“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.
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