Abducted

Carl Baxter was an associate professor of chemistry at Southeastern Nebraska Agricultural College. One morning in early fall, he was teaching his freshman chemistry class. There were about 50 students. The subject was the origin of complex chemical elements—fused together from hydrogen in the nuclear reactions of ancient stars. Carl wrote on the chalk board, and a shower of white chalk particles snowed down. He felt the students' hostility burn the back of his neck. They were studying to be farmers, like their parents before them. That was why they took his classes. They didn't care what science told them about the universe or their place in it. They only cared what science could do for them. They wanted to exploit science to grow their crops, while remaining as ignorant and superstitious as possible. And Carl was helping them do it. He felt like a traitor.
The students stared slack-jawed, baring their crooked teeth at him.
“Any questions?” Carl asked, wiping chalk dust on his pant leg.
A glassy-eyed boy in the front row raised his hand.
“Yes?” Carl said.
The boy stood up and asked, “What if you're wrong?”
“Wrong about what?”
“About where the elements come from.”
“I'm not wrong.”
“But what if you are?”
“This is what all the evidence points to. And even if it's wrong, it's still right. Science has built-in self-correcting mechanisms.”
“But what if you're wrong?” the boy said. “What are you going to say to Lord Jesus when you stand before his wrath? There's no self-correcting mechanism once you're dead?”
The other students nodded and smiled. A few clapped their hands.
“I'll take my chances,” Carl said.
“But shouldn't you believe in Jesus,” the boy said, “just to be on the safe side?”
Angry blood pulsed to Carl's temples. “What are you going to do when you stand before the wrath of the flying spaghetti monster?” he said.
“What?”
“There's a flying spaghetti monster on the dark side of the moon, and he's furious that you don't believe he exists, so he's going to banish you to a lake of burning fire for all eternity. Shouldn't you bring an offering of grated Parmesan cheese to his altar, just to be on the safe side? Make him a big, cheesy Parmesan fondue.”
“What's a fondue?” the boy asked.
“It's a hot pot of cheese that you dip things into,” Carl said.
“That sounds pretty good,” the boy said.
The other students nodded and smiled at each other. They wanted fondue.
“Let's continue,” Carl said, holding his chalk at the ready. “This isn't the time to share your faith, or whatever you call it.”
“It ain't faith, Professor Baxter. It's certainty. I'm as sure of Jesus as I'm sure I had toast and jam for breakfast.”
“Well, I don't know that you had toast and jam for breakfast. Frankly, I'm skeptical that you had breakfast at all. If you had, perhaps you'd be better able to pay attention.”
“I've seen Jesus with my own eyes,” the boy said. “Not just by faith.”
“The human brain is prone to hallucinations,” Carl said.
“”There's a big wooden cross behind the altar at our church,” the boy said. “For the past month, every time I pray in there, Jesus appears on the cross—nails and blood and a crown of thorns and all. Then he looks at me and smiles.”
The boy's classmates nodded in perfect faith.
“One percent of the population has schizophrenia,” Carl said. “It usually first turns up in the late teens or early twenties—about your age—then gets progressively worse. Congratulations. You have a lot to look forward to.”

People were so stupid. It made Carl want to scream and pull his hair out. The only thing that calmed him was walking under the stars late at night when everyone else was asleep. That night, he walked past the last houses of the small college town, and along a dirt road with tall stalks of corn growing on both sides. He walked through the warm, breezy night air until he was out of range of the town street lights. He stared up at the stars and was filled with a great sense of calmness. The constellations shone brightly, thousands of tiny white spots against a black curtain. The moon was full. A few purple-tinted clouds breezed past. That was the one good thing about rural Nebraska: there was little pollution, so he could see the stars clearly.
The stalks of corn rustled in the warm breeze. Carl felt embarrassed for the corn. It had to be grown by such ignorant people. The corn grew because people figured out how to optimally grow it through science, not because of any rain dance performed for Jesus.
