Early May

The Tremont Trust and Savings Bank

Boston, Massachusetts 2015

On the day of his thirtieth birthday, Nicholas Daring sits at a non-descript wooden office table in a small room, an open safe deposit box in front of him. Anticipation has brought him this far and now he hesitates to pull out the contents of the container. It had been thirteen years since his father’s mysterious disappearance.

He takes a deep breath then brings his hands to the opening of the metal box. His fingers handle the remnants of his father’s life; a small, worn tobacco pouch—cedar, clove, and vanilla scents still ingrained in the leather; two wood pipes with faded teeth mark on the stems; two miniature model airplanes—which he and his father built together—with yellowed clumps of dried glue between the joints, the decals all but chipped off; a crimped, faded photograph of his father, mother, and himself taken when he was twelve years old from a mock World’s Fair in Las Vegas, and most importantly; an unopened letter for Nicholas meant to be read on this very day.

He stares at his father’s handwriting, now faded on the front of the envelope, and turns it over and over in his hands. His heartbeat quickens, sweat forms under his armpits as if the letter itself could trigger emotive qualities. He feels a little dizzy, his mouth is dry. He considers not reading the letter, but he’s had so many questions with no answers.

Until now.

The seal on the envelope opens easily with a slide of his thumb.

Nick extracts thin handwritten pages with the care of someone revealing an ancient find. Bringing the letter to his nose, he inhales deeply in hopes for the familiar aroma of pipe smoke or the lingering fragrance of his father’s aftershave.

Instead, a musty odor assaults his senses. He clears his throat, then flattens the years of creases in the paper.

It is time.

January 14, 1998

Dearest Nicholas:

Happy birthday, son. I felt it necessary to wait these many years to share my professional life with you in the hope that the rules might have changed; that maybe the cloak and dagger misinformation platitudes are finally outdated. Who knows, maybe they have not changed and maybe you have no idea what I am talking about. But I have a feeling you do. You were smart at seventeen, I suspect you are smarter now.

When I graduated from MIT with my doctorate, I was introduced to a group of scientists who were involved with geothermal disturbances in the state of Utah where several incidents of strange phenomena were occurring, mostly in the Uintah Basin, near the Ute Indian Reservation. As you know, I began my professional work at Area 51 and was quietly and quickly transferred to an on-site group known as SADU (Scientific Anomaly Discovery Unit). The Unit—as it was called—was small, only five of us. We had unlimited funds. We all signed disclosure forms. We were told that we were, under no uncertain terms, to share our work even with our loved ones. Leakage of what we did could cause a nationwide panic. Even the President of the United States was not aware of our work. The military was involved, but from a quiet distance. You and mom, too, were not aware of what I did. It was very hard to be away from you both.

Son, do you remember the many nights we spent looking through the telescope, at the vast array of stars that represented only a fraction of what is out there? On those clear nights in the desert, you used to tell me how one day you were going to travel to those stars, become an astronaut or a scientist like me and how you were going to fly into the darkness to find other planets like ours, where people lived like we did.

Are you an astronaut or a scientist now?

Nicholas snorts and mumbles, “No, dad. I stopped looking at the stars thirteen years ago. I write software for a biomedical company in Boston.”

He continues to read.

One of the first lessons I learned in the scientific community was that the words ‘anomaly’ and ‘science’ did not belong in the same sentence, which is why the code name SADU was such a play on words. We were, thought by some, wasting our time on quackery.

In the world of science, if it could not be proved, it did not exist.

But herein lies the caveat: We did not have to prove it because it already existed.

Our mission was to plant electrical grids underground to attract extraterrestrials. We discovered, through painstaking research, that the longitude and latitude of our location was a homing beacon for landing sites.

My first encounter with an unidentified being was shortly after I began charting the disturbances. I was outside the trailer where we stored our equipment, setting up a radio band dish. It was just becoming dusk. Still light enough to see around me but darker in the distance. I felt I was being watched from a thickness of trees about 50 feet away from our camp. I turned and saw a figure emerge from the woods. It was tall—maybe seven feet—a biped, light on its feet, surrounded by a faint yellow light, looked almost opaque. It moved, more like glided, toward me. I did not feel danger. I watched it approach. I was not afraid, just wholly intrigued. As the being got closer, I began to feel lightheaded, thought I might pass out. Right before I lost consciousness, I felt arms surround me to keep me from falling on the ground. Long arms, strong despite the lack of body formation, coupled with a buzzing sensation.

