Psychic Warrior

by David Morehouse

  The door opened slowly, and a round chubby face peered at us from the small opening. “Dr. Barker. Hello, hello, hello. Come on in, Mr. Levy is expecting you.”

  “Great! Jenny, this is Captain Morehouse, the young man I’ve been telling Bill about. Dave, this is Jenny Eastman.” She glanced at me and smiled politely. “Hi! Nice to meet you. Come this way; I’ll see if he’s ready.”

  I tried to catch my breath as I looked at the scene I’d walked into. In front of me was an enormous mural, an image of a galaxy filled with crimson and magenta gas clouds. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. A couple of men stood next to a coffeepot to the right of the mural. They stared at me as I walked with Barker toward the office of the man we had come to see. A dark-complexioned man with a slight build emerged from the door to an office. A wide smile spread across his face at the sight of Barker.

  “Welcome, Dr. Barker.” The man snatched Barker’s hand and pumped it up and down. “It’s been a good while since you were here to visit.”

  “Oh, well, yes.” Barker pulled his hand away from the man and took his glasses off to clean them, as if it were an excuse to reclaim his limb. He motioned to me with his elbow. “This is the young man we’ve been talking about.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I tried to look intelligent, or humble, or something. I stuck my hand out to shake his, but I was too late. He had looked me over and turned to haul Barker into the office. He told Jenny to introduce me around to the rest of the office.

  She came out from behind her desk and swiped her hand through the air. “This is it. It’s not much to look at, but we call it home.”

  The building was long and narrow, consisting of one big open bay that was sectioned off into cubicles. You could stand at one end and see all the way to the other without obstruction. The floor was covered with brown commercial carpeting and the office furniture was the standard Defense Department gray metal. An entire wall just to the left of the front entrance was lined with five-drawer file safes for the storage of classified documents. There were two small offices on either side of the building, about a third of the way down from the receptionist’s desk. One of the offices was inhabited by Mr. Levy; the other was a collection of boxes plus a copier and a shredder used for classified documents.

  Jenny walked me over to where the two gentlemen were still standing, obviously talking about something they didn’t want me to know about. One of them saw us approaching and nudged the other to get him to change topics. Both men turned and looked at me with flat and curious smiles. I caught some of their conversation as we approached. Some of the words they used were familiar to me from the folders Barker had given me to read.

  “This is Mel Riley,” Jenny said, handing my arm to him as if I were a child.

  “And you are?” Riley responded, shifting his coffee cup over so that he could shake my hand. Riley had a kind face with pale blue eyes. He was a medium-sized man, a little thin, with gray hair parted on the side. As he shook my hand I noticed the strength of his grip and the intense warmth of his flesh.

  “Dave Morehouse. Nice to meet you.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Jenny slapped Riley on the arm. “Always trying to be funny, aren’t you? Don’t you pay any attention to him.” She turned me toward the other man.

  “And this is Paul Posner.” Posner was tall, trim and muscular, his hair slicked back against his head like a mobster’s.

  “Hi. Dave Morehouse,” I said, reaching for his hand.

  “Call me Paul,” he said expressionlessly. “We’ve been expecting you. Heard some interesting things about you, too.” The way he said that made me uncomfortable; he had one of those I-know-something-you-don’t-know looks. It kind of pissed me off. His handshake was firm but brief. It was as if he had some energy he was protecting, and he was afraid that I might steal it if he held on too long. I later learned he was the senior captain in the unit.

  Both slurped their coffee noisily as they watched Jenny drag me farther back into the office. I could feel their eyes on me the entire time.

  Jenny led me past the receptionist’s desk and into a small cubicle where a man sat staring at a computer screen. Recognizing a new presence in the building, the man awkwardly tried to free himself from one of those back-saving computer chairs. Jenny started to chuckle as he fought his way out of the chair’s grasp and nearly fell in front of us.

  “That thing’s gonna kill you yet, Lyn,” she laughed.

  “Yeah,” the man said, looking back at the chair that had nearly laid him out. “The damned thing’s looking more like firewood every day. Hi! I’m Lyn Buchanan.” Lyn was a kindly man, a bit older than me. His eyes sparkled with goodness; it gave me a wonderful feeling just being next to him for that short while. I looked down at his feet, and his eyes followed mine to the floor. His bare toes wiggled a friendly wave.

  I snorted a laugh, pointing at his feet.

  “Oh, yeah. Forgot my socks this morning.”

  Jenny folded her arms across her chest. “That’s like anyone else saying they forgot their shoes at home, since socks are all he wears in the building.” She glared at Buchanan.

  He looked at me. “It’s more comfortable this way.”

  “I don’t blame you … I may give it a try myself,” I said, offering some political support. He grinned.

  Jenny snatched my arm and pulled me toward the next cubicle. “This is where—Hello? Are you guys in here?” She stuck her head around the corner. “Ahh, there you are. I want you two to meet David Morehouse. He’s the man Dr. Barker was telling us about.”

