AFTERNOON, pt. II

***

He found himself in a vast room, a private library whose walls were covered in books.

A well-built blond man sat cross-legged on a padded leather high-backed chair. He wore a blue blazer with a crest on it. A pipe nestled between his lips.

“You’ve turned out differently than we’d hoped,” the man said, serenely.

“I’m dreaming,” Phil said, removing himself from the floor.

“You always say that,” the man said, wearily, “and then you always ask ‘where am I.’ I always give you the same answer,” he took a long, thoughtful puff on his pipe, exhaled and said, “a flying saucer.”

“I found a skeleton,” Phil said.

“I know. You always find the skeleton. The first time it was an accident, playing football in the field, you tripped on the turf and kicked up a bone fragment. We hadn’t buried them deep enough.” The man got up from the chair, theatrically and continued, puffing away as he did so, “each time we bury them deeper and deeper. Do you have any idea how much trouble it is to cover the entire planet with layers of top soil and rebuilding everything over from scratch? Oh, the streets are easy enough to repave and nobody notices the trees shortening inch by inch, foot by foot, but to have to suspend the buildings and lay new foundation every time … it’s really too much. I’ve suggested a number of times that we just kill you or remove you, take you back home, but oh no, the high council won’t have it. They feel relocating you is more trouble than rebuilding the planet.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“Well, since I have superiors to answer to, I’m not going to kill you if that’s what you’re afraid of. You’re too important. It’s only you, you know? You’re the only one that remembers, and each time you remember sooner than the last.”

“Why?”

“That’s the thing, we don’t know. That’s why you haven’t been killed.”

***

He awoke on a sunny, chilly morning. The kind he remembered from digging in fields.

Digging in fields.

Pancakes.

Flying saucers.

His skull was aching, nagging at him. He felt like he hadn’t slept in years. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Libby, I can’t come into work today … no … can’t, sorry … okay, bye.”

He got dressed as fast as he could and rushed out the door, headed toward the field …

***

He woke up.

Pancakes.

Flying saucers.

Digging.

Skulls.

He woke up eating pancakes in a flying saucer with a gun digging into the back of his skull.

“Don’t worry,” the Well-Built Man said, “it’s too much of a hassle to overwrite the entire programmed reality without you in it. And we won’t kill you, you’re too important to the program.”

He put down his knife and fork, chewed and swallowed carefully, and said, “then why is there a gun shoved into the back of my head?”

“We’re giving you back your memory.”

There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Phil thought. Then he thought, oh yeah, now I get it.

“We can’t fight you anymore.”

“Your experiment failed.”

“Did it?”

“Somehow, you’ve modified my appearance, made me look like you, but I’m not one of you. I’m an alien.”

“Wrong again, I’m afraid.”

“No, you’re right. This is where I belong. Those are my people buried in the ground.”


“You’re the last one. Anyway, you’re a success, as experiments go.”

“All that history, everything I ever learned about the world is wrong. Why go to all that trouble?”

“As far as the history, most of it actually happened, but not here. On a planet called Earth, where we come from. Rome, Greece, America, it’s Earthian history. But we managed to fit it in nicely to the genetic code we imprinted here, most compatible with yours. You see, everything in history happens for a reason, and everything you were told was written for a reason. Everybody has a purpose, but yours was more important than others.”

“What was this experiment you speak of?”

“Let’s just say we don’t like to have to kill our own people. Kind of defeats the purpose of colonization, don’t you think? Well, you proved to us that genocide is the only way to go.”

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s very simple, actually. We find a habitable planet, wipe out the population and re-seed it with our own. You've proven that the natural inhabitants of a planet have too much of a connection to it, a connection that can't be broken with memory implants or genetic tinkering. When we re-seed a planet we provide the pioneers with false history and memory implants as a service to them and to us. It’s easier to rule absolutely when the people have the delusion of freedom. For the most part, our own people don’t even realize we exist, or the great service we provide for them, because every planet’s story ends the same way.”

“Oh, and how’s that?”

“Mismanagement of resources which inevitably forces liquidation. Who knows, maybe with what you’ve learned you can become an even more important person, a whistleblower. How are the pancakes, by the way?”

“Delicious.”

“That’s ours, you know? That’s an Earthian invention.”

***

Phil woke up on warm, breezy afternoon. He slept in, he hadn’t called in to work. He wanted to call in, tell somebody, anybody the senses-shattering news. He picked up the phone to call in to work and tell them his amazing story but he gently set it back down. It’s not that they wouldn’t believe him, he was just too tired to be reamed out by Libby.