The Society of Misfit Stories Presents...May 2019

An Oral History of the Crash of the Pisces

By Kevin Deenihan

ONE: CRASH

STEPHEN HUNTER: It was a really nice day out, pre-spaceship crash.

MICHAEL ABRAMS: It was about ten in the morning. Clear skies, mild. Los Angeles morning.

JERI O’NEAL: Just a totally normal day up until ten. Hold on. Ten oh five exactly.

SCOTT BREEN [JPL-NASA analyst]: Afterwards we got a ton of shit from everyone. A ton of shit. I know people assume we have some kind of monitoring station like in the movies, big banks of monitors, watching the skies. Well, we don’t.

ABRAMS: It would’ve been nice to have some warning. Totally clear day, you’d think someone would spot an incoming bright silver fucking spaceship before it crashed practically at my feet. NASA, looking over at NASA right now.

The Pisces came in on an eastern heading, directly towards the LAX northern runway.

CAROLINE GRESHAM: I was a passenger. Well, I was supposed to be a passenger. I was at the Southwest terminal. I know that everyone gave NASA a ton of shit for not seeing it coming, but I don’t blame them at all. One moment, normal day, the next, a bright silver ball the size of a stadium is skidding across the runway.

DONALD GIORGINI [Southwest Airlines VP]: We had just put something like a billion dollars into a completely renovated terminal. We had fifteen gates going. And then a spaceship destroyed the entire runway. Which we had also partially paid for.

ERIN CAPPELL: We were supposed to land on that runway. I was coming in on a United flight, from, uhhhh, I can’t even remember where. We even had the wheels down, I was looking for that big donut store with the big donut that’s right near LAX. Suddenly we’re climbing hard. People are looking around. After we get back up the pilot comes over the intercom to say Everyone, we nearly hit a spaceship. This is not me making a joke. Then we went back to — Phoenix. That’s where we came out of. Phoenix.

The Pisces skidded across the runway, narrowly missing several airplanes, then continued through the fence onto the neighboring Sepulveda Boulevard.

BREEN: Still not sure what the hell happened on Sepulveda Boulevard. We’ve got a thousand people working on the Pisces now and probably five hundred of them are on Sepulveda Boulevard. We’ve made calls to philosophy professors over Sepulveda Boulevard.

THOMAS YEOMANS [Interview with LA Times, April 27th, 2017]: I am pretty confident I died, you know? Like I got — memories of it? Big grey billiard ball coming out of nowhere while I’m driving around and then — smoosh. Like I remember the car crackling, you know? People screaming? But none of that happened.

CAROLINE SKILES [Air Traffic Controller]: I still get headaches about — I don’t even like to say it. Sepulveda. Yeah, it gives me headaches. First, I’m watching a big death sphere plow up my beautiful runway and hurtle towards eight lanes of traffic, the next... the roads are clear. Ow.

BREEN: The red lights that held up traffic broke immediately after it happened. There are five video cameras that should have taped the area, none of them worked. So this spaceship just rolls on through, doesn’t squish anyone. I don’t know. It’s Sepulveda.

LARRY BROWN: All I know is, I have photos dated 9:57 A.M. on my camera, of planes landing. I have no idea where they came from. I decided not to go plane spotting that day. I stayed home. I did. I stayed home. I didn’t go out.

The ship rolled into long-term parking, destroying an estimated five hundred cars, before finally coming to a stop midway between Aviation and Sepulveda. The time was 10:07 A.M.

JOHN GREEN: They eventually figured out that my car was the one it stopped on. Like, point-blank, middle of the big ball, final resting place. My 2006 Subaru. I remember turning on the TV and seeing the, you know, the geography and thinking to myself, Did I park in Lot 1 or 2?

Steven Hunter worked at a nearby law firm as a secretary. Michael Abrams worked as an airport police officer.

ABRAMS: I was not the closest one to the crash. There was a whole line of taxi drivers between me and it. They all got in and drove off. Then I was the closest one to the crash.

HUNTER: My office was on the fifth floor. I had a really good view of the ship. I mean, obviously I went downstairs. I didn’t decide to walk to it until I was outside.

ABRAMS: Staying close to that thing, hardest decision I ever made. And I definitely wasn’t getting closer. I don’t know. I had my car running, I figured if it moved, I could bolt. Little green men came at me. I told myself I was establishing a perimeter. That’s what you do, you establish a perimeter.

