The Craft

The Craft

Quinn worked high up in the military. He was stationed at the control room at military base in the city. The city was bathed in twilight for all but a few hours of the day.

In the evening, after dinner, when he arrived home, Quinn noticed some strange aircraft flying through the sky. The lights that flashed on them were abnormal. There was a standard light flashing pattern for all aircraft in the city that they all had to adhere to. But the craft that flew overhead used a different pattern, and the colors of the lights were conspicuously different to standard. ‘Let’s smoke a joint,’ said Janine, getting out of the car.

Quinn frowned. ‘There’s something suspicious about these planes,’ said Quinn, pointing. ‘I’ll be in in a few minutes.’ Janine went inside and put on some jazz music and got into her pajamas. Quinn walked across the road to the park to get a better view.

It was a warm night. Quinn watched the horizon. After a minute, one of the craft appeared. If flew towards him. The shape was quite flat and squarish. Definitely not like anything from around here. He tried to make out the detail, but the ship was shrouded in a cloud of fog, hiding its finer aspects from his vision. Listening closely, he found that the ship made no sound as it went. It flew silently past him and gradually decreased in size until it disappeared.

From the same spot, another one of them appeared and flew at right angles from the direction of the previous ship. It crossed him on the far side of the city.

Turning around and scanning the sky, he saw yet another one of the strange craft approaching. It’s bright lights could be seen flashing within the shroud of mist that cloaked it. He jogged through the park and down the street in order to get directly beneath the ships flight line.

It flew low right over him. From this close, he was able to see through the fog to glimpse some of the detail of the bottom of the ship. A six-spoked metal wheel spun slowly at the bottom of the ship. He took a couple of pictures with his camera.

For the next hour, Quinn watched as the craft flew overhead, taking pictures of them with his phone as they went. One by one, a fleet of these abnormal ships gathered over the city. Tracing the flight line, he saw that they emerged from somewhere on the horizon and disappeared on the opposite side behind him. From there, another stream of ships emerged, and they flew on an angle to the other horizon so as to make a giant triangle over the city. They were taking dominion of the sky. Something gave him the feeling that they were collecting data.

He took his phone and called Holt at the military base and told him what he’d seen, and sent him the pictures. ‘Seems strange,’ said Holt. Holt then checked the radar for any signs of the ships, and found nothing. ‘There’s no sign of them.’

‘Look out the window and face east of the tower,’ said Quinn. But Holt still couldn’t discern the ships from the other clouds and mist in the atmosphere. ‘I’ll have to take your word for it,’ said Holt.

Back inside, Janine was singing along to the music. Quinn opened his laptop and scanned for more data about the ships. He was in contact with Holt at the base as they worked together to try and solve the problem. ‘Come to bed,’ said Janine.

Quinn looked at her. She was beautiful. Then he looked back at the screen. The problem of the unidentified ships was imminent; the need to work on them pressed upon him. But work would still be there in the morning, and today just so happened to be his birthday. He left the program running and hopped into bed.

 

Invasion

In the morning, the sound of a low flying aircraft roused him. He went to the window, and then out to the balcony. It was still warm. The cat was on the balcony. The sound of the engine roared from behind him. He turned his head just in time to see an airplane roar right over the roof. The cloud of fog was only a sparse mist, now. And the shape and form of the ship was more like the aircraft in the city. But there were still a few abnormities in certain parts of the plane, and the spectacular lights marked it as the same as the ones who had appeared before. They had transformed into a different form since last night, to match the planes that regularly flew over town. He knew of no known technology in the world capable of doing this.

He showered and readied to go. Janine was doing her stretches. ‘I had the strangest dream,’ she said.

When he arrived at headquarters, Quinn and Holt studied the pictures. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this!’ said Holt. The craft were invisible to radar. They had to scan the sky in order to detect them. They could only see where the craft were in the one moment in time. They were able to do only one scan of the skies per minute. Quinn made contact with them in every way he could, but the craft were unresponsive. By midday they were everywhere. Planes and helicopters that had transformed from the original ships shapes flew all around. ‘They’re taking our dominion of the skies,’ said Holt. The craft spectacular flashing lights of silver, gold and ruby, startled him. ‘Cut‘em down,’ ordered Holt over the radar.

‘Hang on,’ said Quinn, ‘They’re benign.’

‘We are under attack!’ Holt demanded.

‘Permission denied,’ came the response from Rebecca the stateswoman several minutes later. ‘You’re not to fire.’

