I eased myself into the hot tub with a long sigh. Jim dropped his robe and slipped in opposite me. I couldn't help noticing how much older he looked. When we were college roommates his body had been thin, hard, wiry. He'd been a speed freak in those days, so he'd never been muscular, but he had the endurance of a marathon runner simply because the drugs never let him feel tired. Now he had a pot belly and his body looked like that of a forty-five-year-old man, which he was. Still, he looked to be in better shape than I.
We sat in silence, enjoying the peace of the night, the still summer air, the stars overhead. It was strange being with Jim again after all these years. At one time we'd been as close as brothers, sharing our inmost thoughts, exchanging girl friends, taking intense psychedelic trips together. But that was twenty-five years ago. We hadn't been in touch for at least twenty years when he called me out of the blue, and the conversation over dinner had shown how much our lives had diverged.
I was a family man, working as a computer programmer in Marin County, leading a reasonably mainstream life. Jim had stayed with the mysticism he'd gotten into through the psychedelics we'd done together. He'd started as a clerk in a little occult bookshop on the Lower East Side. Now he was a publisher, producing a line of arcane and little-read mystical titles. Still, it seemed to keep him comfortable enough, and he still had that mischievous, slightly evil-looking grin gleaming crookedly from his dark beard. As always, it gave me the feeling that he found me amusingly naive.
He'd always mocked my atheism, my attempts to formulate scientific explanations for the mysterious psychedelic experiences we'd shared. He believed there were an infinite number of equally valid realities, that we shared this one only by consensus. But he was never condescending. He respected my opinions, just as I allowed him his belief in spirits and multidimensional beings. It had made for endlessly entertaining arguments through many nights when we should have been studying.
Now after all these years, here we were in my hot tub. Jim had chuckled and asked about peacock feathers when I suggested the tub after dinner. I gathered that his mystical friends in the depths of New York didn't go in for hot tubs. Just too sybaritic and Left Coast for them. But he had agreed readily enough. Now Linda had put Nathan to bed and gone upstairs herself, leaving us alone to renew our acquaintance.
I looked with affection on his long thin face, hooked nose, long curling black hair, and pointed beard. He could look quite threatening, and I'm sure he startled many a freshman in the old days when he stalked about the campus late at night in his black velvet cloak. Seeing his dark vulpine face wavering through the steam at me, it struck me that he could be a demon in the fumes of hell, or a warlock at his cauldron. I knew he'd be pleased at the effect, and told him of my vision. He threw back his head and gave a loud laugh. The sound took me back to old times, and I realized how much I had missed Jim.
"You see, my rationalist friend?" he said. "The visions still show us the truth."
"No, they're still illusions," I replied. "The hot air and steam cause convection currents, distorting what is after all only the face of a man."
We grinned at each other. We knew neither would ever convince the other, but it didn't matter a whit. It was as if we'd interrupted this discussion a quarter century ago, and now resumed it from the same point.
We sat there another hour or so, catching up on our lives, relating a story or joke or idea we'd encountered years ago, and sometimes just sitting in companionable silence.
It must have been well after midnight when, after a particularly long silence, I looked down from gazing at Orion to find Jim studying me thoughtfully.
"Do you believe in UFO's?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not," I laughed. "As you probably could have guessed. Why, did you just see one?"
"No, I was just thinking about what it would be like. They could be real, you know."
"It's possible. I can't prove they don't exist, of course. But no one has ever come up with convincing evidence that they're real. Until then, I see no reason to believe in them."
"What about all those people who say they've been abducted and experimented upon?"
"People say they've seen Bigfoot and Nessie, too, and I've yet to see proof."
"For the sake of argument, though, you admit there could be extraterrestrials visiting the Earth, studying us?"
"It's possible, but unlikely. The distances involved..."
"But it is possible. They could have a starship drive or a space warp or something, some principle of physics as yet undreamed by us?"
"For the sake of argument, okay."
"Say you were one of them. How would you go about studying humans?"
"Well, I wouldn't suck one up into my saucer like Betty and Barney Hill said happened to them."
"Why not?"
"They'd be freaked, completely stressed out. You couldn't get reliable data."
