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Virginia Carraway Stark is editor in chief of StarkLight Press and

Director at the National Paranormal Society. She has written
extensively on the paranormal and injects her considerable
knowledge on the subject into her speculative fiction and
screenplays. You can find Virginia's work through StarkLight Press.
She works with other writers, artists and poets to hone her talents
and to offer encouragement and insight to others. She has been an
honorable mention at Canne Film Festival for her screenplay, Blind Eye and
was nominated for an Aurora Award.
www.starklightpress.com
www.ihavememory.wordpress.com
www.virginiastark.wordpress.com
Jenn Spaulding is a self-published author of two poetry books; Book of
Sorrows and The Broken
Ones, both as a Kindle version or as a trade paperback and can be purchased
on Amazon.com.
Ms. Estes has also been recognized by the Library of Congress for her mastery
of poetry and her poem Shattered is published in their edition the
International Whos Who in Poetry 2012. She is currently slaving over her first
fiction novel Insanity, look for it soon. She is earning her
Bachelors Degree in Forensic Psychology, with hopes of running her own crime lab one day.
She is also an honorary member of the elite National Society of Collegiate Scholars. Bravely,
she has chosen to be an advocate for Victims of Violence, so they no longer have to suffer in
silence. Please join her fight, check out her website; Victims of Violence
http://toddandjenn02.wix.com/sufferinginsilence. Contact her anytime she will answer any and
all questions; sweetjeni74@stu.argosy.edu. You can also follow her on Twitter, J.L. Estes
@sweetjeni74.
L,E, Caine is a staff writer for Starklight Press as well as an artist
in her own right. She started off her career in writing as a ghost
writer and later ventured into the world of science fiction and
fantasy with the occasional horrendous horror story that she claims
helps her to 'vent murderous urges'.
She is a frequent contributor both here and to various wiccan,
empath and magical bulletin boards.

William Norton is a roughneck and professional welder who

spends most of his time in the Great White North of Western
Canada. When not busy on the rig site, William writes chilling
speculative fiction and investigating the rumors, myths and
legends he hears in the shack. You can find his fiction in
StarkLight Press publications such as StarkLight Volume 2,
Hearts Asunder and Shamrocks, Saints and Standing Stones ,
available at www.starklightpress.com/starklight-press-bookstore/

Anthony Stark is a writer and editor with a background in

engineering, science and medicine. Growing up in the wilds of the
far north he had a lot of time to hone his skills both in research
and in communications. With a wealth of experiences and travel he
has a practical approach to writing and to life. He has taught
classes in art, first aid and tutored university students as has
polished his knack for explaining nearly any subject in a relatable
way. He has always been a writer, practicing as a youth on essays
'for fun' and moving on to writing technical manuals, articles, novels and short
stories. His array of talents is useful in nearly any field lends itself especially
to the diverse world of writing, to which he adds his own innate diverse
pragmatism.

By Virginia Carraway

UFO Report: Mass sighting in Hong Kong on June 19th 2016 follows rash of sightings around the
world.

'In Hong Kong (over Yin Lai Court in Lai King )last weekend a UFO was seen that directly resembles a
similar UFO that was recorded (many hours of footage) over Turkey a few years ago. Notice the cloudy
myst around the UFO that semi hides its true form, but you can also see two of its propulsion engines
on the right and left side. If seeing is believing...then thousands of people just became believers in
China on Sunday night.'
-Scott C. Waring

The same day a UFO was reported in Mexico in Tlaxacala with a photo taken that, while blurry, does
clear up with filters quite easily. Shown here is the original, undoctored photo. The witness declared the
area a 'UFO meeting place', there has been no further explanation of the rather enigmatic declaration.

In addition to many UFO sightings this June, there has also been rampant speculation about a strange
object discovered by NASA's Mars rover 'Curiousity', many claiming that the object is manmade in
origin as well as more alleged faces being spotted in NASA footage. There was also reported to be a
mass sighting over Mt. Etna in Sicily. All in all, it's been a busy month!

Sources:
www.mufon.com
http://inexplicata.blogspot.tw
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00790/mcam/0790ML0034430020400542E01_DXXX.j
pg
Scott C. Waring (quote)
www.ufosightingsdaily.com

Second-minded People
Or Magical Questions and Answers
Advice to Alleged Alien Abductions As Given By Idiots
By Leanne Caine.

WARNING: PREPARE TO BE CONFUSED AND PISSED OFF

Did you know that 5 percent of people are what is known as 'second-minded'? I didn't either
and the websites that I tracked this information down on gave no hard facts on how these
'statistics' had been reached.
Apparently being second-minded is akin to
being someone with a 'Deep Trance Hypnosis
Profile' or DHP. DHP people are, or at least
were, considered to be shamans, visionaries,
magicians, witches, miracle-workers... whatever
you want to call someone who is 'holy'. The
modern consensus on this is that this translates
through to alien abduction scenarios.

Sound crazy? Yeah, I think so too.

OK, this is the thing, according to modern ways

of thinking, if you believe in magic or the
possibility of magic you are crazy. Got that?
Yeah, there's a condition for it, believing in any
sort of afterlife, you are insane. I find this very insulting to me and my people. The mad, crazy
people who believe in magic and that we are something other than worm food when you die.
This is why people get pissed off at atheists, you want to negate every thing, every
transcendental experience, every powerful moment, every near death experience. It's just a
loose circuit in your brain and by the way, you're a fucking nut job.

It's a condition invented by psychiatrists called, 'magical thinking'. It's a mental disorder. Look
it up in the DSM V (THE book for diagnosis in psychiatry).

If you are reading this, chances are, you have it. If you've ever
considered the possibility that we are anything other than
animals that evolved for no purpose to orbit the sun until we
die and get consumed by bacteria and other animals, then
you suffer from Magical Thinking. Christians, Buddhists, New
Ayers, Muslims, it doesn't matter, we're all in the same boat
on this one. The atheists have declared us to be nutso.
I'll get back to this 'nothing spiritual is real' theory in regards to alien abduction in one minute.
(Rant paused temporarily to give more information)
Here is the other portion of a similar yet different theory that is equally whacked in my not at
all humble opinion.
Alternatively you have the Matrix believing 'Universal Belief' people who aren't far removed
from the, 'magical thinking' police. If you think anything that isn't within the UB you are nuts.
Worse than nuts, you're like an oxidizing agent that zips around denuding reality and wrecking
up the UB for everyone else. This is called Quantum Universal Belief Encounters.
Everyone is ticking along just fine with
consensus reality and then you have
someone come in and say, 'hey, I was
thinking, what if the earth actually
rotates around the sun'. This guy is a
free radical (soon to be a burnt radical
hahahah, recant you son of a bitch!)
and he affects everyone he talks to.
That he affects people is fairly obvious,
what is the less obvious and more
controversial belief is that he also
'effects' everyone he interacts with.
The idea is that there is a Universal Belief and that Universal Belief or 'UB' is what dictates
everything around us. Everything works smoothly until someone who is one of the 5% says, 'I
just had a think', that's when all hell breaks loose. Someone just broke a hole in the matrix
and the more powerful their ability to go into a deep trance hypnosis the more powerfully they
effect and affect the world.

What does this mean in terms of alien abduction (anyone sane who is still reading will rightly
ask).
Theory 1 reports that DHP people only see aliens because they think about aliens. They are
so susceptible to falling into trances and hypnotizing themselves that they have hallucinations
of aliens essentially because they are obsessed. They are so deeply hypnotized that they are
capable of inducing trances in others and this explains mass hysteria.
Theory 2 reports that DHP people are so powerful that their power of suggestion is so
powerful that they actually alter reality by believing so hard. Nothing that they feel or see is
any more real than in theory 1. Essentially they believe that the sun really did rotate around
the earth before Galileo changed consensus reality to the point that the force of Universal
Belief made the earth rotate the sun.

Both theories give the

same advice to people
who see aliens, UFOs or
are abducted in any way:
Simply stop believing in it
and it will go away...
unless of course Galileo
or one of the other mystic
5% says otherwise. If
that's the case then by
somebody somewhere
believing at some point in
aliens the belief in them
has spread as a
contagion actually
creating aliens through
our belief.

These are two of the main ways that are suggested to 'magically' deal with aliens etc. I have
no further advice to offer except that whacked theories like these would explain why, when
spread through Universal Belief the world is so fucked up.
Sources:
http://www.darkenergywebb.com/
Deep Trance Hypnosis Profile
http://universalbelief.com/ETLFs.htm

Truths, Lies, Conspiracies and Damn Dirty Lies

Project Paperclip, Hollow Earth, Nazis and NASA
By Will Norton
The conspiracy theories about Post-war Germany are high flying super conspiracy theories.
Since the years have gone by and most of the people who were first hand witnesses have
died of old age, the generations that have followed have made efforts to make sense of the
post-war chaos that followed. Looking back on history through old news reels, photos and
history books filled with conflicting facts based off of the need to enforce the pro-ally
propaganda machine.
The official story is that the
Nazis were working hard to
come up with new technology to
defeat their enemies. Defectors,
such as Albert Einstein who
defected to America and
renounced his German
citizenship in 1933 confirmed
that the Germans were trying to
capture the power of the atom.
Especially since Einstein was
born of Jewish parents, this was
a wise bit of fore site. He saw
the coming afflictions his people
would face with the change of
political tides.

He was made a Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton, it was a prestigious position for
a new immigrant. But he was Albert Einstein! Of course he could have any job he wanted! He
was a genius! Unfortunately for Einstein much of his recognition would come later on. It's far
more likely that his reputation didn't count for much when he immigrated. What did count was
his knowledge of the German's weapons programs, a program he had been an active
member of. As the new legislation from the increasingly anti-Semitic government came down,

Einstein took the hint and left. The knowledge he left with was a huge asset for the
Americans. If Einstein had been kept by the German forces his remarkable mind would have
been used against the Allied forces. It wasn't meant to be and Albert went on to be a key
player in designing the atom bomb.
He told the American scientists how far the Germans had come in mastering the atom. What
else did he tell them? Those pages were never written in the history books and it is unlikely
we will ever know how much Einstein's defection would arm the American forces and alter the
tides of war.

