Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  MKULTRA was also mentioned more recently by conspiracy theorists as being a potential factor in the horrific 2012 Aurora theater shootings in Colorado. Some theorists alleged that James Holmes had been programmed by the Project to commit the massacre in order to bring about a political environment in which a new gun control policy could be introduced.

  The “Polybius” urban legend has also been tied into MKULTRA conspiracy theories. The story goes that a mysterious new arcade machine arrived in Portland, Oregon, in 1981. Gamers were at first enthusiastic, with people fighting over the right to play next. However, the game was quickly found to induce insomnia, night terrors, memory loss, and hallucinations. After a few inspections by “men in black” type government agents, the game was quickly pulled and was never seen again. Alleged players of the machine reported feeling as though they had gone through a “bad acid trip,” with some giving up games all together.

  To conspiracy theorists, Polybius was simply the next generation of MKULTRA mind control techniques being used on an unsuspecting public, this time with an arcade machine instead of LSD. Theorists cited Atari’s contract in 1981 (months before the alleged Polybius events were to occur) to create a tank gunner simulation for the U.S. Army as “proof” of the creation of Polybius, as one of the designers of the top secret development of such a simulation was also directly mentioned in the rumors surrounding Polybius.

  You can connect with Forbes West via email, Facebook, or Twitter, or visit his website.

  Chukotka

  by Lucas Bale

  CLASSIFIED

  EVIDENTIAL BUNDLE, TAB ONE

  From: Aidan Pearson [amp@haarp.alaska.edu]

  Sent: Friday, February 25, 2014 4:54 PM

  To: James Burak [jrb@haarp.alaska.edu]

  Subject: IRI Phase One Tonight

  Hi Jim,

  Sorry man, but I can’t take my shift tonight — Jane’s puking all over the place. Think she ate something at that new deli. Can you cover me? I know it’s short notice, but it’s only an IRI phase one and I’ll be on my cell if you need me. Anderson is DARPA’s on-call.

  Just remember, this one is natsec, okay? So you gotta be in early to clock in.

  Thanks man. I owe you.

  Aidy

  From: James Burak [jrb@haarp.alaska.edu]

  Sent: Friday, February 25, 2014 4:59 PM

  To: Aidan Pearson [amp@haarp.alaska.edu]

  Subject: Re: IRI Phase One Tonight

  Aidy,

  Sure, no problem. Phase one of which though? Is it weather or radio? Sorry, I only just got back from Minnesota seeing my folks so I haven’t had a chance to come in and read the schedule. Is it really only a skeleton team at the office now?

  Jim

  From: Aidan Pearson [amp@haarp.alaska.edu]

  Sent: Friday, February 25, 2014 5:04 PM

  To: James Burak [jrb@haarp.alaska.edu]

  Subject: Re: IRI Phase One Tonight

  Hi Jim,

  Sorry man, didn’t know you were away last week.

  It’s both — weather and radio. And yeah, it’s just gonna be you tonight and security. Since news of the funding cut came through last week, they told us we’ve got to up the IRI count, but we don’t have the staff to do it. We need to get in a whole bunch of these tests before the place closes down so they’re doing overnight phase ones starting tonight. We’re going to have to do five a week to get it all done. Can you believe that? All my notes for the test are on my desk. That’s all you need.

  Test runs from 01:00 February 26th (tomorrow morning) to 01:15. You don’t need to do anything, just make sure you watch the sensors. There’s a no-fly across the Bering for the next 24hrs and the Coast Guard say there’s no maritime activity either.

  Remember, we’re upping the range for all these tests, okay? The new numbers are probably going to be way high, but that’s what we’ve been told to do for these ones. I think they want to get the most out of the place before it shuts down. So it really means keeping an eye on the sensors. Not trying to be a d*ck, but it’s my butt if anything goes wrong.

  Gotta go. Thanks for tonight!

  Aidy

  Scott

  Sailing the Bering Strait is always a risk. We don’t go out just when the weather is good; the gnarliest cold water surf comes when the skies are like ink and the wind is trying to kick the waves over the deck. I learned the sea as a commercial fisherman in the Bering and the Gulf of Alaska—and lost a finger doing it—but in late winter, just before spring dawns, the sailing and surfing I’m searching for is at its best. By the time the storms in Alaska reach Hawaii, the weather has cleaned up and they’ve mellowed, so I’ve always caught them here. I can’t wait to leave the drudgery of the working man’s sea behind and skate on top of its waves. The remoteness of the coastline is what draws me to it. No one can touch me out here. I’m free.

  Mike sits inside the cabin of his yacht, finalizing headings that will take us toward the north coast of St. Lawrence, far enough away from the Chukotka Peninsula that the Russian military won’t get edgy and send someone out to warn us off. Mike needs the money right now—he’s backed up with bank loans and the tourist season didn’t bring in as much as he’d wanted—so he agreed to deliver some mechanical parts to the Yupik on St. Lawrence for a friend. It saves him shitting a brick about the cost of Beaver fuel, not having to make the trip by seaplane, so he really wants to find a way up there. I take him at his word that it’ll be reasonable conditions. The radio forecasts haven’t mentioned anything too serious on the Bering.