HUNTER: Alright, so that’s what everyone wants to know. Why did I walk to the ship. Here’s what I realized. One of two things was going to happen. If they were hostile, I and everyone else on the planet were probably already dead. Certainly, those of us within a mile of the landing zone. If they WEREN’T hostile, then the greatest risk came from, you know, an E.T. scenario where you’ve got the various armed forces overreacting. And if THAT was the case, better they meet someone friendly, immediately. See?

JERI O’NEAL: The Navy is in San Diego, of course. And Oxnard I think. The Marines, also near San Diego. I have no idea where the nearest Army base is. Oh, Coast Guard. Yeah, I’m sure they’re around but who knows where. Probably the coast. So that left America’s Air Force as the nearest agency in force, just south of LAX. And I just was on base when the internet lit up. Our nation’s military first learned of the landing when the LAX traffic twitter feed posted UFO LANDING AVOID AREA SIGNALS ARE INOPERABLE.

BEN BROWN: For some reason we had all gathered at 98th Street [a half-mile south of the impact] to gawk at the thing. Like, that was the line. If someone crossed the street we would’ve stared at them like they were crazy. No, man, that’s too close. Get back here where it’s safe. And we’re all taking pictures. Texting. God help us. And then this guy in brown wingtips and one-hundred-percent banana republic walks across the street and heads for the thing.

Five minutes had gone by. It was 10:12 A.M.

JERI O’NEAL: So the LAX post is mostly coordination with defense contractors plus a bunch of satellites. And despite all our satellites we just switched on local news and saw the helicopter feed.

TIMOTHY JACKSON: Lucky me, I was in the first helicopter on scene for NBC. You know what happens to helicopters in disaster and science-fiction flicks? They crash. That’s what they’re there for. Nice lil’ pinwheel. Laser blasts, fireballs, shock wave, every single time if you are in a helicopter you are a dead man. Helicopter crashes are just really spectacular. I got as close as the 405 [freeway] and then just could not get myself to go any closer. Meanwhile some idiot in weekday khakis is walking right up to it holding a notepad.

HUNTER: I wonder what happened to the notepad. I know I had it when I walked up.

ABRAMS: Two things happen while I am half in and half out of the patrol car, motor running, trying to get in touch with someone worthwhile on the radio. First, the spaceship opens up. Part of the ball opens up, descends, it’s now a ramp. Second of all, some guy is breaching my perimeter and walking right up to the thing holding a fucking notepad. And he has pens in his shirt pocket. This is the guy that is going to make first contact. Pens. Shirt pocket.

HUNTER: I still have the pens.

O’NEAL: We’ve got a team of ten people. And the commanding officer, Major Arteste, he turns to us and says, really breathless, we’re the only ones who can handle this. Lets load up. And I think, load up on WHAT?

MAJOR WILLIAM ARTESTE [May 5, 2019 Congressional Testimony]: My reasoning was this. The Air Force has authority over aerial threats, and we are specifically tasked with Space Command. My group had multiple astrophysical and engineering degrees. If anyone was prepared to answer this threat, it was us.

O’NEAL: I mean, yes, I know a great deal about global positioning satellites. Aliens, not so much. And we certainly weren’t the best available to shoot a bunch of aliens, which is why I got very worried when the Major said, lets lock and load, people!

MAJOR ARTESTE: [May 5, 2019 Congressional Testimony]: The rumor that I said lock and load or any similar comment is categorically false. If I said anything taken that way, in the heat of the moment, it was for the purposes of raising morale.

HUNTER: I walked right up to the ship. No one stopped me. No one was there. It was — silver, I guess. That doesn’t quite do it. There was a texture to it. Like looking at silver, but if you moved your head, you’d see ridges and lines that weren’t there straight on. I don’t know. Texture and colors... it sounds petty when you say it out loud but something about it was... well, okay, alien. I took the door opening up as a good sign.

ABRAMS: I yelled at him and he waved back at me. He WAVED at me.

HUNTER: Look, I’m glad that Michael came aboard. Now, I am glad. At the time, the very last thing I wanted was someone armed on that ship. So I just ignored him. I didn’t expect him to run after me.

ABRAMS: I don’t think I would’ve done it if that news helicopter hadn’t been right there. Just let him get probed. But I just pictured some meeting when the whole world is a big fiery inferno and my boss saying, so, you just let khakis walk on board and try and sell insurance to fucking aliens. So I ran after him.

