Chapter 1 birth of a notion: During Lent, the entire student population would assemble in a windowless long hallway to hear the Stations. It was cramped and stuffy. Young legs struggled to fight fatigue as children were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder straining to hear the weak voice of an elderly nun describe the violent sequence of the ‘Stations of the Cross’. One of the shortest in his class, Louis’ view was often obstructed by rows of taller children, submissive and silent in their uniforms.
He struggled to accept the graphic descriptions depicting the suffering and abuse of Jesus as he carried his own cross towards his death. Little Louis felt a deep sincere sorrow when the ‘Stations’ were recited. Grimacing, he envisioned the scenes vividly, in his mind during each reading.
As a young boy, he was exposed to the mystique and glorification of pain and suffering at home, too. His grandparents being devoted Catholics had rooms in their house adorned with religious pictures. His Nonna’s favorite saint was Saint Rita: the patron saint of lost causes. In a bedroom hung a print depicting the young saint on her knees in a dungeon-like setting with a cat-o-nine-tails at her side, praying to a crucifix. It was highlighted by a narrow ray of light emanating from the crown of thorns, directed at her forehead. The print showed the ray actually piercing her forehead, causing her to have a permanent wound. Louis reasoned that one had to suffer to be a saint. One day Nonna told him the story of Saint Lucy. Saint Lucy was not interested in boys and wanted to be close to Jesus. Nonna told the young boy that when a suitor complemented Lucy on her beautiful eyes, she plucked them out and presented them to the boy. To Nonna, this was a beautiful gesture of Lucy’s devotion to Jesus. Louis thought differently. It was the very last time he would ask his Nonna about saints.
Chapter 2 into the rabbit hole - Louis’ experience exposing him to the secrecy of UFO-related information while a United States Air Force officer would turn out to be the event that put him on track to be a UFO researcher. His unique eye-opening experience occurred at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio, his third duty station. There, he was assigned to the Aeronautical Systems Division as a Construction Manager, responsible for overseeing work by contractors at the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) building, then located in Area A.
FTD’s mission was to research weapons systems from other countries, evaluate threats, and weaknesses, and then relay that information to Aeronautical Systems Division in Area B. Area B was across the main highway where existing programs were either improved upon, or new programs were devised to counter those threats or take advantage of the weaknesses of foreign weapon systems. FTD was in a large warehouse-type two-story metal building surrounded by motion detectors on its lawn. Access, regardless of the visitor’s security clearance was through a manned entry control point. The ‘need to know’ concept was the prime system of operational security in this building.
One day while carrying out inspections, Captain Silvani went to inspect the second floor in FTD’s building. He entered a vestibule that opened into a small utilitarian ante-lobby where he reported to a junior NCO manning the security desk. The room was devoid of aesthetics and comfort. Silvani stated his reason for the visit, signed his name on the visitors’ roster, and received a badge indicating in bold red uppercase lettering, ‘ESCORT REQUIRED’. His escort, was a young senior airman assigned to the security police squadron. Captain Silvani followed his escort through the electrically-operated double doors into an extra-wide corridor.
Silvani noticed the floors, walls, ceiling, doors and door frames were all clean and white or off-white. He took note that there was no directory for this huge windowless warehouse-sized facility. Doors were only marked by a cypher lock. There were neither door numbers, nor room names. The offices and their occupants were compartmentalized. The occupants of one office did not have access to the office next door. The escort stopped at a door to an enclosed stairway and entered the code to unlock the door.
Captain Silvani followed his escort up the wide, austere and faintly lit enclosed stairway. The muffled tapping sound of their footsteps on the bare concrete treads echoed in the stair well.
