American Cosmic

by D W Pasulka

  some creative subjects like Tyler experience it that way.

  When I pushed Tyler to explain how his method works, he

  also resorted to the language of quantum theory.

  “Observation makes things real,” he said. He paused and

  looked away, and then continued.

  4 6 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC

  “I don’t know why it works. It’s more important to me

  that it works. You saw the pictures of Jane. She can walk. She

  can now care for her kids. I can’t spend my time thinking

  about the how of the process; I just use the process because

  it works. Let me tell you about a room where I work. It is

  a special room outfitted with the latest technologies. It is a

  smart room. We put the best scientists and thinkers in the

  world in the room, and then we just let them think. There

  is a complete sense of freedom in the room. Nothing that

  is ever said in the room is laughed at. We could talk about

  a purple unicorn flying through space on a pickle. No one

  would laugh. The point is this— that some of the most inno-

  vative technologies we have and use come from what goes

  on in that room. In that room, we dream the impossible, and

  then we make it possible. See that phone near your coffee

  cup? I assume you use its technologies?”

  Jeff and I looked down at my pink iPhone.

  “That room?” Jeff asked.

  “That room,” Tyler said.

  When lunch ended, Tyler picked up the entire check.

  A few weeks after our first in- person meeting, I reached

  out to Tyler. I sent him a text and asked him how he was

  doing. He responded back with a picture. It was a picture of a

  snifter of brandy and a partial y smoked cigar.

  “Celebrating?” I asked.

  His response was, “Yes.”

  He had sold a company and the money from the shares

  increased his savings account significantly. It would have been

  a wonderful day for me, and I would have been celebrating

  with family and friends. Tyler, however, was alone, in his lab-

  oratory, with the artifacts, a cigar, and a snifter of brandy.

  T H E I N V I S I B L E T Y L E R D . | 4 7

  BAC K I N T H E D E S E RT

  Tyler and I heard James yel . He was on top of a small hill and

  waved for us to come.

  “He found a part!” Tyler said.

  We walked over to where James was standing. He was

  examining a smal , metallic object. It had been identified as

  an artifact by the metal detector. At that point, both scientists

  went into collection mode. Tyler took out a plastic bag and a

  label. He photographed the specimen and labeled it with the

  date, and he also photographed where it was found. Then he

  put it in a special bag he carried for the occasion. We took

  a moment to process the find. In my mind, I was still en-

  tertaining the possibility that the parts were placed here for

  James and me to find. But James found this particular part

  lodged in a crevice between a bunch of rocks in a gul y that

  certainly looked to me like a nesting place for rattlesnakes. It

  potential y had arrived there from a washout of the stream

  bed area— unearthed after years of laying under detritus. He

  had reached down through the rocks to get the specimen.

  Evidently James, who was wearing long leather gloves, was a

  trooper for the cause. The day was almost over, so if we were

  to find more parts, we had to look more careful y.

  Tyler and I decided to team up to make the process more

  efficient. He swung the metal detector low to the ground, and

  I carried the shovel and poked around to try to find any parts

  that the detector might have missed. Much of what we found

  was normal metal. As we neared the mesa, Tyler’s metal de-

  tector started to beep loudly. We both got excited. I came

  with my shovel, but he had already bent down and picked

  up a very large specimen. It was a metallic piece like James’s.

  4 8 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC

  We yelled to James, and we all looked it over in the sun. Tyler

  believed this had been a part of the craft’s exterior.

  At the end of the day, we had found several metallic

  artifacts. At this point night was falling, and it was getting

  dark and cold. We headed back to our hotel. Later, at dinner,

  we discussed our next steps. Tyler warned us that, because

  the parts were metallic, we could get stopped by airport se-

  curity, should we carry them back with us. James agreed to

  take all the parts with him so he could study them. Thinking

  of being stopped at the airport, I agreed to let James have

  the items I had found. Besides, what could I possibly do

  with them?

  The day after our foray into the desert was sunny, clear,

  and beautiful. We were all elated from the proceedings of

  the previous day. I felt James’s excitement and Tyler’s sense

  of accomplishment. James had the specimens and couldn’t

  wait to analyze them. Tyler had brought two scholars to the

  site— two people with widely divergent skil s and methods,

  who could potential y help him understand what he had. On

  the long drive to the airport we exchanged many theories.

  We were all well acquainted with the theories of Jacques

  Vallee, the famous researcher, astronomer, and computer

  scientist. Vallee’s approach addressed three aspects: the

  physical aspect, which Tyler represented; the testimonial

  aspect, represented by experiencers; and the social aspect,

  how belief in the phenomenon persists regardless of whether

  there is any verifiable evidence to support it. Whereas Tyler

  and James represented the first two aspects, I represented

  the third.

