I had a beer and a sandwich when I went to bed around three last night (after talking about Africa and comics for several hours at Max Rinkel's place).

I laid down in bed, curled up next to my sleeping wife at 3:30am, and safely closed my eyes.

Pittsburg.  In a theater at the 8.  But it's far bigger than any of our theaters.  It's a large, slanting, shadowy affair, with bigger wings.  I'm sitting in the middle of it with Zayas.  The movie in front of us is African based... the story of a tribesman fighting a war.  It is dark.  He is fighting odds that he won't... he can't win.

THe movie ends, and we get up and go to a small pizza place.  It is dimly lit, and feels oddly familiar, oddly East Coast.  James and my two siblings sit at the table as well.  The pizza comes out, and the steaming greasy mess is sat in front of us.  I stare at it.  Something's wrong.  We all reach forward to grab a slice, and out they come.  They're small balls of green, similar to the oozing mess of a balled up Gremlin except a bright NEON green.  And they roll out and towards us.  I know them.  They're an ancient evil-- one that I've fought before.  Not as ancient as Darth Vader who used to shut a cat's tail in the door everynight after he commanded his legion of giant bugs to attack the old, woodchip St. Mary's playground... but really, nothing is that ancient an evi.  But I know this evil.  I've faced it before.  One of them rolls right off the table to James.  I don't catch where the other one lands.  Good, I think, I know where one of those mind-controlling bastards is.  This is an invasion.  I can't confront James now.  But at least I know who's side he's on.  I can use him.  I can find out what the plan is this time.  I can save us.  

It's Christmas.  Snowing outside.  I'm back at the Jones residence, but the rooms all seem a little bigger, a little less lit.  There will be fighting here.  I peer into Nevin's room-- it is pitch black except for the TV lighting Nevin's eager, gaming face and enough of the bed to see what's probably Chris Bishop there passed out.   In the kitchen Aunt JoAnn talks with my mother about something.  But I'm on a mission.  James is in the living room.  He's accounted for.  But I don't know where the fuck the other one is.  This can't be good.

In walks Gillian Scully.

We smile at each other-- a smile with great warmth from both of us.  We come to each other from across the room and hug as old friends in front of the birdcage in the kitchen. 

"Dr., how have you been?"

"I've been good," the FBI-actress combination of all things illogical replies mid-hug.  She looks up,  "Yourself?"

"Well..." I take her by the arm and walk down into the laundry room, "We have a problem."

"What?" Her face turns deadly serious.

"Alien mind-controllers."

Her face becomes even more grim.

I try to reassure her.  "There's only two I've seen.  I know who one of 'em got."  More people start filing into the house.  I don't know all of them.  More people.  This crowd in the narrow space of the laundry room is getting too big.  It's dangerous.  I recognize some faces... some of these people are old adversaries.  This is only tipping the scales against us. 

"And the other one?" Gillian whispers.

"I don't know," I reply, looking back over my shoulder at the kitchen table where JoAnn, my mother, and Aubrey sit talking.  I may never know.  I may never figure it out.  I hope it isn't Nevin or Aubrey... I don't want to have to gut them.  I look back.  Gillian's eyes widen.

"Scully?"  Gillian falls, clutching her stomach.  "SCULLY!??!" She falls.  She looks down at her stomach, a long laceration cut across it.  Someone had cut her while I wasn't looking.  They knew the threat she posed. 

"Someone... cut me."

"I know, I know, hang on."  I look around, panicked.  I don't know who to trust.   I don't know who did this.  Aubrey comes running up.

"What happened?" she asks, looking worried at the fallen agent.

"An attack.  Let's get her into the family room."

Some time passes.  Dark to light to dark again outside.  This is bad.

I'm back in the family room.  Gillian looks up to me from the ground.  She's worried.  Don't worry, I mouth to her.  Her upper waist and lower waist sit open, her organs exposed.  There's plastic beneath her, and over parts of her.  Her organs look preserved by formaldahyde.  She should be worrying.  The man operating on her is one of those bastard old adversaries of mine.  Probably the same man who cut her.  His son, about my age, is in the back of the room, twittling his knife.  Christmas is tomorrow.  That's when Kristen Oehme's baby is due.  I don't know if I can trust her, but I verify this new knowledge with Aubrey.

"Yea, her baby's due tomorrow.  Why?  You don't think..."

"I do."

I sit down at my messaging machine.  It's a big plastic dome, with wooden, square Scrabble-esque letters inside.  The controls are wonky, but eventually I'm able to get the letters next to each other.  J-A-M-E-S.  Send.  Kristen will get that message.  James won't be able to track it.

