EXTRATERRESTRIAL DISTRACTION(Charles E.J. Moulton) EXTRATERRESTRIAL DISTRACTION
by Charles E.J. Moulton


Sometimes, encountering the unknown is not the problem.
Fearing it, is.
Fear causes confusion.
So, dear readers, this becomes the tale of fear as the cause of major derailment.
But even derailed trains have survivors.
Peter Barnes was such a survivor.
Peter Barnes was a thinker, an artist and a philosopher.
Peter Barnes was a victim of circumstance.

One night in 1983, he had been sitting alone on a neighborhood hill watching the sunset. The sun granted the sky in which it shone many unusual colors such as green, blue, pink and yellow. The bright orange tinge of the sun made Peter wonder about what was beyond it. His father had always spoken of the universe as “the biggest playground in creation”.
Of course, he would know about cosmic playgrounds. After all, William Barnes was a professor of astronomy at the University of Georgia. It was not unusual for Peter to tag along and listen to his father’s lectures.

This day would prove to be a fateful one for Peter. His homework was done, his bed was made and his food was eaten and now this thirteen year old outsider waited for the sunset. He should have stayed there on the hill. He should have stayed away from Paul. But something stirred inside him. Something that called him back to adventure.
Paul, he thought. Paul was adventure. Paul would play soldier with him, distract him with games that was far away from his own world. Paul would pull him away from reality. The question was: why would Peter want to be pulled away from his perfect life? His mother Oleana Barnes-Noble was an actress in Atlanta. Exciting. Their home was full of art and music and posters of the sun. Beautiful. They were church going people, believers, artists, lovers and friends. Wonderful.
Paul was none of that.
He was the new guy in school, a thin and strange recluse.
Why Peter actually searched for gys like him in his life was something that he would spend the next thirty years trying to figure out.
Peter stood up from where he sat on the hill and walked down toward his own house, all the while thinking how great it would be to see a UFO. He heard about alien beings, read about possible suns with Earth-like planets that might entail life. What was beyond the horizon? Life? Travellers? Extraterrestrials? Who were these extraterretrials? Paul knew. Or at least, pretended to know. In any case, he read about them. So did Peter. But Peter enjoyed speaking to him about it. And the fantasies of these boys would soon be fuelled in a way they had never expected would be possible.
“Mum,” Peter called through the open door of his parents’ suburban house.
“Yes,” Oleana Barnes-Noble called back from the kitchen. “What?”
“I am just popping over to Paul’s house for a bit,” Peter called out.
Oleana dropped her towel down upon the sink and walked in a steady speed toward the open door.
“I don’t like that boy,” she said. “Why don’t you go to Henry’s house, dear? He is a musician and an artist like us. Paul’s family are atheists.”
The shy boy eyed heavenward and then exclaimed:
“Mum,” he said. “He is okay. We talk about aliens and play adventure games.”
“That’s scary stuff,” Oleana said. “Have you done your homework, cleaned up your room and eaten?”
Peter nodded. “Yes, yes and yes.”
“I am leaving for the show in a half hour,” Oleana said in a harsh tone. “Your dad is gonna be home in an hour. I will leave him a note and tell him where you are. If you are not back at nine thirty, he will come and get you. Make sure that you eat something, okay? Those people only serve cocoa and cheese sandwiches. And try to avoid talking to that brute about religion. His father is a gorilla and his mum sleeps around.”
Peter smiled and gave his mum a kiss.
“I can take care of myself. Have a good show.”
Oleana Barnes-Noble waved her son good bye, closed the door, all the while thinking to herself that she had better call her son back.
She didn’t and so off Peter went to his doom.
The fact was that Peter no idea knew what was waiting for him.
OCD, aliens and fear.
Peter and Paul dashed up to the second floor and played soldiers, talked about aliens and ate cheese sandwiches. Paul showed Peter books by the author Eugen Semitjov, who presented the theory that Jesus had been an alien. There and then, Peter’s contradictory problems began. He was a believer. A Christian. He believed in extra terrestrials, yes, but that did not contradict his religious values. It did in Paul’s book.
That evening was a calm September iniquity and the slight breeze allowed the boys to exit the house and play in the garden.
It was then that Paul saw a light. Peter shrugged when Paul called it “an usual phenomenon”. Unusual? What else could it be but a crusing plane?
