Chapter Forty-Seven
JONESY
1
Jonesy was in his mid-thirties. He had slid into a nomadic existence due to a much too prolonged Lysergic acid diethylamide entanglement. He understood that the drug made him a bit ‘raw’ as regards to the rest of humanity. As a result, he tended to avoid it as much as possible; the humanity, that is.
He had four daughters and a beautiful wife, Lori, who all got flushed out of his life along with the rest of normal reality. For years he was impossible to understand. The prolonged experience left him with a profoundly altered mind. Although he had ceased any kind of drug taking activity, except for cannabis, he was at that time still basically, ‘reconnectin with the planet, man.’
As he improved, Lori and the kids began to see him again, although no one was considering co-habitation yet. They had both adjusted to their freedoms and felt that, for the time being, their relationship was just fine the way it was. Besides, they were still married and they still loved each other.
Jonesy spent a lot of time out in the deserts of Utah and Wyoming flying around in his trike. He was the consummate gypsy. He was an electrician by trade and obtained work at every mine he stopped by. The pay was good and he could live for a week on a day’s pay if he needed to. He drove around in a small Winnebago and towed his trike and motorbike behind on a trailer. He owned an Air Borne, T-Light, single-seater trike. It ran a 22hp, Bailey four-stroke engine, which spun a Helix, all-carbon, twin-bladed pusherprop and flew a low-drag, lightweight, double-surface wing. The ‘rig’ had a Vne of 46 knots and a range of about 240 kilometres. The trike was designed for motor-off soaring. It was light and efficient, and Jonesy could soar thermals in it all day when he wanted to. And that was the big passion in his life, to be coring thermals thousands of feet above the deserts of Wyoming, ‘an feelin the freedom’.
2
He was lying in the shade of a low tree in an empty paddock by the river next to his Winnebago and trike. It was stinking hot and he was drifting off to sleep when a bright flash in the sky startled him. He focused on that area of the sky and spotted two objects descending rapidly from high altitude. He sat up and grabbed his binoculars, which were always near him, and focussed on the two objects.
‘UFOs!’ he whispered to himself all excited. ‘Them’s bona fide UFOs!’
He watched them decelerate their descent and come in for a gentle landing on top of a prominent butte just across the river. His body came to life like it had just been plugged into 240 volts. He scrambled around, picked up his iPhone, jumped in the trike and roared off into the sky. He flew low over the river, flying as fast as the twenty-two ‘ponies’ could push him. He searched for a thermal, found a good one and cored it up the front of the steep slope to the top of the butte. He flew out of the thermal and straight over the two spaceships, less than 100 feet above them. He was shocked by what he saw, and exclaimed,
‘There’s aliens standin outside the UFOs!’
Frantically, he grabbed his phone and switched it to camera mode right in the middle of a 90-degree, wingtip-stalling, hammer turn. He made the return pass firing stills at the rate of two a second. He noticed that the aliens waved as he flew over them. As he flew out from the butte, he scanned the sky. ‘There’s nothin else up,’ he thought to himself. There were no other witnesses. He banked left and coiled into a series of tightening 360s, ending up flying circles about 100 feet above the aliens. He fired off shots from all angles. Then the weirdest thing happened. One of the aliens launched and flew up next to him without any apparent form of locomotion. The alien was human shaped, like a very athletic woman, but its whole body looked like a TV screen, ‘on friggin acid,’ he thought. He couldn’t make out any of the alien’s face as it was all covered by screen.
He took many shots of her as they flew circles together. She posed for him and altered the patterns in her suit. He then changed his iPhone to movie mode and shot a video of her flying up to within arm’s length of him. He saw her hold up nine fingers. Just as she did that, he recorded her yell out,
‘Nine years today, be bound to your family on Pike’s Peak, east of San Francisco.’
The alien then flew back down to the ground and re-joined the other two. Jonesy kept the camera rolling and got them re-entering the two saucers and, after a few moments, lifting off and flying away.
He never forgot those words even though he didn’t know what they meant. He did note the time of day and date and quickly calculated September 23, 2023 as being nine years from then.
‘I’ll be bound to my family on that day,’ he thought. ‘I wonder what bound means?’
