Alien Boy

Chapter 1

When Karen Moonbeam Little Bear Lovechild was born her mother said unto her go forth my girl and be strange. A command she took to like a giant ant-headed alien to a bowl of sugar. By ten she’d invented a number of products that she hoped would revolutionise the beauty industry, making it more like abstract art than the usual conservative cosmetic angle. Such as her silicon ear lobe enhancers, eyebrow hair extensions and her masterpiece; a shampoo that changed the chemical composition of your hair so it glowed in the dark, which unfortunately was never manufactured due to the toxicity levels of the dye and the demise of the 1980’s pop group Wham. In fact none of her inventions really caught on but that didn’t deter her quest for being different, which was beginning to attract attention.

When she was twelve she went to a Halloween parade held at her local primary school dressed as a silver fairy and was voted little Miss UFO. It wasn’t just her costume that gave her the quirky title. It was her obsession with Leonard Nemoy, not just Spock but also the man himself as she shared his love affair with the final frontier. She’d often climb onto the roof and stare up at the stars. The massive expanse of universe held so much promise for her. So much intrigue. Unfortunately her little back water town nestled in the sweaty hills of Byron Bay wasn’t the best place to be when your mind races at the speed of a rollercoaster and your body longs to be in the orbital bliss of an anti gravitational atmosphere. But she struggled on regardless.

All through high school she studied maths and science with the intensity of a murderer on death row praying for salvation. And boy did she learn. Of course her genius IQ score helped, but there was something deeper driving her, a passion that burned so bright it’d blind you. She thought it must have been sent from up above. Not God though, as her mother refused to subscribe to any organised religion, and so her alien obsession began.

By fourteen she had a more in-depth knowledge of the universe than most university professors and astrophysicists. Impressive yes, but unfortunately it was met with scorn and ridicule by her fellow students. Their jealous ignorant words would’ve made their hippy parents cringe if they hadn’t turned to the dark side, trading in their Volkswagen Combie vans for BMW’s after their once cow manure clad commune style properties became luxury seaside estates for the rich and famous, once again proving idealism is no match for capitalism.

The cruel selfish needs of others lashed at Karen day and night, and she began to loathe the human race, especially when the teachers turned on her. She’d always thought they were the good guys; that their smiles and praise for her gift was genuine. But a gift to who? It soon became obvious they were exploiting Karen to put their school and themselves on the map. But her mother wouldn’t allow it, shouting, ‘my girl is who she is, testing her would only insult her intelligence not prove it!’

But the teachers persisted, making her do harder and harder exams. Not a good idea. Each one was met with the same result; total defiance. Karen would rather do a ten thousand word essay on the author of a text book and their motives for writing it rather than regurgitate whatever it was they attested to be the truth. There was no doubting it; she was a questioner of enormous proportions, having a veracious appetite for knowledge that was rarely satisfied. It left the teachers feeling extremely frustrated, inadequate, threatened even. They soon jumped on the insult band wagon. No matter how hard she tried she just couldn’t fit in so she decided to hell with them. Only one person’s opinion now mattered to little Miss UFO and that was her mothers, who supported her no matter what. So she dug her heels in deeper and did the bare minimum, jumping through their inane hoops to get the horrendous thing called high school over and done with. And thanks to her child prodigy status she was able to achieve this in just three years. University seemed to be the next logical step but she knew being fifteen in a world of adults, most of whom wouldn’t be as smart as her, would make it worse than ever. She felt so confused and boxed in. She needed to escape. Then tragedy struck.

Her mother died in a failed live human clay baking accident. Karen was devastated but at least she knew her mother went out doing what she loved, and it gave her the funds to follow her one true passion. Spock here we come!

She retreated further into the hills, deep into the rainforest, where only marijuana barons and the occasional washed out American cult leader dared roam. It was there that she set up her dream command centre for extraterrestrial communication.

The night sky of this light bulb lacking North Coast region was perfect for observing meteorological activity or star gazing as she so affectionately called it. And the funds to build her centre were considerable thanks to her great grandfather’s bloodthirsty ways of pillaging the mineral resources of the naive natives in just about every underdeveloped country in the world.

