Disclaimer: Anybody you recognize from the X-Files belongs to Chris
Carter, 1013 and FOX. No copyright infringement is intended.
Category: Humour I guess.
Rating: G
Author's Note: this silly little tidbit was inspired by the recent media hype over the Super Bowl. Make of it what you will. Please read it all the way through, I hope it makes sense by the end.
Comments and criticisms are welcome at tthwaite@banff.net. Flames will be used to heat my hot chocolate.
My Best Friend Is An Alien by tj thwaites (tthwaite@banff.net)
If anyone had told me a few weeks ago I would soon be risking my life to help an alien, I would have seriously considered calling the police. Or a shrink if I knew any. But that's just what I'm about to do. I suppose I should backtrack a bit and explain how I got myself into this mess.
As you probably know by now (is there anyone on this planet who *doesn't* yet), the proof that we aren't alone in the universe was a surprise addition to the half-time spectacle at the single most watched sporting event on the planet. The alien craft crashed into the stadium in front of a live world wide audience of over a billion people.
How the military screwed up their pursuit of the UFO and allowed that to happen is still a mystery to me, but they did. And there was *no* way anybody could cover it up.
I know, rumours that the government had a crashed (or shot down) UFO, along with the bodies of the aliens who flew it, secreted away on some base in the middle of the desert have been bandied about for over half a century. UFO sightings and reported "abductions" have been de rigure headlines in some of the trashier papers ever since.
But this was the real thing; an alien spacecraft and its occupants were the leading stories in every newscast for the past fifteen days. But what the news services haven't found out yet is the fact that there were *two* kinds of aliens on that ship.
The first kind (and as far as most of the world knows, the *only* kind on the ship), the Grays as they have come to be called, are the typical short, spindly creatures with gray skin (hence the name "Gray" for them- how imaginative), large heads and enormous almond shaped black eyes common to the ubiquitous "abduction" reports. There were nine of them in the craft, but they're all dead now. Some died in the crash, and the others were killed by the panicked mob of sports fans when they emerged from the UFO.
I'm sure the military has the bodies on ice somewhere and are trying (desperately, I imagine) to control the feeding frenzy of scientists, and journalists, who are clamoring to get a close look at them. I suspect that the government is playing that card for all it's worth in an effort to keep the lid on the other alien that was on board. An alien obviously *not* a Gray. And who miraculously survived the crash deep in the bowels of the ship.
She wasn't discovered until after the police had managed to cordon off the ship and the military had shown up to take over the "investigation". What? Yes, I said *she*. This other alien is a female. Her biology is remarkably similar to ours, the X-rays, ultrasound and NMR scans have proved that much.
What's NMR you ask? It stands for nuclear magnetic resonance. Don't ask me how it works, it's just another way to take detailed images of what the inside of your body looks like. Anyway, back to this other alien, the one I'm about to risk my life to try and help. Why would I risk my life for an alien? Good question. The only answer I can give you is: over the past fifteen days, she's become my friend.
And how do I even *know* about this other alien, let alone be her friend? Another good question. And I'm getting to that part if you'll just let me get on with my story.
You see, I couldn't afford to go to med school like I've always dreamed, so I enlisted. You know the drill, you sign up for a hitch in the military, they pay for your education, then get your exclusive services for the next ten years, yadda yadda yadda.
I've always been something of a loner. I never had very many friends, but the friends I do have are good friends. And being in med school doesn't leave much time for socializing. But I stay in touch with a few people.
So, here I am midway through my third year and I get rotated to do this stint in the hospital on the base. Not too much in the way of plain old illnesses and stuff, most people in the military are healthier than that, mostly training accidents. Some newbie recruit shoots himself in the foot or falls off some obstacle on the fitness course and busts an ankle, you know? At least, that's all there was before this hit the fan.