Einstein's defection in 1933 taught America a valuable lesson: how to use their enemies
ideology and bias against them. America jumped into bed with Einstein and their trust was
validated, this would presage the infamous Project Paper Clip. The Americans had learned
what would become at best a morally ambivalent lesson: Never ever let a good mind go to
waste.
At the end of the war the Allies were shocked by what they walked into. In both theaters, the
European theater and the Pacific theater, they discovered that their enemies had taken a
no-holds-barred method to scientific breakthroughs. In Germany, American soldiers chased
their fleeing enemy
deep onto German
soil and the lands that
the Germans had
conquered. The
soldiers, excited and
exhausted were
horrified when they
came to what they
first assumed were
Prisoner of War camps. Some of them were POW camps, but far more of the prison camps
were designed to contain their own citizens. They would become infamously known a

Concentration Camps across the planet.

America had largely rejected pleas from Jewish refugees to come to America. Now, they were
face to face with the starved and tortured faces that they had refused to help. Skeletons in
prison stripes begged for help and the experimental labs that the Germans had called
'medical clinics'. These clinics had housed mad scientists who had an endless supply of
human subjects to test their theories on. When word came that the Americans were coming
and that they had lost the war much of the paperwork from these clinics was burned or
otherwise destroyed. Some of the Germans didn't have time to destroy their labs so quick was
the American and Russian onslaught. Others simply didn't believe that they could lose the
war and refused the orders to destroy their hard-earned research.
Less commonly heard about were the camps found by the Americans in the Pacific theater.
The Japanese were just as ruthless in their experiments. Thousands of their ancient enemies,
the Chinese, were rounded up into camps. The Japanese 'doctors' did things to their subjects
that were at least on par with their German counter-parts. Camp 22 did horrific things to
people, freezing them alive, injecting them with diseases, torturing them and then forcing
strange sexual acts on their 'patients' to try to revive them. Hundreds were tied up out doors
on stakes and exposed to extreme heat or extreme cold.
It was horrific and the pictures of the camps, particularly the German camps, were published
in newspapers across the globe, horrifying the general populace who had never truly
understood the word 'atrocity' before. The Nuremberg trials were held as a result of this public
outrage. But the trials were hardly 'fair' and many of the most devout scientists in both
theaters would never see the inside of a courtroom. In fact, one of the head scientists of
Camp 22 later became Prime Minister of Japan.

There was no justice against these zealous doctors who had never understood the oath of,
'first, do no harm'. To them, their prisoners weren't human and they didn't think of what they
were doing as anything but furthering science. The chaos after the war made it easy to enact
Project Paperclip. Instead of being repulsed by these mad geniuses, the Americans
remembered the lessons they had learned from Einstein and other defectors: Never lose a
brilliant mind no matter what your personal or moral feelings were about the individual.
Project Paperclip brought as many scientists as they could to American soil. The deal was a
simple one: The scientists would share all that they had learned during the war and turn their
minds towards helping the American government make medical and scientific breakthroughs.
Their lack of morality paid off. While America publicly decried the Nazis and their tactics they
made huge advances in all the sciences and claimed them as their own. A bloom of new
technology and life saving medical practices was the result. It's not a secret, although few
people want to admit it, that we wouldn't have had things like transplant technology if it wasn't
for Project Paperclip. There was no public way to reconcile vilifying the camps while
benefiting from their research. The Americans response was to just not talk about it. They
claimed the projects as their own and hid the German and Japanese scientists as American
citizens.
They might have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for the fact that people are smart and
have facial recall. Sitings of the infamous Dr. Mengele working with the American government
are the most famous. Mengele was a charming man and remarkably beloved by his tortured
patients. Whether they loved or hated him, his face and mannerisms were unforgettable and
eventually the truth of Project Paperclip was exposed. Mengele was hidden again and again
with last reports putting him in South America where he continued his research and lived the
high life until his death in 1985.
This information was not terribly
difficult to uncover in the end but the
expected public outcry never came.
Was it secret gratitude for advances
in insulin and surgery? Things that
had never been possible before
were daily saving the lives of their
loved ones. The pharmaceutical
industry was booming, most of the
new medications came from
chemical testing perfected in
concentration camps. But a lethargy
had swept across the world and
Project Paperclip was exposed and
then quickly forgotten by all but a few determined to hunt down every Nazi and bring them to
justice.
Between people vanishing and emerging with new identities, the mass emigrations of people
who had survived the war or even the camps but lost their homes and everything else, the
leveling of most of Germany and a lack of understanding of what they were dealing with it is

possible that some of the other, less reputable theories than Project Paperclip may have
some truth to them.
There were rumors that Adolph Hitler and his lover Eva Braun had not committed suicide as
was the popular story. It was a dramatic and even romantic story that the two died as the
Allies approached their bunker and last place to hide: The lovers would not be captured and
killed themselves. This story wasn't questioned for many years until people started to
consolidate and wonder where the bodies were. The story seemed overly romantic, more like
the end of a movie than a real story. Especially a story about a man who had been by now so
demonized that a romantic love story didn't fit the image that had been created of a man with
no humanity whatsoever. He had become HITLER. People didn't want to believe that a
human who liked dogs, loved a woman and drew pictures of spaniels could be responsible for
the abominations and genocide the Allies discovered. Hitler had to be de-personified in order
to put a balm on the idea of human goodness.
This wasn't rational and it adds a note of irrationality to the idea that Adolph Hitler had
survived the war. He was too much of a monster to be dead! How could such an evil man
have died in the arms of his lover? There was also a backlash to the demonization of Adolph
Hitler and the Nazis. Thousands of people embraced the ideology of the Nazi party and the
concept of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Neither of the last concepts were by no
means new concepts but the fervor that these new Nazis who came to be called Neo-Nazis
was intense. Deification of Hitler arose in response to the demonization of him and in the
human memory he became either Satan or God-like. Our species had lost track of the fact
that he was a guy. He was a human. In making him to be the source of ultimate evil (in part to
cover up their own culpability by using Project Paperclip to further their advances) they had,
deified him. Whether people hated or loved him they started to believe that someone who had
been set human could not be dead. Hate truly is the flip side of love and while the world had
set about putting Adolph Hitler into a constellation of the stars. He hangs over us and the
memory, the horror, the legend and what would soon become a mish-mash of mythos cannot
ever be ignored. Adolph Hitler had become the archetype of Evil in the head of nearly
everyone and even if he died in the bunker as was initially reported, those that are
remembered never really die. In deflecting attention from Project Paperclip America
immortalized Hitler.
The idea that Hitler had survived the war set into the world of conspiracies with a vengeance.
He was such an iconic figure he would be impossible to miss. There were some scattered
reports that he had been seen in Argentina and in America especially in Oregon and
Washington State. Some reports
went to far as to say that Hitler's
ideas for eugenics program lived on
and children of Hitler and other top
ranking Nazis were being created
underground and swapped out for
other children like a modern
changeling legend.
The scientists who worked for
Project Paperclip had a few other
ideas for where Adolph Hitler may have gone. The most remarkable of these said places was

the moon. The beliefs of the Nazi Party far exceeded the idea that white was good and
not-white was bad. The Nazis believed that they were descended from aliens that at the time
were called 'Aldebaran' but become more widely known in UFO culture as simply, 'Aryans'.
They argued that white people did not come from this planet, they had come from the stars.
Maybe black people had evolved out of Africa but most of the other races were, according to
their ideology, out of this world.
The Nazis believed that
the Tibetans were another
bloodline that came from a
planet that was the twin of
the Aryan planet. As part
of Hitler's plans for world
domination he sent
explorers to Tibet to try to
access ancient beliefs that
the Aryans had lost. In
addition he utilized Vedic
beliefs and scripts. Finally,
when information on
planet earth dried up the
Vril Society set about
channeling more data
through a type of energy
called, 'Vril'. A sort of energy that was believed to be strongest in the whitest of people. Any
cross breeding of any sort diluted the Vril which was part of why the Nazis build the
concentration camps in the first place. They had to destroy the weak blood and concentrate
the blood that was strong in Vril. In this way they would once more build their race up into
what it had been when they had left Aldebaran.
Papers claimed that the Nazis visited the moon using Vril technology as early as 1942. They
immediately set up a base on the moon and started to make a self-sufficient society.
Obviously, this was one of the safest places to hide Hitler. Few people would search for him
on the dark side of the moon in a
Nazi moon base. Evidence of any
such base resides only in
paperwork detailing blue prints and
in other papers as well as a few
sketchy pictures that seem to show
a flying saucer levitating several
feet off the ground.
American POW's gave further
evidence to back these shaky
claims. In 1946 after their return to
America they told stories of strange
levitating craft that moved without any visible propulsion and could hover and move more
quickly than anything they had in the 40's. Documents and correspondence between Hitler

and the men in charge of the Vril weapons project seem to confirm both the descriptions give
by the POW's and add further validity.
Hitler demanded from his engineers that they create a weapon for him that would alter the
course of the war beyond any ability of the Allies to recover from. In 1944 the New York Times
reported a mass sighting of a disc-shaped object marked boldly with Iron Crosses hovering
over the city. The Vril ships were never reported to be used as weapons. Was Hitler perfecting
his ships to release fleets of them on unsuspecting Allies who opposed the Axis? If so, the
whereabouts of such a fleet was never recorded as being found. Despite the lack of active fire
fights with flying discs, communications between the Allies showed that they feared Adolph's
secret weapons program and regarded it as a legitimate threat.
In 2011 and 2012 the Nazi's on the moon theory hit the mainstream when a movie called,
Iron Sky featuring a swastika shaped base on the dark side of the moon with a full fledged
Nazi culture flourishing in it made everyone take some notice. Articles, written as hype for the
movie were mistaken as factual and further enhanced the mystique of such a far-fetched
possibility. Scattered reports of people building Vril ship s to the blueprint specifications that
the Vril Maidens had channeled and the (unsubstantiated) reports that the ships actually flew
freckled the internet as well. Suddenly Nazis on the moon had gone from far fetched to
entirely plausible within certain communities.

