We Are You

by Jack Phillips Lowe

part 4 of 6

The phone book was where I thought I should’ve been looking, under “p” for “psychiatric hospitals.” But I didn’t want to take a chance on provoking Bud, so I complied. Across the street from the coffee shop, in place of the old Brown’s Chicken, was the Dog & Suds. I’d been watching a construction crew work on the building for weeks. Now, the restaurant was open and packed with customers.

“Duh!” I said. “That’s the new hot dog place.”

Bud laughed. “And you wonder why you haven’t seen any UFO’s. Look up, I said.”

I did. Floating about twenty feet above the Dog & Suds, bathed in a spotlight and attached to the restaurant by a long cable tied to the roof, was a 1958 Ford Edsel Citation. Frost white, with ember red scallops. Hanging under the car was a big yellow banner that shouted “GRAND OPENING!” in blue block letters.

“So what?” I argued. “Dog & Suds has a 1950’s motif. That Edsel’s a balloon, like you see in parades.”

Bud joined me at the window. “A balloon that happens to be an exact replica of the car your mailman saw me driving? A balloon with that much detail? Check out the under-carriage, the whitewall tires.”

“Big sigh. I saw Macy’s Christmas parade last year. They had a balloon you would’ve sworn was Donald Trump himself.”

“Still the skeptic. But not for long. The Council wouldn’t like this, but you know too much already. Keep your eyes on the Edsel.”

I watched the Edsel. And the street below, for a police car I could flag down.

Bud pressed two fingers to the side of his throat. “Hey, Myron!” he called out. “Rev the engine twice, then stick your arm out the window and wave. Go ahead, do it!”

The Edsel’s engine roared twice. A thin, green-sleeved arm slithered out of the driver’s window and waved to us.

Bud cocked an eyebrow. “A balloon, huh?”

I froze in place, gaping. Somehow, he’d hypnotized me, made some subconscious suggestion which played along with his story. Either that or my eyes were lying to me.

Bud ambled over to the door, locked it and turned the “OPEN” sign to its “CLOSED” side.

This pulled me out of my daze. “Hey, we’re open for two more hours. My boss will kill me.”

Bud put an arm around me and guided me back to my chair. “After tonight, it won’t matter. You’ll have far bigger beans to grind.”

I pushed Bud’s arm away, ran behind the counter and picked up the phone. “Sorry, Bud, but you need professional help. Don’t hate me for doing this.”

Bud approached the counter, pulled a plastic coffee-stirrer from the large cup of them we kept there and stuck it in his mouth, like a toothpick. He literally twiddled his thumbs and watched me as I dialed 9-1-1.

“It won’t be so bad,” I said. “They’ve got drugs for almost every mental illness these days. I’ll bet they had to invent some disorders to go with all the pills they have.”

“Could be,” Bud said, sucking on the tiny straw. “I’ve noticed something. Once upon a time, when you humans dialed a phone, you automatically pressed the receiver to your ear before dialing. Nowadays, you hold the receiver in your hand while you punch the buttons. That’s odd, because it only wastes effort.”

“What do you mean?” I gripped the receiver tightly, so he couldn’t pull it out of my hand.

Bud removed the coffee-stirrer from his mouth. “Consider it. You can’t hear the dial tone. The line might be dead.”

I lifted the receiver to my ear. No dial tone. I clicked the disconnect button a few times. The line was dead.

“Quiz, I don’t mean to be unpleasant, but I can’t allow you to turn me in. Plans are in motion that will drastically change this little world of yours, plans in which you and I play pivotal roles. Please, hang up the phone and return to your seat. I need to finish your indoctrination. There’s no turning back now.”

What else could I do? I hung up the phone and fought the urge to kick myself in the ass for this self-induced grief. The recent past played back in my mind like a rewinding video. There’s always a market, I thought, for exposés on dead rock stars. Phoenix’s almost-fling with Jim Morrison was looking better every minute.

* * *

Something big, mean and invisible had come along and ripped me into three parts, parts that were still alive and squealing. The first part said my boss would discover my corpse in the morning, long after Bud had crossed the state line. The second part insisted that Bud truly was an alien who was handing me the story of a lifetime. The third part said it had heard that overexposure to caffeine, via coffee grounds, could cause hallucinations. Yeah, that was it. Caffeine overdose.