I guess I was just lucky that I was on duty when they brought in the UFO and the aliens. The base is sealed up pretty tight at the moment, but I think I know a way to smuggle this other alien out. I have to. I overheard some of the higher-ups talking. They want to sweep the knowledge of this other alien into a dark corner and bury it. That means killing her. And, in all likelihood, dissection before they incinerate her remains. I can't let them do that.
Okay, okay! I'm getting to that.
Like I was saying, I'm on duty when the convoy arrives with the UFO, the dead bodies of the Grays, and this other alien. They stick her in the isolation ward (she *is* an alien after all, who knows what kinds of bugs she might have that are perfectly harmless to her, but could cause serious epidemics to *us*) and *I* get saddled with keeping watch on her. I guess they figure I'm expendable if need arises. Can't be wasting somebody qualified if some alien bacteria turns out to be deadly to us.
So this alien is a little banged up. Okay, a lot banged up, she was just in a crash landing of a UFO fer gosh sakes. But she was still fairly mobile, no broken bones by some miracle. And very vocal. Of course nobody could understand a word she said, but that didn't stop her from screaming her head off for the better part of the first day here.
You may not believe this, but there was some debate as to whether or not what she was screaming was actually a language. Some bonehead came up with the bizarre notion that she was some kind of *pet* of the Grays. As if even an alien keeps a pet that's bigger than he is. Now I know where that joke about military intelligence being an oxymoron came from.
Anyway, for the first day, they just watched her. She paced around her room like a zoo animal for a few hours, then surprised some of the "experts" by methodically examining everything in the room. She nearly escaped that first night, much to the amazement of those same so-called experts. And they're still trying to figure out just how she did it.
The second day, they started their examinations. The X-rays and ultrasounds and all that. Then getting her to copy some basic motor functions. You know, holding her limbs while they figured out range of motion and how flexible her joints were, that kind of stuff. Reactions to various stimuli; loud noises, different smells, flashing lights and colours. She seemed to put up with that nonsense with out too much fuss.
But when they decided to take a few tissue samples to examine, she went berserk. As soon as she saw that first needle, she started fighting. One lab tech ended up in the infirmary with a bashed kneecap after she kicked him. Finally, one of the guards hit her on the head and knocked her unconscious. They took their samples and left her alone after that.
The security video of the whole thing has been classified and locked away somewhere. It scared somebody. I mean, you've probably seen some clips of the Grays. They aren't very tough or strong. But this other alien's physique is probably just as tough and strong as ours. They don't want to spread a panic if it gets out that there's a whole planet of aliens out there somewhere that's a match for us on a physical level. Even if the Grays seem to the only ones with the technology for interplanetary travel so far. The government must be having nightmares of the hysteria of the population envisioning an invasion from space or something stupid like that.
And after that incident with the tissue samples, the alien started attacking anybody who went into her room. They had to put her in restraints when she fell asleep so they could take more samples. And you can bet they kept a very close eye on everything about her, from how often she drank a bit of water to how much of what kind of food she ate.
By the third day, they had removed her restraints and concentrated more on just observing her behaviour. And then my luck decided to rear its misbegotten head again. I was in her room cleaning it up a bit when she woke up. Scared me silly when she leaped off the bed and stood there, sorta crouched in some kind of fighting stance. I stood there shaking in my shoes while we stared at each other for the better part of a minute. Then she started making this awful noise, her whole body shaking. She stood up straight, said something to me in her language, and went back to sitting on the bed.
We both kept an eye on each other as I finished cleaning up. I was just about to leave when she said something else to me. When I turned around, she was standing beside the bed again. She took a step toward me and I backed up, banging into the door in the process. She stopped. In retrospect I realize that she understood I was afraid of her, but at the time all I wanted to do was get out of there. Then she did something the really surprised me. She held up her arm and waved her hand like she was gesturing for me to approach her.
I don't know why I did it, but I went over to her. She said something in her language again and held out her hand toward me. When I didn't do anything, she pointed to herself and spoke again. Then she pointed at me. I must say that her species has very expressive faces. I swear she had a questioning look on her face. Then one of the guards came in. She backed away from me in a hurry and went back to sitting on the bed.