It wasn't the only place Adolph could be hiding out though. There was also, 'the hollow earth'
theory. A theory that said that the center of the earth not a large molten ball of magma but an
entirely inhabitable area that had been used by various alien visitors for millenia. Government
underground bases were only the top of a deeper network of arteries that reached to the
center of the earth while the 'natural' entries into this habitat were on the North and South
Poles.. Tibetan literature seems to be where most of these beliefs come from although many
Native traditions share the concept of underground networks where strange beings emerge
from.
According to
Tibetans, this is
Shambalah. An
artificial environment
filled with beautiful
plant life and clean air
and water. Always
safe from any natural
disasters, Shambalah
is an escape should
anything happen to
the planet. It has
become synonymous
for heaven or
paradise but
originally, the
Tibetans swore it was

a place you could get to. You just had to know where the right cave entrance was to find your
way there. If any one ever did find their way to Shambalah they either never returned or kept
the entry a secret because you won't find directions to get there on any map.
A lot of theories and little evidence but the legend of Nazis on the moon and Nazis in the
center of the earth doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. Is this a truth? A lie? A
conspiracy, or a damn dirty lie? My guess is that the answer lays somewhere in between. A
lot of people saw a lot of something. The efficient Nazis spent money, time and man power on
these projects and clearly believed in what they were doing... whatever that was. Personally,
I'm going to keep my opinions to myself until we get to explore the dark side of the moon, you
never know, we could discover that there are Nazis on the moon after all. That'd be a game
changer and that's the one thing on this subject that I have no doubts about.
Sources:
https://moonconspiracy.wordpress.com/the-nazis-had-a-base-on-the-moon/
https://alien-ufo-sightings.com/2015/07/project-paperclip-dark-side-of-the-moon/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1330566/Hitlers-secret-flying-saucer-Did-Fuhrer-planUFO-attack-London-NY.html#ixzz1WujTjUZQ
https://ca.search.yahoo.com/search?
fr=mcafee&type=C111CA0D20160501&p=Nazis+on+the+moon

Kapustin Yar and Other Russian Secrets

By Virginia Carraway Stark

Kapustin Yar is a Top Secret as Area

51, at least as Top Secret. It is a
secret underground Russian military
base built officially in 1946 but
alleged to have been built in actuality
sometime around the start of World
War 2. Even with the fall of the Soviet
Union, few Westerners have heard of
this mysterious base. The USSR was
desperate to win the space race with
America, but the origins of this base
in the middle of Nowhere Russia had
already issued orders that were told to all pilots BEFORE World War 2: Shoot down any and
all UFOs using and and all means.
They didn't have any luck shooting anyone down until 1948, a year after Roswell. A Russian
aircraft launched missiles as a strange object that was drifting ever closer to the secret base.
The missile hit the UFO dead on and the ship had beams of intense white light shoot out of it.
The pilot of the aircraft lost control of his plane as he was blinded and both aircraft and UFO
crashed within minutes after each other. The only town that might have born witness to the
event had already been evacuated years before to make sure that nobody ever got nosy
about anything that happened in the vicinity of this base.
Unlike Roswell, there weren't newspaper articles about it. Kapustin Yar is officially a rocket
test site and nothing more. Much like Area 51 we're told it's all Top Secret although not at all
important and that we shouldn't worry our pretty
little heads about it. Nobody saw anything,
although stunning footage of the crash is now
available.
The footage has been reported to be genuine and
a metallic UFO and the aircraft can be seen, first
engaging and then crashing, both turning into
fireballs briefly as they connected with the planet.
Nobody said a word about Kapustin Yar's UFO

crash but the base was believed to have been created in part to reverse engineer any
captured alien technology. The fragments of the UFO were bustled into the underground
base. Ten years later, in 1958, the USSR declares that it has won the space race as they
launch Sputnik 1. Sputnik (Russian for 'satellite') was designed to take measurements of the
atmosphere and generally advance the USSR's knowledge of the different layers of
atmosphere. Many, however, have commented on Sputnik's design. It doesn't seem entirely
earthly, a strange design, an orb with three probes positioned out of the sides of it.
Russia has been a hotbed of UFO activity.
Documented by local newspapers as far back as
the 18th century, strange things are described that
may at first sound like meteors... until you read the
rest of the story. Fireballs plummeted from the sky
and then spikes of light came out of the side of the
ships that were clearly seen despite the fact that
the hovering UFO was still surrounded by a ball of
fire. It was reported that anyone in the lakes that came in contact with the beams was
severely burned. The papers told of fish who flopped onto dry land to try to escape the ships
and their beams. The fish were also said to give off an eery glow.
Even earlier, traveling Arabs marveled at the light displays in the skies when they traveled
through the region that became the Soviet Union. They talked to the local people who all
laughed at them for their amazement. Laser show dog fights of entire fleets were common
place. To the Russian peasants the Arab traders spoke to them in marvel of stars in the sky,
the alien ships were a moving fixture, a constant in their lives.
Flash forward:
Imagine sitting on your patio enjoying the early morning air and the sound of the birds doing
their morning serenade. Suddenly you feel a fiery fist that hits you so hard that you and your
chair go flying! Your clothes are so hot that you have to take them off, they feel like they're
about to burst into flames!
The year is 1908 and you
are in Tunguska in what
will one day become the
USSR. The events above
are what the residents of
the city of Tunguska
experienced on June 30,
1908 at 7 am. Something
massive had hit over forty
miles away.
It's a good thing it was so
far away because the
forest where ground zero
was located was blighted.
An entire patch of forest utterly destroyed. Trees ripped up and thrown through the air, whole

swatches of forest forming a radial pattern around... something. Ask the local residents what
hit the earth that day and they will say the vengeance of the obscure god OgDy, what was he
angry about? Nobody knows.
Nevertheless, that is what the villagers told Leonid Kulik and his team when they were finally,
in 1927 able to travel through the rough terrain to make a report. The pictures we have of the
effects of the event and the anecdotal evidence that the villagers supplied were all thanks to
Kulik and his crew. It's a little vague as to why it took until 1927 for a team to reach the area.
Apparently it was due to 'adverse weather'. Nine years is a long time to have adverse weather
but then again, we are talking about a region of Northern Russia so maybe I'm looking too
deeply at this. Was it something else that kept teams from coming in earlier? Something
dangerous? What was the real reason that nobody investigated this cosmic event that
actually changed the magnetics of the earth due to the ferocity of its impact?

Suddenly in the north sky the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole
northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire At that moment there was a bang in the
sky and a mighty crash The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky,
or of guns firing. The earth trembled. - recorded from a villager of Tunguska by Leonid Kulik
Another recounting of the experience:
We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we
both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt

strong wind. Chekaren said, 'Can you hear all those birds flying overhead?' We were
both in the hut, couldn't see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again,
this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started
crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was noise beyond the
hut, we could hear trees falling down. Chekaren and I got out of our sleeping bags and
wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The Earth
began to move and rock, wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was pushed
down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling,
the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there was a
second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what the Russians
call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was the second
thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly as
usual, and suddenly there came a second one!
Chekaren and I had some difficulty getting out from under the remains of our hut.
Then we saw that above, but in a different place, there was another flash, and loud
thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off
our feet, struck against the fallen trees.
We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the
fires. Suddenly Chekaren yelled "Look up" and pointed with his hand. I looked
there and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise was less
than before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder.
Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and
somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep.

The earth did indeed tremble. Seismic counters as far away as England recorded the impact.
Ask NASA or (go back in time) and ask the USSR for the official story and you will be told that
what was experienced in Tunguska was the largest meteor in the modern era to have struck
our planet.
Ask a UFO expert and you might not get an answer, but what you will definitely get is a whole
lot of very intelligent questions. Questions like:
Why was there no crater?
Meteoroids leave craters. We've all seen the ones on the moon but there are craters on earth
as well that vary in size. Why was there no crater? Nobody seems to know.
Where did the radiation come from?
WHAT??? Since when are meteors radioactive. I'm not talking about a little bit of radiation
either, I'm talking about deadly radiation that persists to this day. There is an area called, 'The
Devil's Graveyard' because no trees will re-grow in that area. Also, any animal that blunders
into it dies. Would a human as well? You go first, I'll watch from a safe distance.

Where did the reflective bits of metal come from?

Do meteors refine metal? If so, is some of it radioactive? Meteors do not leave chunks of
metal behind when they make impact. How could they? All the metal that they could collect
was gathered together and eventually ended up in that ultra secret base, Kapuskig Yar. But
there are reports that bits of metal have been found since then and the photos and reports
Kulik made were definitive about this fact: There was metal.
Kulik lead three separate expeditions to Tunguska, each time he made two reports when he
arrived back in Moscow. One was for the official files and one was for the top secret files. The
top secret files tell us much of what I've written above while the official Soviet files agree: It
was a meteoroid.
The blast from whatever Tunguska was hit the earth with 15 megatons worth of TNT explosive
power. For a rough translation of what that means try to visualize the Allied forces dropping
not one nuclear missile on Hiroshima but rather 1,000 nuclear missiles! Can you imagine
that? I'm not sure if there would be any of Japan left if they had.
The impact was this great and yet there was no crater. By all right Tunguska should have left
an enormous dent where it landed. It destroyed over 2000 square kilometers of forest. When I
say destroyed, I mean flattened it to the ground. If this had happened in an urban area, or
anywhere other than Siberia the casualties would have been staggering.
NASA's explanation about the lack of crater is unsatisfying. They claim that it technically didn't
impact the ground but rather exploded higher up which is why there isn't an impact scar. The
enormous radial destruction makes this hard to believe. All the trees are lined up so neatly in
a wheel spreading out from where the (fill in the blank) detonated. If that was the effect of it
burning up during entry, why the huge explosion? NASA claims that scientist in recent years
have discovered substances, bits of rock that may or may not be meteor in origin from the
nearby peat bogs. Again, less than satisfying. Can't you do better than that, NASA? It sounds
almost worthy of the originally released reports from the USSR.
Theories about what the impact may actually have been range from someone from off earth
exploding a weapon for some reason to a mother ship crash landing. It's over a hundred
years later and we still don't know a lot more than they knew in 1927. It's equally likely to be
the wrath of OgDy as it is to be a meteor. With the radiation, the strange metal, the perfect
radial explosion and the lack of crater the odds are stacked against either an angry OgDy or a
meteor and seem to favor the idea that Tunguska was extraterrestrial in origin.
If it was a meteoroid, NASA estimates that one of that size may hit earth about every 300
years so we have another 200 years to wait and see if the next meteoroid hits and forgets to
leave a crater as well. You might want to let your great grand kids know that they should do
something nice for OgDy before then, who knows, it could save their lives.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30jun_tunguska/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytnKJ_hOSys

