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Star Bright

Brian Duggan

Star Light Star bright,
the first Star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight


    I’ve got to stop them from upping the ante, intensifying expected conflict. Forty years of experience tells me small issues grow bigger. It happens because unlikely complications and unavoidable situations exist. What is my wish tonight? Simply put, it’s the hope that what is predicted to happen in the coming hour never occurs. We told lies about Alistair Bainbridge but this is the time for truth.

    Since his condition resulted in what can only be called perpetual arrest and has grave implications, you will share coming events. How simple and innocent the world of that man-child would if the newly discovered planet in M-31?but I must share intelligence data too. M-31 is best known as the Andromeda Galaxy, a sprawling spiral galaxy that looks like a larger Milky Way. M-31 has been visible to the naked eyes of the earliest members of our species.
    I learned of the French mission to study planetary transits when it was on the drawing board or more correctly, still an untested algorithm bouncing between zeros and ones inside the machine language of computer aided design software. A handful of Americans followed the mission after its launch from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome. It sought new planets. If it were a dart the bullseye would be a brilliant pinpoint of light emitted from the stars at the center of M-31.
    There are reasons why I said grave implications. My agency knows that astrophysical experts have detected the basic elements that nurture life nestled in the interstellar clouds that surround the newly discovered planet known as UB142-2012. One week ago, we learned the atmosphere on UB142-2012 contains the essential life-giving gases: ammonia, methane and hydrogen oxide. The mantle is similar to Earth’s and the surface of the planet is 80% water.
    The question that pops up as if spring-loaded whenever the subject of UB142-2012 comes up?only Bainbridge can determine Earth’s destiny?is about to be answered. Strangely acquired and top-secret files going back decades may force you to agree with Clyde Bentley, the astrophysicist considered brilliant yet eccentric.
    He calls the question of life on 2012 UB142 ironic. I ask it as the head of the most secretive of the world’s agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA). I share a question and other relevant events as they happened or more correctly as they happen since we know time is variable.
    Bentley reaches in his pocket and holds out his palm. A deer mouse rubbing pink paws is gesturing toward pointy teeth. A rodent, with a mind of its own, hell bent on a hearty lunch.
    “Can you tell me how a British National with no security clearance could have ever become entangled with that Hughes employee in the first place?”
    “Phylo Lister is and was a bloody saint. He’d call you a twit, Mr. Suskin.”
    “Bainbridge must communicate with whatever inhabits that planet.”
    “The NSA means to carry on in spite of those queer lights?”
    Clyde Bentley sighs, as his finger encourages the mouse to take a nip of his cheese sandwich. The most significant spot on Earth looks like a fallen landscape from the frame of a Gainsborough painting. Tunstall Village is surrounded by a traditional and well-loved Kent countryside. Vibrant fields and orchards greet eyes and nose. Today’s two hour and forty minute drive from Cambridge to Tunstall Village has taken me from the A14 motorway into night.
    My flashlight beam hits the white steeple and illuminates an impressive antenna dish. Moments later, the flashlight plays on a darkened farmhouse floor littered with beer tins and cigarette butts. Crushed tubes of oil paint and broken brushes lay atop dirty dishes and clothes. The entire room pulses in the green light of a blinking computer screen.
    Bentley’s unshaven face is so rigid it appears it can break if his intense expression is altered in any way. Three people, myself, Clyde and Iris Bentley watch a green county bus pass the road sign announcing Tunstall. It discharges angry passengers before the white-steepled vicarage.
    We hear voices. “A vicar’s son sown from the same pagan cloth. . .a disgrace to God-fearing souls it tis.” A loud voice rises higher. “And not a farthing’s tax paid!”
Iris, a longsuffering wife, chews her lower lip at the window and stares at other villagers who picket the vicarage. One villager rattles a fist. “A fine state, church faithful held at bay by a beer-soddened mad man.” Another chimes in. “Evil doers the bleedin’ lot!”
