The Craft - Quentin Pheonix (best historical biographies .txt) 📗

and you’ve got to know how to handle it. Don’t cast pearls before swine.’

‘You don’t own the truth,’ said Quinn. ‘The truth is out there. And they are not swine. They are sheep. And we’re sheperds.’

Holt cut him down. ‘This is my command center, I’m the one who’s in charge around here.’

Quinn resented the rebuke. He grabbed his things, put on his jacket and was just about to leave when a call came through from the sherriff.

‘Mr. Sherriff,’ said Holt, ‘It’s good to hear from you.’

‘What’s this I hear about alien invaders invading our airspace?’ he asked.

‘The government thinks they’re benign, but I am certain they’re hostile. We have to shoot them down.’

‘Tell me more about them,’ said Sherriff.

Quinn explained the way in which the craft had infiltrated the city. He sent him pictures of the craft as they were when they had first arrived. ‘They must have had the ability to morph into any kind of aircraft on any planet,’ he said.

‘What is their purpose?’ asked the sherriff.

‘Their technology is far superior to ours,’ said Quinn. ‘I wouldn’t presume to be able to guess what their agenda is.’

‘Permission to shoot them down,” requested Holt.

“Wait till they attack us first,” said the sherriff.

“They’re subverting our authority!”

“Let’s see what the government does first. Now go home and get some rest, Commander Holt, and come back fresh tomorrow.’ Holt grimly saluted and left. ‘Now listen, Quinn’ said the sherriff, ‘I want you to report directly to me on this, is that understood?’

“Yes, sir,’ said Quinn

 

3-The Nephalim

At dinner with Jenine, he asked, ‘How was your rehearsal today?’

‘There were a couple of no-shows,’ said Jenine, ‘Which makes it interesting.

Quinn was barely listening. He spent most of the time on his laptop, searching through the records for any mention of the time of aircraft that they had encountered. He also cast the net out to several experts he knew of in relevant fields to gather any current intel at hand. There was very little response. The only lead he gathered was to a book that his colleague said vaguely described the transforming function that Quinn had described.

They had toasted sandwiches for breakfast the next morning.

When he arrived at the base, there were a number of concpicuous absentees from among the staff who hadn’t shown up to work. Combined with the presence of the invaders and the lack of transparency surrounding them, nervousness rippled among the staff as they underwent the day’s operations. But, somehow, the city’s normal, daily flight operations, such as commercial flights and emergency helicopters, managed to go on unscathed and unaverted. The craft had now transformed to the point where they exaclty matched the city’s aircraft, except for the lights.

They still hadn’t managed to influence the crafts undertakings. They were out of ideas. ‘This is useless,’ said Quinn.

Taking the sonar remote controller and getting into a jeep, Quinn sped out of the base. He drove out of the complex and onto the main road. Looking around, he noticed a distinct lack of any activity on the sidewalk. He parked at the library and went. ‘What’s on your mind today?’ asked the cleric.

‘I’m after a particular book containing UFO technologies,’ said Quinn.

“Oh, yes. That does indeed seem to be the case.’ She pointed him in the right direction.

Quinn walked down the hall towards the shelves.

Sitting at a seat on the way there was the proffessor who had recommended the book to him. ‘Excuse me, Professor,’ said Quinn.

‘Yes,’ said the proffesor, looking up.

‘Do you recognise me?’ asked Quinn.

The professor shook his head.

‘Listen to me,’ said Quinn, ‘We are being invaded by extra terrestrials.’

The professor began speculating and philosophising, casting his speech so far astray into the histories of, the when’s and where’s, the who’s and how’s, of times gone before when certain concpiricy theories had predicted the imminence of the end of days, or some other world-shattering event, so as to become irrelivent.

‘I’m serious!’ said Quinn. ‘They have taken the airspace. The military and the government know about it, but they’re keeping it a secret.’ Quinn showed the professor the photos

‘‘Well,’ said the professor, ‘The threat of annihilation is perenially hanging above our heads. What with the advent of nuclear weapons, the crash of all civilisation is only one push of a button away. I understand your angst; you’ll get used to it.’

The proffesor was adrift in an ocean of rhetoric; anything Quinn said to him was washed away in the lyrical chaos of the sea. He was going to have to find the information he needed to crack the craft for himself.

In the bookshelves, looking through the books, in the history of aviation, he found an odd book that was a work of fiction that jumped out at him. It was short novel written by an unheralded sciene-fiction author. Quinn scanned the pages, spending about an hour reading. The novel was called Alien Invaders, and even though Quinn had read all the classics of the genre and knew its history well, he nonetheless had never heard of it before. In the plot of the novel, an invading alien civilisation took control of the home planet, turning their people into slaves in the process. The alien civilisation’s home planet and way of life was described, and they were noted, in these descriptions, to have possessed the type of morphing, imitation technology as the craft that had invaded their city’s skies. The author’s name was Earnest Wanton, and he was from a city in a land that was far from here.

