by White, Gwynn
“Marshall McLuhan,” I replied. Nat liked to throw out esoteric quotes. It was his version of throwing down the gauntlet. I accepted the challenge whenever I could. More than once, I’d cheated by looking it up on my cell phone.
Nat opened a package of pretzels and held it out in front of me. I stuck my hand in and grabbed a handful. Suddenly realizing I was hungry, I said, “We oughta stop someplace to grab a meal. You wanna look up places to eat?”
He said, “Sure,” and started tapping the search into his phone. He said, “It was a typo, you know.”
Staring straight ahead at the road, I said, “What?”
He replied, “The Medium is the Massage. Typo. It was the title for McLuhan’s book about media, right? It was supposed to say The Medium is the Message, McLuhan’s oft-quoted statement, but the typesetter messed it up.”
Hmmm. That I had never heard. “So, he just let the mistake go?”
Nat laughed. “No, he liked it. He thought it perfectly expressed how media affects us. It brings us all together to share in the same tribal beliefs.”
I thought about that. “Things have changed. Media divides us now.”
Nat said, “Yeah, but only into our own separate tribes. We tune in to listen to the broadcaster for our own unique tribe and war against the rest.” Without a pause, he added, “Annie’s Diner. What do you think?”
I was used to Nat’s conversational shorthand where he interrupted something he was saying with something he’d been talking about earlier. The accelerator pedal for his mind always seemed to be pressed down with his thoughts going at high speed. I tried to keep up. I said, “Sure. Diners have just about everything.”
He added Annie’s to the GPS and I took the van in that direction.
Annie’s was your average diner: a metal box with neon lights, this one out in the desert. The lights etched themselves onto the dark slate of night. Annie’s Diner. Food. Coffee. Last Stop for Thirty Miles.
Nat looked up at the signs. “Hmmm. Good we stopped, huh? Last eats for thirty miles.”
As we opened the front door, bells jangled.
It wasn’t very crowded. A few guys who probably belonged to the trucks outside. A group of teenagers laughing and waving their hands as they talked about something that interested them.
We waited for someone to seat us.
Finally, a middle-aged waitress came out of the kitchen. She had scuffed white shoes, food stains on her apron and mascara painted around her eyes so thick, she seemed part raccoon. Noticing us, she sauntered over. Without smiling, she grabbed two menus out of a rack on the side of the hostess desk and said, “Follow me.”
She stopped at a booth in the middle of the restaurant.
We sat down. Nat asked for coffee and water.
With a tight expression on her face, our waitress nodded. Her name tag said Michelle.
Diners never disappointed in their sheer variety of food. The menu had everything. Not sure if we’d find food before lunch the next day, I overdid my order: cheeseburger with fries, milkshake, coffee, and apple pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. I felt queasy around bite number three of pie à la mode.
Nat outdid me: two cheeseburgers with onion rings, a strawberry smoothie, and an ice cream sundae.
While we ate, repeatedly wiping grease and ketchup and dessert off our mouths, we talked about our strategy for getting into the compound. Liam had arranged a meeting for us with the cult leader. He’d told him that we were quite impressed, after seeing him interviewed on TV, with his knowledge about UFOs and aliens. Lucky for us, the leader had an unhealthy amount of narcissism. He said he’d be happy to meet with us. Our appointment was for 2:00 the next afternoon.
In case anyone connected to the cult was within hearing range, Nat and I talked as though our strategy was more than that, as though we were genuinely interested in the cult’s beliefs. Nat and I knew each other well. We could talk in a fake way and know exactly what was real. We’d invented that type of communication on earlier field research projects.
In between chomping down on his cheeseburger, Nat said, “I’m excited about this group. I think they have a lot of knowledge as to the true nature of these UFOs and aliens.”
I took a sip of my milkshake and replied, “Yeah. Me, too. I want to be on the front lines if we’re being invaded. I say we try to get accepted into the group tomorrow. I’d like to stay there 24/7 by tomorrow night.”
Nat said, “Agreed. It’s a plan then.”
