BANG 21 Postscript: The UFO
We drove home, solving CRANEA's countdown puzzle and discussing our frustration with BANG 21's meta. As we reached the Marin headlands, conversation petered out and I was content just to gaze out the window at the clouds rolling by, glad they hadn't rained on the experience.
I noticed one cloud in particular was slightly darker than the rest and oval-shaped. Hmmmmm, I though, amazing that all the random iterations of cloud formations could throw up such a uniformly shaped cloud. It moved along with the other clouds, seemingly normal.
Suddenly, it moved... against the wind current. Then it started moving along again. I thought it might be my imagination, until it did it again. It moved back and forth in a completely improbable way for a cloud to move. Not a believer in flying saucers, I tried to come up with a rational explanation.
"Somebody tell me," I said somewhat shaken, "that that cloud isn't what I think it is."
Mark, Rob, Jonathan, and Given all looked, and a sort of stunned silence decended upon the vehicle. For several moments, we just looked at the round mass as it grew closer and closer. Could rationality have gone out the window and aliens had traveled to visit us? I really couldn't believe it, but my eyes were showing me something that, if constructed, was nothing that had been made on Earth.
Finally, Jonathan broke the silence. "It's amazing," he said, "what a flock of birds can look like if there are enough of them."
And as they grew closer, we could see he was right. Little black specks stood out and the manuevers were clearly those of birds. But there were so many of them, they looked like one homegenous shape from a distance. Even as they flew over the van, they still looked like nothing less than a giant ameoba floating in the sky.
I noticed one cloud in particular was slightly darker than the rest and oval-shaped. Hmmmmm, I though, amazing that all the random iterations of cloud formations could throw up such a uniformly shaped cloud. It moved along with the other clouds, seemingly normal.
Suddenly, it moved... against the wind current. Then it started moving along again. I thought it might be my imagination, until it did it again. It moved back and forth in a completely improbable way for a cloud to move. Not a believer in flying saucers, I tried to come up with a rational explanation.
"Somebody tell me," I said somewhat shaken, "that that cloud isn't what I think it is."
Mark, Rob, Jonathan, and Given all looked, and a sort of stunned silence decended upon the vehicle. For several moments, we just looked at the round mass as it grew closer and closer. Could rationality have gone out the window and aliens had traveled to visit us? I really couldn't believe it, but my eyes were showing me something that, if constructed, was nothing that had been made on Earth.
Finally, Jonathan broke the silence. "It's amazing," he said, "what a flock of birds can look like if there are enough of them."
And as they grew closer, we could see he was right. Little black specks stood out and the manuevers were clearly those of birds. But there were so many of them, they looked like one homegenous shape from a distance. Even as they flew over the van, they still looked like nothing less than a giant ameoba floating in the sky.
posted by Skott at 5:20 PM
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