The author called the inhabitants of the civilisation nephalim, but it was hard to make out just exactly what they were. They seemed to harbour some kind of close evolutionary comparitivy in symbiosis with the development of the civilisations advanced technology and machines to the point where they now occupied some shared metaphysical and biological space. The author claimed to have seen the codes used by the nephalim to unlock the nephalim genetic neurological quotent in the brain, thereby accessing the nephalim genome. He claimed that by applying the codes through wires to the neurons of the brain, thereby activating the nephalim genome in the body, one became immune to the nephalim technology.

On the back cover was a plea from the author to send any information pertaining to nephalim to an email address written on the page. Quinn wondered if he was going crazy. A cloak of isolation enshrouded him. He put the book in his pocket and left the library.

He arrived home. Soft music played from the record player. Incence scented the room. He went to the table and drank the last sip of whiskey from the glass. Jenine emerged from the shower. She looked angry. ‘To us,’ Quinn saluted.

‘What happened to you?’

A veil of introspection masked the revelations of his countenance. ‘Sherriff came around and put it to me that I’m the acting commander of the military from here on in.’

‘Is that because the current commander didn’t show up? Because half the cast was absent from rehearsal today, and the shops were closed so I couldn’t get my costume, or anything.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Quinn, ‘Nothing is more important to me than the truth on this one.’

‘Not even me?’

He smiled. ‘You are beauty. Beauty is even more important than truth.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Beauty is above, and a little to the left, of truth. That’s how it works.’ Her expression was one of consolation. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Well...it’s just that I fell for you because when we danced together I thought we were going to keep on going dancing forever. And now you’re the acting commander of the military and I don’t get to even see you anymore.’

He stroked her hair. ‘Have faith,’ he said, ‘Love will prevail.’

 

4-The Meeting

He awoke the next morning to the sound of static playing on the television set. What time was it? Ten-thirty. He must have slept in.

Jenine was on her way out. ‘Are we still on for dinner tonight?’

‘Yes. I’ll come by the theatre after work.’ He watched her leave. ‘Caio, bella.’

He drove the jeep along the beach towards the military base. The shops and cafes along the sides of the road were nearly empty. On the radio, no one was saying anything about the ships. But there were news broadcasts about the fact that they were in a recession.

In the air overhead, he heard the sound of a low flying engine. He turned to see the distinctive lighting pattern of the invading craft. It’s form had taken on that of an antique showplane. The amber lights flashed. The people on the shore of the sea cheered and clapped as the plane flew low overhead.

When he reached the gate to the base, Quinn was ushered in by the security into a secure room for a high-priority meeting. Holt, Rebecca, and the sherriff were there. ‘Gentleman,’ said Rebecca, ‘I have some disturbing news. It appears that people are going missing. That’s what’s caused the recession.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Holt. ‘Give me a name.’

‘We’re at their mercy. They haven’t attacked us, so I don’t think that shooting them down is a good idea. You might provoke them.’

The sherriff and Holt looked at each other and nodded. ‘Let’s shoot ‘em down.

‘No!’ said Quinn. ‘Only as a last resort. It’s time to tell the public. We need to understand them first.’

‘Ha. Fine, alert the media. But in twenty-four hours, if there’s no change, we’re going to shoot them down.’

‘What do you mean, “people are going missing”?’ asked Quinn.

‘They appear to be being replaced with automated messages and social media profiles.’

‘That is it,’ said Quinn, ‘You have to inform the media.’

‘I will,’ said Rebecca, ‘People deserve the truth.’

The meeting dispersed.

Quinn had another look at the book Alien Invaders to see if it contained any information that he had missed. And he found a scene towards the that he had hadn’t noticed before. In it, the aliens use sonar waves to communicate with each other.

The sun came up, and went to the tarmac. He took the sonar device, and, he used it to replicate the craft’s distinctive pattern of its flashing lights. Then he added tonal movements throughout the beats. The experiment yielded results. He got the planes’ attention, causing them to center their flight paths over him. Using the controller, he tried to pull one of them in, as though he were trying to catch a fish. He nearly caught one, but the plane regained control and flew away.

It hit Quinn then that the tonal language spoken in music must be the means through which the nephalim communicated.

Quinn took out his notepad and wrote the details of the experiment and sent it to the author of Alien Invaders.

 

5-The Theatre

Quinn left the base. The few signs of people that occurred on the streets were those of council vehicles and utilities services trucks and vans, as well as the public transport trains and buses around town.

When he arrived at the theatre, it was empty.

At the front was a guard. ‘The councils have decided that due to recent developments in inter-continental integration and cultural cross pollinisation, all land and titles should be revoked from the traditional landholders and be placed into the public domain. You can either leave the premisses peacefully, or we can arrest you for resisting arrest. It’s up to you.’

‘I’m here on business for the sherriff,’ said Quinn. ‘Now get out of my way, or I’ll hold you in contempt!’ He brushed past the guard and went into the theatre beyond. Therein, he found the lights on the stage on. A man, apparently the director, was in a sharp conversation with a union worker. ‘We have paid the theatre owners for the use of this building. The stage is ours.’

Quinn approached the stage and climbed the stairs. He went past the curtain and into the backstage area. A couple of the cast were there. ‘Have you seen Jenine,’ he asked on of them.

‘She’s over that way,’ they answered him.

‘Is everyone okay?’ he asked. They looked at him auspiciously. He went to the room which