“Yeah, I’m sure you have.” I started to pace the room. “In your textbooks on lunatics. This crap is not normal, and don’t try to make me feel better by trying to convince-me that it is. I know better.”
“No, it’s not normal. But what is?”
“Don’t give me this ‘what is normal?’ bull. Nobody I know or have ever known sees things in the night or in their head. I’m spending parts of my life in the borderland, somewhere between this world and some other. I know that! What I want to know is why, and how to control it or fix it.”
“Calm down, David, just calm down. You’re correct: people don’t go around having visions like you are having. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are abnormal.”
“What the fuck do you call it, then?” I snapped.
“I know some people who call it a gift.” He paused, staring at me. “Did you hear me? They call it a gift.”
“Who calls it a gift?”
“For now, let’s just say some friends of mine. For them this kind of experience is part adventure … and part miracle.” He dropped his notebook onto his desk, walked to a four-drawer safe, and began spinning the tumblers on its lock.
I sat there staring at the wall while he opened the safe and rummaged through one of the drawers. He pulled out several blue folders and tossed three of them onto my lap.
“I want you to look at these, all of them, from cover to cover. We’ll discuss them in a day or two.”
“Discuss what?”
“Well, I will want to know your perceptions—what you think about them and what’s going on in them. You’ll notice they’re classified Secret. Please deal with them accordingly.”
“Okay, I’ll take a look at them.”
“Good. I think that should be all for now. I’ll call you tomorrow or the next day. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Doc.”
I walked back to my office, stunned. I couldn’t believe that I’d talked to Barker the way I had. I couldn’t believe he didn’t have me taken somewhere for observation. I know I would have if I’d been him.
I walked into my office and turned on the lights. I was shocked to see one of the other officers in the unit sitting there in the dark, waiting for me.
“Wondered when you’d show up.” He took a drag on his cigarette and stared directly at me.
He outranked me; otherwise I’d have told him to get out of my office. I just wasn’t comfortable enough with the first-name protocol of this unit to do that yet, so I stuck to what I knew best. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Yeah—you can help me and everyone else here.”
“How’s that?”
He motioned at the walls of my office with the hand that held his smoke. “I’m here about this.”
“About what? My pictures and awards?”
“Oh, is that what they are? I thought it was more like a self-aggrandizing museum. Yeah, that’s what it is, a fucking museum. Get rid of it.”
“Why? They’re just pictures.”
“Yeah, pictures of the army. You’re not in the army anymore. You’re in a classified assignment and you are not supposed to expose yourself as a special operations soldier. You’re supposed to be pretending like you’re an acquisitions officer, not a fucking Ranger! Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it!”
He stood and placed his cigarette hand on my shoulder, letting the thick haze build up around my head. “That’s real good, that you understand. I’ll pass that on.” He moved past me, pausing at the door. “I don’t expect to see this tomorrow, right?”
“It’ll be gone.”
“Good. See ya, Morehouse.” He opened the door and disappeared down the hallway.
I slammed the folders down. “Fuck! I hate this place.”
I stayed late that night packing up my “museum” and carting it out to the car. It was ten o’clock before I sat down to look at the folders Barker had given me. I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee and inspected the outside of the first folder. It was stamped SECRET—GRILL FLAME in inch-high red letters top and bottom. Typed on a label on the lower right of the folder were the words NOT RELEASABLE TO FOREIGN NATIONALS—ORCON, followed by the words; CLASSIFIED BY: MSG, DAMI-ISH, DATED: 051630ZJUL78. I opened the folder to the first page. After the words SUMMARY ANALYSIS, REMOTE VIEWING (RV) SESSION D- , was a brief explanation of the target. I noted that no names were used in the folder; everyone was referred to either by a number or the title of “monitor.” In this folder, two people were working the target. The monitor began.
“Viewer Number 66, I want you to shift your awareness in present time to the intersection of the target shown to you in the photograph. Describe the southwest corner of the target to me.”
“Ah … it’s like a … building, but not an office building … . it has large doors, large swinging doors.”
“Change your perspective so that you can see your left hand extending down one street, and your right hand extending down the other street, so you’re facing the corner of the target itself, right there at street level. One street should be going off to your left and one off to your right. Describe the scene on your left.”
“Um … I see, uh, large posters, signs, vehicles parked there. There is a corner of a building, a corner entrance, doors and a staircase. That’s all I see.”
“Okay. Move over the top of the intersection now, so now you won’t be standing at street level, but you’ll be gently floating at about a hundred feet above the ground, and as you look down you can see underneath you the sidewalk and the street extending off to your left. Describe it from this perspective.”
“I see a great deal of activity. People running all over the place, shouting, chanting and waving banners and signs in the air.”
“Do you see an entrance into the building below you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Move to it now.”
“Okay, I’m here. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to describe the exterior of the door, its surroundings, and the lock on the door if there is one. Is there a lock?”
“Yes there is, I do see a lock … . Here, I’ll sketch it.”
