Terror Firma

Dave stood at a very special spot. This sandy roadside verge was the nearest an unauthorized civilian (and when it came to matters like these there wasn’t really any other sort) could get to the Mecca, St Peter’s, Wailing Wall and 74 Station Road, Aberdeen of Ufology. Twenty yards away, down the gently sloping desert, a double razor-wire fence stretched off as far as the eye could see in both directions. The signs were evenly spaced: ‘USE OF DEADLY FORCE PERMITTED’. The signs were there for one very good reason. Over the jagged ridge on the horizon lay the top-secret US Air Force base known as ‘Dreamland’, or Area 51.

This facility was so secret that officially it didn’t even exist – it said so in all the tourist brochures, books, magazines, films, TV shows and pamphlets that had been published on the matter over the past forty years. In the nearby one-stop town of Rachel you could buy a T-shirt that told you much the same thing. As far as secrets went ‘Dreamland’ was about as well kept as Colonel Gaddafi’s hair.

Area 51. Some claimed that forty-two levels beneath the burning desert there lay a junkyard full of crashed alien craft. Others claimed that the very aliens themselves were housed here, their brains picked over by the sort of government scientist who giggled a lot and hadn’t learned to shave. But tonight Dave and the others weren’t here to speculate, they were here for the show. And as regular as an atomic clock, they weren’t to be disappointed.

At eight-thirty precisely the first lights glided serenely above the horizon. They must have been more than ten miles away but against the translucent indigo sky they stood out like nuns in a whorehouse. As if on cue, a barely audible sigh rose from the congregation. Deferentially, camcorders were raised in unison as the nightly act of worship began.

The display was much the same as it ever was. For thirty minutes the lights bobbed and weaved, dived and swooped. It mattered not that the event was caught on over twenty cameras, the tapes of ‘assorted coloured lights dancing in the sky’ had been seen many times on TV before. It took much more to impress a cynical public these days.

Shortly, Dave was conscious of a figure standing closer to him than the others. ‘Mighty fine sight,’ said the newcomer, not taking his eyes from the display for a second. ‘Makes you proud to be American.’

Dave looked his companion up and down. He was the sort of middle-aged man who had been fit once, but pizza and Miller Lite had taken their toll. Covering his broad belly was a T-shirt depicting an Arab terrorist cowering beneath a cruise missile. ‘Go On–Make My Day’ begged the caption.

‘Name’s Ray,’ he beamed holding out a vast hand that could have easily encased both of Dave’s. ‘Fifty-eight combat missions over Nam and not a hint of post-traumatic stress disorder.’

Dave nodded meekly. ‘Dave. Twenty-six copies of ScUFODIN Monthly, and no trace of a book deal yet. Actually I’m not American, I’m on holiday from the UK.’ Instantly he was wondering if this was further into conversation than he wanted to get.

‘Ah – England!’ his new friend gushed. ‘We can always rely on you guys to back us up. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher – now they were leaders with real balls, but this new guy of yours makes them look like pussies. Not like the wet farts we have leading us over here.’

Dave correctly surmised that he should direct the conversation away from politics. ‘So, have you been interested in UFOs for long?’

Ray chuckled good-naturedly. ‘Oh, they ain’t no flying saucers, boy. That there’s good old Yankee know-how driving those babies. If I was twenty years younger I’d take a shot at piloting one myself.’

‘So you think they’re just the latest military hardware? If that’s the case why is your government so secretive about them? Why not show them off to the world’s press to help deter aggression?’

Ray looked pityingly at Dave. ‘They ain’t just any sort of aircraft. They’re the very latest in super-secret stealth technology recon birds. If everyone knows we’ve got them, what’s the point in having a stealth plane?’

Dave looked thoughtful for a long while. ‘If it’s a super-secret high-tech stealth plane, why is it doing an aerial jig above the horizon and flashing like a traffic light having a nervous breakdown in front of twenty cameras?’

Ray looked confused, an expression which seemed to suite his fat red face. ‘Why … they gotta test fly them. Can’t just send them into combat without putting them through their paces first.’

