Somehow, she was drawn to men who mistreated her. Nonetheless, try as she might to destroy the feeling with her medications, her own designer-chemical therapy, she could not shake it. She thought of Richards all the time. She still wanted him. Down deep, she prayed that, after White Book was completed and in a maintenance phase, when they would be out of danger, Richards would divorce his wife, leave his family in Great Falls, Virginia, and come and live with her.
She knew it was sick, this feeling, this need, this desire, and she had tried every means possible to cure herself; but the feeling was still there.
Nonetheless, she was in control.
She kept rigid watch over herself, lest this aberrant, pathetic side of her might show to anyone. And she was successful. However, at times like these, when things got out of hand ... When she lost Woodrow Justine ... After Scarborough escaped into the wilds of America, a walking time bomb teetering on the truth about himself and about the operation ... These were the times that things got rough. These were the times when, perhaps, she tended to overmedicate herself and get the headaches.
She did not take an aspirin or a Tylenol. That would be an inappropriate mix with the other chemicals in her system. Biochemistry was never as exact a science as Cunningham would have liked, and there were so many random factors. However, she was working on that ... This was one of her own private reasons for helping to develop Project White Book. There was so much she was learning about the way the brain operated—and without petty moral or social constraints.
Ultimately, Dr. Julia Cunningham knew, given the proper conditions, she would be able to control the heart, the mind, the soul, of any man or woman.
Perhaps even herself.
It wasn’t until 4: 12 that Brian Richards walked into the conference room, bringing with him a youngish-looking man with blonde hair and a deep frown and a resigned look to his eyes. By that time, Cunningham’s head was pounding. But she wouldn’t give Richards the satisfaction of knowing what he’d done to her.
“Oh,” she said casually. “Glad you could drop by.”
Richards cleared his throat. “Yes. Sorry we’re late. Myers’s plane was late, and then we had to get ourselves a copter from the base.”
“You couldn’t drive over.”
Richards ignored her. “Ed, this is Dr. Julia Cunningham. She’s our chief scientist for Project White Book, some of which we’ll be showing you today.”
“Doctor,” said Myers, nodding.
“Hello, Mr. Myers.” Cunningham replied tersely. “I understand that you’re being a great deal of help in the present situation.”
“If you mean that I’m the Judas goat ... well, I guess you’re right.”
“I understand that you are not happy about the circumstances. Nor would I be, in your situation. However, I hope you have been convinced of the terrible importance of the operation. “
“Yeah. I figured I better be convinced,” said the CIA operative, giving Richards a dark and surly look. “Or else.”
“Ed has been given an outline of the basic information. However, since there’s still some time before an—er—appointment can be made with Everett Scarborough-”
“You mean ‘trap,’ don’t you, Richards?” Myers slumped into a chair and moodily poured himself a glass of the water. He drank it down in several quick gulps.
“Very well, then. Trap. Whatever you wish to call it, it shall be the means whereby we can get Everett Scarborough in our hands. I explained to Ed, that by doing it this way, we may not have to kill Dr. Scarborough-it could be possible to merely persuade him to change his mind.”
“You mean brainwash the poor guy.” Myers poured himself another glass of water.
“I thought that by showing Ed our facilities here, with your able explanations, Doctor, that he might come to see that our work is not only in the best interests of the national security ... It is, above all, philanthropic, humanitarian—in short, for the good of mankind.”
“Well, I’m not sure if I can give these kinds of public relations speeches, Mr. Myers,” said Dr. Cunningham. “But as Mr. Richards is my boss, if he clears you, I’m quite willing to show you the labs and talk about our work here, and other places around the country—and, through the Publishers, the world.”
“Yeah. I want to hear all I can about these Publishers.”
“That depends on what Richards clears me to say.”