At this point I looked at a parenthetical entry that directed me to the back of the session analysis, where I saw the sketch provided by the viewer. It included the Arabic writing on the door’s face.
The monitor asked, “Is this all you can see here?”
“No … wait a minute! I see—No, there’s something dark next to me, moving toward me … . Jesus!”
“Sixty-six, move away from the darkness. Disregard it! I want you to pass through the door and describe the contents of the room for me. Tell me what you see there. Do it now!”
“Okay, I’m passing through the door now … . I see tables and chairs … and some kind of cooking place.”
“Is this the kitchen?”
“No. No, it’s not the kitcheri … this is a makeshift place. Some old man is standing there cooking.”
“Is anyone else present?”
“I don’t see anyone. No, wait! There is someone else. There is someone helping him.”
“Okay, I want you to move into the next room. Tell me when you are there. Stay at this level. Move to the next room.”
“I’m there. It’s .a large conference room. There is a huge table with about two dozen chairs around it.”
“Is anyone there now?”
“No, it’s empty.”
“Okay, I want you to move forward in time about twenty-four hours. Tell me what you see.”
“Moving now. I see a gathering of people now.”
“What time do you think it is?”
“It’s about eight A.M., and the room is full of people. There is a mix of about fifty percent old and the other half are relatively young. They are getting ready for a meeting, I think.”
“I want you to access the mind of the key individual present and tell me what he or she is thinking. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I under
stand. The key individual is an older man sitting at the head of the table. He’s very bitter about something, very angry at some of the people in the room. He’s pointing his fist at them, shouting at them.”
“What is the meeting about?”
“It’s about the Americans … I think the hostages. Yeah, that’s what this is about, the hostages.”
“What are their intentions? Do they intend to kill the hostages?”
“No! No, they are not talking about that. The conversation seems to be centering on what to do with them … let me see … to keep them here or to put them somewhere else. In fact, the old man is upset about the way some of them have been treated. He thinks the younger people have abused them, and he is cautioning them to take better care of the hostages. I’m getting tired now … . I think I want to come back now. Is that okay? I want to come back.”
“Okay. You can break it off and return. We’ll monitor your return. You may begin at any time.”
I sat there, shocked by what I had read. I quickly thumbed through the other two folders, each of which contained similar accounts of floating above city streets, passing through roofs and walls as an apparition would. It was phenomenal. These guys were living what I had been calling a nightmare. They were doing it for a living—for the government. Who the hell were they? How did they get there?
The night was cold and drizzly, with wet and sloppy fog. It was just what I needed to wake me up for the drive home. All the way I was as jittery as they come. I could have sworn that someone was in the backseat. I kept turning around to check, but there was nothing, of course. The trees lining the road blurred, seeming to encircle the roadway. I began to get claustrophobic. I pulled to the side of the road and stepped out of the car.
Inhaling deeply, I tried cleansing myself of the toxins in my mind. I sucked in the cold air, trying to exhale the haunting images that plagued me. After several purifying breaths I leaned over the hood of the car, resting my head against the warm metal. God, I had to get a grip. Why was this bothering me so much? What was the big deal? I slammed my fist into the hood. I knew what the fucking big deal was. I was reading about human beings who turned into fucking ghosts, and as if that weren’t enough, they traveled in time to look at stuff and come back again. They fucking hovered above the ground, walked through walls, and spoke to evil spirits … and that’s just what I’d read about! I had talked with an angel, exited my body and returned again, seen things in my sleep and in the dark for six months now. What was wrong with that? Why should I be alarmed? It was fucking normal to do that … wasn’t it? I flopped back down on the hood, weeping. “Somebody help me,” I sobbed. “I don’t want this … . I didn’t ever want this.”
I stayed there for a long time, feeling the heat of the engine on my forehead and the frigid dampness soaking into my back. Dragging myself off the hood, I flopped behind the wheel and drove home. I fell asleep downstairs, staring into the darkness of the room.
I walked into the office the next morning looking raccoonish around the eyes, still numb from the night before. I grabbed a cup of hot coffee from the secretary’s office and thanked her profusely for it.
“You look beat,” she said. “You’d better grab two cups before the hordes get in here and empty it.”
“Thanks, Margaret. I think I will.”
The hot coffee poured life back into me. I walked into my office and spun the tumblers on my safe. I wanted to take another look at the files. I swigged deep and pressed the warm cup against my forehead. The phone on the desk rang, piercing the quiet of the office.
“David? It’s Dr. Barker. I just wanted to know … did you get a chance to review those files?”
I hesitated momentarily, thinking that it might be best if I told him no. Maybe I needed some time to get my head screwed back on straight before Barker dragged me any further into this. Finally I answered him. “I did. I looked at them last night.”
“Great! Can we talk about them?”
“Yes, sir. When?”
“Let’s say today, about one o’clock. Will that be okay with you? Oh, and bring the files with you. I need to return them to the safe.”
“See you then, Doc.”