Opening the heavy-duty steel door, they entered an area that was stripped of all ceiling tiles, floor finishes, fluorescent lights, partitions, and doors and frames. The entire floor was eerily vacant. Lighting was provided only by single utility incandescent bare light bulbs that were hung and temporarily wired. Except for the occasional chatter on the escort’s two-way radio, the vast interior space was silent. The captain, carrying out the duties of assisting the construction manager, was there to evaluate the existing conditions, compare them to the as-built drawings, and then check the design drawings for potential conflicts. The space was to serve as a ‘computer room’ according to the title on the drawings. There wasn’t much to look at; everything was bare, down to the metal building skeleton. Walking around the perimeter, he noticed his escort, standing near the exit, reading a book while monitoring the radio traffic. The escort rarely acknowledged what the captain was doing, obviously not there to supervise the senior captain.
After inspecting the physical space, Silvani spotted a set of drawings rolled up on a contractor’s cart. He went to unravel the roll and realized this set was the ‘as-built’ record drawings of the building. ‘As-builts’ represent: the condition of the building after the most recent project. In this case, there appeared to be no renovation since the initial construction, so these drawings were to represent the building in its original condition.
Louis flipped through the sheets and made his comparisons. He noticed a sheet labelled, ‘BASEMENT’. He questioned the accuracy of what he was looking at because he knew this particular building was a pre-engineered warehouse building and warehouses normally did not have basements. He inspected the drawing more closely, looking at the ‘footprint’, or the outline of the building to confirm that the basement floor plan matched with the first-floor plan. The captain realized that it was not a misprint, and the sheet was authentic. This building had a secret basement! He felt his face blush and his heart rate increased. The palms of his hands became clammy.
Chapter 3 facts and deception - Louis determined that one of the most extraordinary events related to UFO contact in modern history took place in Antarctica in late February through early March of 1947. Operation Paperclip was the code name for the systematic process where the Soviet Union and the United States took custody of top-secret Nazi weapons technology. Its objective was to gain information on rocket propulsion and guidance systems. Much was learned about Operation Paperclip through KGB files released after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
After World War II, interviews with the German scientists and engineers who had worked for the Third Reich, combined with confiscated documents, led U.S. intelligence organizations to postulate the Nazis had established a secret naval base in Antarctica. Adding to the suspicion, Hitler’s Navy Commander, Grand Admiral Donitz, was quoted in 1943 saying, “the German submarine fleet is proud of having built for the Führer, in another part of the world, a Shangri-La land, an impregnable fortress”. Louis, along with other researchers and authors believed this particular quote combined with information from Operation Paperclip, was the real reason the Navy organized a task force of fifteen ships designated ‘Operation Highjump’ to investigate Queen Maud Land, south of Africa.
Rear Admiral Richard H. Cruzen commanded the flotilla. Admiral Richard E. Byrd Jr led the reconnaissance mission. As with any incident involving sensitive information, there were sanctioned, official descriptions of the operation, and there were other descriptions that researchers including former Soviet officials insisted to be closer to the truth.
Articles and documentaries described it as an operation to map out the coastline of the continent. According to the official records, the task force separated into five smaller groups: the western group, the central group, the eastern group, the carrier group, and the base group. Admiral Byrd headed the carrier group.
Researchers suspecting censorship, believe that a quote by Admiral Byrd, in the Mercurio, a Chilean newspaper, provided a hint of what may have happened during the expedition: “in the case of a new war, the continental United States would be attacked by flying objects which could fly pole to pole at incredible speeds.” Non-conformists pointed out this quote referred to an attack on the flotilla by high-speed aircraft. Accounts of damaged ships were just as suspect, discrediting researchers claiming suppression of truth. For example, conspiracy theorist sites and articles parrot that a destroyer named the Murdoch was sunk and the aircraft carrier Casablanca sustained heavy damage. Official Navy records indicate, however, that the Casablanca was decommissioned a few years before Operation Highjump, and that the Navy never had a destroyer named ‘Murdoch’ in its inventory.
There was no basis for Silvani to support the conspiracy theory with over four-thousand sailors taking part in the operation. If the ‘official’ account was a lie, Silvani figured it could not have been concealed from eventual exposure. In addition, there was an alleged transcript of Admiral Byrd’s ‘secret diary’ where there was an account of a reconnaissance mission over the land mass. In it, a narrative described engine performance, instrument readings and episodes of turbulence followed by a detailed series of entries about the discovery of a verdant valley and a hidden civilization.