‘Quite,’ muttered Dave, rapidly losing patience. ‘But if it is a secret military craft why do they have to test it in quite such a public manner? It doesn’t make any sense to test a secret stealth plane in front of a bunch of snap-happy tourists.’

‘But they ain’t,’ growled Ray, a new edge in his voice. ‘This here’s the Free World’s most secure covert base. Ain’t nothing comes in or out of there that the Powers That Be don’t want to. We’re privileged to get a sneak preview. Next time you see those babies they’ll be on the Six O’Clock News beating the hell outa Saddam.’

Dave pondered this long and hard. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Ain’t nothing comes in or out of there that they don’t want to.’ With that he turned on the soft desert sand and traipsed back to his waiting hire-car. He felt the display he’d just witnessed lacked just one thing – a large glowing sign projected onto the low clouds reading ‘Your Tax Dollars At Work’. Perhaps it could be subtitled ‘Return to your homes, and your 92 channels of home-shopping cable TV, safe in the knowledge that we have it all under control.’

It had been Dave’s long and burning ambition to see Area 51 in person, but now that he had, he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on at Areas 52 and 53.

When he returned to his motel, despite the late hour, Dave was sufficiently stirred by his thoughts to do a spot of research. In fact, as long as it involved sitting at a desk with a nice weak cup of tea, it never took very much to spur him into a flurry of investigation. As long as he had a nice cosy library full of books, or better still a microfilm reader packed with ancient newspaper cuttings, Dave was in his element. Actually getting out into the field to collect hard evidence was a far less appealing prospect. On this road trip, however, all he had with him was his laptop, and that meant, in order find what he was looking for, Dave was going to have to use the internet. The very thought sent a shiver down his spine.

Dave had been slow to jump on the internet bandwagon; as a result it had almost run over him. It was only a glorified version of teletext after all – with just a bit more on it. Now there was a medium which had never been fully exploited. Dave’s rational, scientific soul was deeply troubled by the way that pinnacle of 1970s technology had been superseded by its younger, flashier cousin. About the only thing you could get on the Net which you couldn’t conceivably receive via Ceefax was hard-core pornography – and that was hardly much of a recommendation. It still made Dave fume to think about it – the ultimate triumph of form over content. Dave was not a man to be drawn in by what he saw as incessant hype, quite the reverse in fact. If he saw what he thought was a fad he’d do his best to ignore it. He liked to think he was above the fickle meanderings of the common herd. Lots of Dave’s acquaintances liked to think he was a bit of a sad weirdo.

But in the last year even Dave had had to screw up his pride and establish an on-line presence. His beloved magazine would not have been taken seriously unless he had done. Against his better judgement www.scufodin.org had been born. Fortunately the setting up of the site had not had to break the bank. Dave’s friend Chris was more than happy to build it for nothing more than all the tea he could drink and his own weight in chocolate hob-nobs. Nice one, Chris, milk with two sugars, isn’t it.

It an attempt to ‘do it properly’ Dave had conducted a rigorous scientific analysis of what the world-wide-wacko had to offer. His conclusions left him deeply troubled. What had Dave most bothered about it, especially the bits he was prone to visit, was, not to put too fine a point on it, the unmitigated amount of pure, unadulterated crap there was sloshing about. Was there something about the very medium which brought out the crank in everybody? Reading some of the conspiracy sites it was hard to escape that worrying conclusion.

I ask you – that the English Royal Family was behind a global plot to usurp political power through its communist-riddled puppet, the United Nations … what sort of brain-dead paranoid gun-nut dreamt up crap like that? Or that somewhere in the South Pacific there was an island populated by genetically engineered versions of apparently ‘dead’ celebrities, which some shady organization was using to manipulate the masses in a campaign to spread hysteria and irrationalism. Just where did they get it from? Some people (some Americans, Dave thought smugly) just weren’t right in the head. Why did they allow net access in mental asylums, after all?

Things only got worse when Dave began to interact with the cyberspace community. There seemed to be something about messages posted on newsgroups or bulletin boards which led normally sane, polite people to take them completely the wrong way, no matter how many ;) or :) you inserted. It was almost as if they thought you were laughing at them. There was also the bizarre and completely inexplicable tendency for all trans-Atlantic communications to deteriorate onto two-way rants on one highly contentious subject – that one great napalm-fuelled flame-war to end them all.

