I had always found stars comforting. Such a response belies the scientific truth of what they are. Immense explosions of hydrogen fusions lasting for billions of years. They look so comforting in the sky. The billions and billions of them, seemingly forming clouds across unimaginable distances. All that in my little pixel.
Once I found a natural rock in the shape of a five-pointed star. It was half-buried in sand upon a beach. I took a picture of it and captioned it “Rock Star”. The stars we could reach were the starfish on a beach. That was in a song. I think the song was about dying, but it was a pretty song, and it was always comforting to me.
And now, I needed the stars. Not the explosive ones that hurled out tongues of gas and, along with gravity, hammered out the planets. I needed the comforting ones that twinkled like a childhood song, that spun about my head, my head alone as I watched them. I was the “one who knows” after all. I was…consciousness.
But I shared my little speck inside my little pixel with untold numbers of greater consciousnesses. Some philosophers have spoken about absurdity. Religions have told us of purposefulness and meaning, righteousness, salvation even, while providing us with reasons to divide, hate, and kill. Science has told us of explosions and vast distances and how we are all moving apart at ever increasing speed among energies of darkness that annihilate each other. Is it any surprise then that I needed the twinkling lights above me to beautify and warm the darkness? Absolute zero is the temperature of empty space.
I, like many, longed for knowledge and yet found knowledge alone to be unsatisfying. Logic alone was empty, a character once said. Another character, of whom I’d read, gave up his perfect knowledge of God to obtain the perfect love of God. I would give up knowledge of all these pixels so that I could live in peace.
But all these were thoughts, inside my head. I wondered if glass jellyfish likewise have such thoughts. Did a cell of living glass cry when it had no other? Did a star?
Chapter 20 - DRISCOLL’S DITCH
Driscoll returned a few days later.
“Aren’t you tired of me by now?” I asked.
“No, and that’s the truth. Funny thing is, I’m starting to believe you.”
“Now that scares me worse than anything.”
“We can’t find other explanations. There are no explanations. We detected this immense structure deep in bedrock. There’s a shaft or column or something leading down to it that was sealed with concrete. We harvested a lot of glass with some very special properties. All the glass has disappeared. And the excavation is the former site of a gathering from which, as far as we can tell, everyone is missing. How else can anybody explain that? I’m just sorry we didn’t keep it under wraps better than we did. But the project got to be too big for that.”
“Well, most people don’t believe my explanation for it. So you don’t need to keep that under wraps.”
“More and more people believe your explanation. If you put it all in that book you’re writing, even more will believe it. We have no control over this.”
“Well, look, somebody in government…in our government…knows the truth. There was Roswell and Project Bluebook, Area 51, etc. Somebody knows the truth. Doesn’t the FBI talk to the Pentagon, or whatever?”
“You would think. We’re too busy keeping things secret from each other. And keeping nothing secret that we should.”
“You being critical of them surprises me.”
“Well, don’t quote me because I will deny everything. Officially you’re still a suspect although right now I think I’m in more danger of being arrested than you are. There are some who want my head for bringing in the radar in the first place. At your suggestion, by the way.”
“I just gave you the best answers I could. I haven’t tried to conceal anything. I just didn’t want everybody wanting to lock me up.”
“You’re not going to get locked up. But I do wish we could find something on Drake. We need to confirm if he ever existed or not.”
“I’ve told you what I believe. I met him when we first moved here because he was a neighbor. I didn’t know that nobody else had ever seen him. But I did. And I spent a lot of time listening to him. He knew everything…that somebody in the government still knows to this day. Can’t you find those guys in the black suits that used to hush up everything?”
“I have no idea who you’re referring to. But if they are part of Pickering’s group, we can’t find them either.”
“You know about Pickering?”
“Pickering was a very smart, very rich eccentric with some very strange ideas. He had many backers. He wanted to build an observatory in Antarctica, so it was said. He imported tons of materiel down there. Now it’s all disappeared…like everyone and everything.”
“Someone came to see me claiming to be Pickering but he wasn’t. He came to the hospital in Florida when I was there. There must be records. Cameras? Can’t you trace him down?”
“Well, that’s something we could pursue, I suppose. But the last time I took your advice we created a multimillion dollar ditch in your cornfield.”
“I guess that’s the chance you have to take.”
Driscoll stood there awkwardly before he took his leave. His assistant had stayed in the car this time.
****
After this time, my dreams seemed to become stranger. And the stranger dreams were more frequent.
One night, I was looking out upon a sea. I was standing on a shore watching water creatures emerging from immense waves that crashed beyond me but which ran almost to my feet, bare and buried within the sand and smoothly polished shells. The nearest creature, and easiest for me to see in the starlight, had a large head, big eyes, long legs and feet. Its hands were webbed…but also tentacled. It may have had fins. A creature from a black lagoon? The ocean was dark and profoundly disturbing. I could sense great monsters in the deep. They were chasing the water beings ashore, where they did not wish to be, and yet they were arriving in great numbers in their attempts to survive. These refugees from the waves were our ancestors. They bore ancient DNA that rode on comets to other worlds.