I was debriefed in exhaustive detail by the doctor and military muckety- muck in charge of the alien. They decided that, since the alien hadn't attacked *me*, maybe I should be the one who tried to get her cooperation on further tests. Oh joy. Sometimes I really think the Fates have a twisted sense of humour.
So the next morning, there I was, walking back into the alien's room. But this time I was pushing a cart that had a load of testing paraphernalia. Intelligence and motor skill stuff. You know, different shaped pegs you have to fit into the appropriate holes, pages of pictographic logic puzzles; which shape is the next in a sequence, et cetera. I later came to recognize the look on her face as one of disgust. And I can't say as I blame her. Here she was, on a strange planet who knows how far from home, being subjected to asinine tests.
Over the next week, that was the routine. I would show up with my little cart of ridiculous testing gear and she would patiently perform the tests. And I have no doubt she is as intelligent as anybody else I know. Every now and then she would turn her head to the surveillance camera and nod her head, waving her hand over some just-completed test. Once she even stuck her tongue out at it. Bizarre.
But she would also speak to me while doing the tests. And she would only do them if I was alone in the room with her. If anyone else came in, she would just sit on the bed and do nothing. I have no idea why, she obviously knew the camera was watching everything.
But the way she kept talking to me got me to start teaching her some of our words. And she learned fast. It was amazing. It started when they brought in her meal when we were half-finished one test. She picked the cup up off the tray, held it up and said a word. At first I didn't get it, but then it dawned on me.
"Water," I said.
It took her a few tries to get the pronunciation right. Then she did something that proved to me that she really was smart.
"Water," she said, sticking her finger *in* the water. Then she tapped the cup and that questioning look came to her face again.
I was astounded. This was incredible. I pointed at the water in the cup and said "water". Then I touched the cup and said "cup". From there we were off and running. I taught her the words for all the things in the room. She would repeat them several times to get the pronunciation right, but it wasn't long before she could name everything.
Then she did that bit about pointing to herself and saying something in her language, then pointing at me. It hit me so hard, I couldn't believe I had been that stupid. She was trying to tell me her name and ask what mine was. I had a really hard time getting her name right. Later, one of the linguists suggested that maybe her language uses some phonemes that ours doesn't. That's why it was so hard for me to say her name. And it still sounds so awkward coming out of my mouth.
But back to the risking my life part.
You see, over this past week, I've really gotten to like this alien. This may sound a little weird, but if I met someone (of *us* that is) who had her personality, I could see myself falling in love, settling down and raising a family. Now climb down off the ceiling. I said one of us with her personality, *not* that I could fall in love with her. We are different species after all.
Now this alien has learned a lot in the past two weeks, and her vocabulary is improving hourly. I've even started teaching her how to read our writing. Anyway, this is where it gets complicated. It seems as if the higher-ups are getting a little paranoid about her because of how well she's doing. And it looks like some of the information I've leaked about her has finally managed to reach the press.
So last night, I'm wandering around trying to walk off some of my excitement so I can get some sleep when I find myself outside the office of the doctor in charge. His door is open a crack and I can hear voices inside. Being a nosy person, I naturally stop and start to eavesdrop. And what I hear makes my guts go gooey. The head doctor is talking to the grand high military muckety-muck (what? contempt for the military? who, me?). And they're deciding if they should "dispose" of this "complication in the whole UFO fiasco before the media gets hold of any real evidence".
That was all I needed to hear. I hurried back to my room and began to make plans. Tonight I'm going to try and get the alien off the base. Take her up to a cabin a friend of mine has in the mountains. I figure that in a couple of weeks, she will have learned enough of our language that the next part shouldn't be too hard. And that next part is getting some media exposure. If we can get her story out to enough people, they won't be able to cover up her disappearance. We may not be able to get her back to her own planet, but at least she can live the rest of her life in relative safety.
Besides, I've come to think of her as my best friend. I just hope I can make her understand that she has to come with me tonight if she's going to be safe.
