Chapter 1

I don’t know. I just don’t know. It didn’t make sense.

Now, if it was a politician speaking, I could understand, because politicians are not known for straight speaking, so you have to note the words used, and discern what they actually mean, as opposed to what the politician apparently wanted them to mean to his hearers. Things like, “I agree with what you are trying to achieve, and will encourage my party to add it to its policy development strategy.” This does NOT mean, you have my wholehearted backing in achieving your aim. It means, “I will pay lip service to the idea, and if it crops up as part of my party’s strategic thinking, I will give it a mention if I think it benefits me.”

Not exactly what his actual words appear to say, you might notice. Politicians know how to use words to convey an idea without making definite and clear promises that they can be challenged on later.

However, this was different, and not mere words. What I saw above me was a combination of moves and actions, and that combination did not make rational sense to me. When you see something happen, it usually makes sense in the mechanical, physical world, but when it is coupled with another action that would make sense in another setting, the joint result is nonsensical in human knowledge terms. Something was travelling in a straight line in the sky, and at a considerable speed, much like a jet plane. A straight line in the sky is fine, it it is an aircraft, or a meteor, or even a missile powered by a rocket. It is just as normal for such an object to make a gentle turn, to describe a curve, a circle, or whatever; but a right-angle turn at high velocity is effectively impossible for a manned vehicle, due to the inertia and the momentum involved. This one did exactly that motion. It jinked, just like that.

Making a right-angled turn at high speed involves G-forces that are well beyond what the human body can take, so the object can only be a drone, a self-guided missile, performing at velocities outside the parameters that any known human-built missile can cope with. Or, it might be from another race, from another world, from another dimension or a future time. In all of these instances, it is not of current human origin. The last option might mean human manufacture, but not in this era.

Noting the trajectory, I observed that the object was not making any threatening gesture in its flight. The north of Scotland does not have much to threaten, as it has no military bases worthy of note. The object was therefore not heading for any human settlement, nor a military base, and being over land, not a threat to any naval asset. If it passes any settlement, it does not come down towards that settlement, and the same goes for any assumed military sites. It might pass over. but not directly at any possible target. Derived conclusion: either a demonstration of excessive capability, or an example of loss of signal. The latter may indicate a limit of control signal, leading to erratic behaviour but still non-belligerent in automatic mode. Is it an automatic machine? Size is difficult to judge from the ground. Fast and distant, or slower but closer, will both look much the same. Only if there is a static and measurable object in front or behind the vehicle do we have a chance to assess which is the truth. The assumed vehicle either goes out of sight behind the object or passes in front of it, displaying which of the two it is, and therefore roughly how far away it is.

Next question: will it stop and fall to the ground, or return to its base or to where it can recover its signal? Most of our own drones will be programmed to return to where they lost the signal and try to link up again. Losing a drone to simple signal loss is wasteful of resources.

The above memory from some time ago is a preamble to what I now found: an unusual large rock sitting in the Sutherland countryside, perched all on its own without any other large rocks in sight. Normal occurrences of this nature are known as erratics, and some can be found in this Scottish county. These are rocks dropped by a retreating glacier tens of thousands or possibly even millions of year ago, leaving the specimen a long way from its site of geological origin. This one had an odd colouration, which is why my attention was drawn to it.

It was large. It stood about two or three metres tall, and was a similar distance across, but rounded as most boulders tend to be; so roughly spherical, and thus in line with most erratics; but erratics are not this colour to my knowledge, and this rock was nothing like these spherical stone balls found in Central America. These stone spheres are clearly man-made, slowly chipped away to turn them into their spherical shape.

There are also natural spherical balls that were formed by accretion round an object like a bone, shell, fossil or harder stone, and formed in a muddy environment that will become limestone or sandstone. These balls are found in profusion in certain localities where at some time millions of years ago these conditions occurred in shallow seas, allowing the small balls to roll around and be added to regularly, in concentric layers. These balls solidify, enlarge, and end up as a harder part of a rock layer until they weather out, sometimes on a now wave-washed beach. I remembered seeing pictures of a beach with loads of rock spheres standing in the surf, a tourist attraction today.

Some other accretion balls are found at volcanoes, where molten lava runs down the slope and some chunks turn into balls of lava, but often these are not very spherical, but still roundish in form. Some merely roll in one direction and wrap themselves over and over into a sort of wheel shape, like a Swiss roll style of cake.

Anyway, this particular boulder did not look normal or natural to me. Admittedly it was not spherical, more a misshapen ball like most natural rocks, but to my mind’s eye, not really normal, if you know what I mean. Okay, I admit that what is normal to me is not necessarily normal to you, but you get my drift: it seemed a bit ... off. Perhaps it was that the upper part looked to be wider than the lower part, but misshapen spheres can fit that description too. The earth is a misshapen sphere, wider at the middle, somewhat like a pear or an egg standing on end. To me, it looked too unstable to have stood in that position for very long, as it lay partway between a couple of stunted trees on the gently sloping hillside. The centre of gravity of such odd shapes tend to tip it over, forcing the centre of gravity to move to a lower and so more stable level.

Struck by this oddity on my hill walk, I wandered over towards it, intrigued by the unusualness of it. It struck me that if it was a prop for a cine film, what Americans call a movie, it would not be very dense and so be easily moved; probably a wooden frame roughly shaped with chicken wire and covered with plastic sheeting then spray-painted to seem rock-like. But again, what would a movie prop be doing out in the open countryside, abandoned?

I was rapidly running out of believable explanations as I got closer to it. I wanted to run my hand over the surface to see what it felt like, but first I poked my right forefinger at it, being right-handed. I wanted to see what the surface felt like to a finger. My finger went in, right through the apparently solid surface!

