The Silent Forest

It was a cold, grey, claggy January evening in the remote West Highlands of Scotland in 1962. Dense, leaden clouds were clinging to the summit line of the mountains that ringed Loch Ranna, a small body of water hidden in a wilderness that felt a thousand miles from civilisation. The waters of the loch seemed agitated that evening, as the wind blew through the glen, damp with fine drizzle. Standing alone on the lonely bank of the loch was a small, stone cottage. It had once been home to a gamekeeper but it now stood empty, albeit given a new lease of life by the Mountain Bothy Association. Its simple interior featured two small rooms, one with an old fireplace and a cupboard that contained candles, books and items of food left by hikers that had stayed the night in this wild, isolated spot. Piled beside the fireplace were fire logs and other pieces of wood that previous overnight visitors had also donated, for use by the next occupants. Standing adjacent to the building was a small, outisde composting toilet. It stood about ten metres from a small burn that flowed down into the loch.

The bothy could only be reached by a winding mountain track that led from the road between Fort William and Mallaig. You needed a four by four with good ground clearance to get through the later sections, which were, by turns, steep, rocky and often boggy from the relentless rain that dampened the land. Halfway up the track, just before it became passable only by high clearance vehicles and forestry trucks was a small turnout. Hikers heading for the bothy would park their vehicles there and hike in the west of the way, through the dark mass of Ranna Forest. The forest blanketed the mountainside heading down into the glen, marching like a vast dark green army over the ridge from the other side. Its ancient oaks and tall caledonian pines grew so densely in the forest that the ground below was in near-constant semi-darkness, even on the brightest of days. At night, the cloak of darkness among the trees seemed to have a life of its own, hunting you, unseen in the shadows.

John Stephens, who worked for the Forestry Agency, not only helped tend to the forest but also cared for the bothy. His muddy Land Rover was parked on a flat area of gravel in front of the bothy. He had opened the maintenance room, a small, attached outhouse that was normally kept locked. It contained tools and repair equipment belonging to the Bothy Association, to keep the weather beaten old building in sound condition. John took great pride in his duties and enjoyed working out here, surrounded by the rapidly changing elements in this untamed place. That evening, he had been fixing some loose roof tiles that a strong wind had dislodged a few nights ago. He descended carefully from the ladder, its feet resting on slightly loose stones. As he collapsed the ladder and proceeded to put it back into the outhouse, he was sure he glimpsed, from the corner of his eye, a bright, white light hovering above the treeline of Ranna Forest to his right. He was tired, looking forward to getting home to his wife in Fort William, sitting by the fire and eating dinner with her. He dismissed the strange sight as a trick of the light, the winter night now having descended and the clouds over the forest having slightly cleared, allowing flitting beams of moonlight through. He drew his coat closed and headed back toward his Land Rover. He took a look back at the bothy and nodded, pleased that he had done a good job. In the darkness, the mountains on the other side of the loch were no longer visible and there was a deep chill in the air. Beside the wind, which had somewhat stilled, the only other sound was the now gentler lapping of the loch’s dark waters against its shivering shore.

John turned the key in the ignition and started his Land Rover. Its headlights pierced the blackness, illuminating the ruts, bumps and ridges in the uneven surface of the track. John knew every metre of this unpaved roadway, every pothole and boggy patch. He slowly drove out of the glen, expertly shifting gears and accelerating just enough to clear the uneven areas without getting mired in them. He wound his way up the soft, peaty ground in a steep, narrow zigzag. In places, rocks pushed in on both sides, making it only just wide enough for him to pass through. After the steep climb, the track’s upward incline lessened, as it headed into the cloying darkness of Ranna Forest, a great black, enclosing wall that now lay before him.

