2 Minutes to Midnight (20 page)

teenagers from
zeta reticuli

Joyriding teenagers from a
distant world will forever change the fate of one bored
earthman.

Bill Toblinson sat alone, rocking back and
forth on his dark front porch on another still summer night in
Concord, NC, staring out at the sleeping neighborhood houses. The
last time he had looked at his watch was nine p.m., but that was a
full six pack and hours ago. The only lights were a smoldering
cherry on his lit cigarette, and the distant moon. Long tendrils of
grayish white smoke wafted away in lazy trails, fading into
darkness. He took another long, slow drag, and a sip of beer. The
cherry smoldered on the end of his nicotine delivery system glowing
like a coal furnace, and illuminating his thin facial features and
five o'clock shadow. Bill twirled the cigarette around before his
eyes, following red and orange trails as they swished around in
rhythmic, hypnotic circles. He was waiting for a miracle, and had
felt every bit of the fifty years he had been alive on earth. Where
was the adventure? He was lonely in the dark, and unhappy with the
course of events his life had taken.
Three nights ago a large multicolored neon halo had appeared before
him as he sat in the porch chair rocking, hovered with no noise,
and then after a few minutes bolted like a flash of lightning,
disappearing straight into the night as suddenly as it had
appeared. Frozen by shock, exhilaration, and fear, Bill took a full
two minutes to move after the oddity vanished. Bill's eyes were as
wide as saucers; his mouth dry like the dessert, and his heart was
pumping like an over-torqued engine. After having time to process
the experience he felt a slight rejection. Why hadn’t they reached
out to him after coming so close? He had been afraid, sure. What
else would they expect? Something from the beyond comes zooming
into his neighborhood and he's supposed to have no reaction? Bill
told no one, but instead he sat with expectation outside for hours
each night since the visitation, hoping they would return, and
maybe even give him a ride. Tonight, his neighborhood slept soundly
as he drank and waited.
Bill was just about to crush his cigarette into a half-filled
ashtray and turn in when he saw it again. A silent ring of red,
green, and blue fluorescent lights illuminated the street like a
rave as Bill rose to see if any of his neighbors’ lights were
clicking on. "I can't be the only one seeing this, right?"
The craft was about thirty feet in diameter, almost large enough to
touch houses on both sides of the street, and so close now that he
could see strange hieroglyphics along the edges of the ship. Bill
walked slowly down his front porch steps, absent-mindedly plucking
another coffin nail from the cardboard pack, and inserting it butt
side out into his mouth. He expected a white light to shoot down
from the middle of the spaceship and suck him in against his will.
Instead, four legs protracted, allowing the craft to land quietly
in the middle of the street. Bill stood staring, fighting his
desire to flee back inside the house, and just as he was about to
turn around and run a flat metal ramp descended.
After a few moments of silence a tiny remote control vehicle,
resembling a very small pickup truck, zipped down the ramp on
little black wheels coming his way. Bill saw something inside the
bed and a little white flag sticking out of the back. Bill looked
down as it hit him in the foot and realized there was a little
ashtray in the back of the truck, and a rolled tube of paper.
Beside the tube was an orange cigarette lighter, and
Smoke Me
was written on the flag in
black marker. Bill bent down, picked up the rolled tube, and
sniffed it with caution. It was a joint, and the contents within it
had an odor like angels descending from heaven. In his mind, the
clouds had parted and sun had shined on him in the middle of that
dark, midsummer night street. He took the water-logged cigarette
out of his mouth and replaced it with the joint. When he fired it
up, and took a long drag, the song Dream Weaver began to play in
his mind. After the high kicked in he found that he could see
daylight in the darkness. The trees were green, the grass was
electric, and he had a very positive feeling about going onboard
the disk. With a song in his heart, and a carefree disposition in
his mind, Bill walked over to the ramp.
"Permission to come aboard? Hello?" Bill chimed. He had a funky
high, and felt like nothing could go wrong.
Bill walked up the ramp one step after another sticking the unlit
cigarette behind his ear as he looked around for the ship's crew.
