Aerials – UFO

(Picks up where Aerials Part 3 left off.
If you missed a part, find it here on its Table of Contents.)

Silhouette flies by–
aliens flying crosses–
neighbors stop and stare…

“There, stop there,” Ro said. She hovered behind me like an anxious hen. Her calloused finger topped my lcd screen. “It is a cross. Well I’ll be damned, a flying cross. Who’d have thunk it?”

We both knew the answer. The tear leaking down her crumpling face gave it away. The lovable lug she had married would have loved the irony of this. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her down jacket’s sleeve. I stared at its chevron pattern of stitches not wanting to intrude on her private grief. I had moved in well after Ro had lost her husband, long enough that she had beat the grief and begun to move on.

“He thought this one lady who came by once a month with fliers was an advanced scout for an alien invasion force.” Ro sniffed again, sucking the grief back inside so she could pack it away out of sight. Her dark skin showed none of the red blotches mine would have had I indulged in a crying jag.

“Oh and what gave her away?”

“Hmm?” Ro patted her face with her purple glove; it clashed with her orange jacket on purpose. Ro liked to snag attention wherever she went.

“The lady, what made him think she was an advanced scout? Her beady eyes? Odd bulges under her clothes? You can’t leave me hanging like that. Not when the mothership might be silhouetted on my laptop.” I forced a grin and tapped the screenshot I’d snagged of a black blotchy thing that did look vaguely cross-like against the intense white of the sun.

“Oh that, well it was her brochures. You see, she never left any behind and she’d get real weird if you actually answered your door. So Joe–he used to watch for her coming and open the door before she knocked. Damn near gave the woman a coronary the first time he did it.” Ro laughed. “Oh Joe…you were such a nut.”

“What about the second time?”

“She stayed on the far side of the street and was about to pass our house by when Joe opens the door and yells out to her. ‘You goin’ to give us a brochure?’”

“And?” I tapped in CNN’s address and cued it up to play the top news when the story ended. It was time to find out what the scientists who still had jobs had to say about all this.

“She ran away. Just dropped her brochures and everything and hightailed it out of our ‘hood. And Joe, my gentleman Joe, he felt bad and rushed over to pick up her things and give them back. And you know what he found?”

I shook my head. “What’d he find?”

“The brochures were all blank inside.” Ro nodded, getting into her story now. “The cover had that on it.” Ro pointed to the screenshot I’d taken of the thing everyone outside stared at risking blindness. “A washed out sun with a black cross in the middle. No words accompanied it. Just that image. A bizarre coincidence, eh?”

“I’m a scientist Ro. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Lady holds brochures,
strolls along counting people–
advanced scout hunting.

No, I believed in facts and figures and it was time we acquired both. I tapped the play button and raised the volume. Ro sat on the plush ottoman that had come with the couch. The square thing looked like a couch cushion without a back or arms.

Keither Vaberman’s mug filled my screen. Some idiot at CNN had handed him a mike. I glanced around for my phone and found it lying dead on my shag rug. Damn I had forgotten to charge it. There went my plan of opening a twitter account just to badger my arch nemesis using the helpful hashtag CNN flashed up on its screen. Oh I would have given them great dialogue. A Pulitzer prize winning dialogue that shot down everything that came out of his mouth with hard science. I cracked my knuckles.

Keith jabbered on about UFOs and how aliens are real; they’re among us, according to him, the pseudo-science geek with a comb over. Pausing long enough to suck back in the hot air he was full of, he prepared to unload more bullshit conspiracy theories. I shut down CNN and moved to MSN and found Keith’s main squeeze, a stringy chick wearing the kind of pleather that has a high gloss making her look saran wrapped. Every website I clicked had an “expert” in UFOs plugging his or her book. The serious science community had either gone mum on this one or had been served a gag order by the government.

I landed on YouTube and pulled up a video of the event. Someone, somewhere night still held sway, had captured the UFO with a smartphone. I played the video and watched a star fall from the sky, hit our atmosphere and brake right. Streaming through the troposphere, it had flown an erratic path that had leveled out as the amateur videographer hopped into a car and sped after it.

“Go, go!” Exclaimed the videographer, slapping the car door for emphasis; his voice had an Indian flavor.

His buddy got the message and hit the gas, giving chase. Jumps in the film, where long sections of nothing special had been cut, skipped ahead in time. Night’s star blanket rolled back as first light pinked the horizon and the object in the sky stopped. It hovered over a field and the film zoomed in on it; the bright orb clarified as it descended, taking on a cross-shape as it buzzed the field, the wash of its engines knocking the videographer flat. The object’s light blew the highlights in the video to smithereens–er pixels–leaving no discernible markings visible–just a whole lot of white. Through it all he kept shooting and then video cut off just as the object swung past for a second–attack run? Circuit? What?

The feed cut to white noise. Hitting replay did nothing except load a message that the video had been removed for terms of service violations or some other nonsense. What had that videographer caught on film that had forced YouTube to pull the video? Who had sent the kill order? A cover-up was now in full swing; that much was clear. I’d find no other answers on YouTube or anywhere legit.

Aerials up high,
witness aliens streak by–
smartphone on standby.

~ ~ ~

To be continued next Friday.

Hooked on Aerials? Check out the previous posts in this sci-fi saga: 

Part 1 
Part 2
Part 3