  We arrived at the airport, and Tyler sailed right past se-

  curity, past first class, past economy class, and out the other

  side. He seemed to be literal y beyond the law, whereas James

  T H E I N V I S I B L E T Y L E R D . | 4 9

  and I were not. James and I walked slowly through the long

  lines, and we waited to get searched. As we neared the TSA

  agents, we both became quiet. I made it through the line

  without incident. James did not.

  James had put the artifacts in his carry- on bag. As the

  bag moved slowly down the conveyor belt and through the

  X- ray scanner, the whole thing suddenly stopped. The con-

  traption shut down with a loud BEEEP. Everyone scrambled

  and suddenly James’s line was redirected to another scanner.

  James’s bag had to be rerun through the scanner. I looked

  at my friend and saw the horror on his face. As I exited the

  line, I found Tyler in an airport cafe, looking for us. He and

  I sat and watched our friend James’s bag going through the

  scanner again.

  “Don’t worry,” Tyler said to reassure me. “He’ll be okay.”

  The bag re- scan went without further incident. Security

  searched James, his suitcase, his jacket, and everything that

  he was carrying. By the time he made it through to where

  Tyler and I were standing, sweat drops glittered on his face

  and forehead.<
br />
  “I need to sit down and have a drink,” he said.

  James told us later he had been terrified that the scanner

  would break again, and TSA might take the piece he had out

  of his bag and begin to question him as to what it was and

  why it shut down a TSA X- ray machine.

  I ordered James a glass of water, and we all sat and

  recovered. Although it had been stressful, this last episode

  seemed to seal a camaraderie that had been building for the

  duration of the trip. We were an unlikely team: two scientists

  who believed they had physical evidence of off- planet intel-

  ligence, and a professor of religious studies. It was unlikely,

  but being with them felt right. Tyler and James were perfectly

  5 0 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC

  willing to share their knowledge with me, even though they

  knew I was agnostic about their artifacts. To be honest, both

  James and Tyler felt that the science had to be the answer

  to potential origins of the artifacts. Until then, it was ex-

  citing potential that might lead to an understanding. And

  potential y an artifact of hierophany. They never felt that

  I disrespected them, and they respected that I, just like them,

  was on a quest. Their quest was different from mine, but we

  were united in our desire to know more— as much as we pos-

  sibly could know— about the phenomenon.

  ✦

  2

  JAMES

  Master of the Multiverse

  Do you believe then that the sciences would have arisen

  and grown if the sorcerers, alchemists, astrologers

  and witches had not been their forerunners?

  — F r i e d r i c h N i e t z s c h e

  A CONTENTED CHIHUAHUA LOLLED ON James’s lap as we

  spoke about our trip to the site scheduled for the morning.

  James and I drank beer, and Tyler sipped water. The sun had

  set and the sky turned an icy blue color as the full moon

  slowly rose, its beams reflecting off the white desert sand.

  This eerie, beautiful setting cast a spell on me. The rainbow

  that had greeted us upon our arrival seemed like a gate of

  colored light through which I had entered into a part of the

  country that was somehow more alive than North Carolina,

  where I lived. I had the uncanny feeling that the place was

  somehow conscious that I was there.

  “I consider belief in the phenomena to be an IQ test,”

  James explained as he stroked the little dog’s tan fur.

  “If a person cannot fathom the possibility, as far as I’m

  concerned, they haven’t passed the test. They’re not smart

  enough, and I don’t want to talk to them about this subject

  area. I consider their minds closed,” he said.

  52 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC

  This was typical of the James I had come to know. To

  say he didn’t suffer fools gladly would be an understatement.

  He eviscerated them, took them apart limb by limb with the

  sword of intellect. I had witnessed this on several occasions.

  The victims were always worthy opponents, such as other top

  scholars from universities like Princeton. I felt bad for them

  because James usual y humiliated them beyond the point

  where he had won the argument, but I also understood his

  motivation. He and certain members of his extended family

  were lifelong experiencers. He interacted with the phenom-

  enon on a personal and professional basis. He saw the best

  and he experienced the worst of it. His dismissal of and scorn

  toward those who didn’t believe was personal. He was also

  protective of many others he knew who were actively and

  sometimes brutal y victimized for their belief. Critical y, his

  own belief was forged in the crucible of evidence. As much as

  I was intimidated by James’s intelligence and passion, I saw

  him as a hero. He had the guts and the ability to take on an-

  yone in the world who dismissed the reality of the phenom-

  enon. He fought the good fight, for the right reason: because

  he believes— or as he would say, because he knows.

