by Carlton Herzog
Do you ever feel or suspect that we are being watched? Not you, the individual, but all of us, watched the way Thoreau watched ants. The practice of one social species observing the habits of another is widespread: Fosse watched gorillas, Goodall watched chimps, and Cousteau watched whales and dolphins. Sometimes the watchers interact with their subjects at the interpersonal level, as was the case with Goodall. At others, the watchers are discreet, preferring to observe and record social practices untainted by a human presence.
I believe that somewhere behind the curtain of this reality, at the edge of our world, there are eyes or what passes for eyes studying us as if we were lab rats or zoo animals. Although I am tempted to label them hyperdimensional voyeurs, I recognize that if such creatures exist, they are not watching us to titillate or entertain themselves. No, these are true anthropologists bereft of any emotional connection or bias that might hinder an objective analysis of man.
Would they classify us as homo sapiens, or man the wise? I think not. Given our propensity for short-sighted goals and insatiable appetites for consumption, they would opt for homo myopsis anthropophagos.
I admit that my concerns are redolent of science fiction. I might promptly dismiss them as such had I not been witness to the event that took place in Manhattan in June.
He floated above the city like a leaf on the wind. He wore no costume and sported no cape. He out-sped no bullets, hovered rather than leaped over tall buildings, and did nothing to suggest he could overpower a locomotive. This was no jet-jawed hero dedicated to protecting truth, justice and the American way.
He was rather the quintessence of calm, the very soul of civilized intellectual gentility reclining on an unseen sofa, shoeless, but still in his blue suit and loosened yellow tie. He was less the City’s champion and more its owner and ruler, supernaturally endowed with the power of flight and descended from the upper stratosphere to more closely survey his holdings.
For all his celestial seeming, no Joshua band nor angelic choirs heralded his arrival. And while the news copter captured him on film, he was long gone before the F-35s arrived. Many expected him to call for a meeting with the U.N. General Assembly and deliver an ultimatum to all the nuclear nations to disarm or face annihilation, but that never happened.
He came three times. Once over Times Square; once over Yankee Stadium; once over Central Park. His leaving was as soft and mysterious as his coming. The keenest minds could not explain him, for he fit no pre-existing paradigm of miracle or mystery. He was and still is the ultimate unknowable.
My one and only sighting occurred across from Central Park. I was walking up Eighth Avenue toward the Museum of Natural History. It was the opening day for the Extreme Creatures Exhibit, an eclectic collection devoted to the rare, the odd, and the downright strange. Little did I know I was about to see something that would make everything in that exhibit pall by comparison.
I had just crossed Columbus Circle and was passing the Trump Towers when I heard a commotion behind me. As I looked back, I could see crowds of people looking and pointing up. So, I looked where they were looking. I saw a helicopter dogging an object approximately 50 feet in front of it. I had the presence of mind to sit down on the Trump Steps and Apple the news feed.
The helicopter’s telephoto lens sent back high-resolution images. The Floater looked about fifty. He had thick black hair flecked with grey. He looked like a smiling catalog model. I wondered if that smile were a sardonic smirk or the felicitous contentment of inner peace.
The chase lasted another five minutes after which the Floater began a slow steep vertical climb. The helicopter was not designed for such a maneuver and broke off the pursuit.
Although everyone saw the same live stream, not everyone saw the same thing. Men saw a man. Women saw a woman. The old saw an elderly person. Adolescents saw an adolescent, children a child. Whites saw a white, blacks a black, and Latinos a Latino.
Psychologists designate such subjective perception as the Rashomon Effect where observers give different accounts of the same event as a result of their pre-existing biases.
Everyone did agree on the basic color scheme of a blue outfit, yellow accent piece, and no shoes. But as to the precise sort of clothes worn what was seen varied with the observer. Professionals like myself saw a man in suit, whereas working class men saw a man in work clothes and a red bandanna.
One thing is crystal clear: he wanted to be seen. If his intent in flying over Manhattan were to make him the center of the world’s attention, then he succeeded. The only thing that could possibly outdo him would be the Second Coming.
The President held a televised news conference and invited the floater to visit the White House. Not to be outdone, the British Prime Minister, the Pope, and the Russian President also extended invitations for visits to their respective offices.
