Aliens in Sequoia National Park Read online

  Sally Dickson

  Aliens in Sequoia

  Copyright © 2021 by Sally Dickson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First edition

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Letter to Reader

  Aliens in Sequoia National Park

  Windsor

  Basement Bunks

  Converse Grove

  Crater

  Sequoia National Park

  Allen Radio Telescope Array

  Please Review

  Bonus features and further tales…

  Read on…

  Aliens on the ISS

  Dedication

  This tale harks back to the Golden Science Fiction age of the 60s. Escape with me amongst the lost groves filled with gigantic age-old trees of Sequoia National Park as we play hide and seek with aliens.

  Dedicated to Hazel

  Letter to Reader

  If you dream of wandering the Champs Elysées in Paris in spring, if you can imagine sipping champagne in Raffles in Singapore or the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo or even Tiffany’s in New York, then welcome.

  If you can imagine sharing rice-bowls with Sherpas at the base camp of Everest or watching kangaroo herds race across the outback, then you have come upon kindred spirits.

  If you’d enjoy taking a medieval chorister’s pew to listen to Christmas evensong sung by Oxford’s senior choir, or sitting on a velvet banquette in Vienna’s Opera House to watch Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, please sit back, relax and enjoy.

  Join me as we travel from one glittering location to another, we will be aliens, and also meet aliens, as we explore the most exotic streets and savour the greatest wonders of our planet together…

  Enjoys Aliens,

  Sally Ann Melia

  Aliens in Sequoia National Park

  Recommended Soundtrack: Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft by The Carpenters.

  At precisely 2:04am, a red light lit up a distant control panel. A notification also appeared on Jasmin’s phone.

  Please God. Just one moment’s peace she thought, as she slapped it quiet.

  As the mechanical noise faded, so the sounds of the night amplified. Insects in the shadows chittered, a distant toad called for a mate, and the wind whispered as it passed through the Allen Radio Telescope Array, ‘the so-called eyes’ of the US Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). It was as if the vast field of equipment had a human breath. Now with a click and a groan of steel all 42 dishes turned as one to scan a new area of the night sky, a brand new vista to explore and dissect, thousands of as yet unknown stars and systems to discover.

  The only person watching is me, Jasmin thought as she leant on the railing of the deck.

  “Always just me,” she spoke aloud to the emptiness. Was this it? Was this her life now? Years of standing watching a field of satellite disks pointing up. At what?

  I love you, Jasmin, the memory of her sister’s voice seemed to echo on the night’s breeze.

  I hate this, she thought. I hate myself. Why did I do it?

  In a blink of her eye, she was plunging, hair whipping across her face as her faceplate snapped open. No, she heard herself scream but at the last moment she snapped her teeth shut as with practiced discipline she stopped herself remembering the concrete floor below.

  It’s over. It’s past. This is it now. Standing alone in the cold, this is what you get.

  Her phone jiggled in her pocket.

  What now?

  The screen lit up with her twin’s photo. Jasmin pressed ‘answer’.

  “Short Arse!” She had meant to be funny, but tonight she sounded spiteful..

  May must have noticed the tone as well, because there was a pause before she replied:

  “Peg Leg!” the nick name was punctuated with a nervous laugh. Jasmin nodded and joined in. Forced laughter was still laughter, wasn’t it? Jasmin wondered as her ghost leg tingled, and she looked down to check. Yes her leg was gone, she wore a long prosthetic from her hip to the floor.

  Smack! There it was: the memory of her crashing onto the smooth hard concrete. A fall that had ended her astronaut training and landed her amidst the Allen Telescope Array. The worst part was that while she fought her way through grueling physio just to walk again, her twin sister had hop, skipped and jumped through the tests, examinations and panel assessments until tonight she served as Science Officer on the International Space Station. She glanced up at the constellation Ursa Major, the ISS would be coming from that direction tonight.

  Okay. So her sister had made it. How much longer could she resent her?

  Be normal. Act nice.

  “How’s the view?” Jasmin said at last.

  “I took some photos,” May replied. “I sent them to your phone.”

  True enough, there was an unread message. Wish you were here, read the title.

  For crying out loud, Jasmin despaired. So dreadfully unoriginal. And May was supposed to be a genius and a superwoman, that was the definition of an astronaut, no? Okay so May always said she had become an astronaut for her sakes. But had she really? All the striving, competing, just to prove one of them, the twins, the two Asian sisters, one of them was good enough? Now May had made it and with her success came endless ‘wish you were here’ messages.

  Did May really think any of hers success could make up for what Jasmin had lost?

  “We just flew over Italy,” May said. “It really does look like a glittering boot.”

  “We just moved the Array, ” Jasmin intercut, but May ignored her.

  “You know if more people could see Earth from space,” May continued, and even as she spoke Jasmin’s phone buzzed and jiggled. Her attention drifted. “We would just appreciate our home planet so much more.” May finished but Jasmin peered again at a red flashing notification at the corner of her screen.

