Little ‘S’ stood speechless, looking at Tinker and Spook. “Spook’s right... Tinker this is your transportation to Pac Toul. Pop, this is scary – based upon Ezekiel’s vision and verified by Tinker these ‘silver men' must have been coming to Earth for thousands of years!”
“Your right if that’s true then the failure to return the man and woman ‘prisoners’ might indicate they obtained themselves another Adam and Eve!
I’ll be the first to admit I’m stumped – ‘the men in white’ must have had something to do with the pyramids in Egypt why else the oval patch with the three pyramids? The other emblems on the ‘craft’ were not a face, a lion, a cow, and a bird. We can see from Ezekiel they are descriptions of a man, a lion, a bull and an eagle. I don’t know the meaning of all this but we’ll figure it out someday.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ON THE MOVE AGAIN
They had been in the motel for a couple of weeks after the discovery of the ‘mystery’ in the Bible. Cabin fever was beginning to set in. Since the shooting and the discovery of the blue beret nothing unusual had occurred except their nerves were beginning to fray. Something had to happen, and quick – where were those damn Kim brothers?
Without warning late one sunny morning there was a knock at the door – Sarge cautiously went to open it – no one was there. Lying on the concrete next to the door was a brown envelope. Sarge picked it up and removed the contents; it had an instruction sheet and a couple thousand dollars of American money.
They were instructed to move from the grand ‘Boudreaux’ to a house across Lake Pontchartrain close to Highway 59 in the city of Slidell, Louisiana. A car would pick them up at 0600 tomorrow morning and carry them to Slidell and their new digs. They were to stay there until contacted again.
* * * * *
In Slidell Spook and Tinker were to assume identities as husband and wife. Big “S” and Little “S” were friends awaiting construction job openings in New Orleans. Money was to be delivered weekly and they were provided with a vehicle – driver’s licenses and identification papers were in the glove box for all of them. The car was parked in the garage of their new hideout. After the encounter in the alley in New Orleans, this house was considered more secure.
They were to live in the middle class neighborhood until further orders were received from the idiot Kim brothers; although, their reputations were beginning to improve with Sarge. He had quit calling them ‘idiots’, especially if Spook was around.
Sarge, Little ‘S’ and Spook did not like that word ‘live’ it indicated to them a period considered to be ‘long’ not ‘short’. ‘What could the two Kim brothers be up to?’ Thought Big ‘S’. Notice he did not even ‘think’ the word ‘idiot’.
* * * * *
They had been at their ‘new’ home a few weeks when suddenly and without warning a ‘visitor’ arrived. He pulled into the driveway, opened the car door and stepped upon the porch and hastily rang the doorbell. Sarge opened the door, gun in hand, and let him inside. He never introduced himself – he got right to the point – he would return in exactly one week and he wanted a complete list of all the equipment that the team would need as he put it “in their re-construction of the project”. Include everything - nuts, bolts, wire, electronic gear, any and all items that they needed, or possible thought might be needed. “Do not worry about the cost,” he said. “Cost is no object. If there is a remote chance that an item possibly could be used, put it on the list. Remember,” he said, “I’ll be back at 12 noon one week from today. Today is Monday, you have until next Monday to get your list prepared.” With this piece of cryptic advice he left as mysteriously as he had arrived.
They did not know what to make of the stranger but obviously the Kim brothers sent him. By the sound of everything the rebuilding of the ‘project’ was to begin.
Each wondered as they talked to each other – what to put on the list; do we understand the alien documents sufficiently to make a list of re-constructive parts; what type of assistance will we have; and most of all where is all this to take place?
All these questions would eventually resolve themselves and one week later the list, which had taken on the characteristics of a book, was completed and delivered by another messenger to the Kim brothers who…
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BACK TO THE PRESENT
The tell-tell creaking of the floor upstairs should have alerted Forrest that someone had crossed those boards and, at this very moment, was silently stepping slowly down the stairs to the door leading into the basement – the door handle turned and with a gentle push open it swung.