"Right. You could study a human under extreme stress, but you wouldn't know what he's really like under ordinary circumstances."
"Exactly."
"So what would you do?"
I considered for a few minutes. "Well, if these ET's were invisible, they could just wander around and study us."
"But if they weren't?" Jim persisted. "If they were just regular corporeal guys like us?"
"Oh, so you admit we're corporeal now? Are you mellowing in your old age?"
Jim shrugged. "Our bodies are one manifestation of our multidimensional existence. Say like us, these guys are normally self-aware only on the physical plane."
"They should read your books," I jabbed.
"They probably have," he riposted just as quickly, and we both had to laugh. Jim settled himself lower until the end of his beard was trailing in the water. The tip fanned out like a frayed rope end.
"So," he continued. "Say you're a common or garden variety, physical ET, trying to study humans in their natural habitat. We can assume you'd look pretty different from humans. They'd be put off if they saw you or knew you were studying them. How would you do it?"
"I don't know. Hide behind trees?"
"Brian, I'm disappointed in you. Wouldn't a scientist devise an experiment? You could knock a guy out, pick him up, and put him into a place that is so much like home that he couldn't tell the difference."
"You mean make him believe he's still on Earth? That might work for animals, but not for a man, not for long. He'd soon pull up a flower and find that it's glued to a board."
"I'm not talking about a stage set. I mean simulate his environment, say with a computer program. Wouldn't that work?"
"Hey, yeah," I replied. "It'd be like a VR."
"A what?"
"A virtual reality system - a program that generates a simulated reality. There are some pretty impressive ones around already, but they're clunky and pretty slow. They use big helmets with video displays over your eyes and headphones for your ears. But if these bug-eyed monsters were very advanced and had developed a really good program and a way of feeding it to a subject directly, he'd never know."
"Is that possible?" Jim asked.
"Sure, why not? Our brains can't see, hear, smell, or feel. Everything we know about our world is at some point an electrical impulse travelling along a nerve into our skulls. Intercept and manipulate that signal, and no one could tell the difference. For him the VR would be reality. Of course, the program would have to monitor his responses, adjust the VR to reflect his actions."
"Yeah, I get it," said Jim. "So if he pulls up a flower, the program just generates roots on the bottom of it."
"Exactly. So as far as he knows he's still on Earth, going about his business. You've got your perfect research subject: still in his native habitat, unaware of being observed. But you can alter his environment at will to conduct your experiments. You could program it to apply a particular stimulus disguised to look like a natural event in his life, then study his response. Pretty neat. It would make a good science fiction story." I began considering the possibility of trying to write such a story.
"But how would you end the experiment?" Jim asked a few minutes later, interrupting a revery about adding a scene of steamy virtual sex.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Well, when the ET's are done with the guy, what happens to him?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I hadn't thought about how the story would end. Put him in the trash compactor?"
"But he's still alive, right? He's been going merrily along, living his life, totally unaware that he's in an alien lab."
"So after abducting this poor schmuck and experimenting on him, the ET's are suddenly developing a conscience? Who knows what their moral code would be? What makes you think they'd have any qualms about having the guy for dinner?"
"I don't know. I suppose I would expect really advanced beings to have sympathy for other sentient life forms."
"Yeah, right," I replied. "Ask the Tasmanian aborigines about that one."
"Huh? Why?"
"There aren't any. The advanced beings from England hunted them to extinction."
"So these guys are even more advanced than the English, if you can imagine that. Say they have compunctions about cruelty to humans."
"Didn't stop them from experimenting on the guy, did it?"
"But he didn't know about it. If he's been mistreated, he wasn't aware of it. But now the experiment's over. Say they have animal rights activists, too. Suppose there's a law against cruelty to laboratory animals. Maybe they have to follow a strict protocol to get a permit to study humans. When the experiment's over, the subject has to be returned in good condition to his home planet."
I considered that for a while. "That could be cruel, too," I said.
"Why? Couldn't they just put him back where they got him?"
"Maybe not. They could make his abduction seamless by making the VR exactly like the world he was leaving. But now they've applied various stimuli to him that wouldn't have happened in the real world. And no matter how good the programming, it couldn't simulate everything that was really happening back on Earth. The two realities would have diverged."