Something seemed strange about the forest that night. John was used to its moods, its fervent quiet, punctated by the subtle sounds of the night. Tonight, however, it felt threatening. There was an unearthly electricity in the air, an eerie silence. As he reached the edge of the forest, he pulled up in a small passing place, took his torch and cautiously wandered into the trees. Immediately, he was unnerved by the totality of stillness, the suppression of the usual nocturnal undertones. Even the wind had calmed. Nothing moved. The forest felt suddenly forbidding and alien. Something was wrong, though he did not know what it was. Something was here that did not belong and even the nocturnal creatures of the forest knew that it should be feared. John shivered, as he noticed the air getting colder, the temperature dropping unnaturally. On the edge of his perception, he began to notice a very quiet, unsettling, low humming sound, like the note of a distant engine, but he could not determine what the noise was or where it was coming from. It seemed to emanate from everywhere but at the same time to come from nowhere at all.

“Hello?”, John called out, his voice quavering, “Who’s there?”

No-one answered. His voice seemed to be deadened, muted by whatever had possessed the forest around him. The buzzing sound grew subtly louder and John now wanted to run, an action that was against his nature. He had never before felt afraid of this land - in awe of it, respectful of it, but never afraid of it. He wanted to run, but he could not, in fact he could not move at all. It was as though he had been paralysed by an unseen force in the darkness that preyed upon him. After what seemed like minutes had passed, a bright light flooded the forest, descending into the trees like a bright spotlight from above. It seemed uncontrolled, as though it were crashing down to the forest floor. As the light engulfed him, he lost consciousness.

The entire glen echoed with a sudden explosion, a deep, reverberating boom, so loud that it frightened the large herd of deer that grazed the opposite shore of the loch below. The herd leapt away up the hillside in a terrified mass, their frightened movements adding to the disturbing aura of the night. Shortly afterwards, a bright white light rose up from the forest and sped upwards into the sky, illuminating the glen to daylight for a few brief moments. When the invaders had gone, they left only impenetrable silence behind, but John himself had also gone. Despite an extensive search of the area that lasted for weeks, he was never found.

Stranger still was the involvement of the military in the search, normally a purely Police-led matter. Officers from Fort William were joined by a flotilla of Army trucks that bumped and rocked their way along the track to the loch and its remote bothy. All access to the forest was closed for weeks. The lights in the sky had been seen by many other witnesses that night from miles away and the loud explosion had been heard as far away as Fort William. The official explanation provided by the MOD was that an unexploded bomb had gone off and that more had been found, requiring their removal and the closure of the area to the public. The lights were put down to a military training exercise based out of the RAF base near Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. However, the locals knew this was unlikely. For one thing, military exercises were not typically conducted in this area and RAF Stornoway was in any case many miles away in the Outer Hebrides. Those who had military connections also knew that the Army trucks with securely fastened sides that headed into the forest and out again were not from the bomb squad. Whatever they brought out of Ranna Forest was taken away by the military, with no further explanation given.

John’s wife, Mary, worked with a lawyer for many years to uncover the truth about what had happened to her husband, however she was frustrated at every turn by the MOD’s veil of secrecy. She was told he had accidentally set off the bomb that created the explosion, however she knew that he would never have approached any such object he found in the forest. He would have reported it to the Police as soon as he could and left them to arrange its removal. Mary passed away in 2003, however her family never ceased their efforts to obtain justice for John, to get to the truth.

In the years that followed what became known as the ‘Loch Ranna Incident’, the forest became a nexus for ufologists and truth seekers. Many went there to find evidence of what they believed was a UFO crash. Others, who simply hiked the long path through the forest to the lochside bothy frequently reported that the atmosphere in the forest was disturbing, not only dark but also silent - unnaturally quiet. The forest gained a reputation for being haunted, though some believed it home to extraterrestrial beings, survivors of one of the craft that apparently crashed down in the forest that night in 1962.

This belief was only encouraged by the ongoing reports of strange lights in the skies above the woods, not only bright white, but exhibiting pulsating colours and flight characteristics unlike any known form of aircraft at the time. Some hikers even reported brief glimpses of humanoid forms hiding in the undergrowth, out of place and not quite human. The locals grew weary of the attention the area was receiving and tended to play down the stories of aliens in the remote wilderness. However, they knew something was going on - something that had begun in 1962 and was still continuing.