  “Sorry May, it’s one of the system alarms.” Jasmin said. “I’m the only one on duty, I can’t ignore it.”

  “Sure thing,” May’s reply had a hint of forced chirpiness to it, like she knew she was being dismissed. Jasmin felt a pang, why did she behave like that with May? “Go do your thing , Jasmin. You’ll do great, you always do.”

  Jasmin paused. How did one response to such impeccable niceness?

  Jasmin’s phone beeped again, this time May heard it too.

  “Sounds like it’s urgent - maybe it’s aliens.” She laughed lightly.

  Right, so now she’s making fun of me, Jasmin thought grimly.

  “Yeah, well if it is aliens, you’ll see them before I do.” Jasmin sneered. Why could she never just have a normal conversation with May? At least May did not have appeared to have heard anything amiss.

  “Go get ’em kiddo. One day you’ll be up here too.”

  No, I won’t. That’s BS, thought Jasmin. NASA had said maybe with ae kind of plastic prosthetic, she could serve on the International Space Station. But really, a cripple in space? When there were hundreds of other candidates. Forget it, Jasmin. Total BS.

  Still at least things were okay between her and May. A unique photo of Italy from space? She would need to take a look later.

  Her phone jigged again. She strode back into the darkened office to her workstation where a bright alert was flashing insistently on her screen.r />
  Her fingers tapped commands. She fine-tuned the sensor arrays to zoom in on the signal.

  “It’s …” she whispered, then her voice rose to fever pitch. “We’ve got ourselves a visitor!”

  Windsor

  Windsor

  Jasmin had not been the only one to receive the phone alert. Others had arrived running and breathless within fifteen minutes, within an hour the office was crowded. Jasmin despised the crush of excited people who were not normally involved in the day-to-day research, and understood little of the displays of data and faint shapes on the screen. But her jaw tensed with frustration to see the management types speaking louder than the rest as they vied to claim responsibility.

  And what responsibility.

  An amazing space visitor! A massive obelisk-shaped alien craft had appeared from behind Jupiter and now accelerated to Earth like a comet.

  As it came closer, everyone tracked and monitored, speculated and ran simulations.

  The disappointment in the room was all too palpable when the First Landing was forecast for Windsor, England. Disappointment that morphed into panic as they realized the exact location appeared to be the playing fields of a school.

  “We have no-one on the ground.” Blake Allen complained. He was roaming the room, pressing fresh Starbucks and donuts into the hands of weary scientists.

  Typical, Jasmin muttered under her breath. Never likes to be ignored that one.

  Play nice, Jasmin. Make friends. May’s repeated reminder echoed through her brain.

  Play nice, Jasmin snorted. May had never met anyone like this guy. Blake brother to Mike Allen, the man after who the array was named. Like his brother, he had spent his career in Silicon Valley growing one tech business after another, subsequently funding various space projects from his wealth. So while Blake had the slim fit frame of a marathon runner, Jasmin knew he was approaching his sixtieth birthday. For someone so old, he was incredibly hot, or at least the other girls thought s, but Jasmin thought it pathetic that a man his age should even want to be sexy. Still, he did own the joint, so it was best not to get on the wrong side of him.

  “We do have someone,” Jasmin snapped back. “Ali Dickson, you remember Prof Alison Dickson, how she went back to Windsor to look after her mother? Hold on I have her number. Give me the details. What time is it over there?”

  “When did you last sleep, Jazz?” Blake said, all surprised eyes, and ‘we love the world’ smile.

  Jazz is not my name, she thought, but who am I to correct the boss?

  “Jazz it’s three in the morning in England right now.” Did he realize she hated the nickname, is that why he used it again?

  “Then I guess there will be no-one awake to see the aliens land on their sports field?” Jasmin quipped.

  “But they might see something come morning, we need to be on top form to help them. So why not get some sleep, hey?” Blake coaxed.

  Jasmin glared at him. Okay so her head was spinning, she was never going to admit it to him, not the great Blake Allen.

  “As you say, the action will not start for a few hours.” She muttered. “I’ll send Ali some messages. But you will wake me? Blake, please?”

  Why was she begging? Blake would wake her but only if it suited him. On that she had no illusions, she was just another piece in his game. Today she had been useful finding and identifying the Visitor, but he might not need her tomorrow. She hated him. She hated her life. Why had she not just clung on, clung to her security and ignored…

  May had been in trouble…

  Had she? Had she really?

  If Jasmin had known she would end up dealing with the Blake Allens of this world, trapped on the ground amidst the telescopes of the Allen Array, maybe she would have left May to fall.

  Oh God, what was she thinking?

  She had had to save May.

  And she had survived, hadn’t she?

  Her ghost leg ached.…She felt so weary.

  Go get some sleep. This last was May’s soft voice inside her head.