Once he cleared the ramp it retracted, sealing him inside the
mysterious disk. There was a window to his right and a moment later
he could see blackness, and stars, and earth getting smaller in the
distance. Bill was gazing out of the window when a door slid back
revealing a lit hallway just beyond and he could hear voices
getting closer. There was nowhere to hide, and the good feelings
were gone. His heart began to pound as sweat beads broke out like
an army marching across his forehead in anticipation of the
inevitable confrontation. He felt light headed, as if he might pass
out, when three figures walked through the door. One had the head
of a pig, another of them looked like a praying mantis, and the
third had almost human features, but the eye sockets were almond
shaped. The three of them had human bodies and long scraggly hair.
Had he not been in the vast vacuum of space, Bill would have
assumed these people standing before him were trick-or-treaters
begging for candy.
They also appeared to be high.
"Dude, welcome aboard the Starship Permabuzz," said the human
looking ET.
None of them appeared to have any insignia on their suits so; Bill
could not tell if they were ship’s officers or pirates.
"Uh, thanks?" Bill uttered.
"I'm Monas,” said the Mantis. "This is Dex," he pointed to the pig
faced ET. "And, our fearless leader is Chip. You gotta' come with
us back to Zeta Reticuli!" Said Monas. His mandibles were clicking
as he spoke.
"I'm Bill Toblinson, and I guess I should ask why you took
me?"
"No time my man, let's go see the sights!" Chip said
excitedly.
"Oh hey, you like the lights outside? I installed em' myself a few
weeks ago. They’re super trippy," said Dex.
Bill shrugged, smiled, nodded awkwardly, and then he followed them
around a circular hallway to the small flight deck where a
dashboard of curious lights and buttons were blinking green and
blue. There were five egg shaped chairs, one of which Monas offered
to Bill. The chair directly in front of the odd looking light board
was taken by Chip, and then the other two sat to either side of
him. Chip waved his hand over a small black panel about the size of
a mouse pad.
"Hey, Bill! You ready for this? Drink up, dude, its grape drank!"
Monas cried, popping the top on a metal cylinder of liquid, and
handed one to Bill. He took it.
"Thanks." Bill began to drink the grape flavored beverage.
"That’s going to give you a huge buzz man, especially since you’re
not used to it." Chip said.
The dome above disappeared, and Bill stared wide-eyed into the vast
void of space, filled with a mixture of fear and childish awe.
Vertigo overcame his senses, and he felt as if he was atop a very
tall building preparing to fall off. Chip tapped a button on the
control panel and a hole in the field opened, sucking them in with
immense gravitational force. Where they appeared on the other side
of this hole in time-space there were three planets very close to
one another sharing dual suns in orbit. One planet was yellowish,
another reddish brown, and the third was a shade of blue.
"The blue one is our home, Olympus." Monas said.
"It looks like earth," whispered Bill.
"Olympus has about seventy five percent of the oxygen you humans on
earth breathe, but yeah, it's a lot like it." Monas shrugged.
"What are the other two planets?" Bill asked.
"The other two are bugs and lizards. The yellow planet is Reptilon,
and the brown one down there is Squish, where our friend Monas
hails from." Dax pointed.
"We’re actually in a little bit of trouble with the reptiles, Bill.
That's why you're important in this scenario," said Monas. His face
turned to a solemn frown.
"Yeah, uh, we sort of snuck into their capital city and took their
scrying orb."
"What’s a scrying orb?" Bill asked.
"It’s a glass ball that allows them to see into the future. It’s
kind of a priceless relic of their society.
"Why would you steal that?"
"It was just a joke, you know to see if we could do it, but they’re
pretty pissed about it and might try to shoot us down," said Chip.
He shook his head.
"We were chased by one of their sentry ships as soon as they
discovered the theft. That’s when we went to find someone from
earth." Monas said.
"The worst part is our parents don’t know about it yet. They’re
going to kill us if they find out before we can fix this mess." Dax
said.
"Yeah, if the reptilians don't do it first. The orb is kind of a
big deal, because all we got was one per planet. That’s what the
makers left behind. It’s supposed to be like millions of years old,
have all kinds of power, or whatever." Chip waved a hand.