The three of them had a phone conference: ‘Who knows about them?’ asked Quinn.

‘No one ,’ said Rebecca, ‘They’ve slipped under the public radar.’

‘They must be aliens,’ said Quinn. ‘There’s no other way to explain their technology.’

‘Have you confirmed where they come from?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve got to tell the media about this,’ said Quinn, dialling on his phone.

‘Are you crazy?’ said Holt, taking the phone off him.

‘He’s right, on this’ said Rebecca. ‘Let’s keep it to ourselves.’

Quinn didn’t like the sounds of that, but he was outnumbered two to one.

 

Response

Quinn and Holt went back to work trying to find out where the craft went to when they disappeared over the horizon. Extra ships appeared to be popping up out of nowhere, and disappearing again. ‘Where are they hiding?’ demanded Holt.

The sun shone high in the midday sky. Holt got on the phone and ordered a squadron of jets to be launched immediately for a mission. The mission was to hunt down one of the alien craft and surround, harangue, or in any way subdue it.

The jets took off and flew in a loose pack as they stalked the pack of alien ships, looking for one to prey. Holt and Quinn communicated with the jet pilots over the radio, guiding them. But the craft were illusory on their radars, and even their eyes seemed to be playing tricks on them. ‘Surround one of them,’ commanded Holt.

The jets took off. Using all their aeronautical nous, they managed to surround one of the ships in the form of a utilitarian chopper with windows. ‘We have you surrounded,’ said Holt to the chopper through the radio, ‘Identify yourself, immediately.’ The chopper hovered nonchalantly. ‘You are an unauthorized aircraft trespassing on military airspace. Respond to this communication, or prepare to pay the consequences...This is city command to you in the chopper: answer yourself, now!’

The chopper dipped back and forth, and in the blink of an eye it had darted beneath the jets into a gap left in their formation, and it sprang away into gap between itself and the jets that left them languishing. ‘After them!’ ordered Holt.

The jets recovered their pace and set off in pursuit of the chopper. With a higher top speed, it was only a matter of time until they caught up it. But the chopper was more dexterous, and try as they might, the jets were unable to hem the chopper in. It led them on a merry goose chase to the outskirts of town. ‘Take it down!’ ordered Holt. ‘I said fire!’ But the radio had cut out. The jets had reached the point outside the city where the radio waves no longer reached, in the reach between cities. Holt got on the phone to call the nearest city in the direction in which the jets had gone, but the call couldn’t be connected.

Rebecca burst through the doors. ‘Your unauthorized methods just cost you your job. I’m ordering you to stand down, Holt.’

‘You can’t keep me out of the military!’

‘The government won’t stand for your unauthorised violence. I’m ordering you to cease from command, effective immediately.’ Holt left the room in a huff. ‘I’m trusting you to keep things safe with the military,’ said Rebecca to Quinn.

‘They’ve taken control of the skies. It’s untenable. I advise that all commercial flights be cancelled, until we can decipher their intentions.’ ‘Thank you for your advice, but you are to proceed with regular operations. We don’t want to cause a panic. It’s business as usual.’

‘Why all the hiding? Is there something you’re not telling me?’

Rebecca confided in him: ‘There’s evidence just in that we’re heading into a recession. It would be unhelpful to put the breaks on industry. As long as they don’t get in our way, don’t do anything.’ Rebecca left.

 

Power in Trammels

Quinn assumed command. Quinn pelted the craft with radio transmissions designed to scramble their electronics and compasses. There was a slight response from the craft as the effects of the transmissions were felt, and a moment later they adapted to the interference and retained normalcy in their operations. He sent audio signals of all frequencies in demand that the craft should acknowledge their reception of his attempts to communicate immediately,’ but his cries were flagrantly disregarded.

The sun went down and the sky faded back into twilight.

Quinn got on the phone and called a nearby city to see if the same phenomena were occurring there. There was no response. He tried several times, to several different cities in the nearby lands to theirs, but nobody was answering anywhere.

All around him, there were murmurs in the staff about UFO’s. Quinn continued to work on the radars, gathering information and sending signals to influence the ships. Holt came back in.

The time of day when the regular staff finished their shifts came. One of them approached him on behalf of the crew. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’re being invaded,’ Quinn said quietly.

‘Don’t be crazy!’ said Holt, who had come back into the room and was watching developments intently. ‘These people deserve the truth. Those planes you’ve noticed are just a cheap political stunt. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, but I won’t have discontent breaking in to my staff through perpetuating lies!’