When I awoke I was puzzled and disturbed. Did we all have a common origin, the lifeforms of Earth and the creatures from the stars? Were all of us aliens after all?
****
“He definitely was not Pickering,” Driscoll said. “It was a pain to get the security camera images from that far back, but we found them in their archives and restored the data. We don’t know who he was, or what he was doing there.”
“He was there to silence me. He didn’t want me telling anybody about my rocketship ride.”
“OK...Don…now you’ve lost me again. Are you claiming…?”
“I’m not claiming anything. Pickering put me on a rocket and sent me past Pluto. And that’s where the angels and the quantum gate showed up. They showed me reality because they said someone from my pixel needs to know about it. It was really terrible. I don’t recommend the view at all. But I got to see a fairy and a unicorn in the end, so that made it not so bad.”
Driscoll looked totally lost. He looked like he wanted to walk away from me and everything else.
“Don, we’ve spent millions believing you. You almost convinced me of your extraterrestrial explanations. And now you make up a story like this? Pickering was an important astrophysicist and would-be observatory builder. But he didn’t have rockets, and you didn’t ride on one.”
“Have it your way.”
Driscoll left. He stayed gone for awhile this time.
Chapter 21 - THE GIRL WITH THE STAR TATOOS
Absolutely nothing had been done to the great hole where my cornfield used to be. The mountain of dirt had eroded and some of it had washed back into the hole. The hole had accumulated water and now looked like a muddy lake with a solid concrete tower in the middle. It was still a tourist attraction, but not as much as it had been. Still, the road past my house was a lot busier than when it led only to my cornfield. Some people even put up tents and resorted to pr
imitive camping. They told me they were looking for the UFOs that took away the glass caves, and they wanted to observe the site over several days. I had to put up “no trespassing” signs in my yard, also “no public restrooms”.
I kept the campers out of my yard, but I had no control over the area that was government land but outside the fence that was around the hole. The local police said it was outside their jurisdiction. The feds, who owned it, were totally disinterested in it now. I guess I shouldn’t have scared Driscoll away.
I kept reminding the campers that the last time I had people camping near my house, they all mysteriously disappeared. That just excited them though. At least one of them said he wanted to follow them, wherever they went. I told him maybe they went nowhere. Then he made a joke that he stole from a Star Trek movie.
The local police did have some say over Drake’s ruins, and they had to patrol the area frequently to clear out more campers from there. The county had cleaned up the yard around the ruins, and fenced it off. So now campers liked to pitch their tents nearby. I drove by every now and then myself to see what was happening. I told them to watch out for poisonous plants. They all wanted to hear more about my missing fingertips and the consequences.
Now that the weather was warming up once again, there were more tents, and campfires. I would sit out on the porch at night and watch the fires. Part of me thought they were pretty and enjoyed them. But I also worried that one would get out of control. Sometimes I would let them borrow water from the house, if only for my own peace of mind.
The campers would come and go. I never really knew who they were. I hoped nobody would go missing.
One night I was hearing some guitar playing coming from one of the campfires. A young woman in a loose black dress was dancing around the fire. Her bare arms and legs were covered with star tattoos. When the music stopped I approached and asked if they wanted to hear the story of my rocketship ride. They said sure.
I went into considerable detail. It was new to me to talk about it like this. I wondered what they would think. They stared at me, and they appeared lost in my story. I could tell they wanted to believe it, but of course part of them was holding back.
When I got to the end, one of them said, “Hey man, I like the fairy and the unicorn.”
“Yeah. That was my favorite part too. I didn’t like the horrors in the cloud. I also didn’t like the ride, alone, with no training. I couldn’t even take off my space helmet for awhile.”
“You make it sound really believable. You should write a book.”
“I am writing a book. It’s believable because it really happened.”
They laughed. The guitar playing resumed. The girl with the star tattoos said quietly, “I believe you.”
****
I was deep in thought when I walked back to the house. Sue was watching TV. I picked up my laptop and wrote about these recent happenings. And then I wondered. The girl with the star tattoos said she believed me. She was speaking truthfully. I had told this story, complete with the quantum gate and its revelations, and she had believed. This is what The Enlightened Ones had said I must do, and yet I had doubted that anyone would believe it at all. The girl with the star tattoos, was she unwittingly the savior of humanity? None of us fully know our role within our pixel. But somewhere, and sometimes, there is a vision of a perfect place.
I tried to remember the song with the sweet folk-like melody that the guitar-player had been singing. I wanted to write it down. It seemed apropos. Part of it was...
“Life’s an endless road and we’ll not be returning
To a joy quickly gone by or a pain that tarried long.
We can only be thankful that we’ve known this time together,
Ever searching, ever hopeful, for a place or time called home.”
