Calling Old Blue Eyes (part two)

© 2011 David jasmin-Green

“Aah, I see you're awake now,” a soft voice said close to my ear, and it startled me because I failed to sense the creature's approach. “Gooood..... The administrator has instructed me to ask you a number of questions. Congratulations - you are the ship's five hundredth guest from this planet, but I'm afraid that there aren't any prizes for that honour.”

A tall, almost pure white creature in a loose fitting beige shawl was standing beside me, and it had little in common with the dwarves. It was painfully, almost impossibly thin, its arms and legs were as flimsy as twigs and its huge, domed skull was balanced on a wiry neck that was surely incapable of holding its weight, at least in Earth gravity.

I couldn't get over the improbably built being's eyes. They were huge and luminescent, almost perfectly round pools of a delightful pale blue, more or less the same blue as a blackbird's egg or a summer sky. At first I forced myself to tear my gaze away from those eyes because I feared I would be cajoled into their inviting depths, buttered up like a teenage boy seduced by his beautiful MILF teacher, sweet talked and hypnotised. I reckoned that the romance would soon be over, and then I would be casually tortured and coldly slain as soon as the thing grasped whatever it was that it wanted from me between its fine, ever moving, over-numerous spider leg fingers.

“What do you want?” I said calmly. “What do you want from me?” It was weird; even though I was fully conscious and I was pinned to a table before an odd looking, possibly murderous alien I felt ridiculously serene, and fear was the last thing on my mind. “Who or should I say what are you?” I continued. “Why are you so..... Ha! I was going to say ugly or vicious or satanic, or all of them rolled into one, but none of those words apply to you, do they?” I could feel my eyes filling with tears, because beyond its appearance the thing was more beautiful than I could possibly comprehend. “Why are you so sweet in comparison to them?” I sobbed. “And how come you don't look anything like the adrenalin junkie Chinamen?” The creature cocked its head to one side and looked over the balcony, perusing the busy scene below. I had a feeling that she (yes, I knew intuitively that it was a she) was checking if the administrator was close by, and apparently he wasn't.

“I see no reason why we can't talk for a little while,” she said inside my head. “You are a good man, I can sense it. It's necessary to communicate in this manner because if they find out they'll kill both of us, and it won't be a swift, painless death, I promise. Talking with captives isn't exactly forbidden, but I have no doubt that even small talk would be frowned upon and severely punished, so I trust you'll keep whatever is said between you and I strictly to yourself.” I nodded in agreement, but it was hardly necessary because I was pretty sure that Old Blue Eyes had her own methods of figuring out whether or not I was trustworthy.

“Yes, I am a female,” she said, reading my mind, “but obviously not of the species that dragged you into this shoddy but perfectly serviceable craft for analysis. Don't make the mistake of judging a book by its cover, by the way. My kind are parthenogenetic, that is we are all female and we reproduce asexually. I come from an entirely different galaxy from the despicable creatures I am forced to call my masters. My species is much, much older and far more technically advanced than they are, but the Haddi, which is what they call themselves, though I could think of more fitting titles, have ways and means of overpowering and enslaving my kind when they catch us in small enough groups. They might not seem too bright in your estimation, but that's because they have little interest in you or your kind and only their leader has learned the fundamentals of your language. They are devious and powerful in ways that you can't even begin to imagine.....

This particular band are escapees from an industrial labour camp on an asteroid not too may light years away from here, which explains their scruffy, hastily assembled craft. The Haddi are totally amoral, and when they feel that it's expedient they can be very ruthless indeed. They were once the masters of almost everywhere, but their species were subjugated by a higher race from afar while your planet was still young. All too frequently, though, they escape from their masters in little ragtag bands like this, and gradually, in several widely spaced locations, they are amassing power. The administrator of this vessel is no fool despite his poor mastery of your tongue. He has contacted a much larger, better equipped band of rebels, and they are preparing to send a vast army your way at this very moment. If no puts a stop to their strategically important game, within perhaps two years those reinforcements will complete the long journey between their current location and your solar system, and if that happens it will be curtains, as you say.

It's not resources they're after, my naïve friend – they can get resources almost anywhere. They want your planet.....