The sound was turned down on a TV attached to the wall up near the ceiling in the back of the diner, but flashing red-and-blue police lights popping up onto the screen caught my attention. A red Breaking News banner lit up the bottom section. A scrolling ticker announced the major details of the story: Two children have been found murdered inside The Astral Plane compound.
I stared at the TV screen. Nat turned around to see what I was looking at. As soon as he realized, he said, “We oughta get the check.”
We paid and left.
Nat took the wheel for his turn driving. As we headed back out into the night, he said, “We should let Liam know.”
I said, “I’ll text him. But it doesn’t change our plans. We’re still going there tomorrow anyway, right?”
Keeping his eyes on the darkened dusty road lit only by our high beams, Nat said, “Of course.” His face had taken on a serious look. As he became lost in thought, I texted Liam, then played a bunch of word games on my cell phone.
When we drove up to the place where Liam had rented rooms for us to stay until we could get into The Astral Plane compound, I thought we were lost. A sign rising up from the desert floor into the night sky proclaimed: Flying Saucer Lodge. A 3D metallic-looking saucer perched on its upper right-hand corner. Green, red and yellow lights blinked all around the rim of the UFO. But there was no hotel in sight.
Nat followed signs that said: Parking This Way. We arrived at an unpaved parking lot in front of a cabin. The windows bled yellow light into the wilderness. Nat said, “You want me to go in to make sure this is the place?”
I said, “Yeah, that would be good.”
Five minutes later, he came out of the cabin carrying papers.
In the meantime, Liam texted a reply: Be careful. I mean it. Don’t do anything foolish.
I chuckled and replied: You know us so well.
Opening his door and getting back into the van, Nat said, “Welp, this is the place. I’m not at all sure what Liam was thinking. Oh, wait, yes I am. This place is dirt cheap.” He handed me a brochure.
I opened it up and took a look. “Yurts!? We’re staying in yurts!?”
Nat laughed. “Yup. Forty bucks a night. We’re staying in yurts. Also, this is the only parking lot. The manager marked our yurts with an X. We gotta go find them.”
I looked back at the brochure. Yup. Two Xs. Unfortunately, they weren’t next to each other.
Sighing loudly, I opened the van door and hopped out. We grabbed our stuff from the back. Feeling a bit like a pack mule with all the bags I had to carry, I followed Nat across the parking lot and onto a path. There wasn’t much on either side of it. Just the dark outlines of scrubby brush off in the distance. It was a path only because rocks on either side outlined it.
An animal howled. Another answered, its eerie cry piercing the silence.
Nat commented, “Coyotes.”
I asked, “How close, do you think?”
Nat said, “Hard to say. Probably not on the grounds of our lodge, though. Speaking of which, keep your eye out for snakes. Those are everywhere out here.”
I looked down at the path. There were a bunch of tiny burrow holes, but no slithering reptiles to worry about.
We walked for fifteen minutes. Then, finally, we saw the yurts. Circular cloth buildings dotted the landscape like stranded UFOs, some emitting the yellow glow of electric light. We obviously weren’t alone. I wondered if the dark ones were empty or if they were rented by people who were already asleep.
As we continued up the path, I marveled once again at how vividly the stars shone out here with so little pollution. It was as though we’d been presented with a different sky, one filled with a lot more stars than back home. I wished I’d thought to pack my portable telescope.
At that moment, something incredibly bright lit up the sky. My first thought was that I was witnessing an explosion. It hadn’t started on the ground, however. It had simply burst into existence in the sky. Was it a plane? Had a plane blown up? A terrorist attack? I hadn’t heard a plane, however. The night had been eerily quiet, almost as though Nat and I were the only human beings left alive on all of planet Earth. As I tried to figure out the source of the illumination, desperately wondering if I should be looking directly at it since the radiance felt near-blinding, the ball of light started streaking across the sky, leaving a gleaming trail behind it.
Nat dropped his suitcase and grabbed his cell phone out of his back pocket. He started snapping pictures.