All the stars followed their paths. Heavenly bodies were logical. Consistent. They made sense. Unlike people. Astronomers had figured out why the planets behaved as they did. No one would ever figure out why people behaved the way they did. That would remain a mystery forever. But at least the planets and stars were reliable. Carl liked this. They always appeared when and where they were supposed to be.
Then Carl saw an extra light in the sky—there was an extra star in constellation Centaurus. No. It couldn't be a star. New stars didn't appear out of nowhere. It was moving slowly, ever so slightly. Was it an airplane? A satellite? Suddenly, the light started to move much faster, scooting across the sky. It was too fast to be an airplane or a satellite. It could have been a meteor. Maybe a comet. Or maybe a missile—an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with a thermonuclear warhead. The stupid people had finally decided to blow up the world.
Then the light stopped. It held still in the night sky, and started to grow brighter. No. The light wasn't holding still—it was heading straight towards Carl. His heart leaped to his throat. At least if it was a nuclear weapon, it would land close and vaporize him instantly—he wouldn't suffer. Carl wondered what his last thoughts ought to be.
The light flickered through a purple-tinted cloud. It kept coming straight at him. Carl saw that the light was being emitted from the belly of a thin, round object—a saucer. Adrenaline burned Carl's fingertips. He turned towards town and broke into a sprint. The light got brighter. A fierce humming grew. Carl glanced over his shoulder. The metallic saucer was about 50 meters in diameter, and it was almost right on top of him.
Carl cut into a field. Maybe he could lose them in the corn. He shielded his face with his arms and trampled the corn stalks. They crunched under him and whipped his arms with their sharp leaves. The saucer followed him, shining its blinding light through the green stalks. Carl squinted his eyes and kept running. Suddenly, his step didn't make contact with the ground, and he screamed out. His feet pedaled air, kicking the heads of corn stalks. He was levitating upwards towards the light. The corn receded beneath him.
Carl tried to scramble away, but he only tumbled upside-down. He pressed his hands to his pockets to stop his wallet and keys from falling out. A panic sweat broke out all over him. This couldn't be real, he thought. It had to be a dream. A very lucid dream, but a dream nonetheless. He was flying. That was one sign it was a dream and not real life. No. The flying made sense. An advanced species of space travelers would have mastered the gravitational force and be able to engineer tractor beams.
Carl needed another test to see if this was real or a dream. The full moon was shining in the sky. Carl willed it to disappear. It didn't work. The moon stayed where it was and kept shining. He would try something else, though. In dreams, if the dreamer looked away from a landscape and then looked back at it, the scenery changed. This was because the brain didn't record and store specific background details in a dream; it had to fill it in with new details when the dreamer looked back. Carl gazed at the star-filled horizon. A puffy, purple-tinted cloud floated along. Its shape reminded him of a penguin doused in gasoline and set on fire. Carl looked away, forcing his gaze down on the corn fields and dirt road, which were bathed in the light of the tractor beam. Then, he looked back at the cloud on the horizon. The flaming penguin was still there, every detail and cloudy wisp the same. This was really happening. This was no dream. How could this happen to him? He was a professor, for God's sake! A scientist! Only white trash got abducted by aliens. The aliens must have seen him walking along the corn field, and mistaken him for a Nebraskan. He would just explain to them their error, and they would let him go.
Carl was getting closer, almost inside the saucer. He looked into the source of light. A dark silhouetted figure floated there. It was humanoid—head, torso, two arms, two legs—but it definitely wasn't human. The proportions were wrong. The head was an enormous sphere. The neck was a thin tube, like the string on a balloon. The shoulders and torso were scrawny, with spindly arms and legs coming from them. A 98 pound weakling, Carl thought. At least if it turned out to be malevolent, he could take it in a fight. Floating there in zero gravity, it looked like an octopus with only 4 tentacles. In Earth's gravity, the weight of its massive head would snap its scrawny neck and break its spindly legs. It must have evolved on a planet with low gravity.