Dave’s earnest postings to a software discussion forum regarding the perceived inadequacies in Nanosoft’s latest word processor (Why was it slower on his new 1200 MHz Cray clone than Write Perfect V.1 had been on his 286?) would be met with a barrage of nationalistic vitriol. If American software was so poor, why didn’t he use the British alternative? As patiently as he was able, Dave would point out it was far from easy getting hold of an operational BBC model B these days, let alone the software to use it. His reasoned response would not matter, however, as all too soon the discussion would mutate into the same one it always did whenever Brits and Yanks started getting a bit shirty. Somehow the subject would metamorphose into gun-control, or rather the lack of it.

‘How can you guys in England be truly free when your government doesn’t allow you to carry guns?’

Dave would take many hours poring over his answer, conducting lengthy background reading to help make his point.

‘If you truly believe you live under a clandestinely oppressive regime do you really think a Kalashnikov and a landmine-strewn patio is the best solution? Aren’t you playing them at their own game? Surely the tactics employed by individual citizens must reflect our own strengths and abilities. Through the spread of knowledge and information we can conduct a peaceable campaign to bring any such travesty to the attention of all right-thinking citizens, thereby halting any dastardly schemes in their tracks.’

This was what he’d mean to write. What he’d actually post would be:

‘You’re a smelly poo. And you smell of poo.

So there. Poo-off you smelly poo.

Vietnam, hahaha.’

Of course the exchange could only go downhill from there. With the remorseless, blood-boiling belligerence of the World-Wide-Whine the reply would be posted.

‘Geeze. If it wasn’t for the US and its citizens’ skill with guns you guys would be ruled by a gang of mad, emotionally repressed militaristic right-wing Germans right now. Drop dead and rot, commie-loving scum!’

There was not really any answer to this, apart from to ask if the irate colonial had ever heard of Buckingham Palace – but this would just add more fuel to a fire that hardly needed it.

Dave would honestly try his best to bring a modicum of rationality to the debate, but it would be too much for him in the end, such was brain-numbing effect of ‘newsgroup rage’. Dave had even begun to wonder if there was some subtle undertone to the very medium which reduced reasoned, lucid discussion to the level of the school yard. But no, that was paranoid nonsense, wasn’t it – almost the sort of thing you’d read on the internet, in fact. When you took into account that the whole thing had initially been set up by the US military to help them survive a nuclear war, it got you to thinking …

As so often in the past, on this evening Dave’s research didn’t so much hit a brick wall as get subsumed into the bland mass of meaningless drivel he found at every turn. As the internet proved all too conclusively, quantity in no way made up for quality when it was information you were after. All the web seemed good for was reinforcing a whole battery of previously conceived misconceptions, strengthening and hammering them home.

More confused and bewildered than ever, Dave fell asleep slumped over his keyboard – the slowly accumulating pool of dribble moulding his moist cheeks to the contours of the harsh plastic keys. When he woke the next day it took nearly an hour of careful massage to coax his face back into its world-weary and slightly less rectangular form.

9. If You Tolerate This Your CD Collection Will Be Next

Not far from where Kate had conducted her interview with farmer Smith, a swampy field just outside Glastonbury was packed with people, just as it always was at this time of year.

But the crowds of bleary-eyed festival-goers weren’t solely here for the music. Judging by the mud, and the queues for the toilets, they weren’t here for their health either. There existed third-world refugee camps with better sanitary conditions than these. But at least the victims of mankind’s latest war weren’t crowded out by gaudily tie-dyed stalls manned by grey-haired hippies trying to sell everything from Abduction Survival Kits and King Arthur radio clock alarms to Make Quorn Edible recipe books. There was more crystal in this quiet Somerset town than all the chandeliers in the Versailles Hall of Mirrors put together, but fortunately there wasn’t a delegation of high-level Germans getting stitched up nearby. The ‘Glastonbury Experience’ was designed to cater for far more than just the anally-retentive masochistic music fan, it was ingeniously crafted to appeal to people wishing to make a ‘lifestyle choice’.