I sat there for a long time, staring at the files. Then I thumbed through the pages, looking again at the unearthly images sketched by the viewers. Their drawings were so detailed, their descriptions of the target so chillingly vivid. I shook my head in disbelief. I’ve got to keep these, I thought. I can’t just let them disappear. I spent the next few hours in front of a copy machine. Whenever you duplicated classified documents in this building you were required to record the nature of the documents and the number of copies with a classified-document manager. But I didn’t want anybody to know I was investigating this stuff. I also had the gnawing feeling that I needed to protect myself with this information. Something didn’t smell right. I needed an insurance policy.
At one I came scrambling out of a command group meeting in the boss’s office. I collected the files from my safe and headed down the hall to Barker’s office. I knocked frantically at his door, but there was no answer. I checked my watch; I was fifteen minutes late. “Shit!” I muttered to myself, still pounding on the door. “He’d better be here! I’m not that late.”
“Just a minute! I’ll be there in a minute!” Barker shouted from inside.
I paced the hall, waiting for him to open the door. I must have looked anxious, or paranoid, or something. It seemed to me as if everyone walking by the office eyeballed me. Maybe they just wondered why I was visiting the shrink two days in a row.
The door jerked open. “Hey! Welcome, come on in. I was just talking to some friends about you.” Barker motioned me into my usual chair as he took his place behind the desk.
“Friends? About me?”
“Sure! Your experiences provoke a lot of interest in my line of work. You can understand that.”
“I guess I can understand that. It just concerns me—”
He cut me off. “Don’t be concerned about anything. All this is confidential. I didn’t mention you by name, only by your operative number, and they have no way of knowing who or what that means. Okay? Shall we get started?”
I sighed, looked briefly at the file folders, and handed them to him. “Those are quite interesting, to say the least.”
“Yeah, I thought so. How did they make you feel?”
“They scared the hell out of me, that’s what. How did you think they would make me feel?”
“I assumed they would be a little shocking at first, but I also thought that you would find a resemblance to some of your experiences. I guess what I really wanted you to see was that this sort of thing, while being unusual, is in fact a reality. I was concerned that you might begin thinking yourself an anomaly.”
“I think I’m a goddamned freak, that’s what I think!”
“That’s precisely what I don’t want you to think. The men you read about last night are not freaks. They are highly trained individuals who perform a very needed intelligence-collection service; they are a national intelligence asset. There is a great deal of information that only they can provide, and they are very difficult people to come by.”
“What’s that got to do with me? I can’t do what they’re doing in those files. Hell, I’m nothing but out of control, and those guys—well, they go where they want to go, see what they want to see. They’re special.”
“They are now … but they didn’t begin that way. Yes, some of them have grown up with some semblance of this ability, but not with the refined capability we’re talking about. Some of them had encounters that frightened them, just as you’ve been frightened.”
“Have they been shot in the head?”
Barker stopped mid-sentence and smiled. “Come to think of it, no, no one has been shot in the head. Frankly, I don’t see how that changes things much. I can’t imagine what a blow to the head of that severity could or would have done to you. But it obviously did something, since you did
n’t have any inkling of this ability before. That fact alone sets you apart from the others. But that’s immaterial. What’s important are your options. And they are: I can arrange for clinical assistance. That is, I can either try and help you here in the office with this perceived problem. Or, I can arrange for you to see a psychiatrist at another facility. Those are two options.”
I was indignant. “And?”
Now Barker was serious. “There is no ‘and.’ However, I can and will arrange an interview with some people. Some people who might be willing, if you qualify, to help you put this newfound ability to some use. The choice is yours.”
“No offense, Doctor, but those are pretty limiting options. If I read you right, you’re saying that I can either end my career and seek clinical help for this ‘problem,’ or I can try to join a group of people who define this ‘problem’ as an ‘ability’ and spend the rest of my life trying to harness it so it doesn’t kill me someday. Is that it?”
“You’ve distorted what I’m saying a bit, but that’s essentially right. You wouldn’t be doing it the rest of your life.”
“How long?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On how well you do, or whether you decide to stay with it, and on about a dozen other variables. But I’d say those are the most important. Dammit, David, I’m offering you a chance at a new life. Are you interested?”
I began to shake my legs nervously, thinking. Then I realized that Barker was watching me twitch and I forced myself to stop. “I’ll have to give it some thought. Can I take a few days?”
“More like a few weeks would be better. I don’t want you jumping into this; that wouldn’t serve my purpose any more than it would yours.” He stood up from the desk and walked to the same file safe as yesterday. “I want you to look at some material.” He pulled a thick stack of papers from the drawer and handed them to me. “That should hold you for a while.”
“What is all this stuff?”
“It’s documentation pertaining to the unit you read about yesterday—some historical stuff, branch programs, more session summaries, and so on. It should give you a fairly good overview of the program. We’ll keep in touch, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have about any of it. You know where I am.” He laughed, thinking his last comment was a joke. “Now let’s break this up, shall we?”
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