Free Phase Shift by elise abram Page A

together in eager anticipation. "I promise
you will not be disappointed."
    "My taste buds and my expanding waistline
also thank you, Sandeep." All in attendance laughed at this last
remark.
    They had exactly one week.
     
    The craft was ready a full twenty-three hours
ahead of pocket formation.
    Two hours prior to pocket formation, Tobin
Watertester, Luna Groomersmate, and Sobal Meteorologist boarded the
craft and approached the phase shift site.
    The hovercraft paced the area until Sobal
detected a change in the atmospheric pressure.
    Luna was the first to observe the formation
of the funnel cloud. She tapped Sobal on the shoulder who in turn
touched Tobin on his. "Ready?" he asked, probably more to himself
than anyone in the craft. "Here we go," he said, before anyone
could reply.
    The shift was almost instantaneous. Tobin
ushered the craft through the centre of the funnel. It was rough
going at first. The tiny, four-seater craft shook, threatened to
come apart for a harrowing fraction of a second, and then was
calm.
    The breeze rapidly slowed to
insignificance.
    Sobal's display went dark.
    Luna gasped. They were heading for a tall,
grey structure that stretched to the skies. It narrowed as it grew
toward the clouds and thickened as it sank toward the ground.
Glass-enclosed tunnels spanned the structure from top to bottom.
Lighted shuttle cars defied gravity as they sped either up or down
through the tunnels.
    "Tobin..." Sobal warned.
    Tobin maneuvered the craft skyward,
following the contour of the building.
    "Pull out!" Luna cried when she saw the
large, saucer-shaped midsection of the building loom large (and
growing larger) above their heads.
    Tobin wasted no time throttling out as he
directed the craft away from the structure.
    When he was sure he had cleared the
midsection, Tobin set the craft to hover at an altitude roughly
even with the rounded overhang of the structure. It was then they
noticed the windows stretching around the saucer's circumference,
and the people staring at them from within.
     
    Fourteen pictures were taken with digital
cameras of the UFO from behind the glass of the CN Tower’s
observation deck that day.
    Because the photographs were digital in
nature, their authenticity came into question. Photographic
analysts would study the pictures for years to come, each one of
their analyses falling short of authentication.
    The American tabloids offered a small king's
ransom for first publication rights of The Canadian UFO
Images , as they came to be known. Ten years thence, the same
images would be used to substantiate claims of alien and UFO
sightings across the globe on a pseudo-scientific documentary
series called "Irrefutable Evidence".
    Tourists on the observation deck would
recount their experience to reporters on the six o'clock news that
evening. Their stories would be consistent: an unidentified flying
object about the size of a compact car, black and wedge-shaped,
suddenly appeared off the north wall of the CN Tower from beneath
the observation deck. It hovered in place, level with the
observation deck for a moment, before disappearing from view. They
would report seeing three figures wearing silver space suits
within.
    Three people would come forward with video
footage of the observation deck of the CN Tower at the time of the
sighting. They would report that a small object seemed to appear in
the sky, midway between the observation deck and the ground, on a
collision course with the building. At the last moment, the craft
pulled up and began its ascent, almost colliding with the underside
of the observation deck. It pulled out and continued its ascent,
stopping when it was level with the observation deck, at which
point it hovered momentarily, and then began a rapid descent until
it disappeared at the very same point from which it first appeared.
The video footage would serve to authenticate the eye-witness
reports.

     

Molly Figures It Out
    "So I've been thinking," I say to