THE AGE WINDOW

Why Would Extraterrestrials Want Women Between 22 and 34? THE TAKEN WOMEN — An Investigative Interview "They aren't collecting women because they're beautiful. They're collecting something our species takes completely for granted." Dr. Mara Voss is sixty-four years old, a former practicing gynecologist, an independent researcher of unidentified aerial phenomena, and a woman who claims that she spent eleven days somewhere beyond Earth in September 1993. At the time of her alleged abduction, she was thirty-one. She has never been able to account for what happened during those eleven days, although she insists that her memories encompass a considerably longer period, and she has spent much of the past three decades studying reports of women who disappeared under circumstances involving unusual lights, missing time, and unexplained reproductive examinations. Her first marriage, to a man, had ended before her disappearance. Years after returning to Earth, she married a woman, but that relationship eventually failed as well. She admits that her experiences left her unable to maintain a stable, intimate relationship, despite desperately wanting one. When we approached her about the disappearance of eight young women aboard the Asteria in November 1982, she agreed to an interview on one condition. We would not ask her to make her answers comfortable. We agreed. What followed was an extraordinarily frank conversation about reproductive biology, alleged extraterrestrial breeding programs, the psychology of abduction, and the disturbing possibility that some women might willingly choose never to return to Earth. "You Have to Stop Thinking Like a Human" Interviewer: Dr. Voss, let's start with the obvious question. Eight women disappeared from the Asteria , all between twenty-two and thirty-four years old. Five men and three older women survived, while another man and an older woman died. Why would an extraterrestrial intelligence be interested in that particular group? Dr. Voss: Because you are looking at the passengers as people, and whatever selected those women might have been looking at them as biological resources. I know how appalling that sounds, but if we are seriously entertaining the extraterrestrial hypothesis, we have to stop assuming that whoever arrives here shares our morality, our emotional attachments, or even our definition of a human being. Interviewer: So you believe the selection was reproductive? Dr. Voss: I believe reproduction would be one of the first possibilities worth investigating, although I'd be the first to point out that twenty-two to thirty-four is not some absolute medical boundary. Women can conceive and carry pregnancies outside that range. But it includes years in which many women have substantial reproductive capacity, and if you were an intelligence attempting to identify healthy adult women suitable for a particular biological purpose, that range might be attractive. Interviewer: Attractive for what? Harvesting eggs? Dr. Voss: That's the simplest theory, and frankly the least imaginative. If an extraterrestrial civilization can travel between star systems, I doubt it needs to cross half the galaxy just to obtain a few human eggs. A frozen biological sample would be much easier to transport than a living woman, so the obvious question is why, in these stories, the woman herself supposedly disappears. Interviewer: And your answer? Dr. Voss: Perhaps the reproductive system is valuable only while attached to a living, functioning human body. Perhaps they need the interaction between hormones, immunity, circulation, pregnancy, and a developing nervous system. Perhaps they're interested in something we haven't even identified yet. Or perhaps reproduction has absolutely nothing to do with it, and we've been misreading the pattern for decades. "An Incubator Doesn't Need to Love Its Child. A Mother Does." Interviewer: But you have a theory. Dr. Voss: Several, and one of them has kept me awake for thirty years. What if they aren't simply trying to produce children? What if they're trying to produce offspring capable of forming human emotional attachments? Think about that for a moment. We can speculate about laboratories, artificial wombs, genetic engineering, and advanced biotechnology all we want, but what happens if the thing they cannot reproduce is the emotional relationship between a mother and her child? Interviewer: You're suggesting they need human mothers. Dr. Voss: I'm suggesting that might be more valuable than human eggs. Suppose you could manufacture a thousand genetically compatible infants but couldn't teach them empathy, attachment, affection, or the kind of instinctive emotional responses that develop through years of human interaction. What would you do? You might bring in the one creature that already knows how to provide those things. Interviewer: That sounds like slavery. Dr. Voss: It would be, if the women weren't free to refuse. But we're assuming things we don't know, including whether the women are prisoners, employees, companions, volunteers, or something for which our language doesn't have a word. Interviewer: You think a woman might volunteer to leave Earth to have children for aliens? Dr. Voss: I think some women would volunteer to do almost anything if the circumstances were right, particularly if they believed they were being offered love, purpose, security, or a life they couldn't have here. That doesn't prove such offers are real or that any