He was in essence a capitalistic pirate of the seven seas, a real nightmare of a human being; hunting endangered species for fun, buying companies only to break them up and laugh at the employees struggling on the breadline, dumping toxic waste in vital river systems, and his favourite of blowing up whales to test weapons for the military, which luckily for the human race backfired on him one day when a whale breached the wrong way and destroyed the vessel he was on. But then unluckily for the human race he passed his lunatic legacy down to his only son and heir. And while he did clean up the family name by starting charities and building hospitals and homes for the poor, he was only doing it for the tax breaks and bureaucratic greasing of the wheels. He was still every bit of a heartless barbarian as his father, continuing the cruelty towards all life on earth with a vengeance. But then like his father he bit off more than he could chew on one of his suspect safaris in Africa; he’d often used the excuse of clearing out villages for a diamond mine here or a timber mill there as a means to get some shooting practice in on live targets. Ironically the gun runners that his corporation supported were the ones who supplied the villagers with the means for his demise. This time the trophies fought back and won! So he died and left his entire fortune to his only child. He did this against advice of his evil minions but he couldn’t let the legacy go, because despite the fact she was a feisty peace loving activist who believed in nurturing rather than nuking the environment he was still hopeful that one day she’d give up her hippy ways and become a ruthless Wall Street warlord or at least give birth to one. Talk about striking out. Karen was definitely her mother’s daughter. And so his brutal bloodline died with him and by default Karen’s mum received the hundreds of millions that went with it.

She sold all the companies and instead of giving to charity, which she knew from her family’s philanthropic endeavours were corrupt and self indulgent, decided to use it for her hippy escapades and eventually pass it onto her daughter who she knew would go on to create something special that the world has never seen before. Well two things actually, but first things first; her alien command centre.

The centre was a massive five acre hexagonally shaped complex built from environmentally sustainable products, powered by wind and solar energy with an eco farm in the centre that produced all the food and water they needed, making the compound completely independent as well as isolated. And what would have taken three years to build took just a few months after she hired ten times the usual workforce and paid the contractor whatever he wanted, making a three million dollar job cost nearly twenty but hey when you’ve got an evil empires money to burn who cares. She joked the speedy record breaking construction project proved her accelerated time theory on how human evolution is speeding up at an almost impossible rate due to the need to have more. MORE! MORE! MORE!

She definitely would never make capitalist of the year, in fact her hate filled rantings against the capitalist fat cats would have made Karl Marx do back flips with joy. But she knew fighting greed wasn’t her path. She always believed hers was a much much higher one.

She called her Mecca for mental giants The Galactic centre for learning and immediately began gathering these giants who were some of the world’s foremost thinkers in science, mathematics, engineering, philosophy and the psychic world. They’d all live there on a full or part time basis in a commune of sorts exploring the mysteries of the universe. And after a rigorous interview process and background check to meet her basic requirements of intelligence and conduct she agreed to fully finance whatever their hungry minds desired, especially on such contested and unknown subject matter as black holes, wormholes, time travel, space travel, psychic phenomena and of course those elusive little E.T’s and their fabulous flying machines.

It was cutting edge stuff and within two years she was an established figure in the scientific community, in fact professors from the most prestigious learning centres in the world such as M.I.T, Caltech, Harvard, Berkeley, Cambridge and Oxford called regularly for her advice and opinions, knowing she’d always go above and beyond any known text.

It was nothing short of amazing. By 19 she was an icon in the science world and had created the philosopher king society her mother had always dreamed of but was too engrossed in her artwork to achieve. No matter. She knew it was her daughter’s destiny to do that not hers. The cavalcade of clairvoyants she’d consulted over the years confirmed that; Karen was definitely the chosen one, having the open mind to explore anything to the full with the killer instinct that could smell a rat a mile off. There was no fooling this girl. Her nerdy entourage joked she was the perfect blend of sceptic and believer, a cross between their beloved Mulder and Scully off the cult TV series The X-Files, which strangely enough was the only show she watched, subscribing to her mums theory that TV rots your brain.

So her galactic centre was a success, and despite her feisty nature and general loathing of her human counterparts she struck up many a friendship over the years. But none of them romantic, as her one true love was the stars and possibly those that dwelled within them. She even constructed a huge cloud like bed encased in a glass dome on the roof of her tree top bungalow so she could drift off into the abyss of dark matter that envelops the universe. Forever dreaming that one day she might travel into it, be apart of it, whether it be in death or a space ship or even astral travelling which she also explored thoroughly, using float tanks and meditation and certain illicit drugs that her mother would’ve approved of. And while it worked a couple of times she never felt right; likening it to being ripped out of her human shell and thrown clear, suspended in a very unknown and scary state where there was no breathing, no sense of physical self at all. It was so scary in fact that she always heard her voice, or what sounded like it, shout, ‘get back in!’

