A Voyage in the Near Distance 1: From Here to Nearly There

by Alec Merta

  “There,” Allie whispered. She pointed into the distance at a solitary figure standing in a fallow field.

  The figure, evidently a man, stood doing what most people at the station had been doing. Namely, he stood staring at the impossibly silent, hovering triangle. I took a moment to do the same.

  It was, as I have said, capped on each corner by a bright red light. The underside contained a constant, brilliant white light of an intensity so strong that it was difficult to look at. I knew as much as the average person about conventional aircraft and concluded that the thing before me was not in that category. It had to be something exotic, and its makers had to be familiar with technology beyond anything I had ever encountered.

  The lack of sound was omnipresent; my brain simply could not get past the silence. It should have been making quite a lot of sound; a jet engine’s roar or the thudding rapport of helicopter blades. That it was completely silent made the craft feel artificial. My mind had a difficult time maintaining the spacial orientation that I knew had to exist.

  “Why is it just floating there?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

  Allie climbed into the driver seat. For a moment, I lingered outside fearing that she might leave me behind. Instead, she looked at me quizzically and ordered me to get in. I obeyed. Part of me feared that I would find a baby slumbering peacefully in a car seat. I wondered if Allie would have stolen the car under those circumstances. I still do wonder about that, actually, but my knowledge of Allie is now such that it is only a half-hearted query.

  As it happened, the driver had left the keys in the vehicle. I suppose that is not such a surprise given the circumstances. He was probably a farmer accustomed to alighting from his vehicle to check this or that, and he had probably developed the habit of leaving his car parked and vulnerable. We would teach him a valuable lesson that night.

  Allie had started the engine before I even closed the door. The SUV was pointed south, so Allie put it into reverse and sped madly down the country road. I have no idea how she managed to do this without going off the narrow lane, but that she did. I tried to look behind us, but I could not make out where the road ended and the fields, with ample ruts and ditches capable of halting our progress, began. Giving up, I turned to look forward. I expected to see a very confused Yorkshireman racing toward the vehicle with arms waving madly. Instead, the lone figure continued to stare up into the sky, paying us no mind. Such was the engrossing quality of the mysterious airborne craft.

  Had you been there, I assure you this would not be such a difficult thing to conceive. Far from it, you would have understood that a person should be forgiven for being so intently focused on the craft as to ignore all other outside stimulation. I myself struggled to concentrate on the immediate danger of crashing into an unseen tree or hedge. Indeed, I soon gave up entirely and tried to take in more of the spectacle hanging in the Yorkshire sky.

  As I have learned since, it is very difficult for people observing objects in the night sky to grasp scale. The human optic system is nice, quite nice indeed if I say so myself, but it has serious limitations. For instance, the brain it is connected to can only work with the input it is given either in the moment or as supplied by memory. This is why a person can intuitively judge the distance between themselves and, say, a commercial airliner with surprising precision. The person knows, if not in units, about how big such an object is. Thus, a person seeing a commercial flight passing low overhead may say with some credibility that the object was quite close or very far away. Take away that requisite information, however, and the system collapses.

  Suddenly an object may be miles away or feet away; it may be colossal or it may be diminutive. The brain simply cannot say. The only hope in such a circumstance is to estimate the object’s size in comparison to some other object in the near vicinity. In this case, I used the service station.

  As I looked at the object, I found my points of reference. Bright shafts of white light emanated from it. They originated at the edges, or so it appeared, and followed lines straight down from the craft. I feared for a moment that the lights would cause parked cars (or worse, gawking people) to erupt into flames. Instead, they began to dance around the station, the car park, and the curtilage. As they had before, some of the shafts bent in unnatural ways. They looked like fiber optic tubes reaching out to explore the land.

  As the shafts moved, I estimated the size of the object in relation to the building and its surroundings. My mind rebelled at the information my eyes transmitted. The service station and its associated car park were, and I have since confirmed this figure to be roughly accurate, nearly six hundred feet across.

  The silent, hovering triangle was half again as long.

  Impossible. Impossible. The word rang in my head. How could such an immense thing sneak through densely populated England? How could it do so silently? How could it simply hover without causing so much as a light breeze? I shall continue to rely upon the word ‘impossible.’

  Allie, undistracted by the fantastic sight, continued her mad driving. Blessedly, she soon found a large, flat area of grass in which to turn around. She threw the vehicle harshly to one side, giving me a momentary fear that we would topple over. We stayed right, and she changed gears. In an instant, we were hurtling north in the correct attitude.

  “I don’t think we can get back to the motorway,” I said.

  “We’re not getting on the motorway. We’re going to have police looking for us.”

  “And that thing,” I said.

  “It’ll take a while for it to find me. I think.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” she trailed off for a moment. “It’s complicated.”

  I let it pass.

  “Then where do we go?” I asked.

  “We have to make it back to the Moors. Put it in the GPS.”

