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We travel on in this way for a while longer. Suddenly Wayne motions to me and points off to his left to a place far out on the ocean's horizon, where the waves are dimly lit by the starlight. "Look at that!" he exclaims. There is a faint, glowing light that we both think at first is an aircraft. But even as we watch it, the lights change into an extroadinary succession of colors that we have never seen an ordinary aircraft display. Pulsing greens, reds, blues, and yellows, and then a sudden switch to a complete envelopment in glowing white light. Then, the next thing we know, whatever it is does something really strange; it moves instantly from its position from far over the ocean to directly where we are in, quite literally, the twinkling of an eye. It stops above the treetops fifteen feet away from us on the other side of the road and hovers, without making a sound. Wayne has pulled the van over to the side of the road and stopped. We sit frozen to our seats, breathless with the strangeness of it. For the first time in my life, I know the meaning of the word "awe". "Should we get out and go closer?" he wonders, and I shake my head. "No,let's just stay right here," I reply, in a voice as nervous as his. At this point, things become unclear. Somehow it seems as if we are outside of the van, standing directly under the spacecraft, which is still hovering, with its lights continually pulsing. But what is stranger than that is the very strong feeling I have that the spacecraft is somehow surveying us. It is taking a reading of our consciousness levels. Instantly I become aware, truly aware, for the very first time, that I belong to an entire planet. Not only to a family, a town, a country, and a continent. The whole planet is where I come from, and everyone and everything on it is akin to me in a sense. And the planet has its place in the solar system, and other beings beside us dwell in the cosmos. The spacecraft, which is circular and approximately thirty feet across, continues to read me and Wayne for an indeterminate amount of time. Then suddenly, its lights change; it lifts slightly above the trees, again without making a sound, and instantly returns to its far point over the ocean. Making a right-angle turn, it heads south over the waves. As Wayne and I are watching it depart, three US Airforce jets come streaking after it one after the other. Then the night sky is finally still once again, but everything has somehow shifted forever. |