First year at the Cosmos Nursery School

I just got back from my latest foraging.

There's not much left of the discount retail store other than useless TV's and
radios, and no one wants those. The clothes and shoes and tools from the gardening
section and blankets and sheets are all long gone. There's still some loose lumber
from the home improvement section and most hand held computer like devices are
still sitting on the shelves, at least those that weren't grabbed in the beginning
when the TRIP happened.

There's no electricity anymore and the batteries won't last long enough to justify
taking the risk for the extra weight and danger on slowing me down with my stash
as I make my run into Merriman junction and then back to my hideout in the hills.

Two months ago, Merriman Junction was a nice small town of 4,000 or so people and
I was making a steady but not spectacular living as the local handyman.

You know, I still am a handyman but now, my only customer is Jerod Perman… that’s
me.

The town is somewhere down to 600 people or so. Were the only somewhat sane
survivors left and every one of us is waiting for the damn other shoe to be
dropped.

As I was telling Clem and Cecy the other day when I visited their home,” you guys
ought to take some precautions and squirrel away like I have so at least when THEY
come, you won't be easy hunting."

That's what I said and it sure makes sense to me but Cecy just tossed back that
pretty mop of red hair and looked at me with a squint, as she had long ago lost
her last pair of glasses, and now she just kind of squeezes those pretty sunny
blue eyes shut when she's looking down her freckled nose at me lately with her 18
years of wisdom.

Of course, who am I to talk as I'm only topping 30 years but I have to tell you
that with the constant worry, I've been feeling closer to 90 and I'm sure that
Clem, Cecy's Dad,
is pushing 120 in his mind.

Actually, I'm thinking the town may be down to 598 now as I thought I saw two
GAZERS standing on a far away hill about early noon the other day, but when I
finished my latest scavenging after a couple of hours of grabbing up some canned
meats and fruits that had somehow been overlooked at Carols Grocery down at Long
and Vine street and was heading back to my hidey hole over at the Park recreation
storage shed which is small and solid and suits my purposes just being concrete
walls and floors and all, I looked over and didn't see the GAZERS any more.

Of course, GAZERS can easily start to wander and since they have their eyes only
looking upwards, assuming they can still see after a couple of days of staring
straight up at the sun, they can easily walk off a ledge or the wild dogs can get
them.

GAZERS are like stunned sheep with half the sense of sheep and they might as well
put a big bulls eye on their bodies, what with their drooling mindless walking and
gazing and walking again until the lucky ones just collapse from no water or food
and quietly die still on their backs and still looking up for the star ship to
arrive from the galaxy deeps.

In the first few days after the TRIP, the GAZERS were an item of news and
discussion on TV, that is while the TV’s were still working that is, and the local
social and medical
services would quickly scoot up to a Gazer and help them into the vans and busses,
depending on how many there were, and off the GAZERS would go to be tended and
cared for by society.

But that was when we still had a caring and cohesive social structure, which has
long since unraveled like everything else has.

The weird thing is that that anyone can become a Gazer at any time and at very
inopportune moments like a cop glancing up at the sky from his patrol car and
wham, he crashes into a brick building because his eyes are locked on the sky and
no where else.

Me personally, I'll never forget the scene on TV of forty or so GAZERS standing

rigid with their eyes locked on the sky while the rain fell on their eyeballs and
none of them blinked. Catatonic shock is what the doctors called it, and that
day, a week after the TRIP, you could just see that famous news anchor trying to
keep his cool while reporting live from the national monument in Washington DC
where the GAZERS had gathered.

You know, once I remember reading about a bunch of anthropologists who discovered
some Stone Age tribe on a remote pacific island.

These tribes lived in peace with one another and apparently thought they were high
on the totem pole until the scientists showed up with their magical gas lighters,
and flashlights and video cameras.

It seems the natives just could not take the news that they were basically
considered as primitives by the scientists and when the Science team came back a
year later for a follow up, they found the tribes warring with one another and in
a "social meltdown',' according to the report of the scientists.

I think that is exactly what has happened to the tribe of humanity.

