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slim, athletic build with daily exercise routines and by avoiding red meat, and I drink water from small, expensive, corrugated plastic bottles. From the way I dress to the way I vote I am methodically conservative in style, and I carry a keen business sense by which, like an aggressive newspaper reporter, I let nothing stand in my way.
    If my parents had not sought careers in the film industry early on, I can only envision myself encompassed within a life of priesthood and pasta in a Queens, New York neighborhood where they hailed from, where their parents would still be hailing Mary and taxi cabs from if they were alive today. This would probably have been better for my own eventual good, and my folks would’ve given me brothers and sisters rather than being so excessively preoccupied with making film features. Instead, I was raised in and around Los Angeles, and if it had not been so, I would not be where I am today.
    And I wouldn’t be telling this story.
    Over the years, I have been regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities concerning the unknown, and more precisely on the subject of UFOs. Most of you may find yourselves familiar with my public television series, with my books and lectures, or through distastefully written one-liners by late night talk show hosts. I hold a Ph.D. in Psychology from Hawthorne University and have undergone extensive studies in the fields of physics, parapsychology and ancient history. I have worked in eleven different countries and speak five languages fairly fluently. When people think of the cosmos, they think of Sagan; when they think of UFOs, they think of me.
    I owe much of my success to only a few very human simplicities. I know how to appeal to the common sense of the average skeptic by remaining candidly honest and persuasively rational. An open mind has earned me the respect of the fanatical. My success could never have been possible, however, if it were not for that basic universal human trait we all share differently: a belief in the unknown.
    The way I see it is this: I have always believed in the existence of myself. Before I could ever believe in the unknown or in anything else, I became aware I was alive. This self-awareness is a kind of introductory courtesy bestowed upon us by the powers that be, a “welcome-to-the-planet” free parking pass for a global theme park that still requires “E” tickets if you wish to enjoy the rides.
    The second thing I ever believed came along so quickly afterwards, my awareness and I were left with scarcely time enough to become remotely acquainted.
    That second belief was, you guessed it, the unknown.
    The unknown hit me as early as when I coughed out my last spew of womb water upon the hospital floor, allowing me that first inverted view of objects and beings I then could not understand.
    It is 2:27, Tuesday morning, January 3rd, 1995.
    It seems as though only several hours ago I was forced to become self-aware all over again.
    And, as surely as I am alive, the unknown was swift to catch up behind.
     
    ***
     
    When the truth of the events I am about to describe were made known to me, my rattled senses still hadn’t adjusted to the remarkable realities of what I was already experiencing. It was as though some maniacal prankster had subtly slipped LSD tabs between my lips as I slept, soon rousing me into this madness.
    That was how I felt when I did awake, quite literally, on what should have been a dismally rainy Sunday evening, the twenty-eighth of August, 1994. But it wasn’t. And for that matter, nothing else was as it should have been, either.
    I awoke in startled alertness to the chill of an icy breeze, and to the pale contortions of my own arms which had cradled my buried face a moment before. I found myself struck the next instant with the impression of having been jolted out of a nightmare. I felt both distressed and exhausted just then, as though I had somehow overslept, perhaps having slept for days.
    No; I