The light from the gunroom spilled out into the dark basement and illuminated the figure crossing the room.
Inside the gunroom Forrest still sat, hypnotized, in the middle of the floor in front of the safe, its doors standing wide open! Papers, folders, medals and certificates lay scattered all over the floor in a jumbled mess.
The intruder at the door softly spoke the word “FORREST!” If he heard his name uttered he gave no indication – he was too engrossed in the Kim brother's CIA documents. Forrest, still entranced by the phenomenon, which still had him, as mesmerized as it was when he first started examining those documents, did not allow his mind to comprehend his summons.
He mind’s eye kept him engrossed in the dream but not dreaming; the places where he witnessed this saga still lingered in his vision, but the participants couldn’t be touched, he still wanted to speak to them but couldn’t. The events unfurled as though the events of the past had been a movie he had been watching of his great-grandfather Grandpa Scarburg and his Grandfather Pa Scarburg. The names, description of events and places were real to him, not just random events depicted on those scraps of paper, what Forrest witnessed he thought was real to him!
It WAS real!
* * * * *
Forrest trying hard to keep his mind focused could not hold onto the images that were beginning to fade – “No! I’m not through!” he said speaking out loud. Startled to reality by the sound of his own voice he realized someone just called his name.
“Who called me?”
The voice – it is familiar – it is part of the movie that he is watching! ‘Am I in this movie?’ he thought. “Who is calling me?”
“Forrest wake up!” the voice urged. The images faded faster… faster and finally disappeared all together, but standing close by he could sense the presence of one of the voices in the ‘movie’!
“FORREST!” The voice said a little louder….
“FORREST!” The voice said slapping his hands together, “WAKE UP!”
* * * * *
“Who’s talking? Where am I?” Forrest turned his head and there standing in the door to the gunroom was his grandfather – Pa - Little ‘S’ - Robert Edward Scarburg, Jr.
“What just happened Pa? Tell me, this is scary… what’s been going on?”
“Forrest, come on, leave everything alone and come upstairs. The sun’s up, you’ve made a whole night of this thing. Hustle up, I’ll fix some breakfast and we’ll talk.”
Sitting around the breakfast table Forrest had a million questions, so he started with, “How did you know I had entered the gunroom Pa?”
“Easy, silent alarm first time you went in.”
“You mean when I sneaked down there you had me pegged from the beginning? Why didn’t you stop me?” Forrest asked.
“Well, I figured you are old enough now to know the whole story. What you were seeing and experiencing last night HAPPENED! I know I was there too and saw it all personally. It was real. The P.H.O.T.O. was real and you were there to see it. I understand what you witnessed seemed scary and troublesome. I identify with your feeling of awe and amazement very well. Your one night adventure has been a constant companion of mine for over 40 years.
* * * * *
Your episode last night felt like a dream, didn’t it Forrest? We know your body gave you all
the indications of a dream but your mind actually experienced the events in real time as they occurred. We discovered from the ‘silver men’ how to perform your little reality shift many years ago using information gleaned from their documents. Remember the beautiful clock you found in the safe – the strange large gold six-sided one?”
“Oh yeah Pa when I found it I almost died, man it was bad!”
“Bad? What do you mean bad?”
“Oh! No not bad...as in bad... bad...yeah, it was…uh…uh...cool.”
“Pa, you’ve got to believe me, I didn’t break it. It was all ready broken, I couldn’t get it to run right!”
“Forrest don’t worry the ‘clock’ isn’t broken and you’re right, it is ‘bad’, we call it the ‘Mind Traveler’. Glad you didn’t drop it, it’s made entirely of gold, silver and platinum and worth a fortune in the metals alone.”
“Awesome! What does it do?”
“Forrest you experienced what it can do – it transported your mine back in time and allowed you to observe everything that Big ‘S’, Spook, Tinker and I did until you woke up six hours after the clock started humming.”
