CHAPTER 5
ALIEN ABDUCTION!
“We’re back at your house. Are you going to go sleep?”
“Yes. I’m really exhausted. I can hardly keep my eyes open. What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going back to the spaceship. I’ll take a spin around the stars...”
“Really?... How cool!”
“I wanted to invite you, but if you’re so tired...”
Faced with the extraordinary possibility of taking a ride on a ‘flying saucer,’ I wasn’t at all tired anymore. I felt
rested and full of energy.
“Not anymore!... Seriously, would you take me for a ride in your UFO?”
“Of course. But what about your grandma?”
I immediately thought of a way that I could leave so that she wouldn’t miss me. “I’ll eat dinner and leave the
empty plate on the table. Then I’ll put my pillow under the blankets so that if my grandma gets up, she’ll think
I’m in bed asleep. I’ll take off these clothes I’m wearing, leave them there, and put on others. I’ll do it all
carefully and quietly.”
“A little white lie,” he said, “because it’s essential that you come with me so that you can write that book. We’ll
be back before she wakes up. Have no fear.”
Once I was in the house everything went exactly according to plan, but when I tried to eat the meat, the word
“cadaver” kept ringing in my ears and made me feel sick. I couldn’t even take a bite of it.
A few minutes later we were walking toward the beach.
“How will I get into your spaceship?”
“I’ll swim over to it and then I’ll bring the vehicle towards the beach.”
“Won’t you be cold?”
“No. This suit is much more resistant to heat and cold than you can imagine. Well, I’m going to look for the
spaceship. Wait for me here, and when I appear, don’t be afraid.”
“Oh, no. Now I’m not afraid of extraterrestrials.” I thought his unnecessary warning was funny...
The moon had gone behind some very gloomy clouds. Now it was really dark everywhere.
Ami approached the gentle waves, dove into the water and disappeared from sight into the darkness.
The minutes were passing and for the first time since Ami had appeared, I had time to myself. I began
thinking...
Ami?...
An extraterrestrial!...
Was it true or had it only been a dream?
I waited for a long time, more uneasy each minute, until fear really began get the better of me.
I was absolutely alone there, on a terribly isolated beach...
I was going to confront nothing less than an extraterrestrial spaceship...
My imagination began to make me see strange shadows moving between the rocks, on the sand, coming out
of the water... And I was starting to have doubts about everything.
What if Ami were some sort of evil being disguised as a child?... ... ...
Talking about kindness just to win me over?... ... ...
No, it couldn’t be! Or, could it?... ... ...
Kidnapped by an extraterrestrial spaceship?... ... ...21
Just then a terrifying spectacle appeared before my eyes: under the water a greenish-yellow radiance began
to rise slowly; then a gyrating dome, with multicolored lights, emerged from the waves...
It was true! I was actually going to see a spaceship from another world!
Then the body of the space vehicle appeared. It was egg-shaped, with illuminated windows. It emitted
greenish-silver colored light.
It was a frightening sight. I felt really terrified. It was one thing to talk with a kid...a kid?...who looked like a
good person...could he have been wearing a mask?...and quite another thing to be alone on a beach in the dark
of night and see a spaceship from another world appear... A UFO that was coming to look for you, to carry you
far away...
I forgot the “kid” and all that he had told me. In front of me was a frightening piece of machinery. Who knows
where it was coming from? From some gloomy corner of outer space? What if it was full of cruel, monstrous
aliens that were coming to abduct me?
It looked much bigger than the object I had seen fall into the ocean hours before.
It began to approach me, floating about ten feet above the water. It didn’t make any noise. The silence was
horrible. And the spaceship was coming closer, ever closer.
I was wishing that I could go back in time. That I had never seen any object fall from space. That I had never
known any extraterrestrial. And that I was sleeping peacefully like my grandma, safe and sound in my own little
bed.
That was a nightmare. Paralyzed by fear, I couldn’t even run away. And I couldn’t stop looking at that
luminous monster that was coming to carry me off...maybe to a space zoo...
When it was hovering, immense, gigantic, right over my head, I thought it was all over for me. I even thought
that that sinister bulk was going to squash me like a bug.
A yellow light appeared in the belly of the monster, then a reflector blinded me and I thought that I was dead. I
entrusted my soul to God and decided to turn myself over to his Almighty Will...
