A low hum, and bright white light flooding through his basement window, woke McKenzie from a deep sleep. Igor's barking didn't help any either. He blinked against the light for a moment, listened to the throbbing hum outside and then rolled over to go back to sleep. At that point he noticed that the mattress was further away than it should have been. He was floating-about six inches off the bed.

First, he stretched out his hand to touch the mattress and pillow; then he waved his hand in the air between the mattress and his bed, searching for anything that could be supporting him in the air. His increasingly frantic search was interrupted when the window opened by itself and he started floating toward it. This was crazy, some sort of a nightmare, he thought, but when he pinched himself, he felt the pain and nothing changed.

"I can't fit through that," he muttered to himself as his head began to push through the small basement window, half relieved that he could wait, floating there until someone came and helped him. But then McKenzie watched in shock as the window grew larger and larger until his entire body slid outside without any trouble. Once he was through it, the window shrunk back to its original size and then shut itself.

Looking up again, McKenzie blinked against the light until he could make out a huge, dark shape overhead.

A crowd of people gathered below him, drawn by the light-although the floating man might have had something to do with their interest too-making McKenzie grateful he never slept in the nude. He kept rising higher and higher above the heads of the onlookers.

"Okay, what's going on here?" a uniformed policeman demanded. "Why are you floating up there like that?"

"Ask them," McKenzie replied and pointed up. "This wasn't my idea. I think I'm being abducted by aliens. Could you call out the National Guard or someone?"

"Good point," the officer agreed as McKenzie rose a higher still. He pulled a radio off his belt, and opened a channel. A moment later he called up to McKenzie. "Sorry, mister, that there is a weather balloon that's pulling you up. When you get to the basket you'll find instructions on how to land it. That's what the Air Force Public Information Officer tells dispatch anyway. Nothing to be alarmed about, folks, this happens every day."

Several people laughed, and someone called out, "Hey, Rigby don't forget to get pictures."

By then, McKenzie had floated too high to hear much from the people watching him. Craning his neck to look up, he saw a huge, black, saucer-shaped vehicle with red and white lights blinking along the underside, just before the world blanked out.

McKenzie found himself lying on a long silver surface that looked like metal, but felt soft, like a cot. It was the same color as the walls, floor and ceiling of the room. Monitors, and computer screens of all sorts surrounded him. He looked down to find leads and IV tubes attached to his chest, arms and legs. There was the frame of what might be an opening in one wall, but it was also a solid silver mass and there was no doorknob. In fact, there was nothing else in the room, not even a button to push to call for room service.

A blob-the only thing he could think of to describe the tall, amorphous, brown mass that entered the room, oozed over to the cot-touched McKenzie on the forehead, then backed off. A second blob, this one blue, oozed into the room as well.

"We are the Borg. Resistance is futile," one of the things thought at him.

"No, you aren't," McKenzie said, puzzled. He'd seen enough episodes of StarTrek to know that Borg were people with funny wires sticking out of assorted body parts, not pretty colored blobs.

"That is, from what we have deduced from your entertainments, the appropriate greeting from a space faring race, such as ourselves, to a member of your species."

"Not even close. You are supposed to say 'Greetings, Earthling. We come in Peace.' Then you're supposed to say, 'Take us to your leader.'"

"Oh, right. Of course, then do we say, "We are the Borg"?

"Yes, then you say it. Now, do you wish to try it again?"

The brown blob cleared its throat…er…its thought pro-duction apparatus.

"Greetings Earthling. We come in Peace. Take us to your leader. We are the Borg. Resistance is futile."

"Got it. Turn this thing south, follow I-95 to Washington DC and I will point out our leader when we get there."

"Actually, Mr. Rigby comma McKenzie, we came to speak to you."

"Me?" McKenzie pinched himself again and was a bit disappointed to find that it hurt, again. For the first time he began to believe that the space ship and the blob creatures might be real. Either that or he was going to have to ask his psychiatrist to up his medication. "Why me?"

