ‘Maybe the bats will eat the aliens.’
“There is nothing we can do but watch.
“My mom fills the waiting time by continuing her story of the alien craft. ‘That’s where your dad and uncle started when they explored the underground labyrinth of caves that led them to the alien craft. They began there and moved downward from cave to tunnel to cave to tunnel, photographing and indexing everything as they went, using the 3D laser scanner to create digital versions of their discoveries. The scans and images were compiled into a three-dimensional map of the underground system below the farm.
“Twizzle wants to know, ’How big is the alien craft?’
“’That’s hard to say because it’s jammed deep into the side of the cavern, smashing through and making way for itself through solid rock.’
“’So you’ve never walked the whole perimeter?’ I ask.
“’Nope. It’s not possible, but we have explored much of the interior and mapped it using the 3D scanner and photographs.’
“’You’ve built a digital model of it?’ Soliloquy asks.
“’Indeed, it is the part of the cave we never let anyone have access to.’
“’Including us,’ I add.
“’Including you kids,’ she says, and then adds, ‘but now it’s time you know.’
“’So can you show us?’ Twizzle asks.
“In answer to her question, my dad says, ‘Give me a minute to retrieve the info.’ Moments later a wire-frame image of the alien craft appears on the screen. He orbits the view around so we can get a feel for it. He stops the orbit and moves his cursor to a spot on the screen. ‘This is the opening into the craft.’ It is at the far end of one side of the thing.
“’Show us the solid shape,’ Twizzle says. My dad switches to smooth and solid mode. The craft is gray. Computer-generated scene lights give it shadow.
“’Why’s it shaped so weird? It looks like a cancerous cucumber with warts and things,’ Twizzle observes.
“My dad laughs. ‘It is rather organic. Everything about the ship is that way. I think of it as some beautiful flowering plant, like a rose with stems, leaves and protective thorns.’
“’Where are the thorns?’ I want to know.
“He looks at my uncle, who looks at my mom, who looks at us. ‘Some outside the entity, but most buried deep within it, Messenger.’
“’So the thorns are protecting it? Did you get hurt by any of it?’
“My parents and my uncle all trade looks again.
“Then Twizzle interrupts. ‘They’ve found the bats.’
“Sure enough, the aliens are now below the bats and, where the aliens had made a point of thoroughly inspecting the tequila, they now avoid the bats, seemingly uninterested.
“Twizzle wonders out loud, ’Think the aliens are afraid of them?’
“A few of the bats stir and fly to new places in the cave, but the rest ignore the aliens. And, interestingly enough, where the glow sticks with crab legs had filled the tequila storage rooms with their light, here they are few, keeping to the cave floor, illuminating just enough to see, but not enough to disturb the bats. We have no audio so we have no idea how noisy the bats or the aliens are. It’s all just a weird silent movie.
“’Wonder where the scorpion king is,’ Twizzle says.
“My uncle points to one of the monitors that show a new alien. It’s like a big version of the spider things the creatures used to open the tequila, only its body is flat and oblong. It’s stopped in the middle of the bat guano under the bats. Feelers from its body are digging around into the guano muck. An appendage on one side of it shovels guano onto its flat back. Then an appendage on its other side shovels more onto its back. The appendages continue to shovel, building the guano into a mound. As the guano gets higher, the sides of its back rise up like it was some kind of pickup truck bed. When it seems to have enough, it turns and scrabbles its way back up to the mouth of the cave, where it stops and remains motionless.
“’Mining bat guano?’ my uncle asks.
“A scorpion alien comes into view and walks to the guano-loaded thing. It pulls a small spider from a fold in its body and plants the thing in the middle of the guano pile. Seconds later, a holographic display of changing symbols appears over the spider. The scorpion alien studies them until the display ceases. It lowers its head to the pile and then, what looks like a tongue shoots out of its head and into the pile and then back into its mouth.
“My uncle smiles and asks, ’Any bets on whether it finds that a taste delicacy?’
“’Yuck’ is Twizzle’s response.