More sinister, however, were the ongoing disappearances that occurred in the intervening years. In every case, they were hikers heading for the bothy, through the forest, who were never heard from or seen again. Despite extensive searches of the area for miles around, no trace of them was ever found.

***

It was November 2025. Ryan and James were two Engineering students who had just graduated after their final year at university in London. They had been friends since the first year and were both avid hikers. They had heard of the legend surrounding Loch Ranna and the neighbouring forest and resolved to hike to the bothy to stay the night there. Neither one of them particularly took an interest in aliens and UFOs, though they had often discussed the statistical improbability that Mankind was truly alone in the vastness of the Universe. In any event, the Christmas break had just begun and they wanted an adventure. James, being the more practical of the two of them, had dealt with the logistical arrangements.

“Where are we picking up the hire car?”, said Ryan, gazing out of the window as the train left Nairn.

“There’s a place by Inverness station. Got a good rate, too.”

“What type of car did you book?”

“A Land Rover. Apparently it gets a bit rough going once you leave the main road.”

“You want to drive?”

“Sure”, James replied, with a smile, “at least as far as the car park bit. After that we’ll hike in.”

“Through the forest, you mean, where the aliens are?”

“Yeah, well if we keep to the path we’ll avoid them, won’t we?”

James had a dry sense of humour, in contrast to his friend, who could be much more flippant. It worked well, as they continually riffed off each other.

AFter they had picked up the car and James had crunched the gearbox a few times leaving Inverness, they were on their way along the shore of Loch Ness toward Fort William.

“Do you think she’s in there?”, Ryan quipped.

“Who?”

“Nessie. Do you think she’s down there?”

“What are you like?”

“Its deeper than the North Sea, that loch. Plenty of space for a monster to hide in.”

“Deep and dark, yes. Not much oxygen down there, though.”

“Perhaps she comes up at night for air.”

“Shall we park up here and wait for her?”

James pointed at a sign for a layby ahead on half a mile on the shore side of the road.

“Nah, let’s keep going. Nessie can wait.”

They left behind Nessie and the hordes tourists hopeful for a glimpse of her for their altogether more solitary destination further west, eventually reaching Fort William, where they stopped for food. They found themselves at ‘Brown’s’, an idependent cafe located next to the pier for the ferry across to Camusnagaul. The view from the window was impressive. The afternoon sun had broken through the cloud and its soft rays danced upon the water, flickering like candle flames. They both ordered steak pie and chips, which came to the table in generous portions, topped with rich, savoury gravy. The accompanying peas seemed sheepishly out of place among the meatiness of the plate.

“Did you hear back from that marine tech company?”, Ryan asked, staring out at the mountains beyond the water.

“Yes”, James replied, “They offered me a job in their development department, working on new hybrid engines for ferries and cargo ships.”

“Ah, well done. Sounds great, Where is is based?”

“Down in Plymouth, not far from the Naval dockyard. Some of their work is contracted by the Royal Navy, on their submarine fleet, I think. What about you? Did you hear back from that Magnox lot, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah”, Ryan replied, “They’re building a new nuclear power station on the coast at Dungeness in Kent - first of a new design of high efficiency fast breeder reactor. They offered me a role on the engineering team.”

“Fantastic, sounds exciting. What did you say?”

“I took the job - starts in March next year.”

James raised his glass of cola.

“Here’s to us, Ryan. Changing the world together.”

Ryan smiled and reciprocated with his can of Irn Bru.

“Didn’t know you liked that”, said James, dryly.

“I don’t”, said Ryan.

They laughed and shared chat as two best friends do, painfully aware that their paths would soon diverge.

James looked at his watch.

“We’d better head off if we want to get to the bothy before nightfall.”

“Yeah, true. Time to go.”

As they left the restaurant and headed back to the Land Rover in the car park, the ferry was just departing, with a loud blast from its horn. The sound seemed to bounce back and forth across the water and disturbed a small group of seagulls hunting for scraps along the waterfront. They took off suddenly and headed toward the pier, hoping to find tourists with chips, from whom they could aggressively steal their next meal.

