Ryan and his memories

                And just like that, one more.

                This time, I’m 11 and lying on the floor at Gerald’s place.  Gerald wants to jam, and I just want to relax.  The television is on, and I’m halfway into what’s going on onscreen.  This is the first time we’ve gotten high, using some of his brother’s stash that Gerald has clandestinely appropriated, weeks ago.  The idea is to determine, on the basis of Ronnie’s reaction, or lack thereof, whether it is safe to try any…and then wait an even longer period to see if Ronnie forgets entirely about the missing weed (or never notices it missing to begin with).  We have just felt safe enough this morning to try it out, because we know Ronnie has gone to Austin.  We haven’t yet discovered that he is planning to remain there.

                There is this clear brain feeling, this certitude that this moment will be long remembered with absolute clarity, that it will be some kind of watershed instant in my early life.  And, indeed, it pretty much has been; of all the sudden reminiscences I’ve been plagued with these few years, this is perhaps the most common, the most familiar.  And that’s weird, because there’s literally nothing else profound about the memory.  Although the feeling of first THC intoxication is indeed a watershed moment, the feeling doesn’t lend itself to remembrance the same way that setting and conversation do.  The morning slips away, fragmenting into the most banal sort of lazed-away hours, each with nothing special to recommend it other than what my cannabinoid receptors are telling me about how great everything is.

                “Pick up your axe,” Gerald commands. 

                I gather myself for a spell, to compose an awe-inspiringly witty response of appropriate gravity.  I want to convey to him, as pithily as possible, how comfortable I am right now, how much effort it will take to pick up my axe, how much more effort it will require to get into whatever guitar lesson you’re about to foist on me, and how little fun I’ll have in the attempt, especially with regard to how much comfort I’m currently experiencing.  The floor and I are, like, really into each other right now.  The guitar feels great just where it is, and if were I to jostle it in order to play, it would become irritable and uncooperative.  

                After a few moments of introspection, analysis and word selection, I clear my throat.  “Fuck off,” I say, settling further into the floor.

                In retrospect, this might also be the first time I ever swear.

                “Pick up your axe.”

                “My axe likes right where it is.  It just wants to be.  I want to just be.”

                “Whatever, faggot.”

                I close my eyes and flip him off.  Although I’ve lifted the middle finger before, this is the first time I’ve ever let anybody see me doing it, the only time I’ve ever actually expressed, to another person, the inherent profanity in the gesture.  So I’ve just cussed twice, in two different ways, according to my own standards for use of the F word.  I’m clearly careening out of control.  Lock up the women.

                And that’s the moment.  It’s followed by several more of similar triviality, and those are followed by more.  But none have the same luster.  Memory has focused just on that first event, and lost interest in the rest.

                I guess that’s the final clue, because now I think I make some kind of sense out of things.  I don’t know whether this has all along been the intent of whatever is dredging these memories up for me, but I don’t really question, either; if there is a reason why I keep catching random glimpses of the past, then this is as good as any other possibility.

                The events I’m remembering are absolutely inconsequential in and of themselves.  They’re the kind of signal that can be hidden in a person’s psyche for years, under the watchful third eye of powerful telepaths, without alerting them to the associations between them that the subconscious is realizing.  If this realization comes as a slow process of gradual accumulation of understanding, then you may have years and years of introspective regard for their emergent significance, and can plan, subliminally, your psychic offensive against the alien telepaths.  You’ll never know til the last minute what you’re going to do, and so neither will they.  Or, alternately, you can take the time this process gives you to work on shielding your mind from outside influences.

                I clamp down immediately on the memories themselves, flooding my forebrain with entirely undifferentiated minutiae of the last twenty years of my life.  I’ve gleaned what I need to, for now, and I need to generate noise to cover the unconscious processes that have been set in motion by the realization.  I know the flag to look for, now, when dreaming up old incidents or wondering what the most recent epiphany might mean.  Every one of these memories is adjacent to a memory of some kind of seminal Ryry event.  What my subconscious means me to remember, in every case, is that adjacent content.  With one exception, that is:  the most recent.  That memory is of getting and being stoned for the first time.  There is nothing prior to or following that memory that has the slightest significance to my current situation; but as recent events have demonstrated, everything psychic about my life seems to have begun right there, right then.  It is the only memory in the bunch that is relevant in and of itself, irrespective of, in spite of, its utter banality.