The diary continued to describe a forced landing and meeting a ‘master’ of the newly discovered society. Entries in the ‘secret diary’ referred to a conversation with the one called the ‘master’. Louis discovered through various sources the dialogue had language appearing suspiciously similar to excerpts from a book by Byrd, written in 1928 called ‘Skyward’. A passage from his log recorded engine performance and related occurrences during a flight over the Arctic. In addition, the supposed conversation between Byrd and the ‘master’ appears straight out of a scene from the 1937 motion picture, ‘Lost Horizon’. The movie places the main character, Robert Conway in a meeting with the mysterious High Lama.
The High Lama told Conway in a meeting: “You, my son, will live through the storm. You will preserve the fragrance of our history and add to it a touch of your own mind. Beyond that, my vision weakens … but I see in the great distance a new world starting in the ruins … But in hopefulness, seeking it’s lost and legendary treasures, and they will all be here, my son, hidden behind the mountains under the blue moon, preserved as if by a miracle…”
The ‘secret diary’ read: “Yes, my son, the dark ages that will come for your race will cover the Earth like a pall, but I believe that some of your race will live through the storm, beyond that I cannot say. We see a great distance a new world stirring from the ruins of your race, seeking its lost and legendary treasures, and they will be here my son, safe in our keeping…”
To Louis, there was enough evidence to present the ‘secret diary’ of Admiral Byrd a hoax, but it did not disprove the theory Antarctica was home to a technologically advanced people. There was evidence to support his theory. First, there were the satellite images in Google Earth of two unusual openings:
Opening 1 is 66 deg. 36 min. 12.54 sec. south and 99 deg. 43 min. 12.37 sec. east.
Opening 2. is 66 deg. 33 min. 11.62 sec south and 99 deg. 50 min. 22.07 sec east.
Opening 1 actually displays what appears to be a retractable metallic cover. Both openings are wide enough to fit a large passenger jet.
Louis did not only rely on the satellite images. He had numerous face-to-face conversations with a retired cryptologist who worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) about the UFO phenomena. One evening, at an event hosted by the Society of American Military Engineers, Louis asked about Antarctica.
“I’ve been doing research on Antarctica and Admiral Byrd. Did you know there are images that show odd openings in the earth that appear to be unnatural formations? One even appears to have a metallic dome-like cover,” claimed Louis.
“I am not surprised. Nothing surprises me,” said the retiree, matter-of-factly.
“So, you are aware of activity in Antarctica?” inquired Louis.
“Yes,” the former cryptologist replied.
Louis was not satisfied with that answer without an explanation. “Did you happen to see any message traffic concerning Antarctica?”
“I saw messages that indicated we had operations there in response to reports of anomalous activity,” responded the retiree with a slow nod and a wink.
Louis sensed the retired cryptologist was not comfortable in more detailed discussion. To Louis, the information from the retired NSA cryptologist was strong enough evidence to help support his theory of inter-terrestrials living in Antarctica.
Chapter 4 encounters and transmissions - Burdened with his laptop case hanging by a strap over his right shoulder, he held a paper cup with coffee in his left hand. At the welcome table, he was greeted by a cheerful man who spoke with a Scandinavian accent, as he held out his hand.
The laptop case strap slipped off Louis’ shoulder as he extended to shake hands. temporarily delaying the gesture of goodwill, Louis placed the case on the floor beside him, this time completing a successful handshake.
“ Allo, Olav Whitouse at your service! Welcome to the annual Pennsylvania Conference. What is your name please?”
Louis gave his name and told him he was the first presenter - the warmup act. The greeter gave Louis a customized badge and program, then directed him to an aide whose job was to assist presenters. Louis thanked the greeter and left, but not without noticing what Olav and the other two greeters were wearing. Olav wore a green tee shirt printed with the recycling logo and the word ‘Karma’ in the center. Another greeter wore a purple “Make America Disclose” hat, and the other wore a black tee shirt with the image of a Grey alien head in white and the words, “I Believe”. He exchanged smiles with them.