Taking the A830 towards Mallaig, they ran along the shore of Loch Eil. The sun, by this point, had slowly begun to set over the loch and the nature of the afternoon light had become more sombre. After about fifteen minutes, they reached the turning to the right that led to Loch Ranna. It was marked with Scottish Foresty Commission signage for Ranna Forest, and, at least to start with, was easily passable, being of graded gravel that evidently many other vehicles had traversed, compressing the stones into the ground. Only after about 3 miles did it become progressively rougher and steeper. It ascended through gradual inclines and turns through smaller areas of forest, with increasingly dramatic vistas of the West Highland wilderness. In the space of five miles, the landscape changed utterly. Suddenly it was raw, savage and unforgiving. The isolation was both magnificent and overwhelming. The silence was profound and had a presence of its own, which only the sounds of birdsong and deer grunting somewhere in the distance dared to challenge.

The track now reached the small turnout, which was as empty as the land around it.

“Just us here then”, said James.

“Nobody here but us chickens”, Ryan replied.

Looking out of the window toward the mountains that backed Loch Ranna, the highest of which was Gulvain, whose cloud-mired peak the forest did not quite reach, Ryan had his first view of the silent forest. It looked dark and forbidding and it made him shiver.

“Looks quite creepy, doesn’t it?”, he said.

James parked the Land Rover, facing the forest and adjacent to the newly installed gate that led to the continuation of the track toward the loch. As he turned off the engine, the reassuring thrum of diesel cylinders ceased and an pervasive silence fell.

“That’s just your imagination. It’s only a forest.”

“A forest where a UFO crashed in the sixties.”

“*Allegedly* crashed.”

“... and where people have gone missing.”

“Easy to get lost in a place like this, though. We’re miles from civilisation and the weather can change in an instant.”

“Always the pragmatist.”

“Just being logical. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good mystery, but there’s no actual *proof* that anything strange really happened here.”

“You believe all that stuff the military came out with? The unexploded bombs and the aircraft exercise?”

James looked at Ryan with a knowing look.

“Alright, Mulder. Keep your hair on. I mean, maybe, I don’t know. That’s what makes it a good story though - no-one is really sure what happened here in 1962.”

“Someone knows.”

“Sure, and maybe some day there’ll be a disclosure of imformation, or whatever its called. Then we’ll all know. Until then, though, we should get moving - its getting darker.”

Ryan smiled.

“Come on then JB, let’s go.”

James’ surname, Barlow, made ‘JB’, as James himself would say, a logical nickname. It was what Ryan had always called him. James, however, had always resisted truncating ‘Ryan’ to ‘Ry’ or anything else.

Having gathered their hiking backpacks, water, firewood and camping equipment from the back of the Land Rover, the boys headed off along the track that now sloped slightly downwards towards the entrance to Ranna Forest. The enclosure of night followed them in, as though herding them into the darkness like an ancient hunter. When they reached the edge of the forest, the treeline created a noticeable break from the peaty moorland they had been traversing to that point.

“Well then, here we go”, said James.

As they entered the forest, the atmosphere changed dramatically. The darkness was such they they had to turn on their head torches to ensure they stayed on the track, which wound up and down beneath the trees. What was most noticeable was the eerie silence. It was beyond quiet, too quiet. There was no birdsong, no movement. Nothing dared to give voice to its presence. The whole forest seemed alive, in a way that sent a shiver down their spines. Even James had begun to notice the strange atmosphere among the trees. There was nothing to see, no reason for the disconcerting aura this place had, but something definitely felt wrong.

“OK, yes, you’re right. It *does* feel creepy”, he admitted, begrudgingly.

“How much further to the Bothy?”

James looked at his Ordnance Survey map, his head torch illuminating the creased paper.

“About a mile or so”, he said, “the track dips down the other side just up ahead to the loch.”

As though subconciously anxious to get through the forest, they now picked up their pace, feeling compelled to look behind them periodically, to confirm that they really were alone.