This is too weird. My best friend is an alien. An alien named "Samantha".
THE END
Category: Humour I guess.
Rating: G
Author's Note: this silly little tidbit was inspired by the recent media hype over the Super Bowl. Make of it what you will. Please read it all the way through, I hope it makes sense by the end.
Comments and criticisms are welcome at tthwaite@banff.net. Flames will be used to heat my hot chocolate.
My Best Friend Is An Alien by tj thwaites (tthwaite@banff.net)
If anyone had told me a few weeks ago I would soon be risking my life to help an alien, I would have seriously considered calling the police. Or a shrink if I knew any. But that's just what I'm about to do. I suppose I should backtrack a bit and explain how I got myself into this mess.
As you probably know by now (is there anyone on this planet who *doesn't* yet), the proof that we aren't alone in the universe was a surprise addition to the half-time spectacle at the single most watched sporting event on the planet. The alien craft crashed into the stadium in front of a live world wide audience of over a billion people.
How the military screwed up their pursuit of the UFO and allowed that to happen is still a mystery to me, but they did. And there was *no* way anybody could cover it up.
I know, rumours that the government had a crashed (or shot down) UFO, along with the bodies of the aliens who flew it, secreted away on some base in the middle of the desert have been bandied about for over half a century. UFO sightings and reported "abductions" have been de rigure headlines in some of the trashier papers ever since.
But this was the real thing; an alien spacecraft and its occupants were the leading stories in every newscast for the past fifteen days. But what the news services haven't found out yet is the fact that there were *two* kinds of aliens on that ship.
The first kind (and as far as most of the world knows, the *only* kind on the ship), the Grays as they have come to be called, are the typical short, spindly creatures with gray skin (hence the name "Gray" for them- how imaginative), large heads and enormous almond shaped black eyes common to the ubiquitous "abduction" reports. There were nine of them in the craft, but they're all dead now. Some died in the crash, and the others were killed by the panicked mob of sports fans when they emerged from the UFO.
I'm sure the military has the bodies on ice somewhere and are trying (desperately, I imagine) to control the feeding frenzy of scientists, and journalists, who are clamoring to get a close look at them. I suspect that the government is playing that card for all it's worth in an effort to keep the lid on the other alien that was on board. An alien obviously *not* a Gray. And who miraculously survived the crash deep in the bowels of the ship.
She wasn't discovered until after the police had managed to cordon off the ship and the military had shown up to take over the "investigation". What? Yes, I said *she*. This other alien is a female. Her biology is remarkably similar to ours, the X-rays, ultrasound and NMR scans have proved that much.
What's NMR you ask? It stands for nuclear magnetic resonance. Don't ask me how it works, it's just another way to take detailed images of what the inside of your body looks like. Anyway, back to this other alien, the one I'm about to risk my life to try and help. Why would I risk my life for an alien? Good question. The only answer I can give you is: over the past fifteen days, she's become my friend.
And how do I even *know* about this other alien, let alone be her friend? Another good question. And I'm getting to that part if you'll just let me get on with my story.
You see, I couldn't afford to go to med school like I've always dreamed, so I enlisted. You know the drill, you sign up for a hitch in the military, they pay for your education, then get your exclusive services for the next ten years, yadda yadda yadda.
I've always been something of a loner. I never had very many friends, but the friends I do have are good friends. And being in med school doesn't leave much time for socializing. But I stay in touch with a few people.
So, here I am midway through my third year and I get rotated to do this stint in the hospital on the base. Not too much in the way of plain old illnesses and stuff, most people in the military are healthier than that, mostly training accidents. Some newbie recruit shoots himself in the foot or falls off some obstacle on the fitness course and busts an ankle, you know? At least, that's all there was before this hit the fan.
I guess I was just lucky that I was on duty when they brought in the UFO and the aliens. The base is sealed up pretty tight at the moment, but I think I know a way to smuggle this other alien out. I have to. I overheard some of the higher-ups talking. They want to sweep the knowledge of this other alien into a dark corner and bury it. That means killing her. And, in all likelihood, dissection before they incinerate her remains. I can't let them do that.