Paul insisted on rushing up to his room. Peter, being the willing slave he was, followed suit and nodded when Paul handed him those binoculars. Paul, with his pocket camera, tried to photograph the thing that slowly appeared over a hundred feet away from beyond the forest. Its’ slow, silent and steady speed seemed ominous, like a promise kept. Paul grew numb with fear as he saw it slide over the roof of the house. The boys on the balcony watched the space ship without wheels in absolute perplexed awe. Big as a car with wings and with six spotlights in the back, the thing disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.
The sighting of the UFO occupied their entire eveningtide thoughts after that.
Not only had they spent half a year now playing alien combat, now here was a real space ship that had appeared out of nowhere. Aliens were everywhere that night, attacking in the forest. Paul insisted on crouching down on the floor and hiding. He saw them, they had guns. Peter didn’t like it, he felt that his life would change for the worse.
His mind was screaming.
Paul didn’t listen.
Well, Peter left Paul’s house scared and confused that night. What if Jesus had been an alien? Had the space ship been alien? But God existed, didn’t he?
Did these aliens want to kill him?
Needless to say, he told his parents about the sighting. His father listened to him with great concentration as he told his story in great detail. His father asked him all sorts of questions and put him through to ufologist colleagues. But surprisingly enough, his father’s reaction was lamer than he had thought. After a while, his father lost interest.
His mother listened, accepted and believed the story. But it just confirmed her opinion: Paul was no good friend of Peter’s. The sighting was fine. Paul’s reaction wasn’t.
The first of many changes occured. Paul’s parents divorced. Apparently, Paul’s dad had been found in the marital bed fondling his own secretary. His wife moved away from the house and moved into an apartment. The house was up for sale.
Oleana Barnes-Noble had hoped that her son Peter now would become interested in this awful atheistic friend of his. To no avail. Peter now insisted on seeing Paul after school and even going with him on field trips.
Oleana accepted her son’s choice, but stressed that it was against her wishes.
The new apartment was small and cosy and Paul’s room was decorated with a parakeet named Ollie and posters of UFOs.
February 1984 came and, strangely enough, this become the time for the second sighting. Same spaceship, different location. Everyone was watching the news on TV when the thing appeared again, just as close – just six feet, and the two boys spent the evening researching the area for traces.
What happened next was a direct result of having seen the spaceship a second time. Secretly, the boys were wondering if they were being followed by these aliens if the same unusual looking UFO appeared to them on two different locations.
It was spring time, when what would become Peter’s biggest problem appeared. Funnily enough, it wasn’t Paul that triggered the catalyst. In retrospect, Peter knew that the devil needed Peter to volounteer.
Peter and Paul spent that afternoon walking in the forest. They were, as always, speaking of the UFO sightings and what they meant to them. It might have been Paul that spoke generally of telepathic abilities in general. That was enough for Peter to claim that he, in fact, did hear voices. Who was speaking to him, Paul asked? They had seen the UFO twice, now some alien was speaking to him. Of course, no one was really speaking to him. There were no more voices in his head than there were jellyfish in a tank of whiskey.
Paul asked him if he was sure about this. Peter answered that, of course, he was sure.
And so, where blood flows the taste of evil commences.
It didn’t take long during that spring of 1984, Orwell’s year of the Big Brother, until Peter and Paul were communicating with an alien boss that spoke through their minds. The alien boss was complaining about local teachers, about humanity and general and warning them about future invasions. It was all perfect, too perfect for Paul, who spoke of the endless possibilities of manipulation. In later years, Peter would repeat these words to himself and ask himself if Paul had planned all this all along.
But how on Earth could one boy fake the sighting of a UFO?
It didn’t make sense. After all, Peter himself had given Paul the telepathic idea.
Be that as it may, Paul used all this as a vehicle for his own self defenition. He started undermining Peter’s sense of self esteem. The “alien boss” started claiming that he was God and that there were groups battling against one another through the brains of the boys. Furthermore, all the images of the aliens inside the brains of the boys were taken from a UFO magazine. The “alien boss” was taken from a picture of a tall, silver-skinned alien with horn resembling ears. Peter felt that this image made the alien look like a devil.
Peter’s mother had asked him not to read crap like that.
Especially after she caught him reading about a woman who claimed she had made love to a demon. The real demon was up ahead.
The next change was coming.
Oleana received her career’s biggest and brightest oppurtunity: teaching drama at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. Oh, yes. That would mean a Central Park apartment and maybe even Off-Broadway and Broadway roles.
William Barnes started looking for professorships in NewYork State. With his merit as a leading professor of his field, it was not hard to find a position even in a such a hard market as The Big Apple.
Of course, for Peter it was a big change. New friends, new places, new life, new schools, new surroundings. They sold the house and looked for a new house in New York State. The Central Park apartment had been canned for the benefit of a ranch. With two large salaries now under their belt, this was no problem.