“Quiz,” Bud called from the table, “on your way back, could you pour me another?” He waved his empty cup.

“If I were a bartender,” I grumbled, “I would’ve cut you off by now.” I pulled the jug of soy milk from the fridge, carried it to the table and plunked it down in front of him as I slid into my chair.

“How thoughtful!” Bud said, his face breaking into a smile. I noticed he only had a couple of front teeth, which were neon-white and pointed. “That is A-1 service. I’m afraid I’m running quite a tab.”

“Forget it. Causing nervous breakdowns is thirsty work.”

“Upsetting you is not my intent. I’m only being honest. Think of it this way — you’ve found out that Santa Claus isn’t real. It’s sad, but ultimately good, because it means that you’re growing up.”

“Fine. Then help me ‘grow up’ some more. What about the Edsel, and Myron? How did they get up there? What about the Nike base, the guy in the green jogging suit and that throat thing?” Scared as I was, I was still a journalist.

“Baby steps, Quiz. First, the guy in the green jogging suit is Myron. He wears the hood because he’s allergic to sunscreen lotion. As for the Edsel, it’s not really a car. It’s our spaceship.”

Scribbling in my spiral kept me centered. “I figured as much. Why an Edsel?”

Bud paused to think. “Because Myron’s got a taste for vintage Fords, I guess. If we’d used the old saucer model, a million buttinskis with camera phones would’ve been snapping pictures as they called the cops.”

I turned to a new page. “Like a flying Edsel wouldn’t draw attention?”

“If you were a police operator, what would you say to a flying Edsel report?”

“Enough said. I guess there are more than eight cylinders under the hood?”

“There are all kinds of supercharged doohickeys under there, but you’d have to ask Myron about them. He’s the pilot. It’s a fast machine, though. Hits light speed in third gear.”

“Why the Dog & Suds?”

“It’s a convenient observation point. I told you I was a surveyor. Remember those quaint little ships you people sent to your moon? Like them, our Edsel is chockfull of scientific thingamajigs recording data and taking samples that will be studied back on R Planet.”

“Nobody at Dog & Suds smelled a rat?”

“It’s a new place and they’re still trying to get organized. I told the manager the Edsel is a promotional tool sent from corporate. He’s too busy to be suspicious.”

“Wait, I can’t write that fast!” My hand was cramping. “Your names, Bud and Myron. Those are only aliases for use on Earth, right?”

“No. My name’s Bud and his is Myron.”

I looked up from my page. “For real? Aren’t space aliens usually called Voltar or Mork or —”

“Humans are so lost. Why do you guys call each other what you do? It’s just what’s easiest. Why assume there’s always some profound reason?”

“The old Nike base, then, is just a potential landing pad?”

“It was a good place to launch missiles and it’ll be a good place to land spaceships.”

Still scribbling, I pressed my fingers to my throat like Bud had.

“That? It’s our version of a cell phone. No mystery there.”

“It’s in your throat?”

“Yeah. We embed them in our bodies.”

“What the hell for?”

“You humans are forever losing yours. I always know where mine is.”

“But how do you dial?”

“More than you need to know, Quiz. There are more important things to consider.”

Bud sat quietly while I caught up on my notes. He may have been a nut, but he was a considerate nut.

“What a ton of info,” I said, pushing the pen across the paper. “How am I ever going to break this down into a feature-length article?”

“You’re a reporter,” Bud grinned. “You’ll figure it out. Besides, why try to cram it all into one article? Why not a series of articles? Once they read your story, people are going to be clamoring for more.”

“Your story.” When Bud said those words, red and yellow supernovas burst in my head, pulsating webs which stretched across my mind’s eye. These were writer’s fireworks. We authors see them when we hit on a hot topic. Or when our egos get stroked.

“Bud, you’re talking my language!” I turned over yet another fresh page. Thank Mead for three-subject notebooks. “God, I’ve got so many questions, I don’t know where to start.”

Bud crossed his legs. “Let’s have them. I’m all ears.” He knew he had me hooked.