    A flickering candle descends the stairs to send an eerie shadow climbing the far wall. Alistair Bainbridge emerges from the darkened stairwell. His eyes bounce in deep, hollow sockets and scarlet welts circle ashen flesh around his eyes. He has been playing upstairs using his virtual reality goggles.
    Describing Bainbridge is a difficult task. He wears a Royal Air Force flight suit and a Harry Potter Gryffindor backpack. Of course the head is misshapen and out of proportion to the skinny body but I was prepared for that. I’m told craniosynostosis is a birth defect allowing the irregular joints of a newborn’s cranium to close quickly before the brain is fully formed.
    Some contend that surgical intervention had been a noble goal that hadn’t produced the required results; in point of fact, it had created an unknown creature. Don’t judge my use of the word creature too harshly since Bainbridge has to a large extent has been manufactured. The people who should know couldn’t or wouldn’t tell how his behavior changed. His brain displayed anatomical features that included a greatly enlarged arched connecting band between similarly enlarged cerebral hemispheres. I learned the typical band contains 200 million nerves Bainbridge has five times that number?the government employs a million nerves.
    The brain of a male at thirty should be around three and one-half pounds but testing revealed a fifteen-pound brain measuring 6,300 cubic centimeters?again five times the normal brain size. A derisive nickname was fostered for Bainbridge by Bentley, Double Deck. I’ll offer no apology for British anatomical meddling and continue with facts. The infant was fitted with a removable titanium skullcap and never returned to West Hampstead or his parents. The NSA learned Bainbridge was placed in “protective custody” since he was judged autistic.
    Further testing revealed Bainbridge should be reclassified as a prodigiously rare savant with extraordinary skills. I’m a guest in England, so I’ll not debate the morality or the legitimacy of this country’s Super-injunctions. The fact remains, with that injunction, skill became power. What are his skills? Electrodes were embedded in brain tissue three decades ago and now an expansive wireless network resides inside Bainbridge to be utilized by a Defense Ministry housed at Bushsweep Annex at Nenwith Hill near Harrogate in North Yorkshire.
    I’ll share a little know fact. Nenwith Hill was once the most extensive intelligence facility on Earth but we at the NSA are constructing a 240-acre facility in an innocuous, eons-old, weathered crater in the midst of the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Hardware will feed databases that approach infinity. Every digital message on Earth: retail receipts, travel plans, web-based searches, private emails, conversations?secure bytes and bits percolating in Bainbridge’s very network?will be accessed 24x7.
    Bainbridge is irreplaceable yet as I stated earlier small issues grow. Bentley tips his golf cap in a quick, exaggerated sweep. Iris takes it and Bentley’s hands rise too late to hide a pattern of small, round, red spots. Bainbridge’s face hardens into loathing watching Bentley’s failed attempt to hide his head. Thin deformed fingers reach out like probing tendrils to grip the Bentley mouse as droll lengthens like a bungee cord from Bainbridge’s lower lip. Speech liberates spittle.
    “Bentley is not authorized to attempt communication now. It’s not fair!”
    “Women wag a tongue, Double Deck. What news of Squire Bainbridge, Iris?”
    “Are you joking? A wobbly brain on loan at no cost. ‘We’ll have it large,’ said the Yanks.’”
    Bentley staggers forward with a mocking bow to Bainbridge. “She’s been on about a pig’s palace over the Clay Pigeon I’ve rented for years. She meant no harm mate.” Iris watches the sky as distant lights turn from red to blue and enter pale clouds above the village. I learn that Iris had a long history of seeing UFOs.
    “Pig’s palace. . .eyes glued to IBM 360’s. Yanks spying on the Queen’s subjects, Suskin?”
    “Yes, the NSA snooped then and it still does. Phylo Lister knew Project Mogul in Roswell was General Ramey’s first lie.”
    Iris is not listening to me.
