by Nancy Lieder
Helicopter blades can be heard pulsing as the chopper looks down through
whispy clouds at a broad wheat field, golden in color. As the clouds part the
crop circle laid into the wheat is exposed. The wheat has been bent at the
nodes, not broken. Some grasshoppers are hopping across the bent wheat, trying
to avoid the approach of the noisy chopper.
A crop circle investigator is sitting next to the pilot of a helicopter. The
investigator has a video camera up to his face, but has pulled this away from
his face in order to speak. He has a distinct British clip. Through the
chopper window the wisps of clouds are still clearing in the early morning
light. The investigator says,
What are they trying to tell us?
The pilot says something almost unintelligible, given the background noise of
the chopper, and the investigator responds.
Yes, yes, overnight. . . There’s not a foot print down
there. We’re the first here. . . This is huge!
10
_______________________________
Red and Martha are sitting on the porch swing just after dusk. It is summer
and the night is filled with the thrumming sound of singing insects. Red has
his elbow on the armrest and is holding a can of beer, one foot resting on the
knee of his other leg. Martha is adjusting her hairpins, and sighs by way of
saying that at last the end of day has arrived and she can rest as she drops
her hands into her lap and looks out on the view. Martha points to the horizon
at her left, at a Half Moon rising.
Dad, has the Moon ever come up over there? It’s always
more . . over there . .
Martha gestures toward the right, more centered in the view from the porch
swing. Red says,
Been that way lately . . but not in all my years
here, no. Damned peculiar.
Big Tom’s muffled voice comes from within the house, but we can barely hear
what he is saying.
. . bath night, kids . .
Martha springs up and dashes off, with Red not able to catch her with his free
hand as he gropes to catch her arm.
Rest awhile. Martha!
Martha throws a comment over her shoulder on her way into the house.
He always forgets their ears . .
Red smiles affectionately at the backside of his hard-working daughter, as
though he should have known better than to stop her. His gaze returns to the
rising moon while his face gets somber.
What’s chasing you lately?
Red sighs, as though to say that there is something amiss, but he doesn’t know
exactly what it is.
11
-Theories-
Zack Maya, the editor of the Daily News, moves slowly around his crowded
office. His baggy pants, wrinkled around the seat and sagging unevenly below
the knee announcing without fanfare the editor's priorities. The Daily is
successful, but the margin, as with all products that depend upon the fickle
public, required a nervous eye. Maya found he had to be a politician more
often than a reporter, and where this did not set well with his perfunctory
personality, he had learned to accept this as a fact of life. Some news came
with a price, when printed.
Maya eases into his worn leather chair, flipping the pages of a story laid on
his chair seat with barely time enough to grasp their meaning. Glancing up
through his bifocals at Danny, who has been watching from his desk and has
come to lean in the doorway, the editor is brief and to the point. Maya points
a finger at Danny.
This won't fly. I won’t print the story. He has no
proof! It’s just a crazy idea. Can I remind you that
you write for a conservative newspaper? You could
start a panic with this stuff.
Danny frowns and slips into a wooden chair in front of the editor’s desk - the
defendant's chair, not meant to be comfortable. Danny is listening but we can
see he's not buying this explanation. Maya continues,
Who's going to pay the merchants for damages, for the
riot that this might cause?
Danny protests.
It’s a great article. The guy impressed me, and he had
plenty of sources. We’ve done documentaries before,
asteroids slinging by and all. I, I didn’t think this
was any different.
Maya just shakes his head, looking unblinkingly across the desk at Danny,
peering up over his bifocals.
That was maybe, this isn't saying maybe. I can’t print
this.
Maya tosses the story across his desk to Danny, settling back into his chair.
You're not sitting in my chair, Danny, and I'm telling
you, this won't fly.
Danny scoops up the story, his mouth opening and closing as he processes and
rejects arguments, blinks twice, and slowly rises and walks out the door
without a comment. Outside the editor's office he stops and is lost in
thought, his face smooth, showing no emotion. Finally, under his breath.
12
Bull shit.
Danny grabs his jacket and strides out of the office.
_______________________________
The wooded campus at Brandon University backs up into the foothills of the
Appalachian Mountains, crisscrossed with trails worn smooth by the pounding
feet of jogging students and faculty. For those familiar with the maze, the
trails led to treasures in the woods known to few. Isaac is fishing with his
cap down, back against a tree along the river. Isaac casts a fishing line when
a phone rings. He reaches into his fishing bag, pulls out a phone and
answers.