Oleana hoped that the friendship with Paul would be over for good.
The change came, Peter was excited, New York was exciting, but the friendship with Paul persisted. The biggest problem was that Paul was getting delusions of grandure, calling himself “the assistant of the alien boss”. The alien boss was now “the good big shot”. The UFO became “Object Number One” and the unfolding story of the contact became “the serial”. There was a good side and a bad side of aliens, the men in black carried big knives around and could appear at any time and kill them, the “Brain War” was raging and an attack was being planned for 1997. Humanity would be eradicated, saving only 10 000 people, including Peter’s and Paul’s families. The form of the sighted UFO being, roughly speaking, a triangle, made it a fact that a triangle also was the sign of the alien group. Any triangle appearing on a path would have to be circled or death would be a result. Peter had to carry with him a triangle drawn in pencil at all times as a sign of obedience to the alien boss.
Invisible aliens were chased in the local neighborhood and underground military bases were uncovered. Paul even spoke of almost being picked up by “Object Number One”.
The most difficult part was that Paul had given him OCD.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
It had started innocently, Paul suggesting him that he might touch a lamp post three times when passing it or laying a pen along side the side of the desk. Yes, Paul had told him that anybody could manipulate anybody. The scary fact was that Paul really was manipulating Peter into becoming completely independant upon Peter. The UFO serial was becoming a secret between the boys, because of the unfolding imaginations of the story. All this was connected to the “serial”, but so cunningly interwoven with real life that Peter really couldn’t differentiate between real life and fiction.
They had seen the same UFO in Georgia twice, right? That proved that aliens really were contacting them. The alien boss really existed. That was the codex. There was a brain war, an alien invasion, all of that. Paul created labyriths on paper for Peter to solve and vice versa and all the while he was confusing Peter. He was telling him that his identity was gone, that everything that he was was connected to the OCD.
Peter became a heavy neurotic, fighting the fact that he was severely angry at Paul for messing around with him like this. His mind constantly claimed that he would behave in ways that would make him look stupid or evil or that he had to run past a certain point before a door closed. Peter was closing himself in, painting himself into a corner.
The OCD had been implanted into him by Paul, fuelled by stories of dictatorial obedience to an alien boss whose existance no one really could prove. In fact, Paul had given him these neurotic fears of hell and damnation and then told him that he shouldn’t think these thoughts.
This was becoming a huge problem.
New York was a very exciting place for the Barnes family. Receptions with famous people, university lectures, celebrity friends, world premieres, trips, tete-a-tete’s, travels and tidbits. Peter, however, was ambivalent. He loved this life during the daytime, but was scared to be murdered at night. Were there Men in Black living in the apartment building across the way, just like Paul had claimed? He had once felt that his life had been cut off into segments after moving from his original home of Arkansas at age five. Now, he had somehow left his childhood behind in Georgia, enrolling into the music academy at age fifteen. There was a great deal of envy against him. He was the son of a professor and the other students and teacher certainly showed him that he needn’t think he was special.
All the time, he had contact with Paul through cassette tapes that were exchanged. Orders were handed out from the alien boss through Paul. Peter’s summer visits in Georgia became real actual alien trips with long walks. During these walks, the alien boss would “play telepathic films” to the boys, mostly to Paul, ridiculing humanity with the emphasis that it was better for humanity to die.
Of course, Peter loved his parents. However, as the only son of successful parents, he felt obliged to be as successful and willing to tell them everything. But, because of these two sightings of this one same UFO, he believed in the truth of the whole “serial” story. He believed that he boss would kill him if he told anyone about what was happening.
He only realized later that it had not been his domineering father or prude mother that had given him the neurosis. It had been Paul and Paul alone. The UFO sighting had not even been the issue. The serial that emerged through these sightings, the lurid games of two teenagers being chased by invisible aliens in the forest, that was the culprit. Peter actually believing that ten invisible guards followed him to New York was the problem. So much so, that Peter one day insisted on walking out at Central Park station, whilst out with his mum, just because Paul had told him he would be picked up by aliens on that day. He ended up pretending to chase his imaginary brother, because he was caught dawdling and searching for alien spacecrafts.
He ended up feeling really stupid.
This was bad for his self esteem.
Not only was he dependent on Paul.
He was dependent on him even when he wasn’t there.
This wasn’t a UFO problem.
This was a power problem.