She is lost in events that occurred forty-seven years ago at a U.S.A.F base in South Ruislip, Middlesex which no longer exists. But I caution you Lister’s account of alien behavior and his theft of a vital component in New Mexico while working for Howard Hughes in 1947 are still highly classified documents.
    Bainbridge sits Iris down at his side since the Bentleys are still considered Lister’s allies. Her fear erupts in shallow, rapid panting as her eyes widen. We take a collective deep breath and agreed on salient facts. I summarize for brevity’s sake with a welcomed assist from Bainbridge.
    UFOs have appeared on the NSA radarscope before 1947. They do not make noise and leave no gaseous trail or heat plume. Howard Hughes cataloged UFO sightings using a special airborne spectrometer
         /magnetometer recording each UFO’s light wave signature and real-time magnetic field. Odd as it seems, the amplitudes recorded during measurement mimic a
sub’s sonar array.
    Hughes aircraft overflew the Trinity Test Site when the first atomic bomb exploded. NSA contractors improved the instrument and metrics. The NSA identified hundreds of UFOs after President Eisenhower’s directive in 1953. There was one monumental discovery that was stolen by Lister.

Gravity Accelerated Propulsion (GAP) was found to power UFOs. This combines the strong and weak gravitational forces with an unidentified component of dark energy that creates the vibration mathematically predicted by Professor Susskind’s String Theory.
    Bainbridge smiles while teaching us a simplified version of Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. We learn about gravity and its applicability to macro structures: stars, super clusters of stars and galaxies. He turns to a grade-school description of Quantum Mechanics to describe the four fundamental forces and we proceed to explore atomic structure.
    Black Holes exist in all galaxies and the one in the center of our Milky Way presents a reprieve from the anticipated death sentence. Bainbridge knows how to travel between galaxies. His consciousness rides an intergalactic subway system. A wormhole connects the Black Holes in M-31 with our Milky Way. It allows time travel at speeds exponentially beyond that of light but only in one direction?the future.
    Bainbridge and Bentley say that in a day’s time they have perfected a broad range of communication tools that allow for real-time communication with intelligent beings on UB142. I watch as Bainbridge opens his backpack and withdraws a cigar box. My flashlight sweeps the ceiling to wires, meters and radios and stops at the skylight revealing the antenna dish on the steeple. Bainbridge lifts the lid on a cigar box. Metal cuttings glow until my flashlight’s beam interrupts. I lift it to judge its weight.
    “Bentley, what do you make of this, the box is as light as a feather?”
    ‘Have a go with me shank.”
    Cutting metal with a knife under that flashlight beam is easy. Two metal pieces fall to the floor but I jump because when floor-meets-metal, we see sparks. Outside the beam, I attempt to cut another metal strip. Sweat pours from my face; the knife blade breaks in two. Bainbridge comes closer. He bounces and drools on my wrist. I ask a question.
    “What is this stuff?”
    “Grain structure identifies a solid polyhedral.”
    “I understand Bainbridge, a many-sided crystal but composed of what?”
    “Allotropic indium antimonite, a compound of indium and antimony. . .”
    “Right again Bainbridge, it’s used in infrared missile guidance systems and infrared astronomy.”
    Bentley pushes Bainbridge to one side. “Truth be known, it’s a bloody blivet—two stone of shit in a fourteen-pound bag. No matter what a bloke does, he will get dirty but I credit the Queen’s slackers for one bit. The wankers isolated a phosphor havin’ atoms arranged in a three-dimensional repetitive pattern.” Bainbridge shakes Bentley’s hand before speaking. “Atoms change position in direct proportion to the frequency of light illuminating them.”
    Iris raises hers arms, gesturing for mercy before Bainbridge offers an attempted rescue. He tells her a phosphor is a substance emitting visible light in response to ultraviolet radiation. Iris is lost but gets it after I offer the analogy of embedded laundry detergent phosphors in a T-shirt under a black light’s UV source. Bainbridge is in my face again.
