Roswell: It Was My Fault
by Olaf Baumann
part 1
Nobody knows what boredom is if they’ve never worked in an accounting firm. Monotony emanates from every number on a ledger. Tedious indifference rises from the columns. Pedantic dreariness hovers, fills the room, mixes with pencil dust and the moldy scent of old paper. Toxic apathy penetrates your body through all pores and chokes your soul. Your essence dissolves and leaves a suit draped over solidified meaninglessness as if it were a manikin. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you why the Grim Reaper didn’t claim me. Perhaps I am too boring even for the Specter of death.
When I was young, I had dreams. Pilot, poet, or professional ballplayer. My dad convinced me to pull my head out of the clouds and get it into the game. “Do something that pays the bills. With a bit of luck and dedicated work, you might make it into the middle management. Adult life needs a solid foundation. When you’re set up, get a hobby.”
I was set up, but when I got home, I was too tired for a hobby. I fell into bed exhausted but, when I lay flat beneath my blanket, I couldn’t sleep. On occasion, I drank hard liquor to shoot my lights out. When I felt not tough enough to endure a hangover, I drove my car out of town. I know a spot where the valley opens and you can see the distant mountains.
The nights were clear in the desert. The white band of the Milky Way illuminated the road before me. It stretched straight to the horizon. It connected me to a world I would likely never visit. I wondered what adventures were hiding behind the next bend. I could have kept on driving to find out, but I never did. The dreariness of my existence was like glue that kept me stuck. “Don’t chase pie in the sky,” said my father. He was dead, but what was left of him lived in my head.
It was a couple of years after the war. Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific on a raft; Truman grinned into TV cameras for the first time; Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier; and Jackie Robinson was the first Black guy throwing a ball in the major leagues. One fateful night, I parked underneath a starry sky, staring into the clear desert night. I always calculated how long it took to get to the Ocean. A day; at most, one and a half.
Dawn was almost upon me. The office called me like a prison guard who herds you back inside after yard time is over. I turned around and drove to suffer the mind-numbing security of adult life.
It was just a passing glance into the rear-view mirror, but I saw a light. I hit the brakes and looked back. An ethereal glow descended from the heavens. First, I figured it was a shooting star. It streaked over the sky, but did not fade. It slowed until it hovered not too far from me. As gently as a feather, it floated down to earth. I heard a hum, and the air felt electric.
The light disappeared behind a canyon wall. I don’t know what drove me. Without weighing the consequences, I turned the car, and I sped forward to explore. My father would not have approved. For once, that was a captivating idea. A mystery had come from heaven, and I would not run away from it to go accounting.
Recently, there was talk on the radio about a pilot who had encountered a strange phenomenon way up in Washington state. They called it a UFO, an “Unidentified Flying Object.” Shortly after, more people spoke up. They had seen circles or triangles or just lights. They flew fast or slow and, in an instant, they were gone. It was a mystery. They had no clue what they were or where they came from.
Some said they were the godless Bolsheviks, others said it was signs of the Second Coming, the Rapture or angels. I didn’t pay any attention. I was convinced I would never see one. Why would anything fascinating pick a spot as dreary as here? Here is where anything unusual comes to die.
My car zoomed down the highway. I was speeding, but I wasn’t scared of a ticket. I saw my father riding shotgun pumping imaginary brakes. That planted a vicious grin on my face, and I floored the pedal some more. For once in my buttoned-down life, I was a bad guy. As if I was piloting a warbird, I shot around the bend. There was something! I hit the brakes. The tires screeched, and my ride skidded to a halt.
What was before me took my breath away. A gigantic flying saucer stood beneath a picture-perfect night sky. The stars twinkled, and I thought I had a stroke or my mind had snapped, and I was suffering delusions. My tortured soul tried to spice up my boring existence and conjured up things that were not there.
I stared at the craft like a lobotomized ape. It was insane. The UFO looked as if you had glued two saucers together. There was a ring of blue pulsating lights running along its mid-section. The soft hum of powerful engines filled the air. They pumped static electricity into the air that gave me goosebumps and made the little hairs on my arms stand up.
A couple of hundred yards away, I spotted a green space-alien. It was sneaking up to a lonely cabin. I guess it wanted to examine the private parts of some country pumpkin. At least that’s what a guy on the radio said they do when they’re not busy making crop circles. Here, it had to be the former. We were in the desert; we didn’t have any corn fields in which to make crop circles.
I was wondering if I should honk my horn to warn them, when I noticed the alien pervert had left the hatch open to his intergalactic flying machine. Light fell through the door. It painted a nice yellowish rectangle onto the dirt as if it was a sign that read: “This is where you can get in.” It was like magic, enticing, appealing, tempting like it was the devil himself outlining in excruciating detail the appealing features of a French maid he had custom created to lure me into hell.