                In this case, and in the case of every memory I’ve so far examined for proximity to these memory visions, the significance is that I changed to a measurable degree during the event.  I stood up to a bully for the first time (and suffered the consequences); I stood up to my parents for the first time (and suffered the consequences).  I took a dare.  I faced risk.  I got braver, to the point where my friends had to reappraise me and my potential utility in various shenanigans.  These are all times when  I did something unexpected.  Times when I was original.

                In each incident, I committed some kind of act of rebellion against myself, and came out of it a different person.  Getting stoned at Gerald’s is the meta-example that nucleates all the rest:  I didn’t just get high for the first time, but I also used vulgar language for the first time.  If I were to chase the memory down further, I’m sure I would find still higher-order examples of autorebellion.

                My problem now is that I didn’t come to this realization gradually.  It hit me hard, just now, not ten seconds ago, in the interval it took to compose these words.  The first few seconds were expended in silent, solemn recognition of what the revelation means; the last couple have been spent in silent, solumn regret that I left a three-second window between the moment I realized something important, and the moment I took action to prevent its being compromised.

                If any alien telepaths have hacked me already, and were paying attention just now, then they know as much as I do about what I just realized. 

                Even if they haven’t, I can’t pursue this line of thought any further until I’ve shielded myself somehow.  I need to get back into meditation in a big way.  Find some way of dwelling on something without consciously worrying at it.  Generate some kind of wall of separation between myself and any listeners.  Block out intruders.  Attenuate any emanated signals.  Wrap my head in foil.  Whatever it takes.

                But if they have, then there’s probably not a damn thing I can do from this point onward, in my entire life, that will have any bearing on history.  If they know what to look for now, they can mine my entire head for data any time I don’t have powerful defenses up.  Any time I’m asleep.  Any time I’m drunk.  Any time I’m doing anything at all other than sitting on the floor in lotus position.  Which means that, quite possibly long before I do, they’ll have figured out what my endgame is, and they’ll have successfully defended against it.  Humanity loses, and the planet goes to the bad guys.  I've just neutralized myself, recused myself from the field of battle, and left it to the apathetic, ignorant masses to extricate themselves from the situation.

                This is why I hate thinking.

Gerald and Tara on the phone

                “So you’re equating integrity with ideology now.  You’re literally saying that if anyone disagrees with you on anything, they lack integrity.  Like, they’re lying about everything they say…in which case, your premise is absurd, because if they’re lying about what they say, then they actually agree with you, which implies that you lack integrity too.  Mm-hmm.”

                “I’m not equating integrity with ideology.  I’m not saying you lack integrity for disagreeing with me.  I’m just saying that you cannot continue to hold all the little positions that your ideology requires you to.  Look, Gerald, you’re going to have to one day decide whether you want to be an ideologue or right.  You can’t be both.  Too many tenets of your ideology are inconsistent with each other.  If you want to get on the side of the truth, you’re going to have to abandon some of those, because they by definition cannot all be right.  I’m trying to help you figure out which are which now, while you’re still fairly young, before you get set into any emotional pattern of thinking that would inhibit you from looking at this stuff objectively later on in life.”

                “I see.  So what you’re saying is, even if my ideology is 100% correct, I still lack integrity.  Thanks for pointing that out.  I’ve always—“

                “Shut up.”

                “I wish conservatives would start looking at integrity the way liberals look at drug addiction.  If we can’t blame someone for being an addict, then we can’t blame someone for lacking integrity.  Both conditions are probably entirely beyond the person’s control.”

                She hadn’t heard the grin in his voice; she seethed briefly, before realizing it wasn’t visible over the phone.  “That’s fucking ridiculous.  That’s the worst example of moral relativism I’ve ever heard.  Are you saying being dishonest is a what, a mental condition?  A deficit?  Like retardation?”  She wanted to yell that nobody was born addicted, but then she thought of crack babies and swallowed that thought.

                “I’m saying, that in my case, yes, that is exactly correct.  I am a retarded liar.  I am also one hundred percent correct about everything.  Those two statements support each other perfectly.  It’s an amazingly apt expression of the American political scene.”