“No, Pa, I know when I’m awake or dreaming, what I saw had to have been in a dream! But it sure did seem real now that you mention it?” If I wasn’t dreaming how did that ‘clock’ thing do that?”
“PT we had a whole ‘clock’ team study the alien documents and blueprints and finally build that device. I didn’t work on the team that developed it, but it was figured out from the alien’s information that we brought back from Cambodia. About all I know about it is how to set the crazy thing. You set the machine into operation when you touched that red knob – you did push the red knob didn’t you?”
Sheepishly, Forrest hung his head and nodded that he had.
“No problem Forrest, I can have a plan too. I figured after your first visit to the safe you would go back. I went downstairs, opened the safe and set the time on the ‘Mind Traveler’ to 1350 (1:50 pm) hours on 15 August 1967. Longitude and latitude corresponded to the Polei Kleng firebase Republic of South Vietnam. The ‘clock’ operates on a six-hour real world cycle that begins when the red knob is activated.
We pushed the Edison recording up from thirty seconds to a couple of minutes but, so far, the 'mind traveler' is still limited to six hours, real world time. We'll get a breakthrough someday that will extent it's time too."
Basically the ‘Mind Traveler’ works by emitting an ionized electromagnetic force field that manipulates brain waves by transporting a person’s consciousness to the time and place set on the face of the machine. Two micro-miniature devices called 'Interferometers' emits this force field to anyone within three feet of the device. The team that works on it refers to something called 'Negative Energy' and miniature 'Wormholes'.
“Worm...whats!”
“Wormholes, Forrest. The astro-physics guys think the big white disc transmitted their information to Betleguese using these ‘Wormholes’. Someway these ‘holes’ bend the fabric of space and time. In effect, they shorten the tremendous distance concerned with travel across the universe.”
It's all Greek to me; however, there are a couple of peculiar facets of the “Mind Traveler’ that we have observed but have never been able to figure out.”
“Yeah, what’s that Pa?”
“Forrest did you happen to look at your watch while in the gunroom?”
“Yeah I did, when I tried to get your ‘clock’ to work.”
“What was the time on your watch?”
Forrest thought for a second, “Oh yeah, now I remember – 1:12.”
“How long have we been upstairs? It’s 7:26 now.”
“I suppose about 10 minutes.”
Pa spoke rather slowly and with deliberation, “Look at your watch – what time is it?”
Looking down at his watch Forrest stammered, “Its… its…. 1:23!”
“That’s our anomaly – your watch stopped for those six hours! I’m not offering an answer just stating a fact – were you actually in your ‘dream’ or was it just your mind?”
The second thing we have observed is something the 'Clock Team' calls 'retrocausality'...
"Retro... what!
"Retrocausality - the future cannot affect the present and the present cannot affect the past. In other words time or 'mind traveling' cannot change the future while "in" the past - or alter the present if 'traveling' in the future. That's explains why when you were "there" you could not speak, be spoken to nor be seen - you were merely an observer, remember?"
Now I know you are dying to ask me some questions – and I will answer them as honestly as I can – you deserve to know all the truth, fire away.
The only caveat attached to my explanations is this: everything I tell you is ‘classified’, you cannot breathe a word to anyone. The CIA runs every aspect of our operations as a ‘black ops’. The ‘real’ government does not know and has never known of our existence. The CIA has always been afraid our facilities would be assigned to DARPA (Defense Advanced Projects Agency) but so far the ‘Company’ has maintained exclusive rights to our research.”
* * * * *
“Okay Pa, I understand. Now the last thing I remember watching you all had left New Orleans and moved to Slidell, Louisiana…”
“Slidell, yeah you remember the place.”
“Yeah, and you had to make a list of stuff to build the ‘Edisons’ again, right? (Pa nodded). What happened next?”