It was thirty minutes before the start of the conference and Louis noticed people coming in to form lines. He was led to the auditorium having a capacity of 420 according to the posted sign by the local Fire Marshall.
“Interesting number,” he smirked. It was the perfect capacity for the conference. The aide, a young collegiate woman, did not know who Louis was.
“Did you write a book?” she inquired while leading him to the podium.
“No…not yet,” he sheepishly. She seemed disappointed.
She showed Louis the podium and offered to help connect the laptop to the system’s projector.
“I should have looked at the program,” she apologized. “What is your presentation about?”
“Inter-terrestrials,” he replied with the enthusiasm of a young exhibitor at a school science fair.
“Inter-terrestrials? You mean beings that live on Earth with humans?” she asked.
“Exactly!” Louis smiled, raising his right index finger like a gameshow host responding to a contestant’s correct answer.
“Interesting…” the thought amused the aide. She quickly connected the laptop to the auditorium’s system and tested it.
“You are good to go Mr. Sivani. Good luck and here’s a bottle of water,” she said, leaving the room.
“It’s Silvani!” he yelled as she disappeared through the doors.
Chapter 5 back to that same 'ol place - Louis often experienced lucid dreams. One recurring theme was levitation. He also had dreams that made him wonder about the mind. In one dream he recalled being surrounded by people speaking Chinese. Amazingly, he understood what people were saying. It made him wonder if there might be data in our brains only accessible in a subconscious state. He wondered if humans had more knowledge than exhibited. Sleep usually came easily, without the need for chemicals. He trained himself to fall asleep at will in the service, participating in week-long exercises that would require continuous hours without it. This night would be no different and Louis had another unique dream. He envisioned being in the clouds above Earth. Looking down, the clouds dispersed and he made out the image of a large medieval fortress built in the form of two equal squares on center, transposed forty-five degrees. The fortress was surrounded by a large grassy field. In the background he heard a chant similar to that of a Tibetan monk he had recorded for meditation years ago. As gradually as it had appeared, the fortress faded and disappeared ending the dream.
Chapter 6 the assignment - Louis easily found the Aurora address near the city center. He parked his car on the crumbling concrete drive plagued by crabgrass and weeds. The drive ran alongside the vacant-looking house. Like the discarded veteran pan-handling up the street, it sat appearing empty, without life. The two-story wood-framed bungalow was in need of care. Its blue clapboard siding was faded. Trim around the windows was weathered with some dry rot. A wood-framed addition enclosed the front porch. The roof appeared to sag slightly at the ridge and there were no gutters. Another one-story addition with oversized windows was built on the back of the modest-sized house. There were small windows in the cellar facing the drive that were boarded inside.
Louis walked towards the front of the lot, and navigated the uneven weathered concrete sidewalk to the house. Cars and trucks passed closely on the busy state route. The entrance to the house was on the opposite side of the enclosed porch. Its concrete stoop led to four concrete steps aided by a loose rusted wrought iron handrail. The landing at the top of the steps was just big enough to accept one visitor. There was no doorbell and screen door. Louis knocked on the chipped and weathered wood door. He heard the release of a deadbolt then the loose door knob jiggled. It was Mary Ellen who opened the door to let him in.
“Hello Mr. Silvani! You made it here in good time!”
“Yeah, not much traffic going westbound in the morning. I thought I would get here early in case you wanted to leave earlier.”
Louis walked into the musty front porch. Old newspapers were placed near the door to the house. The floor was a worn lime green carpet. Walls had cracks under some of the water-damaged window sills stains from leaks. The room had an old couch with a wilderness print placed against the original wall. Its arms were well worn with one being stained. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been salvaged from the curb.
Chapter 7 intuition - “There are things happening to me, Mary Ellen: things that are quite unusual, escaping my understanding. Saturday, in Pennsylvania, as I meditated, I had a thrilling experience like I went through a wormhole. It was …amazing!”
“You experienced an out-of-body event where your spirit left and you had consciousness of its travel. There are people who have meditated for years and have never been able to get to that level. The Watchers informed me they would give you tests as you progressed on your spiritual journey. I am certain that your out-of-body experience was such a test.”