                “Shut UP.”  This was the part of the conversation she always dreaded.  When he ran out of rhetoric, he resorted to that childish wit.  He rarely tried hard to win arguments, but he always tried to win conversations.  “I can freely stipulate that there are some people who are sociopathic, and who lack a conscience, and so might be predisposed to acting entirely without ethics whatsoever.  But they’re not involved.  They’re not members of society.  They almost never do anything that’s not in their direct personal interest, and I’m willing to bet that most sociopaths don’t vote.  What I’m talking about are people who vote, who take positions, who try to influence society’s development, and they do it all the while lying to themselves about the things they’re very passionately trying to change.  It’s no way to change a society.  Without an honest appraisal of the likely interactions between inconsistent principles being put into action over time, there can be no honest appraisal of unintended consequences.”

            “So what you’re saying now, is…I’m a sociopath.”

“Yes, Gerald.  That’s exactly what I’m saying.  But you’ve known this for years, yes?”

“Suspected.  I wonder if my subconscious was fighting me on finding the proof.  Do you think it’s mostly a character thing, or was I predisposed to this genetically?”

“In your case?  Character, totally.  The lack thereof.”

“Could still be my parents’ fault.  They must have raised me wrong.”

“They got the other two right.”

“Parents are always the least experienced with the first one.  That’s the one who statistically speaking gets the most therapy later in life.”

                Tara was suddenly bored with this.  There was just about nothing left to say, and she had, she realized with some irritation, unconsciously been expecting Gerald to say “gets the most brains at birth.”  She wanted to hang up before he thought of it too and started trying to find a way to work it into the conversation.  But he plowed on:  “Still, you gotta look at what’s heritable.  Something like half a person’s personality is directly inherited from the parents.”

                “And since that heritability includes a substantial fraction of one’s intelligence, one has to wonder why you were such an outlier in that regard.”  She instantly regretted saying this.  It had been intended as a lightweight jab, implying he was the laggart of the group, but of course she hadn’t specified which end of the scale he’d fallen off of. 

                It immediately backfired.  “Oh, ferfucksake,” he replied.  “I have never, not once, ever made an issue of that.  Only you have.”

                “I’m not,” she said defensively.  “I didn’t.  I…don’t.  I didn’t say what I meant to say.  Doesn’t matter.  Nobody’s jealous of anybody’s brain here.  We all three had two very smart parents, and we hit the jackpot.  It’s pretty much what you’d expect, statistically, right?”

                “I disagree.  American sitcoms have conclusively demonstrated that it is statistically impossible for all the siblings in any American family to be similarly intelligent.  At least one of them has to be ridonko-stupid.  I believe it’s called the Eighty / Twenty Rule.  Anyway, nobody ever said any one of us was smarter than the other two.”

                “No, you just acted like you were the smartest of us.”

                “How do you act smart?  Like, smarter than you really are?  Seriously, how is that even possible?  I didn’t have a scale I was comparing everybody to.  I just acted as smart as I thought I was justified in acting.  As I assumed everybody else was doing.”  

                 You were always free to try to keep up, he didn’t say.  She would probably have resented that one more than “born with the brains.”   She sought the moral high ground:  “Anyway, Lanie doesn’t think of herself as smart as we are.  I think your attitude really crushed her, like she could never really be smart like us, so she stopped trying back when we were little kids.”

                “So what you’re saying now, is my sociopathy has to be inherited, because there was no way I had enough time to develop it to so…sophisticated a degree by that age.  If we were still little kids.  Whew.  Not my fault.”

                “Did you not hear me just now?  You like crippled Lanie’s intellectual growth by not accepting her intelligence when she was a little girl.”

                “I did no such thing.  She was always the one I was directing all my jibes to, but they were about you.  We were making fun of you the whole time.  Just ask her.”

                “Gerald, she just told me a couple of days ago that she thinks of herself as the least intellectually well-endowed of us, and she thinks it’s like a gap of 30 IQ points between her and us.”

                “Aw, Tara, that’s just Lanie being stupid.”

February 20, 1997: Professor Richard King

“So I think we should start radiation right away.  The chemotherapy can wait a few weeks, I think.  You’ll want time to prepare for that.”

“You didn’t really answer my question.  I asked you what kind of cancer this is.  What kind of tumor I have.”

