Brisk California air from a cool summer twilight whipped and smacked against Billy Bob’s falling body. He twisted, twirled, back down towards the Earth. Arms and legs flailing, body barrel rolling. Tumbling end over end in tight swirling spirals. Down, down, he plummeted. Like Alice, chasing the white rabbit through the tunnel beneath a tree. He maneuvered his limbs in an effort to catch a gust of air beneath his body. Steadying himself. Flipping onto his belly.
Now, he faced downwards. Body level with the ocean waters. A faint whiff of salt water crawled beneath his motocross turned space helmet from the dark ocean abyss below, filling his nostrils with the sea.
He gazed down towards the black waters and sands just as two colorful objects manifested out of the darkness. Like an aerial view of two fireworks bursting beneath him. An explosion of red, white, and blue. Spreading out like the wings of two butterflies flying in formation. It was a dance of two parachutes, intertwined. Displayed with the image of American flags. Blown back and forth across the California skies. Descending towards the Pacific ocean below.
Billy Bob sucked in a long, deep breath beneath his helmet, closed his eyes, and pulled the rip cord. The straps from the backpack yanked hard against his shoulders. Pulled tight against his chest, as the red, white, and blue sheet from his own parachute spread across the moonlit skies like a curtain flapping on a clothesline on a windy night. He pulled on the two cords hanging from both sides of his backpack. Coasting back and forth, following in the invisible trail left by Jimmy John and Cletus as they approached the sandy beach below.
Twinkling lights from the coastal city glimmered. A mirror reflection of the flickering starlight high above. The black sliver of the sky in between the rocky Earth and whatever white nothingness surrounding the planet in a colorless, lifeless prison. Whatever void trapped the planet in a plain, ordinary veil of blank whiteness. Whatever illusory emptiness imprisoned them and the rest of the human race.
The tiny flames of artificial light flung across the California landscape shrunk like they had been sucked out of the air through the nozzle of an enormous vacuum cleaner until only a few white and yellow flickering lights remained. The sandy California shore closed in on Billy Bob. Thirty feet… twenty feet… ten feet… his feet splashed down in a few feet of frigid salt water. Soaking the red flannel patches, corduroy pieces, and blue jean strips sewn across his spacesuit.
Jimmy John and Cletus emerged from the ocean about one hundred feet further down the beach. Each wrapped up in the red, white, and blue of the United States of America.
Billy Bob bundled the parachute in his arms and trudged along the sandy shore towards the others. He plopped onto the sand next to Jimmy John and Cletus. Their chests rising and falling with the rhythm of the ocean. Waves crashing and receding, crashing and receding, beneath the light of the luminescent Moon hanging high above. They stared up at the ball of gray cheese, or rock, or simulated projection, or whatever mysterious lie all believed it to be.
“Look fellers,” Cletus said, pointing up at the sky. “Flock’a seagulls.”
Billy Bob followed Cletus’s finger. There, flapping their wings beneath the iridescence of the artificial Moon, was a bundle of white and grey feathers.
“Would you look at that,” Billy Bob said. “Sure are a pack’a seagulls.”
“Do seagulls always fly together like that?” Cletus asked.
“Not sure, Cletus,” Billy Bob said.
“Never seen no Great American Bald Eagles flying in packs,” Jimmy John said.
“American Bald Eagles make their own path,” Billy Bob said.
The crew of the PATRIOT-17 were silent for a moment. Eyes focused on the pack of seagulls flapping their white wings across the twinkling night sky.
“Well, what do ya say, fellers. How’s about we start our adventure back home?” Billy Bob said.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Cletus asked. “Can’t just go back to normal after what we just seen.”
“We find the others,” Billy Bob said.
“What others?” Jimmy John asked. “Who can we tell about what we saw up there? No one will believe us.”
“That’s easy, Jimmy John. We track down our fellow Patriots,” Billy Bob said. “The ones ready to wake up. The ones prepared to confront the truth and abandon all of the lies and the darkness from the past.”
“The Great Awakening,” Jimmy John said.
“It’s time,” Billy Bob said.
“Alrighty then, Billy Bob. I like the sound’a that,” Cletus said. “Along the way, maybe we will catch us a glimpse’a some Great American Bald Eagles. Those lone warriors. Flying free. Just like us, crew of the PATRIOT-17.”
“Yeah, Cletus, I like the sound’a that. But first, I say we fetch us a few pieces of peach cobbler,” Jimmy John said, rubbing his belly.
“That’s a long trek,” Billy Bob said.
“Sure is. But we got much to discuss,” Jimmy John said.
“Lotsa waking. Lotsa conspiracies to unravel,” Cletus said, his stomach grumbling like a freight train. “Maybe, along our journey, we’ll find some’a them good ol’ American Patriots uniting at a Bar-B-Q.”