    “No! The frequency range would be from 7.5 x 1014 Hertz to 3 x 1016 Hertz.”
    “Bloody hell! Use ya crust, Double Deck. Tis no matter?crust of bread is head, Mr. Suskin.”
    A curious smile creeps from the corner of Bainbridge’s mouth. “Biologically speaking the phosphor atoms mimic live cells with UV light being the hormone directing mutation as needed into any electronic component.” We are stunned; Bainbridge isn’t what we expected. He possesses eloquence and is more than a guinea pig in a vital intergalactic effort. He can be temperamental and unfortunately very childlike.
    I reminded the group that General Ramey, head of the 8th. Air Force and headquartered at Fort Worth, denied the existence of aliens even as they were being dissected at Wright Patterson Air Base. Autopsy footage exposed colorless hollow tubes capable of transporting light waves. Those robots formed a wireless network that permitted all three aboard the crashed UFO in New Mexico to communicate with each other and a suspected guidance system beyond Earth’s orbit allowing for wormhole travel.
    The Bentleys learn that Bainbridge’s telepathic power in only one of the many special brain functions that will become tools for the betterment of all, but our eyes always return to the clock on the mantel. Now all eyes follow Bainbridge who commandeers the chair before Bentley’s computer. He reaches into his backpack and dumps photographs on the floor. One photograph shows the Tunstall vicarage where English police hold back onlookers at the driveway leading to the vicarage’s chained gate. He must begin transmitting soon and stop playing.
    The next photograph shows a close-up of Bentley peeking through curtains as electrodes and wires dangle before an unshaven face. The last photo is a close-up of the satellite dish atop the white steeple taken from space. Iris puts a cigarette in her mouth and taunts Bainbridge as Bentley tosses his old cranial harness and electrode leads aside to utter
“Overdue this last bit. Yanks muckin’ about for improved communication employing Double Deck.
Dr. Who only dreams of crossin’ a space-time dimension. . .warped though it be.”
    Bainbridge disconnects the keyboard. He connects a small plastic tube with an illuminated bulb to the keyboard’s cable and reconnects. Delicate fingers position Bentley’s captive mouse on top of the cigar box. Iris holds her nose as the mouse rocks on twitching legs with a turned head.
    “Clyde, can you smell an odd raspberry?”
    “Indeed, Double Deck’s raspberry tart. The lad is nervous.”
    “Queer, a meteor lays dinosaurs low yet a mouse evolves into us and we rule the Earth.”
    “Adam and Eve it, tis a go-round if Double Deck gets this bit wrong.”
    Bainbridge smiles and inserts the small bulb up his nose. The ripple of lighted flesh between his left eye and nose plots the transit of the catheter. The computer monitor displays a cascading line of spiked radio frequencies that dance in fluctuating columns. We know what metal strips from the 1947 crash in New Mexico contain and marvel at the ease with which Bainbridge inserts a matrix of ultra-thin oval-shaped metal wafers in each eye before adjusting his blindfold.
    He is cooperating, so a sense of relief calms my nerves. I wonder what it would be like to share this creature’s genius before the image on the monitor stands my hair on end. A chilling of skin brings goose bumps, swallowing a dry mouth, shallow breathing a speedy heart. Defense Ministry officialdom ensues across the monitor, “Authenticated Extraterrestrial Memorandum Transmission Approved.” Communication to 2012 UB142 will begin shortly.
    Would the Earth, a world running out of coal and oil, convert light to power on an unimaginable scale using Bainbridge’s talents or would it destroy satellites, ships at sea, tanks and millions of poor souls? I have seen defused ICBMs after the UFOs visited land bases, attack subs and SAC bombers—so have the Russians. Some venerate Dr. Tesla and his Macroscopic Particle Beam Projector but we will make the right choice and use sun power for energy not death.
    My cell phone rings as I see the danger Bainbridge exposes emerge on the monitor. Fog lies over a glass sea. From high up a thin candescent slice broadens and narrows again on the sea’s far horizon.