Habitable planets are quite rare in this part of the cosmos, you see. Though most intelligent races have so far paid scant attention to this outlying arm of your galaxy the verminous Haddi regard the neighbourhood and your world in particular as excellent real estate, mainly because it's situated a long, long way from their enemies. If they do manage to conquer your planet - which is a foregone conclusion, as they possess mainly stolen technology that your race, at their current point of development, can only dream of - maybe they'll be left in peace long enough to build up their numbers and amass a decent sized battle fleet.

They'll enslave a few million of you for a while, no doubt, but the majority will become cattle, they'll be harvested for their flesh and blood. That's not the most pleasant of fates for any sentient species, but maybe we can avoid it. The conquerors would have to modify your atmosphere somewhat, because at the moment it's slightly toxic to them. When they're done, though, it'll become very poisonous indeed for any humans still living, unless they're genetically modified. You're being fed with oxygen right now, otherwise you'd struggle to breathe in here and within a few hours you'd die.

Right now the Haddi are simply gathering information, which is why they are kidnapping guinea pigs like you. As I've explained, it will be a while before their compatriots arrive on the scene and commence their invasion. Perhaps your species might have a chance of survival if we play our cards right. Maybe we can delay the invasion – maybe we can convince the scum that the expensive, time consuming trek here isn't worth their while, but even if they do come we'll be ready for them, don't worry about that. Look into my eyes now and try to appear dazed, the administrator is coming.” I did exactly as I was told, and the being laid her hands on my forehead and gazed deep into my eyes with her huge baby blues, her rough, horny fingers caressing my skin with a touch like a nest of centipedes.

“Uncover big news interesting for me like, drone?” the administrator snapped.

“Nothing of any great importance so far, Sir,” Old Blue Eyes replied, speaking to the main man telepathically on a totally different frequency to the one she had used to converse with me, and I was surprised that I understood. “But that's because he's a difficult one. He's very strong, he's by far the strongest one I've examined so far during this mission, so it may take a little while to analyse him thoroughly and subjugate him. He's a keeper if ever I saw one, so I don't recommend that you send him to the lab for dissection when we're through. In my humble opinion, Sir, once I've finished taming his unruly mind I suggest that we implant him and drop him off back home. Once I've broken his will he'll be unusually obedient, and he'll work for you tirelessly – the powerful ones always do.”

“No rush, please,” the administrator said impatiently as he carried on his way. “Plenty time. Do properly or not do at all, say I. Do you what think best, drone. That why you here for. Girl good - keep plenty fine work up you eat nice, yum-yum, but work slacky eat cacky, remembers?”

“Yes, Sir, thank you Sir,” she said.

“Has he gone?” I whispered gently in thought, if that's possible.

“Yes,” she said, “he's gone. Now listen carefully, because this is very important. A sizeable battle fleet from my own planet is on its way to ambush the Haddi fleet. Though they'll be covering a tremendous distance that you'd struggle to get you head around our ships are very swift, and all being well they should meet up with our common enemy before they're even halfway to your world.

As I and my companions can't risk communicating with our people directly as frequently as we'd like to, we'll need to do it through you. If you're a willing subject, of course.” I nodded automatically without even thinking about the consequences. “The implant I spoke of earlier is for regular spies – we implant selected humans who then seek out and transmit whatever information the Haddi wish to know. The device I'll be concealing in your body is slightly different, it's something we've modified ourselves through our own ingenuity. The tiny chip is capable of sending the crap that the vermin crave back here in the regular manner, but at the same time it covertly allows you and I to keep in touch, hopefully without their knowledge.

You'll need to construct some serious hardware at your end, of course, so that you can receive and unscramble the information I feed you, pass it on to my comrades and process and return their replies to me, but that will look after itself. It will all come naturally, you'll see..... I have tremendous faith in you. You'll intuitively know what to do, because I'll download the necessary knowledge directly into your cerebral cortex. It's as easy as ABC. Do you understand?”

“I think not,” I said. “I'm not sure if any of that has sunk in.” To tell the truth I hadn't got the foggiest idea what Old Blue Eyes was rabbiting on about.

“I'm going to put you to sleep now and insert the implant, and before you know it you'll be back home,” she said. “Take care of your loved ones, human. Cherish them no matter what. And don't worry about the piffling problems that are eating at you right now, because they're meaningless compared to the grand scheme of things and everything will work out in the end, I promise..... Love is all that matters, just remember that.” She waved one of her delicate hands back and forth over my forehead and looked intently into my eyes. Lovingly. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's bloody true. I returned her gaze, wanting desperately to cry again and wondering what I ought to splutter in reply, and that was it – I went out like a light without so much as a thank you.