HUNTER: He ran after me!

ABRAMS: This guy sees me, comical look of shock on his face. Jesus christ. Big spaceship, and the thing that surprises him is a cop actually about to do something to him. White male privilege in a god damn nutshell.

JACKSON: I literally made the helicopter shake, I was so worked up. Don’t go in the ship, people! You are not the authorities!

O’NEAL: We’re all holding guns and we pile into two vans. The Major gets in the driver’s seat. We paused for a brief meeting, and he ordered me to call UCLA and see who they could get to help. I’m like, alright. Biology? Linguistics? Physics? Finally, I just called the general line and said that the military was calling and we’d like to talk to a UFO expert. Why not.

ROSIE HENDERSON [Professor of Anthropology, UCLA]: Afterwards I made some effort to find out who at UCLA transferred them to the Anthropology Department, which ended up being me. If I find out who did it, I will punish them.

O’NEAL: Anthropology seemed as good as anything. I asked her to come down.

HENDERSON: To this day, I do not answer the phone unless the number is already in my phone. And it better read HUSBAND or DAUGHTER on the display. Anyway, I said yes. I asked if they wanted me to grab some historians and some economists or maybe a French professor while I was heading to my car.

BREEN: We do have a rapid response team now. Biologist, physicist, astrophysicist, Marine response team, linguist, several doctors. Anthro... no. No disrespect meant. I, personally, studied Sociology for my first few semesters.

TWO: INSIDE

ABRAMS: So, I am inside a spaceship. And of course, the door slams shut.

HUNTER: I got a little concerned when the door shut.

PRESIDENT MCSHERRY [In CONSIDERABLE BULK: THE MILITARY AND THE PISCES] The door slamming shut was the first time we seriously considered use of weapons. Everything up to that had seemed so... crash-landing. This was not an ominous, Independent Day saucer hovering over my residence. Until they took two Americans on board, and the door closed.

HUNTER: The last thing I had wanted was a gun on board. And now there was a gun on board. I told Michael to throw the gun away.

ABRAMS: You know what else I wonder? What if I had just cuffed Stephen and waited at the entrance? Obviously, I did not. I was thinking... here we are at their doorstep, beating the shit out of each other. Hi, welcome to Earth.

HUNTER: Anyway, I said I was going to look around inside.

ABRAMS: At the time I was really fixated on the possibility that this was some kind of, uh, alien test. Two guys on board, shut the door. And then we have to be representatives of all mankind or something like that. Or breed. You know.

HUNTER: I yelled HELLO? One time. That’s it. And ANYBODY THERE?

ABRAMS: You know, to this very day, I don’t think Stephen gets why I held on to my gun. It wasn’t for gunning down xenomorphs. It was for him, and maybe for me.

HUNTER: So, the interior of the ship. It was... bright. But not like, clean bright white light. It was more of a green... green-ish yellow. We were in a large open area, and it was bright enough that you couldn’t really say how big the area was.

ABRAMS: I know Hunter saw green. I saw red, red-pink. And it was still bright. I was told in an interview once that there were researchers making hay of how Hunter and I saw two different colors. Like... he saw green because he had a positive attitude and green reflected positivity, and I saw red... [laughs]. Yeah. I’m sure that aliens went to the trouble of finding out how stoplights worked in America.

HUNTER: We just kind of... stopped arguing, since it was pointless, and walked into the ship. I kept calling out, which I know Michael hated. The sound would echo really strangely. But nothing, no response.

ABRAMS: I tried to use the radio. No reception. That was the worst. That was a full-bore here-comes-the-probe moment. Why bother blocking out radio reception? Anyway, I got out my phone and that didn’t work either. I started taking photos.

HUNTER: Michael started taking pictures, so I did too.

ABRAMS: I bet he took a selfie.

HUNTER: I absolutely never did. Did Michael really say that? Come on. I appreciated the seriousness of the moment!

ABRAMS: I did a panorama shot, too. It came out nice except that Stephen came out like a big caterpillar. All smeared. I am sure I just did it wrong, but I am told a bunch of scientists got really worked up when they first saw it. And yes, my photos show red and his are green. I don’t worry about that.

