“No problem. Even here, I like it better than back there. I'll keep snooping around.”
As I turned away from the oil well, I spotted a small silver object in the sand. “Mel, I think I see something unusualâa small canister, looks like stainless steel. It's stuck in the sand downwind from the fire.”
“What is it?” Riley asked.
“I don't know. It's empty, thoughâat least I think it's empty; nothing is coming out of it.” I gazed at the object, which leaned like the Tower of Pisa. About twenty or so inches high and about three or four inches in diameter, it was a finished metal cylinder with perhaps four or six inches of its base wedged into the sand to hold it upright. It narrowed at the neck, where a valve was placed. A plastic seal had been torn away and a portion of it lay on the ground next to the cylinder. I circled it, trying to see something that might indicate what the cylinder was, but no luck. “There's something odd about this thing. It just doesn't belong here at all. I'm moving to another wellhead to see if I can find one that has some markings on it, or if there's a pattern here.”
“Okay, but first can you get a fix on the location of this one?”
“Too late, I'm already moving. But I don't think I could give you a fix anyway; I can't see enough of the terrain to describe it.”
“I understand. Let me know what you find at the next well.”
I found similar canisters at every well I could get to in the next twenty minutes. They varied slightly in size and shape, but they were always downwind from the fire, as if to avoid burning their contents. Something about them troubled me deeply, but I couldn't tell what. “I'm breaking it off and coming home, Mel.”
I completed my summary and sketches and was on my way to turn them in to Nofi when Kathleen returned from her session. She was white as a sheet.
“You all right, Kathleen?” Jenny asked as Mel ran to her.
“I'm fine, I think I just need to sit down for a while. It was hot in the roomâ” She slumped forward in Mel's arms; her session papers fell from her hand and scattered on the floor. I helped Mel carry her to the couch, where we laid her down. She was moaning as Jenny dialed 911. Paul Posner appeared with a cold washcloth to wipe her face, and Nofi scrambled out of his office in the commotion. I thought I saw him actually get nervous there for a minute; he thought he was in trouble.
Fortunately, the hospital was just across the street and down a block or so, and Kathleen was even coming to by the time the ambulance arrived. I noticed her papers still scattered on the floor, and I hurried to pick them up before the ambulance crew came in.
It turned out that Kathleen was dehydrated; the heat of the viewing room and the intensity of the session had taken their toll. She'd be fine, and so would the baby; she just wouldn't be doing any more viewing as long as she was pregnant.
After the ambulance left, I went back to my desk with a fresh cup of coffee. I'd set Kathleen's papers down there; now I started putting them in order. And my heart nearly stopped. There on page five was a sketch of the cylinder in the sand, a sketch identical to mine.
“Oh, my God,” I said aloud.
Riley came to a stop in front of my desk.
I jumped up and looked around the cubicle doorway to see if anyone else was coming. The coast was clear, so I sat Mel down in the chair beside my desk and handed him my sketches and Kathleen's.
“Look at these.” I showed him my results.
“So?”
“So? Are you kidding me? Look at them, they're the same as mine.”
“Goddamn, Dave, they're
supposed
to be the same. You had nearly the same mission.”
“No, I didn't. Look at Kathleen's tasking sheet, it's there at the bottom of the stack.
She
was supposed to look for evidence of chemical or biological agents.
I
was supposed to look for âanything of military significance,' like a combat unit or a weapon, not to look for chemicals or bio-agents. What kind of fucking game are they playing here?”
Riley looked at me, confused. “I don't see what you're getting at, Dave.”
Suddenly it all seemed clear to me. The DIA wanted to make sure that a chemical or biological agent had been released on U.S. troops, but they didn't want anyone else to know. So they made it appear to us remote viewers that we were targeting different areas, when in fact we were all targeted on the same area. They also tried to keep us from talking to one another.
