Marilyn Peake - The Other

In that twilight state right before sleep, my mind flooded with strange, random images. My life as a little girl back in the compound in Utah. The survival drills. The times I had to crawl through a long tunnel on my belly to practice escape should the military come to round us all up. The night I had to watch a woman give birth, so I’d be prepared to deliver a baby in an emergency situation when no one else was around. Fear gripping me around the throat as I watched in horror. I was nine. I prayed I’d never get pregnant if that’s the result. I worried I might get pregnant because I had no idea how it happened. I had a general idea from the animals we kept, but I wasn’t exactly sure how that translated to humans. After the memories, random images of babies being taken away. Babies with green skin and large haunting eyes. Buildings and forests burning. Floods overtaking cities, swallowing them whole. Violent storms and monstrous ocean waves buffeting people around like kites in the wind.

I stifled a scream. For a moment, it seemed like I’d descended into madness. Then it cleared, like the sun coming out from behind clouds after a storm.

A stewardess approached the guy leaning into our aisle, peering out our window. She said, “Please, sir, you need to sit down.”

At that moment, the plane shook. A tall, lanky woman standing next to the seat behind us lurched forward and spilled the Diet Pepsi she was holding onto the back of Nat’s shirt.

He whipped around. “ Goddamn it! Can you please sit down?”

She apologized profusely and went off to find her seat.

Handing Nat a pile of napkins and a bottle of water, the stewardess whose hair and makeup still managed to look perfect this late in the rather tumultuous flight, said, “I’m so sorry,” as if she were the one responsible for soaking him in sticky soda.

Mumbling, “No, no, it’s fine,” Nat grabbed the napkins and water and started dabbing at the soda stain.

Ping! The fasten seat belt signs lit up.

A steward came on the speaker: “We’ll be experiencing turbulence as we pass through a windy area. Please stay in your seats and keep your seat belts buckled. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to get up.”

Attempting to lighten the mood, I leaned over and said to Nat, “It looks like something shit on your back. Something with rather liquid diarrhea.”

Never failing to level up a joke, he replied without missing a beat, “Yup. It’s the secret ingredient in all brown soda.”

Nat gave up trying to remove the stain. Instead, he just leaned back and shut his eyes.

By the time we landed in Roswell, my head had cleared. I’d finally managed to take a nap on the second part of our flight from Phoenix. I had also drunk lots of water after worrying the wine might have gone to my head and affected me more than usual on the first leg of our journey. The most eventful part of the second leg was some old guy complaining about the food and a baby crying for about half an hour. Other than that, no problems.

We rented a Land Rover, so we’d have plenty of room for gear and could travel over rough terrain if needed. After throwing all our bags into the back, we headed out to the place Liam had rented for us. The drive was long. Gradually, we left the artificial lights of the city that mostly slept at night. During the day, Roswell was a tourist destination filled with people searching out museums and shops. But at night, those places were shuttered and the streets so deserted, it seemed practically a ghost town.

As the artificial lights dimmed, the moon and stars popped more brilliantly against the dark sky. While I drove, Nat turned on the local radio. They were covering the story of our initial plane flight. Apparently, a number of passengers had called into CNN and MSNBC and their stories were now going viral. Of course, Roswell news would report anything UFO, but especially if it made the major cable news channels. Somehow, that made it seem legit.

Nat laughed. “You think anyone recorded it with their cell phones?”

I shrugged. “Probably. Doesn’t everything get recorded these days?”

Opening a can of Diet Coke, Nat said, “The medium is the massage.” He took a swig of soda.

“Marshall McLuhan,” I replied. Nat liked to throw out esoteric quotes. It was his version of throwing down the gauntlet. I accepted the challenge whenever I could. More than once, I’d cheated by looking it up on my cell phone.

Nat opened a package of pretzels and held it out in front of me. I stuck my hand in and grabbed a handful. Suddenly realizing I was hungry, I said, “We oughta stop someplace to grab a meal. You wanna look up places to eat?”

He said, “Sure,” and started tapping the search into his phone. He said, “It was a typo, you know.”

Staring straight ahead at the road, I said, “What?”

He replied, “ The Medium is the Massage. Typo. It was the title for McLuhan’s book about media, right? It was supposed to say The Medium is the Message, McLuhan’s oft-quoted statement, but the typesetter messed it up.”

Hmmm. That I had never heard. “So, he just let the mistake go?”

Nat laughed. “No, he liked it. He thought it perfectly expressed how media affects us. It brings us all together to share in the same tribal beliefs.”

I thought about that. “Things have changed. Media divides us now.”

Nat said, “Yeah, but only into our own separate tribes. We tune in to listen to the broadcaster for our own unique tribe and war against the rest.” Without a pause, he added, “Annie’s Diner. What do you think?”

I was used to Nat’s conversational shorthand where he interrupted something he was saying with something he’d been talking about earlier. The accelerator pedal for his mind always seemed to be pressed down with his thoughts going at high speed. I tried to keep up. I said, “Sure. Diners have just about everything.”

He added Annie’s to the GPS and I took the van in that direction.

Annie’s was your average diner: a metal box with neon lights, this one out in the desert. The lights etched themselves onto the dark slate of night. Annie’s Diner . Food . Coffee . Last Stop for Thirty Miles .

Nat looked up at the signs. “Hmmm. Good we stopped, huh? Last eats for thirty miles.”

As we opened the front door, bells jangled.

It wasn’t very crowded. A few guys who probably belonged to the trucks outside. A group of teenagers laughing and waving their hands as they talked about something that interested them.

We waited for someone to seat us.

Finally, a middle-aged waitress came out of the kitchen. She had scuffed white shoes, food stains on her apron and mascara painted around her eyes so thick, she seemed part raccoon. Noticing us, she sauntered over. Without smiling, she grabbed two menus out of a rack on the side of the hostess desk and said, “Follow me.”

She stopped at a booth in the middle of the restaurant.

We sat down. Nat asked for coffee and water.

With a tight expression on her face, our waitress nodded. Her name tag said Michelle .

Diners never disappointed in their sheer variety of food. The menu had everything . Not sure if we’d find food before lunch the next day, I overdid my order: cheeseburger with fries, milkshake, coffee, and apple pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. I felt queasy around bite number three of pie à la mode.

Nat outdid me: two cheeseburgers with onion rings, a strawberry smoothie, and an ice cream sundae.

While we ate, repeatedly wiping grease and ketchup and dessert off our mouths, we talked about our strategy for getting into the compound. Liam had arranged a meeting for us with the cult leader. He’d told him that we were quite impressed, after seeing him interviewed on TV, with his knowledge about UFOs and aliens. Lucky for us, the leader had an unhealthy amount of narcissism. He said he’d be happy to meet with us. Our appointment was for 2:00 the next afternoon.