"Because you, Mr. Rigby, are a great philosopher and we wish to learn from your wisdom before we once again travel into the great beyond. We have been ship-bound for hundreds of generations. We still receive transmission from our home planet of Gygaxion daily, but at this point the educational reports are hundreds of years old.

"You see, when we first began to receive signals from your world about fifty of your planetary cycles ago, we were thrilled. At last, after all of our voyaging, we had found a sentient species that was not only a civilization of builders, but space farers as well. We could not understand, however, why a great Federation of planets, who had built state-of-the-art starships such as the Enterprise, could send a scientific mission, including a family with young, into space in such a substandard ship as the Jupiter Two."

"McKenzie laughed. "You didn't realize that was fiction?"

"No, not at that point. After many years of study, we did reach the conclusion that some broadcasts were meant strictly as entertainments, while the rest were informative. We have never had such broadcasts from Gygaxion, and we assumed, incorrectly, that your broadcasts were also educational only.

"Now, of course, we are aware of the mistake and we, the scientific community of this ship, in fact all Gygaxiennes on the home world as well, have questions, many questions, that we need to ask you, Mr. Rigby."

"Why me?"

"We have access to the computer transmissions known as the Internet as well as your space broadcasts, and we have studied fictions such as those that you write. You, of all the writers we have found, have not only stated much of our own philosophy, but have advanced the concepts one-hundred-fold. You, with your brilliance and wisdom, could be the only logical choice for us to contact with our pressing questions."

"I see." McKenzie responded craftily. "Of course, I am a busy man."

"You will be handsomely rewarded, Mr. Rigby. We will see to that."

"In that case, I suppose I could find some time in my schedule for you. Not that I meet space faring aliens everyday, mind you. What did you have in mind for the reward?"

"That we will leave up to you. First, I have always wanted to know, why were a group of humans, stranded on an island for years and why were they never rescued by other humans even though they had cameras and broadcast capability?"

"That was an entertainment. You see there are several ways that you can tell Earth entertainments from Earth educational broadcasting. Usually, in educational programming, the human addresses the camera directly as if he or she is speaking to the audience personally. In entertainments, the humans pretend the camera is not there."

"Ah, we had every faith in you, Mr. Rigby comma McKenzie, and it is wonderful to know that our faith was so well placed. We knew that your wisdom would clarify things.

"Second, in several of your writings, you define the field of pseudoscience correctly, but you do not delve into the related field of absurdity. Is there a reason for this?"

"You must be aware, that ninety-nine percent of human culture is based on absurdity? There is no need, when writing for my species to delve into it. It is understood by everyone, except those in power, that everything we do is absurd."

Several blobs applauded. McKenzie had not noticed them entering, but now there was a green one, an orange one and a chartreuse one.

"That is why we sought you out, not some public representative who does not realize this simple fact. We listen to political speeches all the time. What can be more absurd than that? Do these people not know this when they give the speeches?"

"Of course they know it. Politics is a game to see which candidate can tell the biggest lie. See, the bigger the lie, the more people believe in your ability to carry on the tradition of absurdity in politics, so the biggest liar wins."

"If people know this, why do they go along with it?"

McKenzie sighed. "It's intuitively obvious to anyone familiar with the science of absurdity. You see, humans want to believe in magic, you know, they want to believe that someone can wave this magic wand and make everything better again. Of course, this never happens in real life. Even if someone had the magic wand, they wouldn't use it like that. But, people still want to believe it, so that's why they believe in the politicians. Magical thinking, true, but there you have it."

"Absurdity. Pure absurdity. Then this also explains your news broadcasts?"

A screen came to life in one wall. The tape rolled to show a local newscaster looking into the camera. "Good evening. In our top story tonight a local man, security guard and sometime writer, McKenzie Rigby was caught and literally pulled from his home by a rogue weather balloon. Witnesses state that Mr. Rigby seemed to float out of his apartment and up to the balloon. The local Air Force Public Information Officer declined to be interviewed, but did release a statement suggesting that it is impossible to float in the air and the eyewitness reports of such were either people in need of psychiatric treatment or hallucinating due to leakage of helium from the weather balloon.

