Ron's Revelation

Following her usual Saturday routine, Margaret was in her home office, working on her next book.  She glanced out the window.  A student from her 200 level class, Ancient Technologies, was pacing back and forth on the Jefferson Street sidewalk, directly in front of the house.  The student was Ron Rosendahl, a Math major with a minor in Archaeology.

 Ron paused, then purposely strode up the walkway, climbed the stairs, rang the bell.

 Margaret went to the door, opened it.

 Ron said, “Professor, I’m hoping you can help me with an hypothesis I’m working on.”

 “Of course.  Come in.”

 Ron took the chair in front of Margaret’s desk.  Margaret, settled into her own chair.

 Nervously, Ron said, “It’s like this, professor.  I got this friend.   He lives over at the beach.  The guy’s an army vet.  Now he’s a technician for some satellite TV outfit.”

 Ron squirmed before he continued,  “Anyway, this guy’s a bit of a nut case.

 “So, we’re talkin’ the other day.  I made some passing remark about Stonehenge being a solar observatory.  As usual, this friend of mine, he went off on some rant about one of his screwball theories.  The rant was one that hit home -- you know, given the class I’m taking from you and all.”

 “Go on.”

 “Now you understand, this is all pretty wild.”

 Margaret nodded, kept a poker face.

 Ron squirmed some more.  “You know about Stonehenge and all those other stone circles from prehistory?"

 “Of course.”

 “Well, this friend of mine, he insists the solar observatory function that’s obvious in some of the stone circles is just secondary.  He says that aliens visiting this planet use suns as gateways to hyperspace channels that exist between black holes and suns.  That’s the reason so many ancient peoples were sun worshipers.”

 “Really?!”  This time Margaret couldn’t keep her poker face.

 “Remember Roman history,” said Ron.  “Remember that the Emperor Constantine changed the Christian Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.

 “Well, my friend insists that Constantine did that to attract sun worshipers to the new religion -- you know, Christianity.  And that those sun worshipers were in fact worshiping aliens, who were considered to be gods.”

 “Interesting theory,” replied Margaret.

 Ron scooted forward in his chair. “Look -- there are hundreds, literally hundreds of prehistoric stone circles all around the world.  The British Isles, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia, you name it.”

 Margaret smiled at Ron’s growing excitement. She liked enthusiastic students –- students who were eager to learn, students who thought for themselves.

 “Now get this,” continued Ron.  “I assume you’re familiar with the post World War II cargo cults of the southwest Pacific?”

 “Certainly.”

 “Well now, my friend says that the stone circles are the workings of very ancient cargo cults.  You know, the circles are copies of flying saucers.

 “The World War II cargo cults, they built crude copies of C47 transport planes, hoping to get more of the goodies the Americans were passing out -- rice, medicine, machetes, and the like.  The ancient cargo cults were pulling the same stunt, but with crude copies of flying saucers."

 Margaret coughed.  “Now, really, Ron.  I mean, really?”

 Ron replied, “I had a free weekend not long ago, and went over to the library to copy images and drawings of Neolithic and earlier stone circles."

 “Go on.”

 “Well, I once saw this TV documentary about some renegade engineer who’d worked at Area-51.  He insisted that there were captured flying saucers there.

 “So I went on the Internet and downloaded drawings this guy had made of the interior of a flying saucer he’d been in.”

 “And?”

 “Get this.  You know how some of those ancient stone circles have rocks inside of ‘em?  Well, some of the patterns of the way those interior rocks were put down matches up with that guy’s drawings.”

 Margaret’s smile became slightly twisted.

 “Ron –- listen.  I know this all seems exciting.  But you need to calm down and consider what you’re saying.

 “My advice is you should put a lid on all this until the Christmas break.  Don’t tell a soul.  Before you go home or whatever you’re planning for Christmas, you should come see me.  Then we’ll discuss what you should do.  Okay?”

 “Yes, professor; I think you’re right.  Mid-terms are getting here pretty quick.  I really need to study.”

 Margaret showed Ron to the door, patting him on the back as he left the house.

 Margaret returned to her office, sat, picked up her phone’s receiver.

 The phone was from the 20^th Century.  It was clunky and black.  But it had been Margaret’s Dad’s; it worked fine.

 Margaret punched in some numbers.  The ringback tone sounded three times.

 “Pappy’s Pizza,” answered the called party.

 Margaret carefully read off of an index card she’d pulled from beneath her desk blotter: “I’d like a large -- thin crust, sausage, mushroom, and olive.  No wait!  Make that a medium.”

 There came a faint click, then came one sounding of a higher frequency ringback tone, another click.

 “Will that be black olive?”

 “It’s Margaret three.”

 “One moment.”

 Margaret held the receiver away from her ear as a series of multi-frequency tones squealed.  The bi-directional scrambler system was then enabled.

 As usual, Margaret wondered if all the Pappy’s Pizza outlets nationwide were used for intelligence gathering.

 A robotic sounding female voice asked “What is your access code?”

 “Baltimore. Purple.”

 There came another faint click.

 “Agent Reilly here.  Whatcha got Margaret?”

 “I’ve got a code seven -- got the name of one of the perps.  You’ll have to track down the other.

 “The one I’ve got the name for, be gentle.  He’s a good kid.”

 There came a brief pause.  “He’ll never know what hit him, Margaret.”

THE END

C.E. Gee (aka Chuck) misspent his youth at backwater locales within Oregon and Alaska.

Chuck later answered many callings: logger, factory worker, meat packer, Vietnam war draftee infantryman, telecommunications technician, volunteer fireman and EMT, light show roady, farmer, businessperson.

Works in progress include short stories and his blog at http://www.kinzuakid.blogspot.com

E-mail: C. E. Gee

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