Jed really did not want to be out in this swamp in the middle of the night looking for a flying saucer. The moon overhead bled out only a nail clipping's worth of light, and Jed cursed himself for the dozenth time for not bringing a flashlight bigger than the one on his little keychain. Around him, the night air of the swamp was thick and cloying. His feet repeatedly stepped into things squishy and unidentifiable, while his ears were filled with the chirping of crickets and the occasional nocturnal bird.
In front of him, stumbling along with as much grace as he was, was the source and focus of his misery, a rather short and chubby man bearing the name Virgil. Jed still was not sure how Virgil had maneuvered him into coming out here. Something about the way his face puffed up, and how his eyes went slightly out of focus behind his inch thick glasses when he grew excited about something. Jed had given in more out of exasperation than any real interest in what they were seeking.
"Let me get this straight again," Jed said, as they wormed their way through a particularly thick thatch of palmetto bushes. "We are walking up to our ankles in muck, out in the middle of nowhere, to see a flying saucer leave a crop circle?"
Virgil paused a moment, and mopped his face with a somewhat soiled handkerchief. "No, I told you in the car, we are here to see a flatland phenomenon" The handkerchief had left a smudge on Virgil's face.
Virgil turned and resumed his trekking, and Jed sighed and followed him. On the way over, Virgil had been babbling about what he called `The Flatland Phenomenon.' Apparently in the previous century, a writer had created a story called Flatland. From what Jed could make from Virgil's long winded and somewhat vague description, the story was about a bunch of two dimensional geometric shapes that lived in a flat world. Being two dimensional, the shapes had no concept of up or down, only the ability to move left and right and so on. Well, one day a sphere decided to pass through flatland. Now, to the horrified citizens of flatland whom had no concept of third dimensional space, it seemed to them that a single tiny dot had appeared out of nowhere, and began to grow bigger and bigger, and then smaller and smaller, until it finally vanished all together. Of course this was simply the circumference of the sphere passing through the flat world, but to the squares and ovals and triangles living in flatland, it was an inexplicable mystery.
Ahead of Jed, Virgil made a grunt of surprise.
"Did you see that? Was that a rat? That was the biggest fucking rat I've ever seen. Shine your light over there, tell me how big that rat is." Drool came out of Virgil mouth when he got excited, and Jed waved his light around the swamp more out of a defense to escape a fine spray of spittle then to search for a rat. But luck was with him, and his light caught the reflection of a possum giving them a baleful look. It soon scurried back into the trees.
"It was just a possum." Jed explained.
Virgil shot one more suspicious look after the little quasi-mammal, and then continued trudging on. Jed soon became bored with the monotones of the dark swamp, and spoke to Virgil some more.
"OK, yeah, you told me about flatland, but what does that have to do with flying saucers?"
"I never said anything about flying saucers," Virgil said over his shoulder. "I said crop circles. You're the one who linked together crop circles and flying saucers."
"My mistake," Jed muttered.
Suddenly they broke out of the thin expanse of trees into a wide open clearing. The starlight from above provided a little more light, and Jed was able to clearly see the wide bed of peat moss spread out before them. In the summer months it would be thick with water and uncrossable without an airboat. But the cool winter days had dried it out, leaving a wide circle of dry moss, springy underfoot. Virgil seemed satisfied, and sat down. From a fanny pack he pulled out a bottle of water, and took a long pull. Jed looked on enviously, but when Virgil pulled the bottle from his mouth, and a thin umbilical cord of drool linked the bottle and his mouth, all thoughts of asking for a sip evaporated from Jed's mind.
"Crop circles," Jed muttered. "With no crops in sight."
Virgil heard him and spoke up. "Well, of course not. We are not here to see a crop circle, but to see what makes them. Crop circles are evidence of flatland phenomena. I think they happen fairly often, but only when they leave some evidence of their passing to people realize that they had been there."
"But crop circles are fake," Jed protested. "I saw it on the discovery channel. Some old guy made them with a board and a piece of rope. People have been copying him ever since."
"Or maybe," Virgil said in bright tones "That old man copied the real thing"
Jed shook his head and flicked away a mole cricket that had been climbing on his shoe. "Well, just explain again how these crop circles fit in with you 'flatland phenomena'."
Virgil turned and spoke to Jed in tones usually reserved for the mentally retarded. "OK, I told you before, but I'll make it a little simpler. Remember in flatland, the sphere passed through their world, and they simply did not know what to make of it. Well, I think that is what is happening here. Crop circles are evidence of something passing through our planet, perhaps even our universe. Those strange geometric designs left on the ground are only a shadow of something that exists with more dimensions to it than we can comprehend. In fact, I even tried to model it on a computer, expanding the image left in crop circles to a form we would be able to comprehend."
This actually caught Jed's attention. "Yeah? What did it look like?" Virgil's face clouded up. "I couldn't get the program to run" he muttered.
Jed suppressed a snicker. "Alright, so if these crop circles happen fairly often, why don't they happen more often?" he pressed.
"Oh, I don't know. You need people to be able to see something. My theory is that electrical current may disrupt a crop circle from forming. With a power lines running under foot and overhead nearly every place there are people, its not surprising they don't form."
"Ah" Jed said. "And how do you know one is going to form out here?" Virgil's face took on the inner glow of pure narcissism. "Calculations" he said simply.
Jed decided not to press the subject, and sat in silence. About forty five minutes passed slowly, and Jed was starting to get pissed. He had flicked off about a half a dozen bugs, and was afraid he might have missed one or two. He was about to tell Virgil he was leaving, When the squat man took in a sudden hiss of breath.
"Look" Virgil whispered in hushed tones.
Jed looked out across the open expanse of peat moss and saw nothing. But then he followed Virgil's pointed finger up, and felt his heart skip a beat. Because the stars were moving. He gazed at them in wonder, for they seemed to weave back and forth into one particular spot in the sky, like some strange cosmic ballet. After a moment he realized that the stars themselves were not moving, but their light was being reflected and distorted through something. Something coming down from the sky.
A breeze began to briskly move through the swamp, and Jed felt the hair on his arms stand on end. He still could not make out what he was looking at. He could only make out its shape through the distorted stars, and the way those kept shifting and swarming led him to believe that perhaps the object was constantly changing shape. Next to him Virgil began to babble.
"See it? See it? Didn't I tell you! Fuck! I did not bring a camera. It doesn't matter, people would just think it was doctored anyway. Look at that thing! What do you think it is? Its coming down." Virgil's Eyes grew wide. "I'm going to go see it up close."
Jed was about to protest, to say that maybe that was not such a good idea, but before he could start, Virgil sprinted off to the center of the clearing, his footsteps noiseless on the springy peatmoss, his arms waving wildly to the (Jed hated the cliché') unidentifiable object coming down from the sky. What happened Next, Jed saw very clearly. The odd phenomenon drifted down and enveloped Virgil. For a single clear moment, Virgil was seen distorted, arms stretched in odd directions, legs stretched longer than was naturally possible. Then Jed covered his mouth in horror as Virgil began to sink into the ground. The last expression on Virgil's face was one of surprise, and then he was gone.
Jed stood there, unmoving, for perhaps ten minutes. His brain tried to grasp what he had seen, but failed. He wondered if anyone would come looking for Virgil, and what he would tell them if he was asked. He didn't think too long.
"Swamp gas" he muttered, then headed back to his car.
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