When Mrs. Donna Wills went to her baby’s room to check on her one-year-old son, she fainted at the site that greeted her; he was floating above the crib, in a standing position looking down at her gurgling and smiling. When she came to, she rushed to him, grabbed him and held him close. “I must be losing my mind. He couldn’t have been floating in the air…but he was,” she said and put her son back in his crib, he rose up, she grabbed him, and, as she did, her husband came home, and she hurried down to meet him.
“Hi, Donna,” he said and kissed her. “How’s my family?” he said and took Bobby and held him. “How’s my boy?”
“Arnie, I want to show you something.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“Put Bobby down.”
“Okay. There y’ go Bobby,” he said and put him on the floor.
“Now, what do you want to show me?”
“Watch Bobby.”
As he watched, Bobby rose up to a standing position, smiled, gurgled, and went to his father, who held him. “Donna, what…? Uh, let ‘s go sit down before I fall down,” he said and they went into the living room. “What do we do about this, Donna?”
“I think we should take him to the…the…God, who would know about this?”
“Let’s start with Dr. Jones. He might know what to do?”
Donna was sitting with Bobby on her lap when Dr. Jones entered the examination room. “Hi, Arnie, Donna. What’s up with Bobby?”
“I’ll show you,” Donna said and put Bobby on the floor. Bobby gurgled, rose up and went to Dr. Jones, who held him.
“I…I don’t believe it. How does he do that?”
“We don’t know,” Dr. Jones, but we hoped you would know who might know?”
“The Air Force comes to mind. No. They’ll want to keep him so they can study him. The university has a para psychology department. I would go there. Wow. This is amazing.”
At the university, they demonstrated Bobby to a psyachrist/para psychologist, Dr. Mason. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Wills, this is an amazing phenomenon. Unfortunately I’m afraid I can’t imagine how or why your baby can fly. I wouldn’t know where to begin to figure it out. We deal with paranormal activity. If you thought your house was haunted we would investigate, but…uh, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Mason,” Arnie said, and they left.
The Wills sat in their car in silence for several minutes. “I guess we’ll have to hope he grows out of it as he gets older. What else can we do?” Donna said, and they went home.
As Bobby grew older, he didn’t grow out of it; he was still flying, and the Wills could never let him out of their site. They imagined that he would fly out of their reach. When he was five, Donna home-schooled him. She had appropriate teaching aids and soon Bobby learned so fast that she had difficulty keeping up with him. By the time he was eight, he was speaking Spanish and Russian fluently, and, by the time he was twelve, he was immersed in physics. When Bobby was fifteen, he was able to control his flying. He could still fly, but only if he wanted to. The Wills thought he was probably a genius, and sent him to an acclaimed private school. His teachers all agreed that they could not teach him anything because intellectually he was far above them, so he was sent to a university. By the time he was twenty, he had earned his doctorate and became known as a brilliant physicist. His peers admitted that they had difficulty understanding his theories.
When he was with his mother and father, he felt like a stranger. He felt that he wasn’t in the right place, but he couldn’t define what the right place was. When he was twenty five, he was given his own laboratory and a place to live on campus. No one bothered him. He sat alone for hours and thought, produced hundreds of scholarly papers, and, as time went by, his body changed. Each hand grew a sixth finger, and his arms became shorter. His legs became shorter, and he shrunk to four feet. His head grew a four-inch antennae over each eye. As his brain grew, his head grew to accommodate his growing brain. No one had seen Bobby in a year, so no one knew how he had changed.
The scientific community contacted the president of the university to request that he ask Bobby to give a lecture. The president contacted Bobby, who agreed, providing the lecture be held outside, and he deliver his lecture just outside the door of his apartment. His conditions were met and the day arrived. The greatest minds had gathered to listen to Bobby, and there was great anticipation. The time came, his apartment door opened, and he stepped out not looking at his audience, and went to his podium. There was a gasp from his listeners as they witnessed what they couldn’t imagine, someone who didn’t look human.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the scientific community, for several years, I have been changing and I have become what you see. For several years, I have felt like a stranger here on your planet. In fact, I was a stranger on your planet. I know now that I am from a distant planet where my brilliance is common. You have tried to understand my theories, but you could not because I and my kind are superior, and you are inferior. From the time I was a baby, I flew. No one knew how or why. Now, I know why. Look up. You can see an object. That is the vehicle that will take me home. It will not land; I will fly to it, and after I fly to it, your inferior planet and all life on it will disappear. We have decided that there is no justification for you to exist. Goodbye,” he said and flew like a bullet to the ship. The second he disappeared from site, earth exploded and the particles that were earth, flew in a million directions.
The End
Bio: While teaching speech and English at a community college, Mr. Greenblatt wrote short stories and plays, one of which won a reading at Smith College. After retiring, he wrote short stories, novellas, and plays. Several of his stories were published in on-line magazines, and others were published in print anthologies.