    “Iris, tis Orford Ness Lighthouse. . .our Suffolk coast.”
    “Can ya hear them?”
    We listen spellbound to the lapping of waves on rocks before the stone tower discharging a shepherding beam. Two boys toss stones. Then a distant rumble turns heads. It’s an approaching helicopter. Inside the helicopter a pilot tunes the radio and somehow we talk via my cell phone. Bainbridge smile tells me he is pleased.
    “This is Suskin, who’s pursuing?”
    “Portuguese first, then the Germans. We locked on at Portsmouth. . .visuals and radar.”
    “Did anybody tag that UFO?”
    “Light and magnetic field match the Rendelsham 1980 UFO on your NSA’s Alpha Roster.”
    The Bentleys embrace one another. From our present vantage point, they witnessed the sightings that occurred thirty-two years ago between the twin bases of R.A.F Woodbridge and U.S.A.F. Bentwaters and they themselves attempted communication with aliens on a primitive software communication system. Bainbridge is multiplies the number of images on the screen. We see Air Force Delta Force jeeps with mobile searchlights fanning out through in a pasture towards us.
    An Air Force eighteen-wheeler with rotating antennas crosses the pasture toward the edge of the vicarage. It’s a Mobile Command Center (MCC) with twin armor-plated turrets that house TV cameras. An Air Force Policeman (AP) riding shotgun inside the eighteen-wheeler holds a sub machine gun. It has forty 4.6mm x 30mm cartridges in a magazine. His microphone goes live and Bainbridge taps his skull with his right index finger to take credit.
    “Suskin, the British police appear to be following. I’ve got blue lights in the mirrors.”
    “Relax, that’s what they do. . .we are in Britain.”
    Within minutes, static grows on the hand-held radios of a cluster of uniformed APs surrounding three British patrol cars. Bobbies sit in a small circle offering pistols. A smiling AP rips film from a constable’s camera waving a sub machine gun. “Sit tight, those Walther popguns are in good hands.” Bentley slowly lowers his cap to cover his face. Thick, bristled stubble makes an almost audible soft scrapping sound. “Cor blimey! Look at that.”
    A red light, ten to fifteen feet off the ground moves through the trees slowly leading the pursuers. My knees buckle when I see a reddish glow has colored the top frame of the vicarage’s opened window. Has Bainbridge high jacked my operation? As if to answer that question, the monitor image closes in on the MCC and even passes through its metal side. Airmen bathed in red light sit before a bank of TV monitors and computer screens. One face is tense looking up at a uniform with twin stars. The general’s voice increases tension.
    “Are my UV searchlights ready?”
    “Yes Sir, but we lost the radios. Frequency interference from that red light. . .a UFO.”
    “I want volunteers.”
    A red light, ten to fifteen feet off the ground moves through the trees as wary airmen step down exiting the MCC’s metal steps to follow disappearing taillights.
    “It went in a thousand feet out, Sir.”
    “Kill your lights. I’ll take portable light and a handheld camera.”
    We watch an airman extend a small antenna and clip a shoulder microphone into place on the general’s uniform. A stonewall at the farm’s periphery expands on the screen showing a cultivated field, vicarage and barn. Animals raise an alarm as a green ball of light shoots over the field. We hear the general. “Let’s toast some circuits!” UV searchlights capture the UFO in their beam but we can’t see them. “Look, Iris their portable torches put me Dad’s Francis Aldis signaling torch to shame. . .rotten buggers, this lot. Double Deck, do you fancy their UV beams? Wee mischief to muck up atoms, it tis.”
    We track a red ball of light that breaks into five white objects scattering in the black sky. The edge of the vicarage suddenly glows in white light. The night sky shows three white crescent-shaped lights as the general’s radio barks. “We got blue, green and red lights and they’re really zipping.” The monitor morphs from many to one menacing image. A glowing ball closes in at a high speed only to stop in the distance. A light beam shoots from the ball to the general’s camera.