“The scorpion alien shoots out its tongue again, but this time it lingers, pushing it around in the guano pile. The small spider thing in the guano pile burrows into the guano and then re-emerges, covered with guano. It jumps onto the scorpion alien, climbs up to its head and then crawls around the alien’s head, tracking and smearing guano as it goes.
“’Perfume?’ my uncle guesses.
“’Medicinal, maybe?’ my dad suggests.
“’Alien,’ my Mom says, as a final note.
“’Alien,’ Forbes repeats with surprising vehemence. ‘Stinkin’ alien.’
“My mom smiles and my dad laughs.
“’Forbes knows,’ my uncle remarks.
“’Well, it stinks now, even if it didn’t before,’ I add. No one laughs.
“Twizzle tries to get my mom back to the computer-generated spacecraft. ‘So tell us about the thorns you found in the craft. What were they? How do you know they protect the ship? What do they look like?’
“My uncle replaces the image of the alien craft with a different image, a feed from the caverns. ‘Look where they’re heading,’ he says to my dad.
“’No surprise,’ my mom notes. ‘I think it’s time we abandon this room and make our way to safer digs.’
“’Safer?’ I wonder. ‘What more is there?’ This is as far as our practice routines had ever taken us.
“’Warm clothes first,’ she announces. She rips open some boxes and starts pulling sweats and jackets from them, tossing the clothes to us one at a time. From another box, she pulls out hiking boots of various sizes. ‘Try them on for size until you find a set that fits.’ Within fifteen minutes we are warm and ready to go. She opens another box and pulls out flashlights and lanterns, passing them out among us, making sure we each have one for ourselves. My dad and uncle, in the meantime, are loading backpacks with food and liquid. When they finish, they give a backpack to each of us.
“’We’re going spelunking,’ my mom tells us.
“Soliloquy gives me a worried look and shrugs her shoulders in resignation. My mom touches her gently and offers assurance. ‘Honey, you’re in this now, and for your own sake, you’ll have to follow. I’m sorry you have to get involved. Trust us and we’ll try to get you through this, okay?’
“Soliloquy nods her head. ‘Where’re we going?’
“’To the alien craft Bob and Ted found. It’s the only place we’ll be safe. The aliens are headed here right now. If they find us, they’ll hurt us. Please believe me. They are not here to make friends with humans.’
“’The Alien craft is the key to all this, isn’t it?’
“Soliloquy is smart. It’s obvious the aliens are deadly, yet I had not put that together, but she has.
“’Yes, honey, it is.’
“Soliloquy looks her from eye to eye and then turns to my uncle and dad, who are watching her. She studies them for a moment then turns back to my mom. ‘Okay. I trust you.’
“My mom grins and gives Soliloquy a big hug. ‘Thank you, honey. We won’t let you down.’ She releases her and then shifts to drill sergeant mode.
“’B
ob, you lead. Ted, you bring up the rear. I’ll hang out in the middle. Twizzle and Forbes, follow your dad. I’ll follow you. Messenger and Soliloquy, follow me. Let’s move out.’
“And just like that, we leave everything behind. We simply walk out of the room while the computers and monitors are still up and running. In single file, we follow my dad on a winding and sometimes crawling journey through caves and tunnels down and down until we come to the chasm my dad spoke of in the video before it went dead. We stop and gather at the start of a rope bridge spanning the chasm. I lean over the edge, aim my flashlight down, but am unable to see the bottom clearly. Seems like it IS deeper than 30 feet. When I direct my flashlight up, the cave ceiling appears equally far away.
“’Everyone, turn off your lights. What you will see exists in only one other place in the world, in New Zealand,’ my uncle says.
“We are thrown into complete darkness at first, but slowly the ceiling and walls come alive with a bioluminescent blue-green light until the area is filled with what looks like night-sky distant stars. I look over the edge of the chasm and notice the light is reflected in a body of moving water at the bottom of our fissure. ‘There’s a stream down there,’ I note.
“’It provides moisture for the glowworms. The walls of the cave are moist, too. The glowworms are larvae of a fungus gnat, one of the bugs that our bats feed on.’ He points to the cavern ceiling. ‘The stuff that looks like tiny icicles hanging from the ceiling is webs of silk threads the worms use to snatch their prey.’