And what a choice it was. The masses of combat-trouser-clad off-duty estate agents and junior management consultants were there for the dope. If they’d wanted music they had perfectly good CD players in their Audis and BMWs clogging the huge car parks nearby. They were doing something far more profound than simply having a boogie – they were making a stand against the relentless drive of consumerism, and they thought £49.951 a head to do so was a bit of a bargain.

Some went with the loud intention of dropping a few ‘e’s’. But the only letter these frustrated public-school boys had ever dropped were ‘h’s’, in a sad attempt to sound more working class.

The admission was a particular bargain this year, though the organizers didn’t realize that yet. If they had known the identity of that year’s mystery gate-crasher they could have safely trebled the prices, and still sold out ten times over. Lounging in their distant Tuscan villas, value for money had been the last thing in mind – but then soon enough, so too would be mere profit.

As the latest mumbling, moody three-piece band to crawl from the mean streets of Newport left the stage, safe in the knowledge that if you’re Welsh and grew up in a terraced house no one would ever accuse you of being pretentious, the next act was warming up ready to go on. But this performer wasn’t limbering up backstage. No mineral-water-equipped green room hung with nubile groupies was temporary home to this show-biz heavy weight, just as he wasn’t to be flown in last minute on a private luxury jet. The anxious stage manager didn’t know it yet, but the next visitor was zooming in from much further afield, both in space and time.

Accompanied by a bone-shaking electrical hum, a perfectly triangular black craft slowly descended through the veil of low grey cloud. It came to rest hovering two hundred feet above the sea of upturned awe-struck faces, bathing them in the single baleful yellow light that shone from its keel like an unblinking evil eye. Without a sound the ship effortlessly glided further forward, stopping to float directly over the deserted stage.

The golden light pulsated for a moment, then a single radiant figure slowly descended through the glowing column, as if suspended by an unseen wire.

If the crowd had been speechless before, soon they were hypnotized by the man hunched statue-still up on stage. He wore a spotless white jump-suit, flared cuffs glittering sequin-laced under the eerie light. Behind his lavishly coiffured head stretched an arching radar-dish collar. His bloated top lip was curled in a famous uncontemptuous sneer, as he pressed it hard against a rhinestone-encrusted radio-mike; his other jewel-heavy hand thrust back and up behind him in a quivering stance. The wrap-around shades he wore would have done a welder or an oversensitive vampire proud.

If this was a publicity stunt then it was well worth the admission fee alone. This was the best Elvis impersonator anyone had ever seen, and he certainly knew how to make an entrance. The sideburns were a touch too long and curly, and shot through with grey if truth be told, but every other detail was spot on. Authentically enough he didn’t seem to have missed too many meals lately – what a commendable touch of professionalism in this slapdash age.

Elvis didn’t move his ostentatiously bowed head from where it was hunched over the mike. He had the voice down pat too – a harmonious Dixie drawl wrapped up in a diamond-studded velvet glove.

‘I’d just like to tell y’all, I don’t eat meat no more – not since the military started pumping it full of filthy GM hormones. This next number goes out to all those reformed meat-eaters out there – and by that I don’t mean hamburger lovers, you dig?’ He formed his upturned hand into a Churchillian victory salute, ‘Viva Lost Vegans, everywhere.’

The King then broke into a stirring rendition of one of his best-loved numbers. Accompanied by an unseen orchestra, which seemed to blare out from the black ship above, he tore through ‘Always On My Mind’, singing not just to the audience but the entire human race. Any doubts that he was the real thing evaporated the moment he opened his mouth. When he pleaded with them to ‘give me one more chance to keep you satisfied’ the crowd would have hit the roof, if there’d been a roof to hit.

When the noise had subsided to a mere deafening roar, Elvis held up a shaky hand for silence. ‘Where’ve ya been, ya Highness?’ yelled an impatient reveller from the crowd’s rippling front row.

One of the King’s trembling trouser legs started wobbling of its own accord, generating a terrific breeze as it did so. ‘Well, howdy there, li’l pardner. Been staying up at the government-run heartbreak hotel, but now I’ve come back to you folks for good – aha huuuu.’