  The two were sitting at their respective desks; a man and a woman. Both stood almost in unison to greet me. I reached for the man’s hand first. “Hi. Dave Morehouse … how are you?”

  The man stood a good four inches taller than me, with a bearlike posture and physique. He smiled warmly from behind extremely thick glasses. He had huge hands and thinning hair. More than anyone so far, he expressed genuine pleasure at the meeting. “I’m Pratt Orsen. I’ve heard about you.”

  I nodded. “That’s what everyone’s saying. I hope it’s not all bad.”

  “Not a word of it.” He motioned toward the woman. “This is my officemate, Kathleen Miller.” Kathleen was a pretty brunette, thin and timid. She refused to make eye contact as we shook hands.

  As we stood there for an awkward moment, I glanced at Pratt’s desk and surroundings. His desk was barely visible under a cascade of books and papers on art, music, and the paranormal. The floor was littered with crumpled papers and snack food wrappers, fast food bags, and old soda cans. The expression on my face must have been obvious.

  He turned and glanced at the mess. “Oh. I like to read. But I admit I’m kind of messy.” He grinned, his eyes magnified by his thick glasses.

  Kathleen chimed in with a shy smile. “Actually, he cleaned it up this morning because he knew you were coming.”

  “Well. I didn’t clean it up”—Pratt snorted—“I just shoved it all into one pile.”

  Jenny said, “That’s it! That’s all of us. Let’s go back up to the front and see if Mr. Levy is ready for you yet, shall we?”

  I waved at the pair and backed out of the cubicle. “I’ll see you later, I guess.”

  Jenny sat me down in front of that bizarre mural, in a small cluster of chairs that they called the lobby. I waited there for several minutes, watching Paul and Mel, who were still standing at the coffeepot, carrying on their conversation.

  A few minutes later, Barker and Levy came out of the office. Barker motioned for me to come to them. “David, Mr. Levy would like to have a word with you now.”

  “Yes, David, won’t you please follow me?” He led me into his office.

  The entire room was lined in dead plants. Not a thing was alive in the office, nor had it been for some time. There must have been twenty of the shriveled, dry things around the room. He motioned for me to sit in a large overstuffed chair directly in front of his desk.
As he sat down, he picked up a pencil and began playing with it, spinning the eraser on each of his fingertips in succession, over and over again.

  “So! I have to say that I’m always amazed there are still young military people who are willing to give it all up to become a part of this effort.” He focused on his fingers, never once looking at me.

  I cleared my throat and shifted my weight in the chair. “I’m not certain of any of that, sir,” I said nervously. “I’m not sure I understand what I’d be giving up—or, more important, what I’d be giving it up for. I mean—”

  Levy cut me off. “And just what is it that you think we do?”

  “Well, I think you engage in some sort of out-of-body experiments … or something like—”

  He cut me off again. “No, that’s not what we do.” He leaned forward and stared directly into my eyes. “What we do here is train individuals to transcend time and space, to view persons, places, and things remote in time and space, and to gather intelligence information on them.” He paused, still staring into my eyes. “That is what we do here. Now, your next question will most likely be ‘How do we do that?’ which is something I will not answer unless you are fortunate enough to join us. What I want to do now is determine if you are the caliber of individual we would want. What you’d be giving up is your life as you know it today. You would not leave here the same man as you arrived.”

  “Exactly what does that mean?”

  “It means just what I said: you will be changed, permanently. I’d like to believe for the good, but there have been some exceptions to that; however, they are few and far between. You needn’t worry about that now. All I need to know is whether or not you are interested. Beyond that, the decision is very much mine.”

  As he spoke, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and my palms began to sweat. This man made me more nervous than anyone I’d ever met. He rambled on for several minutes, but I can’t remember what he said. I only tuned in again toward the end.

  “So, we have a few tests for you. Pratt will give those to you; you may take them home. Dr. Barker will see to it that they are returned to us, and we’ll let you know something as soon as the results are in. Okay? Now before we proceed, I want to know if you are interested in the program. Again, I realize that you’ve been given limited information, but that will have to do for now. What do you say?”

  I stood, wishing I’d paid more attention. “Uh …” I tried to review the consequences of what I was about to say, but I couldn’t tally them fast enough. Finally, I followed my instincts. “Yes, sir, I’m very much interested.”

  Levy took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Fine, then. We’ll be in touch.” He motioned toward the door.

  “Thank you for your time, sir. I hope to see you again.”

  Barker said his farewells as I moved toward the front door. Pratt Orsen pulled some documents from one of the safe drawers and hustled toward me.

  “Here, David. Mr. Levy would like you to complete these.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the papers. “I hope I get to see you again.”

  “I’m sure you will. One thing that might help: answer the questions on those documents as though you were the person you’d like to be, as opposed to the person you are.” He could see I didn’t understand. “Put yourself into a mind-set free of any hostility or animosity. Answer the questions in a spirit of humility.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t look so worried—you’ll do fine.”

