by Thomas Shaw
With cautious steps, Tom made his way into the attic with Julie close behind. He knew exactly where he was headed and within moments they were standing in front of an antique steamer trunk. Tom handed the light to Julie as he knelt and opened the top of the trunk. Particles of dust swirled in the beam of light as they both looked in. It appeared to be filled with neatly folded clothes.
Tom moved to the open portion of the top and pressed down and pushed sideways on a special section of the lid. A thin 2 by 4 inch piece of wood which moved to expose a small compartment.
Julie shined the LED flashlight into the compartment while Tom worked his fingernail under what appeared to be a small metal strip about a quarter of an inch thick. As he maneuvered the metal case out of its hiding place he realized he was holding a USB type memory stick. Tom tested the compartment once again with his finger but felt nothing. By moving the memory stick under the light they could just make out the characters “C-5” written on it.
Tom leaned over and whispered into Julie’s ear; barely audible. “Stay here, I’m going to get my laptop.”
He took the flashlight and made his way down the stairs. Within minutes he returned with his portable computer. They closed the trunk lid so the laptop would be at eye level as they sat on the floor in front of it. Tom switched on the computer and waited while the soft green glow reflected off their faces while it cycled through the “boot” process.
Tom clicked on the “My Computer” icon and then double clicked the new F: drive. Almost instantly the display window showed a single folder labeled Code-5. Tom double clicked on the folder and watched the list of files pop-up on the screen. The files were simply numbered #1 through #25. Tom clicked on file #1 and watched the screen instantly fill with text.
April 1, 2016
My name is Donald Goodman PhD Psychology and I am a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore Labs in the field of Computerized Behavioral Modification, a top secret program that has the capability to train military combatants with the skills necessary to carry out very complex military assignments in an extremely short amount of time. The current use for this program is to give our counter-terrorists groups an honest advantage. The story I’m about to tell is TRUE and by simply typing these words into my computer could cost me my life, but I feel compelled to document the events that led to this point in time…
Tom and Julie began to read the words as they scrolled down the screen. It was clear that this file had been written recently and it sounded like the story had started with a phone call in this very house.
5
March 15th 2016 Tracy, California…
It was 7:30 in the morning when Don Goodman answered the phone. After a few moments of conversation, Don realized that he was talking to his old friend and colleague, Dr. Ed Merrill.
Don had met Ed at MIT where they had both pledged the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon and each graduated with PhD’s in Computer Science. Don had gone to work for Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, while Ed went to work on the East coast for some unknown research organization. They had maintained a loose relationship over the years, meeting occasionally at tradeshows. This phone call was out of the ordinary but the urgency in Ed’s voice immediately got his attention. “I’m working on a new project and I need your advice,” Ed was saying in what sounded like a tired voice. “I don’t have time to explain everything now but I can tell you there’s a Learjet headed your way and will be landing at the Tracy Airport in less than two hours,” Ed added, without waiting for an answer. “I’ve instructed my pilots to pick you up and immediately fly back to Quantico, Virginia.
Don was caught totally off guard but sensed the urgency and simply said, “How long will it take?”
“A few days, tops,” Ed replied.
The wind was buffeting Don’s hat while he stood outside the small building called the F.B.O or a Fixed Base of Operation as he waited for the plane that would take him back to the East Coast. It was one of those rare Spring California days that made you glad to be wearing a ski vest.
Don stood there thinking about his recent phone call. He was torn between the anticipation of a new adventure but couldn’t shake the feeling something more sinister was afoot. He hadn’t taken a vacation in over four years and suddenly his supervisor tells him he needed to take some time off, and it would start right now. Was this a coincidence or by design?
Sure enough, at 9:30 sharp a solid black Learjet touched down on runway three, five right on schedule and taxied toward the F.B.O. A fuel truck came out of nowhere, pulled up beside the Lear and began refueling without a word from anyone. Two very laidback young men stepped from the plane and approached Don.
They introduced themselves and were obviously aware of who he was. Don was instructed to go ahead and board the plane while the taller pilot secured his gear in the luggage compartment. He was told they would be on the ground less than 15 minutes.
The second pilot walked directly into the small office and was making a phone call as Don climbed the steps into the plane. The taller pilot stuck his head in the door and asked Dr. Goodman to be careful where he stepped. As Don glanced down, the floor of the cabin was open and clearly under construction. There were exposed hydraulic pistons and what looked like part of the wings exposed where the seats should have been. There was a narrow catwalk leading toward the front of the plane. Don turned to ask the pilot what all these exposed parts were but was cut off with a hand gesture as if to say; not now.
Don made his way across the construction area to the single seat which was located on the right side of the plane directly behind what he thought was the co-pilot’s seat and buckled up. There was a stainless steel box sitting across from his seat about the size of a small refrigerator. He would later find out it held their meals for the return flight.
