Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  Elvis was a very spiritual person who made routine visits to the Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters in Los Angeles to learn about meditation and yoga. One of his most prized possessions was indeed Cheiro’s Book of Numbers, which allegedly mysteriously vanished when he died. Another prized possession was Autobiography of a Yogi, which also disappeared, and contained a reference to “There is a Season” from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which Nick sings to Anna in “Manufacturing Elvis.”

  Elvis did have a DEA badge issued by President Nixon, and he was given the famous DEA jogging suit, which he wore on the day of his death. While some claim the badge was honorary, there are many, including Elvis himself, who claimed it was not. He allegedly exchanged calls with President Carter during the last few months of his life.

  Even if Elvis is dead, he lives on in countless cultural references. He has been immortalized in over a hundred songs, including the Mojo Nixon and R.E.M. songs referenced in “Manufacturing Elvis,” but also in “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles and “Calling Elvis” by Dire Straits, both of which are referenced peripherally in the story. Elvis allusions and impersonators litter our TV shows and movies. The statement “Elvis has left the building,” which was announced at Elvis concerts to get crazed fans to go home, has been used in multiple other contexts. As Fox Mulder observed in The X-Files, “Do you know how hard it is to fake your own death? Only one man has pulled it off: Elvis.”

  Has Elvis left the building? After doing the research for this story, I am no longer so sure. I do know that the story of Elvis is not nearly as simple as I once thought it was, and I would like to thank David Gatewood for inviting me to be part of this anthology and allowing me to learn more about the man who was a true religion.

  Jennifer Ellis is the author of four novels, including A Pair of Docks and A Quill Ladder, books one and two in her young adult series about magic and science. She also writes action-adventure for adults. She lives in the mountains of British Columbia and reads tarot cards and researches the end of the world in her spare time. Visit her online at www.jenniferellis.ca and check out her Amazon author page.

  The Final Flight of Michael Aoki

  by Edward W. Robertson

  He awoke to the smell of himself burning. Just as he’d smelled in the jungle. Airborne dirt sifting down through the fronds, arms of yellow flame reaching up the trunks of the palms. The moment when all things had stopped.

  He coughed, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them, he was in a cockpit. The glass was ashy, dusty. Past it, moonlight shined on a flat and scrubby desert.

  A klaxon crooned over the snap of the fire. He tried to move, but something clutched him to his seat. Straps. Harness. He pawed at it, choking on smoke, clicking open the buckles. He wriggled from the cockpit and rolled down the side of the vessel, plopping onto the hardpan. He dragged himself from the wreckage on hands and knees. In the distance, whirling lights sped across the desert.

  Once he no longer tasted smoke, and the heat beating against his back was no worse than tropical sunlight, he rolled onto his side. Behind him, the saucer canted from the dust, unbroken, silhouetted by its own flames.

  * * *

  The next time he woke, the smell was much calmer. Antiseptic. Clean metal. Hospital. The small room was made smaller yet by clunky machinery. It had the same pale blue walls and dingy white tile they all did. He felt disappointed.

  The door swung open. A nurse in an off-white uniform stopped and stared. He tried to speak; nothing came out but a weak croak. He touched his throat. His fingers bumped over old scars. The nurse backed out the door.

  When the door reopened, a uniformed man strolled through it. Heavy around the middle. He was mostly bald, and what hair remained was cut brutally short. He had an easy smile, the kind so wide it threatened to swallow the eyes.

  “He’s awake!” The officer moved to the bed, stepping onto its foot and leaning his forearm onto his raised knee. Concern touched his smile. “How you feeling, chief?”

  Before he could reply, the officer passed him a clipboard with a pen. He wrote, Am fine.

  “Great news. You remember your name?”

  He moved to write it, but reaching for the memory was like lifting a glass to his lips only to find it was empty. He blinked up at the officer.

  “It’s okay,” the man said. “You take your time.”

  His eyes watered. His heart beat. Then it popped loose like a baby tooth. He wrote, Michael Aoki.

