Vril 7 Encounter

August 15th, 1995, 3 a.m.

I've been asleep for a few hours. Hot night, a little bit of breeze coming in through
the screen door of the bedroom and the open windows on either side of the bed,
but it's still sticky hot, the kind of heat that makes you realize that mattresses are
the invention of a cold climate, whereas in hot countries people sleep on cold bare
floors with ceramic head rests instead of pillows. The night is full of noise as it
always is in the Ozarks, the loud trilling of treefrogs on the window sills and the
crescendo of cicadas and katydids rising and falling from the trees that ring the
yard. From deep in the woods in several directions come the repetitive chants of
whippoorwills. In the Ozarks you learn to sleep in spite of the noise, the same as
in New York City. It's just a different type of sound.

I've learned to be watchful. I seldom sleep so deeply that I'm not aware of my
surroundings at some base level of consciousness. Deep sleep is nearly a thing of
the past for me, something I grab in snatches a few minutes at a time. Tonight
has been quiet, though, in the terms I care about--until now.

At first I think that the mechanical droning that invades the bedroom is the sound
of a truck pulled over on the roadside a couple of hundred yards down the
driveway, then with a jolt I realize the source of the noise is in the wrong place
and much too near. Immediately I am fully awake and raise my head from the
bed, expecting that with full consciousness the sound will fade and resolve itself
into something ordinary--but it does not. The sound still comes from the west, a
hundred feet away and just above the treetops, a droning mechanical hum like
an idling engine, the bass rumbling pierced by the shrill whine of a high speed
turbine. It does not sound like any truck engine I've ever heard.

I don't want to tip them off. Let them think I'm sleeping and I'll deal with them if
and when they come. I settle my head back on the pillow and feign sleep, but I'm
all adrenalin and my heart is pounding. I hear the voices of men talking through
the engine noise and strain to understand the words, but there's too much
interference from the machine. I wait and watch the wall between me and the
intruders. I hear them laughing. I wonder about going out to confront them but I
set that thought aside. I have a better chance in here, in the pitch dark, than
outside in the grass and the starlight. In here, surprise is on my side.

I constantly check myself, asking myself whether I'm really awake or not, but I
am awake completely and this is not one of those times when I'm wondering
whether it's real in the physical sense or real in some altered state of awareness. I
wouldn't be any more awake if they were shooting at me. I remind myself where
my weapons are--the pistol on the nightstand, the longknife beside me in the bed.
I'll use them if I need to do that.

I inspect the mechanical noise with my mind, separate it into shafts spinning and
pistons pounding and blades churning air, trying to get some sense of the
machine. A mental image comes to my mind with the ease of familiarity, the
same way pilots know a plane by the sound of its engine, except that this is
something that isn't supposed to be and that I'm not supposed to know. It's a Vril
7 flying platform, probably the newer American model. Levers groan and thunk
as hatches open. Noise ebbs and returns as men walk between me and the engine
ports, setting up equipment on the walkway that rings the upper deck. The
stabilizer fans scream without a hitch, compensating automatically for the
shifting weight. The voices stop.

A reddish orange dot of light appears on the bedroom wall between me and the
machine floating above the trees a hundred feet away. It grows quickly into a
patch of ruddy energy a yard in diameter. I'm not surprised because I'm familiar
with portals and with what comes through them. I ready myself, relaxing instead
of tensing. My thoughts quiet and I shift into that other self I don't like to show
people. I'm not afraid, because this is something I do well.

Something unexpected happens. I'm very familiar with suppression fields, but
this time it's different. Instead of that heavy blanket of pressure trying to hold me
down, it forms beneath me and lifts me up. If I were sleeping I'd never know I left
the bed. Now it holds me suspended a yard or more above the bed and begins to
carry me, slow and steady, towards that orange portal. I wonder if I should let it
happen, and whether I'll be coming back this time if I do.

In mid-air I decide to turn around and break the contact; there's a sudden jolt in
my awareness and I'm darting back towards the bed, unable to tell whether it's
my doing or not. Hopefully it is, because I no longer want to cooperate with these
people. I doubt they trust me any longer--they want people who will act without
questioning orders, and I've suddenly developed a moral sense. I'm replaced in
the same position in which I left the mattress, and I listen for a few minutes more
to the dissassembly noises, the movements of the crew on the metal deck, the
clanking of machine parts being stowed, the creak and thunk of hatches closing
and being secured. The men are talking, but not joking. They sound tired, even
solemn. I hope I've been trouble.

Then it leaves. I critique the noise, still thinking it might be a truck, but trucks
wander the hills following the highway, shifting gears and revving motors, even if
the engine is one of the new turbine models, the only type that might generate a
sound like the one I hear. The noise of trucks traveling ebbs and flows with the
terrain, but this noise leaves in a straight line towards the southwest, at treetop
level and rising into the sky.

In the morning I look for any evidence of the mission. There's no sign that
anything was here.

Afterwards I try to explain what happened to acquaintances online, but it's hard
to get across to anyone what is so different about this--the physicality of it, the
brute force technology, the completely ordinary mental state in which I observed
and participated. I want to believe that in that one instant of broken perception,
the instant of turning around to go back to my place in bed, I somehow broke
away from the contact and disrupted the process, because that was my intention
and that is what I tried to do. I'm troubled, though, because in that instant my
thread of consciousness was broken. There is something wrong.

I checked the clock that night after things settled down but there seemed to be no
missing time. That is no comfort, because if technology does exist that shatters the
limits of time and space, crosses light years in an eyeblink, anything is possible.
Someone like me could be taken and returned to the same moment, having spent
hours or days in other places. That could explain many things, like implanted
devices that appear overnight in healed tissue. Other people claim it has
happened to them. I suspect it has happened to me.