James was quite right - the track did indeed shortly begin its descent down to the quiet, lonely glen, inhabited only by a herd of deer on the other bank of the loch. After about an hour they had left the forest and were descending the muddy zig zags of the track toward the bothy. As they arrived at the little stone building, the sun now sank behind the mountains.

They were all alone in the night.

***

The time was now nine PM and James and Ryan had settled into the bothy. They were the only ones there and had chosen the room with the fireplace to set up their sleeping bags. They had lit the fire using a combination of donated fire logs and some of the wood they had brought with them. They had placed candles around the room and in fact they had made it very homely, a safe haven from the ravages of night that preyed on them outside. James had set up their camping stove on the table by the window and had placed a frying pan on it. He added some oil from a small bottle and took out some beef burgers from their food bag, proceeding to cook them. When they were done, he warmed through some brioche buns in the pan, melted a slice of cheese on each burger and constructed two quarter pounders. Though Ryan had teased him for it, he had also brought salad with him as well, which had been pre-dressed with vinaigrette. Ryan, however, did not complain as, in fact, it complemented the burger quite well.

“Thank you, chef”, he said, as James passed him his plated burger.

Silence fell as they both ate their dinner, seated on the bedding areas where they had installed their sleep systems.

“Not a bad little stove that”, said James, placing his empty plate down next to him.

“Not a bad burger either.”

“Thanks. I do my best.”

“Love the salad. That was a nice touch. Good vinaigrette.”

“So glad you approve.”

They laughed and shared a camping mug of hot chocolate each, thanks to the indomitable little camping stove.

“Adventure enough for you?”, James asked.

“Yeah. I like it. Its so peaceful out here”, Ryan replied.

“Do you think they’re watching?”

“Who?”

“The aliens?”

“Well, if they are then we should invite them in for some of your salad.”

James affectionately shoved his friend jokingly as they both laughed at the absurdity of the idea.

“But it is nice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Haunted or not, I’m glad we got to do this before, you know ...”

James smiled.

“... you know?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. We’ll stay in touch, though.”

“Sure, of course. I’ll come down and see you in Plymouth.”

“No, I’ll come down to Dungeness and have an ice cream with you.”, James replied.

“The beach is all shingle there.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t have an ice cream.”

Over the next few hours, they watched a movie on James’ laptop, which he had downloaded the night before. Appropriately enough, it was *Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind*. At around midnight, they snuffed out the candles and went to bed. The room stayed warm from the log burner, in which the last pieces of wood, over the following few hours, slowly burned out, their subtle glow fading away.

***

It was 3am in the morning.

James and Ryan had been soundly sleeping for about four hours, when siddenly, a noise from outside woke them both up. Something was crunching in the gravel outside the bothy, as though it were circling the building.

James turned on his torch and pointed it at Ryan.

“Did you hear that?”, he asked, a slight note of alarm in his voice.

“Yeah”, Ryan replied, “Yeah, I did. What was it?”

“Dunno. A deer, maybe?”

“Shouldn’t we go and find out?”

James laughed gently.

“Why? We’re safe in here. Go back to sleep, it’s all good.”

Ryan felt a little unnerved. If it was just a deer then, obviously, he was just being silly. A single deer was hardly a threat to them, much less a herd of them that would, in any case, be extremely wary of these two adventurers.

“Yeah, you’re right, JB. Lets go back to sleep.”

As they both settled back down, calm returned and a further half hour passed, before the sound was heard again, this time much louder and *much* closer. This time it did not sound like deer peacefully meandering around the building, but like actual footsteps - deliberate, bipedal footsteps that appeared to move to the window and stop there.

They both woke up again and Ryan turned on his torch, hands shaking slightly, pointing it at James. he was visibly shaken. It felt different this time, as though something was outside the window, looking in at them from the darkness.

“Tell me you heard that!”, said Ryan.

James’ usual stoicism was also now being challenged and concern had begun to creep in.

“Yes”, he said.

“Something *is* out there.”

“Yes, but it might just be ...”

James tried to calm his nerves with reason.

