“Who do you think you are?”

 The phrase Frank’s mom would yell at him when he was an insuburant teenager. Looking back at it he deserved a few of those harsh words. He could laugh at it now, looking back at his sub par middle class upbring. His father worked  at the local factory and his mother worked at the post office. He was also sure she sold drugs on the side but he couldn’t ever get any proof of that. One of the times she yelled this phrase was when he got caught taking the truck out on a Friday night. Him and his then high school girlfriend had the high school equlivet to a romantic fuck on the bed truck. He had barely been caught while returning inside the house. While his mother scolded him, his father sat in silence. Looking back at it years ago, he understood that his father probably understood what he had done with the truck that evening. 

Frank repeated the phrase in his head with only his mother's screeching voice. He did it through the six years of college and the 80k worth of debt he got himself into as a result. He did it again twenty years later when he sold his company for more than a little nest egg. He said it to himself now as he drove his brand new Lincoln continental. It was hot and he felt paralyzed. Was this a dream? “ What am I doing?” he thought to himself. He was trying to breathe but couldn’t. Was he lucid dreaming again? What a bizarre dream. He couldn’t open his eyes. 

“Ow Fuck.'' Was his sleep paralyzed again? He needed to stay calm and it would go away. He couldn’t stay calm though, he was incredibly hot and a pain in his back started to take form. His semi lucid state was also diminishing. His thoughts became clear now. He remembered driving a car. Was he dying? Why did he think that? He needed water all of a sudden. 

“Go back to sleep Frank. Be calm.”

“ Who do you think you are?”

“ Who do you think you are?”__

That wasn’t Frank that had thought that and it wasn’t his mother's voice saying it to him. Frank had become fully awake and conscious now. He couldn’t determine if his eyes were open or if it was dark. He had just thought he heard someone say his mother’s phrase. He was confused as to where he was. He was driving his car home. Had he got in a car accident. Was he in a coma? Being in a coma was among one of his biggest fears. It would be like a never ending sleep paralysis. 

“ You are not in a coma” A voice said.; This must be a lucid dream then. 

“ Nor are you in a dream”. He suddenly felt a sense of fear. 

“ You are safe Frank, may you feel at peace with that.”

Frank tried to talk but he could barely move his mouth and the best he could do was stick out his tongue. Had he been doing drugs? No one replied that time. A red hue of light began to form in front of him. It started off dark red but got lighter in color when it almost became pink in color. The pink color suddenly turned into a light of white and blue and Frank became very calm looking at the color. His fear seemed to vanish.

 A shadow slowly appeared inside the blue color. As Frank looked at it, he became aware of the mobility of his body. He could now tell that he was lying down on a table. He slowly moved his head around and repeatedly opened and closed his mouth. The shadow got darker and darker as it approached Frank. Frank began to softly grunt as though he was testing himself on whether he would be able to talk. Right as he finally came up with the energy to do the same thing, something touched his shoulders and he went back into a paralyzed state. 

Frank woke up again and was completely conscious. He remembered the lights and the touch. He was aware that he was laying down on a table. It was pitch black. He had hesitated on whether he should move or not. He was still very confused about what was happening to him and the lack of being able to see what was around him was a motivating factor in not moving. He realized that he was completely naked. 

“ You are not in danger Frank of the Mormons.” Someone said again in his head. 

Frank pretended to not hear the voice. Frank wasn’t afraid but he dared not move in complete darkness. A red orb of light appeared again, this time it didn’t switch color and instead just got brighter. It became bright enough that Frank could see the floor . He laid there quietly for many moments deciding if he should get up and move from his position. He finally decided he would test out his boundaries. He moved his left foot first, followed by clenching his right hand into a fist. He moved one arm up and down slowly. He didn’t feel any fear or concern. His decided as a final test he would turn his whole body and lay on his left side. He picked his left side because he was right handed dominant and could move the fastest under extreme circumstances. 

He moved his body to his left side with nothing happening. From his side he finally moved his right leg down on the floor. He kept half his body still on the platform. Frank stayed in the position with his one foot on the floor for a long time, anticipating a voice to talk to him.  He finally got bored in the position and lifted his other leg and planted it on the floor. He was still crouched to a degree and he slowly stood up. He took two quick steps only to stop again. 

After all the slow movements, Frank began to think he was acting silly and should just proceed to walk until he found something. The only problem was that he couldn’t see anything worth walking too. 

“ Frank of the Mormons” a voice called out. 

“ I’m not mormon” Frank called out with a small fear. There was no reply to his comments.“ What do you want? Where am I?” Frank moved slowly toward a new shadow. He found every step becoming easier to do now.

“ Frank, you need this.” As a cart with a tall glass of liquid appeared almost out of nowhere in front of Frank. He looked at it and realized just how thirsty he was.  Taking the glass he looked at it, smelling it for an odor. He drank it with caution. As he drank the last of it, he began to feel more energetic but was still confused about where he was. He began to look around his surroundings more which was nothing. He tried to look for the table he was lying on again but it had seemingly disappeared.

