The Great Perplexity

by Englebert Wächter
in Zeugenbuch (Schmidrüti, Switzerland: 2001), pp. 158-60
a liberal translation by J. W. Deardorff, May 2011

The following event took place in the beginning of the construction of our Semjase-Silver-star-Center in Hinterschmidrüti.

The year 1977 was -- as also the year before -- when we few stalwarts in a sense "occupied" the busy streets of Hinterschmidrüti -- for all of us a hard and labor-intensive time. The surroundings and premises offered a pitiful sight, and the few individual trees that we were able only with much effort to retain on the completely boggy meadow slopes, fought with their last power against approaching death from rotting. Everywhere you looked, improvements and renovations had to be considered; and so also with the decrepit carriage house [see map, No. 8].

So it happened that Billy, on Tuesday, the 31st of May 1977, allowed the inescapable renovation of the carriage house to be initiated. With the help of Jacobus, Mitscho, Renato and me, the first new rafters were prepared for further assembly. First, the roof, which had been criminally neglected by the previous owner, and which only here and there blocked the water when it rains, was taken under attack, and we four obeyed Billy's extended-arm instruction, so to speak, which ordered us up onto the roof. The ridge-piece rafter, as well as the two side-roof rafters, and thus the beams that were anchored in piecewise rotten construction timber, and also the outside beams that support the roof's eaves, had to be removed with great care to avoid an accident. The middle of the day had long since passed, and the hours ran out on us like an activated whip. My preparatory work, however, was already sufficiently advanced that I began to fit the beam, accurately pre-cut at different angles on the ground, onto the existing support rafter. However, my wrist watch showed, with empty-stomach accuracy, that it was somewhat after 20:45 hours, a time that would soon mark the end of the remaining daylight. High up on the ridge-piece rafter I stood, in order to deal with the final position adjustments before the installation of the heavy beam, when Billy shouted: "Carpenter [Englebert], set yourself down outside the roof, for from there you can much better pound in the nails." This advice was tempting; nevertheless I hammered away in the wind, for in order to mobilize such vast conciousness power as to be able to stand simply in the air without a solid foundation high over the nearby roof, would truly require still some centuries more experience and wisdom than I carry on my shoulders -- to say nothing of the fact that I still haven't the slightest idea of the application of such gigantic forces in my present state of evolution. Nevertheless a completely unexpected event happened a few minutes later.

It must have been around 21:00 by the clock -- before it happened. Just as my feet reached the narrow board lying underneath me, which served us in the work as a scaffold, Billy, after brief eye contact with me, and supple as a panther behind me, pressed against me in order to move next to me on the other side of the board. Yet when I looked around at him, he was gone without a trace -- simply so -- a quick pressure on my back, and he was away. My first thought: he could perhaps have fallen from the roof into the material underneath, I immediately discarded, for on the one hand I had heard no noise, and on the other hand my working colleague next to and underneath me in any case did not notice the slightest indication of any headlong fall or bodily descent. It had the appearance of Billy all of a sudden dissolving into the air. Immediately a hunt for him commenced inside and outside of the remaining carriage house, unsuccessfully despite intensive search and loud cries.

About a half hour had passed, and we had taken up our work again, when all at once Billy came strolling quite cheerfully across the carriage-house parking lot and returned to his working place, as if nothing had happened. Our inquisitive questions -- where in the world he had been -- he received with a suggestive smile and explained that he had been beamed up into Ptaah's ship, as usual, via a tele-transmitter. That explained Billy's sudden disappearance from our working group, where he had actually simply dissolved into the air.

 

Excerpts from Contact No. 77, 31 May, 1977 commencing at 21:07
From Wendelle Stevens, Message from the Pleiades, Vol. 4, pp. 73,77

Meier... You have granted me a request I have kept for a long time. For some time I have been eager to be standing in the middle of some members of the group and then simply to disappear without leaving a trace. Getting taken away like this for a contact is a nice alternation. I hardly believe anybody having seen me disappear suddenly from the middle of the group, and brought to here by a teletransmitter, or whatever this means is called.

Ptaah... 1/In fact, nobody saw anything of this, but I haven't taken you here because of that, but for other reasons. 2/Menara has told me your desire concerning the meditation center. ...

Ptaah... (41 sentences later) ...43/But now I want to let you return, because down there they are all of light excitement. 44/Your friends meanwhile have noticed you suddenly disappearing without leaving a trace. 45/Let yourself slide into the pit. 46/Farewell, and be attentive.

Meier... Ha, again you give me fun, Ptaah. There down below the pit are menacing some hundred meters of depth.

Ptaah... 47/They are less than 900 meters -- or, do you suddenly fear?

Meier... Dear, no. I only have a joke, as evidently you have not conceived. Tchys then, dear friend, and do greet them all kindly.-- 900 meters, oh man. Then let us do...

Ptaah... 48/But your funniness is....

Postscript by Meier: By regret I did not get completely the last sentence of Ptaah, because already when he started to speak, I walked into the escape pit and fell into emptiness, to be standing at the same moment in the same place on the scaffolding again, from where Ptaah had taken me, about 38 minutes before. [Note: The discrepancy may be noted as to the spot where Meier was returned to. Since Englebert's account was first written some 23 years after the event, the Contact Report excerpt is probably to be preferred.]