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The next thing I knew I was back at the edge of the clearing, lying flat on my back in a bank of sodden nettles with ice cold raindrops falling on my face. A cock blackbird filled the air with its dulcet tones a few feet above my head, and I could hear the rumble of traffic in the distance. All was normal, all was well, apparently, and I was convinced that I had suffered a hallucination. It couldn't have been a side effect of the antidepressants that the quack proscribed for me, I told myself, because I disliked the spaced out feeling that they gave me and during the last few weeks I had gradually weaned myself off the damned things and flushed the remainder down the toilet.

As I stood up and began to make my way home my knees ached where the malicious dwarf in the dream had shot me with his toy ray gun, and I could feel a slight soreness in the muscles at the back of my neck where I guessed the implant might be if it was real - if I'd had a genuine experience instead of just a plum crazy hallucination. Though I struggled to identify the sore spot in the bathroom mirror later that day I could find no wound, not even a tiny anomalous mark.

I recalled reading somewhere that alleged victims of alien abductions often complain of inexplicable lost time after their experiences, but when I checked my watch it was only nine thirty in the morning, which couldn't be right - I had barely left the house by then, and I distinctly remember that it was just after twelve thirty when I entered the trees at the edge of the old tip. When I got home at about half ten I struggled to keep my eyes open. I fell asleep in front of the Jeremy Kyle show, which invariably makes me feel better about my own troubles, before I had a chance to drink the coffee I made in an attempt to keep awake. I didn't tumble back into the land of the living until the first of my girls arrived home from school, and even then she had to shake me.

Over the following few days things started to get really crazy. When I set off for my morning walks I found myself wandering down unfamiliar roads without really knowing where I was going or what I was looking for. I invariably stumbled across a piece of wasteland with a selection of unexpected goodies dumped in the undergrowth or a skip with some delightful something placed on the top of the other trash as if it had been left there especially for me. Amongst other things I collected lots and lots of conked out TV's and knackered stereo systems, outdated computers, a discarded satellite receiver, a forty foot short wave radio aerial and a large roll of copper wire. One way or another I transported my assorted electrical garbage home and stashed it in the outhouse or the cellar.

As time passed my walks got shorter and my creative sessions (for want of better words) with the junk I collected got longer and longer. Over the following month or so I worked almost non stop building – well, I built something, but I'm not entirely sure what it was; or is for that matter, because the damned thing's still there. You can come and see for yourself if you like.

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After various components from the satellite dish were incorporated along the old radio aerial's length I erected it on one side of the oversized brick outhouse that some former owner of my house had kindly (and quite probably illegally) constructed for my benefit. The base of the aerial was concreted firmly into the ground, the housing was fastened to the exterior wall with pressed steel drainpipe clamps and the wiring trailed into the building's interior so that my masterpiece would be protected from the elements and hidden from prying eyes.

In a corner of the unit I screwed together a rough framework with old roofing laths and fixed a desktop approximately a third of the way up, and then I began to dismantle the discarded electrical items and reassembled apparently random chunks of their innards within that matrix. The whole of the time I worked completely unconsciously, which I suppose is a fancy way of saying I didn't have the slightest clue what I was doing (and I had only a vague idea why I was doing it).

Slowly my strange something began to take shape, and late one cold afternoon I somehow realised that the job was complete. I plugged the power cable into the mains and sat down at the makeshift console while the insane contraption fired up, crackling and spluttering as the battered forty eight inch plasma screen TV at its heart began to glow.

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While construction was in progress I thought my family would conclude that I'd bust another mental gasket, but they were used to my crackpot schemes and generally they were only marginally interested in them. I told them that I was building a digital radio telescope, and do you know what? They were gullible enough to believe me. To explain why and to stop you from thinking that I live with a bunch of numbskulls I have to digress a little.....

