© 2018 Eric Bickernicks ISBN: 978-0-578-43809-2 Copyright Reg: TXu 2-108-301 Version 1.0 1 HIGH STRANGENESS 01 I shouted over to Noodles, “A crashed saucer is an oxymoron!” I gripped the steering wheel of my Ford Taurus, raised my index finger and continued, “That’s just another example of stupid extra- terrestrial syndrome.” “Stupid extraterrestrial syndrome?” he said. “Yeah. They’re so smart they figured out how to get here, but were too stupid to avoid crashing into our planet.” Noodles slumped into his seat. “But something can always go wrong, right?” “Not if you’ve avoided every little particle in outer space be- tween here and your home planet. Do you know what happens if you’re going at the speed of light and you hit something the size of a pebble? You’re toast! They’re that smart.” Noodles thought for a moment. “What if they took a worm- hole?” “Great!” I threw my hands up in the air and slammed them 2 HIGH STRANGENESS down on the steering wheel. “Now you’re saying they’ve learned how to bend space…but not how to avoid huge chunks of dirt?” I did an alien-as-surfer-dude impression: “Hey Zork, what’s that? A planet? WHOA!!” I made the classic car crash sound. “Pffffffffffff….” “Then why do so many people say they’ve seen a crashed UFO?” I gritted my teeth and exhaled deeply. “Because they’re delu- sional.” I kept trying to drive my argument home every time he brought up crashed saucers. He seems to get it only some of the time. We sat in silence as I focused on the road. Noodles is my friend Terry that I’ve known since childhood. We met at Quash- net Elementary School in Mashpee here on Cape Cod. We called him Noodles because he was this incredibly skinny kid, and the name stuck. I just wish he closed his mouth more often when he wasn’t speaking. A bud is a bud; unfortunately you can’t pick your friends’ attributes. Cape Cod is a sixty-mile-long peninsula that extends out of Massachusetts into the Atlantic ocean. Back in 1914 the Army Corps of Engineers lopped it off from the mainland with the construction of the Cape Cod Canal. I wasn’t sure if the engineers were trying to make it easier for boats to navigate up the coast, or to isolate it’s residents from the rest of the continent. As in any island nation, you either live “on Cape” or “off Cape”. There are three bridges that allow us to escape our little “paradise”. In the summer, why would anyone sweat their asses off inland when you can come here? It’s around this time of year, right after Memorial Day weekend, that things get crowded then everyone starts to go mental. Noodles and I were driving down Route 6, which is the main highway that goes down the middle of the Cape. We passed exit 9, or the start of “Suicide Alley”. It’s the spot where the divided highway merges into a two-lane, crash-test-dummy delight of on- 3 HIGH STRANGENESS coming high-speed vehicles. Plenty of drunk, distracted or suicidal people have drifted over the line and taken somebody else out with them. I’ve told myself, if I ever see anyone drift over the line, I’m putting my car into the ditch. Even if I’m going sixty miles an hour—I don’t care. Noodles was zoning out while he stared through his window. “I heard people see ghosts walking around out here.” “What? Dead drivers looking for their cars in the after life?” “I passed a weird looking guy a couple of years ago who was just standing there at the side of the road with his thumb out. I was gonna give him a ride, but when I managed to turn the car around, he was gone.” I sighed. “A ghost looking for a ride?” “He was pretty weird looking.” “Dude, most hitchhikers are pretty weird looking. How’s this for an explanation: he got picked up before you came back?” “I didn’t see any cars pass me.” “Or how about: he went into the bushes to take a leak?” I shook my head. “There aren’t any ghosts. People who say they’ve seen one are just looking for things to support their religious views.” We passed a car with a flat tire on the side of the road. Beside it was a guy pulling a jack out of the trunk. Noodles turned to scrutinize him as we went past. The guy wasn’t transparent, so it wasn’t a ghost having a bad day. He went back to watching the oncoming traffic. “Where are we going, Kenny?” He’s been calling me Kenny since we were kids. He knows I liked to be called Ken, but how the hell was I supposed to stop him? “We’re going to Namskaket Marsh,” I said. “I found a good field of phragmites to make our crop circle in.” Noodles nodded his head slightly and continued to monitor the roadway. There’s two things you should know. First, phragmites are a tall, reedy grass that you find in New England wetland areas. 4 HIGH STRANGENESS They’re considered an invasive species and are the closest thing to a wheat field that you’ll find here on the Cape. Second, crop circles are total bullshit. They drive me crazy; they’re just another example of stupid alien syndrome. If you had to set your spaceship down on this planet, wouldn’t an Amazonian rainforest or the Grand Canyon be more interesting than a wheat field? Did they need some flour for their trip home? Of course this all started when some nitwit made a circle in somebody’s crops and claimed a flying saucer made it. It’s not that hard to flatten a bunch of wheat using a board. The problem I have is when these “aliens” decided to start making intricate patterns as art projects and people still believe they are extraterrestrial in origin. There’s plenty of footage of people showing how they made these things, yet the myth won’t go away. So I decided to do something about it. Noodles and I are going to make our own crop circle. Since there is no wheat growing on the Cape, a field of reeds will have to do. We’re gonna film the whole process; that way when people go nuts over a crop circle appearing on Cape Cod, we can show that they’re idiots for believing such a thing. It’s hard enough to get people to take the idea of extraterrestrial life seriously; I want to at least root out all the obvious bullshit. I found the perfect place, just off Route 6A, in Namskaket Marsh behind the greenhouses of Hanson Farm. Google maps show that near the farm there’s an access road that goes out to the marsh. We got to the farm just as it was starting to get dark and noticed lights were on inside. We went down the dirt road about half a mile and pulled over. Noodles got out of the car first, turned on a big LED flashlight and shone it up into the trees. Stark, skin- ny shadows whipped through the branches. I snapped at him, “Dude! Turn that thing off!” He smiled. “It’s my Fenix LED flashlight…two thousand lumens.” 5 HIGH STRANGENESS “You can’t use that, someone’s gonna see us!” He nodded his head and turned it off. I opened the trunk of my car and got our equipment: an industrial-length measuring tape spool and a board with a rope looped through holes on each end. He studied it for a moment. “What’s this?” “This is what pushes the reeds down.” To illustrate, I stepped on the board and held the rope taut. “You lift your foot up like this to push down on the reeds. You keep stepping forward to flatten everything in front of you.” I did a few quick steps as an example. “You’re gonna be the anchor and hold the measuring tape.” I showed him my sheet of graph paper. “This is what we’re making—an alien head.” “That’ll be cool! Everyone will think the aliens drew a portrait of themselves.” “That’s the whole idea.” “Where do you want me?” I pointed to a couple of black dots on the paper. “You’re gonna stay at these anchor spots and hold one end of the measuring tape while I hold the other end and walk in a big arc. You got my infrared camera?” “It’s on the back seat.” He climbed into my car while I grabbed my rubber boots from the trunk. I knew it was going to be mucky out there. He appeared a moment later holding a pair of wooden Bigfoot feet and asked, “What are these?” I finished putting on my boots and stood up. “That’s another hoax I’m working on. Anybody can create fake Bigfoot tracks; I want to show how easy it is. Those are just crude plywood tests, I need to make real ones out of flexible silicon.” Noodles studied my handiwork. “Ah cool! Can I wear these?” “No, we don’t want to confuse the folklore. Leave ‘em here.” Noodles dropped them next to my back tire. That would have to be an off-Cape expedition, some other time.