Psycher Chronicles

Interlude II

Crop Circles

(Darren Hallsprings)

Darren was flying his long-distance UAV for a ride around the old farmstead, the one that had been recently sold and mostly turned into zoned off lands for up-and-coming Mega plazas, when it happened.

Return home.

The first time it happened, he had managed to get to within four hundred meters of the old farmstead. After that, the range had slowly increased to four hundred and ten meters out, then each progressive time the distance seemed to increase by an additional ten meters.

After the first time, Darren took this as a sort of personal challenge, as he couldn’t understand how the code was triggered. Normally it only occurred when the drone was low in power, but each time after the first, Darren made sure to fully charge the drone before sending it out again.

Yet, every time he sent out his UAV it always got sent home.

One day, he decided to go to the line personally and see with his own eyes if there was something that caused the change. Riding his bike, he found the back trails to be somewhat enjoyable. The place was the exact middle of nowhere, no signs of powerlines, or large cell towers that might cause interference with his UAV and possibly cause a drain of its battery.

Which was why he was confused to see that the domain, or rather the area that seemed to be cut the new cut off point for where his UAV could move and record ended at the end of the hold Tulley farmstead.

With his own eyes, for months he had gone about trying to see what exactly was happening in this one area that caused his UAV to get sent home. Being this close, he took out his UAV from his backpack and released it, causing the device to go up, and begin to cover the open fields of the farm.

Return to sender.

Yet, this time despite having started much closer, the UAV somehow got programmed to go back to his home. That was a wasted day. Well mostly, he did get a good afternoon bike ride in, but otherwise all it did was cause him to become obsessed with finding out the secrets for why his UAV would constantly be sent home from there.

Darren thought of everything, from government super tech being produced, to unnatural amounts of rare elements that would cause electrical feedback to anything. Honestly, he was at a loss, and decided to just go and check everything, even going so far as to find out how to jailbreak his UAV so it no longer had the Return Home feature.

He even did a few test runs with the now jail broken UAV to find that it worked perfectly, well to be honest even better than perfectly. A few of the restrictions were lifted, meaning he could technically climb into air space of planes now, not that he actually intended to, but the option was there. Also, most importantly, even with a test run of the plane flying for hours on end in one spot just an inch off the ground, the UAV never returned home when it was low on battery power. Instead, it just crashed to the ground. Fortunately, the one-inch fall was nothing too much for the robust UAV to handle, and with a quick recharge the device was as good as new.

Now was his chance to cause the UAV to do a set route over the old Tulley farmstead, so he could finally see what exactly was causing the UAV to malfunction in the first place. Now, even if it did run out of power, he had a good excuse to go onto the Tulley farmstead as he would just be looking for his UAV that just so happened to have glitched and randomly died while flying over this one stretch of land.

Takeoff.

The flight was simple and smooth. Within seconds the UAV had risen up to a height of a hundred feet, and stabilized nicely, despite being fully exposed to the winds and elements from up there. Normally this was too high, and something Darren opted to avoid, as he didn’t want to have his battery drain faster, but as everything that his UAV saw was being livestreamed straight to his personal computer, where it would be simultaneously copied to a cloud account, he felt this was a worthwhile venture.

Never did he expect to see what he would happen to at that time.

As he flew his UAV, he began seeing the signs of fire and smoke from far away. With his height and angle it was clear that a fire was happening on the Tulley farm.

This was not surprising, as this was the time of year when many would resort to such measures to clean up waste and debris from open fields. Being as this was an old converted farmland, it was not too surprising for Darren to see signs of an open fire, particularly being this close to dusk.

What was odd however, was the size and intensity of the flames. There was an odd sort of uniformity to the flames. Normally flames had a central point that rose higher than others, and all the flames seemed to feed that one internal point. This time, however things were different. This time it almost seemed like the fire was created in the form of a ring.

Then as he got closer and closer, he saw that there was a singular black figure in the middle of the flames. Well not black, but their overall appearance was hard to identify due to how high the flames around them were.

Shocked.

That was all that could happen. There in the center of the burning circle was a tall creature that appeared blurry due to the view through the flames and constantly changing air pressure that seemed to distort the actual size and image of the creature in the center of the ring of fire.

Then there was a pause, as the flames seemed to pause for a second, then almost break apart, as the creature at the center of the pillar of flame became visible if only for a second. During that second, there was a pulse.

Static.

There was an electrical surge that almost seemed to happen, one that even caused the image from his monitor to pulse and distort for a second.

A second later, the image became blurry, causing the dark figure at the center of the flames to become even more distorted. Then there was the clear response for the UAV to be sent home.

Darren felt a sense of relief there, as he almost smiled to himself having dodged a bullet, as he saw the command come across the screen.