The crowd erupted into ecstatic screaming delight. Elvis held up a calming hand once again. A fistful of glittering jewellery sparkled amidst the golden light.

‘First I’ve got some news to tell ya. Don’t figure y’all like it much.’

As one the crowd fell silent. Elvis continued in his lilting sing-song voice.

‘I ain’t been gone of my own free will. Been a prisoner dancing to a dishonest warden’s very own jailhouse rock. For all those long years I been gone, I was held hostage by darkly sinister forces. Yes folks, there’s a conspiracy going on behind your backs, perpetrated by your evil governments and the corrupt politicians who spin you their cynical lies.’

There was a howl of incredulous rage, plus some shouts for further songs by some of the less politically-aware festival goers. But this crowd was far from dubious of the great man’s claims, there were plenty here today well capable of believing what he told, many who were completely unsurprised by it in fact – and didn’t the unseen puppeteers just know it.

‘Those same good ole boys who got to Kennedy, well they got to me too. Kidnapped me from my very own john. Well now I’m here in Engle-land for the very first time, ready to start my come-back tour. Gonna be some show!’

Meanwhile a single unmarked helicopter had come to hover above the crowd. Those camped beneath it felt the brutal effects of its rotor down-wash – tents and teepees flattening beneath its steady thumping force; but its turbines gave off no sound. As it hung there like a spiteful wasp Elvis continued his heart-felt manifesto.

‘Hard to believe, I know, but there’s more to their depraved schemings than just my heinous incarceration. Your governments have kidnapped others too – but not just men and women like you and me. They’ve got hangars full of crashed space-aliens – little peace-loving grey brothers who mean to do us no harm. Help me to set them free!’

Those unlucky few beneath the suspicious black chopper clearly saw a hatch swing open in the side of its smoked-glass cockpit. Those not wrapped up in the King’s astonishing revelations watched as a long gun barrel protruded from this hole. Their screams of warning were lost in the crowd’s angry roar.

As was the single crack of high-powered rifle fire.

‘ALIENS GOOD, GOVERNMENTS BAD …’ Elvis led the steadily rising chant, or at least he did until his vaporized brains sprayed backwards across the stage in an ever-widening cloud.

The first the masses knew of the hit was when they saw their idol’s arms jerk forward in an oddly familiar motion, and the condensing cranial matter reform to perform a brief come-back tour of its own as it trickled down the garish display at the back of the set – every detail caught on the giant-sized screens either side of the stage. There was a second of stunned silence, then a massive and strangely resigned moan rose up from the throng.

Somehow managing to look scared for its life, the black triangle beamed up Elvis’s remains the same way they had come down and beat a hasty retreat up into the clouds. The hovering black chopper went after it in hot pursuit.

That was when the riot began.

When the official forces of government arrived, in the shape of the hard-pressed British police, they had to use tear-gas and electric cattle-prods to disperse the baying crowd. But their efforts to engineer a peaceful conclusion were to no avail. In a quest for instant retribution the surging hordes went on the rampage down Glastonbury’s sleepy main street; their target, any symbol of the heartless Establishment brave or foolish enough to stand in their way.

A corner-shop post office, three Tourist Information Centres and twelve New Age bookshops paid the ultimate price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They said the pall of choking incense, given off by a thousand burning josticks, hung over the deserted town for generations to come.

They were right.

1 Losing a potential additional 4p on every ticket sold, but this tactic had been carefully and cunningly thought out. What this price-point policy, in accordance with the very latest marketing theories, said was: No, we don’t think you’re stupid enough to imagine there’s a difference between 49.99 and 50, but we’re banking on you being seduced by that saving of 5p. We’re not satisfied selling you an overpriced concert ticket, with the honour of suffering diarrhoea in a draughty chemical toilet thrown in for free, we intend to patronize you first, too. Card number and expiry date please, you gullible fuckwit.

10. Containment

The hospital ward was packed with the sort of hi-tech equipment which could have made the most hardened gadget-freak go weak at the knees – that’s if the strangely lifeless air and epilepsy-inducing lighting didn’t get to him first. However, overcrowding was not likely to become a problem in the near future; this ward contained just one very special patient, but then this was one very special hospital.