I should have thought of that sooner. I did the same.
Then, as though nothing had ever happened, the night sky returned to its previous state.
A sonic boom erupted, passing overhead like an earthquake of sound.
Then, once again, the Earth became shrouded in silence.
A few people stepped out of their yurts, looked up at the sky, then went back inside.
Trudging along the rest of the path to the encampment, we found our assigned tents. Mine was made of green cloth and had a wooden door painted blue. Nat’s was red with a black door.
Once inside, I flicked on the light. Thank God, these had electricity. Yurts were invented thousands of years ago as homes for the nomadic people of the Central Asian steppe. The ones we had rented had been modernized. It even had an electric stove, rather than the wood-burning iron type that usually sits in the middle of the tent, venting pollution out through the roof.
I looked around. It wasn’t bad. Colorful rugs hung from the wooden lattice that supported the tent skin. There was, thankfully, a tiny bathroom with a toilet and sink. I assumed there were public showers on the grounds somewhere. There was a kitchen area with a refrigerator, stove, sink, a small counter and a table. And then I noticed something that pulled me toward it with the force of a magnet: a king-sized poster bed with a thick quilt. Suddenly realizing how physically exhausted I was, I kicked off my shoes and climbed in. Pulling the covers up to my chin, I fell fast asleep.
Around 3:00 in the morning, I woke with a start. It took a moment for me to remember where I was.
I became aware of footsteps outside. A few loud gasps from a bunch of people. Someone yelling, “Look!”
Groggily, I threw off the covers, wrestled my shoes onto my feet with exhausted fingers and stepped outside. A couple outside the next-door yurt were gazing upward. The woman was pointing. A flash of light, brighter than lightning, lit up the ground.
I looked up. There, the same thing as last night: a ball of light streaking across the sky, a trail of light forming a wake behind it.
I went back into my tent, climbed into bed and fell fast asleep. These didn’t look like the comets we were used to seeing, the kind that got people excited enough to haul telescopes out into the country to view them without light pollution. These latest explosions…I thought maybe they were asteroids. Tomorrow, I’d start looking up the scientific reports, to see if there was any factual basis to worry they might come too close. Probably not because there had been no news reports from scientists warning about approaching asteroids. It felt disappointing, and more than a little alarming, that we were living in another historical period when people turned to superstition over scientific fact, immediately jumping to conclusions that we were being invaded by an alien race.
My thoughts stopped there, as I slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
4
The next day, I woke up early, found the community shower, then went into the main building to see if the place offered free coffee. A large, surly guy working the front desk pointed a thumb toward a hallway and said, “Right in there. Breakfast.”
There was indeed breakfast. Not much of one; but it would do, especially since it was complimentary. English muffins and bread next to a toaster and different kinds of cereal and doughnuts. For toppings: butter and jelly, peanut butter and honey. For drinks: juice and milk and coffee.
Realizing I should eat for strength, I toasted bread and slathered it with peanut butter and strawberry jelly. Then I poured myself two cups of coffee, added cream from a pitcher and carried them back to my yurt.
Sipping coffee, slowly waking up from the caffeine, I plugged in my laptop, wondering if I’d have good enough connection. There wasn’t any. I turned instead to my cell phone, scanning scientific websites to see if there was any chatter regarding the things I’d seen in the sky last night. Only a few local reports. Local scientists saying it might have been an asteroid; they’re presently analyzing photos. Quite a few townspeople claiming it was part of an invasion of flying saucers from outer space. One guy claiming he’d been abducted and experimented on. He showed a scar that ran down his left side. I zoomed in on his image. The scar looked old and healed.
A knock on the door. It was Nat, ready to head on out to the compound. We didn’t know if we were coming back. If we managed to gain admittance to the cult, we’d be staying there, so I gathered up my things.
When we arrived at The Astral Plane, we realized we’d also arrived at a crime scene. A chill ran up my spine as I took it all in. There were many resemblances to a war zone. Yellow police tape imprinted with the repeating message in bold black ink, POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, had been strung across the front gate. Armoured personnel carriers were parked on either end of it. Police walked around, carrying assault rifles and submachine guns.
