They’re looking for Leon.

I knew Leon.

He had a collapsed face, its frame softened by missing teeth from most of his mouth. With swollen gums, the teeth that remained were purple, with complicated edges.

He would push out his bottom jaw, at times when he would pause for conversation with others. Mostly he would pace and stomp on the dry dirt in tight circles in black, blown out sneakers, carrying library books in the crook of his arm while he carried on conversations with beings who seemed not to be there.

The books were always on sea monsters, his primary conversational fixation. Whether or not he believed in them was unclear. What he was aware of, was that he was waiting.

Leon, as he would tell, was a messianic figure in an interplanetary battle, a Luke Skywalker Jesus, on ice on earth until the moment he would be gathered as the keystone to secure lasting peace and stability in some critical section of the Universe.

Most would disregard Leon, perhaps poke fun and point as he talked “to himself”, paced in concentric erraticity. I had a moment and curiosity, myself having been some earthbound prophet, to listen with attention.

His certainty of his place was casual and authoritative.

——

In New Jersey, in 2024, space ships gathered. The peoples of the Bible, having no vocabulary to properly name the longer boats of the sky, gave human qualities, anthropomorphized machinery.

“Aliens” became “angels”…a circulating set of intertwined rings was called a being when, to our current understanding and vocabulary, they would just be called a space ship—rather than a god. Or drone.

So as internet speculation and theories populate Reddit, that scanning drones are seeking a smuggled nuclear weapon, or any other number of covert functions, including preparations for imprisonment, takeover, battle, bombing, surveillance, information and intelligence gathering by foreign entities or false flags, I scoff.

I know what they’re up to.

I know they’re looking for Leon.