“Men in Black?” I asked to see if I heard him right.
“Yup. I have to get going. Open the door”
I went to the door and opened it. There stood a man- tall, dark and handsome. Like a guy straight out of a Hollywood movie. He wore a black suit and matching goggles.
‘Who wears goggles at night?’
Paul who came behind me laughed, obviously listening to my thoughts.
“Hello sir” said the man in black, “I’m Officer Jay. I’ve come to retrieve your guest, if that’s fine with you.”
“Guest?” I looked back at Paul, “Oh yeah, sure.”
“Wassup Jay!” Paul waved his hands and the man replied in a changed amiable tone, “Hi Paul. Seems like you’re gonna be stuck here for a while longer.”
“Yeah yeah. I don’t mind.”
“You don’t mind?” the man pulled down his goggle and peered from the top to check if Paul was joking, “You mean the whole send-off party I threw for you this night was for nothin’?”
“Yeah well, thanks for the party. But guess I’m gonna be stuck here for a while longer” Paul grinned.
“Fine. But I’m not givin’ you anymore parties the next time your ship is fixed. And looks like it’s bumped up pretty good” said the man-in-black, “Kay is loading it in a truck over there.”
“I must ask, Sir” continued the man now looking at me, “Did you feel any discomfort in his presence?”
Paul was offended, “Hey look at me and then look at him. Do I look like someone who can hurt him? Evolution may have made my head bigger but left my body weak because we don’t use it much. The only discomfort to him is the tall scary guy on his doorstep in the middle of the night.”
The man smiled and pressed me, “Well, did he Sir?”
“Uh, no no not at all” I said earnestly hoping my statement would extend Paul’s stay in my house.
“Good, we’ll be off then” said the man-in-black and signalled Paul, “Get on the car Paul.”
“Hey don’t order me! And one more thing, I’m going on a vacation right after I return to office.” Paul said with his hands folded across his chest.
“Vacation? Where are you going? To the second floor of our office?”, Joked the man who called himself Jay.
“Very funny. I’m going to roam the world.”
“But we can’t let people see aliens.”
“I’m not alien. You’re alien!” Paul raised his voice.
“Okay okay, talk to Zed. Let’s see what he thinks. Now get on the car, please! We’re late and I’m sleepy.” Jay pleaded with Paul.
I didn’t know what to say to Paul. A minute ago we were talking our hearts out and now it all seemed awkward. Paul came to me and gave me a hug, his bony limbs feebly wrapping around me. He was tiny. His huge head pressing against my chest, I felt like I’m hugging one of those personal post boxes we see in Hollywood movies, or a huge lollipop.
Paul let go of me and smiled “E.T go home”.
‘Another movie reference’, incorrect reference though since the actual quote is ‘E.T phone home’ and it is often misunderstood. But I let it pass. He had just called a place on Earth his home.
Paul walked away from me and past Jay but stopped at the door, then turned towards Jay, “Jay, can you do me a favour and bypass the next step?”
“Next step?”
Paul squinted at Jay for a couple of seconds, perhaps willing him to do something, and then sighed, “It’s no use trying to convey something to you via thoughts. I meant the elimination of witness step.”
“Elimination?” I gasped.
“Are you serious? That’s a violation of protocol” Jay objected.
“Come on just this time, for me” Paul sounded pleading.
“But… You know that I’ll be in trouble.” Jay seemed conflicted.
“He won’t say anything to anyone.” Paul told him and then looked at me.
I understood nothing, “Uh what’s going on?”
“I’m just asking him to spare you.”
“Spare me?” my heart was pounding now, “You can’t kill me. That’s illegal. I didn’t commit any felony. You.. you fell in my balcony! It was your fault! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!”
Jay and Paul exchanged confused looks and howled with laughter together.
“See I told you… He’s harmless… Let him be, please” Paul spoke between chuckles.
“Okay fine”, said Jay “You owe me one.”
“Hey you guys want me to recommend humans to my community right? That’s why you’re helping me go back home. I owe you nothing” Paul said sticking his tongue out “Come on, let’s go”
They had just spared my life. Meeting him didn’t sound like everyone’s privilege, almost illegal. I was an outlaw in that manner. And yet, I didn’t want him to leave. I raised my hand forward to stop him from leaving and then dropped it without saying anything. Paul saw me raise my hand and thought I was waving him goodbye. He waved back.
“I’ll miss you” I blurted out. My mistake.
He stopped on his track.
“What?” jay asked him.
Paul turned towards me. His eyes even bigger now, “You’ll… miss me?”
“Yeah” I shrugged. Why are you over-reacting?
“Nobody has said that to me.” He said.
“Well, that’s maybe because people in your office see you every day. So they have nothing to miss. And the outsiders who see you are removed from existence.”
“Even when I was about to leave earth nobody said they’ll miss me” Paul eyed Jay who raised his hands in surrender, “Hey, we neva’ thought it a farewell. We assumed once you’re back to yo’ home you’d get a new ride and keep visiting us.”
Paul got to thinking and then looked at me, “How can you miss me? You just met me. Instant connection is not something humans can do. I thought only our kind felt it because of our mental connections. I even started liking your mind-voice.”
I gave a grim grin, “well, I sometimes get attached to people pretty soon too. It’s rare but it happens.”
“My gosh, you humans are better than I thought” he looked at me and Jay in turn and then at me, “Then you’ll find it hard to let go of this new friendship.”
“Sadly yes” I replied softly, “It’s not every day that I meet a super smart telepathic E.T. You’ll keep in touch right?”
“I can’t. I’ll miss you but Jay’s reputation is at stake here.”
