They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be - Recap

I knew this one was more than the biggest story of my life; it was the biggest story in the lives of everyone on this planet. I fought hard for the story – fought harder than ever before, because I knew it was more than news. Much more. I felt people should know about it so they could be prepared when it happened again. If it’s possible to be prepared for something like this…

It began fairly quietly. Lincoln Park Zoo, September 2nd, 5:30am. Shanka, the zoo’s prize cheetah, was expecting her morning feeding. It never came.

A cheetah races crazily around her cage. Wind blows, whirling straw into the air. The cheetah assumes a defensive crouch and snarls...

It started for me on a day which is supposed to be one of my happiest: the day of the first game of the first World Series for the Cubs in twenty-nine years. The day began badly.

Ron Updyke is temporary sports editor. He has a prodigious store of baseball lore, but has forgotten something very important to Carl: World Series tickets. Two weeks ago Ron had the misfortune of offending Stuffy Padachenko of the Atlanta Amazons rollerblading team. Ron learned the hard way what a bad idea that was, but Carl intervened and discouraged Stuffy from further mayhem. Recovering, Ron promised Carl a World Series ticket. Carl isn’t pleased to discover Ron has forgotten his promise. A threat to take up where Stuffy left off convinces Ron to part with a ticket.

Vincenzo arrives as Carl prepares to leave, with a story he’ll have to give to someone else: the theft of a cheetah from the zoo. Carl tells Tony he has the facts wrong; that story was yesterday, and it was a panther. But Tony says a second animal has been stolen. Carl is hooked and Tony knows it. Snatching the wire report from Tony’s hand, Carl heads for the zoo.

En route, Carl’s scratchy ballgame coverage is interrupted by his police scanner: a “Code 5 – Priority – 201 in progress, Raydyne Electronics, Commerce and 24th Street.” Detouring, Carl finds police already at the scene. Someone inside tripped the alarm. Abruptly, a force bursts the wall outward and scatters onlookers like ninepins. As the stunned witnesses close in four pallets of lead bars vanish into thin air.

Police Captain Quill tells Carl to disappear, too, and has two officers show him how. As Carl is escorted to his car he passes a group of officials. They must be important because Captain Quill salutes them.

Carl resumes his trip to the zoo. This time, his poor radio loses the ball game signal to a talk show. A caller is complaining about the Street Department, which has “screwed up” Mariposa Way, the street where he lives. They’ve left tarry sludge all over his lawn.

At the zoo Carl gets a picture of the cage showing the bars bent inward. On the floor of the cage is some kind of goo. The zoo’s veterinarian, Dr. Bess Weinstock, tells him this is a “viscid mass.” The sticky mess contains a lot of acetone. She believes vandals intended to foul the entire zoo with this chemical but were scared off. Asking about recent animal deaths, Carl learns all the animals died of heart attacks. First a panda died then a leopard, a panther, and finally a cheetah.

Carl calls the radio show but has no luck learning the location of the irate caller. They claim no such individual ever called. City Hall is no more forthcoming; they claim no record of roadwork on Mariposa Way.

The ballgame continues as Carl pulls into Mariposa Way. There Carl finds the caller, Alfred Brindle, and learns that an hour after the call four trucks from the Street Department pulled up. They tried shovels, chemicals, and finally flamethrowers to remove the sludge. Brindle’s law and plants are burned and stained.

Brindle also shows Carl his neighbor Henry Anskeroni’s broken window. It seems that last night an intruder kicked in the window and snatched a stereo away while Anskeroni was listening to it. Anskeroni never saw the thief. The police found the cabinet and chassis in a culvert back of the house but the electronic innards were gone. Carl manages to retrieve a small fragment of sludge the Street Department missed.

Elsewhere, Peter Hudson, out on parole and out of money, endangers the first to improve the second: he snatches a woman’s purse and races around the corner into an abandoned building. The basement he picks is full of appliances and electronics; Hudson thinks he has hit the jackpot. But it turns out that entering this particular building was the last mistake Hudson will ever make...

Carl returns to the zoo and the vet with his sample. She is uninterested in comparing the two samples, but eventually his cajolery wins her over. She confirms the two samples are identical. The stuff is a mix of acetone, hydrochloric acid and bone marrow. Weinstock reveals that all the animals killed at the zoo had puncture marks at the major bone joints and all the marrow was missing from their bones. Weinstock believes someone ate the bone marrow and then threw up.

Back at the INS office Monique helps Carl develop his pictures, but they don’t show much. Convinced they’re trash, she tears up the prints. Indignant, Carl orders her to reprint them and then heads to the morgue for a visit with Gordy the Ghoul. Gordon Spangler is Carl’s morgue contact; for a little cash, Gordy helps Carl to all kinds of information. Carl wants the autopsy report on the guard who died at Raydyne Electronics. Gordy is about to retrieve the report when Coroner Stanley Wedemeyer enters the room forcing Gordy to backpedal. But the coroner seems happy to give Carl the results: “Subject, Lloyd Relm, male Caucasian, sixty years of age, prior history of myocardial infarction, immediate cause of death, cardiac arrest, other autopsy findings unremarkable.” But Gordy is shaking his head in a silent “no,” and showing Carl a cassette. Carl wants to look at the body but Gordy reminds him that’s not permitted – and slips him the cassette.

