Syman

Where do I begin my unique story? Well now, I guess a good a place as any is at the very beginning, when I saw him or should I say his vessel for the very first time. As I recollect it was sometime in the third week of July 1999, on a beautiful crisp and cool night, while standing on the balcony of my small and meagerly appointed home in Tasmania, which faced the banks of the beautiful Tamar River. The location offered generous panoramas of the Batman Bridge and surrounding river frontage. It was roughly around 9 o’clock in the evening and I recollect there was a moonless sky above me. The night air was so clear and clean with zero pollution, as the westerly winds predominately blow from one side of the island to the other. They begin from as far away as the Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometers away, rounding Cape Town at the bottom of Africa. Another benefit of living in a rural area was having the advantage of no street lights interfering with the view from above, giving me 100 per cent visibility. One of the many passions of mine has and always will be, staring at the stars on a crystal-clear night. Why even as a young boy I would drag out my sleeping bag and lie out on the back lawn while gazing skyward for hours at a time, mesmerized by the amazing vista above me. I would lay there and think of the possibilities of distant Worlds, trying to imagine what they would look like. Is there any type of plant 2 MR E. life on those Worlds? And, who or what type of beings live on them? Also, on that odd occasion when I was lucky enough, I’d catch a glimpse of an asteroid’s last moments, watching it fall towards Earth in a white hot death roll. Why even being a new father hadn’t dampened my interest in stargazing, generally most evenings that’s where you’ll find me, especially after a hard day’s work. I’d star gaze while having a coffee and a roll your-own cigarette on my balcony, mainly so I don’t smoke inside the house for young Timothy’s benefit. Relaxing and unwinding watching for asteroids, orbiting satellites and space junk to drift by. I gave my glasses a good clean on the corner of my flannelette shirt, so I could see more clearly. There was nothing worse than gazing through dirty spectacles at the fine details above. It never ceased to amaze me just how much crap was floating around up there, including parts of old multistage rockets and old satellites no longer in use. Suddenly my eyes were drawn to a particularly bright object, a satellite moving rapidly from East to West. Wow! Isn’t that amazing! I thought. I could even see its anti-clockwise rotation. Once again I thought, how clear the air was here. What I saw next defied everything you ever heard from governmental authorities, especially in regard to UFOs. ‘Officially they don’t exist’. However, I was following the path of the satellite when a vessel swerved out of its way. In doing so, the reflection from the sun hit what I thought was the underside of its hull, exposing all of its texture and details, especially its overall size. It was huge, bloody huge in fact. Guessing by the size of the satellite it missed, it was roughly the size of a large family home, of course that’s only the one side I was able to see. God knows how tall it was. Although, the texture of the side facing me was pitted and rough like an orange skin. In some strange way it appeared to be almost organic. Only when the vessel changed its course did it come into view, which made me assume it has some type of stealth capability, because once it had dodged the oncoming satellite, it vanished from my sight. So, there I was, alone on my balcony with 101 questions running through my mind. I started imagining all types of creatures which may inhabit this vessel, or perhaps it was a fully automated probe of some kind? But as I said before, it was a crisp, cool night and I was freezing my ass off out there, it was now time for me to get back inside next to the fire and warm up. After rinsing my coffee mug in the kitchen sink, I sat down in my favorite lounge chair, right next to the blazing fire, the warmth coming from it was both calming and comfortable. My wife Stella was staring at me rather strangely. “What’s wrong Jim? Looks like you’ve just seen a ghost,” she said, after turning around from viewing the TV.