This is a short story about aliens and Michael Bendell.
Michael (never 'Mike') Bendell is a swimmer. Not a professional swimmer, it's not his job to swim, and although you could argue he's been paid to swim before, that was for charity so doesn't count.
Michael is swimming. He was swimming some time before, and he's swimming now. But between the "then" and the "now" something happened. Either Micheal had one of those existential moments when he was somehow outside his own body and had time to consider his own being from a distance, or he was abducted by aliens, experimented on (why else would they do it?) and placed back in the water without realising what had happened. Between strokes (he was doing the 'front crawl' - he'd often lay on his back and just drift, but today's swim had an indeterminate time pressure, so the fastest of strokes it was), fractions of a second after the out-of-body experience, he was back in the real world. Swimming not as quick as he used to, but maintaining a very respectable pace for a man of 43 years, nine months and thirteen days. His age was/is not important to the aliens.
When we hear stories of alien abductions they're usually from remote areas of the planet. The collection of stories montaged during 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' are typical: deserts, people who probably worship the sun or similar, not Reading town centre or 500 yards out in The Thames estuary near Leigh-On-Sea. Thing is, Aliens look down on The Earth and most of it is water. They calculate that whatever inhabits The Earth is likely to be in the blue bits, not on the green and brown bits. It's just maths. So the vast majority of alien abductions have been fish and sea mammals. Whales and dolphins usually, although they tried great plankton shoals too (in case the shoal was one great organism, which of course it is). These abductions have to date been so lacking in worthwhile information, that the aliens had all but given up. Fish and sea mammals are great, don't get them wrong, but they're better to eat than to talk to.
Imagine the aliens' joy at stumbling across Michael Bendell 500 yards out in The Thames estuary near Leigh-On-Sea. He wasn't a fish, he seemed to actually realise what was happening to him, and was happy to tell all about the invention of the wheel, the internal combustion engine, and computers. His insides were much the same as the sea mammals, except some small but vital differences in breathing apparatus. On the whole a very worthwhile catch: quick, and informative. They dropped him back exactly where they'd found him, and of course erased any memory he'd had of the abduction. Textbook. Luckily he was immediately conscious enough to continue swimming, rather than drown.
The news today is full of stories of raw sewage being pumped into our seas and rivers because the current government aren't very good. Sad to think that this short-sighted approach to waste disposal will stop people like Michael Bendell from swimming in our natural waters, and prevent aliens from picking him out of the water to experiment on him. Perhaps the aliens will think we enjoy swimming in our own waste, turn their noses up (they have several noses) and decide to try a more civilised planet. It makes you think.
