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Is this a memory of the visitors at work, as it were?
In my childhood I was known as an extremely persistent questioner, so much
that in school I was allowed to ask no more than three per period so that I
would not take up all the time. True to form, I started questioning this
being. Maybe I knew her even then  certainly
I had gotten over any initial shock quickly.
I find the exchange fascinating. I asked who the people around me were, and
was told what was obvious even to me. They were all soldiers. Then I wanted to
know why they had been brought here. The answer is telling: "Because they were
alone." It might suggest a methodology, one that is borne out by some studies
of unexplained sightings: The craft seem to favor isolated areas. They do not
appear as often over cities, and there are not many stories of their taking
people from heavily populated places. Perhaps a limitation of technology is
visible here: There are simply too many risks in populated areas.
I asked what was being done to the soldiers. The answer, typically
uninformative, was, "We look then over and send them home." I can recall my
perplexity at that moment very well: I relived it during hypnosis. It seemed
an awful lot of trouble to go to just to examine people, and I asked,
rapid-fire: "What's the point of that?" The creature seemed read to reply, but
she was cut off in midsentence as if somebody had flipped a switch. For a
moment she sounded like a stuck record. "The point of that is  The point of
that is  " Then she stopped, as if surprised that she had been caught off
guard, and said, simply, "Well," her voice melodious with amusement.
Soon after, I was watching her moving around. I did not know what she was
doing, perhaps something that involved touching the soldiers with a
copper-colored thing. I asked her why she looked so awful, and she certainly
did look awful. I cannot imagine why I wasn't terrified. It is incredibly
upsetting to see something that is clearly not human walking and moving about
with intelligence. There is something that is unmistakable about the precision
of consciously directed movement that is deeply frightening when seen in such
an alien form.
Nothing tike this was going through my mind at the age of twelve, but the
vision of that eerie being moving about among the tables remains quite clear.
When I asked her why she looked so awful, she replied almost absently, without
stopping her work, "I can't help that."
I wonder what Ishtar really looked like, and if the whole Greek pantheon of
beautiful gods and goddesses was not something akin to the beautiful "godlike"
beings imagined by people who have made flying saucers their religion. These
believers seem to be people who cannot face the stark reality of the visitor
experience, and so cloak the fierce, limitless eyes, the bad smells, the
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dreadful food, and the general sense of helplessness in a very human
mythology.
I wonder if Homer and Pindar did not do the same. And why was Homer blind? It
is known that many different storytellers comprise "Homer." Perhaps hysterical
blindness was a commonplace among the prehistoric Greek bards out of whose
tales the classical pantheon emerged. I don't blame them. Hysterical blindness
and congenial belief systems would both be excellent defenses against things
similar to what I have seen.
But if they have really been here so long, why did they have so much trouble
getting me to keep down my feeding? Perhaps the substance has not been changed
over the years to suit me, perhaps the very act of eating it has changed me.
Maybe it is a process of acclimatization.
It was while I was watching the lady with the eyes moving among the soldiers
with her copper wand that I noticed my sister. She was below me and to my
right, lying sprawled in her nightie. I still remember how much seeing her
like that scared me. She and I were very
close in those days. I loved her and admired her, and it was dreadful to see
her looking as if she were dead. A voice told me that she was all right. This [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]