O’NEAL: So we two vans of pasty analysts clutching sidearms raced off to stop the aliens. Dickey is crying, in the back. Riley is giving this really awkward speech to her sons about how to grow up right. I am thinking about how my cats are at home, so I text my Mom to ask her to take my cats after I’m dead.

PATRICE O’NEAL [Mother]: At no point did she text WHY she was going to die. I should’ve taken her cats anyway. She lost cat privileges that day.

O’NEAL: We busted up Sepulveda, which was a mistake, because traffic was at a standstill. In spite of everything, there were still people trying to get to the airport and make their flights.

SKILES: Of course, we were still sending flights out! As far as we knew the thing was going to explode! We got fifteen flights out of there in fifteen minutes and we thought we were being heroes. Like, there’ll be a monument for us when they rebuild the airport, called The Tin Pushers, for evacuating X number of women and children and I guess men before the lasers started. Instead we all got a tremendous amount of crap for not closing the air space! It’s like they never saw the Battle of Hoth!

O’NEAL: The Major tries to honk his way through the Sepulveda tunnel. That fails. He got out of the car and pulled out his gun and tries to fire a dramatic shot into the air to, I guess, clear the way? Luckily the safety was on. He stares at the gun, fumbles around with it. Then he got back in the car, honked the horn a bit more, and said try and get some more experts out of UCLA. Oh, okay.

MAJOR ARTESTE [Congressional Testimony]: The tunnel being blocked, we preceded westbound on Imperial, then northbound on Pershing. The time was 10:20.

HUNTER: Can I say something dumb? The fact that the interior was all crystals and big airy spaces... it was comforting. Like, if we were looking at black metal, big scary sigils, yes, I would’ve been more concerned. That’s very Klingon. Or Borg, very Borg. Or Geiger... or Lovecraft. It’s always dark. And this wasn’t, and I appreciated that.

ABRAMS: It worried me, that we didn’t see anything that was, I don’t know, some kind of machine? I am not a highly imaginative man by nature. I was not looking to conjecture, because that would’ve scared me even more. But it was like we were walking through one big carved-out gem, it was very warm inside, and I did not like it. I turned to Stephen and said something like, hey, what are we doing, exactly, uh, you?

HUNTER: It was getting uncomfortable that we hadn’t introduced each other. The right moment hadn’t arrived, and then I guess it had passed.

ABRAMS: He knew my name. Well, my last name, it’s on my shirt. I kept waiting for him to volunteer it. Finally he says, hey, I’m Stephen, by the way. Stephen Hunter. And he comes over to shake my hand. Yes, I hesitate.

HUNTER: I am still disappointed that he hesitated. As far as we all knew, we were being evaluated as representatives of humanity.

ABRAMS: He got mad at me when I didn’t shake his hand. He says, Really? You’d condemn humanity? Just like that? That pissed me off. I had a lot of things I’ve been meaning to this guy, and I started to tell him them.

HUNTER: Michael got mad. I still have my hand out. When Michael gets mad he makes lists. Number one, what the hell do I think I’m doing rushing aboard an alien vessel in stupid-ass pants and with a god-damn notepad. Two, do not yell at a police officer who is trying to do his job on an alien vessel. He kept saying alien vessel each time, really heavily. Like, Hunter! we are on board an ALIEN VESSEL and you’re playing god damn Star Trek make-believe games!

ABRAMS: There we are aboard an alien vessel and he is giving me shit about not shaking his stupid hand. I gave him a top six reasons why he should be glad I wasn’t going to cuff his hands to a piece of crystal.

HUNTER: So yeah, we’re screaming at each other when we find the alien.

THREE: ALIEN

BREEN: I can’t talk about the alien.

HENDERSON: Nope, cannot talk about the alien.

CIA REPORT: [September 20, 2017]: XXXXXXXXXXX greyish, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

PRESIDENT MCSHERRY: For now, our scientists are still carefully surveying what we know about the alien. In due time, we will all know more.

ABRAMS: Well, he was greyish. Light grey. Totally naked. Shit, I don’t really know if he was naked. But I certainly didn’t see any clothes. Two weeks after all this happened I woke up in the middle of the night and just realized, just like that, he was totally, buck-naked. Didn’t occur to me at all at the time. I’m sure Hunter was all over that.

HUNTER: Did I realize he was naked? I mean... no. I guess now that you mention it, he was naked, huh? I didn’t see any genitals so it never occurred to me. Lord knows how the alien procreated, right? I think if I had seen a big floppy thing on the outside I would’ve realized something was going on, but I didn’t.

