Chapter Sixty
CLYDE
1
Clyde lay in his bed listening to a podcast of Jerome Clark eloquently philosophising about multiple dimensions. The interviewer was Errol Bruce-Knapp in episode 448 of the popular Canadian programme, Strange Days Indeed. Something about the conversation intrigued him.
‘Is that a suggestion about interdimensionality?’
‘No, see that doesn’t mean anything. You can throw words like that around but they don’t explain anything. They’re just words. What’s interdimensionality? It’s a speculative concept. All we can say is that it is possible to have vivid experiences of things that do not seem to be conventionally explainable as hallucinations or mental illness, but also that do not exist in event reality. These things are some kind of anomaly of experience, anomaly of consciousness, anomaly of imagination, and they’re real, but they’re real solely as experiences that exist only in testimony and memory, but that you could never prove happened in this world. These things take on the colouration of cultural expectations of otherworldly encounters. So, in other words, they’re fundamentally subjective. There may be some kind of phenomena out there that triggers these things, but they’re experienced in cultural images and language that the brain can comprehend.
‘You know, there isn’t even a proper vocabulary for it. That is one of the problems. The closest we can get to it is visionary experience, but visionary experience is simply descriptive, it’s not explanatory. So, we think that something is either true or it isn’t true, but what if there are things that happen to us that are neither. Just try to get your brain around that. We don’t have a vocabulary for that. How could something be and not be at the same time?’
Clyde rose to his feet and sat in front of his computer. He paused the program and replayed the last minute. He listened intently and when the question was asked again, he answered it in a whisper,
‘Jack, that’s how.’
2
Clyde let the radio show keep playing as he stepped out onto the porch and stretched his arms. His bloodhound, named Lincoln, raised his head lazily to see what his master was up to.
His hut was located on a ridge above, and due east of, Sonora. His porch faced due west and gave him a view clear across Sonora and New Melones Lake in the distance.
Clyde had just come up for air from a weeklong bender. He’d been celebrating the procurement of twenty cases of his favourite whiskey. He sat in his rocking chair and blankly stared at the sunset. New Melones Lake glowed like molten gold out in the distance. Something in the splendid vista triggered a memory of a dream in his mind. He thought that maybe he might have dreamt it the previous night, or maybe the night before. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last seven or eight nights, or days. Everything was all melted together into one homogeneous haze. But his dream stood out crystal-clear, like a vision, like the memory of a place he’d actually been to.
He remembered sitting on his porch in his rocking chair and it was sunset, just like then, and he remembered how the ocean, all orange and gold, lapped right up to the porch steps. He remembered it like he’d seen it with his own eyes.
He got up out of the rocking chair and went inside to turn off his computer. He’d lost interest in the radio show. Lincoln followed him into the hut and muzzled his shin.
‘You hungry, boy?’
He took a frozen pizza out of the fridge and placed it into the microwave. He then opened another bottle of Jack and filled his glass.
3
The brand-new, 60-inch, high-definition, flat-screen TV sat on top of two cases of Jack placed side by side on the spot where the old ‘piece of shit’ TV used to be. Clyde bought it to celebrate his recent windfall.
He took the hot pizza out of the microwave and gave half of it to Lincoln. He sat down in his ratty-old lounge chair and took a bite out of a wedge. He grabbed the remote and switched on the TV. A panel of presenters appeared, sitting behind a large, semicircular desk, backed by a giant television screen. On the screen was a live image of the comet being shot through a telescope from the International Space Station. One of the presenters explained,
‘It may look innocuous, ladies and gentlemen, but let me assure you that this puppy is at least 25 miles across. It is still eighteen hours out from the flypast, so it’s about, let’s bring up the on-screen calculator, OK … eighteen times 45,000 is 810,000 miles out from Earth. That’s over three times farther out than the Moon. If it did not have a coma around it, it would be almost impossible to see. And buried in that coma, so NASA tells us, are a couple of dozen chunks of rock, any of which would wreak extreme havoc on our planet if they were allowed to impact.’
Clyde topped up his glass, grabbed another slice of pizza and changed channels. He found the same program. An attractive female co-presenter asked a question of the handsome anchor.
‘When will we see the Arcturians, Mike?’