I get out my cell, and send a quick text to Kristen.  She has a moving image in my phone.  The picture is her laughing.  That laugh may be cut short today, I grimmace.  He's the one, I text, who's coming for your baby.  Be safe.

I look up and realize the old adversary no longer is holding a surgical tool.  He's holding a knife.  I big, freakin' knife.  I pull mine, and go for him before he can get Scully.  He turns, and we tussle.  I stab a multitude of times in the chest.  I hear the lungs deflate, there is no blood.  He glares up at me as he expires.  Good, one enemy down.  I look up at his son who charges at me from across the room.  We fight, pushing our blades at each other.  He throws me down and runs out of the room.  Shit.  I look down at Scully.

"I'm fine," she reassures me, "I can sew this up," she says, indicating her exposed organs.  I hesitate.  "I'll be fine.  GO!"

I leave, hoping Aubrey isn't the other alien.

I drop into Nevin's room again.  Dark.  "This level is weird... they're naked," Nevin tells me.  He's playing what looks like some old Japanese top-down flying game... and they're flying over giant, animated nude bodies.  I turn around to leave, and I bump into Enoch and Lindsay Jennison. 

"Hey, man," says Enoch, "These aliens... what kind of pizza did you get?"

I can't remember.  I think it was pepperoni.  I struggle to tell them as much.

"We got the supreme right before you guys, and we don't know if either of us is infected."

Shit, this IS a breakout.  We may not stand a chance.

"Can you afford the vaccine?" I ask them.

"No!" Enoch declares.  "Who can afford three-hundred-dollars?!"

He's right.  This is God-foresaken class warfare.  The rich will live on, and we poor will become a slave race.  

He and Lindsay smile, waving their goodbyes as the move towards the front door of the house.  I look up the dark stairs.  My parents room.  That's where the adversary's son went.  Shit.

I leap up the stairs, and turn into my parent's room.  They're asleep, just enough light in the room to see the seafoam green walls, and the long, white shawl over them.  At the end of the shawl; THERE HE IS!  At the foot of the bed.  He looks up at me with a snarl and I lunge at him.  I miss, he parries.  We dance a dance of death.  He's almost as good as me with his knife.  Almost.  Until I hit him in the chest.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.  I can't leave chances.  I can't have him coming after me or my family when I go fight the onslaught.  He falls with a loud thump on the end of the shawl over the hardwood floor.  I kneel next to him.  He breathes, rasping.  Still alive, I scowl.  I turn him over, lift up his shirt, and shove my blade into his lungs ten more times.  Again, no blood, but the sound of air.  I push down on his back, hoping to remove all the air so I know he's done, but I can't seem to push it all out.  He laughs a small, arrogant, air-y laugh.  I hate these guys.

My parents sit up in bed.  "You can go," my dad tells me.  "We've got him."

Whether or not he's right, I don't have time to argue.  The enemies have begun to make their play.  I leave the room, checking my cell for news from Kristen.  

Justina Patterson sits at her desk, dignified.  The room is seaside, filled with light, decorated in a deep red with golden decor.  Her front door stands open, leading to a winding, open staircase of gold.  James comes up it.  He moves almost robotically.  He's going to get her.  Justina sees him come in... from the giant ballroom on the same level (or not... it's almost as if it's in another dimension that goes back and forth between being there and not being there) Kristen yells out, "It's James!"  Kristen can't cross the dimensional barrier, but she, and her newborn son, are safe.

Justina begins to fight James.  It's a full-out kung fu brawl. High flying combat, throwing (and kicking) each other across the room.  Justina pushes James back, and throws him over the staircase, past me.  As I run up the staircase, I stop to see James land with a thud at the bottom.  He glares up at us.  "Hey, Nolan," quips Justinia.

"Hey.  Think we can get the alien outta him?"

"I don't know."

"Well... you've gotta try.  I'm going to the ballroom.  That's where the leader is, I'm sure of it."

Justina nods.  I hope she can save James, but I doubt it.  

I cross into the ballroom.  It's huge.  Mostly done in white, with a shadowy ceiling.  There are at least a hundred long tables, and thousands of people milling about.  Everyone is impeccably dressed.  I, myself, look smashing in my tux.  I throw of my jacket.  Time to find the leader.

Jenny Werner walks over to me, in a long black cocktail dress.  "He's in the back," she states.

There's a clattering of items over near the kitchen.  Some form of skittering robot bursts into the kitchen through the double doors, and out come pots, pans, and screams.