ABRAMS: Anyway, he was greyish. Fish scales on both sides, reddish fish scales. Big head. Huge head. Huge eyes. Not too far off from classic alien.

HUNTER: Very Roswellian with a hint of sea creature. Big, though. Maybe seven feet.

ABRAMS: No arms. I guess not what we’d consider arms.

HUNTER: I still wonder about the lack of arms. That just doesn’t make much sense. You need arms to do things. I still wonder if they were maybe severed in the crash or if the lack of arms explained the crash. Because it’s hard to fly a spaceship with no arms.

ABRAMS: I see Hunter scribbling madly in his notebook. He writes NO ARMS? like he’s going to forget this moment. What’s the word? Epochal. Epochal moment. I don’t think you’re gonna forget. Anyway, in retrospect, at that moment I forgave him for getting on board the spaceship. He was just a goober.

O’NEAL: We came around the west side of LAX, near the beach, and then whipped around the front end. Major Arteste has the radio going, and the news guy in the helicopter is narrating the scene. Suddenly he started talking about US. Two identical white vans appear to be approaching from the north side... And then for no real reason, Artest starts juking the van from side to side, serpentine, just to get the radio guy worked up, which he does.

JACKSON: To this day, one of the weirdest moments of the entire scene. I heard our guy say he appears to be... swerving, serpentining, and I just started giggling. You can hear it on the broadcast.

O’NEAL: Meanwhile, I had managed to assemble a UCLA task force. Our anthropologist, a biologist, a molecular cell biologist, a historian who ran into the anthropologist and decided to come with, a physicist, and eight chemists. I reached them during a conference meeting.

HENDERSON: We met up in the faculty parking lot and everyone but me was amped. The historian was especially excited. And here I am with my useless training in small group human dynamics which is completely worthless. I ended up writing a paper on the dynamics of the Research Team, as we called ourselves, once Lambda Team was voted down for team name.

HUNTER: The alien was clearly hurt. Hurt real bad. Moving, but just a little, and oozing blood. Or fluid, I guess.

ABRAMS: We both knelt down. The alien kind of looked at both of us. There was a big pool of stuff underneath it. I wish I was some sort of scientist so I could tell you what it was doing there. It was just a big room, with a bunch of corridors winding in and out of it. No machinery, no nothing.

HUNTER: I told Michael that we had to help him.

ABRAMS: I was scared. All I could think of was infection. I did not want to touch alien blood. I’m sorry.

HUNTER: Michael gives himself a really hard time that he didn’t pick up the alien.

ABRAMS: I should’ve been the one to do it. I told myself that I needed to be able to get to my gun or something. That was a lie. I had a friend with AIDs when I was a lot younger and it really put something between us — I know that was at the back of my mind. I was just scared.

HUNTER: We didn’t really discuss it. I just sort of, you know, picked him up. He or she or it... he. Is this going to be one of those interviews where we talk about pronouns?

ABRAMS: Before we go any farther, the alien is an it. That is an it. I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I’m not going to get in trouble like Hunter did.

HUNTER: [August 30th, 2018 Interview with Jezebel]: Look, I consider myself a feminist, but it’s just a he. I’m using the term generically. Like, guys. No, look, here’s what you don’t get.

ABRAMS: He picked him up, really awkwardly. This kind of... fluorescent goo is streaming down onto his pants. I felt a little bad making fun of the pants earlier.

HUNTER: The military ended up taking those pants.

ABRAMS: We both paused. We’re waiting for something to happen. The alien is still moving a little bit. Lord knows where hi— its pulse is. I say something like, lets get to the exit, and I realize there is no exit.

The time was 10:29 A.M.

FOUR: OUTSIDE

BROWN: We were all standing around. I guess I’m surprised how many of us were just standing there, filming on our phones, taking pictures, talking to other people. The sane thing to do was to get in the car and get out of there. We just stood there. I eventually went inside only because I was hungry, and I came back out again. Just staring at this big silver ball that kind of looked like the epcot center.

CPT STEVEN HADDAD [Airport police]: Well, we made a perimeter. That’s the most important thing.

