Hostile Intent

Hostile Intent

  By Michael P. Rogers

  Copyright 2013 Michael P. Rogers

  In the Garage Workshop

  Harry was examining his latest electronic project in his garage cum’ workshop where he spent most of his spare time cobbling together various gadgets and gizmos that were placed around the house much to his wife’s annoyance. The last thing he had installed was a very complex central heating control unit that required a great deal of time setting up to get working. “But it works!” he told his distraught wife.

  He looked admiringly at his current masterpiece which was lying on the workbench connected to various test instruments. “I just need that satellite dish and it’s up and running.” he muttered with great joy rubbing his hands together. He popped back indoors for a cup of tea after setting the intruder alarm on the garage door. The alarm was totally unnecessary but he loved his gadgets.

  “Any deliveries for me sweetheart?” he asked Julie. “What have you ordered now? Not more junk?” she replied irritably. She’d seen quite enough of his abandoned gadgets lying around the house, but at least it kept him out of her hair, she thought. Just as he was about to speak, a van pulled up outside and two men got out and were struggling with a huge ex-army satellite dish from the back of the van. “Ah, it’s here at last.” he crooned. “What the hell is that?” his wife shouted with eyes bulging. “It’s just something I picked up from the army surplus website. It only cost a few quid.” he said in his attempt to placate her.

  He opened the front door and asked the two delivery men to take it down to the garage. “And mind you don’t damage it.” he said as they gave him a disgruntled look. He watched them like a hawk as they placed it on the ground outside the garage door. He handed over a fiver and thanked them for their trouble. They slunk off dripping with perspiration.

  He threw the garage door open completely forgetting the alarm which made a piercing squeal bringing his wife to the back door. Turning it off quickly, he smiled with embarrassment while she was unplugging her fingers from her ears. “Well the alarm works pretty well.” he said cheerfully. “So it does!” she moaned, and slammed the door. He went in the garage and came out with a long coil of cable. “I hope this connector fits!” he said, slightly worried that the plug he had sourced on the internet might not be quite right. “It fits perfectly, superb!” he chortled as he spun the thread round on the connector tightening it fully. He fixed the dish to a modified line pole that he had prepared some time ago, pulled it up in position with a rope and winch and secured the pole with a couple of nuts and bolts. He was puffing a bit afterwards but the dish was now in position, pointing meaningfully at the sky. “No doubt the neighbours will have something to say, the miserable sods.” he mumbled.

  The other end of the cable was then threaded through a hole in the window and connected to his pride and joy of electronics on the bench. He plugged in the video monitor, flicked the power switch and held his breath. “Damn, not a sausage!” he cursed, fiddling with the fine tuning adjustment. With a sigh of relief he saw the tuning indicator lights climb to eighty per cent signal strength, buzzes of static coming from the headphones and a haze of flickering lines on the monitor. He cackled happily like some mad professor from an old horror film and put the headphones on, while making himself comfortable in the old arm chair that had very nearly got taken to the rubbish tip.

  “Now to put it through its paces.” he muttered. He rotated the tuning dial searching for transmissions and picked up the odd satellite television stations. “So far, so good.” he thought. “I’ll try that auto scan now, and if it finds a good signal it’ll lock on to it automatically.” he said, talking to himself again. He sat listening to the various buzzes and whistles while it scanned the ether, and slowly nodded off to sleep in the chair, hypnotised by the noises.

  It was roughly an hour later when he was awoken by strange sounds from the headphones. He looked up at the monitor and saw what looked like the beginning of a news broadcast. A remote view of a planet filled half of the screen, with a heading in some foreign language along the top. He didn’t recognise the words and decided they must be Russian or something. The scene changed to a television studio and he was taken aback by the figure sitting behind a desk. “Looks like I’ve found a sci-fi channel.” he mused. While he watched, the alien was pointing with a three fingered hand at a screen on the wall and speaking in some weird language. “They might have had subtitles!” he groaned, not being able to make any sense of the guttural sounding speech.