“You have to understand that Dr. Cunningham’s knowledge is kept limited as well. But I don’t see any harm in you telling Ed everything you know. I think, by the time you’re finished, we may well have convinced him that the Publishers are perhaps the most important group of people in the world today ... A group that has helped mankind survive this far ... And may well be responsible for preserving the race through the troubling times ahead.”
“Christ, by killing people? By betraying friends? By threatening to destroy people’s families?”
“Ed. You must know that true leaders always follow John Stuart Mill’s dictum: The greater good for the greatest number. I regret what we have had to do in this case, I truly do, but you gave us no choice. Everett Scarborough is now a great threat to our program. He must be captured.”
“Well, I’m doing what you tell me. Isn’t that enough?” He drank more water. The spring sun and heat in New Mexico must be having an adverse effect, thought Cunningham, automatically calculating the necessary chemicals she might administer. She stopped herself. There were more pressing things to think about than a CIA operative’s hydro-vascular system. Still, to Dr. Julia Cunningham, everything was chemistry.
Everything.
“I’m sure you are doing your professional utmost,” Richards responded. “However, Everett Scarborough is not a stupid man. Somewhere along the line he may well perceive a tremor, a lick of the lips, and a gulp of regret. Mere words on paper do not transmit the full enormity of the situation. I am hoping that your tour of these facilities, as well as the explanations from Dr. Cunningham, will give you the conviction your act needs.”
“It sounds as though it’s going to make me sick.”
“We shall discover that in due time, Ed. Now then, Doctor. Would you like to begin our little show-and-tell for our esteemed colleague?”
“This way, please, gentlemen. We’ll start just down the hall, toward the true core of our efforts here.”
Dr. Cunningham stalked toward the door.
Her head was feeling immensely better already. She enjoyed lecturing people.
She felt in control.
“It’s a computer.”
“Yes, how observant of you, Mr. Myers. However, it’s a very special computer, a very unique computer, developed specifically for Project White Book—most particularly for my analytical work on the operation. It performs a variety of functions gathered around the essence of our work here: the practical study of methods to shape the very fabric of human existence. ‘ ,
They were Cray computers, many of them, with screens and readouts and printout boards connected with multiple cables and peripherals.
“Mind-washing again,” muttered Myers.
Cunningham shook her head adamantly. “No. Brainwashing doesn’t really work except in the most extreme of circumstances. The human mind is a complex organism, and must be treated as such. Brainwashing is ineffective, dangerous, and messy. It leaves holes as wide as barn doors in the behavior of individuals. And frankly, it harms them. Ultimately, we do not mean to harm people. Or even control them, actually—just mold them. Social herding. But I get ahead of myself, Mr. Myers. Richards here wants me to tell you about Project White Book, and that I shall do. I just want to impress upon you that this is not the primitive torture ritual you might think it is.”
“What, you work with subliminals? I thought those didn’t really work either.”
“Subliminal programming is an element of the mix. As is hypnosis and what we call “Reality Programming.” But above and beyond all this, there is chemical bioengineering.”
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“You’re getting ahead of yourself here, Doctor,” said Richards. “Myers seems very upset about our brief borrowings of individuals to work with them. Maybe you’d better take it from there.”
Faintly annoyed that she had to cover even the most obvious basics, Cunningham sighed and said, “Very well. I trust that by now, Mr. Myers, you are familiar with the basic history of Unidentified Flying Objects in the U.S.”
“Yeah. Too familiar.”
“The actual phenomenon itself-the physical evidences of bright lights in the sky, etcetera--doesn’t really concern me. What interests me is the phenomenon of what goes on in the human mind during this kind of exposure to the unknown ... and what it is that exists in the mind that can actually project this I kind of experience when in fact it is only a subjective reality.”
“You mean a delusion.”
“Exactly. Why is it that when a few people claim to see flying saucers, many people suddenly see them? A form of mass psychosis. Was Carl lung correct? Does there exist a collective unconscious? But in fact is it more than the mere tendencies toward archetypal influences? Is there really some kind of psycho-chemical connection between people? But again, I get ahead of myself. Let’s get back to UFOs, shall we?”