  “You remember your mission, Aoki?”

  Michael gazed down at the pad. I am a pilot.

  “Damn right you are. What else?”

  There is a war. He hesitated, pen in hand. That’s where I hurt my throat.

  The officer’s voice went soft again. “I wish it was so. We won that one.”

  There’s another. Already?

  “You don’t have none of it?” The officer sighed and removed his foot from the bed frame. “This is easier with pictures. You stay right here, will you?”

  He chuckled and stepped out. While he was gone, Michael took stock. His head was bandaged. So was his right ankle. His ribs hurt, but very faintly; he was on morphine. The rest of him seemed fine. The crash hadn’t been enough to take him out. He felt pride in his toughness, yet for some reason he felt sad.

  The officer returned, manila folder in his beefy hands. He moved beside the bed and sighed through his nose, long and slow. He withdrew an 8x10 and set it on Michael’s lap. Black and white. Looked like a flooded lumberyard. Nothing but rubble. Debris. Trash.

  “San Francisco.”

  Michael looked up sharply.

  “This here’s Los Angeles.” The man handed over another photograph. The details were different, but the look was the same. His hands trembled. He flipped a third 8x10 onto Michael’s blanket. “Denver.”

  The memory breached. He wrote, The Soviets.

  “Hard to forget a thing like the end of the world, ain’t it?”

  But we’re still here.

  “For the moment. That saucer out there? The one you nearly shattered on the hardpan?” The officer gripped Michael’s shoulder. “That’s the only thing we’ve got that can slip through their defenses. You’re our last hope to take them down.”

  * * *

  The officer’s name was Parnell. He was a colonel. Michael was a major. It was 1947, and the West Coast of the United States had been destroyed.

  They told him he had a high ankle sprain, two broken ribs, and a cracked skull. They gave him pills for the pain. A doctor came around to run more tests—he’d gone down near one of the nuke sites and they were concerned about radiation. Once his ankle improved, the nurse helped him hobble around.

  His days were busy. Exercise to strengthen his body. Puzzles and games to stretch his mind. Photographs of the cockpit, which he remembered in perfect detail. A psychologist questioned him about his memory. Everything but the ship was shadows and blurs. After a while, the man grew frustrated, but Michael had nothing to give him.

  Every night, he had the same dream. A woman and a girl in a humid jungle. Flames crisped through the canopy. Bombs thundered in the bay. Strangers. They didn’t belong here. Heedless of his orders, he ran toward them. A whistle drowned out the screams. The mother and her daughter vanished in a blinding flash. A wall of force struck him in the guts, throwing him aside like he was nothing at all.

  And then he woke.

  “You were in the war,” the psychologist prompted. He wore glasses and his red hair was parted on one side. “Do you remember?”

  Michael touched his throat. He wrote, There was an island.

  “Guadalcanal. That’s where you were wounded. Is this where the woman was? The little girl?”

  He nodded.

  The psychologist made a note. “Do you have anything before that?”

  Longing. Regret. That was all. He shook his head.

  Parnell came to see him every other day. He seemed antsy. Fidgeting his thick hands. Michael knew why. The attack
had happened six months ago. No warning. The skies had gone dark with planes, and then white with fire. Along with the cities, they’d struck the nuclear caches, but they had missed two sites. The president had sent bombers over the pole. They hadn’t returned.

  Now, they waited on the enemy’s next strike. The one that would take out the East. Unless the saucer hit back first.

  “No pressure, right?” Parnell chuckled, picking at the cuticle of his thumb. It was already bleeding. “It’s a hell of a thing.”

  He wrote, I’ll do what’s needed of me.

  “I know you will. I’ve had dogs less loyal than you, Aoki. This accident, though, it’s clarified our blind spot. If something happens to you, where does that leave us?”

  Nowhere.

  “Exactly. We’re bringing in another pilot.”

  Michael regarded him. Replacement.

  Parnell swung his chin to the side. “No sir. Backup. Redundancy. More importantly, a partner. This flight won’t be any skip through the daisies. Won’t hurt to have someone at your back. Lieutenant Tanaka, you want to get in here?”

