I Took the Red Pill at Christmas

AJ Burns |

12/22/2007 - 12/23/07

First Place, teens, stories

Could Santa be a genetically modified creature under the control of aliens from outer space? Do presents get delivered on Christmas Eve with the help of time-stopping technology? AJ Burns convinces us all thi — and more — is true as he revisits The Matrix, Roswell style.

Personal Log — Stardate 17493-4 (aka Christmas), on the M class planet "Earth"


It has been a long road to get to this day, literally and figuratively. It all started on the winter solstice when the aliens came, thinking our defenses weakest that day.

Even though we thought the aliens came for war, they actually came for peace. The aliens expected us not to fight because our defenses were weak. This is what the aliens told us, but we figured out another purpose for their coming. They bring Santa Claus back to the North Pole every year on this day, and we usually never see them. This year they decided to see what other Earthlings were like, so they landed in Roswell, New Mexico.

Not everyone believed they came in peace. Russia believed they came to destroy the human race and started attacking the aliens. With their advanced technology, the aliens shot down everything Russia threw at them. After Russia decided to stop shooting at the aliens, the aliens decided to show the Earth what their weapons could do. They proceeded to blow a mile-wide crater in the middle of an unpopulated part of Russia. The French immediately surrendered. The rest of the world stood in shock.

During the fighting, Santa's equipment was damaged. So, after the aliens finished dropping off all the presents at the North Pole, they had to stay on Earth for Christmas to help out.

For the first time, everyone on Earth saw Santa. He was just like we expected — big and jolly — and he loved cookies. Santa didn't look like an alien, though — he looked human. We later figured out that he was human and that the aliens had genetically modified him.

Early in human history, the aliens had landed at Roswell, before it was Roswell, and abducted a human for testing. This testing modified Santa and made him live forever. Every year they would make presents on their home planet, and on the winter solstice bring Santa and the presents to the North Pole. On Christmas Day, Santa would deliver all the presents around the world — with the help of the alien technology, of course.

Everyone was awed by the aliens' advanced technology. The leaders of the big countries (except Russia) asked if they could have this technology. The aliens stated that this technology was way too advanced for our civilization, and that they would give it to us as soon as someone on Earth could comprehend how it worked. The world's best scientists worked night and day trying to comprehend their advanced technology, but no one could.

Once Christmas Eve hit, the aliens left Roswell for the North Pole to help Santa. That night, the aliens did something no one thought possible — they stopped time. However, this didn't affect every human, and that's how we know they stopped time. The unaffected humans were very confused and struggled to understand what was going on. Only later did they figure out that the aliens had stopped time.

While time was stopped, Santa delivered all the presents. For the people affected by the time stop, presents weren't there one second and were there the next. For people who were unaffected by the time stop, it was a totally different story.

While time was frozen and Santa was delivering his presents, the aliens saw the opportunity to investigate our technology. They figured out that our technology paled in comparison to theirs. During their investigation, the aliens discovered that their time-stop didn't work on all humans.

The aliens' first idea was to kill the humans who weren't affected by the time-stop. They quickly decided against this course of action because it would raise too much suspicion. Their next idea was to wipe the memories of those who weren't affected, but that wasn't reliable enough and had not been tested on a human before. So the aliens decided to let those who were unaffected by the time-stop to remember the whole experience and tell it to all of humanity.

After the time-stop was over, the people who weren't affected told all of humanity what had happened, but, to the aliens' relief, no one believed them. Some of the people even shared videos and pictures of what had happened, but still no one believed them. The general public believed that the pictures and videos were doctored. The videos and pictures even circulated around the Internet. Some people finally started to believe, but most didn't. Everyone wanted Santa to stay magical and not know how it all really happened.

If you take the blue pill, you can stop reading this and believe whatever you want to believe. Or you can take the red pill and believe what I have said. The choice is yours. I know what happened that day; I was one of those not affected by the time-stop. The question that haunts me is this: What if the aliens didn't really stop time and they just wanted us to believe they did?

We'll probably never know the real answer.