Unappreciated Alien Presence

by Lilian D. Vercauteren

Five floors below the surface, in an undisclosed location, a television screen on a laboratory wall flickers on, showing the interior of the US Senate.

“The hearing’s started already?” Brinker utters to the empty room, dropping the levitation field and taking a chair.

“Hey, boss, what’s cookin’?” Allen flings open the door and points finger guns at Brinker. “Missed you at the potluck lunch. Everyone was—”

“Shh!” Brinker turns up the television’s volume.

“Mr. Vughadd,” Senator Gartenbaum says. “As a former US intelligence officer, can you confirm whether or not there is an active disinformation campaign within our government to deny UAP sightings?”

Allen scoffs. “What happened to calling them UFOs? That had a much better ring to it.”

On the Senate floor, Cris Vughadd leans into the microphone, his voice steady, his eyes clear: “Yes.”

Brinker’s mouth falls open. “Did he just admit it?”

Allen snickers. “Cool.”

Brinker massages his temples without taking his eyes off the screen. “How much juice did you send them?”

Allen blinks at his boss. Brinker stares at his intern.

“I thought you did—”

In an instant, Brinker is in front of the fridge. Rows of ice cube trays filled with bright green jelly jiggle as he jerks the door open. He picks up the first one. “This is plain Jello.” He examines each tray. “Plain Jello. Jello! Jello! If you didn’t send any to the Senate, then where did all the Denyjuice go!?”

Allen pops up next to him, haphazardly catching the trays his boss is tossing out the fridge. “What do you mean all this is plain Jello?”

“Senator, as clear as you can see me sitting here, there are UAPs in our airspace?”

Brinker pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers, fighting for his life while trying to keep calm. “If all we have left in the fridge is plain Jello, and yet they’re spilling undisclosed information in there…” He gesticulates at the fridge, the screen, speaking slowly, maintaining the high—but improbable—hope that Allen will keep up. “I prepared four batches. What, for the love of Homunculus Nebula, happened to the Denyjuice!?”

Denyjuice®, in retrospect, is easy—simple even—to make. Naturally, it’d taken some experiments, but what were a few dozen scrambled human brains in the bigger scheme of things? For the greater good, in this together, et cetera, et cetera. Except, as agreed upon by the governing bodies on Earth and Elsewhere, humanity isn’t anywhere near ready. Thus, when cooked up with a little outsider’s help and injected into (for obvious reasons) green Jello, Denyjuice blocks isolated receptors in the human brain that store undisclosed intelligence on the existence of aliens. It holds up against the most state of the art lie detector. It’s a safeguard. A lid more secure than the strongest Tupperware ever made. And gluten free.

In the not-too-unlikely scenario of a well-informed whistleblower looking to get a documentary and publishing deal by going on record during a Senate hearing about the truth on alien life, he’ll get a special little treat in advance on the house. Allen was supposed to send the goods to the Senate today before the hearing about the truth on alien life.

“I…err…” Allen scratches his head and slowly backs away while Brinker towers over him like an angry cumulonimbus.

“Is this one of your pranks?”

Allen shrinks. “I went to the monthly lab lunch potluck. And…I forgot to bring a dish to share from home, so I figured I’d just bring the Jello! The plain Jello I made in advance for you to add Denyjuice to. But…” he motions haplessly to the fridge while simultaneously fumbling for his safety goggles.

“So, you ate it?” Brinker fumes. He balls his fists, then racks of test tubes, cylinders, and beakers jump in the air and shatter into a thousand pieces.

Allen snaps his goggles on just in time. “I would never,” he replies, wholeheartedly. “Wait a minute, that’s not what I meant to say. Ask me again!” He takes a deep breath. “No. I did not eat the Denyjuice, and you,” he points a shaky finger at his boss, “are deffo not an alien.” He slaps a hand over his mouth in shock.

Brinker groans like he is about to be sick. “Do you realize what you’ve done? You ruined everything!”

“But how was I supposed to know?” Allen wails. “They’re both green! There’s no label.”

His boss whips around and points at the refrigerator. “Aside from the giant sticker I asked you to put on the fridge that says: DO NOT OPEN. DO NOT TOUCH. DENYJUICE INSIDE. You mean that label?”