I could feel that they were pulling me up, that I was in a sort of elevator, but my feet weren’t resting on
anything. I was expecting to see those creatures with octopus heads and blood-shot eyes...
Suddenly my feet hit a soft surface and I found myself in a luminous, pleasing place with carpets and tapestry
covered walls.
The star child was smiling in front of me, his large, kind eyes shining.
His gaze calmed me down, brought me back to reality, to that beautiful reality that he had taught me to
recognize.
He put a hand on my shoulder.
“Calm down, calm down. There’s nothing bad here.”
When I was able to speak, I smiled and said, “I was really afraid.”
“I could tell. You turned green!” he said, laughing.
“I thought that...well...I thought terrible things.”
“It’s your overactive imagination. An imagination that’s out of control can kill you with fear; it’s able to invent a
demon where there’s only a good friend. But reality is uncomplicated and beautiful. It’s quite simple...”
“Then...am I on a UFO?”
“A UFO is an unidentified flying object. This, on the other hand, is completely identified. It’s a spaceship. But
go ahead and call it a UFO if you want. And you can call me a ‘Martian.’”
That broke the tension and we both laughed.
“Come on. Come see the command center,” he invited me.22
We went through a tiny, arched doorway into another room, which had a ceiling as low as the one in the room
we’d just left. Before me I saw a semicircular room surrounded by large, curved windows. In the center were
three reclining chairs in front of a some controls and several screens almost leaning against the floor.
Everything from the size of the chairs to the height of the ceiling made it look like a room for kids! I could touch
the ceiling when I raised my arm. There was no way an adult could fit in that room...
“This is unbelievable!” I exclaimed. I went over to the windows while Ami made himself comfortable in the
center chair in front of the controls. Through the windows I could see the seaside lights twinkling in the
distance.
I felt a slight vibration in the floor and the lights disappeared. Now I could see only stars...
“Hey! What did you do with the town?”
“Look below you,” Ami answered.
I almost passed out. We were thousands of feet above the bay. All the seaside towns were spread out below
us and I could see mine way down there. We had flown miles into the air in an instant and I hadn’t even felt like
we were moving!
“Cool! Super cool!”
My enthusiasm was growing but soon the height was making me dizzy. “Ami...”
“What do you want?”
“Uh, can’t we fall?”
“Well, if a person who tells lies should come on board, then these delicate mechanisms could fail...”
“Let’s go down then! Let’s go down!” I said almost shouting, but his loud laughter told me that he was joking
and I felt better.
“Can they see us from below?” I asked.
“When this light is on,” he pointed to an oval red light above the command board, “it means that we’re visible.
When it’s off, like it is now, we’re invisible.”
“Invisible?”
“Just like this guy sitting next to me,” he remarked, pointing to an empty seat beside him. I was alarmed, but
he started laughing, and then I knew it was another of his jokes.
“What did you do so that they couldn’t see us?”
“If a bicycle wheel is turning rapidly, you can’t see the spokes. We just make the molecules of this spaceship
move rapidly...”
“That’s amazing, but I’d like for them to see us from below.”
“I can’t do that. The visibility or invisibility of our spaceships, when they are in non-evolved worlds, is decided
in accord with the ‘aid plan.’ It all depends upon a ‘super-computer’ located in the center of this galaxy...”
“I don’t understand very well.”
“This spaceship is connected to the ‘super-computer’ that decides when we can be seen and when we can’t.”
“And how does that computer know when...?”
“That computer knows everything... Do you want us to go somewhere special?”
“To my house in Phoenix, Arizona! I’d like to see it from the air...but it’s hundreds of miles away...”
“Let’s go!” Ami moved the controls and said, “Now!”
I was getting ready to enjoy the trip by looking out the window... But we had already arrived!... Hundreds of
miles in a fraction of a second!
I was fascinated. “What a fast way to travel!”
“I already told you that in general we don’t ‘travel,’ we ‘situate ourselves’... It’s a
space-time thing but we can also ‘travel.’”23
I gazed at the illuminated, wide avenues of Phoenix. The city looked marvelous at night from the air. I located
my neighborhood and asked him to take us there. “But,” I said, “‘traveling’ slowly please. I want to enjoy the
trip.”
The control board light was off. No one could see us.
We advanced smoothly and silently between the stars in the sky and the lights in the city.
My house appeared below. It was really an extraordinary experience to see it from overhead.
