Bill is a good enough guy. I don’t think it’s fair that humans judge him and his people so harshly. They aren’t demons, the are just trying to survive. I don’t think any being is beneath taking such drastic measure to save their own species and lineage.
I met Bill face to face for the first time while swimming in a blue beam of light. His face was expressionless, grey and lacking empathy. His large glassy black eyes reflected my own confusion and horror at my inconceivable situation, and that was about all of the emotion that would be mustered from that stone cold face. Swimming and churning in the light, which seemed to have the consistency of ultra low-density water, I felt like a fish in a large glass cylinder, viewing the sterile surroundings of inexplicable form and incomprehensible technology. Then Bill nudged my arm and all went black and silent. That is about all I can recollect of our first encounter.
Though that was the first memory of our meeting, it certainly wasn’t the last. In fact, there are several hazy, dreamlike memories that follow that first meeting. Each time, Bill was there to observe and to analyze my every atom. It wasn’t painful, it wasn’t degrading. I don’t remember any rectal exams, though it’s more than likely since they rarely ever did this to women, and I was a man. It was mainly the men that were the subjects of this particular practice. It wasn’t the anus or the rectum that interested them, it was the prostate, along with its fluids.
Bill looked very similar to the rest of his kind. I only recognized him by his presence. It’s not explainable, and it’s not a feeling. Its just a knowing that this entity was around. No words were ever exchange, just impressions. Clear, concise impressions.
This is why Bill was know to me as “Bill.” He had no name, just presence. I had to call him something since I couldn’t comprehend identifying a being by their presence alone and had to give him a mark. He understood this and so he sent me the impression that, in order to more effectively study me, he had to accomodate my level of comprehension. Therefore, he gave me the name Bill to attached to his identity. Why he chose Bill, I don’t know. But I’m sure his was decision was based on generations of statistics and the most sound of reasoning.
His presence would be known sparsely through the next 7 years of my life. Just a patchwork of hazy memories and impressions. A flash here and there of bright lights, quiet humming and being meticulously observed while lying down.
During this time, I quietly questioned why I was the subject of such meticulous scrutiny, never revealing my experience to anyone. Some nights, I wouldn’t sleep, trying to remember just what happened whenever Bill was present, and to glean as many details as I could gather from my malfunctioning memory. The experiences after the first meeting never roused any emotion in me, and that is what was so horrifying. To not feel during such an incredible experience, but to simply be there, observing being observed. A human must have an emotional response to his experience to make any value judgements on whether what has happened was good or bad, right or wrong, happy or sad etc. These emotional responses just weren’t there during the observations and statistic collecting. I was the subject of a most rational of projects, and that was only thing that mattered.
It troubled me that, even though I should have been outraged by being treated like a lab animal, fearful and resistant, I wasn’t. Those emotions came after the fact, when the observation was done. I couldn’t fathom what was happening to me, and if what I had experienced was even real. It became a huge burden to bear.
I began to write everything down as I remembered it. I began to write down the questions I had, and to try to come to some sort of conclusion. My biggest question though, oddly enough, was “Who is Bill?”