If all of us remote viewers came up with the same results, the DIA would know that chemical or biological weapons had been used. However, none of
us
would know, because we would never be able to compare notes. Once the use of these unconventional weapons had been confirmed, the DIA could start their cover-up so the American public would never find out.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm down a bit. “Okay, look. We all got called in to help out. Nofi doesn't want us to help, but we're shoved into his lap from all across the United States. Second, we're all targeted into the same area, with just minor changes in the coordinatesâsomething we wouldn't notice unless we sat down and compared notes, which is a violation of protocol. Third, each tasking is worded differently. They know we'll all stumble on the same thing, thoughâthey know the signal line will lead us to the most significant aspect of the site. So we give them confirmation of the employment of biological or chemical weapons, and we never even realize what we've done, because
the only one to put it together is Nofi.”
“And some closed intelligence cell at DIA,” Mel said somberly.
“It's obvious that the Iraqis placed the canisters next to the fires to mask the plume from the canisters. So I think they released a slow-acting toxin to poison the coalition forces, and they covered it up with oil-well fires. Every soldier downwind of those fires must've inhaled the bug or whatever it was. The poor fuckers are walking around with time bombs inside themselves, and the rest of the world is distracted because the environment has been damaged. It's really slick. Un-fucking-believable.” My face tingled, feeling as though it were a mask and not my own; my hands were numb. “They know it. Our fucking government knows it and they don't want anyone else to know it.”
“Yeah, can you imagine if this got out? The fucking war is over and the treaty is being worked on. If this got out, all hell would break loose!”
“I'm more cynical than that. I think some lawyer in the Pentagon put a bug in the secretary's ear about the ramifications of having to answer to fifty thousand legal or medical claims against the government. I don't think our illustrious leaders want to break the bank taking care of the thousands of military who are affected by this thing, especially since they don't know what the extent of the damage is. They'll just deny any knowledge of it, or spend the next seventy years faking research until everyone affected is in a box or in a VA hospital. This is a goddamned conspiracy, that's what it is.”
Riley grabbed me by the arm and shook me. “Just wait a fucking minute. It all sounds good sitting here at this desk, but think about what you're saying. Think for a minute, just think.” He released me and sat down again, his head in his hands. “If this is true, it's far bigger than either of us. We need more evidence. We need some other sessions.”
“So pick one. Everybody in the place is going into the sand and smoke. When do you work the mission?”
Riley shook his head. “My session won't do any good: I've been shown the results of yours and Kathleen's, and anyone would say I duplicated your results to cause a ruckus. Goddammit, Dave, this is not good. We don't have anyone who will listen to us on this.”
“We'll take it to the media!”
“Uh-huh. Who do you think will give you time to explain that you're a trained military psychic, who is part of this top-secret program at Fort Meadeâand no, you don't really work there anymore, they just called you in to visit for this special project?” He paused to put his hand on my shoulder. “You getting the picture yet, buddy? We weren't supposed to find this out, and just in case we did, they brushed their tracks out of the sand. Nobody will ever believe you. Nobody.”
I stared out the window, shaking my head in disbelief. “So what do we do, Mel? We've seen this; what do we do, ignore it? Then how are we any different from the guy they were fighting over there?”
“I don't know,” Mel said quietly.
“I'm going to tell Nofi that I know. I'll leave you out of it, but I want the bastard to know that
I
know what the fuckers are up to.” I grabbed the papers from the desk and started out, but Mel blocked my way. “Move, Mel. I'm doing this!”
“Over my dead body. If you go in there and let him know that you're on to him, you may walk out of here tonight. But are you going to make it home? Think about it, asshole, what are you to them? If they went to these lengths to keep this quiet, do you think they'll let a burnout like you spoil their secret for them? How long do you think it would take them to kill youâor just discredit you? Ohâhow
are
those goddamned nightmares, anyway?”
“Fuck you, Mel!”
“No, fuck you! You want some more? Where's your wife and children? How come they don't live with you anymore? Is it because you see things in the night? Is it because you walk in your sleep and swing at phantoms?