We had a visit, which shocked the hell out of us, and what's worse, we never saw
any aliens or ships. We only saw their power.

I'll never forget it. It was about 6AM Pacific Time and I was out working on a new
swing for the Ellerbe kids and listening to KJAY, my favorite soft rock station
when all of a sudden this weird, and I mean weird and really strange sound started
playing on the station.

It was as if thousands of distant bells were ringing with an overlay of a low

thrumming vibration that would raise and lower its pitch and then there was a
sound like rain falling on a tin roof. It was very relaxing, while at the same
time making my neck hairs raise.

Every station on the dial had this crazy sound playing, so I put down my hammer
and walked back into the side door of my rental home next door, and turned on the
television.

And there it was.

On every station was a picture of Earth and the Moon. I kept waiting for some
expert to come on and explain to the viewers what we were seeing, but no anchors
showed up and no commercials or nothing. Just that peaceful and beautiful scene
of the Moon orbiting the Earth and all the while the alien sound was playing.

I think I just stood there with my mouth open for at least 10 minutes until I
remembered to sit down on the nearby coffee table.

I may be a handyman but I did take some college courses. One of them being
astronomy and I kept thinking that to pick up the moon actually orbiting the Earth
meant that the camera was at least a million miles out to be able to catch the
whole scene.

It was right about then that I began to think that maybe this wasn't our doing or
anybody else in the world. Those tinkling, chiming bells backed with the lulling
sound of rain on a metal roof began to put me into a very relaxed almost asleep
mode and it was all I could do to occasionally wrench my eyes away to check my
wrist watch for the time.

Then all at once my viewpoint began to recede away from the Earth and Moon and
that's when the incredible TRIP began.

Over the next two unforgettable hours we were given a tour of our solar system and
would swoop down on each planet at about 200 feet or so and then move along the
surface at the speed of a slow run for a few moments then wham off we'd go
shooting back out and into space.

If the planet, like Saturn, had moons, then by damn, we visited every one of them.

Plunging into Jupiter's wildly tossing skies, we saw what had to be some kind of
huge floating life form about the size of our moon which actually then flapped its
stupendous wings and flew out of our sight. Then I was staring at our sun and
zooming towards it at mind awakening speed and then suddenly we were orbiting our
star, all the while huge flickering gas jets and solar storms were raging about
us.

I could only imagine what the world's astronomers and astrophysicists were
thinking as the world's hand was being held while humanity was being escorted
across the galactic street, so to speak, and we were being dropped off at the
cosmos nursery school.

The stunning crescendo was reached when the sun became smaller and smaller as our
collective eyes drew away from it until it was only a cool distant speck and then
nothing could be seen of it and we were alone in a vast and humbling eternity of
stars.

Even those began to fade as we continued to draw further and further back and with
a gasp, I saw our Milky Way from above the plane of the ecliptic. I may have been
drooling by this time, I don't remember. No one does.

The final shock came as our vision kept withdrawing in what seemed to be real
time, and we watched our precious galaxy begin to fade away and with a stunning
shock, found ourselves in intergalactic space where other galaxies, like nearby
neighbors, were on all sides of us.

The bells were ringing loudly and the rain on the roof was like a torrent of water
and the humming vibration began to rise and rise until wham we were back and the
stunned anchor people were staring back at me and looking like fish that had been
tossed out of the water and gasping for air.

Well, over the next two days, I can tell you that humanity, like that stone age
tribe, slowly but inexorably went collectively mad, as in nuts and off the wall
insane.

Of course, everyone began to watch the skies sure that THEY were going to show up
at any time. But after a couple of weeks of a no show, it was like waiting for the
other shoe to be dropped by your upstairs neighbor. You clearly heard the first
shoe hit the floor but the second just never happens and it’s all you can do to
not walk up the stairs and say, "drop the damn shoe would you!”

I really have to hand it to THEM.

How to rattle a world. Just make an undeniable contact but don't show yourself.
Make it to clear to the contactees that their technology is at the level of a log
floating across the pond and then show them around the cosmotic neighborhood.

Then just disappear and let the primitives sort it out amongst themselves.