‘Good question, Sandy. So far, the Arcturians have been somewhat coy. The whisper going around is that it could be due to the slight difference in their appearance to us.’ Mike grinned, ‘Heeey … not all space species are as DDG as we are, you know.’
Everyone sitting around the desk laughed.
‘Life can be a bitch, ha, ha, ha.’
‘Yeah, Mike. So, will we see them deflect the comet?’
‘Another extremely good question, Sandy. Well, apparently not. Apparently, they will be using a deflector beam from a distance, so we won’t exactly see anything. They only have to deflect the comet by a fraction of a degree to make it miss our planet. Er, they may have even done it already. Either way, they know the best time to do it, so NASA has decided to leave it up to them.’
‘Will they also deflect the surrounding debris?’
‘That is affirmative, Sandy. The treaty we have signed with them stipulates the deflection of the comet, as well as all the debris.’
‘I’m keen to get a load of their wenches, Mikey.’
‘Get in line, Randy boy. We’ve all been secretly fantasizing about a little, er, whoopee of the third kind.’
Clyde changed channels and found the same program again.
Mike placed his hand over his right ear and announced,
‘I am being told that we are about to cross to Green River, Wyoming. Hello, Alby? How is the weather in Wyoming?’
Alby had to scream at the top of his voice in order to be heard over the tribal thump, thump, thumps of drums and guttural screams of a band playing in the background.
‘Well, I can report that it’s night and that it isn’t raining. Green River this year is like an insane asylum, Mikey. There must be a million people here and I’m pretty sure that everyone is on something that’s probably highly illegal, ha, ha, ha. My advice to anyone thinking about coming here is; forget it because you won’t get within thirty miles of the place.’
‘What is that noise, Alby?’
‘Oh, that is the band, Beaver Fever, going right off behind me, Mikey. They’re just belting out their big hit, the ever-popular, Armageddon Some Tonight. We’re set up on the edge of Stratton Myers Park, just like we were last year. Tomorrow’s the big day. Every 23rd of September for the last eight years the aliens have shown up on top of the butte just across the river. We’ll turn the camera around so that you can see it, Mikey. See, it’s all lit up in spotlights this year. The crowd is going completely nuts around me … oh, oh … OK … er, I might have to get back to you later, Mikey … you don’t look eighteen sugarplum …’
4
Clyde changed channels and got the same program. He clicked the clicker, over and over, and finally realised that there was only one program on television that night. He poured himself another glass of Jack, lit a smoke and turned the sound down on his TV. He picked up his iPhone, that was lying on a small table next to his ratty-old lounge chair, and scrolled through the music tracks until he found the one that reminded him of his Jenny. He took a couple of big swigs of whiskey and pressed play. The sound blasted out of a perfectly-preserved, antique set of Altec Stonehenge 3 speakers that Clyde had inherited from his father. The song, There’s No Other, by The Crystals, filled the interior of the hut with a wall of sound. The song, which interestingly has a run time of 2:23, had an effect on him like a time machine, especially when he was ‘hammered’. It took him back to the best time of his life, back to Turlock High, his Jenny and his ’57 Chevy. He remembered the first time she played the song for him and how she dedicated it to him and declared her lifelong love for him. Jenny was the most beautiful girl in school. Every boy in the valley wanted Jenny, but she only had eyes for her Clyde.
Tears began to stream down his cheeks as he emptied the glass and re-filled it again. He was beginning to once again slide into his favourite place. He sometimes called it ‘the place between dreamin and dyin’. When the song came to an end, it automatically reverted to the beginning because he preset the iPhone to replay track. And The Crystals sang, ‘There’s no other like my baby, oh no, no, no.’ And one time, he couldn’t remember when, Clyde thought that Phil Spector might have killed that actress, Lana Clarkson, or maybe he didn’t, and maybe she deserved it, or maybe not, but sure as hell there couldn’t be any denyin the fact that he produced the greatest anthem to love and American culture, ever recorded, bar none.
The swirling haze of liquor and music took him back to a place that was young and healthy, and full of life and love. And it was full of Jenny, the last pair of lips he ever kissed, and the last pair of arms he ever felt around him. That was over half a century ago. He remembered the accident, and how he lived to suffer the pain of her death for the rest of his life. That’s where he stopped the movie and went back to the beginning, back to Turlock High and the day he met the love of his life.