Return home.

But that function had been erased as part of the jailbreaking process.

Then he could almost see the dark figure nod in understanding that its commands had been discarded. Raising its right hand, a pulse of energy shot out, distorting the air as it came closer.

From this height and this distance, the pulse of energy almost died out by the time it reached the craft. So transfixed on the stream of energy was he that he didn’t even take into account the fact that he needed to move his UAV out of the way. Instead, he, like the UAV, just sat there and watched the rippling distortion of space shoot out, collide with his aircraft. Then there was a second where the waves washed over, the UAV trembled for a second, then all Darren saw was the UAV falling out of the sky, before the last few seconds of the feed from the UAV went to his computer.

“Shit.” Darren said, as he gently tapped his monitor, wondering if that would bring back the image.

A few seconds later, his screen alerted him to what he already knew.

Connection feed lost.

Seeing the message, Darren paused for a second, before his mind began to process everything it had just seen.

Badump, badump, badump.

Then his heart began to race. Seeing that, the burst of energy, the control over technology, he had seen it, finally he had proof.

“Alien people, are here.” Darren said. Then looking at his computer, he saw the folder with his recordings. Realizing the truth of the matter, that the government would likely take his files away if they found out the UAV was his and what he recorded, he decided to make copy. Pulling out a flash drive he transferred the file, then pulling away the loose floorboard in his room to reveal his secret hiding spot, he placed the file in the floorboard, and sealed it up.

Only then did he debate with himself about whether he should go and get his UAV or not.

Finally, after a few excruciating minutes, he decided to go down to Tulley farm and retrieve it. If he could find it, before anyone else could, he could likely avoid any problems. At least that was what he hoped.

As he rode, he figured the easiest answer was that his UAV got lost on a routine fly about and collapsed. It would almost be impossible for him to be proven to have been actually piloting the craft, unless of course people saw the number of times he tried to access the fields and failed.

As he got closer to the spot where his craft landed, he realized it was already dark out. This actually proved to be a good thing, as it meant he could try to hide his movements even easier. Though finding his UAV would be tougher than expected. Still he had the GPS of its last fall, and as he got closer he tried to find the UAV, while also seeing what happened to the alien.

Just in case he could collect anything he had his GoPro running in night mode, collecting everything he did and saw. Yes, this would be incriminating, but only if he had been trespassed from this property. As he entered on the one path that conveniently had no Private Property signs on display, he could make the argument that he didn’t see anything.

These were all flimsy arguments, but ones that he made for himself as he realized that he absolutely needed to know one thing. Are there such things as aliens.

It wasn’t until he arrived at the scene that he began seeing the aftereffects of the flames on the fields. That is when he saw the circular patterns, and the interconnecting burn paths. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear that the Tulley’s were trying to create Crop Circles. But why? Wouldn’t just creating them cause news reporters to come and try to investigate the area?

Then again, Darren figured that if they had been spotted, the easiest way to cover up the fact that aliens were here would be to hide them in plain sight by staging a fake crop circle.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized this might be too much.

“Faking an alien burning the lands as possible crop circles, that is ingenious.” Darren said, as he searched the area, trying to find his UAV, only to realize that it was either in the deep grass, or it had been moved.

Only after looking around for a bit did, he find the UAV, it was hidden in plain sight, right at the center of the last crop circle he saw being created by the pyrokinetic alien.

As he approached the spot, he felt a strange sense of tension building in him, as he realized that this was likely a trap.

“They always put the cheese at the center of the mouse trap.” Darren mused to himself as he saw the wide-open field that led to his UAV.

Deep breaths.

Darren tried to calm himself as he thought about what to do. On the one hand it was obviously an alien trap of some kind. Or maybe a top-secret government conspiracy where the government was working jointly with aliens on some secret project out in Jackson West Virginia. Just saying sounded stupid, which instantly also made it completely plausible. What better place to hide than somewhere far away from everything.

Part of him thought about just leaving the drone there and never claiming it again. Then another more pragmatic side of him remembered how he mowed lawns for a year to save up for this, and how much it meant to him and his possible future career as a UAV journalist.

Granted there wasn’t a market for such a profession yet, but within ten years, many people would likely outsource their video feeds from extra sources, and he intended to have a network of UAV drones going about monitoring everything and providing real time accurate data wherever possible.

With his future career aspirations on the line, Darren decided to take the chance and run out, grab the drone, run back to cover and then leave the property line as quickly as possible.

That was his plan, unfortunately for Darren, while his mind was fully in on the steps needed to take, his body wouldn’t move.

He was so focused on the drone ahead, that he failed to hear the light rustling of overgrown grass from beside him. Only when he heard the words spoken did he even move.

“So, is that yours…”