Perhaps in another 40 years or so, we might have the other shoe dropped and find
out who THEY are. By that time, all the misfits of humanity will have long since
disappeared. At least that's the way I look at it and I think that Clem and Cecy
might just agree with my conclusions.

I suppose from a viewpoint of a psychologist, watching how different people

reacted to the reality of the TRIP might have initially proven to be a fascinating
study in human mentalities, but from my viewpoint, watching the microcosm of
Clem's family slowly fall apart, like the macrocosm of the human family across the
world falling apart, was not a pretty sight.

Starting with Emily, Clem's wife and Edward, Cecy's younger brother, their family
oneness over a period of about 4 weeks just went to screaming hell.

I think I am safe in saying that out of 10 people, there were easily six who
wanted to know" how did THEY find us?" and then figured that it was time to put
out the camp fires and go dark so THEY would lose us in the vast galactic night.

That meant that television and radios, satellite uplinks…. any communication tower
or ground up links that gave off a frequency strong enough to emanate into space
had to be immediately shut down.

Radio stations and television stations soon found themselves being mobbed and
bombed by frantic HIDERS as the press called them.

What was worse was if you happened to have a home satellite dish or some
other proof that you were receiving incoming frequencies, local HIDER chapters
would pay you a visit, and in no uncertain terms tell you to shut off your TV or
else.

Panicked and terrified normally law abiding citizens mobbed the local power grids
and shut them down. Out on the hills, the big electric towers were being blown
up, and even dams were being attacked in order to destroy the turbines and the
generators.

Of course, governments across the world attempted to stop this but then again, a
lot of the government officials were secret HIDERS and the police and armies
attempting to guard the sources of electricity and frequency origination were
filled with HIDERS and GAZERS and TRUTH BRINGERS.

Not to mention that some of the staff at the radio and television stations were
also made up of HIDERS and GAZERS and TRUTH BRINGERS.

The TRUTH BRINGERS, again named by the press, were people across the globe who
believed that the TRIP was brought to humanity courtesy of Satan and that it was
all a big lie, for surely humanity was made in God's image and was the only
intelligent life with a soul in the universe.

So, if the message is a lie, then destroy the messenger. That's television,
radios, cell phone towers and the Internet as the TRIP was played again and again
on countless web sites.

The formula was lethal and in less time then it takes to tell, the world
communications ceased. Period. End of story.

Police and army officers and soldiers either left outright or turned into GAZERS,
or
TRUTH BRINGERS or HIDERS, and mutinies and rebellions spread across the world.

People are people are people, no matter their uniform, and THEY knew that and
played us like a terrible song.

And this atonal, screeching melody with the soul wrenching lyrics was playing at
all levels right down to the nub of society, the family.

Emily, a wonderful gentle woman with a bright smile and always giving a helping
hand to those of us less fortunate, and always with an infectious laughter ringing
in their home
was the first in the family to plunge into the hell pit of insanity caused by the
TRIP.

It was getting towards dusk and the shadows in the kitchen were starting to gather
in svvirling pools. I vvas just about done installing a new broom closet door
when I asked Emily to turn on the kitchen light so I could see what I was doing.

" I don't think so Jerod,' she replied in her soft lilting voice.

About that time Clem walked into the kitchen and stopped by the refrigerator. At
first, he didn’t notice that Emily and I were just staring at one another. All of
a sudden I had this cutting pain in my soul, as I knew what was coming next.

This was only a few days after the TRIP and the reports about the effects of the
TRIP were beginning to be noted and commented on, and a few HIDERS had already
stated their views publicly and then quickly disappeared with no follow-up
interviews, and in the case of some of the celebrity actors who had clearly made
their Hiding cause known, they just simply backed away from work and from society.

Clem, all unknowing, opened the refrigerator for some mango juice and the light
spilled out into the shadowed kitchen like the flare of a campfire in a deep
forest.

Emily whirled and slammed the refrigerator shut almost smashing Clem's arm in the
process.

The mango bottle dropped to the floor and crashed into fragments of glass across
the stone tiles.

“ We have to keep the lights out Clem so THEY can’t find us you know,” whispered
Emily

Clem looked in my direction.