****
Now that one person had believed me, I was more determined to finish my book than ever. But it took time to write all this stuff, to take rough notes and flesh them out and make them as complete and as believable as possible. I tried to keep everything straight. But it had become more and more convoluted in my mind. The stuff I wrote at the beginning of it all, when the oval first arrived in my cornfield, somehow sounded different from the more recent stuff. My writing itself had changed over time. Maybe I’d gotten better at it, or maybe worse, I didn’t know. But I knew that I had one believer. Somehow that meant so very much.
I’d hang out with the campers some more. But I never felt like telling that story again. I think that I thought that if I told it again, that it would cease to be real, that I wouldn’t even believe it myself. It was becoming like a photograph, the memory of which eventually replaces the memory of the event of which the photograph was made.
I didn’t see the campers with that particular guitar player or the girl with the star tattoos. They seem not to have returned after that night. I kept asking if anyone knew them, but nobody did.
And then one night I headed over to a campfire intending to inquire as I had been doing. One young fellow stood up when he saw me.
“You’ve been asking about the girl we called StarTat…is that right?”
“I have, her and her musician friend. I was wondering what had happened with them. I never knew her name.”
“Her friend is OK, mostly, I guess. StarTat died…drug overdose. We don’t know if it was intentional or not.”
I was floored. I almost fell. My throat felt tight, and my chest hurt. Tears filled my eyes. When I tried to speak I could only sob.
“I’m sorry, man. She must have been special to you.”
“She believed me.” My voice broke uncontrollably.
“I wish she’d believed in herself. Her self-esteem could have used some fixing. She always said she didn’t have a purpose.”
“Purpose…purpose…My god, she was the savior of humanity.”
The camper stared at me and then walked back to the fire. I walked back to the house.
“What in the world happened?” questioned Sue.
“One of the campers died. Drug overdose.”
“What? Here? Tonight?”
“No, not here. Not tonight. But I just learned about it.”
“That’s terrible. I know you’ve made friends with some of the campers. I guess you believe in some of the same things.”
“Yes, yes. Believe.”
****
I was surprised when Driscoll showed up some time later.
“Don't you ever just call?”
“I like a chance to get out of town. I wanted to let you know that we got finally got funds to clean up your field. You’ve got all these people camping around this muddy lake, which has a high bacteria count because it’s been farmland for many, many years. We want to blast away that concrete column and refill the hole with the dirt from that mound we made over there. We’ll enlarge the fence up to your land and keep the squatters away.”
“I’ve grown accustomed to the campers. I kind of enjoy having them here by now.”
“Well, they have no facilities. They are creating a health hazard on federal land. But if you want campers around, then you can arrange for it with local authorities, but it has to be on your own land.”
“You can’t just make a little national park? Glass Canyon National Park maybe?”
“We don’t want anything more to do with that damn glass!”
“It’s alive you know.”
“What’s alive?”
“The glass.”
“Don, I swear. We’re trying to do you a favor here. Don’t give me any more crap.”
“I guess you don’t believe me.”
“Hell no, I don’t believe you.”
“No savior of humanity are you.”
Driscoll actually kicked one of my rocking chairs.
“I don’t think that was legal.”
He turned to walk off in a huff. But then he turned around and came back.
“Did you ever find out where Drake was born? How old he was?”
“He said he was born around here somewhere but that was before the glass…never mind. I don’t know his age. Around seventy maybe. He was in very good shape for his age.”
“More like 80 plus. How old do you think he was if he was an officer back in the 50’s.”
“I hadn’t really thought of that. Maybe he was a very young officer.”
This time Driscoll left and didn’t turn back.
****
I wasn’t sleeping well, and by now I seldom had dreams that I remembered. The death of StarTat weighed on me so heavily. What could follow her death, I wondered, and would she now have any idea what she had done, what she had accomplished, for all mankind, by her simple, kind, and totally human act, the tiniest touch of her compassion?
When I did sleep, I awoke, or thought I awoke, to Drake’s voice.
“Yes, I know. As long as I hang out in your mind, I know everything.”
“What do you mean in my mind?”
“StarTat lives there now. So I’m getting to know her too. But you give her more credit than she deserves. There will be others who believe if they read your book.”
“Look, I don’t know how it works. They told me I had to find someone who would believe. And as far as I know, she was the first, and probably the only.”
“Hey, I believe you.”
“You don’t count. You started me on this path, against my will, with trickery and deceit. And how old are you anyway?
“How old do you want me to be?”
“Old enough to be real…. Driscoll wants to know.”
“Driscoll, eh? He believed you a few million dollars’ worth.”
“You are trivializing what to me is deadly serious.”
“All right. I apologize. StarTat doubted her life and her purpose. And she was depressed without proper treatment. She nevertheless believed enough to save humanity. The thing that was most important was that she believed in goodness. I guess she believed in your perfect world. She was naive and her naivety doomed her while it saved the rest of us.”
Angels of the Quantum Gate Page 11