supposed choice was freely made, but don't underestimate how complicated human desire can become when somebody appears to offer you everything you've ever wanted. "I Was Thirty-One When They Took Me" Interviewer: You keep speaking as a researcher. Let's talk about your own experience. Dr. Voss: I was thirty-one, recently divorced, working ridiculous hours, and convinced I understood the human body better than most people. Then I disappeared for eleven days during a trip through New Mexico, and when I came back, I couldn't give investigators an explanation they were prepared to believe. Interviewer: What do you remember? Dr. Voss: A room that didn't appear to have corners, light that came from surfaces rather than fixtures, and women who looked sufficiently human to make me comfortable until I realized that their expressions were somehow too precise. I remember examinations, conversations, being asked questions about my medical training, and being shown things I still can't adequately describe. But memory is complicated, especially after a frightening experience, and I'm not going to pretend that my recollections constitute scientific proof. Interviewer: Were you frightened? Dr. Voss: At first I was absolutely terrified. Later I became fascinated, which troubles people more than the fear. I was a physician, and I found myself in what I believed was a medical environment where much of what I thought I knew had become irrelevant. Imagine spending your career learning the rules of human reproduction and suddenly believing you're in a place where those rules are merely one possibility among thousands. Interviewer: Did they experiment on you? Dr. Voss: I remember examinations I did not understand and procedures I could not identify. Some were humiliating, and others seemed so routine to the people conducting them that I felt like a patient in a clinic where nobody considered explaining anything to me. I won't describe them as consensual simply because I later stopped fighting, and I won't invent a diagnosis for something I cannot verify. Interviewer: Were you pregnant when you came back? Dr. Voss: No. And before you ask, I cannot tell you whether I was pregnant at any point during the time I remember being away. I have memories, not laboratory confirmation, and I refuse to turn a medical uncertainty into a sensational claim just because people want to hear one. "They May Want More Than Our Biology" Interviewer: Let's return to the eight women. If reproduction was the objective, why take all eight together? Dr. Voss: Variety, possibly. Different immune systems, genetic backgrounds, personalities, psychological responses, or combinations of characteristics that we wouldn't necessarily recognize as important. But I want to emphasize that these are hypotheses within a much larger, unproven explanation. We don't even know that an extraterrestrial abduction occurred. Interviewer: You don't sound particularly doubtful. Dr. Voss: I'm doubtful about almost everything except the fact that something happened to me that I have never been able to explain satisfactorily. That's why I investigate. I don't need a religion built around flying saucers, and I certainly don't need people telling me that every missing woman is living aboard a spacecraft. Interviewer: What other reasons might explain the selection? Dr. Voss: Research into human longevity, immunity, endocrine systems, or psychological development. Perhaps even neurological compatibility with an unfamiliar environment. There is also the possibility that the age range reflects a social or behavioral preference rather than anything directly reproductive. We keep returning to babies because that's the first thing humans think of when somebody takes women of childbearing age. A genuinely alien intelligence might have an entirely different interest. Interviewer: Such as? Dr. Voss: Companionship. Adaptation. Communication. The ability to establish emotional bonds across species. Or simply the fact that humans, for reasons we don't yet understand, respond differently to whatever was reported aboard that vessel. "I Couldn't Stay Married to Anyone" Interviewer: You mentioned that your relationships fell apart after your return. What happened? Dr. Voss: I came back to a world that looked exactly as I'd left it, surrounded by people who expected me to resume my life, and I couldn't. My first marriage had already ended before I disappeared, but when I tried dating again I found that ordinary conversations exhausted me, physical closeness sometimes felt strangely unfamiliar, and I had an almost unbearable sense that everybody around me was moving through life without knowing something I knew. Interviewer: You married again, though. Dr. Voss: Yes. Her name was Caroline, and she was a wonderful woman who gave me more patience than I deserved. She believed that something extraordinary had happened to me, even when she didn't believe every explanation I offered. We built a life together, and for a while I thought I'd finally managed to come home. Interviewer: What went wrong? Dr. Voss: I did. I couldn't stop comparing my ordinary life to memories I couldn't explain. I would wake in the middle of the night convinced I'd heard someone speaking, and Caroline would find me standing at the window looking at the sky. Sometimes I felt homesick for a place that might not even exist. Imagine trying to explain that to the woman sleeping beside you, the woman who has spent years trying to make you feel