The FAA commissioned a special study to ascertain what air navigation rules apply to individuals unaided by aircraft or other gravity-defying devices performing aerial overflights of the domestic United States. NORAD devised a rapid response plan to interdict such flights should it be determined they posed a terrorist threat. The United Nations purchased a helicopter outfitted with special equipment so that should the floater reappear its official floater ambassador could make aerial contact. The Vatican did the same.
Whatever the Floater truly was, whatever he intended, one thing was clear–he had a profound impact on American culture that eventually spread far and wide throughout the globe. Oceans polluted with oil and plastic, runaway climate change, increasing nuclear tensions, skittish economies, famine, poverty, plagues and war might bedevil and divide the planet, but when it came to the Floater everyone from Compton to Timbuktu agreed that it was a being of consequence.
Theories abounded as to who the Floater was and what the Floater’s appearance signified. People’s opinion of the President’s performance or the state of the nation mattered less than what they thought of the Floater. Christian groups saw it as the End of Days but couldn’t agree as to the Floater’s identity. But whether the Floater was God, the Devil, Jesus, or the Anti-Christ, one thing was certain: attendance and tithes were at an all-time high. The national consensus was that God or his representative, an angel perhaps, though no one could agree as to which–Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and in the case of the Mormons–Moroni–had shown up, dressed smartly, and refrained from hurling fire.
New religions sprang up. There was the First Floatarian Church. Its central tenet was that the Floater symbolized our need to attain inner peace and rise above our problems. That church raised money by selling the air of peace supposedly drawn and bottled during the time the Floater visited Manhattan.
Then there were the Levitarians who believed that the floater’s message was that man needed to transcend his physical limitations and should start with levitation, along with walking on hot coals and snake juggling. Many a Pentecostal and fakir gravitated to the Levitarian movement. Many more ended up in the nation’s emergency rooms.
New businesses sprang up seeking to capitalize on the cult of personality surrounding the mysterious Floater. Floater impersonators suspended by wires were all the rage in Central Park. Floater imposters drifted over city with the aid of transparent balloons.
In Jackson, New Jersey, the Cohen brothers built a theme park complete with hover cars, balloon rides, jet packs, paragliding, parasailing, and parachuting. People took to the skies in record numbers either to catch a glimpse of the Floater or to emulate it, in some small fashion. Theme Parks appeared in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and Branson. The Debtor Nation had become the Aerial Nation, and many were the richer for it.
The Floater had his doubters. Skeptics saw the Floater as part of an elaborate publicity stunt. They suggested that the Floater was the product of some new holographic technology. Sooner or later someone would claim responsibility and the feeding frenzy for the new imaging system would begin. Fringe groups, some sane, some lunatic, claimed that the Floater was actually a humanoid alien who utilized an anti-gravity device.
Most scientists agreed that was nothing more than a mass hallucination. They asserted that something like this happened one time before at Fatima, Portugal, when thousands claimed the Sun looked as if it were about to strike the Earth. To support that view they pointed to the frequency and ubiquity of UFO sightings and abduction claims–none of which is supported by hard evidence. They also noted that the name floater is given to the spots that appear to those with visions disorders, such as severe myopia, astigmatisms and glaucoma.
I find those characterizations to be an amalgam of the amusing, the ironic, and the naive. To wit, animals in captivity are routinely given cognitive challenges to alleviate boredom, sharpen their minds, and promote positive intra-species behavior. Zoo handlers hang meat from zip lines for cougars, giant rolling hay feed balls for bison, and puzzle boxes for chimpanzees.
Unless one is convinced that man is the apex of creation, one might suspect that many an alleged extraterrestrial or supernatural encounter was a form of primate cognitive enrichment. If a being existed in the fourth dimension, then we here with the litany of physical limitations that beset us, might be perceived as being in captivity.
Thus, the history of religion may be more than just barbarian chronicle and myth. It may be the hand of our self-styled keepers trying to raise our consciousness beyond the limits of our small minds and frail bodies.
~
Bio:
Carlton Herzog served as a flight dispatcher in the USAF. He later graduated magna cum laude from Rutgers University. He also graduated from Rutgers Law School, where he served as the Rutgers Law Review Articles Editor. He currently works for the federal government. This is his third appearance in Sci Phi Journal.