The staff accepted what Holt had said and left the building. ‘Are you crazy?’ asked Holt. ‘You’ll waste a good thing.’

‘What, ‘good thing?’”

‘See, the truth,’ said Holt, ‘Is something you possess, and you’ve got to know how to handle it. Don’t cast pearls before swine.’

‘You don’t own the truth,’ said Quinn. ‘The truth is out there. And they are not swine. They are sheep. And we’re shepherds.’

Holt cut him down. ‘This is my command center, I’m the one who’s in charge around here.’

Quinn was about to rebuke him when a call came through from the mayor.

‘Mr. Mayor,’ said Holt, ‘It’s good to hear from you.’

‘What’s this I hear about alien invaders?’ he asked.

‘The government thinks they’re benign, but I am certain they’re hostile. We have to shoot them down.’

‘Tell me more about them,’ said the Mayor.

Quinn explained the way in which the craft had infiltrated the city. He sent him pictures of the craft as they were when they had first arrived. ‘They must have had the ability to morph into any kind of aircraft on any planet,’ he said.

‘What is their purpose?’ asked the Mayor.

‘Their technology is far superior to ours,’ said Quinn. ‘I wouldn’t presume to be able to guess what their agenda is.’

‘Permission to shoot them down,' requested Holt.

‘Wait until we know more about them,’ said the Mayor.

‘They’re subverting our authority!’

‘I’ll be sure to tell the council that. Now go home and get some rest, Commander Holt, and come back fresh tomorrow.’ Holt grimly saluted and left. ‘Now listen, Quinn’ said the sheriff, ‘I want you to report directly to me on this, is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Quinn

 

At dinner with Janine, he asked, ‘How was your rehearsal today?’

‘There were a couple of no-shows,’ said Janine, ‘Which makes it interesting.

After dinner, Quinn went back to the laptop, searching through the records for any mention of the time of aircraft that they had encountered. He also cast the net out to several experts he knew of in relevant fields to gather any current Intel at hand. There was very little response. The only lead he gathered was to a book that his colleague said vaguely described the transforming function that Quinn had described.

 

Knowing the Enemy

When he arrived at the base the next morning, there were a number of conspicuous absentees from among the staff who hadn’t shown up to work. Combined with the presence of the invaders and the lack of transparency surrounding them, nervousness rippled among the staff as they underwent the day’s operations. But, somehow, the city’s normal, daily flight operations, such as commercial flights and emergency helicopters, managed to go on unscathed and unaverted. The craft had now transformed to the point where they exactly matched the city’s aircraft, except for the lights. The public were still unaware of their invasion.

They still hadn’t managed to influence the crafts undertakings. They were out of ideas. ‘This is useless,’ said Quinn.

Taking the sonar remote controller and getting into a jeep, Quinn sped out of the base. He drove out of the complex and onto the main road. Looking around, he noticed a distinct lack of any activity on the sidewalk. He parked at the library and went. ‘What’s on your mind today?’ asked the cleric.

‘I’m after a particular book containing UFO technologies,’ said Quinn.

She pointed him in the right direction.

Quinn walked down the hall towards the shelves.

Sitting at a seat on the way there was the professor who had recommended the book to him. ‘Excuse me, Professor,’ said Quinn.

‘Yes,’ said the professor, looking up.

 ‘We are being invaded by extra terrestrials.’

The professor began speculating and philosophizing, casting his speech so far astray into the histories of, the when’s and where’s, the who’s and how’s, of times gone before when certain conspiracy theories had predicted the imminence of the end of days, or some other world-shattering event, so as to become irrelivent.

‘I’m serious!’ said Quinn. ‘They have taken the airspace. The military and the government know about it, but they’re keeping it a secret.’ Quinn showed the professor the photos

‘Well,’ said the professor, ‘The threat of annihilation is perennially hanging above our heads. What with the advent of nuclear weapons, the crash of all civilization is only one push of a button away. I understand your angst; you’ll get used to it.’

The professor was adrift in an ocean of rhetoric; anything Quinn said to him was washed away in the lyrical chaos of the sea. He was going to have to find the information he needed to crack the craft for himself.

In the bookshelves, looking through the books, in the history of aviation, he found an odd book that was a work of fiction that jumped out at him. It was short novel written by an unheralded science-fiction author. Quinn scanned the pages, spending about an hour reading. The novel was called Alien Invaders, and even though Quinn had read all the classics of the genre and knew its history well, he nonetheless had never heard of it before. In the plot of the novel, an invading alien civilization took control of the home planet, turning their people into slaves in the process. The alien civilisation’s home planet and way of life was described, and they were noted, in these descriptions, to have possessed the type of morphing, imitation technology as the craft that had invaded their city’s skies. The author’s name was unknown.