  I had never used that particular sat-nav before, so it took a while to activate it and find the location. This was complicated by the fact that I had to scan around the map to visually locate the Hole of Hercum. All the while, I kept glancing in the mirrors to track the progress of the triangle craft. Each time I looked, I expected it to be looming close behind in a silent pursuit with shafts of light reaching out for us. My heart skipped a beat each time I did as I imagined the inevitable climax that would soon follow. To my profound relief, it remained steady and in place.

  When I entered the location into the sat-nav, the system told me that we were not on any known road. This was hardly a surprise as we were bouncing up and down across gravel and dirt. I moved the map around until I saw a road before us.

  “Go north,” I said, “There’s a lane up there that will get us to a road we can take to the A59. I can get us to York and onward to the Moors.”

  “Does that take us through towns?”

  “Well, York for one. But the rest should be fine. Little villages and whatnot.”

  “It’ll have to do. We’ll try to bypass York as much as possible. It’ll slow us down, but there won’t be as many cops.”

  I was zooming in on the map to try and find a path from the country road to the promised lane. I saw nothing, however, but green and brown smudges. Allie, predictably, had already set her mind on a course.

  A cluster of lights glowed before us. It looked like a large estate or maybe a commercial building. Whatever it was, Allie must have concluded that it held an access way to the lane and then onward to the A-road. She pointed the vehicle toward it like a fighter jet; only fighter jets don’t have to worry about things like hedgerows, fences, and cows. I felt pain each time she flew across a rut or through an earthen obstacle. I anticipated the crash that would signal our impact with an unseen farm animal.

  I was gratified that when we did careen into objects, they were light enough to give way without seriously damaging the vehicle. We smashed through small farm implements and local foliage, and we took several years off the life of a very surprised goat. Thankf
ully, we did not crash and continued un-slowed in our fevered race.

  I took another look back and immediately wished I had not. The lights were changed. They were larger. That could only mean one thing.

  “It’s coming,” I said.

  She said nothing in reply. I heard only the sound of the gears and the engine as she pushed the vehicle to reckless speeds.

  “Allie, what are we supposed to do if that thing catches us?”

  Instead of answering, she reached into her jacket. When she withdrew her hand, it held a pair of round discs. She popped one into her mouth. I assumed it was another dose of pain medicine.

  That assumption vanished when she reached her left hand out and grabbed mine. She manipulated it such that the disc ended up in my grasp.

  “Don’t chew it. Just put it in your mouth and let it dissolve.”

  “What?” I shouted. “What is this?”

  “It’s mainly potassium iodine with a few other ingredients. White blood cell boosters.” I raised my hand to my mouth, pausing to consider it. Obviously it was not poison, but that gave me little comfort. It smelled salty.

  “Why potassium? What does this do?”

  “Potassium iodine. And it should keep your from dying of radiation sickness. Now take it!”

  “Radiation?”

  “Carver, for God sake, just do as I say!”

  I bit. Or rather, I did not bite. I placed the disc on my tongue and closed my mouth. It tasted foul, like salt and iron. The disc dissolved in seconds, leaving only an unpleasant after-taste. I fought hard to expel the word ‘radiation’ from my mind.

  “What’s the plan, Allie?” I said, again looking back.

  “It’s pretty self-explanatory, Carver!” She shouted. She was wide-eyed and looked slightly mad. Gears ground down under her fist. The engine roared. Again, we accelerated. I held on as best as I could, but I could not resist being tossed around as the ground beneath us rose and fell.

  As we neared the distant lights strung-out before us, I began to discern what they signified. It was some type of farm complex. People were milling about large combines and tractors. Farmhands and mechanics were obviously preparing for a long day of working the fields that lay all around us.

  “Allie, there’s a lot of people up there,” I half-shouted.

  “Good.”

  “Good? Why good?”

  “Because they’ve made enough of a scene for one night.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think!” was all she said. “How far away is it?”

  I turned back and re-checked the triangle’s progress toward us. It was definitely larger. Why was it ambling along so casually? How could it not see the tiny car, headlights ablaze and kicking dust high up into the air? Perhaps distance was not a concern to whomever flew it.

  “Still there. It’s closer,” I said.

  The road leveled and straighten out. Now we were heading at full tilt toward the farmers. I saw at least a dozen, maybe more. Their attention was on their work, but inevitably one heard us and turned to look at the on-rushing SUV. He shouted something and turned to get the attention of others. Quickly, a wave of curiosity and concern rippled through the workers. They stared at us as we sped toward them.

  Very soon, the men began to look up. Of course, I realized, they would not long be concerned with a car racing away from a massive, flying object. The object itself would rapidly catch their attention and hold it fast. I turned back to see how close the triangle craft was. I screamed as I saw beams of white light racing along the road in our direction.

  “Go faster!” I shouted.

  The beams sliced through the ground toward us. Shafts of light that appeared as solid as ice swept up and down the road, illuminating the countryside. I could make out clouds of dust swirling where the made contact with the earth. One of the shafts bent and began to extend itself toward us like the snake in that old arcade game.