When I regained consciousness, I was alone again, but I could still feel the arms around me.

I started to cry. I got down on my knees and cried like a baby. My colleagues arrived a few minutes later from their perimeter check and found me in tears.

I could not explain.

They picked me up and took me to the medical trailer, shooting off questions I could not answer. They probed my eyes, my skin, took my pulse, set up an EKG. Everything was normal. They were concerned. I assured them I was alright, they thought I was overstressed, tired. But, son, I do not know why I did not share my experience with my colleagues. After all, isn’t that why we were there? To unearth and prove? To bring forth evidence and dissect it?

Nicholas, when I tell you I felt something in my heart that I had never felt before in my life, it is the truth. I love your mother and you like a father loves his child, like a husband loves his wife. But this other love, this other…feeling I had after my encounter with this being…it was deeper than love. It was an unadulterated knowing.

For days I could think of nothing else. I wanted the being to return to me, to feel those arms around me once again.

Nicholas rubs his face; a two-day stubble grips his palms. He sets the letter down on the table and looks around the windowless room. It is stuffy despite the even flow of cool air coming out of the two air vents located above his head. He fingers one of the little model airplanes—willing it to come to life to fly him out and away.

He warily reads on.

The being returned three weeks later and it was in the daylight. I was alone in the computer trailer, extrapolating data from the grid. My back was turned but all at once I felt its presence. I swiveled in my chair my pipe falling from my mouth onto to the ground! It was watching me.

“Who are you?” I asked quietly.

Instead of a voice, I felt a whisper-like rush of air come towards me. “I am you.”

“How could that be?” I inquired.

I felt once again I might pass out. “No. Please. I must understand.”

Again, arms materialized to keep me from falling.

But this time when I regained consciousness, I was not in the same room.

I was in an alternate universe.

Nicholas grunts and tosses the papers up in the air, a few fluttering to the floor.

“Aliens, alternate universes?” he says this out loud as he pushes the chair back with a grunt, stands up, and starts to pace back and forth.

His heart feels like a sock of wet sand hanging low and pounding between ribs, sinew and soft tissue.

He always held his father in such high esteem; a brilliant man, not to suffer fools lightly, the man with the answers, a true scientist.

And now, this?

He stoops to pick up the fallen pages, grabbing them in a clump, thinking he might rip them to shreds. How could his father expect him to react to this gibberish?

The last page of the letter has fallen on the table. He reaches for it before it slips off the edge.

I am probably still alive, but not in your world.

We will see each other soon, son.

I love you always,

Dad

Nicholas chokes out a sob, “Why? Why now?” His hands shake as he stanches tears with stiff fingers. It takes a moment for him to catch his breath. He uses his t-shirt to dry his face, then stands up to collect the items from the table. He tenderly puts the leather pouch, pipes, photograph, and miniature airplanes in his backpack then shoves the crumpled pages into the safe deposit box, slams the lid shut.

His mother is waiting for him upstairs in the gold leaf marble lobby of the huge pillared old establishment. She had accompanied him to the bank with the promise of a special birthday gift to follow the reading of the letter.

As he climbs the stairs back to the lobby, a thought strikes him: How did his father’s letter make it back to this world from the alternate world he claimed to have awoken in? Was it somehow teleported? Was there a messenger? He continues to ponder this when he feels a gentle hand on his shoulder. An unmistakable notion assures him that no one is there. The short hairs on his neck prickle, his heartrate rachets up a notch.

His mother’s back is to him. She sits near a window overlooking Tremont Street, her silhouette lined from the ambient light coming in through the panes of glass.

Then in a sudden vertiginous seismic shift, Nicholas understands how the letter ended up in this world.

He approaches his mother tentatively. “Mom?” his voice quivers quietly.

She nods her head. “Son.”

He is afraid to walk around to face her.

He steps gingerly around the chair.

Her face is as calm and beautiful as always.

A loving smile rises from her mouth when she sees him. In one fluid motion, she reaches for his hand. “You have many questions,” she whispers without moving her mouth.

He cannot move to meet her hand.

He thinks he is paralyzed yet watches in stunned fascination as his arm involuntarily rises from his side to reach her.

When she stands up to face him, he sees that she is almost opaque.

He feels a tremendous wave of love and warmth issue from her when a buzzing sensation ripples through his body.

Before he loses consciousness, arms come together around his torso to hold him close.

“You are perfectly safe my son,” the entity assures him, “it’s time to go.”

By Ellen Bennett

From: United States

Website: http://www.bennett-creates.com