I spent the first year after we married tarting up the house, which was a bit dated when we bought it, and when that task was completed to my satisfaction I found myself at a bit of a loose end. For a couple of months I spent every spare moment kitting out the outhouse with the hundred or so little cages that comprised my long planned canary breeding unit, but I grew tired of canaries after a single season and replaced them with pedigree Sphinx cats which, of course, required an extensive, rather costly refit. I sold the half a dozen litters of kittens I bred for a considerable loss, and eventually I passed the adults on to new homes. Next on my hit list was reptiles and amphibians, but that fad didn't last very long either. I learned the hard way that I wasn't a particularly good stocksman, so after those failed projects cost me an arm and a leg I abandoned animal husbandry altogether.

I rebuilt vintage racing bicycles for a while, but it bored the tits off me. I made a few model aeroplanes after buying a bomb load of tools and equipment for a song from the widow of a recently deceased local buff, but sadly that wasn't my cup of tea either. The final revamp of my little home from home was as an art studio where I spent hours producing huge, garishly coloured landscapes that everyone detested - but not a single person of my acquaintance, not even my close friends and family, could summon up the courage to tell me that they didn't like my work and I was born without even a smidgen of artistic talent. Nevertheless, posing as a self taught arty-farty painter was my longest lasting hobby, for it took me several years to realise that I didn't like my paintings either.

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For the following fourteen months I sat before my mysterious baby for several hours a day, and if my missus or the kids interrupted me I pretended that I was experiencing technical problems and I grumbled that the pile of shit would probably never work. I magically translated masses of indecipherable squiggles on the big screen and several smaller ones that I wired into the system as they came into my possesion. I relayed incoming and outgoing information back and forth through a bank of forty eight hard drives linked together by a jungle of wiring. Simultaneously I typed blindly on a jumble of keyboards dismantled and reassembled, glued and wired and soldered together in a rough cube. Don't ask me how I did it, I just did what I unconsciously knew needed doing.

For over half of this time I carried on around my new job – I found the time one way or another, even if it meant staying up half of the night. Sometimes the back of my neck itched so violently that it woke me in the middle of the night, and I would be lured down to the outhouse in my dressing gown and slippers to slave until dawn. During that strange time I may have been a complete nut job achieving nothing of any consequence, except of course from escalating my own madness, but I suppose I could have been shooting signals off into space and receiving fresh instructions from Old Blue Eyes through my modified aerial – I guess I'll never know for sure.

Anyway, eventually there came a day when I lost the urge - it just vanished, it's as simple as that. There was no longer any need for me to operate the equipment, I realised. I was made redundant from my role in the Space Cadets core, but I shouldn't dismantle the mechanism just yet in case there was a need to use it again, I felt. That's what I believed (or maybe it was what I was told). I had a very powerful inkling that the problem was sorted, that the Haddi had been vanquished by the spindly white things and there would never be another communication from Old Blue Eyes and her buddies. Not in my lifetime, anyway.

So that was that. The show was over, and sadly the fat lady (or the awfully thin one with the big blue eyes) never got around to singing. During the complex task that I was entrusted with by a possibly hallucinatory, possibly real benevolent alien my depression magically lifted and it never came back, touch wood. Soon after the communications ceased I landed a better job – it doesn't pay a fortune, but at least we can make ends meet now. Well, sort of. My boss has hinted that I'll more than likely be promoted in the near future, but I've been asked to keep that quiet.

I feel normal again for the first time in many moons, but occasionally, usually when I least expect it, the muscles at the back of my neck twitch uncontrollably, I experience a familiar itching and I have a powerful compulsion to mosey on down to the outhouse and fire up my infernal intergalactic communication system for old times' sake, or maybe just to see if I can figure out how many of the memories crashing around in my head like angry waves are real and how many are loony tune constructs from those mad, mad days. Sometimes, when that itching rouses me, I get out of bed and look out of the window, and if it's a starry night I cry like a baby - I can't explain why. I guess it's wondering if my intergalactic love is still alive. Shhh! Don't tell the missus.....

I haven't entered the outhouse for almost a year now. Maybe I'm terrified of what I might find in there, or maybe I'm frightened of the effect the contraption could have on my mind - once bitten, twice shy. Thankfully the compulsion to go in there usually evaporates after a little while and I can return to my safe, sane, humdrum existence. But one day I might submit, because I can't help wondering if the itching is Old Blue Eyes trying to tell me that it's about time I read my emails from the stars. Shit, what a wonderful creature. I really miss her, you do realise that, don't you?