“I thought that was a joke!”

“Is that what I am to you? A joke?” He narrows his eyes: “Are you trying to sabotage me?”

“No!” Allen fans his hands in the air, like he’s trying to cool the room. “No! Look, no biggie! We’ll just make more! It’s the same stuff you give everyone before they leave the lab every day, isn’t it? So everyone always denies you exist? Now everyone has had their dose for the day and your secret is safe!”

Outside the window facing into the hallway, it strikes Brinker that there are more people than usual milling about, stopping to tie shoelaces coming undone just by their door, pretend-reading dog-eared posters on the wall, but actually eying Allen and him.

Brinker shoots them a venomous look before letting out an exasperated sigh. “Are you keeping up with current events? With, say, what’s happening in the Senate in front of the entire world right now?” With a snap he turns the hallway window to opaque, then scrutinizes Allen. “Can you guarantee that everyone at lunch took at least two cubes?”

Allen grimaces. “There were a couple…maybe a handful of them that said they were tired of Jello? Because we make them eat it every day, now that you mention it.”

Brinker shakes his hands to the ceiling. “Why?” he wails. “Why me?”

His intern jumps up. “I have a plan. We cook up another batch on the double, we make everyone take it today before they leave the lab, while they,” he looks at the television, “get juiced up, do another hearing, deny everything, and, you know, Mandela Effect the shit out of everyone. A buddy of mine is a web scrubber.” He wipes the counter with his lab coat’s sleeve and starts assembling ingredients. “I’ll make the Jello!”

“But we’re out of                                              and low on      - !”

“Don’t worry, I got you. How much of each?” Allen’s tongue touches the tip of his nose as he scribbles the ingredients on a piece of paper.

“Don’t write it down! For all heaven’s sakes! It’s classified!” Brinker lets out a hysterical laugh. “Galactic Powers that be. I’m gonna have to pack it all up.”

“Boss, I can fix it.”

“Just mix the caramelized Dragon’s Beard.” Brinker clenches his jaw while heating the desiccated redacted and measuring the square root of delineated                           . Because a good alternative to                            is                                                                                                                                                                                              however                                                                                                                            which happens to be lethal.

Meanwhile on the screen, in the Senate, Senator Gartenbaum—equally knee deep— continues: “Besides intelligence, you have physical proof that UAPs exist?”

“Intelligence is an exaggeration,” Brinker narrows his eyes at Allen.

“We retrieved biologics from crashed aircrafts,” Vughadd answers.

“Biologics?” Allen yells over the noise of the centrifuge. “Is that what you are? Sounds like biohazard scraps you throw into a waste processing furnace!” He barely dodges a well-aimed friability tester hurled at him.

Brinker sinks back on his chair. “We’re supreme beings in mind, body, and spirit, and that’s extremely disrespectful to my fallen brothers and sisters!” he says, but, on the screen, the Senator goes on with his questioning.

“Were these biologics, erm…human?”

“They were extraterrestrial materials,” Vughadd says.

“Surely only ‘extra’ from where you’re standing!” Brinker shouts at the screen.

Vughadd clarifies, helpfully: “Senator, they were non-human.”

Brinker stands up so fast his chair falls back. “That’s it! This is the end! It’s all out there now.”

Allen beams. “You’re gonna be famous!”

“I’m gonna be dissected!” Brinker hustles about the room. “I must go. Now!” He runs from left to right throwing equipment on piles. “Humans aren’t ready! Unprecedented pandemonium, wars, people will lose their fragile minds! Conspiracy theorists will be insufferable! I won’t stay here, Allen. I resign! They’ll hunt me down! Freeze dry me for their depraved experiments. I can’t exactly go take a walk on the streets shaking hands introducing myself!”

“Nah! You’ll be fine! Nobody will believe you because aliens don’t exist! Agh!” He shakes his head like a dog after drinking from a garden hose. “Aliens do not exist! Wow, boss, this DJ is a really strong batch!” He feels his forehead. “Will my brain melt? I had at least five cubes at lunch. Are you sure we have to double dose everybody? We might need to take a quick survey who believes in aliens and who’s a skeptic at the water cooler, before…Oh, crap, I feel sick.”

