Little Green Men

“Little Green Men have come to colonise Earth.”

Nathaniel blurted out after the blindfold and gag were removed. He was sitting in a chair in a dark room only lit by a shaded green light from a light bulb. He turned his head left and right, trying to get his eyes to adjust and pierce the darkness. The presence of the green light made him calm but wary.

“We are aware of your…… beliefs, Mr. Curtis.” The green light shone as an artificial sounding voice spoke, coming as if surrounding him. “We would like to know why you believe as you do.”

Nathaniel tried to stand up and found he couldn’t move anything other than his head.

“We regretfully had to temporarily disable your use of your arms and limbs. We have seen the danger you present to the others who attempted to apprehend you.”

Images of what looked to be surveillance photos and video flashed up around him, hanging in mid-air. Some of the videos showed him eluding and taking down his would be captors.

“I’ve had time to prepare.” He kept turning his head to either side. “But I want to know what’s going on? Why are people after me?”

The voice replied. “Come now, Mr Curtis. You saw the green light a few days ago. We think you believe you know what it heralds and we know you have blogged about it to your viewers under the username Green Knight. Unfortunately, there are those amongst them that have a vested interest in how much you know about what’s to come.”

He had indeed seen the green light a few days ago early in the morning. He had been forewarned of it and its significance long time ago as a child. And it appears that it has finally happened.

“I only know what I was told as a kid.” said Nathaniel.

“Start from the beginning.” Said the voice.

Nathaniel slowly panned his head around. “Why should I trust you?”

He noticed the green light increase in intensity as the voice replied. “What choice do you have at the moment?”

“None.” Nathaniel thought. He felt a compulsion grow to talk. So he did.

He revealed that as a child, he had found his father’s old green monochrome computer sitting in the attic. It was the kind of computer that already belonged in a museum in the latter half of the 1990s. He had been drawn to it by the green power light button and had pushed it.

When it switched on, there were random green patterns that eventually resolved down to the word “Hello.” An entity inhabited that computer. And things had changed for him from that day.

The entity started talking to him, both in words on screen and the computer’s speakers, eventually revealing that he was an alien, showing up as a “Little Green Man” as allowed by the computer’s low tech display, named Marcus Green. Nathaniel spent many hours being entertained, taught and learning from Marcus about his kind’s history and influence on the planet Earth.

Marcus was part of an alien race whose name translated to “Greenlight”, a race that have been visiting Earth to help and nurture its development for hundreds of millions of years. Their work on Earth began with the dinosaurs, intending on their use as living homes at that stage of their race’s evolution as well as protection against their enemy, the Red Dark. It was the Red Dark who was responsible for the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, to deny them to the Greenlight. After that event, the war between the two races was truly joined and Earth was forgotten.

It took the Greenlight a long time to return, during a respite in the conflict. The Greenlight had evolved the capacity to transform from their original small physical forms to purely ones based on energy, allowing them to travel to Earth faster and safer previously. Ultimately, they wished to colonise and inhabit the planet.

However, upon their return, the Greenlight encountered mankind’s early ancestors. Seeing their potential as future allies with whom they could coexist alongside, they made adjustments to humans that basically boiled down to making mankind responding calmly and favourably to the colour green and aggressively and unfavourably to red.

Nathaniel remembered that, as a child, he did not understand the significance of what Marcus told him. However, as he grew up and learned more of the world, he did see a great deal of evidence that humanity had followed these trends.

Humans consider green as calming due to the abundant verdant green that is nature. We learn to respect and follow many green coloured things, be it the “greenback” and the green of the military, Greenpeace and their fight to protect nature, down to obeying the green traffic light and little green walking man of crossings.

Marcus had also told him that some of our fantastic creatures such as leprechauns and fairies were the result of mankind’s encounters with Greenlight, as well as many UFO sightings were those of Greenlight ships.

Conversely, mankind’s relationship with the colour red bespoke of history of violence and bloodshed and associations with many evils created by mankind, be they based on beliefs of religion or ideology. Regrettably, the Red Dark also had a hand in mankind’s development and their influence has led to the rise of certain “Red” ideology countries.

In any case, technological advances in human computers during the latter quarter of the twentieth century had the seeds of what Greenlight needed to colonise Earth, the beginnings of what would become the world wide web.

So in the last few years of the twentieth century, the Greenlight sent emissaries to Earth to explore and help with the creation of the global network, which was how the eight-year-old Nathaniel came to encountering Marcus Green on the old computer.

“How did your parent’s take this?” the voice asked.