“Well the information we supplied went back to Spooks two brothers, Bud and Lou, in the CIA. Both of them were promoted and transferred to CIA HQ in Washington, D.C. They set us up as a legitimate company under one of their ‘black ops’ programs and let us built a completely new laboratory, we constructed new ‘Edisons’, in fact, we are on ‘Edison Version IV’ currently. Our facilities are known as S.C.A.R., which stands for “Searches Concerning Antiquated Records”.
"What happened to Dr. Kim and Miss Lu?"
"Spook and Tinkers blossoming romance that began in the far off land of Cambodia flourished and they got married once we got everything settled and up and running again. They are still alive and well and both semi-retired. I cannot begin to tell you how much they contributed over the years to the research. Both are brilliant scientists that have been blessed with three fine children – two handsome sons and one beautiful daughter. The sons are twins, both married and following in the footsteps of their father and mother. Both work for us as Analysts. The girl, married too, her husband work for us at another of our facilities.”
“Uh, question Pa – how many ‘facilities’ did the CIA build for you?”
“Three – one is under my gun business. The store is just a front, the lab is three floors deep, buried underground, reached by an elevator hidden in one of the store’s closets.
Another larger facility is disguised as part of NASA on Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville (Alabama) and the third is located deep within Cheyenne Mountain (Colorado) with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command).
This last facility is located deep inside the granite rock of Cheyenne Mountain since NORAD is impregnable to a nuclear attack. We fully realize this research cannot be jeopardized in any way, the data is too important, not just to the present generation but for future generations.
I better explain about my store. I told you it was just a front – that’s not quite true – I supply weapons, ammo, explosives or whatever that might be needed for CIA supported operations in the southern hemisphere.
I provide equipment for the CIA to assist the National Guard Special Forces units too. The CIA uses these Special Force units to infiltrate and destroy, mostly, the drug production business in South America. This is in conjunction with my ‘interpreting’ duties.”
“Awesome, now this is all beginning to make sense. I see now why you have so many guns and military stuff.”
Pa what about rebuilding the ‘Edisons’ you say you are up to Version Four – what did y
ou learn – did you get to work on the Kennedy Assassination? What about the Army? What about the ‘the silver men’? Did you run upon them again? Did you ever find out why they sent all the data to the star in Orion? I forgot the name?
“Betelgeuse is the star’s name. As far as the ‘why’? No one has ever come up with a good answer for that one; we theorize but in the years since, our facilities at NASA work continuously on trying to find the answer. They are involved with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, wormholes, time travel and things such as these. Researches someday will open up travel to those other solar systems. Someday we will sit down and I will explain this research – I believe you will be just as fascinated with their discoveries as you are with this one, they might impress you more so.”
Forrest continued, “Did you decode all of those documents? Who are the two men in the Ford sedan I always see arrive at the gun store. THE PLAN was to find out what was carried in the black satchel? Is this why Baba never had any photographs? And two important questions: Do you think ‘the silver men’ will ever come back? And did you ever run upon the Russian Colonel again?
“Whoa, slow down – we rebuilt the Edisons and yes we were able to listen to the photographs once again, at first, we managed to get about 30 seconds of voice and movement. We coined the word ‘interpret’ instead of read; we thought ‘interpret’ sounded more ‘official’. Then we improved them to interpret farther and farther – right now Version IV can discern speech and movement up to 2 minutes. We can now ‘interpret’ photos from newspapers, magazines and best of all – well maybe not best, but exciting at least, we can ‘interpret’ written documents, hand written ones!
I wish you had been present, I'm guessing about 10 years ago now – we ran the Declaration of Independence through Version III! Hearing Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and the other Founding Fathers speak as they were signing their names. Forrest you couldn’t believe your ears. Unbelievable is all I can say. I truly wish you had witnessed it with us. It was truly a historic event. If I had not known better I would have thought I was watching Sean Connery playing Benjamin Franklin in a movie. It was wonderful. Not to worry though, I have it all on DVDs you can watch it later.