The Lights

The Lights

           Click. The lights went on. Displayed unnaturally out of George’s basement window. Now, they went off. Click. Back on again. If there was one word that would not describe George, it was unreliable. Click. Went off.

           The flickering of the lights that emanated from his basement were always the same dull, white colors that can be seen from far distances, because they were as bright as the northern lights. Maybe brighter.   

           One day, the Coast Guard, along with the local police paid a visit to George. The lights reached as far as Lake Haven, a port of pleasure some three miles away for the rich and famous, who enjoyed their peaceful evenings drinking high-priced champagne and forty dollars a pound shrimp dipped in gold dust cocktail sauce.

           The bright lights became a nuisance and tapped into their leisurely pleasures.

           Since the lake trickled through a small stream connected to the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard became involved in what they thought was suspicious activity, enough to warrant an investigation. On a report handed to George, it stated that “the luminescence exhibited from said residence coincided with the flashes to those of a nuclear explosion. According to the rules of Homeland Security, a thorough inspection must be conducted.”

           This did not sit well with George; however, he complied. After several hours of complete strangers rummaging through his house, they found no evidence to convict him of domestic terrorism.

           George had a simple routine. He would rise before sunlight. Eat breakfast. Go for a morning run. Shower. Then head straight to his basement. Around five in the evening we would sit on his lawn and drink some beers until six. That’s when he would suddenly get off the lawn chair, run to the basement, and precisely one minute later, the flickering of the lights would begin.

           Twenty-two times the lights would flicker. After the end of the twenty-second time, it stopped. Then he would return, and we would continue our conversations.

           Never once has George explained the reason for why he did what he did. Even after countless attempts there was never an explanation.

           Doctor George Smythe, Professor and Director of the Physics Consortium for the Advancement of Humanity in Sweden, was retired due to fringe experiments conducted by him and his fellow research associates. The outcomes were the accidental removal of an appendage of a Doctor Layla Karlsson, for which medical expenses and compensatory damages were awarded on her behalf, and the unintentional danger imposed against the safety of the community.

           George’s termination became international news. The experiments he conducted involved the use of a hadron collider and reversed particle admissions. Some believe he was using the microscopic power and force of a black hole to open a portal to another dimension.

           These facts were not hard to come by when the proper research was done at any library.

           It seemed as if our friendship was mostly based on drinking beers and telling odd stories, so long as they did not involve black holes, or bright lights.

           And then it happened. One Saturday evening, George did not go to the basement. At one minute passed six in the evening, the lights turned on in the basement. But this time, they remained on and did not flicker.

           George ran down the stairs in his pajamas. Apparently, he had overslept from his previous night of binge drinking. It was the first time this had occurred. And after a few minutes the lights returned to their spatial impulses, until the twenty-second time and then the lights stopped.

           The next day, George cancelled our usual get together and decided to stay indoors and await in the basement with no further interruptions.

           “Just for today” he said.

           Unfortunately, the residents of Lake Haven caught the long suspension of the bright lights the previous night and informed the police.

           This time the doctor was removed from his home, handcuffed, and placed in the back of a police car.

           As the car headed towards the police station, the lights began at the precise time. Only once again, they remained on, with no pulsation.

           George and the officers in the car noticed it. George pleaded with the officers to take him back to the house, if only to remedy the situation. The officers did not listen and after two minutes of incessant brightness, the lights turned from the dull white frequently exhibited, to an effervescent green, unlike anything ever witnessed.

           Still, the officers drove on.

           The windows in the basement slowly cracked and the concrete foundations began to crumble.

           A green monster with long claws and bony structures, crawled out of the rubble. It screeched and wailed. It lifted its nose to the air and set off on all four limbs in the direction of the police car. Before they could reach the station, the monster had caught up with George. And as it tore the rear door of the police car, the officers had already taken flight out of the car and disappeared into the nearby forests.

           The green monster stared at George. Frustrated.

           “I’m sorry,” said George. “I tried to explain to them to let me go. They wouldn’t listen. But I promise you. I didn’t tell them.”

           It broke the handcuffs from George’s hands.

           “Now, where were we?” asked George.

           His equipment consisted of a small dark box, retrofitted with polarity integrated circuits, a small round satellite with receiver nodes, and a gamma ray induced camera. To the police, it seemed as if he were filming a video.

           What the police did not know was that the doctor, successfully, had opened a gateway to another dimension. A continuance of an earlier experience done at the previous research facilities.

           As it turned out, when the portal was opened with the help of the hadron collider a green hand caught the research associate’s arm in front of the wormhole and ripped it from its socket.

           The green hand was retracted with the help of a much larger white pulsating hand.

           It was first contact.

           The larger hand belonged to the parent of an interdimensional alien race. It stuck its head through the portal and spoke to George.

           Evidently, George had managed to find the one species whose children wreaked havoc across vast universes. If they were not controlled, they would destroy anyone and anything. The father of the child made a deal with George. “Put my child to sleep at a certain time and we won’t destroy your world.”

Doctor George Smythe, profound physicist, whose dedicated research to find other worldly beings, for the advancement of humanity, resulted in the preservation of humans as he became Earth’s first interdimensional babysitter.

           When the child was calm it would reverse its bioenergy from its green menacing form into the dull, white light which pulsated twenty-two times before it would fall asleep.

           “Now, Gribnok, it’s almost past your bedtime.”

           As he drove the monster back to the portal in his basement, he recounted the nursery rhymes that made children fall asleep, while the baby curled up into a fetal position in the back seat of the police car.

           “And Mary had lost her sheep…”