“... might be what?”, Ryan retorted, “can’t you feel it? it’s like we’re being watched.”

“OK, yes, I know - I do - but let’s not panic. We might just be hallucinating, you know - half dreaming.”

“I hope so”, said Ryan.

The noise came again, this time it was not just footsteps, but a tap on the glass. The wooden frame of the window creaking as though their unseen visitor was trying to pry it open.

“JB!”, said Ryan, “Did you hear that? Someone’s trying to get in!”.

“OK”, said James, getting out of his bed and shivering in the now cold - unnaturally cold - room, as the temperature had fallen very suddenly, “OK, I’m going to take a look”.

As he got up, Ryan followed him to the window and they now both pointed their torches outside, searching the darkness for whatever was preying on them. There was nothing to be seen, but the feeling of being monitored had only intensified as they moved closer to the window.

Then, quite suddenly, a face appeared on the other side of the glass, directly in front of them, as if out of nowhere. They both jumped back, nearly falling to the floor in the shock. It could have been a dream, just their imaginations running riot from the power of suggestion, but the face remained. The image of the face now fully resolved out of the shadows into a humanoid figure, slender in build, of medium height and definitely not human. Its skin was a smooth, pallid white, its head tall and oval shaped. It had a small nose and mouth, and piercing blue eyes that appeared as though illuminated from behind. The being just stood there, silently, unblinkingly, staring at them with its penetrating gaze.

James and Ryan backed themselved up against the opposite wall of the bothy, where the bunk areas were. They clambered up on to the bunk deck and instinctively huddled next to each other.

“What do we do?”, said Ryan, visibly terrified.

His usually calm friend looked back at him with fear in his eyes, something Ryan had never seen before.

“I don’t know”, he said.

Seconds passed, but they felt like minutes. Still the being outside remained there, watching them. It raised its hands to the window and placed them against the glass. It had four long, thin fingers on each hand.

“Is ... is it an .. an ...?”, Ryan said.

Without completing the sentence, James looked back at him, his eyes wide, as if to confirm that he was right. They both knew that the word they were searching for was ‘alien’, though it seemed so improbable. Yet, there was a creature outside the window that surely was not of this world.

“Ryan, the door!”, James said, in a moment of realisation.

Bothy doors did not lock - these places were meant for anyone to use, so they were always open.

Before they could get up and grab one of the chairs to wedge the bothy’s main entrance door shut, the room flooded with intensely bright white light, cold and unearthly, like a thousand full moons. Neither James nor Ryan could now move, as though paralysed on the spot. The room around them began to blur and they felt themselves slipping into a deep sleep, the light pulsing slightly with a strange hypnotic effect. Just before they lost consciousness, their eyes recorded the image of not one, but two of these creatures, not outside the window, but inside the room, standing directly in front of them.

***

James and Ryan awoke to find themselves in what appeared to be a cavernous, round room, with a high domed ceiling. Between the structural beams in the walls and ceiling, which appeared to be made of shiny metal, were illuminated sections, flooding the room with silvery white light, less intense than before, but still strange and disturbing. James and Ryan were slumped on the floor, which was solid and felt strangely warm to the touch. Their vision was still blurry, but, as it gradually sharpened, they found themselves able to move once more, able to get up and walk around. There was no obvious door to the room and it was hard to estimate its true dimensions. The air in the room smelt strange, as though it were energised somehow. It had a faintly metallic odour. They looked at each other, still dressed in their camping clothes, woollen thermal socks against the floor. James wanted to say “where are we?”, but something held him back from speaking - he was not sure what it was, as though the question seemed somehow irrelevant. The fear that they had both felt in the bothy was beginning to subside. It made no sense, but they were beginning to feel safe, as though this place, wherever it was, had been created for them.

As they looked around, they began to notice that they were not alone - there were seven other people with them, each looking as puzzled as the other. One, a middle aged man, was dressed in a thick coat, with muddy boots and a forestry worker’s clothes. He looked as though he came from an earlier decade, as did all the others, who otherwise looked like hikers.