So she left it alone until the right Buddhist monk or transcendental guru came along to teach her. Until then it was just a case of dream a little alien dream, every single night! A relentless routine of venturing out into the final frontier, searching, always searching. And then finally it happened.

She was studying the constellations when suddenly a strange light no bigger than your average star plummeted towards earth in a zigzag trajectory unlike any she’d ever seen before. She deduced it could be a satellite spinning out of control or some sort of weird meteorite or even a rare comet but then it stopped!

She sat up in total awe. Seconds seemed like minutes as the mystery object hovered wondrously against the black landscape of space, then BOOM! It shot up and out of sight. It had to be a space craft. She ran downstairs and consulted her colleagues but none of them had seen anything on their state of the art radars and telescopes. This really freaked her out; was it just a dream?

For the next few nights she stayed up watching and waiting for its return but saw nothing. Then finally exhausted from nearly ninety hours without sleep she passed out and almost immediately found herself drifting above her compound. Only she wasn’t afraid this time, there was no voice shouting at her, just dreamy silence as she drifted up into the night sky then stopped, hovering like a curious dragonfly, looking down on the lighthouse at Cape Byron as it swept its life saving beam across the sea. It was so peaceful and free. She reached out towards the many twinkling lights of the Gold Coast and giggled and then voomp! She was inside what appeared to be a spacecraft.

Everything was so bright and shiny and moving in a soft surreal blur, like she was trapped in a rainbow coloured cloud. But then she saw something move towards her and then all at once inside her. She couldn’t help but moan in ecstasy at the sensations that ran through her body. She’d never been touched so intimately before. It felt so foreign and yet so wonderful. She gave in, throwing herself open to the unknown entity which totally enveloped her. The ecstasy went on for hours and hours; pure enrapture, big balls of bliss, total toe tingling pleasure. Not really. It was more like a slow soothing full body massage that concentrated on the temples and forehead. A tender rub a dub dub that most women would say was better than sex anyway. And then voomp! She was back in her lofty perch, alone and shrouded in the afterglow of the mystery mans caress.

‘Man? Was it a man or a thing? Maybe it was just a dream I mean how could I just float up through the glass like that? Damn it’s finally happened; I’ve finally gone completely nutters. No! It was real goddamn it!’ she shouted angrily at herself; the sceptic and believer in her slugging it out. ‘Calm down and think,’ she commanded sternly, a little worried at the possibility of slipping into Looneyville as she knew madness was always a possibility. Obsession with the unknown was a dangerous game to play. You just have to look at the many philosophers and scientists that have burnt because of it, leaving them a drooling bed ridden zombie or worse a total nut job rocking back and forth in a padded cell with nothing but a crazed smile tattooed on their face and some cockroaches to keep them company. She had no intention of ending up this way so she racked her scientific brain for answers.

Maybe she crossed over into an imaginary realm that she knew could actually exist due to the quirky laws of quantum physics, creating a kind of Alice’s Wonderland; all those years of hoping and wishing for such an experience with this boy from out of town had opened a vortex and she’d gone down the rabbit hole. And so like Alice she continued her search for truth.

For days, weeks, months she continued her vigil but to her dismay there was no repeat performance by the mystery man. Disappointing yes, but fruitless, possibly not as she was suddenly struck down with vomiting and nausea and then the tell tale absence of that pesky monthly reminder that she was a woman. The unbelievable, inconceivable, mind blowingly freakable thing had happened; she was pregnant!

A mix of excitement and dread washed over her. Being a single mother was hard enough without dragging around a multi coloured blob with antennas or a swirling cloud of light while you do your shopping. But then again she didn’t do shopping or anything else outside the compound for that matter so who cares! She could raise her alien baby in the safety of the compound and no one need know about it. Just keep it hidden and out of sight and most importantly protected from the ravages of human intervention, which she knew from the stories she’d read about her own flesh and blood could be cruel and fatal.

But after a few months of careful concealment and excuses she could no longer hide the obvious bulge, especially as it appeared twice as large a usual pregnancy. So she decided to sit her most trusted and long term colleagues down and tell them she’d been knocked up by E.T.