  As he does his calculations, I pack the boat. I’ve done this so many times before, I almost have a blueprint in my head for where everything needs to go to make the best use of the available space. I step off the jetty one last time and up onto the deck, then toss my kitbag inside the cabin. My surfboard is already in there, stowed in back with Mike’s. The rest of the space has been taken up with crates of mechanical parts.

  Getting anywhere in Alaska is usually a job for a helicopter or plane, but money is tight for both of us. There were last-minute reports on the radio of an incoming swell down the Bering Strait, and Mike’s yacht is all we have to get over to St. Lawrence to catch the surf. I barely bring in enough to make the rent and pay for food, so my camera’s in there too; maybe I can sell a few shots of polar bears on the ice floes up on the coast of the island.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out. The name on the screen shouldn’t be a surprise to me—she’s been calling for days now, wanting to know when she can come over and pick up her stuff—but it still cuts me. She’s leaving me, and I should stick around to help her move out? Fuck that. I try to tell myself that refusing to answer is not as childish as it feels.

  Mike tosses me a look as I put the phone away. He knows better than to ask. He knows I need to escape; to get out of Dodge and do something that makes me forget.

  * * *

  The cabin of the small yacht is cramped inside, with the crates taking up most of the space, so we’re both either on deck or in the cockpit whenever the weather allows. It’s a thirty-year-old sardine can, and sometimes it feels like it’s way too flimsy and held together with duct tape and rusted bolts, but it’s all we have.

  We’re close-hauled, leaning hard to port as a northerly sweeps down from the Arctic. The rain lashes us in thick sheets and we shuck water away from our faces. Waves crash over the deck at the bow of the boat. This is Alaska and the Bering: the cold is an indigenous resident here, a fact of life that seeps into your bones and gnaws at your skin. I pull the hood of my immersion suit tighter around my face and wish I’d remembered the flask of coffee that’s still sitting on my kitchen counter. Both of us wear commercial immersion suits when we sail in the Bering, but mine is getting old and some of the seals are abraded. Trawler gigs have been hard to come by for a while so there’s been nothing spare in the pot to replace it. If I ever went in, I sometimes wonder how long it would keep the water out and keep me warm.

  I r
ub more water away from my face and stare out into the thick pall of wet charcoal. Through shifting breaks in the cloud I’ve been able to catch the briefest glimpses of the barren, frozen landscape behind us, but now there’s nothing but roiling grey.

  We’re less than three hours away from St. Lawrence when everything changes. The wind has so far been more playful than belligerent. Truth is, this hasn’t been much of a storm—the Bering gets much worse. Weather reports, if you know what station to tune into, are pretty accurate here in AK. Yet the sky turns darker a little too quickly. I notice it, but tell myself there’s nothing to worry about. We’re not far out and we’ve got time. Weather can turn on a dime here, but we’re close enough to St. Lawrence for us to get there before it does. I’m sure of that. I know the Bering.

  It’s only when Mike leans forward to examine the GPS for the second time in five minutes that I feel a flutter of concern. I watch him glance away to his left then examine the screen again. It’s an expensive unit—he’s told me often enough—so I don’t get why he’s scrutinizing it so closely. Mike checks the course again, staring at the instruments arrayed across the aging yacht’s dash.

  “There a problem, Mike?” I shout against the clamor of the wind.

  He looks at me vaguely, seemingly confused. “Not sure,” he says and purses his lips. It’s a thing he does when he’s thinking. His wife loves it, says it makes him look intelligent. “GPS hasn’t been updating for the last twenty minutes—like it’s lost signal.”

  I look out at the veil of rain and cloud rolling across the sea. “Does it matter?” I respond. “We sail by the charts then.”

  “Of course,” he replies. and I find some tension in his voice. “But… you seen the compass? It’s strange. I don’t get it.”

  I glance at the compass. It spins in place then settles, then spins in place again. There’s concern written all over Mike’s face. “You said you checked the weather, Mike,” I say, trying to work through it. “Nothing serious—just some wind and rain.”

  Mike waves a hand around the cockpit. “This look like just some wind and rain to you?” He’s right. It’s going bad too quickly. It isn’t right; it’s unusual, even for the Bering. “I’m going to radio Savoonga,” he says. “See what’s happening over there. Maybe they can give us a weather update.”

  “If they can’t, we may have to drop the sails and wait this out.” He looks at me as I say this and doesn’t like it. He glances into the cabin, then back at me, and I know he’s thinking about his delivery.

  But he nods and then heads down. I take the wheel and watch him perch by the radio. The display is flickering. He taps it and then starts punching buttons. The display doesn’t change at all. He’s not getting through on any channel. He leans back and looks at me. His eyes are hollow.