He flew back to the Winnebago with his camera full of high-definition stills and movies. He plugged his phone into his laptop and replayed the alien’s speech. He made himself a cup of strong coffee while he looked up Pikes Peak, California, on Google Earth. He thought that he knew where Pikes Peak might have been located because he had flown near there once, but he wanted to make certain so he looked for it on Google Earth. It was located high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, east of San Francisco. He spent the rest of the night ‘rollin doobies’, listening to Willie Nelson and playing everything back, over and over.
3
‘You ain’t been smokin that Mary-jew-wanna again, Jonesy, ave yer?’
Jonesy didn’t have many friends. He did have an acquaintance, though, a guy he knew from high school. They had absolutely nothing in common, however as circumstances would have it, a series of chance encounters through the years meant that they managed to keep a semblance of a loose liaison. His acquaintance had a proper name, but Jonesy, and everyone else that knew him, only ever called him by his high school nickname, Snake.
Snake was a moderately successful talent agent in Las Vegas. Besides live acts, he also dabbled in the media, handling freelance writers and producers and such. Snake’s office was located on the edge of town, at his home, right next to his pool. Jonesy usually parked the Winnebago in the driveway of Snake’s comfortable, low-set dwelling.
‘I’m tellin you, Snake, all the evidence you need is on this phone.’
‘Listen, Jonesy, UFO stories are a dime a dozen. Nobody’s interested in that shit anymore.’
‘Let me plug my phone into your Mac,’ insisted Jonesy.
Snake had the latest, big screen, iMac computer. Jonesy sat next to him on another chair and took him through the photos and videos in chronological order. The pictures were crystal-clear, hi-definition recordings of the space ships and their occupants.
‘Christ, Jonesy, these look so clear that they almost look fake.’
‘Oh, come on, Snake, how could I fake these on the iPhone? An anyhow, if I was gonna pull a scam, you know I’d let you in on it.’
‘Holy cow, Jonesy.’
‘What did I tell yer.’
‘There might be a few bucks in this.’
‘This’ll blow people’s minds wide open,’ said Jonesy excitedly.
‘I got to figure out how to make the most out of it. Has anyone else seen it?’
‘Naah, just you an me.’
‘Are there any other copies?’
‘Just my laptop.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
‘Were there any other witnesses?’
‘None.’
‘Bonanza!’ Snake whispered.
‘I know I got somethin, Snake, an I figured you were the man that knew how to
handle it.’
‘You make it an I sell it, Jonesy, that’s how I operate. But this is raw shit. I’m gonna have to think about it for a while.’
As they watched the video, Snake sat up to attention.
‘What was that? ... there! … where the alien spoke English. What the hell was that, Jonesy? Stop it there. Play it again.’
Jonesy jumped back a minute in the video. They listened to the alien repeat in a female voice,
‘Nine years today, be bound to your family on Pike’s Peak, east of San Francisco.’
‘What’s all that supposed to mean, Jonesy?’
‘Beats me, but I know where Pike’s Peak is.’
‘Can we transfer all this shit to my computer?’
‘Sure, all of it, except the Alien talkin. I don’t want nobody hearin that.’
‘But that’s the clincher. That’s the big payday.’
‘Well, it’ll have to be a small payday, Snake, cause that bit of vision is just for me.’
‘Suit yourself, but feel free to change your mind.’
Jonesy copied all the photos and all the footage, except for the fragment that contained the alien’s speech, to Snake’s computer. They had a beer together and replayed the footage over and over. After a refreshing swim, and another beer, Snake told Jonesy to give him a week to ‘mull over a few ideas.’
‘We could be lookin at a couple of mill each, Jonesy. Why don’t you stay here tonight an I’ll pick up ten large for you first thing in the mornin. Think of it like a down payment. It oughta keep you goin for a while.’
Next day, as he rolled out of Snake’s driveway, Jonesy said,
‘Thanks, Snake. Get in touch when you got somethin.’
Jonesy drove out to the coast and gave most of the money to Lori. She and the kids lived with her parents in Berkley. He told them about the Green River incident and that there could be more money to come.
4
It took Snake almost twelve months to come up with a documentary director that could pull together the right sort of crew. He figured that if they produced a high-quality documentary, and sold it to the networks, they could pocket a ‘tidy chunk-o-change’.