From his vantage point and through a side window, he could see the second pilot walking back to the plane carrying a ladder. Within minutes both pilots were on the ladder with their heads in the intake portion of the starboard engine. After what appeared to be a heated conversation, they continued to prepare the plane for the return flight. Without saying a word they secured the cabin door, climbed over the hydraulics and squeezed into the cockpit. Moments later they were methodically going through their final checklist.
The pilot sitting in the left seat turned so he could see Don and said, “Buckle up tight; we’re going to be hauling the mail in a couple of minutes.”
Don gave an extra tug on his seat belt as the jet taxied to the active runway, making ready for takeoff. As the experimental aircraft pulled on to the 4000’ long runway the pilot began the process to perform a short field take off. With both pilots pressing hard on their brakes they pushed the throttles forward producing more and more thrust.
Don’s instincts told him this wasn’t going to be a normal take off. In a matter of seconds the engines were developing thousands of pounds of thrust and the noise level inside this sound proof plane was at a point of becoming uncomfortable. If that wasn’t enough, the plane was now starting to vibrate in an unnerving manner.
Inside the FBO two flight instructors were sitting in the students training room, suddenly looked at each other with the same thought. “That’s got to be Military!” the first instructor said. They both immediately jumped up from the table and raced toward the door leading to the tarmac, just in time to see the black Learjet start its takeoff roll.
These flight instructors were veteran jet pilots of the Gulf war and hadn’t heard anything this powerful since they had returned to civilian life.
They watched in amazement as the small black plane thundered down the runway sounding more like a newer F-22 Raptor than a Learjet. “He’s got to be going over 200 knots, and he hasn’t even used a quarter of the runway,” the instructor said excitedly. Just then the nose wheel came up and the jet leaped into the air at a steep 45 degree angle. The pilot continued to add power and pulled the nose up another 20 degrees as they rapidly gained altitude.
“What was that?” the instructor asked his friend. “Whoever is flying that thing, doesn’t know about the noise abatement rules around here.” They could still hear the engines even though the plane was long out of sight.
Inside the plane, Don was surprised to feel the extreme G forces as he was pressed back into his seat. The next surprise was the feeling that he was going straight up and at the same time being pressed even further back in his seat.
Once the plane leveled off, Don leaned forward to ask the boys, “What the hell was that all about! I don’t know much about Learjet’s, but this thing is either a Military version or some kind of special experimental aircraft.”
Don suddenly realized that the pilot flying the plane was sitting in the right seat, which was just opposite of the norm. The copilot turned to Don, “This is Dr. Merrill’s, newest toy, and we are just doing a little performance testing.” He also told him that since he had a top security clearance it would be OK to look at the instrument panel.
The first thing Don notices when he leaned forward was there is no steering yoke. The pilots’ right arm rested in a contoured arm rest with an arcade looking joy stick in his hand. The next thing that caught his attention was the array of liquid crystal displays that made up the control panel. There were an endless number of meters and dials in front of him. The pilot tapped on one of the instruments that was indicating an airspeed of 684 miles per hour.
Don asked them if we were breaking the sound barrier and the copilot told him that at this altitude of 45,000 feet, we were just under it. He pointed to a couple of other strange instruments and said, “This baby has the juice to go supersonic almost three times over.”
Don was in awe of what he was experiencing and suddenly felt a new level of uncertainty about this meeting. He settled back in his seat and for the next couple of hours simply looking out the window, watching the ground roll by almost eight miles below.
Without prompting, the co-pilot turned to Don and began telling him about the flight path they were taking. “We’ve been on a South, Southeast heading for the past 97 minutes and are well out over the Gulf and about 100 miles east of the Mexican coast. It’s time to do some more tests,” he said with a grin.
Don glanced at the altimeter and wasn’t sure he was reading it right. “Is that 50,000 feet?”
The copilot simply nodded his head.
The whine of hydraulic motors made Don look down as the mechanical arms under him begin to move. The wings were repositioning to a swept back angle and at the same time he felt the plane accelerating again by the pressure pushing him back in his seat. After about 10 seconds the pressure on his back began to relax.
The copilot casually tapped on the glass panel digital display, where Don saw the indicated airspeed clicking past Mach 2.04. The copilot noticed the startled look on Dons face and simply said, “That’s without the afterburners.”
They crossed the Gulf of Mexico in 27 minutes, slowing down to just under supersonic while they passed over the Florida Keys.
When they were out over the Atlantic, the pilot banked sharply to the left. Once again Don heard the whir of the motors and the wings retracted even further back as he was pressed back into his seat once again.
The flight to Quantico, Virginia had taken just under 4 ½ hours. Don couldn’t believe it given the route they had taken, but the pilots acted like it was no big deal.
A black Lincoln SUV pulled up beside the Lear as it rolled to a stop. A light rain was just starting to pepper the top of the jet as Don quickly made his way into the waiting Lincoln.