  “Radio’s down,” he says redundantly. He’s not really saying it to me; it’s more like he’s confirming it to himself. I manage to stop myself asking what that means. I have to rely on Mike to think it through—this is his yacht. It’s his trip.

  The brilliant white flash comes at the same time that the loudest crack of thunder I’ve ever heard kicks across the sea; it’s like a high-caliber rifle going off inside a tiny room. The lights inside flicker for a second and then wink back on. The compass jerks around like it’s been electrocuted, then settles.

  “That was fucking lightning!” I shout. Where the fuck did that come from? This wasn’t supposed to be a thunderstorm. My heart’s hammering in my chest and I find I haven’t actually hauled in a breath for a few seconds. My lips are dry as hell. I can see something that might be scorch marks on the top of the mast. I desperately hope I’m wrong, because if I’m not, we’re in trouble.

  “The radio’s not picking up a single channel and the GPS is still not updating,” Mike repeats, as if I need to hear it again.

  “We need to get the sails down,” I say. “Trip’s over. We wait it out in the cabin.”

  “We can push through this.” I can see the desperation in his eyes. We wait this out, we could end up anywhere in the Bering. It’ll take more than a day to get back. It’s not just that he’s scared—no sailor wants to sit in a cabin, waiting while a storm tears the shit out of the sea around him—Mike must be on a clock with the parts for St. Lawrence.

  Of course you’d say that, Mike, I think. You still want to make your drop-off. I know storms. I fish in them, sail in them, surf in them; so I made myself understand what I have to deal with. We’ve gone from a relatively benign, isolated single-cell storm to something which could be a multi-cell cluster in seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it. We leave the sails up in this, they’ll get torn away, maybe even capsize the damn boat. If Mike can’t see that, I have to.

  “There’s no way, Mike,” I shout. “It’s already too strong, and the way this one came up on us, the speed of it, it’s only going to get worse.” He’s silent. He doesn’t reply. So I hammer home the point; make him understand that I know what’s driving him. “Your parts will have to wait. It’s just too fucking hot out here now.”

  I think he might have gone for it, if he’d been given a few seconds to think about it. Mike’s a sensible guy, just a little desperate right now. But when the second lightning bolt hits, slamming into the mast, the halyard snaps. The boom comes sliding in hard as the boat rights from its close-hauled position. The only thing that saves me is the fact that I’m steering and to the stern of the boat, but even then I lose my footing and the boom misses me by inches as I slide.

  It’s only going to get worse.

  Umqy

  It is still dark when I begin the last hunt I shall ever make from the village I have called my home for more than seventy years. I do not allow myself to look back at the place—it has changed so much since I was a boy, and all it serves now is to remind me how the ravages of age and illness have contrived to rob me of my usefulness. How younger, healthier men in the village have stripped me of the pride I once had.

  There is a frozen wind this morning. Ice has already formed on my white beard, and the snow nips at my wrinkled skin. Yet I think this is fitting. The silent hunter I am looking for will thrive in this cruel weather. The wind cannot pierce his thick layer of blubber; the sea cannot penetrate his oily fur, yellowed by age and hard-won experience. I was named for you, umqy, because you took my brother from me before I was born. I have been intertwined with you ever since. My whole life given meaning by the death of a boy I never knew and a white bear who will one day take me with it into the afterlife.

  If the disease does not take me first. I cough again as I load my sled and instinctively raise a hand to my mouth. One of the two reindeer tethered to the front glances at me and shakes its head quickly, a fine mist billowing from its nose. The cough has been growing steadily worse of late, another gift from the Soviets. I know I am dying. This was no evil spirit, this disease they brought with them, but something more insidious. I don’t need to look at my glove, made from a seal’s hide, to know it will come away flecked with blood. My coat, too, is made from that same seal’s hide. I have found nothing warmer in the western clothing the Soviets brought with them; nothing that keeps the wind and snow at bay as effectively. I made this coat myself. Every stitch is mine. The fur is from my beloved first dog, and from a wolverine we once tracked together. This coat is almost as old as I am. It is the only friend I have left.

  There will be other anqallyt hunters rising from their yaranga out by the coast, nomads who still cling to the old ways, but I want to avoid them. I want no company on this last hunt of mine. It is the tranquility of solitude that I seek as I walk toward the spirits who will restore my pride and usefulness in this diseased world.

  My daughter will be furious with me—her father who will not be tamed; who will not accept what she says about the good the Soviets brought with them. Tinned food that tastes of too much salt and like the metal it comes inside; clothes that do not last and which scratch my skin; their language and culture. What about our langu
age? What about our songs and stories? Are our traditions so foreign to you now, daughter? How quickly you and my grandchildren forgot what the Soviets did to us, and then welcomed the trinkets they brought you. You even teach their children now—teach their history instead of yours. How little you understand who we are and what we have lost.

  I am dying, and the shaman—helped by a Soviet doctor of course—has admonished me to remain in bed. This I cannot do. I know my flaw, of course—I am not so foolish as to be blind to it—an old man still clinging to past glory. There is still life in this slow heart.