The oncologist hemmed and hawed.  “It’s difficult to say, Richard.  The cells I’ve biopsied are odd.  They have an odd appearance, I mean.  They’ve mutated in a way that makes it difficult to identify the source organ.  They look like nothing else so much as stem cells.  If I had to make a guess as to what they are, I’d say they were embryonic stem cells that failed to differentiate during your embryonic growth, and have been floating around in your bloodstream since they formed.  But I should be able to find out more from the culture.”

King considered the many times he’d found lumps in his arms and legs—lipomas, inflamed lymph nodes—and never acted on them.  He had to know whether that weird cyst in his left foot, removed a year ago in a drunken fit of self-surgery, had done this to him.  He did not have any samples of that tissue left to show the oncologist or his regular physician, who had referred him to this guy after finding something weird in his bloodstream.

“Is it possible that breaking a cyst wall might introduce tumor cells, or stem cells, into the bloodstream?  If I, for instance, received a deep puncture that punched through one?”

“Why, have you?  I don’t know, Richard, but I don’t think so.  Depending on the kind of cyst, and how long it had been there, any cells walled off inside it should be dead.  Most dermoid cysts are entirely benign, and I don’t believe I’ve encountered any instances of, say, a sebaceous cyst including cancerous cells.  At least living cancerous cells.  Now, we know some tumors have a viral cause, so if there were any cancer-causing viruses or infected cells in that cyst, then they might have gotten into your system, yes.  Is there a particular cyst you’re worried about?”

“There’s one on my foot.  What’s left of one, anyway.  Could you maybe take a biopsy from there, too?”

“Sure, we could do that.  How long ago did the cyst…er, get punctured?”

“About a year, I think.”

“Hmm.  A virus doesn’t sound very plausible in that case.  I would expect much longer-term exposure, with a dormant period in which the virus remained latent, in unassembled form, within cells, where they could interfere with genetic transcription and duplication.  That's how you make cancer.  It's not from the disease itself, because it doesn't emerge from cells that are killed by the virus replicating itself.  It emerges from the cells that survive the infection, and they survive the infection by assimilating the virus' DNA without expressing any of its cell-damaging features.  Since the virus' shell proteins aren't manufactured by the cell, or are manufactured incompletely, then the virus won't burst out of the cell, and the cell may survive long enough to divide.  If it does, and the virus has been incorporated into its nuclear DNA, then each division will carry the same insertion mutations to both daughter cells.  If any of the inserted DNA masks important nuclear genes, or interferes with the production of vital enzymes, the cell will not operate correctly, may be prone to higher energy consumption in order to overcome that inefficiency and survive, and may not be properly inhibited in reproducing.  Anyway, I'm over-explaining.  The point is that any virus that could spread pervasively enough to cause tumors within a year’s time would probably have made you very sick in the process.  More likely, we're dealing with something that you've had a long time and simply came to regard as an aspect of your health, rather than an illness.  You say you’ve felt fine this entire time?”

He’d been fit as a fiddle, for an old man, for well over a year.  Except for those unpleasant lumps now and then.  “I haven’t been sick a day since.”  Since excising an unidentifiable foreign growth from his skin.  “What about fungi?”

The doc shrugged.  “Wouldn’t be unheard-of, I guess.  You might be a candidate for candidiasis.”  He seemed pleased with this verbal juxtaposition.  “We can do an antibody test for that.  Why this sudden interest, though?  Had somebody suggested this possibility to you before?  Or are you just agonizing over what you might have done to bring your illness about?”

King stood up, regarding the consult as finished.  “You know how it is, Doc.  A smoker with lung cancer can blame his habit.  An IV drug user with AIDS can blame his habit.  All I’ve got to blame is Act of God, and if God could do this to me, I might not be able to expect Him to stand by me while I face it.”

The doc’s pleased expression gave way to blankness, and this pleased King.  Never pass on an opportunity to share one’s inner blackness, he thought.  But if he were going to die of cancer, it wouldn’t be God he held responsible for it.  But the guilty would be just as difficult as God to hold accountable for this.  Gods they might as well be.

November 17, 1994: Ryan Patrick, to Gerald Moore

While singing along to Roger Waters:  “’Christ, it’s freezing inside, the veteran cried—‘“

“He’s saying ‘veteran’ there? I always thought he was saying ‘Bedouin.’“

“Dude, why would he be saying ‘Bedouin?’”