“Oh, so now this is a spiritual journey?” Louis began to understand what was going on.
“Everyone is on some kind of spiritual journey, Mr. Silvani. Some are just along for the ride, while others are more participatory. You have always had some sort of awareness of this aspect of yourself, only now, it is a bigger part of your life.”
“There was another event. Saturday night I dreamt of a crop circle in England with the chants of what sounded like a Tibetan Monk in the background. The next morning, going through social media I discovered that exact image posted by a woman who had sent me a friend request the previous night.” Louis was fishing for more answers.
“That is synchronicity. It is your spirit telling you that you are on the right path.”
“That’s it? There’s no other significant meaning?”
“That’s it. Just stay the course.”
“Stay the course.” Louis shook his head, recalling that phrase being a repeated response by George Herbert Walker Bush during a presidential debate versus Michael Dukakis in 1988. “Can you offer any more information about your plan?”
“As I mentioned, the information you are seeking will gradually be revealed to both of us as we continue the trip.” Mary Ellen did not want to show Louis that she too, had many questions and persistently wondered what lay ahead. She reclined her seat back and closed her eyes. She was able to take a decent nap, waking after a couple of hours. They were approaching Saint Louis and dinner time.
Chapter 8 the hybrid phenomenon - Mary Ellen looked at her friends and motioned them to follow. She entered the small stuffy room. Kaja’s favorite chair was a single hammock, suspended from the ceiling. It was styled from a large laundry sack, dark gray, with a thick soft teal cushion. Its sides tapered to a point above her head giving her the much-needed feeling of being sheltered. She placed her hat under the chair and pressed herself deep into the cocoon with her head against the back. She would have closed it up if she could. Mary Ellen entered the room and sat closest to her, on a large dark brown cloth bean bag. Deborah and Louis followed suit and knelt on the thick cushions on the floor.
Mary Ellen introduced the two strange faces. Kaja looked briefly at them, not saying a word. Louis and Deborah tried to act casually and cordially. Both felt uncomfortable. There was awkward silence.
Although she had already told her travelling companions about Kaja, Mary Ellen spoke, about Kaja’s background.
“Roswell?!!” Louis asked enthusiastically.
“YES! IT IS THE PLACE YOU CALL ROSWELL. I COULD REMEMBER IT LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY. WE WERE SCIENTISTS. WE MEANT NO HARM. YOUR PEOPLE WERE WORKING WITH ATOMIC REACTIONS. WHEN YOUR PEOPLE DETONATED THE TWO BOMBS IT WAS LIKE AN ALARM THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY. YOUR SCIENTISTS DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DAMAGE THOSE DETONATIONS HAVE DONE TO OTHER DIMENSIONS! THE RELEASE OF ENERGY IS SO GREAT, THE COMMUNITY WAS CONCERNED AND DISPATCHED SCIENTISTS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR PEOPLE. YOUR PEOPLE SHOULD NOT HAVE TECHNOLOGY THAT THEY DO NOT COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND.”
Chapter 9 the divine warrior - The Japanese Internment Camp was just southwest of town. Since it was a weekday during the school year, there were a few buses there and school children were being led around the desolate site. Only one of the original buildings remained. The camp covered about 10,000 acres. Evidence of the structures was represented by exposed weathered concrete foundations framed by six equal square blocks with straight and narrow dirt roads which looked like a giant tic tac toe design branded on the land. Knee-high dry shrubs dotted the landscape. The common appearance of dead fallen trees littering the site combined with the aged and decayed foundations made the place feel like a graveyard. The three visitors walked slowly among the building ‘footprints’ which evoked permanent chalk-line silhouettes at a crime scene.
The school children, heading back to the buses, were walking in the opposite direction of the three visitors. As the children’s voices became more distant, the visitors only heard the sound of the fall wind along the high plain. Browned brush dotting the barren soil contributed to the site’s harshness. Mary Ellen looked across the landscape and felt its emptiness. The camp opened in August 1942 and had as many as 7,300 people. It closed in October 1945. Almost all of its occupants had been from California.
