Frankentown (13 page)

A candy-bar fell down.
“Let’s go Frank, let’s go.”

As Frank passed, he pulled Hector up by the nostril and went after Nikos.

Chapter Fourteen

On The Dragon's Hearth

Hector Weiss and Frank Cabella studied at University where they ended up teaching at the same time, in the mid 60’s. They were classmates.

And Sworn enemies.

Weiss always had better grades, but that also meant he was mostly alone, studying.
There was a time during the fall of sixty seven when Frank thought he might give Hector a chance, but he rejected with a ‘No. Thanks.‘ and moved on.

Later that month, Weiss ratted Frank out for sneaking onto campus with friends at night to drink. Although nothing was really provable in the campus at night, and Frank was getting away with the little midnight rendezvous, ratting out on colleagues just isn’t in fashion.
Since then, Hector has, in certain circles, adapted the nickname ‘Sourpuss”.

So it was that now they were together whether they wanted to or not.

Several more days passed at the base with being introduced to current and past prototypes of spacecrafts; from barely-floating donuts to discs that can travel at extreme speeds and penetrate both space and time (“
…
and have fried several testers
…
”) and everything between. With the light never changing underground, it was easy to lose track of time. Frank hadn’t dared to fly out the hole he hid earlier
…
before his nose got almost broken.

Nikos led them out the main door of the first complex to go to the next ‘wing’.

Several confusing dark corridors later, enormous steel panels slid apart once Nikos typed a shape-based code into the keypad.
After several stifling seconds - the lights came on.
What else will blow my mind?
Frank now thought ahead.

Weiss wore the same facial expression he used to wear around school. Realizing this, he stuck his tongue out at Frank before any mockery ever had time to arrive.
Frank was too proud to flip him the bird, so he remained calm instead.

Ahead of them was an enormous room, apparently connected to an even bigger tank. The walls were lined with a strange dark element not unlike the foamy one in the caves.
It seemed to absorb light.
Or you know, it might’ve just been dark. Frank was in a small spotlight and it was very hard to see anything further than three feet so he saw nothing.

There was no way to know what to expect in the dark of this room. Everything they could see appeared to be organic, though hand-built; as if a stone quarry came alive with glowing gems inside, forming tall stations.

As soon as Frank’s eyes adjusted, he could see behind them, where in the low light, four tall beings stood at least 8 or 9 feet in height, each sloping over to better see the visitors.

“Go on, go in.” Nikos said, gesturing them inside. Frank slowly and cautiously made for the room. Hector cowered by the door which closed shut behind him a mere half second later.
Frank looked over and saw Weiss cowering, scared out of his mind, but didn’t feel the least bit scared himself.

Frank gestured Hector to come over, and he did, despite all the fear, because he couldn’t let Frank have the satisfaction.

“Hello?” Frank cautiously but curiously asked. There was no denying at least trace amount of fear in his voice.

Nikos spoke again in reply, making Frank jump. They didn’t see him walking in with them. But when they looked around, Nikos was not there and the door to the outside had been shut.

Welcome, Frank Cabella
∴

We’ve been expecting you
∴

“How is it-“

Need not speak with us aloud
∴

“How is it what, Cabella?” said Hector, impatiently trying to scare his fear away.

Share your mind
∴

The instruction was clear enough, so he tried to speak to himself.

How is it that you know who I am?
 

It worked. It beings in the room understood clearly. One of the tall dark figures, cloaked in a dark ochre glow, stepped into what little light fell through the water in the tank.
Weiss still cowered by the door with a look of terror mocking his own face.

Can he hear you?

Nikos’s voice answered inside Frank’s head, speaking for the giant before him.

His judgement and fear clouds his mind
∴

He cannot hear us
∴

The slightly taller, older looking being rose majestic. Frank had to tilt his head back to look them in the face, which he might have found extremely frightening, under ordinary circumstances.

There was something royal about them.

Besides
,
Frank thought,
It’s hard to not be intimidated by someone 4 feet taller than you.
Hector’s reaction was excusable.
We’ve heard from our brother of your arrival
∴
You’ve met him in the northwest wing
∴

Nor? Where am I? What happens here?

Before he could be answered, something had to be done about Weiss.
He wasn’t
 
of much use cowering in the corner, and thus didn’t pass the test.

The tallest of the beings in the far back raised its right, three fingered hand up. With fluid motion, the being’s wide hand, which almost resembled a baseball glove in size sprung radiant light from the breadth of the palm, and commanded the heavy steel doors to move. As they opened, Hector Weiss felt pushed back by a phantom force, tilted backwards onto his heels, and paralyzed, was being willed out of the room by the Grey.
 
The doors opened up just enough to get Hector out tilted and then slid shut once again, this time with a thud.

Outside, Hector’s impending heart attack seamed to ease out and get replaced with a combination of envy and spiteful resentment. And euphoria.

Frank stood in silence inside, in the dark, trying to ingest it all. It was strange for him to find that with Weiss outside, he feels more at ease, despite the unorthodox nature of his companions.

The tallest of the beings, apparently the leader, rose his huge palms up into the air.
He held them together almost closed for a brief moment and then moved closer to Frank.
After the gulp, it felt quite strange for an alien being to be so close to him.
The hands were broad and rough and would cover his entire back, but they didn’t.

The tall being held its hands over his head.

In less than a second, Frank had fallen into a deep sleep, so strangely comfortable, as though it was meant to be; as if he was supposed to be there. Then He strayed into a dream.

He was in a tall room with dozens of people standing in line, getting a backrub.