The author said the inhabitants of the civilization had evolved metallic elements in their bodies. It dawned on Quinn that the ships themselves were living beings. The author claimed to have seen the codes used by the aliens to unlock the alien genetic neurological quotient in the brain, thereby accessing the aliens genome. He claimed that by applying the codes through wires to the neurons of the brain, thereby activating the aliens genome in the body, one became immune to the alien technology.

On the back cover was a plea from the author to send any information pertaining to nephalim to an email address written on the page. Quinn wondered if he was going crazy. A cloak of isolation enshrouded him. He put the book in his pocket and left the library.

 

He arrived home. Soft music played from the record player. Incense scented the room. He went to the table and drank the last sip of whiskey from the glass. Janine emerged from the shower. She looked angry. ‘To us,’ Quinn saluted.

‘What happened to you?’

A veil of introspection masked the revelations of his countenance. ‘The mayor has made me the head of the military, now. There’s a lot going on right now.’

‘Half the cast was absent from rehearsal today,’ she said suspiciously, ‘And the shops were closed so I couldn’t get my costume, or anything.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Quinn, ‘It’s under control.’

She looked unhappy.

 ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Well...it’s just that I fell for you because when we danced together I thought we were going to keep on going dancing forever. And now you’re the acting commander of the military and I don’t get to even see you anymore.’

He stroked her hair. ‘It’s just for now. Things will be back to normal soon.’

 

Disintegration

He awoke the next morning to the sound of static playing on the television set. What time was it? Ten-thirty. He must have slept in.

Janine was on her way out. ‘Are we still on for dinner tonight?’

‘Yes. I’ll come by the theatre after work.’ He watched her leave.

He drove the jeep along the beach towards the military base. The shops and cafes along the sides of the road were nearly empty. On the radio, no one was saying anything about the ships. But there were news broadcasts about the fact that they were in a recession.

In the air overhead, he heard the sound of a low flying engine. He turned to see the distinctive lighting pattern of the invading craft. It’s form had taken on that of an antique show plane. The amber lights flashed. The people on the shore of the sea cheered and clapped as the plane flew low overhead. They didn’t realise it was an alien vessel.

When he reached the gate to the base, Quinn was ushered in by the security into a secure room for a high-priority meeting. Holt, Rebecca, and the sheriff were there. ‘Gentleman,’ said Rebecca, ‘I have some disturbing news. It appears that people are going missing. That’s what’s caused the recession.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Holt. ‘Give me a name.’

‘We’re at their mercy. They haven’t attacked us, so I don’t think that shooting them down is a good idea. You might provoke them.’

The sheriff and Holt looked at each other and nodded. ‘Let’s shoot ‘em down.

‘No!’ said Quinn. ‘Only as a last resort. It’s time to tell the public. We need to understand them first.’

‘Ha. Fine, alert the media. But in twenty-four hours, if there’s no change, we’re going to shoot them down.’

‘What do you mean, “people are going missing”?’ asked Quinn.

‘They appear to be being replaced with automated messages and social media profiles.’

‘That is it,’ said Quinn, ‘You have to inform the media.’

‘I will,’ said Rebecca, ‘People deserve the truth.’

The meeting dispersed.

The sun came up, and went to the tarmac. He took the sonar device, and, he used it to replicate the craft’s distinctive pattern of its flashing lights. Then he added tonal movements throughout the beats. The experiment yielded results. He got the planes’ attention, causing them to center their flight paths over him. Using the controller, he tried to pull one of them in, as though he were trying to catch a fish. He nearly caught one, but the plane regained control and flew away.

Quinn left the base. The few signs of people that occurred on the streets were those of council vehicles and utilities services trucks and vans, as well as the public transport trains and buses around town.

When he arrived at the theater, it was empty.

At the front was a guard. ‘The councils have decided that due to recent developments in inter-continental integration and cultural cross pollination, all land and titles should be revoked from the traditional landholders and be placed into the public domain. You can either leave the premises peacefully, or we can arrest you for resisting arrest. It’s up to you.’

‘I’m here on business for the Mayor,’ said Quinn. ‘Now get out of my way, or I’ll hold you in contempt!’ He brushed past the guard and went into the theatre beyond. Therein, he found the lights on the stage on. A man, apparently the director, was in a sharp conversation with a union worker. ‘We have paid the theatre owners for the use of this building. The stage is ours.'

