In an eerie blue light, which seemed to dance hypnotically, a spherical silver object glimmered in the endless blackness of space. The object was cruising slowly high above a beautiful blue-green planet. The occupant admired the planet’s light blue aura encircling its sphere as the silver disc made its serene way through space.
Within the object was a lone humanoid. His only and best friend was the ship itself. The human was 150 years old and the ship was about 600. He was a teenager where he came from. He was considered a bit of a rogue even.
His parents had been very embarrassed when he had just helped himself to a deep-space alpha-energy ship. There was no property in their society but there were unwritten rules as to how things were shared. He had taken off around the galaxy without so much as a quick goodbye. It was this that had hurt his parents the most. His distraught father wondered what he had ever done wrong. Had they not always shown him love? The boy did not seem to enjoy the wild food expeditions or playing with the animals like their other children and he avoided the village meditations altogether. In fact, looking back, the only person he ever really related to was his grandma - and she was quite an oddity herself. In fact, she was a legend of discontent upon a planet famed for its enlightenment. Hevel worshipped her however and the poor boy had never been the same after her death.
Although his parents thought about him every day, it was now some time ago that he had disappeared and the village elders had thought it best to simply let him get it out of his system. It would all work out in the end they believed. Others, a noisy minority, had argued that he should be recaptured and have his personality forcibly reset. That was an unpopular measure and the technology had been abandoned millennia ago. People started to forget about him and the missing ship.
There were of course occasional rumours that Hevel's escape with the ship was part of some sinister, galaxy-wide conspiracy against the Confederation. Hevel didn’t have the wits to commandeer a ship on his own it was argued. In any case, he and the ship were gone, and, by the looks of it, gone for good.
When Hevel had been a child he had heard about a fairy-tale planet far, far away called, ‘The Earth’. Hevel’s now sadly departed, aged and wrinkly grandmother, who was then very nearly 900 years old had been a little bad-tempered too. The only person she wasn’t habitually rude to was her beloved grandson, Hevel. She excelled at storytelling and Hevel loved her dearly. She used to tell him folk tales about planet Earth. Strange monsters, enchanting demons, masquerading evil forces, slaves, zombies and brave heroes peopled this planet. Sadly, the planet’s citizens were enslaved by evil and had been killing each other for millennia. But it had not always been this way.
Hevel, with his mind for the macabre meant he loved hearing Grannie’s, 'Tales of the Dark Side: Planet Earth'. As he grew up he yearned to find out what it was like - if it really did exist. The elders used to imply planet Earth was not a real place. It was just some sort of twisted myth dreamt up by people who should know better. He wanted to find out for himself.
Throughout the galaxy there were great streams of alpha-force. This is the dark matter, the zero-point energy, the circulating life-force. It travels in massive currents throughout the galaxy and is the power behind most UFOs. After many years of patient, behind-the-scenes work, the now ‘teenage’ Hevel and the ship, which was called Aleya, rode the great, mid-galactic alpha-force stream. They stole away from the planet Gaiya to the distant Earth.
The ship was more like an intelligent surfboard than a technology-packed spacecraft. It breathed, had thoughts of its own and life-force pulsed in its twinkling fibre-optic veins. There were no electronics - Gaiya was a post-atomic civilisation and had no need for such technology. Besides which, ordinary electronics would not survive the ship’s intense energy fields.
The ship had no engine. It simply generated a powerful field that allowed it to skate upon the alpha-force streams that criss-cross the galaxy.
‘Aleya.’
‘Yes, Hevel.’
‘I want to be alone. Turn yourself off in here would you?’
‘You've come all this way to visit some backward pre-contact humanoid planet - just so you, “can be all alone?” she said mimicking Hevel’s high-tone voice.
Aleya was helping to edit Hevel's video. Hevel had stolen an unreleased, educational video from the Confederation, an association of 33 planetary cultures. Hevel's home planet, Gaiya, was the founding member of this confederation. The educational film was a most advanced form of video. They are multi-dimensional, have a direct emotional contact with the audience and are almost better than reality. Watching one is a little like falling madly in love. Hevel thought it was criminal such technology was used by his native Gaiyans to make documentaries. He was going to use it to rock a whole planet, hopefully to its very foundations.
Hevel was planning to create as much trouble as possible using his stolen and adulterated version of the Confederation video. The Confederation had intended to make public contact with planet Earth in the not-too-distant future. They were going to explain how Earth's history had been manipulated for millennia. How various extra-terrestrial, sometimes benign, but often malign and warring factions had been busily interfering with Earth humans for aeons. Military contact with some Earth forces had already been cemented of course - mostly by species with a less humane agenda than the Confederation. Of course no-one followed the universal directive about non-interference. Rather, just about every humanoid species in the galaxy had been busy interfering with the Earth for just about forever. The Earth was considered to be a rare jewel in the galactic crown – and everyone wanted a piece of it for their own.