Snake phoned Jonesy on September 13, 2015. He told him that he had a crew going out to Green River to ‘do the shoot’. He told him that they wanted to be out there on the 23rd, exactly one year after the original sighting. He told him that the director wanted to include him in the story and that he was prepared to pay him $10,000 for the job. Jonesy declined the offer and told Snake to find a ‘stunt double’ to take his place. In the end they hired an actor that could fly a trike and made him up to look like Jonesy. His name was Clint, but everybody called him Cowboy. They also hired an actor Snake knew, named Dirk DeRongo, to be the narrator.
The idea was to make the trip out to Green River the story, and to interweave Jonesy’s story, photos and footage throughout it. They thought that shooting it on the twelve-month anniversary would add dramatic effect to it.
Jonesy showed up in Green River on 16th September and hooked up with the crew. Snake was there wearing his big Stetson and smoking a fat cigar. It was all business as the director, whose name was Ludwig, steered the small crew through their shots. They had to bring in a duplicate T-Light trike for Cowboy to fly because Jonesy wouldn’t let anyone as much as touch his machine. He rehearsed Cowboy through some dummy runs for the aerial footage. It turned out that Cowboy was quite an accomplished pilot and they both had a lot of fun flying around together.
Ludwig ordered a chopper for the 23rd. He wanted to get some ‘classy’ aerial shots of the trike flying circles above the butte. Later, he would edit it together with Jonesy’s original footage.
Everything was ready on the big day. They were going to do the chopper shoot just after two o’clock. Ludwig was anxious because he expected a great deal from the day, although he never, in his wildest dreams, expected what he actually got.
Cowboy roared skyward in the trike. He was closely followed by the chopper, which carried the film crew. Jonesy relaxed in a chair under his tree and sucked on a Bud. Snake paced around puffing his cigar and moaned about all the expenses. Jonesy was watching the trike and chopper crossing the river, when he spotted them. He sprang to his feet and shouted,
‘They’re back, Snake!’
He pointed in the direction of two rapidly-descending silver discs. Snake looked in that direction and said,
‘Where? I don’t see nothin.’
‘Oh, you’ll see em soon enough,’ said Jonesy as he jumped into his trike.
‘Oh shyiiiit, there they are! I see em now.’
Jonesy roared out of the paddock, leaving Snake in a cloud of dust from his propwash.
The two silver discs settled on top of the butte just before Cowboy and the chopper arrived.
The chopper was first to rise above the top of the butte, with the camera rolling. They recorded two panels open on the under-surfaces of the ships and extend as ramps towards the ground. They then recorded three aliens emerge from the ships and step outside. The chopper pilot backed up a little and settled into a hover about three hundred feet out from, and about two hundred feet above, the UFOs.
‘Are you getting all this?’ asked Ludwig excitedly.
‘Every nanosecond,’ replied the cameraman.
Cowboy finally made it up above the top of the butte and proceeded to fly tight circles above the ships. The aliens noticed him but seemed fairly disinterested. They were looking out over Green River and one of them panned his arm across the vast plain.
A couple of minutes later, Jonesy came screaming up the face of the butte, and when he rose just above it, he straightened up and flew really slowly no more than 50 feet over the aliens’ heads.
Everyone in the chopper noticed immediately that the three aliens became much more animated when Jonesy arrived. They appeared to focus on him and began waving hello to him. He flew low and slow over their heads and waved back to them. On one pass he clearly saw one of them hold up eight fingers.
‘Are you getting all this?’ asked Ludwig.
‘Yep, the lot,’ came the reply.
The two trike pilots had to keep an eye on each other so as not to have a mid-air collision. After a few minutes, Jonesy noticed the aliens turn to go back into their ships, so he did an ultra-slow flyover, into the wind, no more than twenty feet above them. He gave them a thumbs-up and they gave him a thumbs-up in return. He flew out from the butte and signalled Cowboy to do the same. All three aircraft stayed clear as the two ships rose into the sky and disappeared.
As they returned to the paddock, Ludwig exclaimed,
‘I’ve seen some bullshit in my time, but I’ve never seen bullshit like that.’
Back on the ground, everyone was in a state of total delirium.
‘Did you have something to do with this shit, Snake?’ asked Ludwig.
‘No, man, it was as big a surprise to me as to you.’
Jonesy came over and said,
‘I think it was the same bunch of aliens that were here last year. Did you see how they recognised me?’
They crowded into the media truck and reviewed some of the footage.
‘Them’s good close-ups, Ludwig,’ said Snake.