loved and safe. Interviewer: Was it a sexual problem? Dr. Voss: Sometimes, yes, but not in the way people immediately imagine. It was intimacy itself. There were moments when I wanted Caroline desperately, and other moments when being touched made me feel as though I had no control over my own body. I couldn't always explain the difference, and eventually she grew tired of being compared to experiences she could neither understand nor compete with. Interviewer: Did you still love her? Dr. Voss: Of course I did. That's what made it so miserable. I loved her and still managed to destroy the marriage, because part of me remained occupied by a memory that had no place in our bedroom, our kitchen, or our plans for the future. She wanted a wife who could build a life with her, and I kept behaving like someone waiting for an impossible telephone call. Interviewer: From whom? Dr. Voss: That's the question I still can't answer. "Some of Those Women Were Begging to Go" Interviewer: The most disturbing testimony from the Asteria concerns women apparently begging the lights to take them away. How do you explain that? Dr. Voss: Very carefully. If those statements are accurate, we still don't know what the women believed they were seeing, whether their judgment was affected, or whether the witnesses understood the situation correctly. I would not describe their disappearance as voluntary simply because someone reportedly heard a woman asking to leave. Interviewer: Yet you understand the feeling. Dr. Voss: More than I'd like to admit. There are moments in my memories when I felt perfectly safe, even happy, and I have spent years trying to determine whether that feeling was genuine, a psychological response to extreme circumstances, or something I have constructed afterward. The possibility that I might have wanted to stay disturbs me more than anything else. Interviewer: Why? Dr. Voss: Because I spent years telling everyone I wanted my old life back, and when I finally had it, I couldn't live in it. Now imagine those women standing on that deck, hearing something or seeing something the other passengers couldn't comprehend. Perhaps some were terrified. Perhaps others believed they were being offered a completely different existence. The important question is whether they understood what they were choosing. Interviewer: Do you believe they're still alive? Dr. Voss: I have no evidence that they are, and I won't tell their families otherwise. But if we're speaking hypothetically, an intelligence capable of accomplishing what those witnesses described might also be capable of keeping human beings alive in circumstances we cannot reproduce. The passing of forty-four years on Earth wouldn't necessarily tell us what those women had experienced. "Who Is Zhaevyra?" Interviewer: One final detail. A surviving passenger recalled hearing one of the missing women call a name toward the lights. Zhaevyra. Does that mean anything to you? For the first time during our interview, Dr. Voss stopped speaking. She removed her glasses, set them on the table, and asked us to repeat the name. Dr. Voss: Where did you get that? Interviewer: From the Asteria witness testimony. Dr. Voss: And you're certain that's how it was recorded? Interviewer: Approximately. The witness wasn't certain of the spelling. Dr. Voss remained silent for several seconds. Interviewer: Have you heard it before? Dr. Voss: I've encountered similar sounds in accounts I've investigated, but that doesn't establish a common origin. Witnesses influence one another, researchers make connections that may not be there, and memories change. I'm not going to give you a dramatic answer simply because a word sounds familiar. Interviewer: But it does sound familiar? Dr. Voss: Yes. Interviewer: Is it a woman's name? Dr. Voss: I don't know. Interviewer: The name of a spacecraft? Dr. Voss: I don't know that either. Interviewer: Then why did you react like that? Dr. Voss: Because I've spent thirty years trying to understand a language I remember hearing, and there are sounds in that language that I haven't forgotten, even though I cannot tell you what they mean. That's all I'm prepared to say. "What if They Don't Want to Come Back?" Interviewer: Do you think whoever took you will return? Dr. Voss: I have no idea. There are nights when I hope they never do, and other nights when I find myself looking toward the sky with a feeling I am deeply ashamed to admit. Interviewer: Which is? Dr. Voss: Disappointment. Interviewer: Because they haven't returned? Dr. Voss: Because I still don't know whether I was fortunate to come home, or unfortunate to have been brought back. Interviewer: What would you say to the families of the eight missing women? Dr. Voss: I would tell them not to surrender hope to an extraordinary story, and not to let people like me convince them that speculation is evidence. They deserve answers, not fantasies. But I would also tell them that if they ever learn what happened, it may be far more complicated than the simple question of whether their daughters were taken. Interviewer: What could be more complicated than that? Dr. Voss looked toward the window before answering. Dr. Voss: Whether every one of them wanted to return. THE TAKEN WOMEN — A fictional investigative interview. Dr. Mara Voss, her experiences, and all interview statements are invented. The extraterrestrial and reproductive theories discussed are speculative elements of the story, not established scientific findings.