Or maybe it was human, a homo sapien, and stuck in the saucer too long—long-term space travel caused extensive loss in muscle and bone mass. Perhaps without gravity pulling the blood down to its feet, its brain gorged with blood and swelled to 5 times its normal size.
Carl rose into the saucer. The air was humid as a swamp and stank like rotten eggs. He grimaced. The alien flapped its limbs and floated past him. The rotten egg stench got stronger—it was coming from the alien. Carl forced himself not to vomit. The opening that Carl came in by slid shut, blocking his view of the corn fields. Now he was sealed in here with it. At least he could still breathe—there was oxygen.
The tractor beam light suddenly turned off. Carl expected to fall, but he kept floating. There was a dim ambient light. Once Carl's eyes adjusted, he saw how far the alien floating there was from a human. He also saw that he was in a giant bubble.
He saw the inhuman face of the alien right in front of him. A pair of giant black insect eyes stared at him. Its round mouth was filled with hundreds of tiny sharp teeth. There was no nose, just a flat surface where the nose would have been. Its coarse skin was ash gray and completely hairless. Carl's blood ran cold. The two of them—Carl and the alien—were in a translucent bubble about 10 meters in diameter. On the outside of the bubble were hundreds more ash gray aliens, their giant black eyes pressed against the bubble, staring at Carl.
The alien in front of Carl, like all the other aliens, was naked, unless this ash gray skin was a form of clothing. Its narrow heaving chest had no nipples—clearly this species wasn't mammalian. There was no belly button—did they hatch from eggs? There didn't appear to be any visible genitalia. How did they reproduce? Carl glanced away, embarrassed.
Its long limbs swam like flotsam. At the end of them were pairs of gray, pincer-like digits.
The alien swam past him again, its stench unbearable. It seemed about a foot taller than him, but it was hard to tell when floating in zero gravity.
“I'm not from Nebraska,” Carl said.
The alien swam to the wall of the bubble.
“I'm a chemistry professor,” Carl said.
A small hole opened on the bubble, and the alien squeezed through. The opening closed behind it. Carl was alone in the bubble, hundreds of pairs of black insect eyes pressed to it and observing him closely.
Get over your terror, he told himself. How many people ever got to experience zero gravity? He should ignore the aliens, and try to enjoy the thrill. So he kicked his legs and pulled the air with his arms and went tumbling around. It didn't work; he couldn't enjoy himself.
And he realized that when he told people that aliens abducted him, no one would believe him. Sure, some gullible fools would believe him, but intelligent, rational, skeptical people would say he was weak-minded and delusional. He would be the laughing stock of the scientific community. Plenty of people claimed that aliens abducted them, but unsubstantiated testimonies were weak evidence, acceptable for religion but not for science. No one had ever brought back physical evidence from an alien spacecraft. That was what Carl had to do. Then not only would he be believed; he'd be a hero. The first man to provide credible proof of intelligent life from somewhere other than Earth. So his eyes scanned the bubble for a small alien gadget he could slip in his pocket. He felt a twinge of guilt at planning to steal. He pushed the feeling away. The aliens had no right to expect good manners. Carl was an abductee, not a guest.
But there was nothing in the bubble to steal. No loose objects lying around. No ray guns. Just empty space inside a bubble with hundreds of giant black eyes pressed to it. Maybe if they inserted an anal probe, he would clench his sphincter so tight they wouldn't be able to yank it out. Carl grinned. They'd have to let him take it back to Earth with him. He'd have to clench pretty tight, but that would be excellent physical evidence.
But that was assuming he ever saw Earth again. As far as Carl knew, no one who claimed to have been abducted ever mentioned being in a giant bubble with aliens clinging to the outside of it. Maybe those whom the aliens put in the bubble never lived to tell the tale.
Suddenly, a small circle opened on the side of the bubble. Long alien arms pushed a small, gray creature inside. A child alien, Carl thought. He remembered how mother birds brought live worms to the nest to feed their young. Now, Carl was the worm.
