had some idea what was going on. She asked us if we needed anything. I said that we had all the resources we needed at this point, and we wanted to keep a lid on things for now. “Although,” I added, “I could use a chauffeur-driven limo to get around D.C. faster.” She laughed and said, "Nice try." I really liked her.
Around 6 PM, the day's reports were ready. Back at OSI, I had all of the principals meet in the conference room to make oral presentations of their findings. I wanted everyone to hear this, so they would have an overall picture of what was going on.
Dr. Spencer reported first, "Eleven of the 23 people that were brought in today have the growth, have the same altered EEGs and excellent health, and are hearing voices. That gives us 16 live potential aliens and two known dead."
Dr. Gibbs said, "All the patients tell the same story that was related by Mr. Tolson. We’ve also run tests that indicate that whatever one host/alien team knows, they all know. The voices said that they did not have access to the hosts' memories or innermost thoughts, but there is no way to determine if this is true."
Dr. Spencer said, "There appears to be no way of doing a detailed analysis on the growth, but I will stay on it. There was no physiological reason found for the death of Ruth Evans, though the consensus is that the loss of the alien presence was so traumatic to her system, both physically and psychologically, that she could not overcome it. Her sister managed to hold on long enough to recover, though she continues to suffer severe depression.
Dr. Gibbs said, "The voices do seem to have distinctly different personalities from the hosts. If the patients do not have an alien entity residing in their bodies and talking to them, then I have to conclude that they are schizophrenic."
Dr. Brian Phelps, head of the science team, said, "The voices are vague when talking about where they come from and their ship's propulsion system. They do know a lot about stellar navigation, astrophysics, and cosmology. In fact, they always seem to know more than they are telling. I think they are dumbing things down for us."
There were a few other reports, including one from Glen in the field. Before we wrapped up, I polled the group as to whether we were dealing with an alien life form, hoax, or natural terrestrial occurrence. The vote was 15 for aliens, 2 for hoax, and 6 for natural, which surprised me, since I always considered my co-workers very skeptical. Despite my own doubts, it looked like it was finally time for me to treat this situation as if we were really dealing with aliens.
I told everyone that I wanted them to approach this investigation with a critical eye. Our last order of business was what to code-name the individual aliens. We finally settled on naming them after famous comedians. The original five were named Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Dumont, and the new eleven were named Abbot, Costello, Martin, Lewis, Laurel, Hardy, Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin, Benny, and Burns. The one we considered the leader was Groucho, Mr. Tolson's.
I realized that the project had now grown so big that others would be brought in to run things. I would be lucky to stay on the project in any capacity. This turned out to be more prophetic than I anticipated. As much I complained about the government bureaucracy and about actually working, I found that running this investigation one of the most exhilarating experiences I have had in years. It helped to throw off some of the barnacles that had grown on me after years behind a desk. As much as I would’ve like to have gotten a good night’s sleep, I didn’t like the idea of losing control of the investigation just when things were heating up.
The first thing next day, Barry and I went to the White House to brief President Miller again. She told us that steps were already underway to bring the project under tighter control (bad news). When we returned to OSI HQ, a squadron of unmarked trucks were there, being filled with everything relating to the project: all our files, tapes, CDs, videos, data, etc., and our sixteen patients. They even wanted our personal logs. I found out that the people running the show were from the National Security Agency (NSA).
I knew approximately where all our stuff was going, somewhere out West to a secret facility for more private study. We were all advised not to divulge anything to anyone other than authorized personnel. We already knew that we could not divulge anything that was not in the public domain–which was funny considering there had been numerous leaks and rumors flowing to the press for the past two days. The crux of the story was already on the front page of most papers in the U.S. and overseas, and the Internet was flooded with stories, some of which had to be inside jobs. There was no way this genie was going back in the bottle. This security was way too late.
Even though having this elephant off my back felt better, I was disappointed that I was no longer in charge. It felt nice to have the responsibility and to be making the decisions. Since I had seen this coming, I had made backups of most of the info because I wanted to continue the investigation with my team even though we would now be doing it unofficially. I still had my position at OSI, and I felt I could putter around the fringes without arousing too much suspicion from the NSA.
Surprisingly, I found I’d be doing more than putter around the edges. My connection to the project was not over yet because the NSA people continued to call us for information and advice even though we weren’t supposed to have any data on the investigation in our possession. We went back out to the site and continued to look for host/aliens. We actually located two more and put them through physical and psychological examinations before they were whisked away by NSA. We also located four of the host/aliens that had undergone x-rays or MRIs, resulting in the deaths of the four aliens and one host.
It was fascinating watching the NSA try to contain the outflow of information to the public and at the same time act as if there was nothing to it. Soon the public was clamoring for a more open investigation, and, due to this public pressure, Congress began to pry into the case. I and a number of my co-workers were called before Congress for a series of hearings. The hearings were closed-door initially, but, as time went by, they became more public. After six months of this, almost all the information the NSA had collected on the project was a matter of public record, which took the pressure off me. I had been constantly bombarded by the press, by congressman, by essentially everyone I knew to tell them more about what was happening. By executive order, the NSA had to make its findings public and turn the investigation over to the National Science Institute (NSI). The OSI was called in to assist the NSI investigation, bringing things full circle. I was again working on the project. By this time, it had become accepted by most of the scientific community that we were dealing with real extraterrestrials.
The question of the host humans still had not been resolved during this period. The government did not want to release them into the general population because they did not know if they were being controlled by the aliens and were the vanguard of an alien invasion or just what they said they were and trapped on our planet due to an accident or just a bunch of crazies. One disturbing idea that had been suggested was that the human host’s consciousness was being held captive in their own body by the alien with no way of communicating with the outside world. Very creepy. I knew this whole issue was going to take a while to work out.
Jenny and I had been seeing each other as much as I could with my busy schedule. I had fallen deeply in love with her and had acted the perfect gentleman. I had found her company the only way I had of relaxing, and I began to depend upon her. It was at this time that I asked her to marry me, and she accepted. We were married in a quick private ceremony. Her father was escorted to the wedding to give away the bride and then escorted back to his not-so-secret residence. Now I had a father-in-law, who was still being poked and prodded, sometimes by me.
Eventually, a total of 23 live host/aliens and 24 dead ones were found. As they were found, the remaining aliens were named Mae, Fields, Cantor, Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Curly Joe. As with serial killers, the newspapers names were the one that stuck to the Civilli in spite o
f the scientific community’s effort to use something more technical. I never found out what they thought of this. According to the original estimate of 50, this left 3 unaccounted for and presumed dead. This was a point of contention between us and the aliens, since we always believed that there were at least one, if not three, aliens in human hosts that we did not locate. With their telepathic abilities, they could easily account for all their living shipmates, but they always contended that there were no others.
During the next twelve months, we found out a number of details about how the aliens got here and managed to survive. They claim their ship had been damaged by some interstellar accident, the cause of which we tried to determine from the photos of the ship and from the aliens. But our questions were never answered to our satisfaction. The aliens claimed that we would not be able to understand since it had to do with astrophysics way beyond our present knowledge. I know they attempted to explain to some of our scientists, but the matter never seemed to come to a final conclusion. My personal theory is that their spaceship just ran out of gas, and they were too embarrassed to