Sord in Prosperity - Hope Beyond the Apocalypse

EP. 119 - SIGHTINGS

AS THE NEXT DECADE passed, I heard a few stories that seemed so credible, I had little doubt they were anything but the truth.

While in grad school at Arizona State, I shared a house with one other mate and two young women, all students, and we got to talking one night about our various UFO experiences. As the conversation proceeded, Ellen became agitated.

"What's up?" I asked, noticing she seemed unusually tense. "Does this discussion bother you?"

She nodded her head. "Not me. Doesn't bother me, except my godfather told me something he experienced about an alien sighting. Didn't scare me, but it would scare the shit out of you guys. It happened when he was in the military."

We were beyond interested.

"He's coming over soon with a friend who was with him at the time," she added. "I'll see if I can get them to talk about it."

A few weeks later, I was in my bedroom and heard a knock at the door.

"Guys," Ellen yelled. "My godfather Carlos and his friend Jimmie are here. Do you want to hear the space alien story we talked about?"

We met in the family room and introduced ourselves, then sat together after the beers were opened. I clearly had doubts about alien stories, as I'm sure my roommates did. We were halfway going along with it because Ellen seemed insistent that it was very credible and we should hear the tale.

Carlos was short, stocky, and carried a Southern Arizona Latino accent. Browned and physically hardened from years of outdoor life, neither he nor Jimmie were the kind of guys you'd ever want to mess with. Jimmie was a foot taller and lanky thin, with a matching accent.

After the introductions, we indicated Ellen let us know about their UFO story. Carlos was noticeably surprised at the mention and stared intensely at Ellen. It was almost as if he was being asked to share a state secret with people he had just met.

"Hey, girl, you should have warned me. I don't go telling your average nobody about this stuff. Think your friends can keep quiet?"

Ellen smiled, glanced at us, and nodded. "I believe so."

He stared intently at the three of us. "I'm telling you this secret shit because I trust my goddaughter Ellen, so I'm trusting her friends. This is classified military matters I'm divulging, from when Jimmie and me were in the Army and stationed at the Yuma base. It's balls-cut-off info, man, so you're not going to read it in the papers or hear it on the news because shit like this never gets to civilians like you. And if it ever does get out, you'd wished they only cut your balls off for the trouble it caused."

Give the seriousness of his tone, we collectively pledged that our lips were sealed.

Carlos paused as if he was surveying our psyches.

"You guys know nothing about what we saw while in the military, right? You can't, man. You're in college, something most of us down where I come from never get to do. So Jimmie and me, we were doing base security at what's now called the Yuma Proving Ground. But we didn't call it that then. We just called it 'the Base.' They tested all kinds of shit there, man. New weapons and explosives. Probably the only shit we didn't test was the big nuclear stuff since that's been done in Nevada until recently. Ellen, honey, can you get us another beer?"

It was college and the refrigerator was stuffed with cold beer. With fresh brews in hand, Carlos sat back and relaxed a little.

He took a deep breath. "So Jimmie and me were out one fucking hot summer afternoon in the Jeep. Pretty late. We'd been doing our rounds all day. I can't tell you, man, how many times we were forced to do rounds because some drunk hokey from town phoned up saying they saw strange lights hovering over the base or the testing grounds or wherever in the desert. People drink fucking way too much, and who hell cares what they see, huh? They should keep their crazy-ass thoughts to themselves. And what the fuck do you expect to see in the sky over a weapons testing base? Firecrackers? M-80s? We lit-off all kinds of shit in that range over a huge amount of fucking desert desolation, so strange lights were just a normal part of our business. Get what I'm saying?"