‘Oh my God!’ gasped the closest thing to a best friend she had; an extroverted gay Indian astrologist from the posh streets of Bombay named Tani Lotusflower, ‘was it God – because I know it couldn’t have been anyone else!’ He pouted, a little ticked off he’d been cut out of the loop. He’d always thought they had a kind of Sex in the City relationship without the sex part, but he knew her womanly desires and smoking hot body demanded male attention so the topic was forever hanging in the air. Sure she was no stereotypical blonde bombshell but her spiky red and white dyed hair; thin small breasted but firm and extremely athletic body could easily make her a boner target, especially by the sci-fi community who saw her as a sort of sexy alien wood nymph in one of their mystical role playing computer games.

‘No it’s nothing like that,’ laughed Karen, ‘but it was from up there,’ she smiled and pointed towards the ceiling.

‘Not one of those telescope jockeys, goddamn it Karen! Your child won’t have any dress sense at all!’ cried Tani.

‘Aim a little higher,’ smiled Karen.

‘No!’ gasped Tani, ‘you don’t mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘A visitor!’

‘Yes!’ exploded Karen and the eyes of the other five people in the room nearly bugged out of their heads. They were all believers but this was still a biggie to swallow. But they had no choice. She was their benefactor and easily the smartest person they’d ever known, becoming like a Guru to them, and so like all devoted followers they went along with her claim and agreed to help conceal her secret child as best they could. But Tani wasn’t so agreeable.

‘Can’t you see this is perfect timing?’ he stressed.

‘What do you mean,’ frowned Karen.

‘It’s well known in astrological circles that we are in a period of great change; 1995 will see Pluto passing into Sagittarius that will see human integrity mature into spiritual genius. Things like the Catholic Church, in fact all organised religion, will be brought into question. We need a leader to guide us through these unchartered waters. A person to make us embrace the unknown rather than fear it, and so who better than your alien child? So you see you can’t keep it a secret, the world needs to know, I’d of thought you of all people would know that Karen,’ steamed Tani.

‘You mean this war ravaged, greedy, materialistic world hell bent on its own destruction. This one that punishes rather than rewards difference, I don’t think so. There'll never be a place in it for a child like mine. I thought you of all people would know that Tani,’ Karen steamed back.

‘Fine,’ snapped Tani, frowning his over plucked eyebrows and pouting his collagen plumped lips before storming out. It’d only been a year since he was a victim of a violent gay hate bashing in a park in the city. He would’ve been killed if it wasn’t for his high-pitched squeals alerting some passers by enough to call the police.

‘Tani I’m sorry,’ Karen yelled out after him but he was gone.

‘Ah excuse me Karen,’ piped up a follower, ‘there’s still the question of whether this being will want to be kept a secret.’

‘I know, there’s much to be explored, but first let’s concentrate on bringing it safely into the world, agreed,’ she asked rather than her usual practice of telling.

‘Agreed,’ they all chimed in together. And with that Karen smiled and set about carrying this miracle baby to term.

No expense was spared in making her pregnancy as healthy and comfortable and trouble free as possible. She bought all the latest medical machinery to monitor her child as well as her own body’s biological progress. And her bedroom was decked out with all kinds of orthopaedic chairs and pillows; she even had a mechanically driven hammock that swung her gently back and forth as she lay there listening to calming classical music or the sounds of the ocean or rainforest. And as for her health she was already a big anti alcohol and tobacco person and her strictly vegan diet combined with employing a full time nutritionist assured her body was functioning at its peak. So it was all pretty smooth sailing, right up until three weeks before her little bundle of joy was due to arrive when right out of the blue she was visited again.

This time she woke up in the spacecraft and like before she couldn’t talk or make out the being from the sheer luminescence of her surrounds. But then suddenly she could make out a face that had a large pair of eyes, big bright blue human looking eyes that soothed her with their tranquil gaze. Then she heard a voice, calm and convincing, resounding in her mind.

‘Go to the city and announce the birth of your child, the first one of its kind, a child of the stars, go now, and have faith in your fellow beings for if they fail they will be no more earth to matter,’ it said then voomp! She was back in her bed. But this time there was no confusion or doubt. She sat up with total purpose of mind, body and spirit.

‘Tani,’ she yelled, ‘we have an announcement to make.’

Chapter 2

Lieutenant Colonel James T. Buckaroo, J.T, was sitting in his office, which was more like a Janitors closet than a space for an important military officer. That’s because he wasn’t one, not anymore anyway thanks to his alien abduction story.