Finally, the boys felt able to speak. When they did, their voices had a strange, muted echo, as though even sound behaved strangely in this unexplained room. Somehow their words seemed to get trapped in the space imediately around them.

“Where are we?”, Ryan asked, looking at his friend.

“I ... I don’t know”, James replied.

“How did we get here?”

“Maybe we’re dreaming. Maybe none of this is real.”

“Were we ... abducted?”

James looked at Ryan as if he wanted to respond, but he did not have an answer. The truth was that this question, at any other point, would have been so bizarre that they would have simply laughed it off. However, something *had* happened to them and, the longer they stayed in this place, wherever it was, the more undeniable this became. Neither James nor Ryan could recall what happened to them after they lost consciousness. Looking at their G-Shock digital watches, they saw that they had both stopped. Their LCD screens were frozen, indicating the date and time when they were presumably taken from they bothy, so James reasoned.

Suddenly, in the far wall of the room, a door appeared in the wall and a curved corridor became visible on the other side. Its walls were of the same construction as the large room. Two of the creatures walked into the room, if ‘walked’ was the right word. They seemed to glide with a strange elegance of movement. As they did so, from the perspective of Ryan and James, the entire room seemed to contract and they found themselves now standing next to the other seven people, as though the two creatures wished to address them. There was no terror this time, only an overwhelming sense that these beings meant them no harm, that they had a message to give. One of the beings began to speak, but its mouth did not move. James and Ryan heard the voice in their minds, as though the creatures were using telepathy. The voice had an almost musical duality of tone, with a harmonic resonance that felt soft and soothing.

“Do not be afraid”, spoke the voice, “we mean you no harm. We mean your kind no harm. We have brought you to us because we want to help you.”

The natural inflection and manner of the English this voice spoke only made the situation more extraordinary. It was as though they were being addressed by a trusted figure of authority. Despite the dreamlike nature of the moment, it made sense. The voice continued to speak and, as it did so, Ryan and James, along with the others in the room, saw accompanying visions in their minds eye, so real that they felt they were living through them themselves.

“You have realised that we are not of your world. Our home, in your terms, is thirty-nine light years distant, in the solar system your scientists call Zeta Reticuli.”

Ryan and James saw in their minds what appeared to be a journey through space, from Earth to a binary star system and a planet that looked very much like Earth, with two small rocky moons in orbit of it. As the narration continued, the visions accompanying it played out like a three-dimensional movie, so real that they felt they could reach out and touch the events unfolding around them.

“This was our home planet for millenia, but we were invaded by an aggressive species that you have come to know as ‘greys’. They envied our technology and resources. They came to us, took our people and experimented on them. We fought back, but we could not repel them.”

The grey aliens were exactly as Ryan and James imagined - of similar stature, but with larger heads, almond shaped eyes and an aura of menace. Was it coincidence that these invaders resembled the established lore of science fiction? If so, then maybe there were those on Earth who had been priming the population for some future invasion event. Whether it was for defence or in complicit union with the ‘greys’ seemed unclear. However, the narrative of the tall white beings had an urgency to it. James and Ryan felt compelled to hear its message.

The voice continued.

“Since that time, we have been nomads in search of a home. We are not invaders. We are of peace. We came here because we saw in you a race with great potential. When we first came to your world, we did so in two ships. One of those ships had been sabotaged by our enemy and exploded after landing. It was then that we started taking some of you to us. Time has no meaning in this dimension, where we can speak to you far from the presence of the greys.

Some of you have been gone from your world for decades, but to each of you it will seem that no time at all has passed. We did not realise how this would affect others of your kind. We are sorry for taking you from lives and families, but we are offering you the chance to save the future of your race.

Since you discovered the secret of atomic power, your militaries and governments have been on a dangerous path to self-destruction. We foresee a future where you will develop the ability to wipe yourselves out with technology that you intended to save your world.”

The narrative imagery switched to a world in which nuclear weapons had devastated the world’s nations. Cities lay in ruins. Missiles flew through the sky and came to rest before destroying all in their path. Written on the side of one of the missiles were the words *MAGNOX-M1*.