"Thank you for joining us, Ms. Walker." The civil servant in the starched collar and broad tie
indicated with a wave of his hand that she shoukd sit at the leather chair across from him at
the board table.
Gloria Walker did so and took the moment as she settled herself to have a look around. The
room was in one of the five sides of the Pentagon, and it simply exuded white man's power.
From the tall ceilings to the impeccably polished oaken boardroom table, it screamed, "We
have power". Gloria resisted the urge to either make a snappy comment or to fidget with her
bangles as she sat.
"I'm happy to be called for another consultation, Mr. Schmidt," she replied, giving him a
beaming smile. Confident, in control, she thought to herself. These old men need you, sister.
They need your mind, and your folklore. Again.
Schmidt passed a file folder across the table to her via a younger bureaucrat in training. He
delivered it efficiently with the nervous, don't know where to put my eyes that young white
men got around her. She ignored him and untwirled the string keeping both edges of the file
closed.
"We have another exobiological analysis for you, Ms. Walker," Schmidt began as she looked
through the file. "We were quite pleased with the insight you were able to give into the
forensic materials we provided you access earlier this year, and we would like to see what
you make of this."
He motioned again with his hand at the now open folder. Gloria nodded as she listened to him
and skimmed over the papers inside.
Forensic materials, she thought. That's what an alien corpse and sheets of metal with
diagrams on it are to them. Just forensics. She supposed it was as good a cover phrase as
any.
A word caught her eye in the US Army transcript.
"Icefields?" Gloria looked up at Schmidt with excitement glimmering in her eyes. "Is this a
specimen preserved in ice?"
Schmidt gave the slightest smirk before answering. "Read on."
Gloria looked at him with her large brown eyes, searching for some clue as to what she was
about to read. He obviously wanted to see her reaction to whatever was in this file, and Gloria
was worried she might just oblige him if she couldnt have even a slight bit of forewarning.
She returned to the file, preparing herself for anything.
A bogie was sighted by NORAD April 9, headed north from Guatemala at a great rate of
speed, following an increasingly irregular path. Before jets could be scrambled in Tacoma,

NORAD reported the craft was in some distress. It was tracked to the rocky mountain region
of Canada, and it's last known position was somewhere within 200 miles of Jasper, British
Columbia.
She turned the page, saw a Canadian Document from Parks Canada to the Department of
Defense. It read:
Request assistance for Search and Rescue Task subheading: WHITEHEAD.
At 0345 April 9, Rangers in Jasper National Park spotted a fast moving meteorite that crashed
in the vicinity of the Columbia Icefield. When contacted by affiliates of the DoD from NORAD,
Ranger Williston ordered a search of the area on foot and via air at first light.
CASARA aircraft spotted signs of a crash three km within the Icefield. Non-conventional
aircraft was located at approximately 0637h and reported to the ground search team. While
awaiting further orders, the area was attempted to be mapped by aircraft.
Magnetic deviance caused the crash of one CASARA aircraft. The mapping was called off
and Ranger Williston took a team of searchers to the second crash site to scan for survivors.
Both occupants were recovered with serious injuries and sent to Edmonton for medical
treatment via heli-vac.
At 0805h, NORAD command under authority of DoD Comox ECC arrived via Army transport
craft. Park Rangers accompanied a small contingent of containment specialists to the original
crash site. Non-conventional aircraft was confirmed. Army Specialists took one survivor into
custody, CODE WHITEHEAD.
Standard containment measures were undertaken, however, WHITEHEAD became more
forceful and alert as he was moved from the site of the crash and to lower elevation. Army
Specialist forces determined to keep him at the crash site to guarantee containment until
debriefers could arrive and further examination performed. A containment facility was lifted
nearby to the crash site via Army helicopter, which also experienced severe magnetic
resonance but was able to complete its mission due to ARTICHOKE shielding.
WHITEHEAD is currently being held at the Icefield site, awaiting debriefing and examination
team deployment. Request team dispatch ASAP, as containment is uncertain.
Gretchen's eyes focused again on one survivor and the chilling alias, CODE WHITEHEAD.
She looked up at Schmidt.
He smiled, and for a moment, he didn't look like a stuffed shirt. He looked like a kid left alone
in a candy store.
So, there is a person in there, she thought to herself, and flipped through the rest of the
documents quickly. She knew full well why she was allowed to look at this dossier- the
Pentagon wanted her to examine this living specimen of alien life. There was a little green, or
grey, rather, man that they wanted her to assess and evaluate using her blend of bioscience
and traditional African folklore and legend. Gretchen had used her strange chimera of
knowledge to good effect last year, when the Pentagon had spirited her out of her university
and to a dark aircraft hangar at Andrews AFB. She had been able to decipher the sense of
the writings that had been recovered from the craft. Gretchen had also been able to give

some insight into the nature of the alien biology she had been allowed to examine, based on
what she knew from her native tales.
And now... they wanted her to interview a living alien.
You want me to try to communicate with it? she asked them, trying not to let her fingers
shake as she closed up the file with its string.
The Pentagon would like you to evaluate and assess it, for relative danger posed to the
nation, as well as relative intelligence asset capability, Schmidt replied smoothly. This is a
big one for us, having some alone time with one of these creatures is a big boon for our
intelligence forces. We need you to establish the likelihood of long-term communication
viability, and cooperation between the American Government and this being.
In short, a silky-smooth British accent concluded, they want you to tell them if it will play
ball.
Gretchen turned in her chair to look at the owner of the voice, who had entered the room
silently, most likely while she had been overwhelmed with the words one survivor and
WHITEHEAD. She turned, but she didn't need to in order to recognize that voice. She would
know it anywhere.
Penetrating blue eyes the color of a stormy lake in winter met hers. They crinkled ever so
slightly at the edges as their owner said, And I'll be going with you on this little jaunt... just to
make sure the intelligence community's interests are properly served.
Gretchen grinned at him. David! she said, rising and shaking the hand of the crisply attired
Director of Central Intelligence. Did you recommend me for this assignment, again?
David winked at her as he took her hand in his. I wouldn't need to do that, not after your
valuable performance last time. We leave as soon as you have what you need about youanything you don't have, we will provision as we go.
Gretchen nodded, unable to keep her face from beaming at the thought of her first encounter
with living , alien life.
David Jenkins took a file from the bureaucrat near Schmidt, reaching across the table.
Gretchen felt the compact, lithe form enter her space, and felt that peculiar, confounded
resonance between them that had simmered since the first time they had met. They were so
very different, David and she- too different for either of their comforts. Yet, it couldn't be
denied by either of them that there was a certain... magnetism that wanted to draw them
closer. Certainly David could have walked around the room, rather than reach so far into her
aura. She watched him straighten up with the file folder, and from the tiny hint of flare to his
nostrils and the peculiar way those blue eyes looked through the paper, not at it, that he had
felt it too.
He opened the file and signed several forms as he continued. It's a six hour flight to
Edmonton, where we have to switch to a small prop plane for landing at the Jasper Airfield, so
the sooner we can leave, the fresher our little visitor will be.
Gretchen turned to Schmidt to see if he had any further instructions. Schmidt had stood as
well, when the Director entered; Gretchen cursed inwardly. She hadn't even noticed that, so
distracted had she been by first the file and then seeing that strange, coiled spring of a white
man again. She admonished herself to pay more attention to the business at hand, leaving

aside a bit of her mental energy to try to examine why, exactly, there was this terminally
awkward, unconnectable energy between herself and the Director of Central Intelligence.
She'd have several hours on a jet with the man to try to figure it out. Gretchen raised an
eyebrow at Schmidt, to verify she could go.
Schmidt lowered his head, and made little rippling circles with his hands, as though to shoo
them out the door. Director Jenkins has more security clearance than I in this matter, he told
her. You may consider him your Commanding Officer, Dr. Walker.
Thank you, and good afternoon to you, Mr. Schmidt, she said with a slight mirroring bow of
her head. She turned in one smooth motion to David, who was already turning for the door.
With two strides of her long legs, she had caught up with him and whispered as they passed
through the doorway, Don't forget, I'm a civilian, honey. That's just a general guideline.
David shot a mischevious glance up at her; he was the only white man she had ever seen
who wasn't intimidated by her statuesque height and capable limbs. Not for the first time,
Gretchen wondered if he was so comfortable with her Amazonian proportions because he
was himself shorter than most everyone he worked with in the Military and Intelligence forces,
or if it was something else, something he knew about her, something he saw in her with those
strange, cold, flat, inscrutable blue eyes.
I wouldn't dream of ever imposing orders on you, darling, he replied. They walked down the
hallway now shoulder to shoulder, although the rhythm of their steps was completely stacatto
and echoed dischordantly off the high white man's walls. Anything that falls outside your
scope, I would never ask you to do.
Gretchen shot him an appraising glance. That was the second time in minutes that she had
got a charge of... something... off of Director Jenkins. There was a glimmer in those soulless
blue eyes, an edge of razor sharp glass in his voice. As they made their way through the
maze of back halls and access corridors in the Pentagon, Gretchen wondered what, exactly,
David wanted to get out of this crash survivor. The feel of barely concealed... intent- that was
the best way Gretchen could put it in her mind, intent- made her uneasy. Was this alien a
threat, was there something more sinister she was walking into between terrestrial forces and
this exobiological subject? David had worked with her last year on the autopsy, and though
coldly interested in a way that only one who dealt in death and life on a daily basis could be,
David had not shown any bias nor prejudice toward the being. This wasn't prejudice now, not
exactly. Gretchen could smell that sweaty, thoughtless stink a mile away.
They were in the private car, heading to her university for her kit, when Gretchen realized
what it was. She was sitting across from David in the back, watching him watch the scenery of
Washington that passed him by. And then she saw it. A set to the jaw. That sharp weapon in
his voice. The sparkle of doom in his eye. This alien had something Jenkins wanted. The lack
thereof had resulted in an adamant determination to rectify that imbalance. Gretchen Walker
could see that, no matter what, Jenkins was going to get what he was lacking from that little
WHITEHEAD cooling his tiny heels at the top of an ancient glacier.
As to what that something was, Gretchen was at a loss to see. She set it out of her mind,
along with roaming, erratic thoughts about what, exactly, it would take to break down the
barriers of congenital race awkwardness between them. She had to pack, quickly and
carefully.
It was as though David had heard her thoughts, or perhaps, Gretchen thought as he spoke,

he had read her thoughts in her face.