March 18, 1997: James Washington

James opens the outside door and finds himself face-to-face with Rhett Roy “Red” Mueller:  Agent RED.

“Holy shit,” he wants to yell, but he only gets as far as “Ho—“ before remembering himself and lowering his voice.  “Holy shit,” he whispers.

Red seems equally discomfited, but only for the second it takes to lower his eyelids over his bulging eyes.  

“Are—“ he starts to say, then realizes James might not be here on official business.  “Are you…here?” he instead asks.

James blinks, fighting the widening of his own eyelids.  “No.  Just passing through.  Are you here?”

Red has chilled.  Red is no longer startled.  Red is in control.  Red swallows.  “I’m”—he clears his throat—“I’m just here to see my nephew.”  He indicates the door to Room 23.

James blinks, losing the battle with his eyelids.  “That’s your nephew?” he wants to ask, but he keeps his chill.  “Mmm,” he instead says.

Red sees the outward relaxation and relaxes inwardly.  This is no mission-ordained meeting of two conspirators in the field.  This is a meeting of friends.  The man standing before him is not Agent BLACK; he is James Washington, fellow veteran, fellow outdoorsman, and fellow affable stoner.  “Sup, James.”

“Sup, Red.”  He steps back and extends a hand.  They shake:  palm, fingers, snap.  James is on the point of inviting Red in for a smoke, then considers that it might not be wise to reveal to Ryan that they know each other.  If Red’s here to visit his nephew, let him do that; James is still weak and sick from his ordeal anyway.  But he can’t let Red go just yet.  The past few days have been exceptionally weird, and he needs answers.  Was Red aware of what was going to happen at Groom Lake when he suggested it as a site for the BEAR test?  Did the Group have a specific motive for putting him there, above and beyond the test itself?  Is there an inside man at Dreamland, someone who orchestrated all this in order to put specific evidence in James’ hand? 

There is no way to ask all this, here, at the entrance of a cheap motel at the outskirts of a small town.  The boonies this may be, but it is by no means uninhabited, and he knows from the past two nights’ experience that the neighbors can hear this conversation.  But he has to start somewhere.  “Look, did you—Do you know what’s been happening the past few days?”

Red does, of course.  He’s the only person in the Group who does.  No one else, outside of Team BLACK, is aware of the AI II’s tracker transmitter, its frequency range, or the algorithm that directs its frequency hopping scheme.  He has never revealed this to James or Harold, or to the Group, but he has been able to track their movements for years.  He knows they were at Groom Lake five nights ago.  He knows the van left the area in a big hurry, and he knows that it suddenly went dark a few minutes into that retreat, as if the transmitter were cut off.  He also knows that there is virtually no way to simply turn off the transmitter without substantially dismantling the van, which would have been hard to accomplish at the speed they were retreating.  He does not know where the van or its occupants have been in the time since, but now—with James here, staring him the face—he can surmise the general shape of the ensuing journey:  Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas, then here.   

The Phoenix Lights.  As he’s previously suspected, they had been tracing the same journey before they were lost to view south of Tucson.  Now he knows that the Lights—whatever they were attached to—were either following James, or guiding him.

He doesn’t know how long James has been in Sealy, though, or why Agent BLACK hasn’t tried to contact Agent RED…unless he suspects the Group of setting him up out at Dreamland.

“Yeah,” he finally says.  “I know a little bit.”  James starts to respond, and he heads it off.  “Don’t worry.  The Group doesn’t.  The government doesn’t.”

James feels something click into place.  Red is part of the Group, but regards himself as apart from it, at least in the context of watching Team BLACK.  “Did you…did you do this?  Or did King?  Or did we?”

A very vague question this is, but Red knows what James is asking.  The Group had requested BEAR, but hadn’t specified a date for the final test, nor known how long it would take James and Harold to work out the kinks.  Professor King had established the requirements, but had demanded no specific metrics.  Ralph McSpadden had coordinated Team BLACK’s efforts with the Group’s activities, and shipped parts and materials for BEAR, but had revealed nothing to anyone—at least through channels—about what had been requisitioned, or when.  Red had suggested the test site, but circumstance had dictated the schedule.  “We did,” he says, finally.  This sequence of events is the confluence of several different influences, each beyond the control of any one member.  This situation has self-organized. 

