Author: Bill Cox
It’s amazing what you can learn in a bar. All kinds of secrets come out with the liberal application of alcohol. Let me tell you about one such occasion.
It was a Friday night and I was knocking back the beers on my lonesome. The regulars were in, along with a group from the Army base. The Full Metal Jacket crowd normally kept themselves to themselves. However, as I was savouring beer numero six, there was a hullabaloo at the back of the bar, where the Dirty Dozen were sitting. A difference of opinion was in the progress of escalating into something more physical.
Suddenly, Debbie’s baritone cut across the melee-to-be, stopping everyone in their tracks. Even the Saving Private Ryans knew better than to mess with Debbie. She was the owner and sometimes bartender. A woman she may be, but I’ve seen her lay out two rowdy bikers with one hand, while strangling a third with the other.
All of the Few Good Men, bar one, decided that the DJ at Saucers, the towns premier (and only) nightclub, was playing their song, so they shuffled out the door in various states of inebriation. That left the one disgruntled soldier who’d been at the centre of the ruckus. He plonked himself down on the barstool next to mine.
Being the neighbourly sort, I engaged him in conversation.
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked.
“Ah,” he replied, obviously somewhat intoxicated, “I just tried to talk about some stuff and they were all ‘You can’t discuss that, it’s secret!’ What’s the point of knowing secrets if you can’t tell anyone?”
So we became buddies of the barstool, the beer got to flowing and secrets as well as booze were spilled.
“You ever wonder what goes on at the base?” he asks.
I’ve heard all the rumours about crashed UFOs and captive aliens with the spooky big black eyes, so that’s what I tell him.
“It’s all true!” he laughs.
Now, I have actually given this topic a bit of thought and some things never quite sat right with me.
“So you’re telling me,” I say, “That these UFOs, that are the product of a technologically advanced civilisation, cross umpteen light years of hazardous space, then crumple like a cheap sedan the moment they get here. Not only that, but we capture the pilots and the folks back on planet Vulcan, or whatever, aren’t even bothered about rescuing them!”
“Because they’re not crashing by accident,” he grins, “They’re crashing on purpose.”
“Huh?” I reply.
“These aren’t state-of-the-art spaceships. The ones that’ve crashed (and there’s been a few), they’re little more than drones, sent one way with no expectation of a return journey. We’ve had their ships for decades but there’s very little there to reverse engineer.”
“But why?” I ask.
“The beings they send are their rejects. Their criminals. Their psychopaths. The ones they don’t want on their world. They send them one way, to a planet in the middle of nowhere, with no prospect of return. All these ‘visitors’ are sadists, or insane, or both. Why else would you probe someone’s ass?”
I wanted to ask him more, but Debbie called time so I went to the can then headed outside, but he was already gone.
So that’s what I’ve heard about saucers and aliens. Maybe its true, maybe he was pulling my leg. Imagine though, if the galaxy is sending its crazy rejects to us, it would make Earth the universe’s lunatic asylum. Somehow that feels like it explains a lot.