He claimed he was beamed up by little green men whilst serving in Iraq during the Gulf War. But his rank and families influence allowed him to stay on in the Armed Forces and pursue his claim, which quickly turned into an obsession.

The official title written on his filing cabinet door was Chief Liaison Officer for Extraterrestrial Affairs but it may as well said Nut Job for the lack of respect he was given around the base, which was ironic considering where it was; the notorious and lethally guarded Area 51 United States Army base in New Mexico.

J.T was thrilled to be let in on the big secret and finally get to the bottom of his alien affair but the truth wasn’t what he expected, and it certainly didn’t set him free, more like imprisoned further in his dungeon of doubt. Why? Because it turned out the base’s reputation was false; there were no aliens being held captive or kept in huge glass jars to be prodded or dissected at the whim of over zealous scientists. And the many sightings of alien spaceships were just top secret experimental aircraft dreamt up by genius’ to be used as yet another way to evade the enemy and bomb the crap out of them when they weren’t looking. For once the military weren’t lying! And it actually worked in their favour as people were so distracted by conspiracy theories they completely forgot about the real destructive reasons these war boys were out there.

So J.T was left crushed on the side lines. No matter. He wasn’t a quitter; he knew his position still gave him the means to explore his obsession, and allow him the chance to clear his name. A chance that was only made possible because of his family’s long history of being blood shedders. Two Generals, three Captains, five Star ship Commanders (sorry that’s in the future) and a whole armoured truckload of grunts killed in action guaranteed his job security no matter how crazy he appeared. Mind you he wasn’t always regarded with such doubt. He was a chip of the ole homicidal block before his experience in Iraq in 1989 when he went to fight the evil Saddam Hussein, so evil in fact the U.S government put him straight back in power after the dust had settled, hmmm.

Yes Siree Bob J.T chewed barb wire and pissed napalm like the others before him. In fact whilst participating in Operation Desert Storm he had 28 confirmed kills and God knows how many unconfirmed Ay-rabs bit the big one because of Lieutenant James T. Buckaroo’s badass battle cry loving ways. Special Forces, black bag ops, covert behind the lines panty raids, he was up for anything dangerous and involving casualties; he’d been chiselled and chopped and spat out of the military machine like a murderous Ken doll. His life was like an X-BOX game; one surreal bloody encounter after another. But then something went really wrong over there in the desert that would change his life forever. And it wasn’t the dreaded gulf war syndrome either, even though that’s what a lot of psychiatrists blamed it on because the real reason was without a classification. At least not in polite circles anyway as his father, The General, could never say, ‘please meet my son the war hero, oh and by the way did you know he was kidnapped by aliens?’

But J.T wasn’t insane, he knew what he experienced was real, and he also knew the stigma surrounding his abduction claims. That’s why he tried to keep the strange story to himself but the visitors wouldn’t let him bottle this one up. They kept appearing in his dreams, reminding him of his abduction experience because despite lasting for days and days, even though he only went missing from his post for a couple of minutes, he could hardly remember what happened. There was the extreme luminescence of the spacecraft and its inhabitants and the way they seemed to move in and out of his mind and body with such ease. He’d pass out from total exhaustion only to be awoken by some more mind massaging and a total rollercoaster ride of the senses.

He went to the Army’s sick bay for proof of any probing, particularly around the anal area, but they found nothing. He laughed it off, putting his paranoia down to all those old Sci-fi movies he’d watched as a kid. But it was still so blurry. The only definite thing he took from the experience was the message they gave him; ‘Protect and serve when called upon, be the soldier you know you should be, a leader among men that is answerable only to his heart and mind and those he believes are worthy’.

This was a bit of a challenge for him as he’d always followed orders no matter how warped they may have been. He’d just shut up and be the killing machine like the Buckaroo’s before him, leading only under direct orders; a true misguided robot for the cause.

Of course after many bogus missions he grew to believe the ones giving the orders weren’t worthy but he felt he had no choice, it was a matter of kill or be killed. But it did make him incredibly conflicted because believe it or not there was a gentler side to him. No he didn’t frolic in the fields and catch butterflies only to let them go and giggle at their delicate beauty as they fluttered about his face. It was dragonflies. But that wasn’t it either. He knew that deep down the killing was wrong, no matter how the boys in charge dressed it up. In fact he likened these leaders of powerful countries to spoilt little kids in a playground who’d grown tired of their own toys and lunches so they beat up and stole those of the