What did you go home every night and tell your wife and kids about? Didn't you tell them that you could travel in time and see things remote in time and space? Didn't you do that, Major Morehouse? Isn't it true that you are simply delusional, perhaps psychotic?
“You want to take on the big intelligence machine. You want to stand up like some fucking hero and tell the world that you saw the sons and daughters of the world poisoned by a madman. Then you want to add that the U.S. government orchestrated a cover-up. Oh, yes, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen of the court-martial jury, we have a prime lunatic on our hands. We strongly recommend that you find him guilty of treason and lock his fucking ass in Leavenworth until he dies. No, noâbetter yet, let's give him some good mind-altering drugs and keep him in a hospital somewhere so his mom and dad can watch their son eat baby food through a straw.” Riley was shaking with anger and frustration. “You can't do this now.” He dropped to the chair, exhausted. “You can't. It will serve no purpose, and you will die in the process, I promise you. You have a family to think about. Now, don't make me give you the fucking water parable again, okay? Just let it go for now.
Please
tell me you will let it go for now. Everything has its season; this will, too. But not now. Promise me.”
I bit my lip in frustration, yet I knew he was right. Everything he said was true, and speaking up would solve nothing. The heroes had been poisoned and I could say nothing. Nobody would ever believe me.
“I promise.” I wiped a tear from my eye. “I promise.”
I saw what happened ⦠and now, the babies of the heroes are dying.
THE DECISION
I
rented a room off Chesapeake Street in Annapolis. It wasn't much to look at, a dark little upstairs corner in an ancient wooden house. I'd been keeping a journal for almost three years by now and it was filled with information I'd received from or about the etherâmy training notes from Sun Streak, messages from the angel, records of my nightmares and visions, and sketches of entities and places found deep in the ether. I spent most nights roaming the halls of the old house, sketching and recording the visions.
The mental noise was becoming unbearable. I couldn't sleep or even stay in a quiet place; images and emotions from my surroundings would collect in my head. All I could do to control them was sketch them and make notes. Every two or three days I'd collapse from fatigue, and sleep without falling into the ether.
I didn't have a phone in my room, so I had to use my landlady's kitchen phone. I couldn't say the things I wanted to say to Debbie and the children. I spent all of my free time alone, because without my family, I found it difficult to be in public. Walking into a room full of people was like being a human antenna, bombarded incomprehensibly by every emotional and visual signal in the place.
In November 1990, I received a phone call at the office.
“Dave? It's Mel. How are you?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“How are the nightmares?”
“Coming on like gangbusters. I have some interesting sketches, though. It'd be nice if we could get together and share a beer.”
“We will, and soon. I have a proposition for you. I know a guy who wants me to do some remote viewing for him. A simple case, nothing too drastic, and I need a second set of eyes in the target area. Are you interested?”
“Sure, I guess so. Who's the customer, and what's the target?”
“Let's just say he works in the media business. He asked me to keep his name out of it.”
“Really? How did you meet him?”
“Well, actually I never have; I've only talked to him on the phone. He knows I'm a remote viewer, and he's been trying to get information out of me for a few months. I referred him to some of the retired monitors and viewers, but none of them will talk to him because of the unit being classified. So he keeps coming back to me.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants us to work Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the one the Soviets shot down in 1983 over the Sea of Japan.”
“Wasn't it a surface-to-air missile that did it?”
“No, a pair of fighters, SU-7 Fencers.” These were the Soviets' top fighters, with heavy armament. I recalled that the Soviets claimed the KAL jet violated their airspace and refused to respond to repeated warnings. Of course the South Koreans and the United States insisted it was an innocent mistake, but the Soviets obviously thought otherwise.
“And your media man wants us to find out whether the plane's location was a mistake or not?”
“Yes indeed. Are you up for it?”
“When do we report to the unit?”
“We don't. This is a nongovernment customer. You'll be working on your own.”