It was anticipated that the Confederation's public contact would cause upheaval but that it would be for the best overall - if a cosmic war with Earth's current 'keepers' could be avoided. The last one had not gone too well for the Confederation, although it had added some spice to what would become the Vedas - the great books of the Hindus.
Hevel had other plans. The video was originally intended for potential contact-crew only. It was interplanetary recruitment. By beaming his version out early Hevel was hoping to embarrass the Confederation. It should also outrage the Earth humans and possibly start a war between the Confederation and the Earth's secret extra-terrestial rulers - who were possibly the most malign force in the galaxy. Hevel always aimed big when he looked to cause trouble.
Hevel had spent many long years secretly cementing his friendship with Aleya. An intelligent deep-space alpha-force ship cannot be stolen without her complicity. It took a dozen years to form such a ship, although she was not large in size being only twenty metres across. She had the classic silver disc-like appearance and sported flashing lights across the mid hull. Ships, such as she, were more grown than built. Aleya was a human-type mind living in an organic crystal computer interface within a living ship that was her body. She was grown from a living form of crystal-metal. It was a material that was solid and liquid at the same time and never needed polishing. The ship could also become physically invisible for short periods. Aleya was termed a silicate organism.
Hevel leant back in his chair, ‘Roll the video Aleya - please.’
Aleya sighed, waited a moment then darkened the lights. A wall lit up with the introductory credits.
‘Sorry Hevel, I need your attention,’ said Aleya suddenly in a serious tone.
‘I'm busy editing, or at least I will be if you didn’t keep interrupting,’ Hevel complained in his whining nasal voice.
‘I've got something you will want to see.’
‘Mhmm, we'll get back to this later then.’
Aleya stopped the video. Another wall fluoresced like water and then became transparent showing a breathtakingly beautiful view of the planet Earth. There in the middle of the entire panorama was a dirty great rocket-launched space capsule hurtling right at them.
‘Those Earthies cannot be serious. That’s so backward it’s mind-boggling,’ remarked Hevel, tapping his crossed legs in anger, ‘haven’t they got any alpha-force technology?’
‘They do, but they insist on keeping the old “crash, bang, whallop” stuff going as well for some strange reason,’ Aleya replied. ‘Incidentally, shall we get out of the way before they crash into us?’she asked. ‘We have but a few seconds till impact.’
‘I guess so. Let’s make ourselves known as it passes us by. In fact, let’s follow it. It must be going to that heap of scaffolding they call a space station.’
Just off to one side of Hevel and his best and only friend, Aleya, in a crowded little space capsule sat Jill, the UK's fifth official space-woman, and her two male colleagues.
‘OH-MY-GOD!’ she screamed. ‘Did you see that! It was a SPACESHIP.’
‘We're in a spaceship, Doh!’ said Jack, hitting his forehead theatrically. He was used to this sort of thing. ‘Don't bother telling control neither,’ he continued.
‘And why might that be?’ said Jill, indignant.
‘Star-ships don't exist unless the U.S. government says they do and it says they ain't. So just keep it zippo,’ replied Jack helpfully.
Igor, the Russian compatriot aboard the mission, muttered under his breath. He had seen stolen copies of Russian E.T. files. It was common knowledge in certain circles that every major government had stacks of files on UFOs. Some governments even had UFO denial departments dedicated to misinformation. These were usually the same governments that had UFO flying departments. They had teams dedicated to flying their stolen, 'gifted' or reverse engineered UFOs. Igor wasn’t bothered. He just hoped he could smuggle the implanted retina-camera back home without the interfering Americans finding out.
As Hevel and his best friend, the ship, followed a now somewhat spooked crew of one English-woman and two men in their pocket-sized, rocket-launched space capsule, something odd happened. A mind-entity by the name of Golden Frog entered the mind of the interstellar star-ship with a stealth-like smoothness. There was a slight blip in the ship’s sensor systems but then nothing - neither Aleya nor Hevel noted the intruder. The frog-like mind entity took some notes and made a few ‘corrections’. Golf rubbed his virtual hands in thinly disguised glee. He told the mind-spanner to non-integrate and quietly prepared to take his leave.
He hoped his bosses wouldn't find out about his little trip. He needed insurance. If things didn’t work out at the agency he could always hitch a lift with the living ship - if she was still in the vicinity of the solar system. Even Golf was impressed - very few galactic civilisations had developed, ‘Silicate Organism Ships’. Golf knew he couldn't trust those mind-control freaks at the agency. If this ship was reasonably near-by Golf would know. He could then teleport straight into her mind-storage systems and hide.
With the job complete, Golden Frog calculated that to go from the ship's mind-storage facility back to his host human mind on planet Earth would take him just over 66.6 Earth seconds - or thereabouts.