Travel light, he advised her. It's a long trek from the Rangers' quarters to the temporary
camp.
Gretchen nodded, then stared out the window. In part she was trying to determine if she had
let anything of her mind slip on her expressions, and in part she was trying to minimize that
potential loss of information by turning her face from the Director as far as politeness would
allow. People had told her that Jenkins had a way of knowing what was in your head. He had
a way of sneaking up on you, just like he had done in the big tall room at the Pentagon. Just
like he had done when he surprised that torrent of tears out of her when she had been
evaluating the scene last year, with a dead WHITEHEAD instead of a live, dangerous one.
David had said just the right thing, at the right time, to bring all the weight of her culture, her
bloodline, her own human fears and hopes, all unravelling around her.
Gretchen had been better for the catharsis Jenkins had initiated; she had been better able to
perform her duties of evaluation and assessment. But she had revealed much of herself to
David as he skillfully and kindly performed the role of confidant and therapist that day. It had
been more than Gretchen usually revealed to anyone, especially to a powerful, white male
who worked for the Goverment. So now, David had tools with which to pry into her mind, her
heart and her psyche, tools he had been given by Gretchen herself.
It's always a struggle, she thought to herself. It's a striving, between him and me. Between
him and everyone. An endless quest for information, for knowledge and for advantage. That's
all.
But it wasn't that easy, Gretchen realized as she hazarded a glance back at the Director. He
was reading over one of several dossiers that he had in his briefcase and appeared to take no
notice of her eyes upon his crisply tailored form. Yet there it was again, that frisson. No, it
wasn't that easy at all.
They were somewhere over Ohio, Gretchen thought. The landscape far below had got flatish
but had not yet turned into proper fields of grain. She had spent the last couple of hours
pouring over the two dossiers of information David had given her. This was intelligence that
few on earth had ever laid eyes upon- it rewrote the last thirty years of history. Gretchen
would never think about the Second World War in the same way again.
She looked through the photo dossier again. Pictures of Nazi, Italian and Japanese scientists
from the secret government underground immigration program known as Project Paperclip. A
grainy but distinct picture of a flying saucer floating over a runway somewhere in Europe.
Pictures of what appeared to be aliens sitting at a table in an English bunker, talking with
someone who looked for all the world like Winston Churchill. A picture of the Tavistock
Institute. Rows and rows of young adults in comas, lying in old hospital beds, hooked up to
Ivs- at the bottom of that one was scrawled, Insulin Coma Reconditioning, Montreal, 1961. It
went on and on.
From what Gretchen could gather, David had given her this to take some of the wide-eyed
wonder out of her sails at her own, personal first contact. It would appear that these visitors
had appeared during the close of WWII, negotiating with both sides on the conflict and

feeding them technology and information. After the Americans had successfully courted the
aliens, it would appear that they had signed a devil's bargain. The USA received the much
needed edge in not only airplane technology, radar and pharmaceuticals, but in the delicate
construction of the firing mechanism of the atom bomb that became the distracting coup de
grace that ostensibly won the war. In exchange, the aliens requested that most ostensibly
innocuous of recompenses: space underground. Bases were made for them in underground
Caverns near Carlsbad and in Virginia; they showed engineers how to make atomic drills that
could carve out huge new bases, and tunnels between them.
The Cold War had begun an age of fear and relentless military striving. Russia began to make
great gains in aerospace and weaponry. America, for all its ingenuity, could only progress so
far, so fast. They returned to their quiet, unassuming friends under the earth. In exchange for
the transistor, and plans for successful satellites and rockets to compete with Mother Russia,
the aliens requested something a bit more... unseemly. But still, what were a few children, a
few hundred disappearances throughout the country, a few midnight indignities? Those last
could be wiped away with the aliens' mind control powers, so formidable they terrified even
those in the highest levels of the government. As for the rest... birthing was standardized in
hospitals, legislation changes making home births and midwifery almost illegal. At this point, it
was for the best, wasn't it? The atom bomb and the early testing had caused more tragic
consequences than the early, albiet rushed, tests of radiation exposure had indicated. More
than a few babies were born with harelips, with deformed limbs, with disfigured faces. Let the
aliens have those, anyway.
And as for the disappearances along roadsides and byways throughout America... well, that
was the price of war, wasn't it.
Gretchen let out a long, slow exhalation. All this revelation was stunning enough, but when
combined with a more private dossier marked just PROPERTY OF CIA, was combined into
the mix, the picture became terrifyingly clear. This dossier was largely in Cyrillic, with English
translations. It painted a systematic picture that, by 1960, was undeniably clear. While the
aliens had been helping the US, they had also been shucking the exact same shell game at
the Russians as well.
From what Gretchen could see, this was where David Jenkins had his start, was following the
whispers of intelligence that leaked out from behind the Iron Curtain. Many of the early
documents were his own reports, in his own, crisp, future-slanting hand. Back then, he was
listed as 'field agent'. Gretchen looked over at where he sat, an island to himself across the
aisle of the jet, lost in thought. She wondered where, exactly, he came from, and how old,
exactly, he was. He seemed to be young, just cresting into middle age, but these files... these
were a big admission from him to Gretchen. The kind of key to himself that she herself had
given over to him in his previous counsels to her. The field photographs, the pictures of him
meeting with Russian officials, him in the uniform of a Russian Naval officer, these were clues
to the man that he no doubt guarded jealously. Yet, the information they conveyed, the truth of
the planetary situation they revealed, trumped any selfish desires to keep what glamour he
had around Dr. Walker.
So they've been playing both sides against the middle, she said finally, after struggling to
find the right way to begin. All this time.

David took a moment to look over at her, which was unusual for him. When he did, his eyes
were kind, but that cold, unreadeable blue was sharper than ever. He nodded, smiled sadly,
and took a seat across from her so they could speak more easily. In the few steps he took
across the aisle, Gretchen thought he looked suddenly much older than he had before. No,
she corrected, not older, but more burdened. A flash of description from The Lord of the Rings
crossed her mind, doomed to live forever, the cares and burdens of Middle Earth were an
ever-increasing burden on the minds and hearts of the Elves.
She shook her head to clear it, and raised her hands in an unspoken question.
To her surprise, David laughed, which oddly cemented the passage from the book in
Gretchen's mind. He mirrored the gesture.
So, we find out for certain that we are not the only wily and deceitful race in the Universe,
David replied. And we may find yet that, on the vast, galactic scale of infamy, we never were
the major players we thought ourselves to be. How embarrassing to be bested in duplicitous
treachery our first time out on the universal playing field.
Gretchen gazed at him with wide eyes. Does the President know? I mean-
Of course, David inclined his head. But what can he do? What can, indeed the leader of the
CCCP do? They swarm beneath us like so many termites in our floorboards. They steal our
children, wives, ourselves, in the night, conditioning us in ways that, as it turns out, are
completely beyond most humans' ability to resist. You saw the pictures, of the decantings?
Gretchen shuddered. The photos of what had come out of the draconian looking, vertical
aquariums chilled her. I wish I hadn't.
If you continue to delve into the Brave New World of exobiology, you'll wish you hadn't seen
any of this, he told her, perhaps a trifle more sharply than he had intended. To compensate,
he put a hand on hers where it lay, protectively keeping the horrors in the dossier trapped
within its covers.
The disillusionment that comes from knowing what the world actually is, what it is all about, is
the most shattering betrayal any of us have ever experienced. I would not wish it on you, was
all I meant to say.
Why am I here, though? Gretchen asked, furrowing her pleasant brow into a frown. I mean,
the Pentagon acts as though this is only the fifth or sixth alien they've ever had access to...
but this clearly is not the case.
David shrugged. Why wouldn't it be so? Our forebears were too innocent, too arrogant, to