“Here in my office?”
“No, do it wherever you're staying now. It probably
wouldn't be too wise to let anyone at work see you working a remote-viewing project. Can you view at home?”
“I have a room I'm renting; I'll do it there.”
“Don't worry too much about not being monitoredâyou've been around long enough to do this standing on your head. Just make sure you have a quiet place. I need a session as soon as possible. Can you get results to me tomorrow?”
“I can do the session tonight, but how am I supposed to get the results to you?”
“Fax them.”
“Do you have any coordinates for me?”
Mel gave them. “I'm going to view at the same time and place. We want to look at the entire scenario from start to finishâjust see if anything doesn't look kosher, and get your results to me no later than, say, four tomorrow afternoon.”
“I'll do my best.”
Â
I locked myself in the room at ten o'clock that evening. I'd never intentionally done a remote-viewing session outside the unit before, and I was apprehensive. I couldn't afford any accidents.
I paced, staring at the blank walls and sparse furnishings. I scribbled the coordinates and some brief instructions to myself and set the paper on the nightstand. Turning off the light, I lay there in the darkness and counted down ⦠.
The veil of the ether parted and I found myself in the cockpit of the KAL jet. I stood for a moment watching the pilot, co-pilot, and engineer at their stations. I don't know what I expected to find, but I sensed nothing out of the ordinary. I touched the engineer with both hands; closing my phantom eyes, I read his thoughts. They were all to do with his responsibilities and with the progress of the craft. The co-pilot's mind was jumbled with thoughts of home, family, and finances. He didn't have a single thought about what was happening inside or outside the plane during the
time I was in contact with him. I moved on to the pilot, sitting in the left seat.
He
was
thinking about something besides the plane, and it was troubling him. I sensed that he was up to something. It seemed to me that he was purposely letting the aircraft drift off course in very small increments. He was flying a heading of maybe 195 degrees west instead of the approved course of 189 or 192 degrees, and it looked like he was doing it without informing the co-pilot.
Off the starboard side of the aircraft I could see a faint streak of land on the horizon. I didn't see anything out of the port window. The pilot kept looking at the co-pilot. Although I could sense his tension, he appeared strangely cool about the flight.
I passed through the cabin door and walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, looking for anything out of the ordinary. I found nothing. I then dropped through the floor of the main cabin and into the frigid and noisy hold. I waded neck-deep through bags and cartons, toward the front of the plane, one cargo compartment after another.
On the starboard side of the hold was a metal object shaped like a pedestal or step. It was attached to the floor and the wall of the aircraft. On it stood an odd-looking device, a rectangular box about six inches high, eight to ten inches long, and perhaps six inches wide. It was painted dark gray and a nomenclature plate was attached to its top. There was a device protrusion on the end of the box closest to the skin of the aircraft. It looked like the flared portion of a bullhorn, except that the end was closed. I couldn't make out what withâmetal or a composite or maybe a glass lens of some typeâbecause the end was so close to the plane's inner wall. I'd have had to exit the aircraft to find out, and I wasn't willing to risk that working by myself. I tried to see what the function of the device might be, but it didn't move on its pedestal, nor did it have any visible moving parts. I sensed that it was a passive device, absorbing energy waves without emitting anything detectable. It wasn't scanning anything or photographing anything;
it was feeling for or measuring energy emitting from the ground. But I didn't know what kind of energy, or why. All I knew was that it was a detector or sensor of some type, directed at energy sources below. I broke off the session and began my return to the physical dimension of the room.
As I drifted from the target, a projectile slammed into the starboard rear quarter of the airliner, striking it just behind the right wing. The jet erupted into a fantastic ball of flame, rolling violently to the right, nose down. The devastating image faded as I made my way forward in time and space to my room.
