UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT
Have you ever seen an Unidentified Flying Object? I hadn’t until last night and then something strange happened…
I’d been on duty at the front desk of Infinity for about four hours. It was just after two o’clock in the morning. Not a sound anywhere. There was a heavy, oppressive feel to everything. I’d been reading a science fiction novel about the crew of a spaceship that had crashed on the planet Torkax. The astronauts had virtually no hope of being rescued. I wasn’t finding the story very convincing, so decided to step outside the main entrance and have a smoke.
That was when I sensed that the sky was different. It had a strange purple hue with orange and yellow flickering lights in the far distance. I’d never seen anything like it before and it fascinated me. For a full five minutes I stood gazing in stupefaction at the limitless void stretching out far above me. Just as well there weren’t any Snoops in the vicinity at the time. If I’d been seen staring into the sky like that I’d have been arrested instantly for suspicious behaviour.
As I watched, the sky turned pitch black and hundreds, then thousands of stars began lighting up the ink-stained sky. I could have stayed there for hours staring in fascination at the impenetrable void above me. But I came to my senses and decided that I’d better get back to my post before Olaf checked up on me. You never knew when Olaf 
might turn up.
I started walking back towards the entrance and that’s when I saw it, a gigantic flashing object hurtling through the blackness of the night, a glowing white fireball that took my breath away as it rushed noiselessly across the night sky.
I’d never seen anything even vaguely resembling it before. What made it so unsettling and awe-inspiring was that it made no sound. It flashed across the sky in a silent, menacing stream. And then suddenly, for a split second, it seemed to explode in a fireball of light, a gigantic dazzling white unidentified flying object. I only glimpsed it for a moment before it disappeared from sight, but I’m sure it was there. I’m convinced that for the first time in my life I’d encountered aliens from another planet.
Later, I began thinking that I’d imagined the whole thing, that I’d confused in my mind the space ship that I’d been reading about in my book and the UFO I’d seen in the sky. But no. That just wasn’t possible. The fictional spaceship had bored me. What I’d witnessed in the sky had shaken me to the core.
Not only that. It seemed to me that my immediate surroundings were fundamentally different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But there was something about the appearance of Infinity Gateway that didn’t look the same. Everything seemed to be bathed in the same whiteness that I’d witnessed on the UFO.
I decided to take a walk around the Infinity corridors. I usually do this two or three times each night to check that everything is in order. Nothing out of the ordinary until I reached the fourth floor. A blinding luminescent whiteness shone from all sides. The heat was unbearable. Smoke was pouring from the video surveillance cameras suspended from the ceiling. They had evidently stopped working as the temperature had risen. I barely noticed though because of what was immediately ahead of me. I was astonished to see a crimson portal glowing fiercely at the far end of the corridor. I’d never seen this portal before. It hadn’t existed before.
As I got closer, my eyes were blinded by flashing lights and my ears assaulted by a low-pitched throbbing sound that reminded me of the UFO. I sensed that I was getting closer to an alien life force. I pushed myself forward despite the ear-splitting sound and the blinding lights. I couldn’t resist. A voice in my head was calling to me, pulling me instinctively towards this portal into outer space.
And then everything collapsed back to the way it was before. The flashing lights were obliterated, the throbbing sounds stopped, the crimson portal disappeared from sight…
At that moment I knew that however dangerous it might be I had to find out what was hidden behind the Infinity Portal.
© Zeb Solitanu
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