JOHN GREEN [Firefighter]: Gosh, were we nervous. We staged over near Sepulveda. I had expected a mass casualty event. And then no one was hurt, which meant there wasn’t a whole lot for us to do except stare at that big ball that looked sort of disneyworld-y. And worry about it. I reminded them that the aliens in Signs — that M. Night Shyamalan movie? — that they were vulnerable to water. And one of the other guys looked at me and said oh boy.

HADDAD: We had a hard time with jurisdiction. I was very gratified that we had a big response from LAPD, from CHP, pretty much every unit in Westchester. We had a nice blue line around them. I took charge on the basis that one of our units was evidently inside the big christmas ornament, but we were still glad to see the military turn up.

O’NEAL: The cops waved us through, and it suddenly occurs to me — they’re relieved. They think that we’re gonna take over.

MAJOR ARTESTE: [Congressional testimony] We liasion’ed with Captain Haddad, senior officer on the scene, and took up a position where the two individuals had entered the vessel while we awaited the arrival of the science and behavior team.

O’NEAL: We all roll up and spill out. We’re all pasty undersized nerds with guns that we don’t have holsters for. I left mine in the van. We all stare up at this thing, this big pinball globe, and I ask what we’re going to do. I suggest — and it was a joke, it was clear from the tone of my voice that it was a joke — that we can figure out the height if we see what the length of the shadow is. Major Arteste turns to me and says, absolutely straight-faced, that’s a great idea, O’Neal.

ABRAMS: So, we’re lost, and we are holding a dying alien. I assume he’s dying. He definitely looks dying.

HUNTER: I never felt like we were lost. We were just disoriented. I had an idea.

ABRAMS: He says something like, ‘hey, I bet this ship responds to their touch." I point out, he doesn’t have any arms. Or hands. He does have what look like feet and I assume that that’s what Stephen is gonna try, when he practically slams the guy’s head into a wall.

HUNTER: It was a very gentle touch.

ABRAMS: Imagine my surprise when it works.

HUNTER: The wall sort of... lit up? With a bunch of sigils. It’s really too bad that of all the photos and video we took from the interior, neither of us got a shot of those.

ABRAMS: I am still confused about that. Are we really thinking that the aliens walked around bonking their heads into things to make them work? That cannot possibly be right. A race of headbonkers could not build a highly advanced spaceship and fly it across the galaxy.

HUNTER: I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t his head. Maybe I am projecting our values of anthropromorphism onto a totally different being. But it worked.

ABRAMS: We made our way back to the entrance, I mean, the big room that we started out in. It’s still shut. We touched his head to the wall again and all of a sudden there’s blessed daylight.

The time was 10:35 A.M.

PRESIDENT MCSHERRY: I want to dispel the reports that nuclear missiles were being prepped to fire on United States soil. Yes, we entered a heightened state of readiness that included a partial activation of our nuclear arsenal, as well as more conventional weapons. However, we had already made the no first strike decision with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Unfortunately, this was not quickly communicated to our personnel in the field, who had otherwise, and commendably, arrived at the scene.

PERRY SILVER [NBC Anchor, from the broadcast audiotape]: Okay, everyone, we are seeing movement from the front of the.. Ship. The ship is opening up. We are seeing what appears to be the ship lowering a — a sort of gangway. We cannot exactly see into the interior. And there is movement. There is — those are humans. Those are humans. We are now seeing two humans emerge from the ship. Can we confirm those are the two — JESUS H. CHRIST THEY ARE HOLDING A GOD DAMN ALIEN!

SILVER: I don’t regret the remarks. I think they caught the moment. Obviously they weren’t enormously dignified, but there were a number of different anchors broadcasting the same feed, and mine is the one that — how do I say this — entered the public consciousness.

HUNTER: I was relieved to be outside. I didn’t have a definite plan outside of vaguely thinking about getting the alien to medical attention of some kind.

ABRAMS: Boy, I really liked that daylight. It was a really nice day.

HUNTER: Then I start down the ramp and there’s like thirty guns pointed at me. An E.T. moment, just like I didn’t want.

ABRAMS: I have no words for what Stephen said. I will try to defend it. He was under a lot of stress. He was holding a dying alien. He was facing a bunch of loaded weapons. These circumstances must be taken into account. That being said, it was an insanely... hey, whatever. The man tried.

O’NEAL: Major Arteste levels his gun at the gangway. Everyone is watching him, and we all do it too. I do it too. Arteste got all the shit but we all did it.

MAJOR