Random America: UFO Burgers at the Roswell McDonald’s
One fine Monday morning—the first of 2022—kicking up dust and recklessly swerving my car to avoid varmints, I drove into Roswell, New Mexico. I had just sojourned in Houston, working on a top-secret video project with Tanzanian Wojak, and I had grown tired of the city: the crowds, the inescapable stench, the various Hoovervilles blocking out my enjoyment of a pristine cityscape. I figured I would return to my breed, my people, by visiting the alien capital of the United States.
All photos by the author
The road to Roswell, at least from the east, is straight and desolate. 100 miles out from city limits, there cease to be gas stations or rest stops. Yet only a fool would think he had turned the wrong way—little green aliens dot the long road, multiplying as one approaches the city, eventually advertising Roswell’s peripheral businesses: metalworking companies, RV parks, gift shops. The town itself is clustered around a few major attractions: the New Mexico Military Institute, the Roswell Museum, and, of course, the International UFO Museum and Research Center.
Roswell began as a totally unremarkable place. It was used as a watering stop for epic cattle drives during the 1870s and 1880s, and was home to both the Walker Air Force Base and Robert H. Goddard, who built the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. Everything changed in July 1947, when a simple rancher named W.W. Brazel discovered a strange crash site on his property. The wreckage was taken to the Air Force base, which quickly issued a shocking press release that the military had recovered the wreckage of a genuine “flying disk.” Just as quickly, the government moved to declare that initial reports were false, it was simply a weather balloon, and the rest, as they say, is history…
Today, Roswell is a ufologists’s version of Niagara Falls: any natural wonder has been hijacked by a capitalistic machine hell-bent on commodifying and selling the idea of aliens. Extraterrestrials are used to advertise nearly every business in Roswell, from the Pizza Hut to the local plumber to mundane insurance companies. Little green men wearing sombreros painted on the window of a Mexican restaurant; a giant green alien holding up a Dunkin’ Donuts sign; a McDonald’s shaped like a UFO. Alien heads wearing Santa Claus hats rest at the top of the city’s light poles. A sign says “Unattended children will be picked up by the next UFO.” A gigantic alien mural greets visitors to the Roswell Chamber of Commerce.
Sounds delightful, but the locals themselves are either antagonistic or cynical towards their own folklore. The uniformed space cadet who worked the front desk at the “VR Spaceport,” where you can experience a cringeworthy rendition of the Roswell incident from the aliens’ point of view, glowered and shook her head when I asked if she recommended the experience. A kindly gift shop lady clarified that the actual “Roswell Crash” happened 75 miles north of the city. Probably the best thing I saw were numerous shirts that had both “Let’s Go Brandon” and an alien head emblazoned on the front. After spending a few hours walking around, I decided to eat a Big Mac from the UFO-shaped McDonald’s and head out from this blasted place.
While there weren’t any secret menu items at the McDonald’s—I half-expected a radioactive green burger to be served—the Big Mac I ordered tasted a little…strange. It had a slightly metallic taste and the lettuce was jarringly crunchy. Almost immediately after taking my first bite, I began to feel a buzz in the pit of my stomach. I ignored my feelings of discomfort, finished the burger, and began my drive to my next destination of Sedona, Arizona.
About 90 miles out from the city, on a road as lonely and desolate as the surface of Mars, I spotted a strange light moving in the sky. What struck me about this light was its bizarre motion: while getting closer, it appeared to vertically drop and change direction at hard, impossible, 90-degree angles. I had never seen an airplane move like that, and I remember thinking, “Aw hell naw mane. Hell naw. This better be no bitch-ass aliens…”
I decided to pull over and snap some pictures. There were no other cars or lights for miles around. The UFO got closer and closer until it was levitating above me, close enough that I could see strange concentric circles and red triangular shapes marking its underside. All of a sudden, an enormous light beam shot down and everything was illuminated pure white. I’ll never forget the sound of that beam—it sounded like the torture and execution of a million Windows computers at the same time.
The next few moments are incredibly traumatic and hard to recount. All I remember is white—white like the surface of a star—consuming me, and then a torrent of frightful images flooding my brain. I saw hellfire consuming Earth’s cities, I saw people running for their lives as their skyscrapers toppled, I saw nothing less than complete civilizational destruction, perpetuated by what appeared to be a race of machine-Gods that resembled giant squids. In between the scenes of annihilation, various other cryptic images flashed through my mind; I described them in detail to my friend Tanzanian Wojak, who helped me make sense of them. While many will remain an enigma, we were able to identify a recurring image of a star system which we believe to be Sirius, as well as molecular structures that we deciphered to be lithium, zinc, and magnesium.
There was clearly a great rift between civilizations and languages, but after much contemplation and meditation, I have come to believe these images I received represent three distinct messages. One, that if we stay on Earth, destruction is inevitable—it may be a hundred years, it may be a thousand, it may be a hundred-thousand, but these machine-Gods will find our planet; two, that our salvation may lie in the Sirius star system—a belief also held by the Dogon people of Africa, who pointed at Sirius as their home star system; and three, it is imperative—absolutely existentially crucially—for our species to consume more zinc, lithium, and magnesium, which have been leached from our water and our food.
I opened my eyes. A bitter, metallic taste clung to my tongue; my face was smeared with dirt and dust; my shirt was torn. I was on all fours—it felt like needles were jabbing my skin from all directions, and to move brought about an excruciating, horrific pain. I was paralyzed. I could feel the UFO in the sky above, but the light beam had disappeared. In front of me, roughly a foot taller than me, stood a green alien with black, oval eyes. I grasped at the alien’s three-pronged toes. “Please…please…” I heaved.
The alien knelt down and touched my forehead. All of a sudden, the pain disappeared; I gasped and rose to my feet. I stared into those giant, black eyes, which betrayed no emotion (I have my suspicion that they were in fact not actual eyes but rather a virtual interface, given they way they seemed to mechanically narrow and expand like a camera’s aperture). I clutched at my pocket, which still held my phone, and beckoned for the alien to come closer. “Please…just…” The alien took two steps towards me and placed his face next to mine. I snapped a selfie. “Thank you…” I said. The alien looked at me, then began walking away. “Wait!” I said. The alien did not stop. All of a sudden, the light beam shot down from the UFO again, and everything went white again.
I awoke next to my car. The clock read 3:43 AM; I must have been lying unconscious for several hours. I felt, both physically and mentally, utterly exhausted. I checked my phone and was both shocked and relieved to find my pictures still there. I wrote down as much as I could remember of my vision, then pulled over at the nearest rest stop to sleep.
Such sleep would become a luxury; I barely sleep at all these days. I am haunted by my experience, tormented by the message. I can no longer rest or experience peace. I have seen a vision of our future, yet I feel powerless to stop it—other than by consuming copious amounts of zinc, magnesium, and lithium. Real life is but a fantasy, and my dreams are filled with horror. Nothing will ever be the same. I am but a husk of a man. I am…Zyxclantapan.