  Basement Bunks

  Jasmin slept much longer than she had anticipated, sixteen hours her phone told her.

  Why did no-one wake me? Why did no one come and get me?

  At least Ali had been in touch. There were a dozen messages from Windsor.

  She clicked to look. Photos of handwritten notes. Private to her. That was good. She had info the others didn’t. Most likely it was important. Something the others needed to know. That would teach them not to wake her up. Still, she would need to print these out and read them. Dictate them into something approaching a report. It was not like Ali to send such incomplete data. What had gone on in Windsor?

  She looked around where the dorm was full of sleeping forms. Thank goodness, the shared bathroom was empty. She took a long shower luxuriating in the heat and steam, then picked some clothes from the spares wardrobe. Black shorts, black-T, both bore the tiny gold SETI emblem, black headphones, black phone and discretely holstered at the centre of her back a black M17: everything a girl ever needed.

  Another message from Windsor and a close-up of a newspaper story.

  Bleeding Choir Boys run Screaming from Chapel.

  Jesus, what had happened in Windsor? Did the others know?

  Echoing down the stairwell was the noise of many voices, what was going on upstairs?

  Hair pulled back and pinned up. Jasmin paused by the food counter to grab a protein bar and a coffee, before pushing into the control centre. The place was jammed. The atmosphere close to hysterical. Jasmin shoved her way through to her workstation.

  “What did I miss?” She snapped.

  “Well we have a ton of stuff from Windsor, none of it good.” Markus a young Harvard PhD sounded like he’d been drinking too much coffee.

  “I have some stuff from my contact there,” Jasmin replied.

  “You’ll need to submit that. They have a corpse. The management team are desperate that it comes to us.”

  “What kind of corpse?” Jasmin asked, then immediately felt stupid, Markus meant an alien corpse. To cover her mistake, she continued: “Do you want me to give Ali a call?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Not now though. Thing is Jazz, they are here now.”

  Jasmin, she mentally corrected him, but that was not the point.

  “Here?” Jasmin spat out the words. The aliens were here? And no-one had bothered to wake her?

  “They landed in California, in Sequoia National Park. See Blake over there,” Jasmin’s head snapped around to where a group where locked in a heated discussion in the large board room. “They are deciding what to do. Houston is involved and NASA and the military and everyone really.”

  “Hold on! This is my discovery!” Jasmin shouted, her voice shrill with anger. Why had they left her sleeping? She had spotted the aliens first. Now they had landed and she had missed it?

  Markus shrugged, he looked pained.

  Jasmin was on her feet. She covered the distance to the door in six strides. She pushed through the crowd who were watching through the glass walls, then shoved in to where Blake was pointing at a map.

  “I made this discovery, Blake!” she screamed. Inside a small part of her, the May part of her was telling her this probably was not the best approach.

  But Jasmin knew it was important to be ‘The First’. The first to spot a star, the first to track a comet, the first to detect and follow an incoming space craft. Jasmin had been on duty the night the alien had appeared.

  This visitor was hers.

  Or was it? After all Blake paid her wages.

  The entire room was stunned into silence by her sudden anger. She hesitated. Had she gone too far? Blake did not need a reason to sack her.

  No, how could it be ‘too far’ when it was this important?.

  “This was my discovery! I begged you, but you left me sleeping?” If she had dared, she would have added: And no one likes your lousy doughnuts, just keep your promises? But a latent sense of self-preservation
kept this last remark silent to outsiders at least, the shouted words echoed around the inside of her skull. She hated her life. She hated herself. If she was a better person, they would have woken her. If she was a nicer person, she would not need to be shouting now.

  “Hey Jazz, you needed to sleep right?” Blake held up his hands defensively.

  “I didn’t need sleep,” She spat out the words. Not true, but she was never going to admit it.

  “Well, you’re going to be glad you did,” Blake said, he was smiling at her as if she was his favourite child and he was prepared to ignore her tantrums. He waved her to the front. Jasmin strode forward trying to hide the slight limp in her gait, ignoring the perpetual glances at her leg accompanied by sometimes sympathetic, often disdainful smiles. She did not stop until she reached the front, and Blake put his hand on her shoulder, a sure sign of his support as he said:

  “Jazz, I want you to lead the contact team.”

  “Right,” Jasmin was nodding vigorously. Dead right she would lead. But to do what?

  “USA’s First Contact,” he declared. “Even after Windsor, let’s be optimistic. It’s been three decades since the first interstellar signal, but tonight after so many years working and prepping, we have alien landfall on US soil. A glorious day awaits us.”

  There were cheers around the room and outside. Jasmin ground her teeth. Did everyone love Blake? Did they buy his phoney space patriotism? Could they not see that for Blake Allen this was just another photo opportunity, another global headline?

  “The aliens, your aliens Jazz, it looks like they have made landfall right in our backyard, Sequoia National Park.”

  “Why? What’s in the park except giant redwoods?” Jasmin said at once.