Sneaking into a nearby room, Carl slips the cassette into his machine. It contains the dictated autopsy with the real results. Although the history of cardiac problems was real enough the cause of death Wedemeyer provided was bogus. And of particular interest: marrow was extracted from at least some of the guard’s bones.

September 2nd, 10:00pm, Leon VanHeusen, single, ambitious, slightly paranoid. By day a television repairman, by night an observer, a man with a purpose - the author of Mathematico, a universal language that Leon has refined for use in unconventional communication. Unfortunately, on September 2nd at 10:00pm, Leon learned the oldest word in the universal language...

Carl bursts into Captain Quill’s press conference and makes himself loved by asking difficult questions about the rumors of puncture marks on the body of the Raydyne guard. Quill dismisses the rumor. Carl asks if the lead ingots were misplaced. Quill has no reason to believe otherwise, and when Carl reminds him what they both saw, Quill adroitly maneuvers the conversation so that if Carl recounts his tale, he will seem foolish. Quill reminds the assembled reporters of the importance of responsible journalism, and how one must take care not to unduly alarm the public – or erode one’s own credibility. Carl next probes for a link to other thefts of electronic gear. Quill denies knowledge of any connection in a way that again makes Kolchak look foolish. When Quill consults his watch to predict the time of some upcoming arrests he discovers it has stopped. Carl’s watch is also dead. Both instruments stopped at the same time, the time the men were at Raydyne Electronics.

Quill and I weren’t the only ones with watches that didn’t work. Everyone that had been at Raydyne Electronics had the same problem. Question: What would stop seventeen wristwatches at exactly the same time? Answer: An electromagnetic field so strong it might swing a compass needle off true north, to the final truth.

Tony won a bet with the editor of the Times; he is eating the delicious meal that was his prize when Carl finds him and tells his fantastic tale. It’s a toss up which one kills Tony’s appetite: the gruesome deaths or Carl’s fantastic assertions. Carl leaves in search of the proof: his pictures. Some nondescript visitors enter Tony’s office, passing Carl on his way out. In the records room Carl discovers that these “suits” intimidated Monique into surrendering his photographic evidence. As a disappointed Carl returns to Tony’s office, the “suits” are leaving. Tony tells Carl that he doesn’t need a UFO story and Carl leaps on that: he’d never mentioned UFOs to Tony. That tips Carl that the “suits” must have brought UFOs into the conversation. Tony’s evening meal is now a glass of antacid.

Carl attempts to learn how one might report a UFO sighting to the government. There are no longer any agencies for that purpose. They will refer the determined inquirer to a private group. Leon VanHeusen was a member of this group, which consists of individuals convinced they have encountered aliens. VanHeusen called in an “OPUS” – One Person, Unverified Sighting – near Snake Rock. As two members argue over the implications of the destructive star Wormwood, Carl eases out.

Soon enough Carl has located VanHeusen’s equipment – and what’s left of VanHeusen. He also finds a recording of VanHeusen’s last few seconds, during which he is attempting to talk to something. Carl’s theory about the compass seems to be correct: the needle is swinging errantly. As Carl follows the needle something that seems to be mostly wind and noise passes him.

The compass leads Carl to a nearby planetarium. Inside, the projector moves on its own. A guard lies dead nearby and his partner Reilly summons the police. The controls that command the projector move without anyone touching them. Carl tries to strike up a conversation with the guard whom he believes is asleep. Then he realizes the truth, and that no one is operating the projector. Something rises from the console, something that is and isn’t there, ephemeral as smoke but with a looming shadow. The thing moves towards Carl, stirring up a wind. Carl snaps a picture and the presence slides away.

The police arrive. Captain Quill dispatches men to the console to turn on the lights – a disastrous mistake. Carl tries to tell Quill that the light from his camera drove … it … away. He also shares a theory that it is here looking at maps. Carl believes the reason it can’t be seen is that it radiates light in a different spectrum – one the human eye can’t perceive. And he further believes that’s why his camera stopped it – the light drove it off. Quill begins to buy into this and takes the theory to the government men.

Emerging, Kolchak finds the police in disarray. The lights just irritated the thing and the light truck is now in flames. But if not the light, what? Quill threatens Carl’s career, but the police are regrouping and Carl sneaks away in the confusion. Returning to the planetarium, Carl takes a few more photos and realizes that when it recharges his camera emits a high-pitched whine. He shares the theory with Quill, but Quill isn’t interested in any more help from Carl. Quill warns him that he’ll be dealt with “at a higher level”. Leaving Carl, Quill drives off.

Carl continues to follow his compass. Soon enough, the instrument begins to spin madly, eventually shattering its glass. Wandering nearby he stumbles upon it: a small thing, like a metal hut with a hatch, resting on the ground. It’s real; he can touch it. But the door does not yield to his strength. Then the owner returns whirling leaves and swirling air. It advances on Carl but the whine of his camera – or something – fends it off. Frustrated, it re-enters its vehicle, which vanishes noiselessly.

They tried to make a little park out of the woods near Snake Rock: daffodils, tulips. But they couldn’t get anything to grow. There was an area shaped like a saucer at the bottom. If you want to see it, you’ll have to hurry. Our park commission decided overnight to do extensive reclamation work in that particular spot. They’re filling it in with concrete.

What happened? It’s all a point of view, really. A traveller has a breakdown, stops to fix it, get a bite to eat… it’s happened to all of us. This traveller happened to be light-years off his course, instead of miles. As for me? Well, I haven’t heard from the boys in the sedan. Yet.

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