You just never know when a setback becomes a setup for a surreal saga.
Such a seismic shift in fate seemed as remote as Antarctica for Howard. The doctoral student’s day snowballed into a catastrophe that sent chills throughout his body. After lunch, Howard dashed out the madhouse Student Center Cafeteria when he realized class time came. He bolted towards University Hall for his education research and data analysis class. About halfway there, Howard realized he made a mistake that had him analyzing his head.
Howard stopped in his tracks like a deer caught in headlights.
“My backpack? What did I do with my backpack?” he screamed.
Howard realized in 20 seconds that he left his rucksack in the cafeteria. And the odds were 10-1 that someone had already taken it.
Howard beelined to the Student Center cafeteria to the exact table where he sat. What he found stung him like a swarm of yellow jackets. The Montclair State University logo backpack that he left under the table was gone. In it was Howard’s laptop and two pricey doctoral class books. He felt as forlorn as a Red Hawk with no wind beneath its wings. Needless to say, his day was definitely turning out for the birds.
That evening, the loss still had Howard reeling like a fisherman battling a big tuna. Earlier that afternoon, the Carl Sagan lookalike had gone to University Police headquarters to report his missing backpack and items. He then returned to his home in Wayne’s rustic Pine Lakes to lick his wounds.
After dinner, Howard’s embarrassment and anger evolved into resilience. He vowed to canvass the cosmos for his backpack. Howard’s determination overshadowed the fact that the search amounted to finding a needle in a haystack. He drove back to campus anyway. After all, Howard had nothing to lose by trying.
Howard turned his Honda Accord from Clove Road onto Yogi Berra Drive. He headed to the Student Center like a man on a mission. He was oblivious to the passing traffic — Howard was just itching to get to the building’s lost and found. He was gambling on the off chance that a good Samaritan had turned in his backpack. Instinctively, Howard knew that outcome was a bad bet.
Howard unwisely decided to bypass Car Parc Diem. He schlepped to the Student’s Center’s rear entrance. He thought, “The sooner I can get to the lost and found, the better.”
Howard’s damn-the-torpedoes attitude had him leaving his navy-blue car illegally parked in Lot 17. His mind was so at sea that he cared less about where he beached his sedan.
Howard marched inside the building. He strode through an active Student Center lobby to the information desk. There, Howard inquired if anyone had turned in a backpack with the university’s trademark Red Hawk icon. Following a brief check, the employee apologetically told Howard that no such item had materialized. The crestfallen fellow felt more bummed out than a vagrant on skid row.
Howard wallowed in disappointment as he shuffled towards the Student Center’s north exit. Howard’s zoned out state temporarily blinded him from a sudden strange shift in circumstances. Nonetheless, the anomaly became too conspicuous to ignore when he exited the Student Center. Howard looked to his left and his right again, and again. He couldn’t believe his senses. The immediate campus had gone silent. There was not a single soul anywhere in sight. The sky turned overcast with a frosty nip in the air. Howard felt more off-base than a Bad News Bears baseball catcher.
The startled student trotted down the decline to Lot 17 to stumble upon a stunning sight: the lot was completed deserted. Every vehicle, including his, had somehow disappeared! It didn’t help Howard’s sanity that he could seemingly hear a pin drop all the way from Paul Hall. He began to fell like the protagonist in the Charleton Heston movie “The Omega Man.”
Howard slowly walked toward Blanton Hall, and onward to Webster Road. His eyes widened with worry as he continually saw nobody around either inside or outside Blanton Hall. Worst yet, Howard sensed that something sinister was observing him. His Socratic mind grasped for any rational explanations. Howard staunchly sensed that whatever was causing this eccentric situation is definitely not from this Earth. That supposition would soon prove to be true.
Howard crossed Webster Road. He began descending down the walkway to Yogi Berra Drive. Howard observed three things which sent pins and needles all throughout his body.
First, there was still not even one car in sight. Secondly, there was still not a single person around. And most alarming of all, a strange fluorescent yellow glow was emanating from Car Parc Diem’s south side.
At this point, Howard felt he was living in a Twilight Zone episode. The intensifying light defied any explanation that science or superstition, or anything in between, could muster. Howard thought to himself, “What would Rod Serling make of all this high strangeness?” He joked to himself that even the famous sci-fi show host would be woefully weirded out.
Despite all the irregularity, Howard’s curiosity trumped his fear. He stepped down the stairs to Yogi Bera Road. Then, everything just went sideways with a vengeance. That enigmatic luminescence at Car Parc Diem proceeded out of the parking deck at an increasing pace.