“All of you here have knowledge that can help prevent this future. We can send you back to where you came from, if you wish. We can also send you back at the point in time when the path to destruction can be prevented.

Your scientists will develop a new form of nuclear reactor that opens the way to create weapons of unimaginable power. With your knowledge and the gift of our technology, you can set your race on a path to peace. We can help you create a future where your technology helps you flourish and travel far beyond your own world to live among the stars.”

The narrative changed to show a new reactor being built on a shingle headland by the sea. The landscape of Dungeness was unmistakeable.

The voice went on.

“None of you will be forced to do this, if you do not wish to. If you wish, we will send you back to the point in time from which we brought you here. Those who wish to be agents of change will be returned to your world in the year you call 2025. From that point onward, your actions can help shape the future. If you accept this opportunity, please step through the door and follow us.”

The voice and minds-eye narrative imagery both stopped, leaving only silence in its wake and a decision for all those who found themselves chosen by this being.

James and Ryan looked at each other. The reality of the situation, as extraordinary as it was, was no longer deniable.

“Did you see what was on that missile?’, said James

“Yes”, said Ryan.

“You know what this means?”

“That all this - this future - all that destruction - it all starts with that new reactor?”

“Do you believe them?”, James replied, still coming to terms with what was happening to them, “For all we know, *they* could be the enemy. The future isn’t written yet”.

Ryan thought for a moment.

“I don’t know ... but if they’re right, even if they’re not ... even if none of this is real ... then we are going home - back where we came from. These others - you know who they are?”

“The missing hikers from the forest?”, said James.

“Yes and that man in the forestry gear ...”

“... he’s where it all started, back in 1962.”

The boys stood still for a moment, at what seemed like the crossroads of their lives. A point in time for which perhaps they had been destined, to which the choices they had made were meant to lead them.

Ryan looked at James calmly.

“Let’s go, JB. Let’s go home”.

They both stepped forward, through the door in the wall. As they did so, all seven of the others followed them through. They felt themselves again surrounded by a bright white light as they and the room they had been standing in slowly faded away.

***

It was a rainy day in March of 2026 on the Dungeness headland as James Barlow and Ryan Morton arrived at the future site of Dungeness C, the first new nuclear power plant in the world to feature a fast breeder reactor of an entirely new design. It promised to generate power more efficiently than any other reactor had before and make energy production more sustainable than at any point in history. James and Ryan arrived at the Dungeness site’s main gate, wrapped up in their coats. The main building had been constructed and was now ready for the new reactor to be completed and installed. The security guard at the gate wore a Magnox uniform and welcomed James and Ryan with excited enthusiasm.

“Good Morning, gentlemen. Welcome to the future. Passes please.”

James and Ryan were checked through the gate and followed the designated path to the main complex.

“Do you think they were right, JB? Is this really the point when it all changes?”

James looked at Ryan and smiled.

“I guess that’s up to us now”, he replied.

***

General Liam Ford, Base Commander at RAF Stornoway, was seated at his desk in the command building overlooking the runway. He was expecting a call and nervously tapped his fingers on the desk as the appointed time approached. He took a sip from the cup of coffee that had been on the desk, which was now at room temperature. His phone finally rang and he picked it up promptly.

“General Ford, Sir”, said the voice at the other end.

“Yes, Commander Harrison, go ahead.”

“The Loch Ranna artefacts have been moved to site A, Sir.”

“Thank you Commander, and the enemy?”

“No sign of them since the last identified incursion at Loch Ranna in November of last year, Sir.”

“Then we are ready, Commander. Have our allies been informed?”

“Yes, Sir. They are en route to you now.”

“Understood, Commander, thank you.”

“A pleasure, Sir.”

Commander Harrison ended the call then opened a fie that sat on his desk. Printed on the front of it was a strange symbol, like a letter from an alien language. Opening the file to the first page, the General studied the photograph that had been attached to it.

It showed a grey humanoid form with large, black, oval eyes.