“It’s mesmerizing being bathed in the dim blue light. The experience is similar to being under the stars on a clear night except everything, including us, is now blue-green.
“’We need to keep moving,’ my mom orders.
“I touch one of the guy ropes that span the chasm, and then I look at my dad. ’You built this?’
“’Yes, we built this. And, in answer to your unasked ‘how,’ we created a custom gun to blow a steel pin into the other side. Attached to the pin was rope. Once we made sure the pin was adequately secure, we fastened another steel pin into rock on this side. We pulled the rope tight between the two of them, tested it for strength and then crossed the pit, one at a time, hand over hand. Pretty hairy the first time, but later we modified it into what you see now with more pins and supports in the rock—a lot more.’”
“The bridge comprises three thick rope lines that form a triangle in cross-section. The lowest rope is what you walk on. The other two ropes running parallel and almost four feet above the bottom single rope line are what you hold onto while you walk across: hands on the two upper ropes and then feet on the lower one. It is tightrope-walking with a rope railing on each side.
“’Forbes, you’re too small to try this alone. I want you on your dad’s back,’ my mom tells him. ‘I’ll lead the way. We go one at a time. When one gets to the other side, the next person starts across. Any questions?’
“’I hate heights,’ Soliloquy says in a small voice.
“’You can do this, honey,’ my mom encourages her. ‘Even if you slip and fall, you’ll not get far.’ She holds up something that looks like leather handcuffs with wheels on the ends of them. ‘Each kid gets a set of these.’ She locks one around Soliloquy’s right wrist, securing it firmly in place. ‘You affix the wheel to the cable like this,’ she says as she snaps it onto the cable. She pulls it down and instantly you see the beauty of it. ‘If you fall, you hang by your wrist until you get your feet back onto the lower cable again.’
“Soliloquy isn’t as impressed as I am. She gives my mom a doubtful look. My mom smiles and tells her, ‘Watch me.’ She removes it from Soliloquy’s wrist and then attaches it to herself. She attaches a second one to her other wrist and attaches it to the opposite rope cable so now her back is to us and she is facing the chasm.
“’This is what it looks like in action,’ she explains. She grips both rope cables and starts walking on the lower thicker cable towards the center of the chasm. When she reaches the middle, she surprises us all by stepping off of the foot cable. Twizzle yelps. I gasp, and Forbes yells out her name. But the wrist things cut her fall short. She hangs there with her shoulders bouncing against the bottom rope foot cable.
“’Now watch how I get back up,’ she yells. She swings one leg up and over the foot cable, and then the other leg, so now she is seated on the foot cable. From there she pulls herself up to where she can stand and hold onto the cables on each side. Once she is up, she backtracks backward to us until she is on solid ground in front of us. My dad removes the wheeled leather handcuffs from her wrists.
“She takes the handcuffs and secures them onto Soliloquy’s wrists. ‘Now honey, if you fall and find that you can’t get back up, I’ll come out and help you, so no matter what, no matter how much you’re frightened, no matter how much you freeze up, I’ll be there to get you across.’
“’Won’t our combined weight be too much?’
“My mom shakes her head. ‘We are being conservative with the one-at-a-time rule. It’s just an added measure of safety. The lines can be stressed, don’t worry.’
“Soliloquy looks past my mom to the chasm beyond and grimaces, ‘I’m worried as hell. I’m sorry. You have no idea how much I hate heights. And you can’t tell me to not look down because I need to see the rope in order to place one foot in front of the other. It’s not going to work. I can’t go. Believe me, I can’t.’ She’s pleading at this point.
“’Okay, honey, we’ll do this differently. You and I will go last after everyone else. We’ll go together. We’ll both be locked to the cables. I’ll be right in front of you. I’ll be walking backward, facing you, making sure you stay steady and sure. We’ll be talking the whole time. We’ll step together, each footfall.’ She looks over to my Uncle Ted. ‘Ted, you go before us. Cross over and then bring me back one of the kids’ cuffs.’