“Oh!”
“You were right Jay” he tapped on Jay’s shoulder, “carry out the next step. I don’t want this burden on me.”
“Wait what?” I jumped back, “You mean the elimination step? You can’t do that. I’m your friend.”
Paul smiled, “Nobody’s going to hurt you buddy. Remember when I said you won’t remember anything? That’s what is going to happen. We’ll remove the evidence that I was here. Then you won’t be a witness anymore. That is the elimination.”
“Please look here Sir.” Jay adjusted his goggles in place and took out a sleek looking metal cylinder of some sort. It was rounded at both ends and had a black strip near one end. He held it vertically like an artist measuring his model with a pencil.
“Please look at this black strip” he told me.
“Wait what is this?” I asked, scared now.
“It’s Neuralyzer. It’s used to wipe the memory clean of a witness. Its flash of light goes deep in your brain and erases the most recent experiences from your short term memory before it could commit to your long term memory. You won’t remember meeting Paul.” Jay replied casually.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t want you to remember me and long to meet me buddy. I know that kind of longing- to go meet my friends -and I don’t want to be the cause of it to someone else. Hence, this cruel treatment. But it’s lesser of the two evils. I’d rather that you forget me than have you remember me as a friend who abandoned you.”
“No!” I protested. I realised that Jay’s sunglasses must be protecting him from the Neuralyzer. Why else would he be wearing a sunglass in the middle of the night? If only I had one right now. ‘And you thought you could beat Cyclops by covering yourself with sunglasses’ my mind-voice found the most inappropriate time to mock me. Paul chuckled. I looked at him and saw that he had closed his eyes and was smiling at my thoughts.
“Say cheese” said Jay and I instinctively looked at him. A blinding flash of light.
I stood stunned for a second and shook my head.
“Goodbye kid! And Thanks for the yummy Murukku.” Paul said and started walking towards his car. I was too dazed to react.
“Did you just call’im a kid?” Jay raised his eyebrows, “This guy looks like he’s in’is mid-20s.”
“Of course” I said blinking rapidly, “for someone as old as Paul everyone on earth must be like kids.”
“What the?” Jay looked at me shocked.
“He must’ve blinked” Paul called out from near the car, “and you forgot to say the commands. Try again!”
Another bright flash of light before I could protest. Everything was pure white. Like a clean white board. Like everything written on it had been just cleaned. Spotless.
As my eyes adjusted to the surroundings I heard the man-in-black talking to me, “You don’t remember anything that happened in the last hour. Nobody visited you. You just fell asleep and had strange dreams which you can’t recall. Go inside and lock the door. Go to your bed and sleep.”
“Okay” I said in a monotone. He nodded and walked away from the door. I locked the door, went to my bed room, turned off the lights, lay down on my bed and pulled up the blanket to my face. As I closed my eyes the last memory of a white board still fresh in my mind, a kind of memory that lights up the back of your eyelids.
On my table near the bed, my laptop was in ‘Sleep’ mode, with a new document open also with white screen in it. I went to ‘sleep’ mode as well.
–The End–
- This story is inspired from the movies ‘Paul’ and ‘Men-in-Black’. Also my personal interest in sci-fi and philosophy.
- UFOs are real. Yes, they are ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’. Whether they are weather balloon, military surveillance aircraft, a prank or actually alien spaceship is up for debate. If we knew, they won’t be called UFOs anymore would they?
- Roswell Incident of 1947 refers to the crash of a military surveillance balloon in Roswell, New Mexico. When the crash was reported, the military quickly collected all the debris and concealed the military purpose of it, passing it off as a weather balloon. This caused people to believe that something was indeed fishy about the way the military covered up everything and several theories of alien spacecraft crash were born. Some witnesses of the Roswell incident claim seeing alien dead bodies being recovered by the military. Spooky isn’t it?
- Many people who have witnessed UFOs also claim to have been visited by strange men in black suits who threatened them into keeping silence about their UFO sighting. If we can believe someone’s account of an alien space ship hovering above them then we might as well believe in the MIB phenomena.
- Apart from these there are several account of people who claim to have seen live aliens and some believe they were abducted by the aliens to their ships where they were experimented on and then were returned back to earth, all this while they either have lost track of a lot of actual time or no time at all.
- Even with all the so called video ‘proof’ and crop circles, there is no substantial irrefutable proof of life elsewhere in the universe. I believe, and so do many others, that this is because of the close minded short sightedness of religion and scientific limitation in venturing deeper into space. We cannot even claim to know all the species right here on earth, and the universe is infinitely vast. We must be really conceited to believe that we’re the only ones.
-Post Credit Scene-
I got up after about an hour of sleep because of the faint burning sensation in my eyes. I switched on the light and looked at the sleep deprived self in the mirror. My eyes were red and eyelids were drooping. There was a thin filament coming out of the corner of my right eye.
“Oh crap!” I reached to it and pulled it out. It came out without resistance. I dropped it in an open cup on the drawer below the mirror. I carefully took out the other one from my right eye.
The vendor who supplied these contact lenses, though proudly advertised its AR coating and the UV protection capabilities, had strongly advised me against sleeping with the lens on. “These babies may protect your eyes from harmful rays but the eyes also need oxygen which is hard to get with the eyelids closed.” He had said.
I dropped the second lens in the disinfectant liquid to soak all night. I drew heavy breath and went back to my bed. I had to pretend like I had forgotten everything in front of Jay. I then looked at my laptop.
‘You wanted inspiration for a blog post. Now you have enough for atleast five.’Whispered my mind-voice.
–The End (for real this time)–
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