The bubble closed behind the creature. It floated out and Carl saw it was different from the aliens. Like the aliens, it had a giant head and ash gray skin, but it wasn't hairless. A tuft of black hair grew from its scalp. Its eyes were small and shaped like human eyes, but they were solid black—no white part. In the middle of its face was a bump with two pin pricks—a primordial nose. Its lips were gray, but looked human. It had a thick gray neck, broad shoulders, and a wide torso. The arms and legs weren't spindly; they were thick and sturdy. It was the size of a 4 year old human child. It had no nipples, but it had a belly button. At the end of its sturdy limbs were fully formed human hands and feet. And it had gray sexual anatomy. It was a boy. The aliens had genetically engineered an alien-human hybrid. This body would be able to support its massive head in Earth's gravity. The aliens couldn't survive on Earth themselves. Were they cloning alien-human hybrids to colonize Earth?
Black insect eyes pressed against the bubble, watching Carl closely, like scientists peering into a microscope. But what were they looking for? The child didn't seem interested in eating Carl. Then Carl had an idea what they were looking for. When ecologists wanted to introduce a new species into an ecosystem, they often first tested it in isolation, one-on-one trials with individual species already in the ecosystem to make sure they didn't tear each other apart. Was this a scientific experiment? Maybe they were testing Carl's reaction to the hybrid. Why? Probably so they could predict the reaction of humans when hybrids were introduced on Earth. They wanted to know if humans felt affection for the hybrid children like they felt for human children, or if the humans would freak out and kill the hybrids before the hybrids had the chance to become the dominant species and wipe out the humans. The result of the experiment would be, of course, that the hybrid disgusted and horrified Carl. Chills flashed through his body just from looking at this grotesque creature. They wanted to replace human being with these creatures. A lot of people annoyed Carl, but when it came down to it, he was still on the side of humanity. Carl had to warn people. They needed to know that there was an impending alien invasion. But if he told them, they'd just laugh and think he was crazy. He needed proof. And now he saw what physical evidence he could take with him. He would take a sample of the hybrid creature's DNA. All he needed was a few of its cells. Every cell had the entire DNA sequence in its nucleus. This wasn't absolute proof, of course, since scientists couldn't use the DNA to fashion their own hybrids in a petri dish, but it was concrete physical evidence—much better than just Carl's word—and the similarities to human DNA would be apparent.
If Carl scraped off a few dead skin cells from the hybrid with his fingernails, the aliens pressed up against the bubble wouldn't even notice. He wouldn't scratch hard enough to draw blood (if it even had blood.) Just hard enough to scrape off some dead skin cells under his fingernails.
Carl swam towards the hybrid. He felt a twinge of guilt at messing up a scientific experiment by reacting dishonestly, hiding his disgust and pretending to like the hybrid, but he pushed the guilt away. Lab rats had no obligation to scientists.
He floated up close to the creature. It didn't smell as bad as the aliens. It had only a mild rotten egg smell.
“Hi there,” Carl said, forcing himself to smile. “You're a cute one, aren't you?”
The hybrid smiled back, opening its mouth wide. Hundreds of sharp little teeth jutted out. Carl suppressed a shudder. He steeled himself to touch the creature. Its black eyes stared at him. A low-pitched hiss rolled from deep in its throat. Its gray skin was arranged in a series of tiny hexagons, like a bee hive. Carl lifted his right hand, and pressed three fingers—index, middle, and ring—against the flesh of the hybrid's broad shoulder. The flesh was slimy. Carl forced himself not to scream. He could feel all the alien eyes on him, observing him closely. The hybrids sharp teeth glinted at him. Carl held his breath and pressed his fingernails against the skin. The hybrid's black insect eyes stared at him from between gray human eyelids. In a smooth motion, Carl scraped his fingernails across the creature's shoulder. Hybrid skin gunk lodged under his fingernails, and panic seized him. He needed these filthy cells cleaned out from under his nails, and far away from him. Immediately.