"Hmm," he said. He shifted his weight, sending rings of waves across the tub, tickling my chest. "So if there's no way you could put him back without his noticing, then you'd have to tell him."
"Nah. You'd blow his mind. What would you do, just shut off the program so he wakes up in a laboratory surrounded by aliens? 'Hi, we're bug-eyed monsters and we've abducted you. Your life has all been an illusion, and now we're going to send you back to a world you won't recognize. Sorry for any inconvenience."
Jim chuckled. "Yeah, that would be a little cold, wouldn't it?"
We both sat a while, thinking. This story definitely had possibilities. I swirled the water idly with one finger as I considered solutions.
"I guess the best you could do," I said, "would be to use an agent to give him the news. Program the computer to generate a non-threatening human, someone familiar to the subject, someone he'd trust. Then have this agent explain the situation as gently as possible. Warn him what to expect, fill him in on some of the discrepancies between his world and the real one."
"Wow, what a shocker that would be! But it would take a lot of convincing. If someone came up to you and said that you'd been abducted by aliens, you'd say, 'Yeah, right.'"
"I would, yes. You'd probably say 'Far out. I knew there were other realities all along.' But you're right. If the system is so good that the guy hasn't figured it out for himself, it's going to be hard to convince him it's all been an illusion."
"Unless the agent could prove that it's all an illusion," he said. A drop of sweat dripped from the tip of his nose.
"How could he do that?"
"Easy," he said. "The VR program could simply do something that's not possible in a true reality."
"Like what?"
Jim looked at me through the rising steam. His eyes suddenly seemed full of sadness. He scooted around the tub until he was beside me, then took my hand. I looked at him in surprise.
"Brian," he said. "I'm really sorry about this. I love you very much. But I think you're as ready as you'll ever be. Hold on tight. Tight no dloh."
It took me a second to realize that he was speaking gibberish. Then he slid back around the tub and continued speaking as if in a foreign language. I stared at him, fearing that he had suddenly gone mad. But then I realized that the steam was drifting downward, being sucked into the water. As he ranted on, a drop of sweat leaped from the surface of the water and landed on the tip of his nose.
"Easy," he said. "The VR program could simply do something that's not possible in a true reality."
I blinked at him in amazement. "Wha..?" I gasped. The steam was rising again.
"I'm sorry, Brian. It was the only way."
"What was that? What happened there?"
"The program was backed up for a few seconds."
"Program? What program? What just happened?"
"The VR program. We rewound the recording, then played it back. It's something that can't happen in a non-virtual reality."
But... what are you talking about? What VR program...?"
"It's real, Brian. It really happens. Barney and Betty Hill were full of shit, they just made it all up, but UFO's are real. You were abducted by one."
"I was?" I stammered. "But, but... when?"
"Twenty-six years ago. December of '67."
"Twenty-six y..."
"Do you remember The Big Trip? When we both did four hits of Owsley's best orange wedge acid?"
"Sure. That was the biggest trip ever. We wanted to see how far we could go."
"Do you remember what happened that night?"
"I'll never forget it. We were walking around on the campus, late at night, tripped out of our minds. Everything seemed oozing with hidden significance. We both felt that something was about to happen, that some great revelation was imminent. You thought you were about to see God. I thought I was about to formulate the Grand Unified Theory of Everything."
"Where did we go?"
"We wandered around for hours, then ended up at the Horace Mann monument, out on the lawn by North Hall. It was like a space needle, pointing to the stars. It seemed that whatever was going to happen would happen there. We climbed up onto the pedestal and lay there looking up."
"And what happened?"
"A meteor. The biggest, brightest fireball either of us had ever seen. It flew right over the top of the monument. I think I came at that moment. We both knew it had to be a sign. You thought it was a sign from God and you got religion. You dropped out of school and got into your mystical kick. I didn't know what it was a sign of and never did figure out what the hell it meant."
"Right. The meteor. That was it."
"That was what?"
"The UFO. That's when you were abducted."
"What? Jim, have you finally lost your mind? Is that why you looked me up after all these years? To tell me that?"
