[ WP ] A man who has had a UFO encounter one night , but nobody believes him .


 `` Damn it! ``, he whispered to himself, recoiling from the sudden jolt of high-voltage electricity, `` How could it possibly...''. His voice trailed off as the sudden realization struck him, he sat back in his chair to keep from falling off of it. The world seemed to start spinning, as the possibilities and implications of the discovery overwhelmed him. `` They know, they have to know! ``, he whispered to himself, `` Somebody knows.'' Closing his eyes, he tried to relax, to stop shaking from the sudden flow of adrenaline, to focus on the system and finalizing the design. Tomorrow he would build it. 
 
 * * * 
 
 He awoke to the damning buzz of the alarm clock, eyes red from a long night of experimentation, body aching from near exhaustion, he reached over to turn the alarm off, and smiled. Today was the day, and he had all day to build. 
 
 He was not an expert in any field, nor a formally educated man, but somebody who intuitively understood the mechanical nature of the world around him. He fostered his own education, not only through studying the theory and mathematics of science, but through active experimentation and experience. He considered himself a bit of a hacker, and this to be the purest form of hacking, hacking the world. Discovering anomalies and exploiting systems in the real world as so many great scientists before him had done. 
 
 `` It'', was something of dreams, something of an impossible nature. This was the result of a life spent tinkering, testing, and questioning authority. He referred to it simply as'the sink'. Just as water drains from a sink to pipes below, he had created a'sink' for energy, tapping into a source of seemingly unending potential. It was just a matter of putting it all together. 
 
 * * * 
 
 A numbness overcame him as he worked through the day, never pausing to even eat or drink. He huddled over his workbench, painstakingly soldering the tiny electrical components together, and writing hastily constructed bits of code, forming what would be his greatest achievement, his greatest hack. 
 
 * * * 
 
 As night fell and the device came together, he finally started to relax. Taking a small pipe from his pocket, he reached into a small toolbox and produced a small baggy. He packed the bowl to the brim, lit it, and inhaled. All the stress of the day flew from his body, the aches and pains melted away into the past, and he meditated for a few minutes. It was time. 
 
 The final component was a curious looking vacuum tube that he had picked up at a garage sale, along with a dozen others. The tubes could easily have been mistaken for small lightbulbs, and they appeared as such, perfectly spherical, but with a single black rod extending up from the bottom and a black sphere perched atop the rod. A single copper contact protruded from the bottom of the bulb. He trembled with excitement as he placed the bulb onto the apparatus, typed a single command on the keyboard and paused for a moment before finally pressing'Enter'. 
 
 Sitting silently, he watched for a few moments, but nothing seemed to happen. Glancing at the output on the computer screen, feedback readings rolled by, indicating that oscillation had begun. After a minute or two, little specks of light started to dance around the inside of the vacuum tube, growing larger and brighter, then fading away momentarily. The temperature began to drop, and after a few more minutes, the room became so cold he could see his breath. The light from the bulb overhead seemed to form a funnel that extended downward to the device. It was working, this was it, and the device had reached near maximum capacity! He heard the sound of a doorknob, and glanced over just in time to see the door start to open, just as the world before him faded away into darkness. 
 
 * * * 
 
 He awoke to the sounds of a strange language, what seemed like a soft, slow humming, and a being stood over him as he lay on the floor, not far from where he had been when the door opened. `` What the fuck?'' he asked, as he sat up and focused his eyes on the being in front of him. She almost looked human, with long flowing red hair, and bright green eyes that shone with the wisdom of a thousand years and more. He gasped for air as though unable to breath momentarily,'' I know you'', he whispered as their eyes met, remembering what he had dismissed as a childhood dream. Staring into her eyes, he felt the communication begin. It was not an exchange of words or pictures, but an exchange of pure thought, a linking of souls. When it was complete, she just smiled at him and left, closing the door behind her. 
 
 He stood up, walked over to the device, and carefully dismantled it, piece by piece. 
 
 * * * 
 
 `` I'm not getting it, you go get it!''. He glanced over to see that another ball had landed in his yard. Everything seemed to have lost meaning in the years following his discovery. What do you even say? He had confessed the incident to his wife, who had merely chalked it up to his drinking and smoking pot, along with the long hours he worked. How could she have believed him, when he could not show her the device or explain how it worked and just `` Talked in riddles. ``, as she said? He understood the implications, knew that humanity was simply not ready, but it wore on him, and now he lived alone, withdrawn from society. It was today. Thirty years ago today, he had chosen to keep the knowledge. 
 
 Sudden movement at the periphery of his vision drew him from his thoughts, and he glanced up to see a little girl running into his yard, stopping where the ball had landed. She reached down, grabbed the ball with both hands, and looked up at him, smiling. Much to his surprise, she ran over and hopped up on the back porch. `` Are you an alien?'' she asked, smiling at him, her red hair waving softly in the breeze. Catching his full attention, he looked directly at her see to her bright green eyes shining playfully back at him. `` No,'' he stammered, ``... No, no, I do n't...'' He stopped suddenly as he realized this was it. `` Thank you.'' he whispered. She smiled at him, turned, and ran back down onto the grass, fading away to nothing as she ran. He sat there, smiling, as his breathing slowed, his heart finally gave out, and life left his body. 
 
 
 * * * 

