The Zeta Reticuli Incident

Journal mcgrew's Journal: The Zeta Reticuli Incident 2

Journal by mcgrew on Tuesday November 01, 2011 @11:11AM

"Wow!" said Betty. "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Barney asked.

"A shooting star. Only it's shooting upward. And it looks like it's getting closer. Stop the car so we can get a better look. Besides, I think the dog needs to pee."

"Give me a second, Betty, there are bears around here. Let me get my gun." He got the pistol and binoculars from the Chevy's trunk and handed a pair to Betty. She said "It's... that's really funny looking. It went across the moon and it looked weird." Both were looking through their binoculars at the sky, presumably no longer very worried about the bears.

"Airplane?" Barney surmised.

"Maybe it's a flying saucer," Betty said. "My sister saw a UFO a few years ago." Barney looked at it again. "That's no airplane! Lets get back in the car."

They drove slowly for a while. "Look! It's right over the Old Man of the Mountain! It's twice as big and looks like it's rotating."

It seemed that the object was playing cat and mouse with them, then headed straight for them, head-on. Barney slammed on the brakes. It was maybe a hundred feet above the hills, and was huge. Barney got his gun from his pocket and stepped out of the car. A voice said "stay where you are and keep looking." Red lights on what appeared to be bat-wing fins began to telescope out of the sides of the craft, and a long structure descended from the bottom.

He saw about a dozen weird looking almost humanoid figures in a window through his binoculars, all but one moving away from the window. Barney panicked and ran back to the car. "They're going to capture us!" he screamed, jumping back in the car and peeling out as fast as he could. Betty rolled the window of their '57 Chevy down and looked out -- the stars had disappeared.

Beeping or buzzing sounds seemed to bounce off the trunk of the car. It vibrated, and a tingling sensation passed through the Hills' bodies. Betty touched the metal on the passenger door, expecting to feel an electric shock, but felt only the vibration. They felt weird, their minds felt dulled. A second series of code-like beeping or buzzing sounds returned the couple to full consciousness. They found that they had traveled nearly 35 miles south but had only vague, spotty memories of this section of road. They recalled making a sudden unplanned turn, encountering a roadblock, and observing a fiery orb in the road.

"That was pretty cool, Rula," said Rority. "I'm glad you talked us into coming. I thought you were really going to dissect them! Too bad they were so shook up about it, but I guess the samples were necessary."

"We're not going to dissect them, but we're going to butcher a cow before we go back to the present. And the samples look good. What, did you think I was going to cut his balls off? If the biologists are satisfied with the protohuman DNA we sampled, we won't need to do this again."

"What about the nobots that were all over her clothing?" Gumal asked. "Won't they be a problem?

"They're dead; I shut them off before we left. Besides, who in 14 AB could program nobots?"

Barney never could figure out why there were shiny concentric circled on the Bel Aire's trunk, or why if you put a compass near them, the compass spun.

"OK, said Rority, "go over to Ireland before before we go back. I want to pick up some beer."

"OK, said Rula, "But then we're going dancing."

Gumal groaned. "Damn, if I knew you were going dancing I wouldn't have come!"

"Well, just use a few trillion nobots from the timeship and go somehere else," Rula replied. "Zeta Reticuli is pretty nice in this timeframe, and will be until the supernova. That's why I put the map on the wall; I knew you wouldn't want to watch us dance and hate being genetically manipulated. Did you bring your stratodoober, Rority? I want a hit!"

Continues...

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