The spring storm was gaining strength and it was raining pretty hard when they turned into the empty parking lot of a nondescript warehouse tucked in behind a group of ancient Oak trees.
“Am I supposed to pay you or something?” was Don’s feeble attempt to make some conversation.
The driver simply responded by saying, “You don’t owe me a thing, then added, just do a good job.” It was obvious that the driver knew more about what was going on than he did.
With his gear in hand, he ran up the steps toward a massive door that begin to slide open slowly as he approached. A Marine guard with some type of machine gun strapped to his chest stepped through the opening. He knew Don’s name and said that Dr. Merrill was expecting him. Don noticed that the door that he was passing through was almost two feet thick. He would later find out that this building was an ancient Icehouse, built in the 1920’s.
He followed the Marine down a long wide corridor with pairs of doors about every 20 feet on either side. There was a light bulb encased in a wire frame above each door and that was it. It felt like he was entering a mental ward. Don knew there was a thunderstorm outside but couldn’t hear a thing inside this building except for the clicking of their shoes on the concrete floor. Not a word was spoken as they walked to the far end of the building. They stopped in front of a pair of steel doors like you might see in the restricted areas at Livermore Labs. Don watched the Marine press his thumb on the laser scanner; the doors immediately retracted into the walls, just like his secret lab. It was a large room, dimly lit and filled with all sorts of electronic equipment. The first thing Don noticed was a huge Plasma display screen hanging at a slight angle in the center of a matrix of twenty-five to thirty large flat screen monitors. There was a long desk running the entire length under the monitors where individual consoles and what looked like mounds of Manuals made up this area. Expensive looking leather chairs were neatly arranged in front of the desks. A couple of technicians in white lab coats were typing on their keyboards with such concentration that they never looked up. Ed came out of no-where and tapped a startled Goodman on the shoulder saying he was very glad he had come on such short notice. He was wearing a fresh lab coat, but you could tell from his eyes that he was running short on sleep.
Don couldn’t hold back, he unloaded a flurry of questions about the flight that he just finished. Was this plane part of the program? What the heck is going on?
Ed kind of smiled and said, “You just met Black Gold but I’m going to end it there, we have too many things that need our attention.”
Ed led Don between banks of computers that formed a rough semi-circle about 40 feet in diameter. Don couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw his “Sensory Deprivation Chamber” sitting in the middle of the circle.
This was the main element of an ultra-secret project Don had been working on for over a decade. He was so shocked that he literally couldn’t speak. How could anyone move the heart of his top-secret project out of his lab in Livermore California without his knowledge? No one, outside his team, was supposed to know anything about it. Now here it was sitting in some strange building 3,500 miles from his laboratory, surrounded by people he had never seen before.
Ed sensed Don’s exasperation and tried to explain how he had run up against a time wall and had to move fast so he didn’t have time to brief him on “this project”. He told Don he had moved “his” machine and all the related computers out of the Livermore lab the previous Friday evening after he had left work. He knew Don was taking a couple of weeks’ vacation and took a calculated risk that he could catch him at home. The phone call was to convince Don to help him with this special project.
He could see the questions mounting in Don’s mind and quickly held up his hand as if to say; stop. It was easy to see that Ed was running on empty and it was well after midnight on the East Coast. Ed promised he would explain everything in the morning but needed to get some sleep because tomorrow was going to be a busy day. Without another word he motioned for Don to follow him down one of the halls and showed him where would be staying.
Don’s bio-clock was still set at 10:00 pm California time so he didn’t feel like hitting the sack just yet. He wasn’t hungry because of the great steak dinner he had enjoyed on the flight. He walked back to the steel doors and pressed his thum
b on the scanner and with little surprise watched the doors slide open. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular but soon found he was standing in front of his Sensory Deprivation Chamber, feeling like he had found an old friend. At the lab they referred to the SDC as the ‘Black Hole”, because the unit looked like a giant black jelly bean sitting in a frame that allowed it to move from a horizontal to an almost vertical position.
Without thinking Don pressed the switch on the side of the unit and with a slight whoosh of air pressure and the whir of hydraulics, the bubble canopy on the top third of the “jelly bean” opened like the cockpit of a Star Wars fighter. He took off his shoes and climbed in and settled back onto the custom designed recliner made from the same material as the seats in the Space Shuttle. For the first time in several hours he felt like he was back in control. He laid there for several minutes and must have unknowingly said something because to his surprise he heard a voice saying, they didn’t understand the statement and would he please repeat his request.
He was caught off guard and it took him several seconds before he could think of a response. Don simply said, “Who are you?”
A perfect female voice with a slight Australian accent said, “Dr. Merrill calls me SAM.”
To his surprise they had several minutes of conversation before Don was convinced that he was talking to a computer. When he asked SAM why he was there, the response was straight forward. “Dr. Merrill will brief you in the morning”.