"It's true. They saw you were completely vulnerable at that instant and grabbed you while you wouldn't realize that something untoward had happened. If you noticed anything strange you'd attribute it to Owsley, not UFO's. They took you away that night."
"Bullshit. I went back to the room and crashed after that. I still want to know what happened a minute ago, not your hare-brained theories of what happened in 1967."
"But it's the same thing. Ever since that night, you've been living in a virtual reality."
"Don't give me that crap. What was that that just happened? Did you hypnotize me or something?"
"I see you need another little jolt. Hang on."
I was blinded by a white glare and a blast of frigid wind. We were still sitting in the hot tub, but a hurricane drove ice crystals stinging into my face. I had a quick glimpse of row after row of white peaks receding into the distance all around. I opened my mouth to scream, but before I could the tub was on a tropical beach. A humid breeze brought the unforgettable scent of drying copra to my startled nose. Palm fronds rustled above the tub. I stared wildly at Jim's calm face. Then we were back at my house. For an instant I could still smell copra.
"What the f...?"
"The summit of Everest and the beach at Bora Bora," said Jim. "I can't tell you how sorry I am about this."
"But, but..."
"Okay, look, I know this is hard, but I'm going to give it to you straight while you're in shock. Here's the major things you're going to notice right away. Robert Kennedy wasn't shot in LA in '68. He became president and escalated JFK's war in Vietnam. He continued his brother's policies in the bedroom, too, and was finally photographed in bed with Marilyn Monroe at the Beverly Wiltshire. He was thrown out of office in disgrace and Hubert Humphrey became president. He finally got the country out of Vietnam in 1976, but they were immediately overrun by their Chinese "liberators," kicking off the Southeast Asia War. The Soviets kicked their butts, but by that time the U.S. was involved again. Things got really complicated after that, pretty different from your VR scenario. But none of that should really matter to you much. It's all history now. The war's over, the Soviet Union collapsed. The president right now is Wally Jameson, a war hero who went into politics. The country's in terrible shape, just about the way it was in your VR."
"I..."
"Wait. Let me get this out all at once. It'll be easier than hitting you over and over. After this exit interview, you'll find yourself in an apartment complex in Denver. They try to make it as much like your VR home as possible, but Marin is a bit of a problem after the earthquake, what with the radiation and all."
"Earthquake? Radiation?"
"You have a bank account with a hundred thousand in it, enough to get yourself started again. It's in your new name, of course."
"New name?"
"Yes. They had to explain your disappearance back in '67, of course. They set it up to look as if you wandered off and threw yourself into the river the night of the trip. The body was never recovered, naturally. So everyone thinks you've been dead all this time. They're all adjusted to your death now, so I wouldn't try looking any of them up. If you did, everyone would assume you'd lost your mind that night and had just come back from wherever you'd been. It won't help to tell anyone what really happened. No one will believe it and you won't have a shred of proof."
"But what about Linda and Nathan? Will they be there?"
"I'm afraid that's going to be a bit of a shock, too. They don't exist any more. But don't worry, they didn't die or anything. They were never real people at all. We wanted to study your attitudes toward mating and parenting."
"They don't ex..." I began, then stopped. "Wait a minute. You said "we". Were you abducted, too, Jim? Or are you one of them?"
"No, no, you still don't understand. The real Jim woke up on the grass beside the Horace Mann monument and never saw you again. He gave up acid after you died. He became an accountant in New Jersey and died in an auto accident in 1987."
"But who..."
"I'm the facilitator for your re-entry, your 'agent' as you put it. I do apologize for the unavoidable disorientation you're experiencing. I assure you it will pass eventually. I want to say that your participation, although involuntary on your part, has been invaluable and is much appreciated. You have done a great deal to increase understanding between our two races. I want to thank you very sincerely on behalf of all of us involved in this project. We won't be troubling you again. At this time we will terminate this program. I hope you enjoy Colorado. Good-bye."
Jim smiled at me, then flickered and disappeared from the hot tub. I blinked stupidly at the place where he had been. I realized that the pine tree beyond the tub was draped in a heavy mantle of snow.
copyright 1996 by Brian K. Crawford