U A Friend or U-Foe?: A Weldon Wandering

A thank you to my Gloria for allowing me to publish our conversation. You are out of this world.

Amber flashes rhythmically pulse as feet shuffle across a freshly painted crosswalk. Frigid air reaches through autumn jackets with piercing cold. Exhaust pours out into the street, bathed in red as brake mechanisms hold back the orderly lines of 3,500 lb metal machines. Looking to the stars, surely something – someone – in the universe is looking back.

But it’s cold. You feel so cold. Tardigrades haven’t withstood temperatures this extreme. Should have worn a different jacket.

A helicopter blinks overhead. No, it’s too fast. A drone? No. Halifax is a No Drone Zone – well, unless you’re a cop. Surely, a drone wouldn’t be so big.

It couldn’t be. It could be. I want to believe. I want to know.

A passing sedan’s ultrabright headlights flood into my wide eyes. The lights are gone. It’s so cold.

Weldon’s student lounge isn’t much warmer. Shrugging off the straps of my backpack, I hear a friendly voice, “What’s got you in a daze?” I turn and smile. Gloria grins, “Hey.”

“How do you feel about aliens?”

“I used to really connect with aliens. I felt, I don’t know.” She trailed off. “I think I had a lot of issues when I was a kid, and nobody noticed the obsessiveness and anxiety. I thought I was the only person in the world like this.”

“Sounds isolating.”

“But it gave me this connection with otherworldly beings.” Gloria shifted onto the edge of the leather seat, bringing her volume down to a level I had to lean over to hear. “Then, I watched this documentary with my mom and brother. It was really scary – from the National, or, I don’t remember where it was from. I just remember being really scared of how they’d abduct humans, and people couldn’t escape. Or, like in Octavia Butler’s Dawn, I was scared of the violence they could commit while being so gentle in their demeanor.”

Her brows furrowed, and her voice held an edge as she sheepishly sighed, “I thought it would happen to me. I think that’s where the obsessive behaviours came from – trying not to get abducted. Trying not to –”

She cut herself off. Gloria leaned back into the chair, crossing her ankle over her knee, and relaxed into the chair. “I just grew out of the fear. I know the way I feel has nothing to do with aliens – not really. I watched E.T. and Arrival. Yeah, I guess I’m neutral with aliens. I’d love to meet one.”

“If an alien came to Earth right now, our neighbours in the south would shoot them down – did you see that in the news?”

“What do you think they’d look like? I hope there’s no tentacles.”

“Maybe like a crab. A really smart crab just scuttling around in space.”

“We’d probably eat the aliens. I love seafood.”

“That’s so dark. Yeah, we probably would.”

“I once went on a UFO hunt on my birthday.” My hands waved for Gloria to go on. “Yeah, I forgot about this. I was with my ex-boyfriend, and we were in this field, and he’s like pointing at this thing in the sky. There was like a flash of light – and I think someone posted about it – I don’t remember now. It might have been a ploy to get me out of the house, but we went on a hunt for it.”

“Well, did you find anything?”

“We found where they were filming Sonic 2.”