I was hired onto the base as an aircraft analyst, which wasn't really what I was trained for.  I am, by trade, an entomologist--I study bugs for a living--but I was hired for my "expertise" in the field of unidentified flying objects.

I tried to tell them, my "expertise" was limited to the perimeter of my ranch, as that was the only place I'd ever seen the things, or made any other kind of contact.

But regardless, they marked me as a person of interest, and furthermore promised that my nagging federal debts would be evaporated pending my cooperation, so here I am.

The ride out was interesting.  I passed gradually from a cool mountain side, blanketed with evergreens, to areas of slightly more civilization, to, finally, a land of vast, flat, tan dirt.

Accommodations were shit, of course.  I had a windowless cube in which I spent most of my time.  Activities included sleeping on a squeaky mattress under a scratchy, pea-green cover, reading on-base literature (mostly Tom Clancy), masturbating on said squeaky mattress, and drawing pictures of the UFOs I had seen and was somehow expected to comment upon at the military's behest.

The first week there was nothing, and I mean nothing, for me to do.  No aircraft, no anomalies of the weather, not even so much as a good rumor passed through.  I was kept in the dark about the urgency of my situation.  The scientists didn't talk to me, like arrogant Parisians, and the MPs weren't allowed to talk to me, period.

But ten days into my stay on the base, a pair of jarheads summoned me to the radio room.  Everybody talked to me, then.

They talked to me about flight trajectories, projectile physics, the arc of descent, and even rate of travel as pertinent to distorting the nature of time.  I never claimed to know anything about space aliens, but I think all their information confused them more than simple observation ever could.  

Maybe that's why they hired me.  To be an untrained observer?

After deflecting some babble in the radio room, and staring dully at three nondescript green blips on the sonar console, I was left with no conception of size or space.  No idea of context.

I was taken outside, expecting to see a trio of stars that might jiggle in the distance.  Hardly anything to compare to my previous sightings, which had even included one landing, but--

The view from outside was phenomenal!  Three distinct orbs seemed to be hovering no more than a hundred feet from the fence!  Furthermore, there were yellow bands of light around their midsections, which seemed to be turning slowly.  

The night air was totally still.  To my left, General Trevors bit his knuckle, and then said, "Well isn't that just the damnedest thing."

"You really don't get an idea of how impressive this is from inside the radio room," I said, hoping my tone was benign.  I added, "...sir."

"Yer right, son.  I've always said, yuh can't allow a machine to do a man's job.  A machine's got its place, but a machine ain't got eyes like a man has got.  Yessir, direct observation is the key here, I think."

I stayed silent, quietly hoping that this general would never be in charge of anything larger than his own backyard.  A military general who distrusts technology?  

Well, I'm sure he's got his reasons.  Maybe his grandfather was a scout in the cavalry or something.

"How often does this kind of thing occur around here?" I asked, my eyes still fixed on the trio of orbs, which now seemed to be rising and falling slowly, like buoys in the sky.

"Five years ago we averaged four unidentifiable sightings a month.  Three years ago it was ten a month.  This year, so far, we've averaged sixteen sightings every month.  And not one of them is readily identifiable."

"So your answer is... increasingly?"

"That's right."

A low whistle pierced the relative silence, and all three orbs disappeared into the distance so fast they left an after-image in my eyes.

The general left me to a group of nattering analysts, who converted my words to polysyllabic categorical jargon, and then passed me on to a pair of MPs, who walked me back to my bed and bid me "Nighty night."

That night was the first night I had mosquitoes in my room.

*  *  *

Most people are prone to kill mosquitoes, but not me.  I happen to think bugs and insects are some of the most beautiful creations on the face of the planet--creatures of instinct and practicality.  Mosquitoes largely feed on nectar, though female mosquitoes need supplementary protein to lay eggs, and thus turn to drinking blood.

In relating this to you, I am reminded of my ex-wife.  Her fetishistic bent was gardening, so she might have said, "When you've planted the seeds, throw away the package."

That's me.

She used to spray mantises in the garden with poison.  I would remind her that:

A.) we are planning to eat that poison-laden tomato,

B.) if you hate bugs, you shouldn't have married an entomologist, dear.