want to know the intricacies of alien biology. We were the center of the universe, you seethey were here only to help in the Great Struggle. And when we went asking, far, far too late,
for reciprocity of research, all we got were hybrids, monkeymen servant beings, and
obfuscation. Schmidt wasn't lying to you, Gretchen- he knows almost all of what is in those
files, and he has only had access to a few of their bodies in all this time.
Gretchen narrowed her eyes. So, we are doing espionage here, she concluded. We are
taking advantage of an accident to get knowledge that has been held from us.
David winked one of his blank, blue eyes at her. Exactly. We are attempting to gain
intelligence. To combat the growing oppositional force that is entrenching itself under our
feet.
Gretchen nodded. I see, she said at length. I can do that. Knowing that- I can help you to
learn about how they work.
David held up one warning finger. I have to confess, Gretchen, he told her, that I struggled
for some time over whether or not to tell you the truth about the situation with the aliens at the
moment. You saw from the files that they possess telepathy and other psychic skills that make
the average individual a more or less open book to them.
Gretchen paused. A chill ran down her spine. And you're worried that, now that I know, I
might share all this intelligence with them.
David made a hemming and hawing motion with his head. More that it might be taken from
you, whether you like it or not. They have a communal mind, you see, not quite a hive
mentality, but they speak plainly and vividly one to the group, one to another, across
distances. It is only interrupted by extreme electromagnetic fluxes, or the efforts of a highly
gifted, highly trained mind. But mental training and skill alone will not protect you- the efficacy
of the mentalist, therapist and even swami have been thoroughly examined and found
wanting. He paused, and let his companion consider this. No, the only thing that will truly
protect a person, other than a fortuitous batch of magnetic-confounding rock or a lucky solar
effulgence, is the combination of will, training and folklore.
Folklore, Gretchen repeated dubiously. You're telling me that magic keeps the monsters
away.
David nodded, deadly serious. I am hoping that the shaman in you has been schooled
enough in the truth of these creatures to not only overcome your scientific naivete about
them, but to provide the strength and tools you need to keep the information you have learned
a secret. Do they not sound more like the monsters from your peoples' legends and myths
than peaceful visitors from the stars?
Flashes of the abbhorent photographs cut across her mind. They do, she admitted.
Good, use that, David pointed at her forehead. That revulsion breeding wrath, that disgust
and despicable hatred- that is a shield, if you can still manage to function rationally while
letting it wash over and about you. That is a fine start. The band of magnetic-confounding rock
on which the alien craft crashed, coupled with the odic energies emitted by the glaciers,
should keep our conversation private, at least as long as he stays there alive.
Odic? Gretchen asked, confused.
David waved the word away with a hand. That is a tale for another time, I'm afraid, he told

the scientist. If you don't know now, it's irrelevant to our coming assignment. But, if you
continue down this path, you might want to look it up.
He rose, more spry than before, and went to the bar. Enough talk of dark things, he
announced. You now know one of the very important reasons we have to glean whatever
information we can from the alien we are about to see. Let's sit down, and put the matter from
our minds, lest eyes in the walls see what it is we are thinking as we fly over them.
Gretchen started, then looked out at the landscape below with no small degree of concern.
There was only sunset spreading out over a landscape that was rapidly turning to farmland.
Scotch? David asked, holding up a decanter.
Sure, Gretchen said vaguely, continuing to peer down at the land, trying to imagine what
exactly could be below it.
There are few things as beautiful as flying into the dark across the vast wheat fields of North
America, he told her as he handed her the highball, clinking with ice. He sat across from her
at the window once more. Sunset over the Sea of Dreams... it is a remarkable sight. Let's
enjoy it, because it's going to be a long, dark night.
There was a tiny DeHavilland with its engine already running at the edge of the tarmac in
Edmonton. It was full dark by the time the plane landed, and two men in suits armed with
revolvers and flashlights trotted Gretchen and the Director to the bush plane. Inside were two
seats bolted to the floor; the light beams reflected off of fresh scrape marks that indicated the
seats weren't usually there.
The quickness of their changeover in the dark, in a new country, in a strange city, unsettled
Gretchen Walker. She had never really spent much time in the prairie, and this place, even in
the dark, was palpably a completely different world. Even from the few minutes she was on
the ground in Canada, it seemed different. Quiet, reserved. Even the tarmac was grainier,
more subdued, more businesslike and less showy than the thick, rich, in your face tarmac in
Virginia. The air here was crisp, tinged with cool, lacking in the thick humidity of the American
south. The evening breeze wafted fresh air laden only with the scent of green crops, fresh
tilled earth and some unknowing wildness beneath- the hint of wilderness. Gretchen stood
and inhaled, one foot on the prop plane, one on the tarmac, taking a moment to orient herself.
David, already inside the plane, watched her silently. When she turned to enter the aircraft, he
smiled at her.
Bienvenue a Canada, he spoke in perfect French.
Gretchen considered the reality of her situation as the tiny, spirited plane lifted off. She had
never been this far north before in her life. She had never been to Canada before, had always
rather dismissed it as just a footnote to America. A place where polar bears and quiet, helpful
people lived. Yet there were photographs in the dossiers she had just poured over, ones
marked Montreal. Maps of underground bases under the very city she had just briefly
visited. Pictures of complexes where aliens worked alongside humans, and the new Canadian
flag with its red stripes and huge maple leaf in the background. And now, armed with this
mind bending knowledge, Gretchen was headed to an ancient glacier in a remote mountain

range to assess a being that was less a window to the Galaxy and more a sinister tempter of
men, a demon landed on earth. And all this was in this strange, unobtrusive country.
Do you know a lot about Canada? Gretchen asked her companion, raising her voice over
the aircraft's persistent whine.
David nodded. Rather a lot, he confessed. It's roots run deep, deeper than its history, let me
say that.
Gretchen nodded, moving her jaw to pop her ears. I could see that, from the pictures.
David put a finger to his nose. Most of reality hides in plain sight, he told her. A mystery is
best wrapped in something easily overlooked.
They flew westward in silence for a few moments. Gretchen wanted to pump David for
information about this strange, bilingual, helpfully unobtrusive country, but she held her
tongue, not knowing what the pilot could hear, and if the pilot was safe to talk around. David
had put himself on quite the limb to share what he had with her, and so she kept her disquiet
and her questions to herself, to save for later. For now, Canada was still a mystery, passing
beneath her in the dark, with only vague, hulking forms of hunched hills covered in what
Gretchen assumed were pine tress, textured in an infinite variety of shades of black. There
were no stars overhead, and she struggled with a vague sense of panic. It seemed like she
was flying through nothingness, a great void with all the landmarks and lodestars of America
stripped away.
As if on cue, it started to rain. A thick, heavy rain, yet not lush and fecund like torents in her
home country. These raindrops were numerous, but thin, and hard. They hit the metal sides of
the plane like tiny little bullets, and the pelting din only served to heighten her disquiet. For a
moment, Gretchen was struck with a trembling sense of disorientation; she could discern
neither up from down, north from south.
David put a hand on her leg. We're coming to the mountains now, he leaned over and
informed her. The magnetic rocks are laced all through this section of the Rockies. It
contributes to disorientation.
Gretchen grimaced. Is it that obvious, that I'm having... issues?
David smirked. I'm glad you're strapped in your seat, otherwise I'd be worried you might bolt
for the door. Not to worry, it's a common sense in the dark, to feel a stripe of panic. It will take
you a bit of time on the ground to reorient your inner compass.
When they did finally land on the ground, it was in near blackness. The aircraft's lights were
ineffective, and lit up only the driving, thin rain that pelted toward them in a swirling torrent of
fatal bedazzlement.
There were a few, paltry, wispy lights that lit up only the far edges of the airfield in Jasper. It
looked to Gretchen as though they were plummeting downward into a vast rectangle cut from
the Abyss. The DeHavilland shuddered, rocked suddenly to her left as though some great
hand had swatted it. Before she knew it, she found she was looking at David for reassurance.
She would remonstrate herself later; right now, she needed to know they weren't going to rip
apart before they crashed into that black rectangle of nothingness.
David shaped the terrain with his hands as he explained the situation. The airfield is on the
east of the highway, in the middle of one of the few valleys wide enough in this pass. The

mountains run north and south, and the river in the middle- the entire area is prone to rather
extreme crosswinds.
And that's what we're feeling, Gretchen concluded, gripping the armrests.
Yes, wind from the river, and off the mountains, meet in this valley, David demonstrated with
his hands. Landing here is one of the more challenging sites in the West.
Super, Gretchen breathed and tried to see what was outside the tiny window. There was
nothing, just a sense of movement.
The landing was remarkably smooth, considering the stormy night. The plane bounced once,
twice, then she felt the drag of the air against the wings and the rumble of tires on some sort
of rough surface.She exhaled deeply and the plane skidded to a stop.
Car's to starboard, sir, the pilot called back to them. Go round the tail of the plane, he
advised Gretchen.
David ubuckled and rose, opening the door of the cargo hold. He hopped down, and held his
hand out to Gretchen. Despising herself for it, she took it to counter her quaking knees.
Taking a white man's hand was not as bad as falling flat on her face in this wild mountain
pass. Pick your battles, Gretchen, she thought to herself. David reached back into the plane
and grabbed her gear; he had locked his briefcase in the jet back in Edmonton, which was
being guarded by the two men in suits with guns, and he was perhaps wisely free from
baggage.
The Director of Central Intelligence carried Gretchen's bag to the waiting car, stopping to
open the door for her first. At least if she was going to be coddled, it was by one of the most
powerful men in the world, she thought to herself. That was some consolation, anyway. She
sat in the car, trying to keep her hands from shaking in the cold and the fear, while he went
round the trunk and deposited her bag. David had stepped up with chivalry and consideration
when Gretchen's mettle had failed her in the strange, new environment; it remained to be
seen if he would give her her props back when she recovered. Gretchen resolved to wait and
see what would happen with him, and make him pay for his ministrations if need be. Right
now, she was just grateful to be on solid ground, in a properly sized hunk of metal like this
New Yorker. She shook her hair free of the rain that had gathered in it with a few flicks of her
fingers, and then blew on her hands.
David ducked into the driver's seat, shaking the rain off of his woolen coat. He reached under
the seat and got the keys, then started the vehicle with a satisfying roar. Now there was an
engine you could feel safe with, Gretchen thought, not like that raspy whine of that flying tin
can they had just been trapped inside.
Headlights flared in front of them, revealing a wide stretch of poorly mowed, dry field. Yellow
stalks of grain or grass flopped in erratic patterns in the wind, and rocks the size of Gretchen's
fist dotted the landscape.
That's what we landed on? she asked incredulously as David kicked the car into drive.
That's what they call an airfield in Canada?!
Its the only major airstrip between here and Prince George, four hours west of here, he
advised with a wink. C'est Canada, malheureusment.
They bounced and rocked their way out of the airfield, headed to what Gretchen thought was
a cliff. A slight dip, then a rise, and suddenly they were on paved road. David turned the car to