“Do you want to see if everything is all right inside?”
“How?”
“Let’s look here.”
On the big screen in front of him appeared an overhead view of the street. It was the same system that we
had used to see my grandma sleeping, but with a big difference: here the image was three dimensional, with
depth. It looked as if you could stick your hand through the screen and touch everything. I tried to do that, but
an invisible glass stopped me.
Ami thought that was funny. “Everyone does that,” he commented.
“Everyone? Who’s this everyone?”
“Don’t think that you’re the first of the non-evolved to go for a ride in an extraterrestrial spaceship...”
“I thought that I was,” I said, somewhat disillusioned.
“Well, you’re wrong. But, just so that your ego won’t suffer, I’ll tell you that not very many people have had the
opportunity that you’re having now.”
“Then I’m happy, Ami.”
The image on the screen passed through the roof of my house and then surveyed the rooms from corner to
corner. Everything was in order.
“Why doesn’t your portable television show everything in 3-D, like this one?”
“I already told you. It’s an out-of-date system.”
“If it’s so out of date, why don’t you give it to me?”
He didn’t expect this question. “What? I can’t, Jim. We’re not allowed to leave samples of superior
technology in these worlds. You already know that this technology wouldn’t be put to good use.”
Immediately I understood: that kind of apparatus would be used for spying.
“And you could say ‘good-bye’ to the privacy for the poor citizens of planet Earth,” he asserted.
I asked him to take us on a spin around the city.
We passed over my school. I saw the playground, the sports field, my classroom.
I imagined telling my classmates later about my adventure: “I saw the school from a spaceship!” I’d be so
proud to say that.
“And right away you’d be taken off to the crazy house,” he commented, laughing happily when he picked up
on what I had been thinking.
Then I imagined how everyone at school would make fun of me and maybe do things even worse. “I think
you’re right... I’d better keep my mouth shut.”
“That would be wiser, Jim. Better that you tell the true story only in the book I told you about. Only there, and
as if it were a fantasy. Is that a promise?”
“I promise, Ami.”
We continued to fly over Phoenix.
“Too bad it’s not daytime,” I said.
“Why?”
“I would have liked to travel in your spaceship by day, too...to see cities and landscapes by sunlight...”24
As usual, Ami was laughing at me. “Do you want it to be daytime?” he asked me.
“I don’t think that your powers would let you move the Sun...or would they?”
“When it comes to moving the Sun, no. But moving us, yes.”
He adjusted the controls and we began to move tremendously fast. We passed over the desert and then
several cities appeared below. From the high altitude we’d reached, they looked like spots of illumination. Then
we crossed the Rocky Mountains. Immediately afterwards I could make out an enormous ocean bathed in
moonlight. It was the Atlantic Ocean! At the horizon up ahead, the sky was growing light. We arrived over
some land and, what’s more amazing, the Sun began to rise rapidly!
To me that was something incredible. Ami had moved the Sun!
In a few moments it was daytime.
“How come you said that you couldn’t move it?”
He was enjoying this proof of my ignorance. “The Sun hasn’t moved. We’re the ones who moved rapidly.”
Immediately I realized my mistake. But it was justifiable. You should see what it’s like to contemplate the Sun
rising above the horizon at an impressive speed...
“Where are we?”
“Africa.”
“Africa! But just a minute ago we were in America!”
“Well, you wanted to travel by day in this spaceship. So we came to a place where it’s daytime. ‘If the
mountain can’t go to Mohammed, Mohammed can go to the mountain’... What African country would you like to
visit?”
“Ummm. India.”
His laughter told me that my sense of geography wasn’t very good...
“Let’s go to Asia, then. To India... Which city in India would you like to go to?”
I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. “It doesn’t matter to me. You choose.”
“How about Bombay?”
“Yes. That would be fantastic, Ami.”
With great speed and at an amazing altitude we passed high over the African continent.
Later, in when I was back at my house, I used a world atlas to reconstruct that trip.
We arrived at the Indian Ocean, crossing it while the Sun climbed higher and higher at a dizzying pace. In a
few moments we were flying through the sky over India.
The spaceship braked suddenly and remained motionless.
“Why didn’t we hit the windshield with that sudden stop?” I asked, surprised.
“Easy. It’s a matter of annulling the inertia...”
“Oh, how simple...”
用户评论