  M E E T I N G JA M E S

  James was the first scientist I met who was also “out” as an

  experiencer. He was also in a rare category as an academic

  who studied the phenomenon. My colleague and I had

  heard that he might be interested in attending a small get-

  together of like- minded colleagues. We did some back-

  ground research on him. What we found blew our minds. He

  held an endowed chair of molecular biology and headed a

  J A M E S : M A S T E R O F T H E M U LT I V E R S E | 53

  laboratory at one of the top universities in the world. He was

  a successful inventor. He had a global reputation for pushing

  the boundaries of science and biotechnology. In our corre-

  spondence with him, we were astonished by his openness.

  He was very transparent about his interest in the phenom-

  enon, and he seemed, at least in email, devoid of pretention.

  He was a top dog but acted like a regular guy. I liked him

  already.

  I first met him in person at our summer conference in the

  foothil s of Northern California. The tastes of professors tend

  toward the conservative and economical, so it was startling

  to see a high- end roadster, tricked out with a red leather in-

  terior, pull up outside the small hotel where we were to meet.

  A group of us were standing nearby and silence fell over us

  as we watched the car park. Out popped James, sneakers and

  al . He apologized for being late. The style of his entrance,

  probably typical for Silicon Valley millionaires, presaged our

  introduction to James and his extraordinary work. It proved

  to be a wild ride.

  JA M E S : E X P E R I E N C E S

  A S A YO U T H

  At dinner that evening, I made sure to sit next to James.

  I offered him some wine, and he related his experiences with

  the phenomenon, which began in his childhood. When he

  was five or six years old, he recalled, little people would appear

  in his room. They stood by his bed or looked at him through

  his bedroom windows. He insisted that he was awake when

  these events took place, and he said emphatical y, “I was

  not asleep. Oh, and I was paralyzed.” He complained to his

  5 4 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC

  parents, who told him that he had had some bad dreams. Yet,

  he told me that he knew that these night visitors were real.

  Later, as a young teenager, he had a strange encounter

  while delivering newspapers on a paper route. One of

  his customers, Mr. Jameson, demanded that his paper be

  delivered by 5:30 a.m. every morning. If James didn’t make it

  in time, he might lose his route. One morning, as he franti-

  cal y pushed himself toward Jameson’s house, he realized he

  wasn’t going to make it in time. He sometimes took a shortcut

  through the woods, though he had always felt apprehen-

  sive about the area. But he was already late, so he had to use

  the shortcut. As he entered the forest, things just didn’t feel

  normal. A shapeless formation of lights slowly passed over<
br />
  him, just above the treetops. It was about twenty feet across

  and completely soundless. He felt frozen in a time warp of

  light, bright as the sun, with no apparent source except itself.

  James just stood and watched in awe. It came and went in less

  than ten seconds. James kept his paper route, but from this

  point onward he completely avoided those woods.

  Nothing happened again until he was in his thirties. One

  night he woke up from a sound sleep and saw a tal , thin

  presence at the end of his bed. It was smoky and translucent.

  He did not feel afraid, even though he was, again, paralyzed.

  In his head, he heard the words “Go to sleep.” He did.

  When he had arrived at our small hotel, the room James

  was given had a window that wouldn’t close all the way, and

  there were no shades. He made it clear to the proprietor that

  this was unacceptable. Later I realized that James had devel-

  oped a fear of open windows in childhood and it was now

  a compulsion. He needed to close the windows and cover

  them up with curtains. A close relative, he said, suffers from

  the same fear. Once, as a teenager, James pranked his relative

  J A M E S : M A S T E R O F T H E M U LT I V E R S E | 5 5

  by drawing a picture of a scary face and posting it on her

  window. The prank went very wrong. Upon seeing the face,

  the girl turned white and asked James, “How did you know?”

  For years afterward he wondered about her reaction.

  After the incident with the presence in his bedroom, a

  chance occurrence opened James to the possibility that his

  experiences were related to UFO phenomena. An avid reader

  of science fiction, James picked up a book by Harvard re-

  searcher John Mack, Abduction: Human Encounters with

  Aliens. James at first thought the book was fiction. He was

  shocked by what he read. The experiences of Mack’s subjects

  were exactly like his own. They described night visitors who

  paralyzed them and seemed to watch them in their sleep. The

  beings also spoke to the subjects telepathical y. Mack had

  gained notoriety for his claim that the experiencers were psy-

  chological y healthy and that the experiences they described

  were common. He saw this as a significant cultural develop-

  ment that demanded serious scholarly attention.

  By the end of the book, James realized he was reading