I stopped abruptly, shocked to the core. What the hell was this thing? I started imagining holograms and other oddities that humanity comes up with from time to time. I drew my finger back, and examined it to see if it had picked up anything, even a stain, from the object. It remained a perfectly normal finger to my stare, a forefinger like my left one. Stupid as ever, I now thrust my whole hand forward in exploration, and it too vanished inside the supposed boulder. Ever adventurous, or continuing my stupidity, I waggled my hand around inside, but it didn’t seem to encounter anything. Odd, I thought. (I have these wonderful inspirations occasionally, you see). What was holding the image up? If you project an image, it usually has a screen for the image to form onto and be visible. Then I stood back, retrieved my precious hand, and checked it over visually. It looked just the same as my left hand. Odd again. Was this rock simply a projection of an image of a boulder, a projection to appear at a designated distance? What would be the point of that, out here in the middle of nowhere? It made no sense at all. I think I came to that verdict back when I first saw it. The same verdict still applied now.

My stupidity had not ceased, and I now stuck my head through this image of a boulder, to discover if I could see anything inside. I might have assumed sight if there was no screen, but all I saw was blackness, and I pulled my head back. The image was not just simply showing the surface of a boulder, it was somehow preventing light from outside coming in. It was absorbing the light as a solid surface would, yet it was not solid or even liquid. It might be an extremely thin membrane that my hand or whatever passed through effortlessly. My imagination was running away with me. That was most peculiar, as daylight is essentially energy of specific wavelengths, so the boulder was absorbing energy while providing an image to appear on the outside. Would it take more energy to display the boulder image than the sunlight that was impacting, or was the solar energy input more than the energy expenditure? The obvious answer must be that its intake was the greater, otherwise it makes little sense. There we go again: little or no sense.

But who or what could expect to find this boulder in an exposed site? There was no road for some distance around, and I was alone, hiking for fun in the fresh air of Sutherland’s expanse, so who was this constructed image intended for?

After thinking for a little, I decided to extend my reach, and walked around, looking for a stick or branch to enable me to prod it more deeply. I had to walk several hundred metres to find a suitable piece of dead wood. It was roughly straight, a few bends, with nothing much in the way of side branches or twigs. It felt lightweight, very dead, probably having lain there for months or years. It would however do the job for me, so I carried it back to the boulder.

I stopped to think things over, and wondered what I looked like, poking at a boulder for no obvious reason. If noticed at all in this empty landscape, I would most probably be seen as a nutter, with some justification. I walked back to the ‘boulder’ and cast my gaze over it again. It looked no different than it did before. It just sat there smugly, which annoyed me. I hate to be left puzzled by anything I have seen, and this one surpassed all others.

Almost in annoyance, I poked the stick into the boulder’s side, and it did the same as my body: acted as if there was nothing there. I tried moving it from side to side, and then top to bottom. It encountered nothing. There had to be something inside, to project the image, but it had to be a lot smaller in size than the boulder image. I pushed a little farther into the boulder, and suddenly the stick encountered something hard. I had reached the object inside, it seemed. And then without a sound the image vanished. The boulder was gone, replaced by a metallic and ceramic-looking object of smaller dimensions, yet still largish, at least a metre in diameter, possibly more if it was properly measured.

Once again, it had a roughly spherical shape, possibly designed to move through the atmosphere as a streamlined ‘thing’, for want of a better term to describe it. I was reminded of that fast-moving light in the sky, that turned impossibly quick. Could there be a connection between the two? Where could this object have arrived from, other than the sky above?

I suddenly felt slightly faint, and quickly allowed myself to drop to one knee while I recovered my equilibrium; that was what I thought. Instead, I seemed to lose my awareness of my surroundings, and possibly go unconscious for a moment; I was certainly not with it, not conscious of my surroundings. Despite this, I managed to remain in an upright position, so that I must have drifted off only for a second or two, or else my body had continued to balance me without my control, which was just as unlikely.

Becoming more aware again, I felt different in an odd way, like nothing I had experienced before; almost like being reborn. Everything seemed to appear new and bright, like seeing things for the first time. It was as if my right eye vision problem, with me ever since I had my T.I.A. episode, had vanished. Without thinking about anything, I moved my head and body to take in a full 360 degree survey of my rural surroundings, as if I had forgotten what the empty landscape looked like. This was followed by a tiny flash of what felt like inspiration, a recognition of what I was seeing in front of me, and this information being amalgamated with some other data to produce a larger and more comprehensive whole. It was like a switch being put on and full light dawning. Now I heard the trill of a small bird in the distance, the soft soughing of the gentle summer breeze, and the aromatic smell of some flower advertising to insects somewhere near. Even a small pebble in the grass beneath my hiking boot was interesting to feel with my sole.

It all appeared so natural and normal that it took me some time to assess the situation and realise that it was not so much ME that was examining the landscape, but some other mind that was using my senses to view everything I could observe. I was suddenly frightened at the idea of perhaps being taken over by some malevolent entity. The ‘not knowing’ was part of the fear factor; being faced with something happening to me that was far outside of my past experience. I had no idea what I was going to do, or what IT was going to do to me; whatever the ‘it’ was.

I almost lost consciousness again with the panic that overwhelmed my mind; the fear of the unknown was flooding me with trepidation, the not knowing aspect of it all. I staggered a little before regaining my balance, though not my equilibrium, for I was now assaulted by what appeared to be a voice speaking without words. That concept sounds ridiculous, but that was what it felt like: a voice trying to speak to me, but without having the words to convey meaning. This continued unabated for about half a minute, then the pseudo-voice stabilised into a recognisable greeting: “Hello.”