Mary Ellen sat down on a concrete foundation and closed her eyes. Gradually, the images came to her. She witnessed cruel winters and oppressive summers. The faces of the detainees showed sorrow, not pain. She shared the sorrow and the sense of betrayal with those people. She wondered if the unjust treatment of the Japanese-Americans had been based on the risk of sabotage by sympathizers to the Empire of the Rising Sun. She then reasoned it had been predicated on something more sinister and less logical. She often wondered the same about how her people had been treated.
As the scenes and the faces faded, she opened her eyes again in the bright daylight. The last of the school children had departed. She looked about fifty yards ahead to see Deborah and Louis walking away from the main dirt road towards a lone memorial site, about three hundred yards southwest from the edge of the camp.
The pair approached a small cemetery framed by low trees. Behind the cemetery was a stone monument with three white metal benches around it. There, stood a flagless aluminum flagpole. The wind caused the loose lanyard to hit the pole making a weak clanking sound like a broken bell. The cemetery existed for the burial of children. Mary Ellen followed Deborah and Louis to the monument.
The monument of rough unpolished granite was a four-sided pylon, slightly tapering to the top with a Japanese pagoda-style cap. Engraved were the names of the Japanese Americans from the Camp who had volunteered to fight in Europe during World War II. The inscription on the pylon indicated the memorial was dedicated to thirty-one Japanese-Americans who died in battle, and another one-hundred-twenty who died while being detained. During the war, second-generation men of Japanese ancestry were drafted and assembled to form the 442 Regimental Combat Team. It was the most decorated unit of its size in American military history. The two veterans and the Native American woman held hands and looked at the first names: “John, Victor, Frank, Leo, Peter, Ned, Arnold, Lloyd, Calvin, George, Robert, Harry, Bill, Joe.” Across the prairie scape, the dry brush was leafless, dormant, and silent.
“Look, there are two people with same last name on this side,” whispered Deborah out of respect.
Louis nodded. “I think there are two common last names on the other side too. Such a poignant but significant part of our country’s history. A remnant of the not so distant past where our country’s leadership fell into the darkness of fear and hatred, and because of its remoteness, few Americans will ever know about or visit this place. This was such a big mistake: an injustice to innocent people and their children. Thank you for bringing us here, Mary Ellen.”
Chapter 10 enlisting energy - “I can do that.” Katrina stopped visualizing. “Bobby, take notes.” Katrina proceeded to describe the facility and its systems. “It is actually two entirely different facilities. The human side has a small footprint while the reptilian side is bigger, mostly corridors. Both have seven levels. The human side is of concrete. The ET side is excavated, like a rabbit warren. There are no straight lines inside. There are no human type stairs because their feet are too large. They use ramped tunnels which are too steep for humans. The reptilian lab is on the sixth level down on the north end. The team should enter a hatch closest to the reptilian side and go down to the lab. Once the fire alarms are activated or disarmed, airlocks separating the two facilities will open and stay open. Find the airlock on the sixth level to get to the lab. The lab rooms are arranged around the core which supplies power, communications, water, and ventilation. The human side is powered by one reactor located on the side closest to the river on the seventh level which is at water level. The reptilians use Tesla technology with rods driven into the earth. They don’t use the wiring systems for power distribution; they use electromagnetic wireless power which is not as vulnerable as conventional distribution systems. I am not going to work on the reactor. It’s too risky. If there is a leak, your team will be poisoned. Voltage is supplied by a transformer. There is an uninterrupted power supply with 3 backup generators. All power production is on the seventh level down. Since it is a sealed facility, its air is supplied through camouflaged vents and fans. A power failure will stop air intake. The facility has a sprinkler system throughout. There are two fire pumps and a huge water tank just underground for fire suppression. I think it holds between 80,000 and 100,000 gallons.”