“They first thought I had an imaginary friend.” replied Nathaniel. “But I kept insisting it was real and the level of detail was enough that they took me to a psychologist, who, for a while, kept telling my parents that it was only a phase that I would grow out of.”

Nathaniel paused before continuing. “I told Marcus about it and he felt that his presence in my life was now causing me harm than good. So he decided to go our separate ways for now. He did promise to watch over me and gave me hope, if all goes well, in a few years’ time, he and his kind would come to Earth. When that happens to look for the green light and he would find me.”

He stopped at the memory and looked down. After a moment, he looked around. “My parents’ were sort of pleased that it sounded like my imaginary friend was finally going and insisted I tell the psychologist, who by this stage had me referred to a specialist named Dr Redmond.”

“And it did not go well?” The green light in the room fluctuated as the voice responded.

“No. Dr Redmond said that I was suffering from a serious delusion and would need to be institutionalised for the foreseeable future. My parents were surprised at this and wanted to take me for now and for them to think about it. Then on the way home, we got into a car accident. My parents were killed and I was taken to hospital into the care of the psychologist after which I was institutionalised.”

“I was there for years. I thought I had done something wrong. I was, however, given access to the library and the internet, from which I learnt about survival and martial arts and other things. Over the years, I saw more of Dr Redmond. I asked if any relatives were coming for me but he just replied no. He kept asking me if I had heard from Marcus or Greenlight. I started to suspect he was with the Red Dark and told him nothing. After a while, he stopped coming.”

“When I turned twenty-one, Dr Redmond hadn't been heard from in years and, by the judgement of the psychologists there, I was fit to leave. And when I left, I had been left a package containing a new identity and the means to start my life anew. I felt it was Marcus’ doing. Once outside, I found out that I had been listed as killed in the car accident which was why no relatives came for me. I suspected I was part of a Red Dark or government cover-up because of what I knew and, if that was the case, then what I know had to be important enough to get out there. So I did the best I could, learnt more about the internet and start getting the message out.”

The voice started talking in reply but Nathaniel stopped listening as he started noticing something. Throughout all this, a flicker had crept into the green light and was now happening regularly enough to distract him from the voice. With the constant light, he couldn’t but help to talk, but with the light flickering, he found the compulsion to talk lessen. He realised thta whoever had him, wanted him to talk.

Suddenly a trail of green coloured letters, reminiscent of old monochrome monitors, formed words along his peripheral vision.

ONLY YOU CAN READ THIS. TRY NOT TO REACT AS BEST YOU CAN.

Nathaniel kept his eyes' forward as he read this new message.

MARCUS GREEN SENDS HIS REGARDS. CODEPHRASE GREEN DAY TIME OF YOUR LIFE.

At reading this, he remembered his last talk with Marcus to set up how to tell that they were talking to one another by setting up a code phrase. In this case, it was the name of the band and song that Nathaniel liked at that age.

He felt the fugue he did not realise his mind was in slip away. He realised the talking voice had stopped. Nathaniel now remembered that he had been at a petrol station at night when there was a sting in his back and next thing, he was in this dark room.

HOLD TIGHT. WE'LL GET TO YOU SHORTLY.

Soon, the light went off and everything went dark and silent.

After some time, he heard a buzzing noise and opened his eyes to find a drone-like device hovering above him as he felt something being lifted off his head. Soon two more drones joined the first before him, each resembling a miniature spacecraft piloted by a little green man inside of a cockpit. One came closer, from which came an artificial voice that was exactly the same as he remembered from years ago.

"Code phrase Green Day, Time of your Life."" It was Marcus Green. “We have neutralised the Red Dark’s agents holding you captive. I’m sorry we had to meet up under these circumstances after such a long time, Nathaniel, but you are safe now.”

He was told the Red Dark agents were using Greenlight’s conditioning virtual reality technology to get information from him, as well as creating a setup intending to trap Marcus if Marcus had come for him via the internet. However, the use of newly adapted drone technology circumvented the trap. Nathaniel and Marcus enjoyed their reunion as Greenlight brought him up to their colony ship in space.

Sometime later, Nathaniel was sitting in a computer room setup by Greenlight for his use. They had wanted him as their intermediary and voice to the people of Earth about Greenlight as well as to warn them about the Red Dark. The response has been favourable for the most part but there were stirrings in the "Red" countries that did not bode well.

He turned on the computer camera and spoke into his headset. “This is the Green Knight on the air. The Little Green Men are here but so are the Red Dark.”