  A man walked into the hospital room. He wore an olive green jacket with lieutenant’s bars. His black hair was buzzed on the sides and longer on top. With so few memories, Michael had found he had to trust his instincts. His reads. With this man, there was a severity and an angry stiffness.

  Michael turned to the colonel. He’s also Japanese?

  “Sam Tanaka.” Parnell grinned. “Haven’t seen anyone so eager to prove himself since you, Aoki.”

  Tanaka saluted. “Major. I’m honored to work with you.”

  Michael rousted himself from bed, suppressing a wince, and returned the salute. He wrote, Everything I know is yours to learn.

  Tanaka took the pad, holding it in both hands. When he looked up, his eyes shined with tears.

  * * *

  He was housed in a Quonset. All his own. Entering the room was like going back to a childhood home decades after your parents sold it. It touched something in the mind, but it wasn’t yours.

  He moved through the room, hoping to jog something loose. Shoes shined and ready. Uniforms folded in the dresser, creases so sharp you could cut yourself. Pictures on the dresser of himself in a bomber jacket leaning on the frame of a Hellcat. A Dopp kit with a razor, scissors, comb, talcum powder.

  He sat on the bed. Let himself feel. Unease. As if the room had been rearranged in his absence. He rose and went through the room again. Closing one of the dresser drawers, he heard the crumple of paper.

  The underside of the drawer had a page pinned to it. A single sentence: His sacrifice is yours.

  The writing was his. Beneath it was a quick sketch of the saucer, also his work. He turned the paper over. The other side was blank. He sat on the end of the bed, pressing his palm to his forehead. It might have made sense before the crash. Minus his memory, it was gibberish.

  Yet he’d hidden it. It was important. He breathed in and out, examining what he felt. Reading the words, he felt… frightened? More than that. Terrified.

  But there was something deeper: resolve. Duty. Something which must be done despite knowing there’s no coming back.

  He pinned the note back in place and walked outside. The desert sun was just beginning to clear the eastern ridges, but it was already hot in a way that promised the afternoon would be like a bad day on Mercury. Michael crunched through the gravel toward Parnell’s office, another Quonset hut, and handed the clerk a note. The clerk said he was in. Michael sat in an uncomfortable chair and waited.

  Twenty minutes later, Colonel Parnell emerged from the back. “Aoki? How long you been waiting?” He grabbed the nearest papers, turned on the clerk, and swatted the man’s head. “You’re just gonna leave him out here?”

  The clerk apologized twice. Parnell gestured Michael into his office and shut the door. “What can I do for you? You ready to get back in the saddle come Monday?”

  Michael sat in front of the desk. The office smelled like dust and sweat. He wrote, I want to see him.

  The colonel glanced at the pad and chuckled. “Mind narrowing that down, chief?”

  The pilot.

  “Aoki.” His voice was gentle, as if afraid of what he might disturb. “You are the pilot.”

  This ship came from somewhere. It had a pilot. Where is he now?

  “Thing like that, he’s either classified, or in a sideshow. I think you can guess which.”

  Who am I going to tell?

  Parnell chuffed with laughter. “You got me there. Why you want to see it so bad?”

  We wouldn’t be here without him, he wrote. Before I do this, I need to know who I owe.

  “You got strange ideas about debt. A thing like this, I can’t make you any promises. But for you, I’ll try.”

  * * *

  In one of the hangars, they’d rigged a full-scale model of the cockpit. He had begun his training in it, and it was there that they sent him to train Tanaka.

  Once Tanaka was in the second seat, Michael thumbed a button. With a hiss of hydraulics—the real saucer was silent—the hemisphere of the hatch closed. Michael switched on a light, illuminating banks of tightly arranged buttons similar to the keys of a typewriter. The actual saucer blazed with tiny TV screens that were as bright as neon and as crisp as autumn. Here, the screens were represented by still paintings of alien sigils and the dry mountains around the base.