Okay, okay! I'm getting to that.
Like I was saying, I'm on duty when the convoy arrives with the UFO, the dead bodies of the Grays, and this other alien. They stick her in the isolation ward (she *is* an alien after all, who knows what kinds of bugs she might have that are perfectly harmless to her, but could cause serious epidemics to *us*) and *I* get saddled with keeping watch on her. I guess they figure I'm expendable if need arises. Can't be wasting somebody qualified if some alien bacteria turns out to be deadly to us.
So this alien is a little banged up. Okay, a lot banged up, she was just in a crash landing of a UFO fer gosh sakes. But she was still fairly mobile, no broken bones by some miracle. And very vocal. Of course nobody could understand a word she said, but that didn't stop her from screaming her head off for the better part of the first day here.
You may not believe this, but there was some debate as to whether or not what she was screaming was actually a language. Some bonehead came up with the bizarre notion that she was some kind of *pet* of the Grays. As if even an alien keeps a pet that's bigger than he is. Now I know where that joke about military intelligence being an oxymoron came from.
Anyway, for the first day, they just watched her. She paced around her room like a zoo animal for a few hours, then surprised some of the "experts" by methodically examining everything in the room. She nearly escaped that first night, much to the amazement of those same so-called experts. And they're still trying to figure out just how she did it.
The second day, they started their examinations. The X-rays and ultrasounds and all that. Then getting her to copy some basic motor functions. You know, holding her limbs while they figured out range of motion and how flexible her joints were, that kind of stuff. Reactions to various stimuli; loud noises, different smells, flashing lights and colours. She seemed to put up with that nonsense with out too much fuss.
But when they decided to take a few tissue samples to examine, she went berserk. As soon as she saw that first needle, she started fighting. One lab tech ended up in the infirmary with a bashed kneecap after she kicked him. Finally, one of the guards hit her on the head and knocked her unconscious. They took their samples and left her alone after that.
The security video of the whole thing has been classified and locked away somewhere. It scared somebody. I mean, you've probably seen some clips of the Grays. They aren't very tough or strong. But this other alien's physique is probably just as tough and strong as ours. They don't want to spread a panic if it gets out that there's a whole planet of aliens out there somewhere that's a match for us on a physical level. Even if the Grays seem to the only ones with the technology for interplanetary travel so far. The government must be having nightmares of the hysteria of the population envisioning an invasion from space or something stupid like that.
And after that incident with the tissue samples, the alien started attacking anybody who went into her room. They had to put her in restraints when she fell asleep so they could take more samples. And you can bet they kept a very close eye on everything about her, from how often she drank a bit of water to how much of what kind of food she ate.
By the third day, they had removed her restraints and concentrated more on just observing her behaviour. And then my luck decided to rear its misbegotten head again. I was in her room cleaning it up a bit when she woke up. Scared me silly when she leaped off the bed and stood there, sorta crouched in some kind of fighting stance. I stood there shaking in my shoes while we stared at each other for the better part of a minute. Then she started making this awful noise, her whole body shaking. She stood up straight, said something to me in her language, and went back to sitting on the bed.
We both kept an eye on each other as I finished cleaning up. I was just about to leave when she said something else to me. When I turned around, she was standing beside the bed again. She took a step toward me and I backed up, banging into the door in the process. She stopped. In retrospect I realize that she understood I was afraid of her, but at the time all I wanted to do was get out of there. Then she did something the really surprised me. She held up her arm and waved her hand like she was gesturing for me to approach her.
I don't know why I did it, but I went over to her. She said something in her language again and held out her hand toward me. When I didn't do anything, she pointed to herself and spoke again. Then she pointed at me. I must say that her species has very expressive faces. I swear she had a questioning look on her face. Then one of the guards came in. She backed away from me in a hurry and went back to sitting on the bed.