“ What is this?” The voice in his head didn’t talk back. “ What do you want” 

“ There is a chair just ahead of you.” This voice said outside of his head. He walked slowly. The room once again began to fill with red light and Frank began to see the outline of the chair. It was a big metal arm chair. It looked like the one that the Emperor sits in Return of The Jedi. Frank sat on the chair and looked out into the red hue’s of light. 

“Where am I?” He shouted out again. No one answered. “ What do you want?” Ted yelled out this time. Frank suddenly began to get a burning sensation in the back of his neck. He reached for it but it burned more as he touched it. 

“ You need to stay calm Frank.”

“ Thats a little hard to do, right now.” The red hue changed to a white light and a cloaked figure appeared. Frank was suddenly in paralyzing fear at the sight of this creature. 

“ You are alive Frank of the Mormons” voice was said to him in his head.

“ I’m not fucking Mormon.” Frank managed to say as he began to take deep breaths. “ Why do you keep saying that.”

“ We picked you up in the land you call Utah.

“ Don’t worry I’m sure the world will still be a shitty place when you return” Frank exclaimed 

“ You don’t have faith in humanity?”

“ Well apparently, humanity has been confused and praying to you for thousands of years. I guess it wouldn’t bother me as much but the wars and the prosecutions for said causes seems worthless now”

“ I sense a change of feeling toward your religious outlook.” 

Frank went silent for a moment. “ What were you expecting to hear from me? Even humanity figured out that praying to the sun was not benefiting anybody”

“ Frank, do you really believe that even if there was one thing that people worshiped that they wouldn’t find a reason to fight over something? Early on we discovered that we wouldn’t just show ourselves to you. Your genesis was to sacrifice many of your own kind, trying to find us. 

“ Human sacrifice?”

“ We had to be careful about showing ourselves to you. The person you call Hitler was sacrificing for this cause. We do not know where he found such knowledge as it had been a long time since your genesis had done this. It was decided that we would take the individual”

“ You have Hitler?”

“ Yes but you won’t recognize him” 

“ Why not? “

“ He  has been here with us for too long. He has evolved to almost past your species.”

“ What is he? A fucking Pokemon.”

“  I went to school with you Frank”

“ Was I an asshole to you?”

“ I can’t remember? ” 

“ Why are you asking me this?”

“ Because I was an asshole to a lot of people.”

“ We don’t have emotions like that. 

“ What emotion? Assholeish”

“ Anger, greed, jealousy. We don’t need it “ 

“ Then what's your point in trying to connect with me on this level?”

“ To help communicate with you? ”  

“ You don’t seem to be having a hard time with that” Right then he realized how hungry he was. He wondered if  

“ Frank, are you married?” 

“ I was. Twice actually.”

“ We understand your institution of marriage”

“ Ow, good. Then you’ll understand our institution of divorce.” 

“ We also understand that. We believe that one can not exist without the other.”

“ The institution of divorce developed before the institution of freedom.”

“ Frank, you mention this freedom and we have noticed your civilization’s development of it. We are curious about this idea in your current civilization.”

Frank didn’t respond at first. He had taken a good amount of time thinking over the question. After all he was about to answer for his civilization. 

“ The concept of freedom is a complex idea. Our civilization does not understand it. We don’t understand it in the same way we do not understand why we cannot be birds and fly.”

“ Do you believe you have freedom?” Frank once again took a long time to think the question over. 

“ I don’t know” 

“ Lets move on to a different topic. What was the cause of your divorce?”

“ It was me…Both times”

“ Do you have shame over it?”

“ No. I could have cared less about either of my marriages or he divorce. 

“ So why get married?”

“ Thats just what our civilization does apparently. Have a bunch of meaningless institutions. 

“ Would you say that you had freedom with these?”

“ I had the freedom to cheat but it was only because I understood this freedom was allowed to exist. But because I knew the possible outcome and could have prevented it, I was not free.”

“ You you wish you had freedom over it?”

“ I don’t think I could handle the freedom of human conscience. I think our civilization needs out burdensome conscience. 

“ Most civilization is a waste. Dostoevsky understood it best. The human burden. Most of us waste our lives or they are wasted by someone else. You probably should have intervened earlier.”

“ We wouldn’t have been able to switch human thinking or nature, Frank.”

“ That's bullshit. You certainly could have. You chose not too.

“ We don’t interfere with civilizations that aren’t as developed, such as yours”

“ I’m not understand why though.”

“We would have too much influence in your development ”

“ Considering we just discovered that slavery was bad, I don’t think you would have had a negative impact upon us.”

“ Why did you think I was Mormon?” 

“Because if where we picked you up” Frank had no memory of anything recent.

“ You picked me up in Utah”