As if that was not seductive enough, the damn door started talking to me. “Come,” it said. “Come in and I make all your secret dreams come true. In this spacecraft, you will find the irresponsible adventures your father told you never, ever to dream about. I reveal to you the most mind-bending secrets of the universe. I have buttons and switches and stuff. You like buttons and switches, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“So, what are you waiting for? Enter!”
I was not an avid reader of science fiction, but I knew invitations like that rarely had a happy end. I could become a casualty in some alien experiment. Or the green guy had run out of snacks during his trip through the Milky Way and now was looking for something tasty to take the edge off his hunger.
I searched for the pilot. The creature had reached the house and disappeared behind a corner. Did that mean the air was clear?
My father inside my head gave me a stern look. “Enough adventures for one night. Go home!” He sounded like he declared play time to be over. “A dull but responsible existence is better than no life,” he lectured. If there is a person on this planet who plays it safe, it is me, but in this night, I couldn’t resist the drive to live dangerously, face death or fate, or both; an urge to explore and to be alive.
I opened the door, slipped out, and rushed over to the UFO. With a mixture of excitement and fear, I stood in the rectangular spot of light underneath the hatch. I heard my father’s voice. “Run!” he said. “Get away!” I took a deep breath and entered.
The cabin was the most awesome thing I had ever seen. It was like I imagined a space craft cockpit should look like. Lights that flashed in every color of the rainbow covered the walls. There were switches in all sizes. Some were tiny, some looked like the levers in a railway switch tower. There were gauges, readouts, and TV screens, much bigger that those you could order from the Sears & Roebuck catalog and, believe you me, they were in color. The program was rather strange, changing symbols and some schematics, and one, I was pretty sure, displayed a map.
In the middle of the cabin stood a pilot’s chair. The thing was a decked-out monster of a chair. It was a sturdy piece of equipment with protrusions, bulges, and grooves. Tubes were going in and coming out. Cold to the touch, it was neither metal nor plastic. There was no yoke, but on the armrests, there were control sticks. I was pretty sure you flew the saucer with them. The padding was heavenly. Soft as the behind of a newborn. When I sat on it, it embraced my tush. No other way to describe it, like it was a horny sailor who sweet-talked my butt. You could sit there forever. Hands down, the best seat I ever sat in.
I should have called it a night right there. There was a voice of reason within me that said: “Go home before the space alien comes back and wonders what you are doing in his seat.”
I stayed. A button beguiled me. A button that stood out from the rest. It was a big and fat and red. It was a button that demanded to be pushed, one that begged for it. Getting me to hit, punch, slam, or thumb it seemed the sole purpose of its existence. I was reluctant, because who knows what happens? To lure me into pushing it, the button called me by name and said, “What’s wrong with you, you loser? If you’re not a waste of space, push me!” I swear, I heard it say that. If that wasn’t alien mind control, I don’t know what was.
I know I shouldn’t have, but I did as I was told. I pushed the button.
The saucer growled like a hungry tiger who studies a juicy big-game hunter stalking through the jungle. “You’re cooked, my friend,” the growl said. “It’s lunchtime!” The snarl got louder, it resonated with raw power. Its pitch went up and a rhythmic pulse joined the sensation. It was like a spring being charged. The stored up kinetic power was palpable. The beats echoed deep in my gut. My innards trembled like dancers in that moment just before the music drives them to move. The energy wanted to burst forth, erupt and assault the laws of physics.
I must confess, there was a second of regret. Wouldn’t it be nice if I sat in the office and double-checked the day’s work? I couldn’t believe I had thoughts like that tucked away in the depth of my psyche. Too late! The careless number-cruncher would exit his earthly existence when an alien flying machine hurled itself into space. The war between acceleration and gravity will squeeze him flat like the many bugs that graced the windscreen he pedantically cleaned every day.
A click, faint and trivial. It gave me a fleeting moment of calm, like I was in the eye of a storm. No vibrating guts, no growling tiger, but serene silence. I would almost call it peace. Then the craft unleashed a slumbering monster. With a shriek, the saucer blasted starward. The force pushed me deep into the seat, but it did not flatten me like a pancake. The cushions embraced me like a mother’s hug. To my surprise, I felt snug and comfortable. Maybe I was born to be a star-man and not an accountant?
I touched what I assumed were controls. Just a little push with the finger, to test the waters. I was correct. These were flight sticks. I was gentle like a French gigolo, but the craft veered to the side like a terrified cow horse that pivots on its hindquarters. The seat engaged and encased my body in a protective layer of fluff. The machinery under my tush worked frantically. There was a clanging noise I didn’t appreciate. It sounded like tortured metal.
I pushed the stick in the opposite direction to compensate, but that made it worse. The saucer tumbled and spun. I felt like dirty socks in the washing machine. The UFO shook and rocked and quaked like a bull in the rodeo who hates his rider like I hate accounting. Then we plummeted down. My stomach tried to escape through my mouth. I clenched my teeth and wrote a note to myself. Next time you steal a UFO, read the manual first. Then we crashed.
Copyright © 2025 by Olaf Baumann
