Bruce Rux explained on his epic Binnall of America interview-a-thon that the original Outer Limits series was a clearinghouse for UFO contact narratives, including many that had never been disseminated.
I wonder if this episode, "The Special One", was one of the stories Rux was referring to. Here's the spiel from the wiki:
Roy and his wife Aggie are delighted but puzzled when they meet Mr. Zeno, who explains that he is a government educator sent to cultivate the mind of their gifted son, Kenny. Roy becomes worried, however, when he discovers that Kenny is learning things that are not accepted by earthly science. When Roy discovers that the government education department knows nothing about any "Mr. Zeno," he confronts the educator only to discover that he is an alien, re-educating children in a plot to take over the world.
The exact experiment Mr. Zeno is performing with young Kenny is quite fascinating, as US readers will see . The reason I'm especially interested in this episode is that the encounter with Mr. Zeno reminds me quite a bit of a famous story told by Jack Sarfatti (whose work on UFO propulsion we talked about here) in which he received a phone call from an alien in 1952:
Jack Sarfatti is today a prominent quantum physicist. Unknown to many, however, is that he may owe some of his success to a very unusual experience—a phone call from a flying saucer. The whole ordeal began more than 50 years ago.
Says Sarfatti, “In 1952 and 1953, when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I received a phone call…in which a mechanical sounding voice at the other end said it was a computer on board a flying saucer. They wanted to teach me something and would I be willing? This was my free choice. Would I be willing to be taught—to communicate with them? I remember a shiver going up my spine, because I said, ‘Hey, man, this is real.’ Of course, I was a kid…but I said, yes.”
This story didn't emerge until several years after the Outer Limits episode, and isn't quite the same in detail, but the basic parallels are certainly fascinating. And since his own close encounter, Sarfatti has kept extremely interesting company and had his fingers in a lot of interesting pies. Sarfatti has worked with Joe Firmage, who himself believes that ETs appear at critical junctures in time to spur human technological evolution along. Firmage's own revelation came when he was a bit older than Sarfatti when he had his encounter:
Some have called it an alien, an angel, or even a hallucination, but whatever the case, someone or something visited Firmage in his bedroom early one morning in 1997. As he writes, "A remarkable being, clothed in brilliant white light, appeared hovering over my bed.
He looked rather annoyed and asked, 'Why have you called me here?' I answered without a moment's pause, 'I want to travel in space.' He chuckled skeptically, paused, and asked, 'Why should you be granted such an opportunity?' I responded without hesitation, 'Because I'm willing to die for it!'
It's fascinating to note that Firmage was raised Mormon, and his revelation sounds remarkably similar to Joseph Smith's encounter with the Angel Moroni.
Firmage and Sarfatti are two individuals with what their colleagues might see as heretical beliefs but yet somehow seem to be able to pull it off thanks to their prodigious talents.
Jacques Vallee is another in this same crowd. The head of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is yet another, more recently. I have a feeling there are lot more like these men, but most have been effectively silenced for fear of their careers being destroyed.
So-was this Outer Limits yarn just pure sci-fi, or is there some actual sci behind the fi? Is this a case of incremental disclosure or a pure synchronicity?
And is there really a difference in the long run?