I was debriefed in exhaustive detail by the doctor and military muckety- muck in charge of the alien. They decided that, since the alien hadn't attacked *me*, maybe I should be the one who tried to get her cooperation on further tests. Oh joy. Sometimes I really think the Fates have a twisted sense of humour.
So the next morning, there I was, walking back into the alien's room. But this time I was pushing a cart that had a load of testing paraphernalia. Intelligence and motor skill stuff. You know, different shaped pegs you have to fit into the appropriate holes, pages of pictographic logic puzzles; which shape is the next in a sequence, et cetera. I later came to recognize the look on her face as one of disgust. And I can't say as I blame her. Here she was, on a strange planet who knows how far from home, being subjected to asinine tests.
Over the next week, that was the routine. I would show up with my little cart of ridiculous testing gear and she would patiently perform the tests. And I have no doubt she is as intelligent as anybody else I know. Every now and then she would turn her head to the surveillance camera and nod her head, waving her hand over some just-completed test. Once she even stuck her tongue out at it. Bizarre.
But she would also speak to me while doing the tests. And she would only do them if I was alone in the room with her. If anyone else came in, she would just sit on the bed and do nothing. I have no idea why, she obviously knew the camera was watching everything.
But the way she kept talking to me got me to start teaching her some of our words. And she learned fast. It was amazing. It started when they brought in her meal when we were half-finished one test. She picked the cup up off the tray, held it up and said a word. At first I didn't get it, but then it dawned on me.
"Water," I said.
It took her a few tries to get the pronunciation right. Then she did something that proved to me that she really was smart.
"Water," she said, sticking her finger *in* the water. Then she tapped the cup and that questioning look came to her face again.
I was astounded. This was incredible. I pointed at the water in the cup and said "water". Then I touched the cup and said "cup". From there we were off and running. I taught her the words for all the things in the room. She would repeat them several times to get the pronunciation right, but it wasn't long before she could name everything.
Then she did that bit about pointing to herself and saying something in her language, then pointing at me. It hit me so hard, I couldn't believe I had been that stupid. She was trying to tell me her name and ask what mine was. I had a really hard time getting her name right. Later, one of the linguists suggested that maybe her language uses some phonemes that ours doesn't. That's why it was so hard for me to say her name. And it still sounds so awkward coming out of my mouth.
But back to the risking my life part.
You see, over this past week, I've really gotten to like this alien. This may sound a little weird, but if I met someone (of *us* that is) who had her personality, I could see myself falling in love, settling down and raising a family. Now climb down off the ceiling. I said one of us with her personality, *not* that I could fall in love with her. We are different species after all.
Now this alien has learned a lot in the past two weeks, and her vocabulary is improving hourly. I've even started teaching her how to read our writing. Anyway, this is where it gets complicated. It seems as if the higher-ups are getting a little paranoid about her because of how well she's doing. And it looks like some of the information I've leaked about her has finally managed to reach the press.
So last night, I'm wandering around trying to walk off some of my excitement so I can get some sleep when I find myself outside the office of the doctor in charge. His door is open a crack and I can hear voices inside. Being a nosy person, I naturally stop and start to eavesdrop. And what I hear makes my guts go gooey. The head doctor is talking to the grand high military muckety-muck (what? contempt for the military? who, me?). And they're deciding if they should "dispose" of this "complication in the whole UFO fiasco before the media gets hold of any real evidence".
That was all I needed to hear. I hurried back to my room and began to make plans. Tonight I'm going to try and get the alien off the base. Take her up to a cabin a friend of mine has in the mountains. I figure that in a couple of weeks, she will have learned enough of our language that the next part shouldn't be too hard. And that next part is getting some media exposure. If we can get her story out to enough people, they won't be able to cover up her disappearance. We may not be able to get her back to her own planet, but at least she can live the rest of her life in relative safety.
Besides, I've come to think of her as my best friend. I just hope I can make her understand that she has to come with me tonight if she's going to be safe.
This is too weird. My best friend is an alien. An alien named "Samantha".
THE END