‘You can’t make out their faces because they are all covered by some sort of full body-suits,’ said Jonesy.
Snake began whistling the we’re in the money tune.
Ludwig shot some more footage of Cowboy pretending to be Jonesy. He also shot a series of segments of DeRongo narrating the story on site. Because of the surprise reappearance of the aliens, and the crew’s subsequent unpreparedness for them, Ludwig said that whatever he forgot to get on site he could make up back in Vegas, at Snake’s place.
While Ludwig was doing that, Snake paid the chopper pilot. He offered him an extra ‘five-hundred bucks’ to keep his mouth shut about what he saw.
The pilot was used to keeping secrets of jobs he’d done. He knew that the work would ‘dry up pretty quick’ if he ‘mouthed off’ about it. He pocketed the cash, smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow and said,
‘It’s been good doin business with you, Snake. Anytime you wanna shoot more aliens, look me up.’
They shook hands and he flew home a happy man.
5
As the two, sleek, intergalactic ships sped back across the Pacific towards Noosa Heads, they communicated telepathically with each other. Slater commented on the day.
‘Well, that will certainly stir things up over there. They even had a chopper waiting for us. Did you see the big camera hanging out of it?’
‘Yes,’ said Thebe, ‘and they had two trikes this year. I think they were filming a documentary.’
‘I sensed that,’ said Noah.
‘So, you’re not concerned about secrecy, Noah?’ asked Slater.
‘No, not really. They only have eight years to go. The poor things might as well have some excitement before it’s all over. Also, we intend to help them avert a nuclear war between now and the end.’
‘Ohh, I see,’ said Slater. ‘You will try to make humanity’s last years on Earth as fun as possible.’
‘Er, we won’t interfere, but final-stage protocol allows for some disclosure. We may be seen, but never caught or contacted. Strict protocols still apply as regards to governments and military. They will never see us. They will only hear about us and see recorded material of us. It will frustrate them no end.’
‘I’ve got no doubts about that,’ said Slater. ‘Do you know how many people are being time-chipped?’
‘Yes, exactly 144,000, although many more will do the time shift through connectedness. There will also be over six million creatures time shifted, everything from elephants to bees. It is a mammoth undertaking.’
Thebe contributed, ‘You will take Lucy and me through the time shift, Slater. I suspect that Kane will be on Rama with his teacher during that time.’
As they flew over Pago Pago, Slater enquired some more about nuclear war. Noah answered him,
‘The main problem for us with nuclear anything is the radiation. A full-scale nuclear exchange would make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years and would cause highly destructive genetic mutations. Earth would become a hellhole. We would have to time shift a million years into the future to get to clean, virgin wilderness again. No Rama would be prepared to do that as there would be too many unknowns with such a huge time shift, and they would never see their families again. A nuclear exchange would terminate the time shift program and the Rama would cease to be interested in Earth. We have already interfered with some of their ICBM systems. They are still scratching their heads about that.’
‘We are nearly home, boys,’ said Thebe. ‘Will you stay for a couple of days and have a surf with us, Noah?’
‘I was told about your break, so I brought my board just in case.’
‘It’s settled, then. Noah will be our guest and we’ll take him surfing.’
6
Snake, Ludwig and DeRongo returned to Las Vegas. Over the following couple of months, Snake negotiated a ‘smokin’ deal with the History Channel, which included a generous advance of $100,000. He paid Ludwig $30,000 as a down payment and transferred half of the rest of the money into Jonesy’s bank account. When all the money was sorted, he re-focussed on the running of his regular business during the days and sat in with Ludwig editing the documentary during the nights.
Jonesy drove out to the West Coast and visited his family. He gave $25,000 to Lori. She was beside herself with joy, as were her parents, and they allowed him to stay in the house for the first time in many years. He still had to sleep alone in the guest bedroom, although he did receive three good-night kisses from Lori and endless hugs from all his girls.
A few days later, he drove the Winnebago south to Modesto where he turned left and took Highway 108 out to Oakdale where he fuelled up and had something to eat. He then headed east towards Sonora and the Sierra Nevada Range. From there he followed the Sonora Pass Highway up into the high country.
Jonesy had decided to scout out Pike’s Peak from the ground and he was going to take plenty of time doing it. He sensed that this was somehow the most important thing in his and his family’s lives, and even though he had let them all down so many times in the past, he promised himself that he would never ever let them down again.
…….