Hank smiled. “Only if you promise you won’t have me committed into the nearest mental institution.”
Cole laughed. “Okay. I promise.”
Hank took a deep breath. “Well, here goes . . .”
* * *
“Who are these people?” President Mason asked his chief of staff.
“The most imminent scientists, physicists, and astronomers in America.”
“Stargazers?”
“Yes. Among other things.”
“Hal, I’ve got a million things on my mind—”
“I didn’t send for them, James. They just showed up at the front gate of the base. They say it is extremely urgent they meet with you.”
“Oh, what the hell!” the President said. “Why not?”
“General Stovall is here for his meeting with you.”
“Have him sit in on this. He can be bored along with me.”
Chairs were found for the dozen men and women and placed in a tight half circle around the President’s desk.
“Thank you for taking the time to see us, Mr. President,” a white-haired man said. “We realize how busy you are during these trying times.”
President Mason nodded his head in agreement. “Terrible times for all good God-fearing Americans, Professor Randall.”
“Yes,” the professor said. “Well . . . Mr. President, are you familiar with the term multiverses?”
“I ... don’t think I’ve ever heard that word, Professor.”
General Stovall leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
“Well, sir, to keep in layman’s terms, it means more than one universe.”
“All right. Go on.”
Professor Randall spoke for about five minutes, pausing only once to take a sip of water.
When he finished, President Mason sat with a stunned look on his face.
Unbelieving.
Speechless.
At first.
“Leaping Jesus Christ!” Mason suddenly hollered. “Are you fucking serious!”
“Very serious,” a scientist replied. “Certain, ah, sections, shall we say, of the scientific community have known of the existence of, ah, other worlds, for over fifty years.”
“But how are they, I mean . . . hell, I don’t know what I mean,” the President said. He held up a hand for silence when one of the scientists opened his mouth to speak. “Wait a minute. Just wait.” He cleared his throat. “You say these, ah, space people have been visiting us for centuries?”
“Oh, yes,” a woman said. “Probably for thousands of years. We believe they’ve been watching us evolve.”
“What about God?” General Stovall asked.
“What about God?” the woman looked at him. “Surely you don’t believe in that superstitious claptrap?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” the general replied. “Very strongly. I repeat, what about God?”
The woman gave the Marine a look of disgust and glanced at one of her colleagues, a noted astronomer. “You trot off to church every Sunday, Robert. You want to answer this?”
The man nodded his head. “Certainly. The same God created us all, General. We are all God’s children. He created all the many universes.”
“Horseshit,” the woman said.
The astronomer ignored her. He smiled at the general and the President. “As you can tell, we hold widely diverse views about religion.”
“Anyone who doesn’t believe in God is a goddamned idiot!” General Stovall grumbled.
That got him a very strange look from President Mason.
“There is no proof that God exists,” another scientist picked it up. “It’s a fairy tale. It’s—”
“Hold it!” President Mason said sharply. “Let’s get back on track here.” He shook his head. Sighed. Took a sip of water. “Let’s just assume that everything you people said about these, ah, space travelers, is true. Why are they doing this?”
The astronomer leaned forward.
* * *
“. . . They’re playing with us,” Hank said. “This is a game to them. Compared to their level of advancement, our society is primitive. We’re just a cut above animals to them. This is, well, sport! It’s amusing to them.”
Cole gave his friend a long look. Nodded his head. “Hank, as a man of the cloth, you don’t have any problem with there being other worlds?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. I’ve always felt it was highly arrogant of us to think we are alone. I believe God created several dozen, maybe even hundreds of worlds. Dozens of galaxies. What is a millennia to us is probably only the blink of an eye to God. Why is He allowing this? Cole, God is many, many things. He might be allowing this as a form of punishment. God might be in a petulant mood. After all, He created us in His image. He’s got to be like us to some degree.”
“A game,” Cole whispered. “They’re playing games with us.”
“It’s only a guess on my part,” the priest cautioned him.
“When did you start thinking along these lines, Hank?”
“Several months ago. But I suspected this for years.”
“Then you’re not the only person with these suspicions.”
Hank smiled. “Oh, no. I think the scientific community—branches of it, at least—have known of the existence of other life forms for a half century, or longer. Furthermore, I think they have proof of it.”
“Yeah, so do I. So what do we do, Hank?”
The priest shrugged his shoulders. “Try to survive until the game is over.”
* * *
“Are you saying these, ah, visitors have a highly advanced form of STEALTH?” General Stovall asked.
“Possibly,” another scientist answered. “But more than likely, ummm,” he paused, frowning. “I’ll put this in lay mans terms, ah ... they have found a hole in time, thus enabling them to move between dimensions.”
President Mason sighed heavily. “So when does this . . . madness end?”
Another of the scientists smiled and said, “When our visitors tire of the game.”
* * *
Cole and Hank decided to keep their suspicions and theories to themselves for a time. A thousand miles away, the President of the United States clamped a security lid on what had been told him by the scientists.
