THE “BIG HOLE,” ELBERTA, UT

Sam Davis heard none of this. He was still trying to understand the thing he’d just witnessed. About 4:30 he saw the dust of hundreds, no, thousands of cars headed his way, from the north and from the south.

By 5 he was the center of an enormous scrum of ATVs of all shapes and sizes all trying to find the level spot at the top. That spot belonged to Sam alone. He’d never imagined so many people in the desert. The highway by the lake was already an enormous parking lot. From a loud stereo system mounted to someone’s UTV he heard the messages. “Spaceships?” he said quietly. “I want to know about the spheres.” His neighbor to the right, dressed the same as the farmers Sam knew in Illinois, gave Sam a puzzled look.

The “billboard” was still shining brightly above them, but the display had changed:

ANTIGRAVITY!

6:00 TONIGHT Watch from HOME

Tune 1400 AM

“At least whoever’s running this is paying attention to what’s going on,” Sam said out loud.

His neighbor looked at him and asked, “What spheres? He didn’t say anything about spheres.”

Sam wanted to tell him everything he’d seen, but said only, “That sign up there; it’s made of 5-inch balls floating in the air. One spoke to me. Told me to get up here before that hole opened up.”

“No kidding,” said the neighbor. “Floating, like a balloon?”

“No, floating like an antigravity ball.”

“How do you know that?”

Sam told him the story, with everyone around him craning to hear it. Someone yelled to turn down the radio, and Sam told the story again, for the back-row seats. By the next day Sam would be a minor celebrity, overshadowed, of course, by the events he witnessed.

The two food trucks who drove out, thinking this is just the event to get some sales, were sold out before 5:30. The police, deputies, and highway patrolmen were overwhelmed by the crowd, their vehicles being just as stuck in the crush as everyone else. A few news helicopters had begun orbiting overhead, beaming live news streams to their audience, and, to the delight of the local news producers, to the world. The national news was still organizing to get their reporters to Utah and find out where Elberta was. Salt Lake International and Provo airports were the busiest in the nation for 48 hours.

At 6:00 the sign went dark and the transmitter went silent, transmitting an unmodulated carrier. The big hole remained dark inside. Everyone pushed forward to see. The transmission restarted.