    “God damn it! They fried it! Get me another handheld on double-time.”
    “Yes, Sir.”
    Bainbridge directs the sound and video broadcasts while moving around the monitor. Each step he takes becomes a struggle as if he is treading in a deep batch of sluggish cement. He grins but it exposes his grotesque yellow teeth and a snarl forms. Then it happens. The headless mouse wiggles in his hand and Bainbridge spits blood and mashed tissue at the floor.
    My worst fear is realized; Bainbridge will run out of time. We shield our faces from a flash of white light bursting through the window. An expanding bubble of light envelopes Bainbridge. Numbers on my cell phone blink 23:30. Minutes from the feared event, Bainbridge is compacted into a multi-colored ball: violet, cyan, magenta, green, yellow, blue and red.
    “Bentley, what’s he doing?”
    “Visible light is electromagnetic radiation. Double Deck is muckin’ with frequency.”
    “Damn you. . .give me an American, scientific answer!”
    “Double Deck is up the electromagnetic scale way beyond the 400-790 terahertz range.”
    “Look at the monitor. Is that Bainbridge that I see tumbling in a vortex?”
    “Leave em’ a bleedin’ message if you must know, Double Deck has gone to gamma rays.”
    Bentley is terrified. His face exudes horror as his eyes search the monitor, but he finds no comfort. “He shifted himself into the high end. We can’t see gamma rays. His strong nuclear force tis fightin’ the electromagnetic force.” We watch the tunnel twist as the NSA interrupts the British Air Ministry in an attempt to shut down transmission. “Initiating Shutdown Sequence echoes in the tense vicarage.”
Somehow the monitor abruptly carries retinal images from Bainbridge’s covered eyes.
    We see a fringe of light expand into a colorful vista. We pass a moon. I somehow know this place and mouth the word silently. . .Santui. The Bentleys nod; they too share my knowledge. It is not barren like our moon but covered with blue oceans, green forests and amber deserts. Just over Santui’s horizon is a gigantic globe—Earth on an immense scale. Mountains unfold before our eyes and we follow a small river gliding down toward a distant city.
    We hover just above the moving water’s surface and see an elegant fish leap toward the sky to swallow a butterfly. The fish’s iridescent scales shimmer against a purple sky to affirm the purity of an unexpected Eden. The river will pass close to the pink structures that seem familiar to us. Yes, we see them clearly now: pink Tibetan-like buildings, marvelous towers, aqueducts fashioned with care and a surprise. A satellite dish gathers unknown data for inhabitants of Gorshon, but how do we know its name?
    Forgotten in minutes are the hours that gripped us in abject terror. They will not come to cleanse the Milky Way of Earth’s contaminating billions. No thinking person will ever again believe naysayers who gather intelligence and plot menacing scenarios using chi-square distributions. The human race defined as a contagion requiring elimination? I shutter realizing my own gullibility. Bainbridge functions on a distant planet, a super-human carrying a message of peace and love. The thought is awe-inspiring.
    “Ta, Double Deck, but shun rodent heads and chew Mum’s Marzipan sweets.”
    “Gorshon will be useful it is billions of years older than Earth. We’ll learn so much.”
    “Are ya daft, Suskin? Kitty Hawk’s Yanks flew bicycle bits—decades later your Battle Taxi threatens Tunstall Village. They will do us harm, mind my words, lads.”
    I know the planet at the center of M-31 is five and one-half billion years old; we will never catch up whizzing around our star. At this moment, I wonder why Bainbridge chose to exterminate a timid deer mouse. The screen has a flashing red border and the image comes into sharp focus when a fuzzy crowd rushes toward us. I stare at an oversized inhabitant. His broad back is covered in brown fur. His swollen belly is white. The tail is black with a white underside. Huge feet covered in white fur reduce a pint-sized Bainbridge to blood-covered remnants.



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