"I don't think I can stop him.  Took too much to get here."

"I'll try, then."

"Thanks," I say.  I give her a small hug around the waist, and begin plotting.  She's not going to make it.  She won't win.  But hopefully she can get enough licks in that I'll be able to finish it off.  I hate to use her as a meat shield, but it's the only way this thing is going down, I'm sure of that much.  Jenny enters the back as I scan the ballroom to decide where I'll make my stand.

Out of the kitchen strolls Charli Verga.  She tosses a small, briefcase-sized grey, plastic box on the closest white-table cloth covered table.  It looks exactly like the radio housing unit does at dispatch, little red vocal levels on the front and everything.  Out of the top of it sprout antennae.  There's a sliding switch on the top as well.

Charli declares to the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is not our enemy..." she's rambling, her voice cracking.  She's taking its side.  Shit.  I don't have time for this crap.

I stride upto the table where the box is.  I immediately begin slicing off the radio antennae.  Can't let it contact help.  Somebody behind me asks what I'm doing.  "Don't do that!"  I look at the robot box in front of me.... the switch. "Don't turn it off!" the person behind me yells, as I do just that.  I quickly flick it back to the on position, hoping they haven't seen me turn it off.  It won't have time to boot up fully and talk to anyone else if I do the next part right.  And it'll give me a chance to see that I've done the next part right.

Charli is still rambling to the crowd.  I take my knife and pop off the front of the box.  The inside is bigger than the outside.  The box outside is a half foot tall, and then about two feet long and wide... but inside I can fit my upper body in, reaching back to examine the endless cords, boards, and... instruments.  Small-sized guitars, harps, some sort of crank... this machine can speak a variety of tones. I start cutting at everything I can, slicing anything that could give it a way to communicate, or anything that could be brains.  Riley runs up behind me.  "What are you DOING!?  I could use that!"

I make a few quick slashes before he can pull me away from the box.  "Jesus, man!  What the hell!" he hollers.  The crowd doesn't notice.  Riley dives into the electronics, but I'm not worried.  I think I've done enough to kill it off.

I'm back in the movie theater with Zayas.  We're sitting on the right aisles.  Barely any rooms for our legs.  It's the sequel to the African movie.  This movie takes place before the other movie, but it's still a sequel, and it's happier.  There's a humvee chase.  An old, bald, wrinkled man stumbles up next to us, with his mid-forties son.  They're wearing sweaters.  They ask to get by us. 

"What?  No, there's plenty of space around!" Zayas counters.  And he's right.  There's maybe forty people in a theater that could easily seat five hundred.  And this guy wants his dad to sit on the other side of us against the wall?  It's stupid.  The old man limps off, his son helping him down the aisle.

The movie is now the sequel's sequel... set even further back in time, and even happier.  Zayas and I comment how odd it is the way the movies got happier.  The credits begin to roll as the lights come up.

There's my ceiling.  Spackled.   I roll over, looking at my bedroom; Cayla's gone... it's a half hour til noon and there's light coming in the window.  I wonder if Gillian's okay.  I'm fairly certain James was cured, but I'll have to be careful around him.  I wonder if I can go back.  Eventually I hear keys out in the hallway.  Cayla's home.  She comes into the room.

World's gone.  I can't go back.  Too awake now.  Maybe I'll get lucky some other night, and I can be sure I stopped them.  I wonder if I'll come back after the events that just happened, or if I'll have to repeat them.

I don't know how familiar many of the readers are here with the early space program, both American and Russian. If you're rusty, I HIGHLY recommend a visit to the Cosmosphere here in Hutchinson, KS. They have the actual Appolo 13. The actual one. Not a replica. THE ONE. And they have the Liberty Bell 7, 'Gus' Grissom's (Called Gus b/c his real name was Virgil Ivan Grissom... sounded a bit to Russian) Mercury - Redstone 4 capsule that sank into the ocean and was later recovered and restored by the Cosmosphere.

The Russian history is fascinating, in large part because so much is still unknown. The Cosmosphere has a Vostok and Voskhod capsule that the russians used to send Yuri Gagarin and other cosmonauts to space it. Remember, the Russians beat us to the first satellite, first man in space, first space walk, and the first woman in space. They also beat us to the first casualties, as we have been slowly learning over the past decade. From a few we know of with rocket test failures, to possible losses of cosmonauts who ventured into space before Yuri Gagarin.

"There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going.