Danny is leaning against the edge of his desk, phone in hand.
Yes Professor Isaac, this is Danny at the paper. ..
Well, I want to do the story but my editor says it’s
crackpot stuff and The Daily is a newspaper of
integrity .. But I know we’ve done stuff like this
before. Do you happen to know why he won't publish the
story? .. I know the place. I’ll be right there.
_______________________________
Isaac is fishing with his cap down, back against a tree along the
river. When Danny arrives, in jeans, he is breathing heavily from the climb.
He fishes a notebook out of an inside pocket within his lightweight jacket,
and flips the pages, having tucked a pencil stub momentarily behind his right
ear. During their conversation, Danny is alternating between believing what
Isaac is saying and wanting to deny as to take it seriously is to be
frightened, so he is coming up with plausible explanations for what Isaac is
laying out. Isaac is familiar with this type of reaction and counters this by
just laying out the facts until they are overwhelming.
Danny . . a friend of mine at a large observatory has
been tracking an incoming object, but has been told to
keep mum about it if he knows what's good for him.
Says this has been going on for over a decade, what's
reported to be Planet X for many years. It comes
through the Solar System every 3,600 years or so and
pretty well tears up the Earth. Well, that's the
rogue planet I was telling you about. It’s real! It’s
inbound! And none of us is ready for it, that's fo
r
damn sure. And that's precisely why the government
doesn't want the public to know about it. They're not
ready for it either.
13
Danny had been expecting this. The editor rejected his story too quickly,
barely reading it.
Who’s asking him to keep quiet and why?
Isaac lifts his pole and flips the line out into the shallows again before
answering. Danny is relieved to be having a discussion over the issues, but is
nonetheless taking this all in but not yet willing to buy it. Isaac says,
The government doesn't want the public to know about
it. They're not ready for it, and they don’t know
what to tell people. So they lean on people to keep it
quiet. Observatories don’t come cheap, they’re built
by big money. Universities get government grants. And
the government can always come in and say it’s a
national security issue.
Danny is confused. Why is a passing planet special?
National security, like, don’t cause panic? They
didn’t do that for the Near Earth Asteroid scares,
they were all over the news, TV and everything. How is
this different?
Isaac explains - those on top fear losing the upper hand.
These asteroids either wipe life out or pass by, black
or white, but this monster passes by and causes a pole
shift, the globe survives, but civilization is pretty
much wiped out, crashes. That’s what happened during
the time of Moses. Egypt lost their slaves, they
walked away, and Egypt was in chaos for centuries.
This is what they’re really worried about. They’re
worried about the working man questioning their
masters, gaining the upper hand. They’re worried about
mob rule.
Danny is beginning to connect the dots.
They think it’s going to happen? This thing is coming?
For sure, this is for sure? Boy, that explains Maya
jumping on me. It was like somebody had leaned on him,
like he knew more about it than he was telling me.
It’s not just a theory, says Isaac.
My friend says they were looking for it, they found it
and now they're tracking it.
An astonished Danny says,
They found it? They found it? Where’d they find it?
Isaac gives the long suppressed history, the discovery of Planet X in 1983.
14
In 1983, they were sending up infrared cameras above
the clouds, in those days they didn’t have the Hubble,
and were looking toward Orion because astronomers have
known there’s something out there, something pulling
comets and planets in that direction, some
gravitational force, and by gum, they found it. Scared
the heck out of them, and it hit the papers before
they could squelch it. Was in the Washington Post,
front page, in 1983.
But Danny is still missing the point.
Damn! But I don’t understand why mob violence will
ensue. I mean, so this thing passes. Why would
civilizations crash?
Isaac points to the extent of devastation that accompanies a pole shift.
It doesn’t just pass. Take a look at mountain
building, fresh mountains like the Rockies or the
Himalayas. If all we’re having is a few quakes now and
then, what would drive those mountains thousands of
feet in the air? What force would overcome the
resistance?
Isaac glances sideways at Danny, gauging his skepticism to be slight. Like
most young people, he is loath to let go of his idealism, not believing the
government would lie to the people. Isaac is familiar with this resistance
and these arguments, and takes them in stride. Danny says,
Uh, well quakes drop buildings, and ..
Isaac quickly interrupts,
That’s from the shaking.
