Volume 8, Issue 9, page 3

Vo Z . VIII - No. 9

X
JAN. - FEB. , 1962 f, Be ERec~usant Voice of 'Th. Infinites'

for Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn,
M

Plut,

4 Pluto, and ZydokumzruskehJen

Published monthly, except for the combined January-Pebruary
and POLICY: Don't take it so damn' seriously.
the July-August issues. ar 207 N. Washington, Enid. Okla. The
infiniteness of Man is not reduced
Editorial office: 2522% North Monroe, Enid, Okla. to a"split
infinity " by wars, taxes,
or"experts" who seek to sell him what
Mail Add.,ess: Postoffice Box 528. Enid. Okla. he already has in
an infinite amount.
Sub-Policy: We reserve the right to change
Subscription PrJce: $2 a year, $5 for 3yea-,s. Single copies
?3# our minds f r o m I ssue to issue. or
even from page to page, if we desire.

Second class postage paid at Enid, Oklahoma Sub-Sub-Policy: Each
Man has the inherent
right to be his own and only"Author-

EDITOL, The Rev. Mr. Dr. ALPHIA OMEGA HAR 1-2. D.D., D.
Sen., ityll-with his wife's permission.
. T'f -Sub-Sub-PolicY. We have no objection to

P.Scn., B.Scn HDA, HCA. et al d n initum ad nauseum Sub

PUBLISM: ALICE AGNES HART, 1-1. HCA. ssc., WFE Lbrn ETC. I I e
ducated guesses about Man 'a d a a'
tiny - if there's no price tag to it,

ADVgRTISING--Payable In advance. Write for *rates. copy and
pay- and if the guesser has no objection to
ment must reach us 45 days prior to insertion date. our guessing
that he's only guessing.

THE EDITOR HAS A MIDNIGHT VISITOR -- A FANTASY

'D BEEN editing and rewriting stories about the February
planetary show all afternoon and evening-and it was nearly
midnight. I was tired. Several cups of coffee had failed to prop
open eyes that drooped and wanted to stay closed. I
leaned my head over my typewriter--just for a moment.

Suddenly. I was aware that I was not alone. Someone had quietly
opened the office door and stood beside me.
They put a hand on my shoulder, shaking me awake.

"The world doesn't realize half the danger it's in," said a
voice, which was very low and sad. Since he stood above
the shade of the desk lamp, I could not see his face.

"They'll think they realize it if they read all of this," I
replied, pointing to th e pile of papers on the desk beside
me. "What could happen that some of theseweeping willies haven't
already vromised""

The"voice"moved back into the shadows.

"Has anyone told of the Little Men?" it asked. "Do you know that
right now, this minute, the world, even your
own orchard, is being peopled with an enemy that can wipe out all
life on earth?"

I stepped tothe wall switch and turned on the overheads. In the
glare of the brighter illumination, a tall, elderly
man-with the wrinkled face of a baby-stood staring back at me
thru little, piggish eyes.

"What are you doing out this time of night?" I asked. "And how'd
you get in?" I was trying to figure out how I
could have slept so soundly during my slight doze. The little
clock on the shelf said 12:05'. so I hadn't been asleep
long.

"It's all in this manuscript," he said, handing me a sheaf of
papers I hadn't noticed before.

"Oh, no!" I said. "Not to

night. I'm tired. And besides, The ABERREE... "

But I was talking to empty space. As quietly and as mysteriously
as he had come, the man was gone.

I slammed the papers down on my desk, turned off the fire and the
lightp, and went into the house and to bed. I'd
had enough. When I got to seeing " v i sitors " who tal ked of
Little Men, it was time for some rest. And sleep.

Maybe there wasn't anyoneand I DID dream it. But today, when I
again started work on the material I 'd been
rewriting last night, I received one of the shocks of my life.
There, just where I'd , 'imagined " I Id tossed it, were a
few sheets of paper, folded together. I picked them up-began to
read. If I werethe gullible sort, my hair probably
would have stood on end - if I had any hair. And if it weren't
for the things that can 't be explained, no one would
know how close I am to Questioning my sanity. Because-to add to
the mystery of the "visitor" and his odd
appearance and disappearance, the typing looked as if it had been
done on my machine on the type of paper I'd been
using all evening!

Briefly, however. the manuscript said that braided rays from the
converging planets, mated with iconemistic
iodians in the atomic fallout, are incubating in the roots of
growing grain. In the spring, they will rise inside the
wheat stems, maturing into countless " Littl e Men". who wil I be
f reed when the plants' stems are opened by
reapers during barbest. These almost microscopic "LittleMen",
like an army of intelligent ants, will swarm over the
land. Man will find his electricity shorted, his machinery
inoperative, his packaged goods destroyed on
grocers' shelves--and since we

have reached the point.where we depend on these things for
survival, famine and panic will
decimate the earth in a short time - and a b
rother-againstbrother policy will complete the
job in less than a decade

Truly, it was science-fictiW in a will-happen wrapper. But no
name was signed to it. Not even
"Mr. Anony Mouse".

"Nuts!" I said, ripping the manuscript into confetti. I carried
it out to the
alleydropping it into the trash barrel.

Which reminds me of a book I once read, the theme of which
was:"What man can imagine, man
can create:' So, if I imagined all the above - and I don't now
have the manuscript to prove
tome that it DID have physical evidence-for awhile, at
least-who's creating what? If I'm
creating it, I can only suggest the following cure:

Don't ANYONE cut grain this year! Leave it in the field. This not
only will keep the
"Little Men" imprisoned in the grain stalks, but when the grain
heads bend over - which they
eventually will do - the beards of the grain will puncture the
stalks and stab to death the
army of"intelligent ants" incubating inside.

This has other advantagPs. If none of the grain is harvested,
this may end the huge
surplus which is choking America's storage facilities. And the
rotting stubble will return a
degree of fertility to the land not to be found in chemical
fertilizers.

We don't expect anyone to take this too damn' seriously, any more
than we expect them to
believe anything else in The ABERREE. In fact e had an auditorial
written iowr this month
onthe foolishness of believing-but it'll wait. After all, we
don't have planetary
conjunctions very often-an

eveh more rarbly do we have strange visitors at midnight.