Then the four tall beings in the room, holding onto something that looked like rounded orange glowing rocks. A literal out-of-body experience. The words came to him as quick as the images.

“No backrubs,” Nikos’ voice said aloud.

not our area of expertise.

Where do you come from?

It seemed to stand on the edge of reason to confirm their origin.

The room started fading off, dematerializing into space.
It must’ve been inside his head; they couldn’t have possibly left earth like that. At least so he thought. It was epic, being a person flying through distances that can be only measured in lightyears, moving through the space faster than light.
 

It was like the greatest roller coaster ride of all time and he wanted to get off.
Within a New York minute, he realized they had not moved at all.
Instead, everything moved around them.

The perfect blackness was always only an illusion. Frank’s eyes compensated for the lack of detail in the nothingness of the universe and he saw beautiful fractals.
To say the least, It was a very humbling experience. For the first time, Frank realized how insignificant our little planet is. And that it was
 
only ironic that we take care of it so poorly.

 
Standing at a single point in space was something Frank had never even dared to imagine in a dream. The density of the stars all around formed a circular ‘room’. When Frank had the time to realize he is no longer standing in a weird cave in Area 51 but was getting flied through space by the Greys. Gravity has left the building.

Coming to from the shock of everything, he realized he has been suspended in air, locked in a position vaguely resembling the posture of a flying squirrel.
 

Feeling pathetic, Frank straightened into a human being in the state of ‘parachute falling’ and looked around. Two gray beings turned into sharp, radiant points of light. Then Frank dared to have a thought. Blurry, indescript blurry shapes started appearing around them, flying by.

Home?

Frank strayed into a dream.

It was a long time ago now,

The race of Grays occupied several planets from a distant galaxy
∴

 
Floating through space and being okay was a novel experience, that afforded many beautiful experiences.

They finally went through far enough of the space to see where they were heading to. A sight so beautiful, of over three hundred and fourteen billion stars, their galaxy spread over a radiant portion of space in a plethora purples you wouldn’t see anywhere on earth.

The space is rounded
∴

If you go in one way long enough,

you get back to where you came from
∴
 
There are ways to travel outside of space
∴

Out into the other dimension
∴

The same way you leave earth to go to space, you leave space to go above
∴
We are not very good at getting outside of space yet. Instead, we travel short distances in time and space
∴

Men only have themselves to fear
∴
Another being chimed in.

Hearing all this in a greek accent had a bizarre, but fortunate twist to it.

Somehow, it was easier to digest.

Verbally, it came pre-digested.

The Grays are an enormous people
∴

We have been around forever
∴

Not unlike like ants, who also live in colonies of enormous scale, their lives have centered around preserving their civilization and preserving their ‘space’ which was spread across three neighboring solar systems
∴
Traveling through space was by no means immediate, but they finally made it to some distant solar system and were heading for a trinity of planets;
One large and blue, two smaller maroon ones.

Why can’t Weiss hear you?

Your mind is open
∴

Path is clear to your thoughts
∴

There is no other
∴

You are the anomaly of anomalies
∴

Go to our kin
∴

Chapter Fifteen

Time Travel

When Frank was about six, he started having recurring nightmares.
Each night, he’d dream up new scenarios of how an extraterrestrial invasion might turn out. Because his imagination had no clear concept of what aliens ought to look like, and movies had plentiful, each night both the scenario
 
and the aliens were different.

It had been on his mind ever since the family trip to Lawrence Hall of Science. His young mind began obsessing over it curiously, mainly because he couldn’t find a concrete answer as opposed to everything else.

Though Lyle hadn’t failed to suggest it on many occasions, as far as Frank knew, he has never been abducted. Each dream was too different.

During episodes of prolonged periods of stress in his life, each dream would be more horrific than the last. By age 8, he stopped counting them. By the time he was 15, there were several nightmares a week. Then some started recurring.

Hordes of elephants with tall legs,
 

Stampede of the millennium,

 
about to take the city by storm.

titanic grasshoppers on a field.

Frank Cabella woke up in his bed, drenched in cold sweat, not feeling rested in particular. His entire body ached and his muscles spasmed, hurting and torn.

Lifting his head was no picnic.

It was all nails and shattered glass.

When he finally sat up and looked around, he realized he wasn’t being forced to stay in a military compound underground anymore.

He was at home.

 
And with zero recollection of the circumstances of his arrival.
Last memory was the of traveling through space with the aliens,
through solar systems, galaxies and clouds; far far away.

The aliens.

Was it all a long, very vivid dream?
That would certainly make more sense than being dragged off by a drill sergeant from the butt-joke of all sci-fi movies.

But this was no nightmare. It felt too real.
And it was too long to have been a dream; it was quite a while now since he found the small alien creature on the beach.

That would be one long-ass dream, Frank thought.
A buzzer went off somewhere in the house, but Frank has never been familiar with such a sound.

It didn’t belong to the doorbell, or a phone.
He went stiff.
Hyperventilation came a little later.

The project recruited me by force, so it’s unlikely that they’d let me go.
It is more likely I somehow escaped.

That was the closest he could come to an explanation. Though the rationale was sound, it didn’t quite come in handy.
Especially Now.
The gray may have let him go. Either that, or the crazy-haired Greek carried him home gently, so as to not wake him up.

How the hell did I get here?
Frank turned the shower on to let it run cold for the first few minutes, before the warm water crept up the tubes from the boiler.
Shock came from his unclad reflection. His body was covered with bruises and cuts on top off the scuffmarks the so-called General left on him.
He couldn’t remember acquiring them in any way.