The hybrid's mouth opened round and wide. Its black insect eyes looked down at its shoulder, where there were three pale white scratches. Then, the creature emitted a high-pitched shriek, intensified by the echoing walls of the bubble. Carl's hands shot to his ears, but he was afraid the skin gunk under his fingernails would crawl in his ear canal, so he forced himself to pull his right hand away. He winced at the piercing shrieks. The hybrid frantically flapped its gray limbs, swimming away from Carl.
The aliens outside the bubble scurried around frantically.
“Sorry!” Carl shouted to them. “I didn't mean to—“
A sudden flash of blinding light lit up the bubble, and sharp electric pain seared every nerve in Carl's body. It felt as if he stuck his finger in an electric socket. He tried to scream, but his vocal chords didn't obey him. Then, the pain dissolved and things came back into focus. The hybrid was scurrying along the wall of the bubble, apparently trying to get further away from Carl. Carl tried to move, but his muscles wouldn't respond. Paralyzed. His breathing continued and his eyes blinked, but all voluntary muscles ceased. He tried to scream, but his mouth and vocal chords wouldn't cooperate. He floated in the center of the bubble, staring at the scene in front of him, helpless to look away.
A circle opened in the side of the bubble, and an alien slid through. Clenched in its gray pincers was a metallic cylindrical object about a foot long. An anal probe, Carl thought. He tried to shout, to beg, but nothing happened. The alien wiggled towards him, wraith-like. Other aliens swarmed into the bubble behind it. The tip of the alien's rod glinted—it came to a point at the end and looked razor sharp. This would shred his large intestine.
The hybrid cowered against the side of the bubble. Tears popped from its black eyes and hovered in front of its gray face. One alien stroked the hybrid's giant forehead with its long gray pincers.
The alien with the sharp-tipped rod now hovered over Carl. The rotten egg stench was unbearable. With its gray pincer fingers, the alien grasped Carl's right hand, the hand with the DNA under the fingernails. Cold metal pressed the tip of Carl's index finger. The blade pressed up at the end of the fingernail and began to scrape at the gunk caught in there. They just wanted the DNA back, Carl said to himself, relieved. Thank God there wasn't going to be an anal probe.
Then the blade jammed deep under Carl's fingernail, deep into the soft flesh of the nail bed. The finger nerves screamed out. Excruciating pain shot up Carl's arm and seized his whole body. He tried to scream. He tried to jerk his hand away. But his body wouldn't obey.
Carl watched droplets of his own blood quiver weightlessly away from him. Then dizziness overtook him, and everything began to fade.

When Carl returned to consciousness, he was lying on the hard dirt road, next to a corn field, the starry sky above him. The fingers on his right hand throbbed in pain. He glanced at them in the moonlight. The nails of his index, middle, and ring fingers were half broken off. The fingertips were exposed gore oozing blood, like fresh cuts of meat. Carl moaned.
He staggered to his feet and looked up. The constellations were as they should be. No extra stars. No stars missing. The full moon had crossed to the other side of the sky, and the breeze was chilly—Carl had been gone several hours.
He felt his pockets. His wallet and keys were still there. At least the aliens hadn't mugged him.
Clutching his wounded fingers to his chest, and using the stars for navigation, he ran along the side of the corn fields, towards home. Every shadow cast by corn stalks and every twinkle of a star made his heart leap to his throat. He would need to find a new way to relax himself in the future. Something indoors. Maybe a stationary bicycle.
He ran as fast as he could. His lungs sucked in air. His fingertips throbbed in pain with every thump of his heart. He had to warn people that aliens were planning to colonize Earth. They were trying to keep their existence a secret—that was why they used such extreme means to stop Carl from taking a DNA sample. He had no concrete physical evidence now, but there wouldn't be any concrete physical evidence until it was too late. The aliens would make sure of that. Carl had to tell people, anyway, no matter what it made them think of him. He knew he would look stupid—weak minded and delusional. But the stakes were high and the future of humanity was counting on him.