In retrospect, I think the attraction was that our parents had opposed our relationship through high school, and that Brenda had the seedy inner workings of a Madagascar hissing cockroach.  She had a "disturbance hiss" and a "fighting hiss," which were transmuted into various forms of nagging about me, life and everything, but basically she was the same as a hissing cockroach.

Regardless, that kind of thing really turned me on back then.

Anyway.

*  *  *

I spent several weeks in relative isolation, occasionally drifting over to the radio room to offer my unqualified opinions on the nature of the UFOs, which sometimes changed shape and behavior.  None of the sightings at the base were as impressive as those on my ranch, though I wondered if I was just feeling jaded by homesickness, and resolved to actually apply my attention to the task of "aircraft analysis."

Every time, I would let something slip that triggered a switch in General Trevors' imagination, and his jowels would part in a grin.  He would clap his meaty hand on my back and tell me, "Son, we're going to make history with this."

I thought, We'd have already made history if you'd just tell the public, but I figured I had better not say that out loud.

Seemed to me the only thing historical about what we were doing was the historically-unprecedented waste of resources and taxpayer money that composed this program.  There were entire storehouses filled with "direct observation" that far preceded my time on the base.  What was the point of me?

*  *  *

If you look at bugs and insects, you can learn a lot about people.  For instance, ants are constantly busy because they need to create new accommodations for new members of the colony.  If the queen ceased giving birth, the ant community would become static.

Termites build veritable castles, clumpy brown Death Star-like masses in the crotches of trees, with tunnels running off in every direction.  They build these things out of their own spit and feces.

I'm sure you've met people whose lives are nothing without their families.  I'm sure you've met people who live in a world of their own shit.

I'm sorry, that was lame.  I used to care about these kinds of things, but lately I have been feeling like a cosmic ant.  Sure I could carry a hundred times my body weight... but what fucking anthill would I carry it back to?

Maybe I'm just thinking of ants because there's so god damn many of them in my room.

*  *  *

Over time, General Trevors taught me a lot about what they did and didn't know of these UFOs.  They knew that the UFOs would respond to flashing lights and Morse code, but not according to the actual messages broadcast in the code.  Rather, they would react to certain patterns, dot-dot-dot, dash, dot-dot-dash.  Certain patterns would elicit complex aerial displays, in which the spacecraft would intermingle, weave between each other, and, for lack of a better word, "dance."

They also knew that certain types of music, when broadcast by radio over the general vicinity, were more likely to produce sightings than others.  For instance, the week they broadcast Beethoven over the base, there were at least three individual sightings each night.  When they broadcast The Cure, however, the week's total sightings dropped to six.

*  *  *

One day we saw something which topped anything that ever happened on my ranch.  It was the middle of the afternoon, hot as hell, and I was in the mess hall having a glass of ice water.  That's me, I drink ice water.

A couple of MPs burst through the red double doors and said, "It's happening again!"

Outside, the sky was blue, but there seemed to be stars out.  Or I thought they were stars at first, but really each was a tiny glowing point of light--an aircraft.  There must have been hundreds, if not thousands.  

The last time a bunch of lights blew my mind that badly, I was on acid at a Pink Floyd lightshow.

The air was filled with a sound like a person making the "V" sound, a sort of buzzing that seemed to carry with the wind.  It was ambient, all around us.  There was no one source--it was clearly coming from the sky.  

I recognized one of the MPs, who at this point was standing aside me, jaw agape.  I said, "What do you think of all this, Jordan?"  He was one of the few MPs who would talk to me, so I generally jumped at any chance to squeeze in thirty seconds of conversation with another human being.

Jordan said, "I think we gotta stop bein' so damn stupid about all this.  I mean, look at these fuckers!  It only takes one or two to come look at us.  What does this mean?  Huh?"

"I don't know, man, I really don't."

"It means they're gettin' ready for war, that's what it means!  They've got an army up there!"

We spent a lot of time talking about that comment in the radio room.