“We’re getting better at this, aren’t we?”  James grins.  And Red feels something click into place.  James may well have been previously unaware of the synchronistic aspect of the Group’s recent activities, but he’s aware now.  Moreover, he’s no longer just along for the ride.  Red has had one hand on the steering wheel, and now James has a hand on it as well.  What he needs to know is how many others are also doing the steering, and whether they’re aware of doing so.

“Yeah, we are.  And…there are others, too.”  He hopes he’s made no gesture or expression that might implicate Ryan—presumably right on the other side of Door 23 even now—but he suspects that James might already have an idea about that.

The conversation has been quiet, but is becoming awkward, as James knows he’s holding Red up, and they’re both hoping Ryan hasn’t heard anything.  “Look, man, I gotta let you go, but, uh, BLACK might need to talk to RED later tonight.”

Red nods.  “He’ll be around.”  James nods in turn, then slaps Red’s palm again and retreats inside Door 22.  A second later, he hears Red knocking on Door 23.

He returns to bed and puts his headphones on.  He’s changed his mind about that walk; he knows now he wasn’t getting up to get fresh air, but rather to talk to Red, who has come here not (exclusively) to visit Ryan, but (also) to bump into James.  He is still nauseous, still weakened, still in need of antioxidants (and, possibly, antibotics, which Harold can finesse if it comes to that).  But if nothing else happens to set him back, he will pull through.  And he has learned a few things from Red—a  few unspoken things—and from those, extrapolated others:

1.  RED has been tracking the African Ingenuity II.  James doesn’t know for how long, but he’s been able to read the transmitter that Harold implanted in the van when they first customized it for Group use…and to read it at a much greater range than it was originally intended for.

2.  RED has been unable to track the AI II for the past few days, possibly since it first left Groom Lake.  Something has masked the transmitter, and neither James nor Harold has noticed since neither has left the van’s proximity, at least until today, when Harold took the van and the Package and tried to draw off any pursuers.  James doesn’t bother to check, now, but he’s sure that if he turned on his headset, it would reveal an empty channel where the van’s beacon should be.

3.  The Package, then, once having been picked up, evidently disabled the van’s transmitter.  It may well have tinkered with other elements of their equipment complement; that would bear some investigation when Harold returned…if the Package allowed it.

4.  The Package might, in fact, have kept the van completely concealed from their pursuers…which begged the question of how they were, in fact, still pursuing.  What were they tracking?  Or was there any pursuit at all?  Had Team BLACK been deceived about being followed?

5.  The Package may well be capable of messing with minds as well as with technology.  If that is the case, then perhaps none of James’ perceptions and impressions can be trusted.  He feels a pang of concern for Harold, alone with the thing, out there somewhere.

It adds up to a new pattern, one that fits with the self-organizational character of the whole scenario.  The Package has orchestrated this.  It has led James and Harold here.  It wants to be here.

It remains to be seen whether the Men in Black have in fact followed him to Sealy, Texas…and whether the Package wants them to be here as well.  But so far, it does seem as though it wants James and Harold to see it…and nobody else.

What else does it want them to see?

Something else clicks into place, unbidden, and James has an insight into the answer to another question, the nature of the utterance he’d offered Harold just before passing out, that night, the night of their escape, the night of his irradiation.

Harp.

He yanks off his headphones and makes a clumsy grab across the bed for the infrared camcorder on the nightstand.  He flips it on and rewinds the tape for a few seconds, then begins reviewing the footage.  For the first time since the night of March 13, he witnesses the Craft passing over the presumed Sport Model in midair, and sees the faint glow radiating downward from the former and enveloping the latter.

That faint glow.  What he’d initially assumed was Cerenkov radiation…couldn’t possibly be Cerenkov radiation.  Harold had been right about that.  The characteristic blue glow of high-intensity radiation was only visible in the presence of water, or some other high-refractive-index material capable of slowing the transmission of light to below the upper limit of the velocity of high-velocity electrons.  It simply wasn’t likely there was enough water in the desert air to account for that much glow.  He could admit that the atmosphere above Groom Lake might be somewhat more humid, but water vapor wouldn’t suffice for Cerenkov radiation; you needed liquid water, in bulk, enough to produce the kind of clouds that were not present that night…at any rate not heavy enough to be visible in the video, or to dim or mask the light of the Craft itself.