Isaac is pondering a mountain building scene, where flat rock snaps and starts
to angle upward at a 45 degree angle, climbing over foothills nearby, climbing
up into the sky to the height of a Mt Everest. He says,
I’m talking about picking up a mountain and driving it
up, up, thousands of feet. Whole mountain ranges, up.
And look at the issue of Ice Ages and wandering poles!
We just don’t get it, we don’t get it! You know the
last Ice Age had ice over France, 11,000 years ago or
so, but at the same time the grasslands of Siberia
were warm and lush! Now, what did the Sun do there,
blink on for Siberia, and off for France?
Isaac pulls his line in and slings it back out again, both men quiet for a
moment. He says,
It's going to be a pretty rough ride, son.
15
Isaac is envisioning a mammoth is standing in grasslands, snow and howling
winds descending. The mammoth is backing away from the direction of the winds,
trunk high as though trying to defend itself, eyes crazed with fear at the
maelstrom descending. The end of the trunk has grass with buttercups in it, as
though this were a sudden event, mid-munch for the mammoth.
Mammoths were found flash frozen in Siberia, been
frozen like that for thousands of years, with
buttercups in their stomach. Buttercups, where there
isn't a blade of grass for hundreds of miles, now.
The Earth turned under them, son, and moved them to a
polar zone. They weren't the only species to go
extinct for no obvious reason. They've been dozens.
Playing the role of protester, Danny is still trying to lay out arguments.
Danny’s eyes are shifting from side to side as he rapidly searches for
rational explanations. Danny is chewing his lower lip slightly but is clearly
running out of arguments. Finally, he says, weakly.
Well, the ice formed over France because, uh, um ..
Isaac keeps up the pressure.
Makes no sense! Potsdam University documented that the
axis of the world shifted, pulling Germany South,
during the Jewish Exodus. The crust moved. The crust
moved! Pull that back and you’ve got Greenland over
where the N Pole is now. Got it? The crust moves, and
during that last Ice Age, France was the N Pole,
that’s why it was frozen! We don’t have wandering
poles, we’ve got a wandering crust.
Isaac flips his line out into the river again, easing back against the tree
trunk, knowing the argument has been won. Danny, now almost relaxed as he
realizes he has lost the argument, is giving in, but is reluctant to admit
defeat to someone in his father's generation. He says,
Is that why the weather's gone nuts and the compasses
don't ever seem to work right anymore?
Isaac is still not done laying out his evidence, and has no intention of
laying off.
And then there's the tidal waves, whale bones found on
hills 400-500 feet above sea level in Ontario. In
Sicily there's bone piles in the rock crevices that
include just about every animal in Europe and Africa,
all broken into bits as though the waves carried them
there and smashed them into bits against the rocks.
Danny protests. Surely there is another explanation for tidal wav
es in our
past.
16
So maybe a meteor fell, like what killed the
dinosaurs, fell in the ocean and caused a giant tidal
wave.
But Isaac has more.
Chief Mountain in Montana took an 8 mile trip over the
plains, and the Alps have moved hundreds of miles
overland. We're talking about slabs of rock thousand
of feet thick. What force is moving those mountains?
Danny tries proferring the standard explanation for massive geological changes
in the Earth's past.
Oh, that happened millions of years ago.
But as with all the other protestations, Isaac has the trump card.
Niagra Falls is running in a channel that's less than
4,000 years old, son, and several lakes on the West
Coast have existed for only about 3,500 years. Sound
familiar? Scientists have known for some time that
the ocean level dropped 20 feet world wide,
simultaneously, guess when - 3,000-4,000 years ago.
Finally, Danny submits.
Holy cow! This is big! Why wouldn’t they let this out?
They warn people about floods, about hurricanes, stock
up for the storm, and all. How is this any different?
Having reached the end of the game, the contest between generations put aside,
Isaac admits his own weakness, shows his softer side to Danny, as the argument
is dropped and has become a discussion. He says,
Put yourself in the shoes of the people in charge,
Danny, and look at the list of your worries. One,
there’s no way after the crust moves and all the
cities are dust to house and feed the citizens. So
they get into thinking about saving a select few, and
the few always includes them, of course. They’ve built
bunkers, you can be sure, and stocked them well, and
the heck with the taxpayer. This is why that story
gets resisted. You can believe they’ve got their
guards at the newspapers watching for it. Gets shot