"If they didn't want it stolen they should have guarded it better
than having an eighty year old man with a tazer at the door." Monas
said.
"So, um, how am I important?”" Bill asked.
"Here’s the deal, Bill. If the reptilian’s try to take us we're
going to try offering them you instead of suffering a horrible
death at their hands. Earth people are big bucks around these
parts. You guys make good house pets, slaves, and other stuff.
Dude, I really hope there are no hard feelings about this,
seriously." Dax apologized.
Bill felt a lump rise in his throat and a cold trail of fear course
down his spine as his mind processed the last few moments. That’s
when the first bolt struck their craft, sending the ship careening
toward the blue planet, Olympus. Heavy smoke rose from the
electronic light board as Chip waved his hands around frantically.
Monas jumped in and grabbed the control stick in an effort to right
the ship. Dax was trying to put out a small fire that had erupted
on the panel, so Bill took that opportunity to run. He dodged out
of the flight deck and ran into the room where he had first
encountered the three ET kidnappers. Another shot hit them, sending
Bill to the floor and he could now feel that they were completely
out of control. Having cleared the planet’s atmosphere, they were
free falling to the blue planet’s surface in a fiery ball. The dome
covering was strobing off and on giving him a view of the inferno
they had now become. Bill scrambled for a place to hide and brace
for impact when he found a small compartment in the wall, that
would be just big enough for his body if he scrunched up
inside.
Bill scrambled over, pulled the latch and opened the door. Inside
was a metallic cube about the size of a lunch box with a tiny
ornate clasp. He crawled inside the compartment putting the box in
his lap as the craft plummeted toward the ground at a high rate. He
could hear muffled screaming and arguing outside the door as Dax
and Monas searched for him while Chip attempted to control their
descent. Next there was a massive jolt as the star craft slammed
into the ground, skipped like a stone, and then after soaring
through the air for a moment crashed hard into the side of a hill.
Bill scared and in total darkness, was knocked unconscious. When he
came to, daylight shone through a crack in the compartment door,
and he heard feet shuffling around. His head hurt like he had been
on the three day bender, but he was happy to be alive. Bill opened
the compartment door and rolled out down a steep embankment,
landing in a puddle of water. His lungs struggled to adapt to the
reduced oxygen level of this planet while he attempted to get to
his feet.
Bill felt a push from behind and went sprawling back to the rocky
ground, smashing his nose on a rock. A blossom of pain exploded
inside his head as something began to speak in a language he had
never heard. When he rolled over he was staring with terror at a
six-foot tall bipedal lizard that was holding what looked like a
long silver rifle on him. He realized that he was still holding the
small box and the lizard man-thing was looking right at it. The
three young aliens who had kidnapped him were torn apart in the
crash, and in pieces all over the ground. Bill had been surrounded
by expressionless reptilian soldiers garbed in black protective
space suits.
"Oh god, please don't kill me." Bill was curled in the fetal
position.
He was sure that at any minute they were going to shoot him for
whatever was inside that little box, but instead the rifleman just
outstretched his hand and motioned with his head to the box. Very
slowly, as if he were holding a ticking bomb, he reached out and
handed the box over. The one holding the rifle handed it to another
of his people who looked inside and nodded approval.
"The scrying orb is in there, sir. Should we shoot this one?"
"Let him live. He's an earthman. He had nothing to do with the
theft." The leader said.
"Th-th-thank you!" Bill said.
"Have fun getting home. You may wish we shot you after a month on
this spinning ball of dirt." The leader said.
Their leader turned back to Bill, nodded to him, and then he and
his crew boarded a ship resembling a giant metal birthday cake and
disappeared into the sky.
Bill sat up, still trying to catch his breath, and thanked his
lucky stars for being alive. Then he remembered that he was
stranded millions of light years from home. He stood, brushed off
his pants, and surveyed the area. Several miles away there appeared
to be a city with high spires and chimneys of industry spewing
smoke from their stacks into the bright sunny day. He had no idea
what time it was or how he would be greeted, but maybe there was
someone in town who might be willing to give him a lift home. He
took one look back at the destroyed ship and its dismembered crew,
brushed off his pants, lit his last cigarette, and began
walking.