Half of the laboratory equipment floats in the air while Brinker fills up crates that stack themselves into a large triangular structure in the corner of the room. Allen dry heaves over a garbage can.

“Can’t you call them out for discrimination?” Allen sputters, coming up for air and watching his boss crumble up his lab coat. “Maybe you’ll get your own flag and month.”

The broadcast from the Senate stops abruptly. The screen wavers, and a long beep sounds, like a constipated fax machine. A new image appears. “We interrupt this programming with a severe weather warning. Temperatures in Arizona, Death Valley, and Inland Empire have reached record highs of 130 degrees Fahrenheit. We are live in Phoenix.”

Brinker gapes at the television, then at Allen. “What is happening? Why are they interrupting the biggest news story of human history?”

Allen shrugs. “Most of us grew up watching Ancient Aliens. I guess humans always kinda knew?” He gestures with his hands and mimes his head exploding.

Brinker shifts his weight impatiently. “But, they just admitted on national television the existence of aliens and…” He searches for words. “Now they’re talking about the weather?”

“It’s very hot in my hometown, Tempe. It’s kind of a shit hole anyway. They should let it burn.”

Brinker struggles to regain control of his mind. The panic is losing its power over him, but it leaves behind an emptiness that quickly fills with confusion and, frankly, hurt feelings. He never imagined a sunny day taking precedence over his kind coming to Earth. Isn’t this what humans had been waiting for since, what, the pyramids? Now nobody bats an eye?

Allen interrupts his bleak reverie. “Speaking of burning…” He points at the counter behind Brinker.

Brinker jumps and with a flick of his wrist lowers the flame on the burner that has blackened the bottom of a beaker bubbling with iridescent liquid.

“You’re so cool when you do that.” Allen slides over a fresh batch of green Jello. “Time to work your magic, boss.”

But Brinker doesn’t move. “What’s the point,” he mutters. “All this work, all this time and energy and they don’t even care. They just want their weather reports and sensationalist documentaries and…”

On the TV, commercials have ended, and an audience applauds while the titles for Wheel of Fortune sashay across the screen.

“Boss?” Allen says. “You okay? You look sad.”

Brinker turns away. “Do we have any messages?”

Allen checks the computer. “Negative. Are you expecting any?”

“Someone must have called! The Pentagon? The president?”

“The president of what? Oh, there is an email about desk yoga if you’re interested in that.”

Brinker closes his eyes. Is his higher purpose truly enduring tiring amounts of gravity and mindless drivel while scurrying about on planet crowded with ignorami? A longing for the sky simmers deep within his core, but the lab is five levels underground, and going through the many security checks takes an eternity. Besides, the light pollution of the city spoils the fun anyway.

“We should fuse these, before the Jello sets,” Allen says from over by his workbench. “Have you thought about doing that survey to see who needs a DJ top-up? I do feel better now. Maybe it was the egg salad that got me. I knew it smelled funny! But we should probably not take any risks.”

Brinker tunes out all the noise around him. He needs to think. He’d be dammed if all his work had been for nothing. If the humans—with their attention spans of an ant with advanced Alzheimer’s—didn’t care now, couldn’t he invent a new formula that would make humans excited over aliens again? Find some switch in their brains to trip, and in no time they would be losing their minds at the mere thought of a blurry sighting, folding tin foil hats, making pilgrimages to Roswell and camping outside Area 51. Those were the good days. He looks over at Allen. “Do you have any friends that need a job? Relatives? Second cousins? What about enemies? You must have some of those. Start writing grants. We need a bigger lab.”

About the Author

Lilian D. Vercauteren is a writer from The Netherlands who roamed strange lands for almost twenty years before recently returning to her tulip-y roots. She started writing at the Writers Studio in Tucson and left a piece of her heart buried somewhere in the wide open spaces of the American West. Her work has appeared in Lowestoft Chronicle, Ghost Parachute, Maudlin House, The Brussels Review, Little Old Lady Comedy and more. You can check out her website at www.ldvercauteren.com or catch her on Instagram – @elver_cauteren.