I lay there for a long time in the stillness, breathing deeply, savoring the euphoria of the altered state. It now took me longer and longer to recover from trips into the ether; I was losing the discipline I'd been taught at Sun Streak. The tether that held me to the physical dimension was stretching thin; I had begun to wonder what would happen if it broke.
I sketched well into the morning hours, producing images of the box and the aircraft. I then fleshed out the details of the journey in my summary. When I finished, it was four-thirty in the morning.
Â
Mel called my office the next afternoon.
“I'll fax this stuff to you in the next hour or so, but one thing is clear to me,” I said. “This wasn't a routine flight. I think one of the pilots knew what was happening, and I think he was a willing participant in the operation. I don't know exactly what he was supposed to be doing, but his aircraft was equipped with some sort of monitoring or detection device. I think he was flying into Soviet airspace, or near it, to measure something. I just don't know what.”
“I do,” Mel said somberly. “They were looking for holes in the radar coverage of the coastline. I saw a device, too. Did yours look like a box with a horn attached?”
“Exactly. Did you get anything on the pilot?”
“No, I didn't look in the cockpit. I guess I should have.
Send me your summary as soon as you can and I'll pass it along to our customer.”
“What is this guy going to do with the information, anyway? Is he going to the press with it?”
“He
is
the press! If he's brave enough, I imagine he'll make good use of it. If he thinks it's too hot, he'll probably just file it away. I haven't any idea, really.”
“I think we should give this to someone who'll use it. And I think we should use it to show the world what remote viewing can do. The Soviet Union's gone. Who are we hiding everything from?”
“Let's not talk about this any more on the phone, okay?”
“I've got a good deal of leave coming. I'd like to fly up and see you and Edith; maybe we can talk then. What do you say?”
“All right.”
I faxed my summary, and that was the last I heard from Mel for several weeks.
Â
Eighteen days passed. I sat in my room sketching in the dark, the moonlight casting a dim wash across the small wooden table. I missed my family but I understood why Debbie felt the way she did. She had to protect the children from the frightening fallout from my remote viewing. In the years that had passed since I'd been shot, they'd forgotten what I was. They only knew what I'd become.
Danielle had made me a birthday card in September. My little seven-year-oldâshe drew every member of the family as a complete and whole person, and they all held hands in a loving chain. All except me. I was a colorless stick figure, transparent, hovering above the rest. Surrounding me were the solid dark figures of ghouls, clutching at me to drag me away from the family. On the card Danielle had written: “Happy Birthday, Daddy! We love you more than them.” I folded the card and returned it slowly to the drawer.
I walked quietly downstairs to the phone in the kitchen.
“David, it's two o'clock in the morning,” said Debbie groggily.
“I know. I'm sorry, I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Well, it's late. I have to get up early.”
“Debbie, please don't go just yet. Can we talk for a minute or two?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
I swallowed, fighting back tears. “I just wanted you to know that I love you, and that I'm thinking of you. And I really miss you.”
“I love you too, David. I miss you.”
“Can we give it another try? I think I've got a better grip on things now. Really I do.”
“David, we've been through all this before.”
I interrupted her. “I know, butâ”
“David, that's just itânothing
has
changed. You're out of control and you won't do anything about it. You can't live with us until you do. You know that. David, the children are scared to death of you. They think you're some kind of alien from the movies. What do you expect them to think? Why would you want to subject them to it again? I just can't let you do that to themâto us. Don't you understand?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“All you have to do is get some help. It's your decision. I need a husband, and the children need a father. None of us needs a half-mad time traveler. Which is what you've become.”
“The nightmares aren't that bad anymore, I promise!”
“David, that's simply not true. You're not normal! I want a husband I can talk to and sleep with without having to chase him down and bring him out of a trance or a nightmare or God knows what. You're getting worse, David, not better. One of these days you're going off the deep end, and you're not coming back. You're not like Mel! Mel's a natural; he was born with the ability. He's never known life without it. But that's
Mel.
You were shot in the
head, David! Your ability was knocked into you, and your life was knocked out.”