“And that is how we proceed. My dad carries Forbes on his shoulders with no problem. He places one foot in front of the other like a practiced tightrope walker while pumping his arms back and forward, as a walker would do, and sliding his hands along the rope, keeping them in contact with the ropes. When they reach the other side, my dad steps off of the rope and Forbes drops down from my dad’s back, turns to us and proudly yells, ‘No proboley, abalones.’ I’m guessing he got that from the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon show he loves so much.
“Twizzle is set up with the leather handcuffs and goes next. Once she places her foot on the bottom rope, she is so scared she practically runs across. When she hits the other side into the waiting arms of our dad, she turns and yells enthusiastically, ‘That is so rad!’
“Once I am set up with the leather bracelets, I follow my dad’s lead and mimic his style, sliding my hands along the ropes, never losing touch with them and feeling jittery the whole time. The crossing takes probably thirty seconds but seems way longer.
“My uncle starts to cross over but stops in the middle to look down. ‘Beautiful,’ he says quietly. He looks up and softly remarks, ‘Absolutely stunning.’ He cuts it short and continues on to the other side, where he retrieves Twizzle’s cuffs and then carries them back to us without stopping in the middle. Then he crosses once more to join us on the other side, where we wait silently for my mom and Soliloquy. No victory jubilation from him.
“My mom cuffs up, snaps herself to the cable and takes a few steps out onto the line, facing backward toward Soliloquy. Soliloquy is already cuffed up. She snaps herself to the lines and takes a step out onto the bottom rope.
“My mom cheers her on. ‘You can do this, honey. You’re as brave as any of us.’
“Soliloquy’s hands are shaking the cables. My mom ignores it and tells her, ‘Now, I’m going to take a step backward. You take a step forward at the same time. I’ll count to three. Ready? One. Two. Three.’ She slowly steps back as Soliloquy steps forward.
“’That’s perfect, honey. You’re doing fine.’ My mom’s voice is the only sound in the cave
as we all wait in tense quiet on the other side of the bridge.
“She goes through the same process, again and again, edging them closer and closer to the other side. But trouble is brewing. Soliloquy is making sharp, short inhaling sounds that are increasing in frequency. Her chest is rising higher with each breath. Her breathing appears to be getting more and more difficult.
“Alarmed, my mom stops. ‘Soliloquy, what’s happening?’ Her smooth voice has vanished.
“In halting words, Soliloquy explains, ‘Stress...asthma. Hard to...breathe. Harder...and harder. Can’t catch...my breath.’
“I don’t have to see her eyes to know she is terrified. Soliloquy goes rigid, locks up, frozen in place and wheezing hard; her hands are white-knuckled. I feel for her. I’ve been in places too high in the past and once you fall into your fear, it’s a live and terrible thing. You can’t move, come hell or high water. Your stomach feels like it’s going to purge itself and your limbs feel like stone. You’re dizzy and you’re sure you’re going to fall and die. It’s awful.
“’Soliloquy, look at my face. Make eye contact, honey.’ My mom’s voice is back to in-control smooth. Soliloquy raises her head and faces my mom.
“’We’re going to do a change-up here. You and I are going to do a slow dance over this ravine. I’m going to move forward to touch toes with you. Then you are going to lift your foot and place it on top of my foot. Then you are going to lift your other foot and place it on top of my other foot. We will be closer than lovers, honey. I’ll lead once you are on my feet. When I say, “lift,” you lift your foot with mine and follow my step. I’m not asking anymore. I’m telling. This is how it’s going to go down.’
“And she does it. Soliloquy places her feet on top of my mom’s and the two of them, very slowly, step by very cautious step, walk the rest of the way over the gorge. When they hit earth and my dad has unsnapped Soliloquy from the cable and pulled her away from the edge, she drops to her knees and retches onto the ground, coughing and spitting up all her fear. My mom kneels next to her, an arm over her shoulder, making soothing sounds and rubbing her arm. In a few minutes, it passes, as does Soliloquy’s asthma. Finally, she bursts into tears and buries her head in my mom’s chest. Watching her cry brings tears to my eyes. I want to take her distress and make it mine to relieve her, but all I can do is stand uncomfortably and watch, feeling inadequate.
Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series Page 6