You live in Texas. Cheap property begets even cheaper rent.

Your days are simple:
Go to work.
Go to HEB, go to Dollar General.
Get parts for the car you're fixing up.
Maybe get a drink.

Each night at 11:50 PM you begin your ritual:

You take a drive to the Bread Basket where you buy a bottle of Big Red.

You park your car by the now long abandoned Kingdom Hall and you turn on conspiracy talk radio, on 99.7.

And every night, the host greets you the same way.

/ Live from the high desert and the great American southwest, I bid you good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you may be on this great planet of ours../

You drink your Big Red, and settle in to your stories.

Sometimes when you're listening, you start driving north. No destination in mind, you just drive.

You often imagine the host is in the car with you. He's the only place you get your news from, part of you even sees him as a friend. (Though you'd never admit this.)

Tonight, after the first hour, you pull out of the Kingdom Hall and start driving.

At the top of the third hour, the lines open--each caller's energy more frenetic than the last.

"This is the Losing My Mind line, right?" they ask, at first shy, and then explode into a story:

First a vampire, then a time traveler from a parallel universe where the confederates won the Civil War.

Nothing too unusual for a conspiracy talk radio host.

And then you call in. You're not shy.

"I'm in love," you confess, "With an alien. You know Waylon Cassidy down here, right? Wrote all those books about Lemurians. He says my alien's a Nephilim. Not a real alien. An angel. Or maybe angels are aliens."

You pass exit after exit.

The host is compassionate to you, just like he was compassionate to all of his other callers, "And why is this alien causing you to lose your mind? Is she asking you to do something you don't want to do? Is it the culture clash?"

He takes you seriously in a way you know nobody else would, and the relief you feel from just being able to *say* this is immense.

"The simple fact that she doesn't love me back. I don't care that she's an alien," you tell him.

"How do you know she doesn't love you back? Well, let's clear something up first: is she back home or here on earth?"

"Here on earth, sir. And I know because... You just know these things, I think. I just want to forget about her."

"Are you regularly in contact with alien races?"

You launch into it... how you met her, why she's in TX, how you know about Pleiadian downloads but never received one yourself.

How you knew you loved her from the minute you met her.

And how maybe her being an alien is tangential to the whole mess, but it sure complicates things when you try to tell your church-going, god-fearing friends and family about it.

After a series of questions - how you know she's an alien, how you're so certain she'll never love you back - he agrees with you, and suggests you focus on healing your broken heart.

You hang up and you notice the bumper song is REO Speedwagon's Keep On Loving You.

You finally get off on Exit 415.

There are other calls throughout the night - a retired federal agent, something about remote viewing.

As the show wraps up the host says: "To the young man out there in Texas, remember, time heals all wounds. Even ones inflicted by extraterrestrials."

You feel different.

CHAPTER 2. MEETING THE ALIEN, PHAEDRA

Phaedra stole her name from an indie movie that came out when you were in middle school. Nobody noticed, but you did.

You met her at a little bookstore on The Drag, near the University of Texas.

She was reading Alien Agenda by Jim Marrs.

What does it feel like to meet an extraterrestrial, in the flesh?

You had seen the face of God himself— well, maybe not God (and God forgive the analogy).

But you could not understate what this moment—the very first moment you saw her—did to you.

Colors suddenly were sharper.
When you got back in your car, you *felt* the music on the radio, you didn't just hear it.
When you ate lunch, you could taste every ingredient.
And you hadn't even introduced yourself.

You started looking for her everywhere, and you started seeing her everywhere, too.

But it was never her. It was just her shadow.

The hope that you might run into her again one day is enough to keep you going. It propels you to wake up in the morning. You know it's ridiculous, but you're giddy at the prospect. Everything you do seems to be directed towards this goal.

You even ask the kratom-addled cashier at the bookstore about her. He doesn't know her name, but she comes in a lot. He suggests trying to manifesting her back. He says he'll ask his gf to light a candle. You leave before he tries to pitch you on magic.

You're a Christian.

And then one Tuesday morning, you're craving pancakes.

Right as you order, you see her.
Your heart flutters, your stomach drops.
The 10 seconds it takes for your server to write down "Gingerbread pancakes" feels like a lifetime.

You're overcome with... with something. You feel sick. You want to cry. Is it an overreaction? You don't know. You just know that feel something you haven't felt before.

Finally, you look up, and say something, from across the booth.

"Hi, how are you?"

And she smiles, and responds to you, like she's been waiting for you to say hello for as long as you've been wanting to say hello.

You two start talking. You can barely eat, in fact, you don't. You put down a $20 and move to her booth. She doesn't eat either.

You'll realize later that you've never seen her eat.

You two leave together, and find yourselves in another bookstore.

She comments that she likes your accent; you tell her you like her hair. You talk about the Pleaides, about the Gurdjieff work (you appreciate the irony), about how Austin is changing. About how people miss the Austin from 2013, 2008, 2005, but you miss the Austin from 1996.

You two keep walking. You're walking for hours. Up Lamar, through downtown, up around the university. Just north, no destination in mind. The weather doesn't bother you, nothing does.

Suddenly, it's 6 and you don't even remember where you parked your car.

As you're watching the sun set together, you take a risk.

You ask her a question that you know is a little out there.

"Do you know anything about starseeds?"

"No, what's that?"

You pull something up on your phone and hand it to her.

"I know it's weird, but I think this is you."

She's quiet for a moment.

She hands you back your phone.

Until, finally...

"I think you're right. That seems like me."

Phaedra becomes a regular fixture in your life.

You've been waking up for her since the moment you saw her, but now she propels everything you do.

Even when you're not with her, anything, everything feels fun-- buoyant--worth seeing the beauty in.

The two of you decide to see a silent screening of RHPS - that is a screening where people aren't allowed to sing along.

Somehow this experience proves worse than one that invites audience participation. The two of you laugh. This is so not your scene.

As the credits roll...

...you lean over and kiss her.

The lights are up now, and people start shuffling out.

She whispers in your ear that she wants to take your psychic energy. You don’t know what that means, exactly, but you’re game.

After weeks of beating around the bush of courtship you spend the night together.

You’ve been with women before— but not like this. Not that she’s showing off any crazy or spectacular moves. It’s just, you feel the night more viscerally. In your heart. It hasn’t been this way before.

You’re simultaneously having an in-body and out of body experience.

You confess your love.

She looks at you and smiles and just goes to sleep. You’re so high strung you can’t fall asleep yourself. And you notice her leave around 4 AM. She doesn’t say anything.

After a day of uncharacteristic silence you receive a long text from her. She’s very honest with you. She feels a mix of regret and shame over what happened. She needs space.

It goes against all the conventional wisdom you have about women.

But then again, she’s not a woman, she’s an alien.

And she scooped the “you” part of you out. Music becomes noise again. You abandon work on the Charger. Food doesn’t taste good. And everything makes you sad. You’ve gone back to seeing her in everything. But every time you see a shade of her in something, it’s like a jump scare.

Eventually this feeling numbs. You start doing things again.

Your days are simple:
Go to work.
Go to HEB, go to Dollar General.
Get parts for the car you're fixing up.
Maybe get a drink.