The councillor shook his head. ‘Not anymore, it isn’t. Everything belongs to the public, now. The private sector has collapsed.’

Quinn approached the stage and climbed the stairs. He went past the curtain and into the backstage area. A couple of the cast were there. ‘Have you seen Janine,’ he asked on of them.

‘She’s over that way,’ they answered him.

‘Is everyone okay?’ he asked. They looked at him auspiciously. He went to the room which had been indicated and opened it. Janine was inside. She turned from the mirror and rose to meet him. They embraced. ‘Over half the cast didn’t show up, and then they cut off the pedestrian access to the entrance out the front. What’s going on, Quinn? Where is everybody?’

‘We’re being invaded,’ he said harshly.

She was stunned. ‘By who?’

He pulled out the dusty old paperback novel and showed her the picture on the cover.

She burst out laughing.

He grabbed her by the arm. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘We’re getting out of here.’

They brusquely left the theatre. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To the military base.’

Janine sighed. ‘Wouldn’t it be better just to go back to the apartment and just chill out for a day or two while this whole thing blows over?’

‘People are disappearing,’ he said. ‘We have to stick together.’

 

Chasing Aliens

At the base, Quinn scanned the old novel until he found that the aliens described therein used sonar to communicate. Harnessing a sonar device, he sent signals to entice the ships towards the base. After a few minutes, sure enough, a chopper, flashing brightly, appeared overhead. Quinn played a more complex and refined melody on the controller. The helicopter was dragged in, and it came down and hit the tarmac.

Upon the dashboard inside the chopper. A radar displaying a map displaying the location of all the alien craft in the city was displayed on the screen. From what he could tell, the craft seemed to be gathering up bits and pieces of the world below as flew over head. They were sucking the information out of the city.

He radioed to Holt. ‘I am in a position to take command of one of the craft.”

‘Me and Janine will be right behind you,’ said Holt.

Quinn and Rebecca got in the helicopter. He the key to the ignition, Quinn started it up and they took off, A stream of blinking lights marking the craft in the city flickered on the screen. He flew the chopper in line with the triangular formation and they flew along in sync with the other ships.

As they flew, the letters of signs on the street were pulled off the signs and were sucked up through the air and into the nephalim craft, making them more advanced. Cracks in the sidewalk were stripped up off the ground and when flying up into the air, also being drawn into the field around the craft and adding to their form and content. When they flew over people on the street, the expression was drawn ever so subtly from their face, and their features lost some of their definition. The ships were pulling the very reality out of the city as they flew around.

‘Cool,’ said Rebecca, despite herself.

The radio hissed to life. ‘Quinn, are you reading?’ asked Holt.

‘I read you,’ said Quinn. ‘The alien ships appear to be sucking reality out of the city.‘

They flew in the line until they reached the limits of the city. Below, in the plains, the green grass of the fields turned to gray, and the lifeless swathes of the country side void of any color came into their path.

Golden light emerged on the horizon. Soon after, he flew into it, and came into a sweltering industrial canyon land fetid with toxic pollution. Quinn switched on his walkie talkie. ‘Are you with me?’ he asked over the radio. There was no response.

In a concave opening of the rock, an angry metalloid giant with multitudinous eyes and no discernible orientation wrought havoc with the atmosphere. The giant robot stomped and breathed oily fumes of fire into the air.

 On the screen, a graphic demonstrated how the chopper fit in as one piece of this enormous metal giant robot, like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Apparently all the ships in the aliens fleet went together to form this metalloid behemoth.

Quin hit the controls repeatedly, to no avail. He was being sucked towards the mouth of the giant. The flames that emerged from here were so hot as to emulsify all within it.

Locked in, being drawn inexorably to a furnace beneath in the giant robot’s mouth, Quinn used his sonar device to speak in the musical language he had used with success previously. He was able to override the giant robot’s control of the ship and regain access to the chopper’s computer. From there, he was able to redirect the chopper’s flight path so that instead of fly right into the giant’s mouth and be consumed, he was able to slot the chipper in in the place it occupied in the greater structure pf the giant robot.

They sat there, inside the ship, docked in the giant robot. Apparently they had gone unnoticed…..

 

 

Impressum

Texte: Hersh Samolin
Cover: Nethermoor
Korrektorat: Hersh Samolin
Satz: Archie Evans
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 13.06.2023

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Widmung:
The Nephilim