After the big brains had left the office, President Mason remarked, “All we need are reports of little green men from outer space to really put this country into a tailspin.”
“I wonder if they really are?” the chief of staff mused aloud.
“Are what?” General Stovall asked.
“Green.”
Eleven
It took Bev and Katti less than one hour to get the suspicions about who, or what, was behind the chaos out of their husbands.
Cole motioned them outside; they sat in the Bronco and Hank explained. Both of the women sat and stared at the men as if they had lost their minds.
“Little men from outer space?” Bev finally found her voice.
“Like in E.T.?” Katti asked.
“Don’t scoff,” Hank said. “The devil I can deal with. What do I know about aliens?”
“Why, honey?” Bev asked.
“Why, what?”
“Why little men from out in space?”
Hank hesitated for a moment, then exhaled. “My father had a friend who was deeply involved in the Air Force’s Blue Book program. That’s the investigation of UFOs. He had his twenty years in—full bird colonel—when he had a nervous breakdown and was discharged. The Air Force claims to have stopped all that years ago. Well, they haven’t stopped it. Anyway, my father’s friend told him the whole story. He said he couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer. I had always suspected that we here on earth were visited fairly regularly by people from other worlds.” He shook his head. Looked out the window at the rain; it was coming down harder now, and cold. “I’m getting off the track a bit. My father never told me what his friend said. He never got a chance . . .” That was spoken with a lot of bitterness. “My father and his frie
nd died in a car wreck about a week after that visit. A very mysterious car wreck. There was supposed to be a second car that ran them off the road. Of course, that car and driver were never found. Mother was never the same after that. She . . . joined my father a year later. She just lost the will to live. The night of the so-called accident, my parents’ home was broken into. At the time mother couldn’t find anything missing.” Hank sighed. “About six months ago, I received a package. It was sent to the church address. It was a tape recording. Old reel-to-reel type. I borrowed a tape player from a friend and played it. Terrifying. It gave me the strangest feeling to hear my father’s voice after all those years. His friend, the colonel, had told him an incredible story. A story about government cover-ups that have been going on for years. About space travelers and space visitors. About a spaceship that crashed somewhere out in the Southwest. There were several survivors. Strange-looking people. Almost human in appearance . . . but not quite. Our government kept them in captivity for several years, studying them, until they died. Then the hangar that housed what was left of their spaceship blew up. A huge and—so far, at least up to my father’s recording—unexplained explosion. The colonel told my father that the . . . whatever they were, the travelers, aliens, could project messages; get into your head through eye contact. He said that before the government figured out what was happening, half a dozen Air Force and civilian personnel had committed suicide. The suggestions had been planted in their brains without their knowing what was happening.
“The tape was an hour long, and my father was speaking very fast, trying to get it all said, as if he somehow knew his life was in danger. It was ... bizarre. That’s the best word I know to describe it. After the aliens died, the Air Force received communiques from the aliens’ ... ah, home, galaxy, planet, some damn place—I don’t know how they were received—that there might be severe repercussions. Perhaps the threat was taken seriously back then—that was years and years ago—and as time went on, forgotten. I think they are carrying out that old threat.”
“You never told me about any of this,” Bev said.
“No. I didn’t want to worry you. I didn’t know if any of it was true. It was such a fantastic story.” Hank’s shoulders slumped. “But I knew it was true. All of it. I knew then the government had killed my father and the colonel. God only knows how many others involved have been killed because they wanted to tell their story about . . . the well, visitors. I think the beings have been looking at us for centuries. Studying us. Peacefully doing so. Without incident. Now, well, they just might be punishing us for holding their people prisoner; they might be blaming us for their deaths.”
“Then you think the devil has nothing to do with this?” Katti asked.
“Oh, I didn’t say that. The same God that created us, created them. There might be a thousand galaxies, a million worlds, but there is only one God, one devil.”
“I don’t think it’s fair not to tell the others,” Katti said. “We’re all in this together.”
“Tell them what?” Cole questioned. “We don’t know anything for certain. We—”
“You’ve got to come listen to this!” Anne Mercer screamed from the side of the burned-out house. “Please come in, y’all. It’s not the devil that’s causing all this. We’ve been invaded by people from space!”
“Oh, crap,” Hank said. “Now it really starts.”
* * *
Members of the scientific community had ignored the president’s request to keep silent and had gone on the air with their findings. They blew the lid off of the Air Force’s Blue Book program, and talked extensively about the years-long government suppression of the knowledge of alien visitors, captured spacecraft, and their crews.
“Filthy lies!” some of the religious right screamed.
“It’s the devil’s work!” others shouted.
“This proves there is no God!” avowed atheists cried.
“No God?” others whispered with a smile. “Nothing after death? No punishment? No Heaven or Hell?”
