Viva Las Zeta Reticuli

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. 

 "Probe this!" shouted Jeff. He slammed the button to the airlock with his fist. He ran to a porthole and watched the small grey being float away from the ship. He looked up towards the polished metallic ceiling and put his hand to his ear. "Nope, looks like you're right, I can’t hear you," said Jeff triumphantly. He’d heard that phrase drilled into his mind every time he’d been abducted before. It was as if they knew he would try to escape someday. The being locked its big black almond eyes on Jeff. The look of utter shock, frozen on its face. Literally. "One down, three to go!" he yelled. He put his hands back on the control panel and let the warm electrolyte gel engulf his hands.

  "Lock doors," he thought. Nothing happened. "Lock the damn doors!" Nothing. Jeff's high from outsmarting his abductors started to descend into panic as he couldn't close the door to the bridge. He stopped, calmed himself, and imagined the doors closing. He heard the sound of metal alloy connecting behind him. It worked.

  He looked around. He’d never been here before. His heart was pounding through his chest, so much so that he could hear it echo off the metal dome. This place was bare. It was about five metres wide, and the low ceiling felt claustrophobic. It looked like it was designed for children. That almost made him feel guilty until he remembered the terror these things had subjected him to for decades. It practically ruined his life.

"Comply! What can we do to ensure your compliance? " This thought permeated Jeff's skull like someone talking through water. He grabbed the sides of his head and concentrated. "Not this time," he thought. "You seriously underestimated me and the second you dropped your guard, I got you." His mind drifted back to the first time he went to therapy for the voices in his head. It’s damn hard growing up having everyone around you tell you that sometimes, something you see and hear is not real. But look at him now. He has his own spaceship! Well almost. He was temporarily in control of a vehicle from a faraway world, a situation he hoped to make more permanent in the very near future.

"Your mind is an impenetrable fortress. The drawbridge is up. No one can get in unless you let them," said Jeff to himself. Not many people have to worry about blocking out psychic messages, but Jeff had become rather adept at it. Silence. It worked. They were locked out. His thoughts were his own again.

For decades, Jeff had been helpless while these beings explored every nook and cranny of his mind. As he became used to it, he became more observant of what was happening. His thoughts became disciplined. He learned to think more in terms of feelings and emotions, something the aliens couldn’t grasp with ease. A few years ago, he wondered if it was possible that, in a moment of weakness, he could penetrate their minds. Until five minutes ago, it was simply a fantasy he used to feel stronger when he felt powerless. But he did it. He had been walking towards the table hand in hand with two greys. Their disproportionately large heads only came up to his shoulder. The routine of this situation must have made one of them drop their guard for a split second. Jeff felt it. He took his chance and burst into one of their minds with his. He knew what to look for. In a second, he downloaded their greatest fears, how to pilot their ships and how to kill them before the being regained its composure. But it was too late. He had fortified his mind. He grabbed the being and ran to the bridge and ejected it out of the airlock.

The others ran from him. He now knew they were as weary of humans as humans were of wild animals. He scanned the bare room for anything he could use as a weapon. There was nothing. He was going to have to take his chances with his bare hands. Unlike other abductees, Jeff always suspected he knew exactly why he was picked. He could prove that aliens took Elvis and replaced his body with a dead clone. In fact, his first abduction was the day after he gave a presentation to his class on his theory. Coincidence? Evidently not. But why they undertook such an elaborate hoax, he didn’t know. He couldn’t find that information in the split second that he had.

Jeff walked up to the closed door. He was feeling confident now. He could hear the synchronised footsteps he first noticed in regression therapy on the other side. "Where is he?" He shouted. "It's time to give him back." Jeff imagined how the world would react to him landing on the White House lawn, live on the 6 o'clock news in a spaceship, and walking out with Elvis. He’d be a hero a million times over. He was met with pressure on his temples but, crucially, silence. He was blocking them out, and as long as he could do that, he had the upper hand. Still, he was dealing with a civilisation hundreds of technological revolutions ahead of his own. He could take nothing for granted. His plan was to go for the tall one first. If he could take out the leader, the last two would be lost without him.

He readied himself at the door. After a lifetime of never being able to hold anything down, he had nothing left to lose. They had everything. He put his hand on the door and imagined it slamming open. The door retracted into the wall. In an instant, he could see the leader at the other end of the ship. It was tall, about seven feet, and it looked evil. The ridges over its jet black eyes furrowed down in a way that inspired a primal fear. He could feel the pressure building around his head. Now was the time. He charged the creature down, and for the first time, he saw what looked like fear on its face. It just stood there, still. As if it couldn’t do anything else but get in his head and was desperately expecting it to work at any moment.

Jeff and the creature clashed, and he drove it into the wall on the far end of the ship. Images of the destruction of the earth flashed in his mind's eye, but he resisted. Now that the being had its hands on him, it made it harder to resist its thoughts. Jeff delved deep into his strongest emotions. He knew they couldn’t decipher them. He grabbed the being's neck. His grip covered the entire circumference. He started pummelling it. Punch after punch, he roared, "That’s for the years of therapy, that’s for my ex-wife, that’s for the house, that’s for my job, and that’s for kidnapping the king of rock and roll."

He felt the life leave this being's body as it went limp in his hands. He jumped back from it and watched it slump on the ground in a growing pool of its own blood. Their blood was the same colour as ours. Jeff turned around and saw the last two greys staring at him. Clearly, this had never happened before. He moved towards them and they stood still. Were they so evolved they’d lost the instinct to run? He stopped in his tracks when he felt their sadness. It was a universal emotion. They stared at Jeff. He was right; they were lost without their leader. He took them to the airlock. They’d keep their lives, but they’d have to play ball.

As the door closed around them, Jeff took a knee and looked them both in the eye. Against all odds, after years of being so completely helpless, after a lifetime of people not believing him about Elvis, he had actually done it. Well, the Elvis thing was still technically a working hypothesis, but who in history had ever outsmarted aliens and stole their ship? Surely his credibility was beyond question now.

"Right, you two are in no position to mess me around and what I’m going to do to make you comply, is eject you both outside unless you answer all my questions." Jeff was annoyed at himself for how clunky his turn of their own phrase was. But to his credit, he had a stressful day.

"First question," said Jeff. "Where’s Elvis?"

"Who the hell is Elvis?" he thought.

"Wait, did I think that or did you?" The beings stared back at him blankly. For someone new to two-way psychic communication, this was going to be a complicated interrogation.