the left and stepped on the accelerator. To Gretchen, it seemed like they were headed back
the way they had come.
You're sure this is the right way to go? she asked him. I don't mean to back seat drive... my
inner compass is telling me it's the way we came.
David smiled sympathetically. Directions are slippery in Canada, he advised. But the
icefields are south of the airfield, so if the airfield is on our left, we're headed south.
Airfield on left, headed south, she repeated. Got it.
All this will look much more understandable in the light, he promised her. It's beautiful
country, but still quite disorienting.
I wonder if the UFO thought it was beautiful before it became so disoriented it crashed, too,
Gretchen asked.
The rain streamed at the expansive windshield like a myriad tiny ghosts streaming out of the
gates of Hades. They curved around a series of badly graded hills, and then started to put on
serious elevation. The drops slowly gained form.
Is that snow? Gretchen asked incredulously.
There's a reason these glaciers still exist, holdovers from the Ice Age that they are, David
replied as he dimmed the lights to offset the glare from the driving precipiation.
To distract herself from the dizzying view before her, Gretchen started exploring the car. The
glovebox had a flare gun, Canadian Insurance card, a National Park year pass, and a
snub-nosed .32 in it. She felt under her seat and found a box of 8 tracks; she raised it to her
lap.
How bout some tunes? she asked David. I can't imagine we get a radio station out here in
the boondocks.
Please, David said. The road is hypnotizing.
Gretchen rooted through the box of plastic cartridges. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Wilf Carter...
Jesus, she exhorted. Who drives this car?
It's a CIA vehicle, David told her. I'd imagine it's whatever they can find at gas stations in
the area.
Oh, here we go, she said finally. Best of Rock. She popped the 8 track into the player and
turned it on. Sounds of heavy guitar rock flooded the compartment.
Gretchen grooved a bit in her seat. Not bad, she said. It's a little funky.
David laughed. Yes, just a bit, he agreed. Better than Wilf.
The drive, though stunning in its lack of orientation, was pleasant enough. They chatted about
music, and pop culture a little bit, but as they drove, Gretchen could tell that whatever intent
David had been hiding from her throughout the journey was taking the forefront now. He was
mustering some inner resolve, growing increasingly meditative, and ominously determined as
he did. The last few winding switchbacks were taken in thick silence. Gretchen could see the
cold, foreboding steel in his eyes reflecting the dashboard lights. David turned to the left and

made his way up a winding gravel driveway or road until the New Yorker's headlights fell upon
an institutional looking three story building. The little square windows were painted green, and
the building itself was stuccoed with pale ivory.
This is the lodging building for the Park Rangers, David told Gretchen as they pulled up in
front of the main entrance. It is also the muster point for the Army Corps who are manning
the de facto containment at the Ice Field. We can go inside and get oriented before
continuing. They exited the vehicle.
At first light, right?Gretchen asked over the roof of the car. David turned his penetrating eyes
to her.
I'm afraid not, he shook his head. No time for a disarming smile now. He was resolute.
Gretchen followed him up the steps of the government building.
Do you mean to tell me that we're climbing a mountain, and a glacier, in this pitch black
blizzard? she half shouted at him.
Time is of the essence, he said simply, and entered the building.
Cursing under her breath, Gretchen followed. This was true, and though somewhat
uncomfortable to follow army men up a mountainside in the dark, she had signed on to
evaluate this being asap. It was just her disorientation and trepidation that wanted to wait for
light, for something less frightening than a midnight blizzard and a monster on a mountaintop.
Let's do it, she said after a moment.
David smiled at her, skin crinkling around his eyes but leaving the frightening determination in
them intact. Good show! he told her, then beckoned her follow him to the meeting room at
the end of the hall.

There were lights blazing, reflecting a myriad blinding snowflakes with their artificial glow. The
white of the glacier and the tumbling blizzard made the temporary contaiment area in the
saddle of the icefield look like a white orb against the black. Gretchen had never seen
anything quite so miraculously artificial in her life. In one of the two makeshift buildings before
her was a real, live extraterrestrial. She trudged on behind David and in front of two U.S.
Army Rangers, exhausted but determined not to show it.
They gathered amidst the swirling flakes under the confluence of the standing light towers. An
officer in military fatigues and an immense parka came jogging toward them. He saluted
David Jenkins.
Sir, we have the WHITEHEAD in the sea can over there, he pointed to the metal storage
unit by the generator. We've hooked the 30kilowat genny up to the outer casing as
recommended, and taken the standard precautions.
The officer glanced at Gretchen, who couldn't contain her dismay at the idea of the immense
steel cube being electrified. He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted toward her.
They don't like steel, ma'am, he advised her. And they don't like steel when it's magnetized.

Cross-voltage setups on a seacan are a cheap and easy Faraday cage.

That's the only thing to keep them out, David advised. Or keep them in- high voltage
electromagnetic flux deadens their ability to slip out of this dimension.
They started wading through the knee high snow toward the cage. The officer spoke to them
in increasing volume to compensate for the roar of the generator.
It's pretty loud nearby, as you can imagine, the soldier said. But the can was sprayed with
insulating foam on the inside before the inner grid was welded in place, so it's quiet enough
for conversation. They don't like engines either, he told Gretchen.
They don't like much, she called back, stumbling a bit in the heavy snow.
The army man, whose nametag read MASLER, took her by the elbow and helped her up in a
businesslike fashion. They like us, He told her. In a bad way.
Gretchen gulped, then tried to look composed. Does it understand any English? she asked
him.
As she asked her question, she cast a look at the Director. He had become studiously quiet,
moving with an almost catlike stealth, as though he were sneaking up on the creature and it
might see him if he called too much attention to himself. Gretchen narrowed her eyes.
Something was off here.
It was too late to consider what exactly was the state of things; they were at the door of the
seacan.The standing electromagnetic field made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up,
even under her toque, and a heavy pressure settled between her eyes.
That feeling, Masler shouted, pointing at his own forehead, that's just the Faraday cage.
And a couple other dampeners we have going. Keeps our minds buttoned down from them,
so they can't root around too easily.
Gretchen nodded, her brow still furrowed. It felt as though someone were suffocating her
brain. David had melted away, somewhere behind her, but there were lights trained on the
door of the seacan and Gretchen couldn't tell if he was out there in the dark.
We're authorized to give you a three minute session first, Masler told her. We will pull you
out if you get into any heavy waters with him. You need to wear this.
He held out a wristband connected to a long line of wires that appeared, from what Gretchen
could tell, led into a tent beside the seacan. Masler took her wrist and wrapped the band
around it.
It's a telemetry system, he told her. It monitors your heart rate, breathing, other stats. They
can try to cause... problems... with us, with our bodies. If any of the telltale problems start, we
will pull you out.
Masler took a bright orange tow strap from an assistant. The strap was wrapped with
windings of copper wire secured with thread; it had wide leather belt at one end.
Gretchen raised a warning finger. Aw, now what is that? she asked dubiously, taking a step
back.
Masler looked apologetic, but in that military manner that indicated his relative feelings on the

matter would not stop him from doing what needed to be done.
I'm serious, Dr. Walker- we pull you out. They can grab hold of your mind and nervous
system, make you drop like a leaf, then rummage around inside you. This is SOP for anyone
entering the can.
Gretchen abhorred being confined. She looked at the door to the seacan. The snowflakes
melted and hissed when they hit the rebar cage that was welded to the outside. She looked
skyward at the infinite snowfall, then held up her arms.
All right, she conceded. But make it quick.
Masler buckled the strap around her snugly. A tech by the tent checked a series of dials, then
gave a thumbs up. The officer turned to face her.
Three minutes! he shouted. Then we tug once on the rope- if you don't come out, we yank
you, got it?
Gretchen nodded, trying not to feel offended by the improprieties to her science and her
person. This was, after all, a completely new endeavour for her field. As far as she knew.
Masler and the other soldier cracked the sea can. An unholy stink wafted out that made
Gretchen retch involuntarily.
That's just them, Masler assured her. Go on, get it done!
Gretchen walked into the sea can, letting her eyes adjust to the dim. There was light in here,
but it was dim, diffuse, and came from fixtures set into the wall behind the interior gridwork of
rebar that formed the inner Faraday cage. Strapped with iron shackles to a metal chair was
Gretchen's first glimpse of alien life.
It was small, like the one she had autopsied and examined. Perhaps four feet high, with
spindly arms that looked unreal and badly fabricated they were so translucent and pale. The
skin looked fake, as did the face- and yet, there was something unmistakeably alive about it.
But repulsive, Gretchen realized, in a way that had not translated with the dead thing she had
examined last year, nor with their technology. It was alien, and real and true alien revulsion
washed over her.
She walked into the can, and immediately she felt a panic as long, thready tendrils of the
creature's mind crawled over her head, her heart, into her, spying, prying for anything it could
use...
Stop that, she commanded it, and looked straight into its large, dully glistening eyes.
Translucent eyelids blinked from side to side over them, and the tendrils dissipated. Slightly.
Like a nest of snakes held back bythe fire of her determination, the fingers of the alien's
telepathy sat in loosely coiling piles, just beyond the edge of her personal, mental space. She
and the extraterrestrial regarded each other for a moment.
It had no nose to speak of, just slits that expanded and contracted with its shallow breaths. A
line of oily exudate stood out over its brow ridges, and in its collarbone wells. The Faraday
cage was obviously causing it some pain, either by its very existence or by the effort the alien
was using to combat it. Gretchen had a moment where she almost wanted to feel sorry for it;
a mental compassion request crossed her mental desk, by rote, when confronted with the
agony of another being. Yet, optimistic explorer that she may be, Gretchen could not bring
herself to actually file that request and requisition herself some empathy for it. Not after those
cold, heartless, demanding and thoughtless tendrils had defiled her so easily. She had never