*  *  *

It was General Trevors who came up with the idea to capture a ship, though he credited me with the idea repeatedly.  I think more people would have opposed the idea of making hostile action on an alien spacecraft if they hadn't all been going stir-crazy on that base for upwards of a decade.  I was still fresh to the tedium, so I suppose that's why I had some semblance of reasoning left.

I said, "What makes us think a projectile will do jack shit?  If they can move across space as fast as we know they do, what makes us think they won't just dodge a missile?"

General Trevors replied with some bullshit statistics about the missiles in his arsenal... nothing of which made me think they could catch up with a spacecraft going at the speed of time itself.

I eventually convinced them to lead off the attack with all kinds of EMPs, in the hopes that we could simply jam their mechanisms and force a crash-landing, and then hope that they didn't have any fucking disintegration rays, but ultimately the decision was final.

We would make an attempt at capturing an alien craft.

The whole thing reminded me of the researchers who sit in the jungle hunting Bonobos, an elusive and secretive, yet highly intelligent primate.  Bonobo research is slow and protracted, because it takes a field researcher many years to glean enough information to draw any conclusions.

General Trevors' plan now was like a frustrated Bonobo researcher charging the whole jungle with a pen knife in his hand.

At best, the things would run off, never to return again.

At worst, the cosmic jungle would retaliate, severely.

*  *  *

The actual attack didn't come about for another three weeks--so long, I almost thought the General would come to his senses and call it off.  But he didn't.  On the night of the 23rd, in either June or July, I forget, we had a sighting, and the General gave the signal.

It wasn't until that night that it occurred to me: the General might very well be doing this under the nose of the larger federal government.

In fact, I highly doubted such a rash action could possibly be sanctioned by a more rational higher-up.  That was when I really began to worry about how flimsy the General's plan might be.  Granted, I had helped design it, but that only made it flimsier.

But when the klaxon went off, all the MPs went to their stations, and I joined General Trevors in his bunker.

With him were two snobs in lab coats and a whole range of observational equipment.  One of the machines, I was certain, was broadcasting Beethoven.  Above us were two orbs, again with yellow rotating midsections.  

"Here it is, son," the General said to me, "history in the making."

There was a mad glint in his eye I had taken for imagination on previous occasions.  Maybe it was both.

I mused that only certain animals could have such a glint in their eye.  If General Trevors were a fly, his red compound eye would have been about as expressive as a rock.  But as it was, I could see every whim in the man's head, ricocheting off the walls of his skull in some manic storm.

He gave the command to launch the first wave of EMPs, and the scientists applied enormous sets of headphones and dickered around with buttons and notches.

To my amazement (and to General Trevors' disappointment), no missiles were launched, because the EMPs were a terrific "success."  Both orbs seemed to groan, the way a bridge must groan right before it gives, and they tipped towards each other in the sky.  Their midsections stopped spinning, and then stopped glowing, and then the two things fell to the ground with an anticlimactic "crunch."  

The deed was done.  MPs in hazmat suits swarmed the crash site, and cheers and applause were heard from the various bunkers around the base.  The General and I pulled on our hazmat helmets and joined them in the desert night.

As we approached, I noticed the MPs seemed to be looking at the ground.  They were stepping lightly, too, as if they were barefoot on hot pavement.  

And the ground seemed to be undulating... spilled fuel?  No...

No, the ground was blanketed with bugs and insects.  Millions and millions of bugs and insects.

They poured out of a gash in the side of the totaled aircraft, gushing and clambering over each other like a waterfall.  The ground was squishy with their tiny bodies, and each sickening footstep towards the ship meant another several alien insects dead.

I saw ants, roaches, caterpillars, beetles, all manner of arachnids--and lots of cicadas.  There were many more, but those were all I could focus on at the time.

The General said, "What the something something..." but his voice was muffled by the hazmat helmet.

I said, "Pardon, General?"

"I said, 'What the hell IS this??'"  He threw his arms in the air.

I bent down and put my fingers to the squirming ground.  Of all things, a Madagascar hissing cockroach crawled onto my glove.  I rose it to eye level.

The General rephrased his question: "Do YOU know what the hell this is?!"

I smiled.

"Gromphadorhina portentosa," I said.