I can’t imagine how you would react if you were to come upon
C.W. in his actual form. Shocked, terrified, nauseated are a few words that
come to mind. I had known him for maybe a year before he allowed me to see him.
Even then, he prepared me by showing some images of his native planet,
Falloonia.
That is, of course, why he was granted the power to change
shapes before mingling with us. I’m thankful for it. At any rate, I caught him “in-real”
as he prefers to call it. He was standing in a large open space at our farm
standing motionless with four of his arms to his side and two pointed toward the
sky.
“What the … ?”
“Quiet,” Middle Head said, “We’re in practice mode.” I watched
as he stood rock-still for several minutes. Then the four hands hanging to his
side began to rise. As they reached a perpendicular position, six of the fingers
on each hand folded and left one finger extended, making a sign quite resembling one
that we use to insult one another. I watched in utter confusion. Was this some
religious ritual hitherto unmentioned? I do get the feeling from time to time
that he has not told me everything about his mission to Earth.
The four arms finished rising and all six now pointed upwards.
Left Head said, “Kthufckowt.” It looked
toward Middle Head.
Right Head said, “Kthufckowt,”
and looked toward Middle Head.
Middle Head repeated the word and all three trembled for
nearly a minute, following which they all looked at me. “Hey Big Dope,” Middle Head
said. “What’s up?” All three made the Falloonian facial gesture signifying, as they
have taught me, a smile of friendly greeting.
Before could answer, the three of them, all together and all
at once, said, “Wait one.” I watched as he moved, best described as sort of a
floating wobble, to a nearby storage building. He moved behind it an emerged shortly
thereafter as, are you ready? The Galilean.
“Blessings to you, brother,” he said as he approached me.
“What the hell?”
“Oh that what you just saw?” He smiled. “We call it a ‘Trump
Drill,’ and have to practice it every day. That’s simply the posture we must
assume when they send the Retrieval Beams for us.”
“A Trump Drill?”
“Exactly.”
“Care to explain?”
He smoothed a wrinkle in his robe. “Don’t you read the
papers?” Before I could answer, he said, “The Falloonian Elders do. Verily I
say, they have ordered preparations for a fast exit.”
“A fast exit from where?”
“Here,” he said, looking surprised, “And we must be prepared.
Last time we were being called back for a conference, Left Head sneezed, and
Right Head got sent to Alabama.” He smiled. “It took us a month to find him and
two weeks of re-programming, You remember, don’t you?”
“Was that the time you showed up as Karl the KKK-Man?”
He blushed. “We don’t talk about Karl.”
“Why the practice now?”
He cocked his head in confusion. His long hair fell in front
of his face and he brushed it aside. “I asked you once. Don’t you read the
papers?”
“Yes, but ….”
“We’ve seen this sort of thing before,” he said. “A
combination of knowledge without foresight and power without morality is a
deadly combination. How do you think asteroids get formed?’
“So, you assume the position. To depart, that is?”
Fulfillment of prophecy, or big mistake? - C.W. |
“They are worried, the Elders?”
“Verily I say unto you,” he repeated, “The unleashing of
raging demons, gorged from feasting upon power, and lacking the balm of reason,
can cause the most sanguine of minds to tremble and the strongest of hearts to
fill with despair.”
“Don’t they see that we despair as well?”
“Unfortunately no,” he said. I noticed a tone of gravity in
his voice. “I’ve been studying the beliefs of the followers of what we call ‘the
Current Occupants.’”
“And?”
“They are quite excited about it all. Something about the ‘fulfillment
of prophecy.’ I can’t imagine where they get such ideas.”
I started to say something, but thought better of it.
Instead, I said, “So you were practicing the ritual you must perform when being taken
home?”
His face turned to me at a slight angle, and his dark eyes glistened.
“I sort of like to think I have been at home these many years,” he said. “But
yes, that’s how I would catch the Retrieval Beam for, sad to say, my return to
Falloonia. If sanity were to return, so shall I.”
That put me in a pensive mood. “You like it here?”
“We’ve never produced a Schubert or a Van Gogh in Falloonia,”
he said, adding, “We don’t have ‘The Big
Bang Theory’ either. He wiped away a tear. “I’ll miss Penny.”
See also:
Delta Dreaming
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