The Cotswold Transformation

Inspired by a range of sources, including documented events, reported encounters, personal anecdotes, and folklore. Certain names, locations, and identifying details have been adjusted for privacy and narrative continuity.

Hello there. I've been meaning to ring about this for quite some time now. My name's Margaret, I'm calling from Gloucester. I'm eighty-two years old, and what I'm about to tell you happened when I was sixty-five. That would have been 2003. June of 2003, to be specific. I was living alone at the time. My husband had passed two years prior, and my daughter was living in London. I had a small cottage just outside Cheltenham, lovely place, quiet. The garden backed onto open fields. Miles of nothing but grass and sheep. I'd always been a light sleeper, you see. That particular night I woke around half past two. Something had disturbed me, though I couldn't say what. The bedroom was filled with this pale blue light. Not moonlight, I know moonlight. This was different. Colder. Coming through the window from outside.

I got out of bed and went to the window. And that's the thing, there was something hovering over the back field. Perhaps fifty meters from the house. Disc-shaped, absolutely massive. Had to be at least twenty meters across. Rotating slowly, covered in lights that pulsed in sequence. The blue light was coming from underneath it. A beam, wide as a lorry, pointing straight down at the ground. I could see the grass bending away from it, like it was pushing down with force. There was no sound. Not a whisper. The whole world had gone silent. I should have been frightened, I suppose. But I wasn't. I felt calm. Curious, even. I opened the window to get a better look, and the moment I did, the beam shifted. Moved across the field toward the house. Toward me. I tried to step back, but my legs wouldn't respond. I was frozen there, watching it come closer.

The light hit me. Passed right through the window, through me. I felt this tingling sensation, starting at my feet and moving up my entire body. Like thousands of tiny needles, but not painful. Almost pleasant, in a strange way. And then I was moving. Floating. Lifted right out of my bedroom. I passed through the window as if it wasn't there. Rose up into the night air. I could see my cottage below me, getting smaller. The fields spreading out in all directions. The beam was carrying me upward, toward the craft. As I got closer, I could see an opening in the bottom. A circular hatch, maybe three meters wide. I went through it, and suddenly I was inside. Standing, or floating, I couldn't quite tell which, in a circular room. The walls were smooth, metallic, with a slight curve to them. Illuminated by that same blue-white light, though I couldn't see where it was coming from. And I mean, the air smelled strange. Like ozone mixed with something sweet. Medicinal.

[ Story continues in the full game... ]

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