It is the ultimate in Cold War legends: that at the dawn of the Space Age, in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the Soviet Union had two space programmes, one a public programme, the other a ‘black’ one, in which far more daring and sometimes downright suicidal missions were attempted. It was assumed that Russia’s Black Ops, if they existed at all, would remain secret forever.

So, did any cosmonauts actually die in space? Russian journalist and 1965 cosmonaut candidate Yaroslav Golovanov claimed that on 10 November 1960, a cosmonaut called Byelokonyev died on board a spaceship in orbit. Mikhail Rudenko, a retired senior space engineer, claimed a few years ago that three early victims were test pilots who were simply blasted straight up into space between 1957 and 1959.

Sadly, there is no evidence to back these claims. But the Soviets were experts at making people and evid­ence disapp­ear, so it is all too easy to believe that more  deaths might have occ­urred in those desperate early days of the space race. Risks were taken at the insistence of Khrushchev, who needed results for political leverage. Tests were not completed and safety checks were ignored. On 23 October 1960, a rocket exploded at Baikonur vaporising 165 technicians, an event that was hushed up by the Soviet authorities for over 30 years.

One fatality that we do know about from those early days was that of Valentin Bondarenko. At 24, he was the youngest cosmonaut. He met his terrible end on 23 March 1961, while in a pressure chamber as part of a 10-day isolation exercise. Bondarenko dropped an alcohol-soaked cotton swab on a hot plate, which – in the oxygen-rich environment – started a fire that ignited his suit. It was 20 minutes before the pressurised door could be opened. Bondarenko was pulled out barely alive, crying “It was my fault”, and died eight hours later, comforted by his best friend, Yuri Gagarin. News of the accident was hushed up until 1986."

These Italian brothers set up a large make shift satellite dish and used the Sputnik frequency that was given to the world and tracked the satellite, even being able to figure out its speed thanks to the Doppler Effect. They tracked Sputnik 2, with the first living creature in space, and then Explorer 1, the first US satellite. 

After hearing that a German Observatory had picked up what they thought were satellite signals, the brothers searched static for a few hours until settling on a frequency where they heard the distinct tap of morse code, "SOS". The most telling sign is that the signal barely changed frequency, indicating some craft departing straight away from Earth, not rotating about it. Later, at another possible Cosmonaut launch, while scanning Russian frequencies, they picked up another transmission, this one of a wheezing voice. 

"The brothers contacted Professor Achille Dogliotti, Italy’s leading cardiologist and recorded his judgement. “I could quite clearly distinguish the clear sounds of           forced, panting human breath,” said Dogliotti.

Two days later, the Soviet press agency announced that Russia had sent a seven-and-a-half-tonne spaceship the size of a single-decker bus into space on 2             February, which had burned up during re-entry. No further information was forthcoming.

Had the brothers captured the dying breaths of a cosmonaut?"

Give the article a read. You can find it here. They did a lot of other amazing things, like listening in on John Glenn's Friendship 7 flight, thanks to reverse engineering the frequency based on the length of the antennae on the Mercury capsule from a photograph. How'd they do it? Their father was a lecturer on legal medicine, and could use a ratio on facial features (bizygomatic index) of divers recovering the craft after a test to figure out dimensions. 

Everything the brothers heard, they recorded, and even played them for NASA, and news stations. The recordings still exist and are possibly the only memorial to many Cosmonauts. 

From the article, a list of possible Cosmonaut losses:

May 1960 Unnamed cosmonaut lost when his orbiting space capsule veered off course.
November 1960 The brothers picked up an SOS message in Morse code from a troubled spacecraft.
February 1961 Recorded the suffocation of a cosmonaut.
April 1961 Just prior to Yuri Gagarin’s flight, a capsule circled the Earth three times before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
May 1961 Weak calls for help from an orbiting capsule.
October 1961 A Soviet spacecraft veered off course and vanished into deep space.
November 1962 A space capsule bounced off the Earth’s atmosphere during re-entry and disappeared.
November 1963 Unnamed female cosmonaut perished on re-entry.
April 1964 Cosmonaut lost when capsule burnt up on re-entry. 

"The Judica-Cordiglia brothers remain adamant that they recorded lost cosmonauts. Standing in front of their unique library of recordings, Gian told me: 'Fifty years   ago, it wasn’t possible to build a simple computer that weighed less than a ton, yet we were firing men and women into outer space who were prepared to die the     loneliest of deaths. They were true heroes. And, thanks to radio, we know about their sacrifices.' He patted a shelf full of recordings. 'We must never forget             them.' "   

-Mike