  The wall screen came into view and it showed what looked like the same planet as before, with a dozen or more space craft grouped in a ‘V’ formation hovering menacingly. The alien news presenter was waving his spindly arms about, seemingly with great enthusiasm, pointing at the space craft and speaking with the same unintelligible voice. The scene started to change, and it was then that he heard a gust of wind rattling the garage doors and the screen immediately went blank. “Blast, it looks like the dish has been blown off direction, I’ll have to tighten it up a bit more.” he said unhappily. He had started to get engrossed in the program and would have liked to have seen more of it. He decided that he’d fix it the next day as it was getting too dark to see properly and made his way indoors where Julie was standing with her hands on her hips looking very angry. “You’ve missed your dinner again, it’s in the bin if you want it! I called you on your blasted intercom three times!” she said, almost in tears. He went long-faced into the lounge and flopped dejectedly on to the settee, his belly rumbling. Glancing at the coffee table, he spotted a television channel guide, picked it up and started searching for the program he had been watching earlier in the sci-fi listings. Not being able to find it after a fifteen minute search, he decided it must be a new channel that wasn’t listed yet. He threw down the magazine and went up to bed early, feeling quite weary after today’s exploits.

  Back on Track

  Harry arose early the next day and after making a pot of tea and taking a cup up to his wife he headed down to the garage with renewed enthusiasm. Twenty minutes later, having tightened the satellite dish mounting bracket he switched on the receiver and the same scenes appeared on the monitor as yesterday, steady as a rock. “They might be repeating the film.” he wondered, so he slipped a blank disk into the DVD recorder and pressed the record button. This wasn’t a bad idea, as quite often Julie would ask him to fix something or other when he was absorbed in one of his projects and he could watch the recording later. As luck would have it, he managed to watch the program for about half an hour without being interrupted.

  The scenes unfolded as previously, but now he could watch beyond the point where the dish was disturbed by the wind and the transmission was lost. He noticed a familiar view of Earth as the alien presenter spoke. “They’ve certainly made a good job of the alien.” he thought, with admiration. He never noticed anything that had the give-away look of plastic or maybe rubber. The alien looked almost humanoid apart from the spindly arms and the three fingers of each hand ending in curled claws; pretty gruesome really.

  He heard the garden gate creak open followed by a knock on the window. It was his neighbour Ricky. He got on alright with Ricky; he wasn’t the snotty type like some of them. Letting him in, he showed him his latest invention with much pride. “I’ve never seen that one before Harry. What channel is that on?” asked Ricky looking at the monitor with a wrinkled brow. “That’s just what I was going to ask you.” Harry replied, slightly miffed.

  “I know what I could do.” beamed Ricky. “I could check it on my satellite TV indoors.” Saying this, he nipped indoors and went through his entire list of channels but it was nowhere to be found. Returning to the garage, he told Harry and they both thought it might be someone using a vid
eo sender. “Hey, just a minute, this is receiving micro-wave signals. I’ve never heard of a sender that can transmit on those frequencies.” said Harry with confidence.

  They both watched for a while as the program continued. “I’ve got to pop back indoors for lunch now Harry. See you later mate.” said Ricky as he disappeared through the back gate. Harry turned back to the screen just as the program ended, ejecting the DVD and putting it safely in its case. He thought to himself, “This has got me dead beat. It’s not satellite TV and it can’t be a video sender unit, so that leaves only one answer.” He snatched up the DVD, switched off the receiver and rushed indoors, much to the surprise of his wife.

  The Only Possible Conclusion

  When Harry played the DVD and told Julie what he thought it was she looked at him straight-faced for a couple of seconds then burst into uncontrollable laughter. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she pulled a face at him and said with much mirth, “I’m an alien!” “You daft old sod, do you really think that came from another planet? I sometimes wonder if you’re from