Not “harp.”

HAARP.  The High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program.

Why had he suddenly thought “HAARP” before losing consciousness?  Among his crowd—the conspiracy-aware government-watching technologically-savvy STEM nerds, or "hackers"—Project HAARP carried some fairly sinister connotations, of government experimentation carried out without regard for the human cost.  But the Group’s research had turned up little of actual malicious potential so far in the experiment, which was being carried out in the remote Alaskan vicinity of Gakona, population 200ish.  Although not yet operating at anywhere near its predicted eventual capacity, the facility was known to engage in sending high-intensity beams of radio waves into the ionosphere to study the effects. 

And among the effects was a faint glow, not visible to the naked eye, but visible to the proper equipment.  To equipment such as James habitually stowed in the African Ingenuity II, and which happened to be among his last-minute packing for the Groom Lake mission.  To the equipment that had recorded this faint glow around the Sport Model as it was being held in place by, and then towed aboard, the Craft.

James quickly distills the observation down to the simplest physical principles.  If high-intensity electromagnetism plus ionized atmosphere equals faint glow, then that could account for his recording…if the Craft had been using a high-intensity electromagnetic beam, in combination with an ionized field, to fix in place and manipulate the Sport Model.  He flashes on previous reports issued by the Group, outside his field of expertise but “accidentally” routed to his inbox by Ralph, that spoke of their efforts to accomplish just such a thing…but mentally rather than technologically.

Psychokinesis.

Magnetic levitation. 

Podkletnov’s antigravity experiments.

A tractor beam.

The use of electromagnetism to induce a magnetic field in an object, and then to vary the intensity of that field to direct its movement within the planet’s magnetic field.  The ionization that the glow implied might be entirely incidental to the process; might in fact be nothing more than an artifact of the Sport Model’s power source…or might be an artifact of the Craft’s propulsion system.

He reflects for a while on the radiation burns he’d received as it passed overhead.

If the ionization was not an integral aspect of the tractor beam’s operation, then it was quite fortuitous that the Craft and / or the Sport were ionizing the air around them, because otherwise, that telltale glow might not have occurred, and James would have no record of it.

Click.

He flashes back to the Weather Report issued by the Group just prior to his heading out alone toward the Groom Lake facility:  local conditions dry and clear, cool, with a low dew point; nationwide, a crescent moon and a corresponding dark sky; and, globally, an ongoing, intense “research campaign” well into its second week at HAARP, with presumed potential ionospheric effects over the entire western hemisphere (effects yet to be determined, as of the time of the Report’s release).

Click.

That is what this is all about, he concludes.  He’s shaking now, not from radiation sickness but from excitement.  He has to tell somebody, has to work this out with a second mind.  Harold is away for a while, and Red is close at hand, RED is all but entirely unavailable until whatever he's not working on is finished.  On his own turf, RED's operation would take priority, and James should stand by to assist if possible.  James does not want to do this, so he does not want to invoke the working relationship just yet if he can avoid it.  But he can probably still appeal to an old friend for help, provided that old friend has the capacity to help, and isn't currently dealing with his own situations.

Do the due diligence.  Falsify your hypothesis.

He has no way of doing so here, he decides.  He can’t quantify the physical properties in his head; he needs Internet access and some computational power.  He can’t conclusively demonstrate that what he saw, and filmed, were two distinct aircraft, at least not without a detailed analysis of the videotape, to be performed—presumably—back at Group headquarters.  He can’t even confirm whether HAARP was actively transmitting at the time, but that’s immaterial now; even if HAARP’s activity had nothing whatsoever to do with what he saw, its inclusion in the Weather Report had provided the final clue he needed to piece together what had happened.

Yes, there was due diligence still to be done.  That didn’t change the facts.  He knew what was going on.  The Old Man had been right.  Powell’s emphasis on synchronicity as a motive force had been on the money. 

What he had on the tape wasn’t just evidence of flying aircraft…evidence which wouldn’t be conclusive evidence of advanced alien technology, no matter how exotic the craft appeared when the images were enhanced.

What he had on the tape was evidence of an energy signature, the signature of an alien tractor beam.

What they had in the van was perhaps even more profound, but it was nothing that could be shown to the world. 

Not yet.