It had long been theorized by more than a few, that if God could be proven a myth, what would immediately follow would be the most vicious crime spree the world has ever witnessed. Why not? What would anyone have to fear? There is no afterlife. If there is no God, then when one dies, the lights go out and that’s it. To a certain type of person, what the hell difference does it make what kind of life one lives? Before, no matter how vicious and horrible and hideous the crime, moments before the condemned walked the last mile, so to speak, one could always profess an acceptance of God and His son and the Virgin Mary and the Saints (not the football team), and croak believing the gates of Heaven were open and waiting.
Not now.
Now, only the dark coldness of the grave waited, for eternity. So let it all hang out, baby. For no matter what you do, or who you do it to, there is nothing waiting for you after life; neither the shining gates of Heaven, nor the yawning, smoking, fiery pits of Hell.
* * *
Millions of people, of course, had no difficulty accepting both God and the existence of other worlds and other peoples. If He made one world, why couldn’t He have also made a dozen or a hundred or a thousand more? As far as they were concerned, the findings presented no problem.
But those were the decent people. The indecent people were always looking for an excuse to lie, cheat, steal, assault, rape, murder . . . now they had found it. The door was standing wide open and they gleefully entered.
The most hard-line and zealous of the ultraright religious types were always looking for an excuse to censure, burn, punish, meddle, and stick their puritanical (and more often than not hypocritical) noses into somebody else’s business . . . now they had found it.
Of course that meant that everybody else was caught right in the middle.
* * *
“I guess nothing is going to happen,” James Mercer remarked. Twenty-four hours had passed since the scientists made their startling announcement to the world.
“Give it time,” Cole replied. “Right now, people are still stunned by the news. They’ll soon get over that.”
“And then they’ll start reacting,” Hank added.
“You mean the killing and the rioting and all that will start all over?” young Pat Winfield asked.
“Yes.”
“But this time, all over the globe,” Cole said. “That’s just a guess on my part.
Hank nodded his head. “A good guess, I think.”
“And, if you look at it from one point of view, some good will come out of it,” Cole said.
“Good?” Jenny blurted. “Good? What good, Cole?”
“The world is running out of things, Jenny. Clean air, drinkable water. We’re running out of metals and minerals. Many countries can’t produce enough food to feed their populations. Fuels of all types are running low. We’re running out of just about everything except people.”
“That is monstrous!” Carol Swift said. “I can’t believe you would say such a thing.”
“But isn’t it the truth?” Cole responded. “Maybe these . . . call them what you will, space travelers, aren’t really here on some personal vendetta, as we think. One thing is for sure, I believe: they do look at us as a much lower life form. And compared to their highly advanced and evolved technology, we are just that. Maybe they think they’re doing us a favor. Culling us. Thinning the herd, so to speak.”
“That is a horrible thought!” Carol practically shouted the words at him. “You’re talking genocide.”
“Oh, get off of it, Carol,” Cole told her. “I’m not talking genocide against any race or creed or religion. People who consider themselves something really special just because they happened to be born—like you three—give me a pain in the ass. I’ve watched reports from all of you journalists here. You’ve all condemned doctors who assist people in suicide. You all marvel at the technology to keep people alive for days or weeks or even months when they’re nothing but breathing vegetables�
�and many times can’t even breathe without a machine helping. Then after their families have run out of insurance, in many cases bankrupted themselves, the hospitals have made several million dollars, the patient dies anyway. Which he or she should have been allowed to do days, weeks, or months back. In peace.
“You people talk about the sanctity of life—what sanctity of life? Slaughterhouses around the world run waist deep in blood to supply once-living flesh for us to eat. We’re killing off some of the most intelligent creatures in the sea . . . for no other reason than greed. Ranchers want to kill off the wolves, one of God’s most beautiful creatures. Our songbirds are dying because of the overuse of pesticides. I knew a farmer back in Louisiana who would shoot a coyote simply because the animal walked across his field, The animal wasn’t harming a thing. The dumb son of a bitch just wanted to shoot something, kill something. What sanctity of life, Cindy? Either all life forms are sacred, or none of them are. Yours or mine.
“Stop preaching about the value of life while thousands of dogs and cats are put to sleep every day in this nation. Stop pissing and moaning about the sanctity of life while you’re stuffing your mouth full of baked swordfish or T-bone steak or lamb chops, and especially if you eat veal. Cool it with the rhetoric about the significance of life while wearing alligator shoes or leather jackets or carrying purses and wallets made of the skin of a once living creature.”
“What are your boots made of, Mr. Younger?” the reporter popped right back him, her face flushed with anger.
“Leather, lady. But I’m not the one whining about the sanctity of life. You are. You’re a hypocrite, lady. I know this, Cindy: in this overcrowded world of ours, a war like nothing any of us have ever seen is right around the corner. It’s going to be a piss-cuttin’, bloody son of a bitch.” He smiled, very grimly. “Then we’ll see how much value you idealists place on your own lives.”
Gene Rockland applauded Cole with a smile on his face. “I knew you were an okay dude, Cole.”
His wife said, “You know, Dads, Cole would be cute with long hair and a bandanna.”
Katti started giggling at just the thought.
“Oh, shit!” Cole said, struggling to hide his grin.
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