Howard turned around and started to run, but it was to no avail. Within seconds, he was enveloped in an aurora of amber which screeched with a high-pitched pulsating din. Both kooky phenomena faded in a flash. Howard promptly discovered that shimmering mass paved the way to a wayward world.
The next thing Howard discovered had him doing the double take of all double takes. To his horror, Howard found himself in an extraterrestrial environment. He was standing by a highway, at least three lanes wide, which resembled the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Mysteriously, Howard’s Honda Accord magically appeared in front of him a split second later. Sleek maglev vehicles were whizzing by.
They had contoured bodies that seemed somehow to dynamically contort. Howard theorized he was witnessing some ultrasophisticated anti-aerodynamic drag system.
A couple times, Howard could make out bald humanoid occupants inside the unconventional coupes. They seemed to be wearing shiny form-fitting tunics.
He blurted in his head, “Where in the world did these guys snag those get-ups? They don’t sell stuff like that on Amazon.”
Howard then came up with a frivolous answer to his question. “Then again, maybe Amazon has an inside deal with a United Federation of Planets Trading Post,” he quipped in his head.
The awestruck man looked around in stupefaction. He saw the expressway was bordered by a perfectly flat surface which appeared as a colorless injection molded floor. Howard observed a cloudless azure-blue sky. He heard unsettling howls emanating from all directions. The ominous noise sounded like the alien atmosphere effect from the original Star Trek series. The wails alternated between masculine and feminine voice. Howard stood a still as a statue as he listened to the cacophony in the windless warm air.
Howard saw a most peculiar airport a few miles to the highway’s left. The futuristic facility had a translucent Eiffel Tower shaped structure with a flashing fluorescent crimson strobe. That pulsating ball’s glare forced Howard to shield his eyes. About a half mile to the tower’s left was an opaque semicircular terminal. The structure was at least the size of The American Dream Mall in East Rutherford. The action around the building had Howard mesmerized.
The incredulous observer spotted spacecrafts of various shapes exiting the terminal in the most unusual fashion. They would just levitate through the building’s wall. Howard saw saucers, cigars, cubes, triangles, rectangles, and deltas. In every case, each metallic object would glide over a luminous fiberglass tarmac for about a quarter mile. Then, each spaceship would briefly pause before instantly shooting up in the sky. Each takeoff produced an echo that reverberated like a hundred tuning forks.
Far behind the spaceport, Howard caught sight of at least two dozen enormous spheres lining the horizon. Howard guessed the pearlescent Death Star-like behemoths were motherships. He soon found his conjecture proved true. Several times, Howard heard a series of modulating beeps. Then, one of the massive orbs streaked upwards and out of sight in a heartbeat. The stupendous sight would make any Cape Canaveral rocket launch spectator gawk for eternity. And that was what Howard did as he saw the rest of the vast vessels dart upwards one by one.
Then, Howard shifted his attention to the highway’s right. He noticed the same featureless plastic-like plain extending for miles. In the distance, he noticed ultra-tall skyscrapers which reached endlessly into the sky. The gleaming silver giants far outclimbed any New York City skyline building as seen from Montclair State University. Howard marveled at the row of spire, needle, and tube towers which disappeared into the sky. He nicknamed the alien colossi “skygapers” since their magnitude commanded Howard’s endless staring.
Howard struggled to think of his next course of action. After a couple minutes, he did the only thing he conceivably could. He approached the driver’s side of his Accord. He intended to drive around to survey this whacky new world. Just then, Howard heard a telepathic command resonate in his mind with a clear cyborg voice.
“Stay where you are. We will come to you momentarily.”
A shiver shot down Howard’s spine. He paused in his tracks. The shaken man circled his head around. He looked for the source of the communication but noticed nobody. Then, Howard caught a bright white starburst exploding a few feet from his car. Two grey beings with wraparound black eyes materialized about 10 feet away. Both oddballs were seamlessly clad in black. They had no nose or ears and a tiny slit instead of a mouth. The entities hovered about six inches above the ground.
To his amazement, Howard saw his Honda Accord vanish right before his eyes. His indignation momentarily eclipsed his trepidation.
“You took my car! Gimme back my car!” he yelled, shaking his right fist at the beings.
One of the extraterrestrials waved his hand in front of Howard. This circular motion somehow put him in a trance. Howard then heard the following message in his mind broadcast in a perfunctory tone.
“You will be not needing your vehicle. You are on the planet Krystos. You are 160 light years from Earth. Your primitive means of conveyance is meaningless when you are nearly a quadrillion miles from your home. You will now come with us.”
This was just the dawn of Howard’s earth-shattering adventure. It foreshadowed an epic that would run rings around the most imaginative sci-fi novelist, and then some!