" Flip the light Jerod in the closet and let's get this glass cleaned up”

" Don't touch that light Jerod," ordered Emily in a hissing voice that I had never
heard before.

I looked over at Clem who was now staring at his wife of 22 years with a dawning
realization sweeping his face.

About this time, Cecy waltzed into the kitchen with her sprightly walk.

" Hey everybody," she chirped in that bright sassy voice of hers, " what's
everyone doing standing around in the dark?”

" Watch the glass Cecy," I called out as I noted she was wearing flip-flops.

" Jerod, why don't you head home and come back tomorrow to finish this okay?" said
Clem as he slowly walked to Emily and put his arm around her and began to lead
her from the room.

"How about candles Em? THEY can't see us if we only have a few candles about
right?" soothed Clem as he opened the swinging door from the kitchen, that I had
installed a few months back, and walked her into the dining room.

Cecy turned to me with a sob and before I knew it she was in my arms crying away.

"Oh God Jerod is mom now a Hider?"

" I don't really know Cecy," I said as I escorted her across the floor with the
glass crunching beneath my boots, " but you better light up some candles and keep
the lights turned off until you know different."

Cecy slowly nodded and then walked into the dining room and towards the center of
the house to find some candles.

I just shook my head and turned back into the kitchen where I gathered up my tools
by touch and memory where I had left them and then I just ghosted from their
house.

It seems that if you pull the wrong thread on a sweater, then no matter how well
knitted, the whole thing will relentlessly unwind, and that is basically what
happened to the fabric of humanity.

Day by day the whirlpool of dissolution grew, and soon we were all caught up in it
one way or another.

About ten days after the TRIP, radio stations stopped broadcasting, and television
was completely gone within another two weeks. The military and the National Guard
were continuously riven with mutinies, and I heard that the President became a
GAZER one day in the Rose Garden and that the Vice President, a closet HIDER, had
quietly replaced him and of course, she then quietly worked to cease all frequency
broadcasts.

Emily declared that their home was to remain “silent” as she called it, and no
more radio or television was allowed, and only candles burned dimly through the
night.

She left in the early dawn a few days later. Her note to Clem said that she
needed to protect us and had joined the Guardians who were the most aggressive
HIDERS in the country and who had already issued flyers stating that they had shut
down the Boulder Dam turbines and generators.

Clem had stood for a long moment at the doorway that morning and just sadly stared
down the two lane paved road that Emily had walked. I offered to go with him to
try to find her and bring her back but he just slowly shook his head.

Clem took one last look down that long empty view and then turned around and went
back inside. The screen door closed behind him and I could take the hint. That's
when I decided to find a more secure place to live and to start seriously
stockpiling food and supplies.

Edward came home one day spouting about the TRIP being a tool of the devil and
that it was science and technology that enabled the great lie to be delivered to
humanity.

Of course, by that time it was a moot point, as we had no more electricity and the
nasty technological devices would not run as there were no more batteries being
made as that takes human beings and… you get the picture?.

That also meant no more gas pumps functioning, which in turn took care of
those of us with internal combustion vehicles. The lucky ones with diesel engines
were able to keep their cars running a little longer on olive oil and anything
that was made up of hydrocarbons that would burn as fuel.

I haven't seen a plane or helicopter for weeks now. News is really spotty, as no
one knows what is happening outside of one of us being able to take a ride to the
next town to find out the latest.

Horses are back in demand and I broke into the County library the other day to
find a book on making carriages and buggy's.

As I said, there's more HIDERS and GAZERS and TRUTH BRINGERS then there’s us
regular every day people, and you can bet that they are watching us with their
keen and wildly glancing eyes, with the HIDERS making certain that no one powers
up a generator to beam out a radio signal and the TRUTH BRINGERS working away to
take us all back to a pre technology era, and the GAZERS just staring upwards at
nothing.

At night, I lie awake in my little concrete hideaway listening to the cool

stillness of the technological darkness descending like a heavy curtain over the
globe, and just wait for the other shoe to be dropped.

END
Hughes Meanderings: Copyright 2008