Chapter 11 shocks and awe - Chief Martin and the NRO agents descended the stairwell. Martin was still sore from the injection. The second agent sensed that his feelings were an indication of getting close to one of the intruders. He advised Martin and the lead agent to continue down the stairs. They reached the sixth level where they were taken by surprise by the smells of the smoke and fire coming from the opposite side of the facility. The second NRO agent took the lead, using his feelings to guide him. His pace quickened as he drew closer. With every step, he had a stronger feeling of togetherness. The lead agent, unaware, of these feelings followed, trusting his partner. Chief Martin had no idea what was happening; he had no choice but to follow. They came to the airlock, and stopped.
Chapter 12 unquiet desperation - The airman continued in a drug-induced monotone voice. “I am assigned to test radar equipment here. We boarded a bus at Nellis and we were dropped off here. The bus had the windows blackened so we couldn’t tell where we were going. It was about a two-hour ride and we were not allowed to talk to anyone in the bus. The people that monitored us seem to take pleasure in threatening us. The blond man there was one of the guards on the bus. Once the bus stopped, they blindfolded us and took us to our job sites. There, they took the blindfold off and we checked the radar equipment while they monitored flying machines that have speed and maneuverability far beyond the capabilities of our best fighters. When our job was done for the day, they separated us. Each of us was blindfolded again. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the radar specialists. I got led into this underground building and they tortured me. I don’t know what they were going to do with me next.”
“I can assure that’s not our Air Force doing this. These guys are working for contractors. They are the worst kind of mercenaries,” explained Robert.
Chapter 13 a friendly darkness - The exterior electric shop vehicles, which were diverted away from the substation, were positioned so the lights above the cab shone onto the shed. As they walked to inspect the building for damage, they smelled burning metal. One of the NCOs went back to the truck to retrieve an extinguisher and called the shop to report what they had found. Since there were no visible flames, there was no need for a fire unit. Another sergeant took out his ring of keys, and upon finding the right one, unlocked it. The smell was stronger, but there was no evident source of heat in the shed. Nor was there was a sign of an explosion or arcing. Opening the transformer cover, they were astonished to see the buss bars had melted and deformed. Nothing they were aware of, with all their training, would have caused that. The entire transformer would have to be replaced. In the meantime, a portable generator from the supply yard would have to be towed in and installed up the line. Eventually, it would be connected to the transformer to restore power to the lights and the ECP. There wasn’t much else they would be able to do at the shed tonight. Before leaving, they called the shop to relay their findings and recommend a genset for temporary power until a replacement transformer could be procured.
Chapter 14 lonely emissary - All of the sketches were on engineering paper. The sketches were technical in nature with symbols and graphics that were unlike anything seen originating on Earth. Out of the thirteen sheets, five depicted star charts and planetary systems beyond the Solar System. Trevor explained the diagrams would only have value for inter-galactic travelers and some of the information is classified by The Council, so he would not be able to go into detail.
“The views of the stars and planets I drew are not from the Earth’s perspective. The sketches with the markings show arrays that are assigned to a specific sector. There are stargates placed in various and strategic places as well. There is one that is close to our own sun and one between Saturn and Jupiter. The symbols I drew here are key codes and combinations used to activate the stargates that would take someone various sectors, dimensions, and universes.”
Tara selected a detailed sketch of an array of twelve planets and moons around a star. “Which star is this?” asked Tara.
“That star is in the Hydrus Constellation. It is documented by astronomers as HD 10180,” Trevor replied casually.
Chapter 15 soft tribunal - Louis stepped through the threshold and was bathed in the light. The variations from the refractions made a harlequin type pattern on his face and clothing. Seeing Louis was unharmed, Mary Ellen stepped through and was closely followed by Tara who almost clipped Mary Ellen’s heel. Behind them, the stone door slowly slid shut, sealing them in. They remained in the middle of the room and the brightness intensified, changing colors, alternating between violets and purples. After a few cycles, the three visitors began to feel a soothing, almost numbing effect from the light work. Conversation between them became light and cordial. The purples and violets gradually faded to the colorless light that had appeared when they first entered. Moments later, the far wall moved out, sliding back to allow space on both sides for someone to walk through.