“In junior high, I read The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Okay, the Cliff’s Notes. The aliens in that story were finally killed off by common Earthly germs that their bodies couldn’t stand. You seem perfectly healthy. What gives?”

“It’s simple. We’re used to it. We’ve been coming here for centuries. You could say Earth has been a second home for us.”

“Like a vacation home?”

“Sort of.”

“Is that why you’re so up on our language, culture and technology? I mean, you’re almost human.”

“Culture, he calls it. That’ll earn some chuckles back home. On R Planet, your radio waves and TV signals have been clogging up our own channels for years. We finally gave in and started watching. When we saw something that looked good, we popped down and borrowed it.”

“Like what?”

“Like our international anthem. We borrowed one of your pop songs.”

“Which one? ‘We Are the World’?”

“No. ‘Heartbeat’ — ‘It’s a Lovebeat’ by the DeFranco Family. We felt the tune best summarized our buoyant and benevolent spirit, more so than any of our native compositions.”

“For an advanced race, you’ve got a tin ear for music. What else have we loaned you?”

“So many things, and not all of them positive. Fossil fuel. That was a good idea in the short term, bad in the long. Zip-lock bags, however, have proven to be invaluable.”

“You guys use fossil fuel? That must be why R Planet is so polluted. You mentioned all that smog.”

Bud tapped the end of his nose. “Bull’s-eye!”

“Wow, R Planet must use even more gas than we do.”

“Think of Earth’s smoggiest city and expand it to a worldwide range. When we ran out of fossils to use in fossil fuel, we used live animals. Our scientists developed a method to flash-fossilize them. Eventually, we ran out of animals, so we began importing them from Earth.”

“Importing them?” I asked. “You mean stealing them. Why didn’t you just breed your own?”

“Quiz, let’s not pick nits. The atmosphere on R Planet became so toxic, the animals couldn’t take it. So we’d borrow some from here. Nobody missed them. After a while, our technology improved to the point where we didn’t require the whole animal, just a few parts. Some time ago, a story ran in your tabloids describing how the mutilated bodies of cattle, pigs and goats were turning up in Puerto Rico and the southeastern United States.”

“I saw that on ‘Maury Povich.’ He said some weird vampire-type animal with glowing eyes did it.”

“Puerto Ricans called it ‘El Chupacabras,’ which in English means ‘the goat-sucker.’ But you and I know who it really was.”

“Man, you guys are cold. Where did the story about the vampire thing come from?”

Bud raised his hand. “Guilty. We needed a cover story, so I phoned the Globe’s tip hotline. Faxed them some photos of dead goats, too. They swallowed it whole. Within a month, the Associated Press glommed onto it. Humans are so gullible.”

“I got to give you guys credit. You don’t miss a beat.”

“R Planet does nothing halfheartedly.”

I paused to jot all those details down before continuing. “Okay, I think I get it. You had to swipe livestock from Earth because the air on R Planet is so dirty, the livestock couldn’t breathe it. Now explain to me how you can breathe it and live.”

“No problem. For generations, we’ve been taking detoxification vacations on Earth.”

“Repeat that.”

“The detoxification vacation. It’s a thrice-yearly tradition on R Planet. When your designated vacation time arrives, you gather up the loved ones and head on down to Earth to de-gunk your system, soak up some sun and puff some relatively clean oxygen. A week later, you return home rested, happy and not hocking up soot. Myron and I are lucky. The nature of our work allows us far more detoxification time.”

“So Earth has been a regular holiday resort for your people, huh? If R Planet is as screwed up as you say, I’ll bet you wish you could always stay —”

Sometimes, ideas hit you like a wet towel in the face. When you’re hit with a wet towel in the face, it takes you a moment to recover.

Bud leaned in toward me. “What’s wrong? Gas? It’s those brownies, I bet.”

“No. I think... I think I figured it out.”

“The Big Picture?”

“Yeah. With all that pollution, R Planet is dying, isn’t it?”

“An old cliché. But it happens.”

“And you, Myron and the gang. You’re planning on moving down here — permanently.”

Bud used his right thumbnail to push down the cuticles on his left hand. “Congratulations, Quiz. You’ve proven that humanity has not, in fact, evolved past logic.”

* * *

Proceed to part 5...