JULY 13, 2022 – Blogger’s note: I trust that in exchange for the denouement, the dramatic close, the fork in the experimental story, the reader will overlook my disregard for my self-imposed, per-post word limit. Enjoy.
What would the alien think, I wondered, of the media hoopla over photos of light generated 13 billion years ago? Or more to the point, what would the alien think of our many dysfunctionalities juxtaposed to our ability and curiosity about the beginning of time?
I was about to ask, when I noticed a young man in the alleyway behind the shrubs that border our backyard. He seemed to be holding a small device in his hands and moving very slowly, but the foliage blocked too much of my view for me to identify the object or discern the man’s purpose.
“Just a moment,” I said to the alien. “I want to see what that stranger in the alley is up to.”
In response, its filaments lit up—in red—and the alien emitted a sound reminiscent of R2-D2. The man, meanwhile, emerged from behind the last shrub and into the open space at the end of our driveway. Now I had an unobstructed view of the device in his hands. It was a black box equipped with an antenna. The man wore a baseball cap—backwards—and a headset with a microphone.
As if catapulted from my chair, I rose and strode down the length of the porch. As I was about to bolt through the doorway and onto the stone patio outside, I noticed a thin rip in the lower part of one of the sections of screening. At that moment I recalled what had seemed to be the alien’s initial, supernatural appearance. In reality had it merely slipped through the opening in the screen?
“Can I help you?” I asked the man in the code used in neighborhoods like ours as a warning shot against suspect strangers.
The man took a hesitant step toward me. I now saw that he was younger than I’d thought—he looked maybe 19 or 20. He smiled puckishly, and though his eyes were obscured by sunglasses, he seemed innocent in the way most college kids do. It didn’t hurt that he was wearing a “Cornell” T-shirt. “Harvard” would’ve been patently suspect, I thought, but anyone who gets their hands on a Cornell T is either connected to the university in the town named after the home of Odysseus or knows someone who is. And, I thought, almost subliminally, I have yet to meet anyone connected to Cornell who is a dud. The clincher was the kid’s removal of his sunglasses, revealing intelligent eyes. “Hello, sir!” he said, confidently and cheerfully.
“Well, well, well,” I said. “What have we here?”
“My senior honors project,” the kid said with a broad smile revealing straight white teeth.
“Huh?”
“I’m running the drone that’s sitting on your porch,” he said. “It’s an experiment I came up with for my honors project.”
“You go to Cornell?”
“Uh huh. I’m a double major in history and psychology, and in talks with my advisor, I developed the idea of using a drone to pose as some alien from outer space. I wanted to see how an average Joe might react.”
“So you thought my name was Joe?” I asked with feigned surprise. “Let alone the perception that I’m average? I’ve been fighting that appearance—and the reality behind it—my entire life!”
“Hah! I did my research. My parents live over on River Road in Minneapolis, near the U, and when I arrived back home for summer vacation, I asked around—friends and neighbors—to see if anyone had a good idea for a target. A close friend and neighbor of ours—a lawyer named Matt Seltzer—said you’d be a good candidate, so I checked you out, and agreed. Everyone I interviewed about you said you were half crazy but in a potentially interesting way and that you liked to talk a lot about all sorts of stuff. Plus, you lived fairly close by, which made it convenient, so here I am.
“Sh_ _!” I said, but then quickly rebounded. “I mean, Holy crap!” I was impressed by the kid’s creativity and even more by his initiative. “I gotta hand it to you—what’s your name?”
“Duke.”
“Duke. I gotta say, you had me totally fooled.”
“That was the most delicate part of my experiment—could I fool the target and if so, for how long? You blew way past my wildest expectations.”
“I fear that the gullibility factor is directly correlated to being full of oneself.”
“I suppose, but dude, you were cool!”
“It was the lemonade. You know how much I’d spike it?”
Duke laughed.
“So, tell me, what did you think of all my palaver? Did any of it register?”
“With your permission,” Duke said, dodging the question, “the entire transcript will be an appendix to my paper.”
“Permission? How much you willing to pay?” I said, trying my best to scowl.
“If you want, I can withhold your name.”
“How ’bout I get to edit?”
“Hmmm. ’Fraid you can’t. For this to be valid, it’s got to be free of that sort of manipulation.”
“I understand, Duke. Tell you what. Just misspell my name, which, for most people outside of Sweden, is as easy to do as trying to spell it correctly. That will give me plausible deniability and allow me to have it both ways—if your jury profs back at Cornell are halfway impressed with the transcript, you can amend the spelling of my name. If they scoff at my pontifications and decide to look me up, they won’t be able to trace me. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Good, now grab your damn drone and scram before I call the cops!” I said, unable to withhold my laughter.
“Yes, sir!” Duke said with a generous smile.
We shook hands, and I then insisted that he join me—and the alien—on the porch for a tall glass of (unspiked) lemonade. We—Duke and I—talked for a good hour. At our parting, I said, “Duke, whatever you think of my assessment of humanity, know this: you give me great hope and faith in the future. Go forth, be good, be kind, be productive with your life, and never, ever squander a moment of it. And stay in touch. I wanna know how your paper turns out—and I wanna keep tabs on how you’re living up to my expectations, making this world a better place!”
“Sure thing!” he said.
THE END
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
