Jaw set, black carry-all bag tucked under my
arm, I strode into the Oval Office. The President looked up from his gleaming
desk, unveiled that famous smile, and stood to greet me. Behind him was a broad
mullioned bay window, framing the beautifully landscaped gardens and lawns of
the presidential mansion. We shook hands in the middle of that historic room,
standing on a Great Seal of the United States woven into the lush navy blue
carpet.
That’s
the way it’s supposed to happen, isn’t it? Well, it didn’t. I didn’t even get inside
the White House. Devereaux cleared me through the Secret Service checkpoint
and, his hand firmly guiding my elbow, spirited me into the Executive Office
Building, that baroque old structure alongside the White House. We went down
several stories in a creaky old elevator. Down to the sub-basement, of all
places. I expected to be introduced to the janitor…
Before
long I was shepherded into a rather ordinary conference room. Around the glossy
mahogany table sat an array of anonymous suits and uniforms, male and female.
They studied me appraisingly. I could have sworn one of the female bureaucrats
was giving me the eye; I felt uncomfortable as she licked her lips ever so
slowly. The men, on the other hand, were all business – stone-faced, actually.
At
the end of the table sat a political appointee I recognized: National Security
Advisor Avery Pollack. His gray, roundish face swiveled toward me as I was
ushered to the seat nearest him. Stars of perspiration twinkled on his
impressive, hairless dome. He didn’t look too happy.
I
took my seat. Devereaux sat behind me in one of the chairs that lined the wall,
reserved apparently for lesser beings. I wasn’t introduced to anyone. It was as
if I had just returned from a bathroom break. After a long silence, Pollack
cleared his throat and spoke. All eyes swung toward him, in a well-practiced
movement.
“Dr.
Goddard, we appreciate your taking the time to join us. I regret we did not
have time to brief you in advance. We’re dealing with sensitive national
security matters known to only a handful of cleared individuals, and none of
them could be spared at this time.”
I
nodded and said: “That’s all right, Dr. Pollack. I’m sure you and your
colleagues will enlighten me. It must be important for you to have to interrupt
my morning jog.”
He
stared at me without comprehension. The room was dead silent. It was as if I’d
broken wind in church.
“Just
kidding,” I stammered. “Sorry.”
He
almost smiled, but apparently his face wouldn’t move that way.
“That’s
quite all right. Nothing wrong with a bit of levity. But we’re engaged in a
very serious matter. Major Dunning of my staff will now give you a short
briefing, and then we’ll discuss your possible role in all of this. Major?”
A
heavyset Air Force officer at the other end of the table stood up and walked to
a podium in the corner. He pressed a button and a screen descended, covering
the far wall. He then launched into a PowerPoint slide presentation that went
something like this (but longer, and with pictures):
Thank you, Dr. Pollack. Welcome, Dr.
Goddard.
Since shortly after World War Two,
the U.S. Government has been conducting unpublicized but quite detailed
investigations of the phenomenon popularly known as UFOs – Unidentified Flying
Objects. It took us about thirty years to determine that this phenomenon is
real, and is indeed evidence of intelligent life. However, we do not believe
that UFOs originate from outer space. We now are fairly certain that all
manifestations of so-called UFOs – spacecraft in the sky, alien visitations,
abductions and the like – represent activities by another species on this
planet, a species as old as, if not older than, Homo
sapiens.
Reputable psychoanalysts, including
some in the Government’s employ, have extensively interviewed “contactees” –
persons who claim to have seen or interacted with “aliens.” These include
people who insist they have been abducted by aliens and taken to “mother ships”
or even distant planets. They also include people who say they have been
subjected to experimentation by these creatures, of a biological or even sexual
nature. The psychoanalysts who have studied these subjects are for the most
part convinced that the contactees are sincere in their accounts. These
accounts are also remarkably similar in their details.
The only problem was, we couldn’t
come up with any hard evidence that these aliens came from the depths of space.
For years we have been scanning our solar system and beyond for the slightest
indication of intelligence – any non-random, directed activity. We’ve come up
with nothing. The so-called UFOs and their operators have never been spotted
outside the envelope of Earth’s atmosphere – despite the occasional accounts of
lunar spacecraft sightings, faces on Mars, and the like, all of which have been
seriously investigated, unbeknownst to the American public…
It was only a few years ago that Government
investigators began noting striking parallels between these contactee stories
and another large body of accounts – the stories of popular folklore throughout
the world. I am referring to those legends, myths and tales in virtually every
culture that deal with other intelligent species in our midst – elves, fairies,
sprites, demons, spirit-beasts, jinn or genies…
The old legends of Europe, Asia,
Africa, the Americas, all refer to creatures with unusual powers, including the
ability to change shapes and to vanish from sight. The tales also include
accounts of abductions, whose details frequently parallel those of the
contactee stories. Stripped of their traditional flavor, these old accounts are
remarkably similar to the stories of “close encounters” with aliens.
Regarding the alien contact
accounts, we were left with two possibilities. Either the contactees were
unconsciously relating modern versions of “fairy tales” they’d heard in their
childhood, or the fairy tales were actually old renderings of real occurrences.
We took this problem to the
physicists. Was it possible, we asked, that another intelligent species could
coexist on this planet, largely unseen, due to a unique ability to move back
and forth between our three spatial dimensions and the other unseen dimensions
that modern physics requires. The answer we received was, Yes, it is theoretically
possible.
If indeed we share the earth with
another intelligent species, our next problem was, naturally enough, to locate
this species. If it lived entirely in unseen dimensions or universes, this
would be a serious problem. Currently, we have no way of entering or operating
in higher dimensions or parallel universes, if they indeed exist. However, if
the putative species lived some of the time in our three spatial dimensions or
our known universe, occasionally taking refuge in the higher dimensions or
alternate worlds, then our task would be somewhat easier.
We began to inventory contemporary
folklore, looking for those cultures that were most insistent at the present
time about the existence of other intelligent beings. We were fairly certain
that wherever the sightings were most frequent, we would have the best chance
of locating the other species. We excluded our own culture, of course, having
already conducted an extensive study of the “alien” phenomenon. That study had
led to a dead end. While this other species certainly visits our country, it
apparently does not live here – regardless of what you may have read on certain
fringe websites about Area 51 and
underground bases inhabited by “Grays” and “Reptoids.”
With the help of the Internet, university databases,
and a number of powerful computers, we gradually narrowed our search for clues.
We have finally identified a location—a place where this elusive species could
conceivably be based.
That’s where you enter the picture,
Dr. Goddard.
The lights
went up. I was still staring at the last slide: a map of the Arabian Peninsula.
After a
moment of heavy silence, I turned to Pollack:
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