He was living in New York, with his parents’ mutual decision entering the academy at age fifteen and thereby dropping out of high school in order to do this. Here, he became a neurotic recluse not aware of his own damage and his parents not aware of the damage that they were doing to him. Paul was the shy teenager, the nerd on the outside that was an Adolf Hitler on the inside.
Other UFO victims came to mind. Peter knew the psychological damage many brilliant men had suffered through UFO sightings. Not only were these people confronted with seeing something that would always remain unsolved, but the fear of actually being killed because speaking about it was worse than the sighting. The whole problem was that fear was interwoven into the neurosis. The war raged on, Peter was neurotic, scared, the only child and had always been an outsider anyway. Knowing his own brilliant genius and actually now studying to become an astronomer before his time, he was at the same time faced with envy and patronizing colleagues.
Loving parents and endless help was no aid. His parents didn’t know that their only child was fleeing. There was no help in sight and Peter didn’t dare tell his parents that he was afraid an alien boss would kill him, so he fled. New York was a city full of peep shows and smut mags. Soon enough, Peter waffled between academies and used his mum’s money on naked women. While his parents were away working, he spread out his men’s magazines on the floor and watched porn. Fear had bred confusion and confusion had bred escape.
New York City should have been exciting and it was, but Peter was turning strange.
Paul already was strange already, a Norman Bates of the mind that no one had discovered. He was a serial killer that everybody saw as a nice guy.
Paul definately was wierd. He had been ordered by the alien boss to categorize bicycle helmets, crusing the Georgian area for kids with helmets. The reason? The Men in Black had hidden invisable cameras inside them in the combat to win the brain war.
In the midst of this confusion, 1991 proved to be a pivotal year.
The last time Peter saw Paul, Paul warned him that his neurosis might turn into schizophrenia. That did it. Peter vowed to break the contact.
Somehow, Paul made a 360° turn. He wrote Peter a letter, disclaiming everything that he had experienced with Peter. The UFO had been a plane and everything a been a game, he had been the victim of a scheme. Peter never did find out what that 18 page letter actually did say. He threw it away.
The contact was broken and Peter started going to shrinks, combing every psychotherapist in Manhattan. The story was unfolded a thousand times. The UFO sighting was sometimes the culprit, sometimes it was the internal squibble of his parents or a domineering father or a prude mother.
Be that as it may, years of pain were ahead.
Peter became a successful professional, finished his high school diploma and worked up a storm as a working man. However, he carried his fear of the alien boss with him for years and years and years, searching the web for remains of his old enemy Paul, hating the fact that his old friend had actually gotten away with killing his soul and not even having anybody know about it.
This had the unfortunate effect that Peter started hating anybody more successful than him. Anybody with bourgeouis values resembling that of Paul’s was attacked. Anybody even looking like Paul was given a dirty look.
Peter kept on reading about UFOs, loving UFO movies and reading Science Fiction.
Peter had been working for a number of years as a professional, still suffering under his OCD, when the UFO appeared again. The strange thing was that he almost felt like letting this whole thing go when it appeared.
He had spent the night the story came full circle in a Florida motel after teaching a seminar right outside Miami. It was a hot night, he remembered, and he couldn’t sleep. He paced the room and the hallway searching for a cure for his insomnia.
It was still dark when he put on his clothes and took the car for a spin.
Ending up out of town and far away up on a hill, he parked the car overlooking Miami Beach. It was a beautiful night and the stars shone brightly. When he turned around ti face the other way, a familar UFO had parked right opposite his car. Strangely enough, it seemed that the UFO saw him this time and not the other way around.
The same ship he had seen in 1983 and 1984 was there again and this time it didn’t leave. It was 27 years later and the space ship didn’t move. It wasn’t flying silently like it had back then. It wasn’t disappearing and it wasn’t scary. It was flat bottom down on the ground and it looked like a car with its’ wheels sawed off.
Peter remembered the entire story as it had evolved and felt a serial coming to a close. The story was coming to a close, but the last lines of the tale were yet to unfold.
Peter was numb, as numb as he had been in 1983.
But now, he wasn’t scared. He was simply perplexed. It was like seeing a ghost.
A very old ghost that had promised to reappear, but never had.
Not yet, anyway.
The nice part was that he wasn’t frightened.
He should’ve been.
A small creature, no bigger than a child, came out of the black car-like vehicle.
It looked nothing like that seven feet, ear horned tyrant that Paul had invented from looking a old UFO book pictures. It didn’t even look like the Men in Black myth man or the standard alien, Roswell-like extraterrestrials.
The alien looked like an Irish gnome with a funny red bose
It smiled.
“Who are you?” Peter asked.
“Your friend,” the alien answered.
