Artifact 24: Raynor Finds IT!

For those following the Artifact series, this episode is especially pivotal!

Artifact 24: Raynor finds IT

 

            Raynor had sent his hands back to the ranch on the pretense that he was going to John Thompson’s ranch to discuss whatever t elder man knew about the so-called aircraft crash. In reality, on his own, he wanted to investigate the strange metal ribbon they had found and had burned the fingers of one Raynor’s men. Figuring out how to handle the ribbon, Raynor wrapped it up and stowed it, but he found that he couldn’t bear to leave the crash site because something unexplained held him in an unbreakable grasp with an inexplicable powerful magnetism.

 

            Drawn inexplicably deeper into the crash debris field, Raynor heard the aircraft droning far off and above, but he paid it no heed. Raynor’s every sense focused on a certain spot nearly midway in amongst the metal shrapnel, pieces of rubbish, and tattered fragments of aircraft. He wondered why this was so, and what it was that drew him to that particular spot, but whatever it was he couldn’t fight its attraction. The attraction urged his shuffling feet forward.

All at once, he stopped for he had arrived. He looked down. He listened. He inhaled deeply thinking he smelled something enticing. His skin tingled, he licked his lips, and he knew the thing attracting him was there somewhere within his gaze. Whatever it might be, it made Raynor feel good, larger than life itself, more than a mere human cowboy standing  out on the prairie among crash debris and making him feel more vital and alive than he ever felt before. He identified the particular exact spot that had mysteriously drawn him in.

            Raynor bent down and studied a shredded piece of elastic rubber. As he reached down, a weak glow beneath the rubber increased with his hand’s approach. He snatched the rubber away, and he saw IT.

IT appeared as a translucent tube made all at once of plastic, paper, glass or something else entirely�"ethereal. IT held Raynor’s senses in a vise-like restraint, his full attention and emotional state in sway. The tube was an inch in diameter and about eight inches in length.

 Cautiously or perhaps lovingly, his fingers deftly curled about the tube, the glow brightening where his fingers grasped the mysterious tube. At the same moment, strange markings appeared covering the tube.  Curious, charmed yet frightened by what he felt from IT, Raynor restrained himself from reacting physically and mentally while trying to scrutinize what this tube might be. He admired it, absorbing what it conveyed to him, but for only a moment before�"

            Suddenly and rapidly, his view zoomed out going from the small patch of soil where he held IT, to an aerial view of the debris field, to the pasture fields, to the vast acreage that held many living things, insects, plants and animals. Each and every one of them aware of Raynor and him of them. From high above, he sensed eight humans in the aircraft that flew toward his location. He could feel what the crew members felt in the performance of their flight duties. Three of the men looked down to the crash site through scopes. Seeing through one set of their eyes that scanned below, he saw himself from high above a tiny but definable human standing in the middle of the crash debris.

Just as suddenly, a tingle racked his body and his head spun. Immobilized, he couldn’t react to seeing the sun suddenly stop in the sky. Raynor inherently knew it had stopped. Then, it slowly backed up retracing its daily arc moving across the sky slowly, then faster to set in the east! Raynor believed that he must be under some kind of chemical drug�"or some other influence from the tube.

Was he a victim of a secret US Army experiment? Twilight and then darkness enveloped him, yet he could do nothing except experience the mind-racking event. He felt the tube in his hand instilling an electric charge that flowed throughout his body.

The first quarter moon rose in the west, and the stars lit�"only the bright ones first, the planets, he knew them all innately, then, within seconds, hundreds, thousands, millions of stars�"with the Milky Way, a salted river, flowing above his head. The stars dizzyingly spun as the moon tracked across the sky. Nauseated, his eyes detected a glow grow on the western horizon, yet something else drew his eyes aside to the north.

A long, tall silvery object hung in the sky shimmering in the weak moonlight like a sparkling icicle in firelight. Raynor stared moonstruck. Out of the corners of his tearing eyes using his peripheral vision, he studied the strange manifestation. Like some strange organism like a sea creature, a squid or more like a jellyfish, the seemingly metallic object had a head, albeit bald, yet below, the bottom half appearing melted into a slender tapered funnel shape. A long, straight dripping thread or strand hung below terminating in a squarish object at its base. At first, it didn’t appear to move, yet after a moment of stars blinking off and on with its snail-like pace, Raynor determined that it drifted in the wind currents. He pondered this marvel for a few, long, moments.

Raynor wondered what this was, at least until something else in the fleeting night sky caught his eye. A moving star? No, it was something larger than a star, moving much faster than the first drifting object. Another silvery object, he determined, but vastly different.

It zipped a sizable distance, then abruptly stopped. Nearly overhead, Raynor stared, and it did not move, but he sensed that it knew that he espied it or not it, but those shrouded consciousness within knew of his scrutiny. Again, it darted apparently at an angle because it grew in size to his perception. Raynor could see its shape�"vaguely�"like two dinner plates set top to top so it came to points midpoint in its body front and rear. It stopped. It darted. Closer to the first object now. It darted again but struck the first object!

The first object collapsed and fell like a stone while the second object hung and wobbled in place. Still frozen, Raynor saw the objects coming down toward him. In a matter of seconds, larger and larger the two grew. Raynor wanted to duck, to run, but he still couldn’t move.

The squarish item crashed to the ground behind him and rolled across the ground as it self-destructed. He felt the breeze and the dust flew about him. Pieces rained about him almost as if he wasn’t there. The upper part broke apart as it fell, but now, seeing how it broke, Raynor could tell it was a large shiny balloon of some sort. The second item fell at an angle and hit the ground with rumbling mighty thump. Raynor trembled with the impact as more debris scattered about his feet. This is what the locals had heard, this crash, but that was yesterday�"the night before!

 The tube fell nearby to the ground, yet he looked at his hand which still gripped the tube, so very odd, he thought. Moments later, a metallic ribbon floated shimmery to land farther away in a tumbleweed. The second flying object skidded to a halt some yards away and Raynor could tell that the object was indeed shaped as he perceived moments earlier yet appeared misshapen, damaged on one side.

From behind the crashed object, Raynor detected movement. Not quite sure what the object was in the dim moonlight, Raynor could tell it wasn’t an animal, yet it wasn’t a human being either. It walked upright on two legs, like a person, but it appeared too thin, too large-headed to be a person. Raynor sensed the being knew he was there observing when he felt a warm emotion sweep across his thoughts. The being raised a hand in a sign of peace.

A heavy, drowsy shroud fell over Raynor’s consciousness, and he dropped to his knees. Raynor passed out and fell flat. How long he didn’t know, but he reopened his eyes long enough to see the being was no longer there. Did I see that thing?  A strange glow and a hum emitted from object, and it wobbled a moment before rising off the ground to slowly drift away.   

Suddenly, the stars resumed their spin, fading away as he saw the moon set in the east! He couldn’t turn his head to study it, but just as well, as the sun soon rose and made a steady arc to overhead to where it had started. With sudden control over his body, he dropped the tube, turned his eyes heavenward and scanned the sky for the object he desperately desired.

Soon, Raynor regained his mind and body, and he saw the plane high above, but not all that far away. Lying there, Raynor became aware that he must depart the site. On his hands and knees, his fingers dug in his pocket only to recall his kerchief was gone. Rapidly, he stood and without touching the tube, he picked it up using the rubber shred and carefully, but quickly rolled the tube up.

Raynor shoved the wrapped-up tube into his back pocket and ran!