Even before the first spaceship set down in the field off Ferry Road, the city went dark. Lights flickered wildly in homes, restaurants, shops and offices. Then darkness descended for good.

Televisions screens went blank. Radios went silent. Computer monitors darkened with feeble groans.

The intense force field from the arriving ship overloaded circuits and caused transformers to pop all over the city. Sparks flew. Power lines burned and fell to the ground, igniting small fires everywhere.

Inside their homes in the early evening, men, women and children were startled and confused. They picked up phones to call neighbors but the force field disrupted those lines as well. There was either a mess of static from telephone receivers or nothing at all.

Silence came down quickly and completely. Across the region, people began to cock their heads, like dogs reacting to a far off whistle.

The low hum of the approaching craft could be heard as well as felt. It sounded and felt unnatural. Ominous. Like something that did not belong in our world.

A sense of unease began to pervade the community.

At the Lewiston police and fire stations, back-up generators roared alive moments after the lights went out. The last, garbled transmissions over digital and analog radios were the voices of harried dispatchers. They shouted about an emergency on Ferry Road before all communications ceased.

The landing was underway.

The enormous, crown-shaped spaceship descended through clouds and eased its way to earth. Thousands of intense lights blinked or glowed. Blinding white rays shot from the bottom of the craft, scorching the ground below and igniting a ring of fire.

The arena-sized spaceship landed smoothly in that circle of flames, like a balloon floating to a burning floor. The low, electromagnetic hum became a throbbing, pulsating beat that killed birds in mid-flight and dropped small animals dead from trees.

Before the massive, plasma engines were silenced, windows shattered in all buildings within a mile of the landing. In that same radius, people screamed and pressed their hands to their ears as their brains hemorrhaged.

The first of the armada had arrived. Chaos was immediate. Before word of what had had come among them even began to spread, the populace was in a panic. People fled their homes in night clothes. They ran past fires that blazed all over the region or tried to drive down streets that were already becoming littered with wrecks.

A fleet of fire trucks raced to Ferry Road. All of Lewiston's police cars were enroute and sheriff's deputies were coming from all directions.

Within a half-mile of the landing though, engines failed. The vehicles stalled in the center of streets or glided uselessly to the sides of roads. Dazed cops and firemen picked up their radios to call for help. But all they held were chunks of useless metal and plastic. The radios were silent.

Within an hour, three dozen more spaceships had landed, widening the wave of terror and calamity. They set down with grace in fields and lots, burning their way to the ground where necessary.

Fire, explosions and screams greeted the invaders.

By now, Washington had been notified and the President declared martial law. The constitution of the United States was suspended. The Federal Emergency Management Administration was given broad executive powers. Among them, the power to detain any person suspected of conspiring with the arriving aliens, to mobilize civilians into work brigades and seize control of the media.

FEMA, the shadow government, began heading to southern Maine at once.

The military would be arriving even sooner. The CIA, the FBI, NASA and all other known and unheard of government entities were also sending troops to Lewiston. But for now, the city was protected against this extraterrestrial threat only by the agencies that protect it every other day.

Officers from the police and fire departments, without functioning vehicles, began to advance on foot. They were frightened and ill-equipped to face this threat from above. Some had abandoned their patrols. They had rushed home to grab their families in an attempt to flee the city. Most stayed and pressed forward, determined to serve the city they were hired to protect.

Gallant if unprepared.

These brave crews advanced into uncertainty. For, how would they respond to invaders from a world unknown to us? What could they possibly achieve against technology we cannot begin to understand? Is this the end? Is annihilation imminent?

Good news, earthlings. The fire department for years has been in possession of a FEMA approved handbook titled "The Fire Officers Guide to Disaster Control." And chapter 13 of that book, thank heavens, is "Disaster Control and UFO's."

I may have made up a few details about the alien invasion, but I am not inventing this book. It does exist and most major fire departments have a copy.

The guide instructs fire crews on the perils of radiation from a UFO, force field impact and the danger of fireballs, among many other things. All the information a firefighter needs to lay the groundwork until the military arrives.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, while Lewiston fire Chief Michel Lajoie recalls seeing the handbook around the station, when pressed, he could not put his hands on it. No playbook spelling out the strategy for handling UFOs.

"I’m kind of worried about it," Chief Lajoie said this week. "It would be just my luck to see one of those things now that I’m looking for the book."

That was Tuesday night. Lajoie planned to ask around about the book and get back to me. I never heard from him again and I’m a little concerned. Did our fearless leader go snooping around? Did he ask one question too many?

The truth is out there, friends. But where is the chief?

Copyright ©2005 Lewiston Sun Journal