A helicopter hovered overhead, its rotor blades whoooshing through the air. The name on the side announced it belonged to a news organization.
A police officer wearing a helmet and dark glasses approached our van. Pointing his submachine gun toward the ground, he rapped on the driver side window with his knuckles.
Nat pressed the button to roll it down. He said, “Yes, officer?” His usual lightheartedness had been wiped from his voice.
Bending down to study Nat as though he were some kind of insect specimen under a microscope, the officer said, “What are you doing here?”
Nat lied. “Just wanted to see what was happening. We’re tourists here in Roswell.”
The officer said, “This isn’t for you then. This is a crime scene, not a tourist attraction.” Raising his gun, he pointed down the street. “Go that way. If we see you back here again, you’re under arrest.”
Nat replied, “No problem, officer. Have a good day.”
His hands shaking, Nat pressed the button to roll the window back up. He headed on down the street, a cloud of dust rising up from our back wheels.
I turned the radio on. Local news reported a murder in the compound we’d just left. A woman had murdered her two children.
An anxiety attack overtook me. Images flooded my brain. My father grabbing my hand. Running, running, my lungs burning…
When we had driven a few miles, Nat pulled the van over to the side of the road. Turning to me, he said, “We’re not giving up, right? I feel we need to get inside the compound now. Something happened in there. We need to know if it was the result of pressure inside the cult, something bubbling up, becoming more intense, or if it was simply a mother gone mad.”
I couldn’t find my voice. I just shook my head yes.
Nat pressed a finger against the screen of his cell phone. I heard his end of the conversation. “Hello. This is Professor Nathan Moore. I have an appointment to interview Leader Razkazeel today. The police out front gave us some trouble, threatened to arrest us.” A pause. Then: “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure, I can do that. You’ll be waiting to let me in?” Another pause. “Oh, I see. Brother Zytavius. Thank you.”
Clicking off h
is phone, Nat turned to me. “I guess we should have expected this. There’s another entrance to the compound. It’s through a tunnel that starts about half a mile from the back entrance. I was told that someone named Brother Zytavius will meet us there. You game?”
I had brought Xanax along. The prescription bottle was tucked into a zippered pocket of my backpack. I reminded myself it was there if I needed it. I said, “Sure. If they’re letting us in, we should go.”
Nat typed GPS coordinates into his cell phone, then pulled onto the road, dust once again flying up into the air, enveloping the back of our vehicle. He said, “I have a hunch things are going to get interesting now.” He smiled.
He drove forward, turning right at the first intersection of two roads out in the middle of nowhere. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but desert, patches of scrubby brush dotting the landscape, and an endless expanse of blue sky. The GPS told us we were outside the city of Roswell now.
Nat’s cell phone announced, You’ve reached your destination, in front of one lone building, an old dilapidated barn. We pulled off the road, loose dirt crunching under the wheels. Nat jumped out. I waited in the van, wishing that time would slow down and delay the inevitable, while he looked around.
I jumped at the sound of my cell phone buzzing. I looked at the screen. It was her again. The message sounded more desperate this time. I deleted the message, looked back out the window. How had she found me?
A man dressed in an orange outfit that looked like an astronaut’s spacesuit came out of a door on the side of the barn. He and Nat spoke briefly. Then the man waved, turned around and went back inside.
When he returned, Nat said, “We’re supposed to park in the barn.”
As our van moved forward, the large front doors of the barn opened. We pulled inside; it swallowed us whole.
The man waved us over to a darkened corner. We parked, jumped out of the van and grabbed our stuff.
Turning to me, the man in the orange spacesuit extended his hand. He said, “I’m Brother Jaxon. I’m happy you’re interested in our way of life. The Truth is in The Astral Plane. You’ll see. Your life will be altered in ways you couldn’t possibly have imagined before now.” He smiled, revealing two broken front teeth. They looked sharp, like daggers.