"Although landing instructions are clearly printed in the baskets of all weather balloons, this one was seen leaving the area at an extremely high rate of speed. The National Weather Service reports that this is not unusual for weather balloons, since they are equipped to travel at high rates of speeds from weather event to weather event. They also report that, occasionally, a rogue balloon will accidentally snag passers-by. Rogue balloons can also be difficult to land, but they assure us that eventually Mr. Rigby should be able to land the balloon. Members of the National Weather Service wish to speak to Mr. Rigby as soon as he lands for debriefing in order to make the weather balloon landing instructions more user friendly."

"Yes," McKenzie agreed with a completely straight face. "Our government believes that if they admit that other space faring civilizations exist and that they have visited this planet, the population will panic. A panicked population is to be avoided at all costs-apparently it's bad for business somehow-therefore they feel compelled to make up stories like that one. Now, of course, the population doesn't believe those stories, but they feel that if the government has enough time to create such obvious works of fiction, then it must have everything under control, so they don't panic. The logic behinds this escapes me, but it works."

"Thank you so kindly for putting that into perspective for us.

"Now. Next question. Which tastes better-Coke or Pepsi?"

"That is a matter of personal preference... Pepsi," McKenzie added quickly. "After all, 'It's the choice of a whole new generation,' you know."

"Yes, we know. But how can they be certain that the whole generation likes it?"

"They can't. Advertising slogans are just that. Absurd, logically impossible, but there."

"Then you would say that humans, for the most part, are illogical?"

"No, not at all. I think most people are strictly logical, except when it comes to communicating with other humans. That's where the absurdity and illogic comes in. It's human nature to exaggerate, to make oneself appear much better than someone else, to tell the biggest lie. In dealing with space faring races, such as yourselves, I hope we can do better, but I don't think so. It's also human nature to mistrust things we don't understand. If I did take you to my leader that would be the worst thing I could do for you."

It was hard to tell that they were confused from their facial expressions, probably because they didn't have any-faces that is-but the way their thoughts fluttered and flitted in his mind made their feelings absolutely clear.

"You have to give up all logic and even basic sanity to work for the government so you won't get anywhere with our leaders. They won't pass on any information and they will have weapons pointed at you the entire time. That's just the way it works. You must have seen that in our entertainments."

"Yes, but we had hoped it would be different in real life."

"Not a chance. When I do go home, I will have to tell the-Weather Service, or whomever they are, that I finally managed to press the right buttons to land this rogue balloon. They really should put better instructions in the baskets."

"They won't believe you."

"I know," McKenzie said with a sigh. "You folks hypnotized me to forget that I was ever on anything but a weather balloon. That is what they will believe."

"Absurd. Well, Rigby comma McKenzie we appreciate everything that you have done for us. Your explanations were everything we hoped they would be. We can safely report that we met you, the greatest philosopher of your world, and that nothing else is important. Now, your reward."

"Wait," McKenzie called out. "Before you do any secret surgeries on me, would you please answer a couple of questions?"

"Of course, but quickly as we must be going. There's a lot more space for us to explore."

"Okay," McKenzie thought for a moment. "Yeah, I gotta ask this first. Why do you keep calling me Rigby comma McKenzie? My name's McKenzie Rigby."

"Why to honor you of course. We call you by the name listed on that most high of all awards offered to a human-the name as it is printed on your paycheck."

McKenzie woke up after the weirdest dream. Something about rogue weather balloons. She shook her long, strawberry blonde hair and laughed, a tinkling sound that made her one of the most sought after stars in the history of Hollywood. Now all she had to do was get a better part than being stuck on a stupid desert island with nothing but bit players, and a cartoon voice-over.

"There we go, Igor, another masterpiece for the list. At least my loyal fans will get a kick out of it. Maybe I should have offered those aliens Wally the Weasel as an experimental subject. No one would miss him.

I don't believe it. They're complaining that I haven't finished a story and that Weasel is leading the pack.