seen anything like it, never felt a presence so invasive nor so strong. Not in all her years of
shamanistic work, not in her time working with researchers into ESP or other theta abilities.
Any ideas of a fireside chat with the being had fallen by the wayside the moment it had
assaulted her.
But what to ask it, Gretchen thought. Well, she decided, better show it some basic civility,
then, if we are to figure anything out about it at all.
Are you hurt? she asked it aloud, surprising herself by the forecefulness and volume of her
voice. In more conversational tones, she added, Do you need anything for sustenance?
The alien cocked its head to one side and its tiny arms jangled the shackles that bound it
there. Images of paste, something like pate but much, much worse, flashed through her
minds. An image of her, running through the forest as a child, terrified, looking behind her. A
tendril trying to clasp her hypothalamus in its suckers and bleed her dryWe don't have any of that, little man, Gretchen said, waving her hand once in front of her
forehead. The alien's eyes blinked with opaque lids this time, and it sat back in its seat. It
opened its mouth and little, translucent, sharp teeth glistened in the light. Gretchen couldn't
tell if it was snarling or smiling. It sat placidly, and suddenly a loud, tall, black and white series
of words flashed in her mind:
NO HURT ME
UNEXPECTED LANDING
WE FRIENDS
HELP EACH OTHER
Ok, Gretchen said carefully. He was clearly being earnest, but even so, she couldn't quite
bring herself to trust it. Those writhing snakes of his were still just out of range of her
apparently tiny mind's reach. She knew they would come back at the first sign her guard was
down. We friends then. We help each other.
The alien made another open mouthed gesture; a smile, Gretchen decided. She smiled back,
and wondered if it looked as disturbing to him as his did to her. She wondered if this even was
a he, or if they had genders.
The alien picked that idea out of her mind, and flashes of sex, underwear ads in catalogues,
her junior high school health class, a wedding she had been to last year, came across her
mind. Gretchen threw the brakes on the rolodexing images in her mind's eye, but not before
the alien noticed he could go no farther.
The alien was trying to determine its best advantage with Gretchen, what gender it could say
it was that would aid in its manipulation of her.
The alien frowned, yes, it was distinctly a frown. He had found a block in her mind, and it was
there before Gretchen had locked herself down- something about gender, about sex, that she
had hidden and wouldn't let him see. The alien tried to scan through her ideas about herself, a
brief, jagged flash of her looking appraisingly at her body in the mirror in her bedroom, a
shadowy image of a kiss with Masler- shadowy from the artificial construction that had gone
into making it. It palpated with its slimy mind tentacles the area she was keeping hidden.
A flash of the radio in the New Yorker. Her hand turning up a song by Sly Sloane on the eight
track. Her eyes looking up, seeing a gloved hand on the wheel while she hand jived in the car.
A laugh from the driver-

Several things happened at once, and it took Gretchen months of reviewing and recalling
again and again the exact sequence of events to even begin to understand what she had
seen in the sea can.
The first thing was that the alien hissed. It hissed like a demon in a corny horror movie,
opened its tiny, obscenely demure mouth wider than Gretchen thought it could possibly go
and bared several rows of translucent teeth. Its pupils contracted, and it turned out that there
was a different kind of material in the alien's eye. Bits of pale grey shot through with black
veins showed around its elongated black eyes. They trembled with something between terror
and rage. It ratttled against the iron shackles that bound it, heedless of the welts it left on its
delicate body.
Immediately after that, Gretchen felt a curtain close over her mind. It was polite, businesslike
and above all, it was unarguable. The show the alien had been watching was over. Gretchen
herself had lost her ability to think with her whole brain in a more complete way than the alien
probing had accomplished. It was as though she were wearing blinders, or goggles with only
small circles of clear glass in the center of her vision. There was nothing else. She turned as
she heard a footfall in the seacan, and wondered lazily if it had been three minutes already.
The alien started to scream, a distinctly familiar howl of wrath and revulsion that rang
evocatively in Gretchen's deepest memory. These things were indeed not new on this earthshe knew them in her African bones. She turned quickly back to the alien, forgetting for a
moment someone was behind her. Gretchen had heard that voice before, her ancestors had,
and she was going to kill it.
Sit down, a familar voice commanded her, and Gretchen found herself on her knees like a
child at prayer before she even had time to process the words.
David? she asked dreamily. Gretchen looked up and saw the Director sweep into the center
of the seacan, moving so swiftly and seamlessly she still, after months of trying to recall,
could not definitively say whether he was moving his limbs or no. He was directly before the
alien, looking down at it with cold, infinitely cold disdain.
The alien was frothing in its wrath, gouging at its wrists with the iron shackles to try to wrest
even a severed limb from its containment so that it could attack. David looked it in the eyes,
and Gretchen's hands flew to her head immediately. The clash of minds was so great it felt as
though a bomb had gone off right in front of her. Her field of vision grew yet smaller, and she
realized that David had first put the curtain over her mind, and now was lowering it yet more.
For her protection. She struggled to raise her head; she needed to see what was happening
next.
The alien quieted to an aggressively surly thrumming, its eyes locked on David's, its mouth
writhing in a variety of foul emotions, it fingers twiddling in infernal patterns.
David raised a hand, and the alien screamed in agony. A line of its black, ichorous blood
welled up laterally along its cheekbones, extending up to the apex of its egg-like skull.
Gretchen expected David to smite it with some ray gun of the CIA's own devise, or to strike
the creature, or to begin interrogating it about alien bases, or weapons, or other government
subjects of interest. Instead, David merely leaned forward and said, in his quietest, most
impersonal tones:
Where is she?
The alien hissed at him, spitting its saliva as its tongue trilled some kind of syllable cacophony

Gretchen could only assume was curses. Who is 'she'? Gretchen found herself idly
wondering.
The alien, having heard her mind as clearly as though she had said the words aloud, let out
its own effulgence of imagery, unable to contain its defenses under the Director's apparently
preternatural attack.
An intwined pair of snakes, rotating against a golden white background. A figure eight, turning
on its side to embody the infinity symbol. A woman, tiny, slight, achingly beautiful, with long
red hair the color of fire and eyes the same blue as David's own. A cavern, stinking with gore
and vats of bubbling effulgences. Cages.
Where, David repeated, more dreamily this time, and he leaned in and flicked a finger.
To Gretchen's shock, the top layer of the alien's skin flayed itself from the weak muscle
underneath. It peeled itself back as neatly and completely as though forceps and scalpels had
been used, and with a similar, methodical precision. David leaned in closer.
Yes, a base, but which base? he purred. Gretchen watched, rocking on her knees, unable to
withstand the force of either David's assault on the being nor the alien's own vicious
counterattacks. Yet she was unable to look away. The girl in the alien's vision, she was
mirrored in David's own mind. It was what he had been hiding from her. A wife? A sister-my daughterGretchen opened her mouth with a gasp. The things they had done to her, Gretchen could
see it in the alien's mind, horrible things... if she was still even aliveThe alien struck back with a blinding, mace of an assault, spiky with evil and damaging
poison dripping from its every brainwave. Gretchen whimpered, then called out with the pain.
David lifted his other hand with that deadly alacrity he possesed and, with precise spreading
motions, ended the attack. Gretchen's eyes were tearing and she felt as though she had been
dirtied in her very soul, but she watched through her tiny goggles what happened next.
Once the attack was gone, David kept flicking, flicking with his fingers, slow, steady, like he
was pushing sand out of a particularly delicate hole. After a few moments of watching his
hypnotic hands do their work, Gretchen realized what he was doing.
The alien was glurbling, twitching its limbs as the layers of its head peeled away. A flick of
David's hands and the tendon was peeled back, the bone was cracked, the bone was levered
away, until only the eyes, bulging even more without their housing, and the pulsing brain of
the alien remained.
Gretchen was appalled at the living evisceration of even so hideous a thing, but she could not
look away. David pushed with his hands until his fingertips were barely six inches from the
creature's pounding, ichor-covered grey matter. The alien was screaming now, lashing out
indistinctly and largely ineffectually with an increasingly weakening force.
Where, David growled. Where, he muttered, as though desperately seeking his car keys or
a winning lottery ticket in the cushions of his couch, as opposed to a location from out of a
briefly still-living brain.
Gretchen watched, transfixed, as the brain itself popped its meninges and pressed inward,
rupturing from pressure unseen. The brain peeled back, widened until it gaped and then
slumped on the resting skull pockets linked to the spine only by the bits of flesh at its base.
Inside the alien's brain was a massive, pulsing, wiggling brainstem with a completely massive

hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Other organs and structures existed, including a gill-like
effulgence that looked eerily like a fallopian tube with extra tendrils.
David stepped forward on his feet, and roared, Where is she! The alien glurbled its lastAnd effortlessly, the remaining brain structures separated apart, pushed back like a perfect,
19th century biology engraving, until only a tender bit of flesh remained in the very centre of
the mind. David's eyes blazed, and with an audible pop, the flesh exploded. The alien
spasmed terminally, then slumped in its iron chair, blood running down what was left of its
face and onto its tiny torso.
David stood straight after a moment, and dusted off his hands. He turned to Gretchen where
she knelt on the floor. His eyes were faraway, looking at the unseen world where he had
battled the alien for the secret of his daughter's prison. They looked down without seeing her,
but the corners of his eyes crinkled into a vague smile. He held out his hand to her.
She trembled to take it, but she did, for at least it was human, and it would lead her away from
the bissected monstrosity before her. To Gretchen's surprise, no shocks exchanged between
them, no vast, penetrating energies ravaged her through his hands as it had the alien's mind.
It was only cool, soft flesh, and the strong grip she recognized as David's own.
She staggered out of the seacan, looking once behind her to make sure the creature would
not leap out of its final prison and attack them. It remained still, decimated, destroyed. No
more.
Outside, the snow was stopping. A few brilliant stars twinkled in the sky like irridescent
rainbows. Gretchen had never seen stars to clear, nor so colorful. She let herself fall into the
arms of Masler and David, and enjoyed the starlight.
Did you get what you came here for, sir? Masler asked over Gretchen's head. She roused
herself out of her glorious starlight ecstasy and found her feet.
Yes, David said, his voice still somewhat distant, resonating against the blanket of stars.
New Mexico, Gretchen murmured, and David looked over at her. His eyes focused again,
and they met hers.
He smiled, and to Gretchen's childlike, delerious delight, he winked.
Together, they both said, Dulce.