  Barker and I climbed into his car as the heavy metal door of the unit clicked shut behind us. We sped down the driveway and made our way back to the Beltway. Barker was in a hurry to get back to the unit; he had a meeting later in the afternoon at the Pentagon. He checked his watch several times, mumbling to himself about the length of time we’d spent at Sun Streak.

  “I know you’re a little preoccupied, but I have a question,” I said. Barker just stared ahead at the road. “Levy alluded to a downside for all of this. What’s the downside?”

  “Well, there are risks—emotional, physical, and spiritual risks, to name the most critical ones.”

  “Those are pretty significant!” I said. “Exactly how are they risks?”

  “Let’s save that for when and if these guys select you. Then I’ll fill you in on everything else. Just understand that nothing in life comes without consequences. There are tradeoffs—and if you trade your ‘nightmares’ and visions for a little peace and understanding, you’ll have to give up something in return.”

  “Well, is it deadly?”

  Barker glanced at me. “I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone knows the answer to that, really. We suspect that some trainees have had problems as a result of the training, but those people should have been screened out before they got to that point. We’ve gotten a lot better at picking the right candidates.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, you have what we’re looking for. I’d bet anything that you’ll have nothing but good results from this. I think it will really help with everything going on inside your head.”

  “Okay, I bow to your judgment.” I settled back and closed my eyes for the rest of the trip.

  That night, I said nothing to Debbie or my parents about the meeting at Fort Meade. Weighing the impact, I figured I’d wait until I knew more.

  I completed Levy’s tests and turned them in to Barker at the end of the week. I heard nothing from Sun Streak, and as far as I knew, Barker didn’t have any contact with them either. He gave me more documents to review. They concerned the Soviet Union’s involvement in remote viewing and related parapsychological studies. The documents were all old classified messages, many of which pre-dated Sun Streak’s inception in the 1970s. Most of them were CIA traffic about a program funded by the government and conducted at Stanford Research Institute in California. From the documents it was clear that this was where our program had originated.

  Barker supplemented my classified reading with open-source literature from various research programs, as well as books written by some of the early researchers like Dr. Russel Targ and Harold Puthoff. These books illustrated what a remote viewer could do, but the authors were careful never to mention any involvement with the government. At this stage it didn’t matter. It was obvious when you took all the information in context that the U.S. government was heavily involved with parapsychological research on many fronts, not just in the area of remote viewing. They were focusing efforts on anything that might enhance human performance potential: sleep learning, subliminal messages, psychokinesis, and a host of others. Several general officers were mentioned prominently—officers like Major General Bert Stubblebine, the former commander of the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Security Command (INSCOM) housed just down the road from the Pentagon, and Lieutenant General Mike Thompson, the former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. Thompson was the number one intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. Stubblebine appeared to be one of the bravest and most visionary of any of them, a man who recognized the potential of all the paranormal “technologies” and was willing to put his career on the line to support them. In one of the INSCOM memorandums I was shown, he stated that we “have no reason to exclude any science or body of knowledge that might enhance our intelligence collection capability … any degree of information is better than the absence of information.” The rumor supplied by Barker was that Stubblebine paid a very high price—he was forced to resign—for supporting work with the paranormal. In short, he had been too up-front about what he was doing. He had opened too many doors for everyone’s comfort and he had become too visible in his involvement. Because he believed in what he was doing, and supported a controversial science, he was sacrificed. The once fairly visible research programs went quickly underground, never to surface again. It was obvious from reading the documents that Sun Streak had its enemies, from prayer groups in the Pentagon to congressmen and general officers willing to kill it at all costs. I asked myself time and again what had kept it alive for all these years. The government was funding pa
ranormal research in half a dozen private and as many state and federal research centers across the United States. They were pumping tens of millions of dollars into remote viewing and various related techniques. But the project and those affiliated with it were set into a class by themselves, no longer part of the intelligence community. They were feared, ridiculed, scoffed at, mocked, and ostracized. Yet somewhere, someone in a position of power was intrigued. Something fueled the program’s fire, and from my readings that could only mean one thing: it worked.

  But weeks passed and I heard nothing from the unit. I kept having nightmares, which were taking their toll on the family. Mom and Dad had returned home to California shortly after my nocturnal visit to the cave, so now Debbie was alone in dealing with all of this. I felt that I was growing sicker, and I was convinced that Sun Streak was my only help.

  “Hey! Guess what?” Barker came running into my office slamming the door behind him, his eyes huge behind his glasses. “They want you! Can you believe it? Of course you can believe it. I told you so!” He shook the message in front of him, holding it with both hands. “They want you to report right away. As soon as I got this from the S-1, I called Levy. They want you tomorrow, if they can get you. Do you realize how exciting this is? Aren’t you excited? We did it!”

  I smiled, more at his reaction than anything. “Yeah, that’s great news.” But I immediately thought about what I was going to have to say to Debbie and the children, and the smile left my face.

  “What’s the matter? You still want to go, don’t you?”

  “Sure, I want to go. I’m just running over everything I’ll have to do to get ready, that’s all.”