5
Clyde awoke from his drunken coma mid-morning on September 23, 2023. The Crystals were still singing and the television was still playing with the sound down. He switched off the music, poured himself another glass of Jack and turned up the volume on the TV. The presenter’s voice echoed in and out of his drunken daze,
‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most widely-viewed telecast in the history of the planet. Everybody, I mean everybody, is watching because it is the only program on Earth. Every network, every station, is tuned into us. So, hello world, it’s three hours to go and all is fine with the planet.’
They crossed to Green River where there were over a million people packed into the town. Everyone came to see the aliens.
‘Travers’ comet is now less than one hour away, ladies and gentlemen. It is less than half way between the Moon and here. Here is a shot of it from the Space Station … and here is a shot from the Keck 1 telescope in Hawaii … and here’s a shot from Keck 2 … hmm, that is one nasty SOB there, wouldn’t you agree, Sallyanne?’
‘I certainly would, Mike, but right now I am going to surf the crowd and get some first-hand impressions of the big day out at Green River.’
Clyde looked at all the crazy people on his TV. He wasn’t actually sure what all the hysteria was about, and he was in no frame of mind to work it out. He just knew that what he was watching was not what he dreamt about as a kid. This was not the dream. This was not America. This was a disease, a nightmare. He gazed at the insanity on TV and heard himself whisper,
‘This country is fucked.’
Suddenly, something on TV snapped him out of his chimera. It was the appearance of a spaceship descending from the sky above. Within seconds, dozens of cameras focussed in on the streamlined, silver disc and an ocean of fingers pointed into the sky. The disc descended from the north and headed directly towards the crowd. There were screams and squeals heard all around. The UFO flew slowly and glided in over the gridlocked freeway. It kept descending as it crossed Flaming Gorge Way, in downtown Green River, then the railway line and finally the river. There were oohs and ahhs and gasps as the UFO silently passed no more than 100 feet above the heads of the crowd gathered in Stratton Myers Park.
All the commentators were stunned into silence.
The beautiful ship glided right over their heads then turned east and flew low over the river again, low over an army contingent on the other side, then up the west side of the butte upon which the UFOs landed every year.
The saucer rose to the top of the butte and settled into a hover, about a foot above the ground, right on the edge where everyone could see it. A panel opened underneath and what looked like a man stepped out. A hundred cameras zoomed in on him. He appeared to be wearing a body-hugging costume that completely covered every part of his body. The costume fluoresced in many colours.
Mysteriously, as if they instinctively suspected something, the crowd hushed into a ghostly silence.
The commentator whispered,
‘Five minutes to go.’
Suddenly, the alien levitated into the air right in front of his ship. He slowly rose above it and softly landed on top of it. The commentator whispered like he was watching Greg Norman putting out at Augusta,
‘The alien seems to have something attached to his ankle, like a rope.’
‘It looks like one of those surfer leg ropes, Mike, except it’s a bit longer.’
‘I wonder what it’s for?’
‘Maybe it’s got something to do with the deflection?’ Clyde poured himself another glass of Jack.
‘Sixty seconds to go, and counting. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven …’ Clyde patted the top of Lincoln’s head and lit a smoke.
‘Forty-five, forty-four …’
‘Look at that, the alien is now pointing straight up into the sky with his right hand, straight up at the comet.’
A picture-in-picture screen, shot from the International Space Station, showed the comet about to enter the atmosphere right above central USA. The commentator whimpered,
‘It’s now or never for this deflection thing …’
The countdown continued,
‘Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven …’
Clyde emptied his glass and took a deep drag of his smoke. As he breathed out, he whispered,
‘I love you, Jenny.’
‘Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven …’
As the countdown reached ten-seconds to go, the alien and his ship disappeared. The commentator swore,
‘Fuck, where did he go?’
‘Eight, seven, six, five, four, three …’
As the countdown reached zero, the picture on Clyde’s TV turned black with a ‘no signal’ message. Five seconds later, the outside of his hut faded to brilliant white.
…….
.
CONTINUED in 2123,
the sequel of this sequel.