  I lurched forward suddenly as the car stalled. My head struck the window, and stars danced in my vision. Blood ran down my forehead. The engine did not die but coughed again and again. The headlights flickered, and the sat-nav began to switch off and on. Unlike the movies, the radio did not begin a frantic sweep across the dial.

  We were out of power and in the grasp of the craft’s operators.

  As my vision cleared, I saw the massive flood lights, which had illuminated the farm complex, begin to snap off one after another. In the last seconds of light, I saw the farmers panic and race for safety. I uttered more oaths and summoned more deities.

  As the engine gave up its last Newtons of energy, Allie lost control. We began to drift round in full circles until she applied the brakes and halted our course. We came to a rather auspicious stop only yards from the farm complex. I looked up through the sunroof to see the malignant craft hovering above us. Slowly, a single white shaft of light began to descend from it, almost as though it was lowering a rope.

  What now? How would the builders of this fantastic flying machine deal with captured prisoners? Would there even be a capture, or would they dispatch us; turn off our bodies with the same ease they had displayed in switching off machines?

  I imagined the end. The brief sensation of pain followed by nothingness. Questions of the afterlife, long removed from my way of thinking, fluttered to mind. Would I die and see God? Would I die and simply end? What would the first seconds of eternity be like? I anticipated flailing about in a long tunnel as I did my best to come to terms with fate.

  I missed my parents very much.

  Then the light paused. It had reached a distance of no more than a foot away from the sunroof. It was so close that I could make out shimmering swirls of energy in the beam that had been indiscernible at a distance. The vehicle began to vibrate softly, almost gently. A feeling of tingling electricity crept through my flesh. Goose pimples raised themselves across my body.

  It hung suspended there for a measure of time the duration of which I can only guess at. Allie and I stared in silence, she in anticipation of something and I consumed by fear of the unknown. As the light lingered and no end came to me, I started to feel a faint hope that perhaps I would not perish. Perhaps the triangle-thing was not intent on killing us or capturing us after all.

  Gradually, the light began to retreat. A wave of relief threatened to overtake me, but I fought it. It was too soon to celebrate. That said, I did allow a trickle of hope to come into my mind as the light retreated into the triangle and, much to my amazement, the bright lights on the craft began to dim slightly. The craft began a slow, anti-clockwise rotation, and the lights grew dimmer still. I gave in, and hope washed over me.

  That did not last long. In my peripheral vision, I saw lights blink on. More lights were appearing in the sky.

  Off to my left, which was probably west, a dozen white, red, and green lights came racing toward us. I felt defeated. I calculated that the craft was not intent on retreat. Rather, it must have been content to merely incapacitate us. That done, the lioness had called its children to dine.

  Allie let out a yell. It startled me profoundly, and I flinched in a violent, reflexive motion. I turned to gape at her, expecting to see stark fear reflected in her expression. There was none of that, however.

  She yelled again, this time in a very American way. She began to call out “Yes!” and laugh. She cursed the object above us and made a rather rude gesture.

  “Go on!” she yelled, “Get out of here you cowards! Carver, keep your eyes on it. You won’t believe how it can move!”

  I had no clue what she was going on about. She had to have snapped and given herself totally to madness. Regardless, I obeyed and began to stare back up through the sunroof. The triangle hovered still, but the shafts of light were all gone. The fixed lights had dimmed to a barely perceptible level.

  Allie said in a quiet voice, “Run away, you bastards.”

  I was blinded. The brilliant white light erupted into an exploding star above us. My head throbbed in pa
in as I was momentarily overcome. Even with my eyes shut, I saw only pure white illumination. I felt heat on my face like one feels while laying on a beach and taking in the sun.

  Then a sound came. It was like the grinding of gears on a colossal ship engine. The sound was like mountains of iron scraping and rubbing against each other, forced together by some godlike impulse. Uselessly, I covered my ears. It went on and on, and I felt as though I would never again know peace. My senses were consumed by the light and heat and sound, their power interrupted only by the tactile sensation of my heart pounding against my chest.

  It will be very difficult for you to really grasp what happened next. I warn you that my description will inevitably fall far from conveying the astonishing sight I witnessed. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to convey some sense of what happened.

  The triangle moved. It moved fast. I do not think the speed it eventually attained was anything extraordinary, but the way in which it achieved it was mind-boggling. The craft did not accelerate; it did not turn to aim at a point on the horizon and, rocket-like, achieve a stately change in velocity. It simply transformed from an object at rest to an object in motion. It achieved its top speed instantaneously.

  In a blink, there was no longer an object hovering menacingly above us. That had been replaced by a distant triangle careening east at hundreds of miles an hour. It kept that course for a brief count before shooting off at an upward angle. It climbed up and away. How, I wondered, could any living thing survive such maneuvering? My schoolboy knowledge of flight told me that launching from the deck of an aircraft carrier imposed dangerous amounts of g-forces on pilots and machines. It was patently obvious that the triangle craft had just demonstrated an acceleration extreme enough to make a catapult shot look casual and ponderous by comparison.

  I turned back to examine the on-rushing fleet of lights. As I did, I noted a familiar sound associated with those lights. It was the sound of jet engines.