  “Dear God,” Tanaka said. “How are we supposed to fly this?”

  Michael smiled. He wrote, Wait until you see the real thing.

  There weren’t many others on the base. They rarely spoke to him. When they did, it was mostly to see how he was recovering, to thank him for what he was doing. How he was going to save the country. It was a strange thing to think about.

  He pushed Tanaka hard. Not just on the basic controls, but also to memorize the ones they still didn’t understand. Tanaka’s awe wore off quickly. He didn’t voice his frustration with the endless repetition, but Michael saw it in the abruptness of his gestures, the frantic scratch of his pen on his notepad.

  Tanaka was a fast learner. Dedicated. He had the basics in three days. When it came to the unknown buttons, though, he had no patience. Yet Michael refused to clear him until he could name each one.

  Eight days into the training, Parnell informed him that the saucer was repaired. Six days after that, following Tanaka’s latest failure to properly identify the configuration of the key cluster known as E14, Tanaka reached across the cockpit and jammed the release. The hatch sprung open with a metal squeal. Tanaka jumped out, sliding down the saucer’s sloped side and dropping to the ground. He hurled his notepad across the dusty cement. Michael unbuckled and climbed down the ladder built into the model’s side.

  He wrote, held the pad up to Tanaka. What are you doing, airman?

  Tanaka’s jaw bulged. “This is pointless. What does it matter if I know which buttons don’t work?”

  So that you will know which ones do.

  “I know how to steer. How to drop the bombs. I’m ready, Major.”

  So you say, Michael wrote. Why are you so eager for this?

  “They bombed us out of the blue. Murdered so many. Don’t you want to pay them back?”

  They committed the worst crime in history. And you want to repeat it?

  Tanaka laughed sharply. “You can’t do it, can you? After everything they’ve taken from you, you’d rather roll over than fight back. No wonder they brought me here.”

  You are dismissed.

  Tanaka’s mouth worked. He saluted, then spun on his heel.

  Michael typed a report. Delivered it to Parnell’s clerk. Parnell called him in the next day.

  Red veins traced the colonel’s nose and cheeks. “You wanted to see me?”

  I am concerned about Lt. Tanaka, Michael wrote. He’s too zealous.

  The colonel raised a gray brow. “We’re talking about the end of the US of A here. We need zealots.”

  What we nee
d is competency. Sir.

  Parnell gritted his teeth. “Can he operate the saucer?”

  Michael tapped his pen on his paper. To a limited degree.

  “Enough to fulfill the parameters of the mission.”

  I understood that I was given the authority to decide when he is ready.

  “That depends, don’t it? Are you holding him back because you don’t think he can do it? Or because you don’t want to get this thing off the ground?”

  Michael drew back his chin. I don’t understand.

  “The feeling is that you may be reticent to execute your mission.”

  His jaw dropped. Tanaka came to you?

  “The saucer’s been ready for days, Aoki. You haven’t been to it once. Is this about the crash?”

  Sir, I… He hesitated. Have a feeling. As if we’re headed down a path we don’t understand.

  Parnell sighed heavily. “There’s something you need to see.”

  He rose from his desk and exited his office into the afternoon heat. He slung himself behind the wheel of a jeep. Once Michael was in, Parnell peeled north, roostertailing dust behind them. Past the rows of huts, a barbed wire fence spanned the entrance of a canyon. Parnell stopped at a checkpoint, showed his papers to the guard. He stopped in front of a windowless concrete building set against the back of the canyon, the jeep rocking on its suspension.

  Inside, another guard checked their paperwork, then took them to an elevator, inserting a key into its panel. They descended several floors. The doors opened to a hallway and the smell of disinfectant.

  Their shoes echoed down the hall. Wordlessly, the guard opened a door into a small, well-lit room.

  A bulky, transparent case sat on a waist-high table. Inside, a thin gray creature lay on its back, spindly limbs stretched and still. Its head was cartoonishly large. So were the black pools of its eyes. It was hairless, lightly wrinkled.