The Biggest Buiding in Milltown

 Part 8, Getting Lost

            Lying there, in Mike’s sister’s bed, thinking, I began to remember a few things about that secret hangar.
            It was dark in there. The door on the other side of the vast room was half an acre away. I started walking, feeling my anxiety rise. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in there. What in the world made Ellis suggest it? Was he demonstrating his “in the know?”
            Off to my left I saw that there were various huge machines, like nothing I had ever seen around the plant, or in the sky. Saucers, sure, two. But others too. Some of them made no sense to me.
            Some of these things were not aerodynamic looking. Complicated contraptions, with bits of machinery on their “hulls.” Some were merely smooth shapes. None of them were resting on the floor. I felt a chill run up my back.
            One of them, distinctly different in texture and color, lay disassembled on a platform. I could see no recognizable machinery in it. It looked organic. The fabric of its hull looked satiny and glowed just a little, enough that I could see it in the darkness.
            I got out my phone, like one in a dream, moving slowly, and I started to photograph. I moved around among them, getting several shots of each, as if I were driven to document these terrifying marvels. I made a short video of the whole room, moving my phone panorama style.
            At last, near the exit, there was one more craft, a dull black ovoid, somewhat flattened. It lay stationed about three feet off of the floor. No lighting of any kind broke up its darkness. I was curious about its skin, so ultimately black with no reflection at all from the dim lights of the other crafts.
            I laid my right hand on it. It was warm to my touch. As if a living creature, it responded. I felt a piercing knowing go through my mind. Small orange spots all along its out edge winked on. I thought of exotic undersea creatures for a moment.
            All at the same time, I realized that this place had to be continually on camera, and that I should have turned around the second I had opened the door, short cut or no short cut. Well, it was too late now.
            I ran all the way to Ellis’s office to return his key. Imagine that. A regular brass key to a door holding all of that dangerous mystery. Ellis wasn’t the only crazy guy working there. Maybe a high-tech lock would have attracted attention.
 
            As I dozed there, I wished I knew Mike’s sister’s name. It seemed odd to inhabit her room and not even know  her name.
            It was finally morning. I wondered if “it” was still outside the window. I think anyone would have peeked. I sure did. And it was. It hovered at window height within arm’s reach. Black and patient as the void, it hung there.
            Outside the bedroom, the house was in an uproar. A young woman whom I took to be the cook was yelling in Spanish and heading for the door. She stomped around Mike who was reasoning with her in rapid fire Spanish, and out the front door she went.
            I stared at him; he threw up his hands.
            “She saw it. Says she can’t work with that thing out there,” said Mike.
            “Not sure I blame her,” said I.
            “Yeah, wait. Just wait, Jenae,” said Mike. “Dr. Brown is over here.”
            “Here” turned out to be the far side of the living room. Sitting in one of those low armchairs made out of native timbers and smaller branches, upholstered in Navajo style woven fabric, in a beam of sunlight sat a man. He was thin, tall, in his 60s most likely. Khakis and a blue chambray shirt. He wore sandals like a student. His hair looked like his wife, or somebody cut it once in a while. On the rustic coffee table before him was the usual laptop computer. He was looking at it, not at Mike or I.
            We walked over and both sat down on a sofa of the same style opposite his chair. He looked up.
            “Jenae, this is Dr. Brown, Doc, this is Jenae Renton. Our witness, alive and well,” said Mike.
            “Well, Jenae. I’m afraid it’s gotten way more complicated than merely being a witness on the run from embedded illegal research and manufacture. Hello, by the way. Sorry. My head is in this stuff all day and night,” said Dr. Brown.
            “That thing outside Sarah’s bedroom window is waiting for you because it is yours now. You’re twinned. You touched it in the hangar. It was in its receptive mode when you touched it. It will come to you no matter where you go. In a sense, as far as we understand it, it loves you! It would kill for you. Be very careful what you think around it.
            “By the way, it is conventional to name it,” he added.
            “Conventional to whom,” I asked weakly. “Who made it? Did my company make that? I can’t believe….” I just sat there looking at him.
            The world turned around in the usual way for a minute or two. The sun rose higher in the sky, as I waited.
            “Oh, Mrs. Renton, your ship is extra-terrestrial. Your guys didn’t build it! They did!”