Miami glittered beneath the hill where these two beings stood. Just like back when two boys were the only ones witnessing an alien spacecraft flying overhead, now there was only one man making an extraterrestrial friend. On this hill, no one was to be seen. There were no nightly dog walkers or horny drunks, no drug addicts or Puerto Rican fugitives. No one except two beings on tellar soil, speaking about very odd things made simple.
“How is it that you speak my language?”
“What kind of a guest would I be, if I didn’t learn your language,” the being said.
The being smiled again. It was a human smile. It was wierd to see that all the illusions that Peter had had about aliens had been false. In fact, having believed Paul’s precognitions about the aliens was a ridiculous idea. This guy was not a small monster with a big head and huge bug eyes. He wasn’t a tall dragon of a man. He was small fellow with a big nose and small, jittery eyes. His skin was pink and his teeth seemed to have a greenish color.
His clothes were quite colorful and so Peter grinned.
The fabric was strange to Peter. It looked like fluid wood. It changed and fluttered constantly, glittered and danced in its’ own light.
“We have a history, you and I,” Peter said.
The being nodded, looking down at Miami.
“Its’ amazing that you have turned into this successful guy, in spite of all the shit you’ve experienced,” the alien said.
Peter blurted out a laughter that sounded like a fart transforming itself into a honking horn. Upon hearing Peter laugh, the alien started laughing, as well.
“You sound so Californian,” Peter said.
The being smiled. “I am not from California, although a lot of us spend a lot of time there. We enjoy the movies you make about us. Most of them, though, are very silly. My name is Egegsakiuh. I am a peaceful man. You don’t need to be able to pronounce my name. Just know for a fact that I know everything that you know. I have watched you and I come in peace. You are relieved of pain, Peter.”
Peter sat down on a stone, gazing at the small man.
“I am what?”
“I am taking away your neurosis,” the alien said. “You have suffered enough because of us. Paul caused you the pain, dear boy, but I feel responsible.”
“Did the alien big shot exist?”
The being shook his head slowly. “I believe you shake your heads when you negate.”
Peter nodded. “Yes.” Peter narrowed his eyes. “Paul made him up?”
“He did. And yes, Paul was unfair,” the being said. “Paul used you. You gave him the tools and he took it from there. His lower consciousness paved the way.”
“Lower?” Peter asked.
“Vermine. He has none. A higher consciousness knows God. Paul knows facts, figures and slide shows. Paul teaches a lot of high brow stuff, but knows nothing of the soul.”
“Are some of us humans evolved enough to match you?”
“Peter,” the being said. “You are. Many aren’t. The fact is that we are here to guide you spiritually as well as physically. God is with us, we know that. Anyway, I came to you because you have suffered enough. Your friend made up this crazy boss that would never fit into our little space ship. We are a small species that travel in high speeds. How would that seven feet man fit into this little thing?”
The alien indicated at his little ship.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Peter responded.
“We come from another galaxy and we want contact with you, not war. Your friend made up this brain war that he said would culminate in an apocalypse. Such hogwash. We don’t kill, we create. You kill. You kill us. Paul would.”
“Why have a let myself be used for so long?”
“You are afraid of other people’s anger,” the being said. “You think that you have to do what other people tell you to do before you can do what you want. Fact is that you can make your own rules. You always have, just trust yourself. God exists and so do you and your decisions. We aliens are your friends and we trust you more than anyone. When we saw Paul’s interpretation of what we were, we began to doubt if humanity had a screw loose. He caused a lot of damage.”
The alien took one step further toward Peter, embraced him and then gave him a small necklace of a triangle.
“This is a sign of independance. You are not required to wear it, just feel that you can wear it if you want. Good and evil? It all boils down to what you are and what you make of it. You decide.”
And with that, the alien entered his ship and flew in record speed up to high heavens.
Peter did go back to the motel and he did sleep for another five hours.
Peter even missed breakfast.
After that, he drove to airport and gave back his rental car.
Once his plane landed at La Guardia Airport in New York, he made sure to take the time to visit his folks. They were older now and in some ways too frail to take care of the ranch. But he did spend some time with them all the same.
Peter and his father watched the stars and for the first time in years his mother came and joined them.
Together, the three of them drank Californian wine and ate walnuts.
They didn’t speak of extraterrestrials.
They spoke about the stars.
There was no fear there anymore.
The unknown was a safe place.
Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away a small big-nosed being was smiling.
He sent Peter a dream that night, digesting on grape-juice, sweet potatoes and turkey.
In that dream, the alien told him:
“Peter, there is nothing to be afraid of.”

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