“Yes, let’s do,” said Richards, clearly a little peeved at all this aerie-fairie pontificating—just like Cunningham knew he would be, which was the reason she did it.
“In the early sixties, the UFO psycho-cultural experience changed. A couple named Betty and Barney Hill were driving home from a vacation toward their New England home when they saw a flying saucer. They stopped their car. And then they apparently lost consciousness. When they got home, the couple realized that they had lost several hours of time. What had happened?
“Under the ministrations of a psychologist and the use of hypnosis, the Hills started to ‘remember’ what had happened. They had been abducted, they believed, by little men from a flying saucer, taken upon the craft, and there were subjected to a battery of tests. They were then told that they would forget the experience, which was a deeply frightening one, they claimed, very protean—my word, Mr. Myers, and may I add the aforementioned term archetypal, as well.”
“Well, did it really happen?”
“No, of course not, but that makes no difference. It was in the air, Mr. Myers. If it hadn’t happened to the Hills, it would have happened to someone else. All the mass hysteria about flying saucers was only the crest of a deep wave, particularly in Betty Hill’s case. Do you think that she was shut off from the massive amount of science fiction, in film and television, as well as in magazines and books? There was nothing really original or startling in the idea of an alien race examining human beings. Maybe Betty Hill read the books of George Adamski, or just a particularly frightening science fiction story; and then, to top it off, saw Invaders from Mars or even more probably Earth Versus the Flying Saucers. The creatures from that particular movie clearly influenced the general view of what aliens might look like! It was all in the air, as I said. It was under people’s skins, and I have no doubt that there were millions of similar dreams in the bedrooms all across America dreams later forgotten, as dreams usually are.
“A couple of years later, Project White Book discovered this incident, and my predecessors saw its incredible potential to not merely serve their own purposes, but to experiment with psycho-cultural influences. I won’t go into the details, and of course you know that the White is basically a cover-up operation concerning UFOs, underpinned by a program of disinformation—but essentially, we arranged for a book to be published concerning the story of the Hills, and had it excerpted in a wide-circulation magazine the name of which I can’t recall ...”
“Look,” said Richards.
“Yes, that’s right. Look magazine. The Interrupted Journey, by John Fuller.”
“Correct. The effect of that book took a while to dribble down to the general unconscious level of the American public, but pretty soon, other people started having these kinds of experiences. They felt they had been abducted by aliens in flying saucers. Our resources checked this extensively. There were no indications that this was actually happening. And yet, just by suggesting that it had happened and would happen again, people all over the country began to experience it as a kind of hypnogogic reality. We were witnessing a very real shift in the nature of the cultural zeitgeist-a shift that White Book had helped along! But not only that, much more significantly, people began to have entirely different attitudes toward the types of creatures that might be operating these vessels from different worlds! No longer were they at all friendly or even detached—suddenly, they were very threatening.
“White Book knew they were onto something. They’d already of course created false UFO-sightings from the very beginning, and now they had another way of spreading disinformation. “
“This is why they began to kidnap people and make them think they’d been picked up by saucers?”
“Yes, the principle reason. It was never an extensive operation. As strides in science were made, so strides were made in the sophistication of the operation.”
“And naturally, we made a giant step when we employed the good doctor here,” said Richards.
Cunningham coldly ignored him. “This is not a fascist program, Mr. Myers. We carefully select the proper individuals, most likely to ably pass on their stories, disseminate the information amongst the culture. Typhoid Mary types, if you know what I mean. Persuasive and yet maybe a little off-the-wall. We don’t want this to be a massive phenomenon. Just, suggestive ... I realize it’s an odd kind of subtlety, but so far it is working very well. This brings us to the next station of our tour. If you will follow me, please ...”
She spun about, and marched away. The two men followed her.
“Here, Mr. Myers, is some of the equipment that we use.”
The room was filled with odds and ends of paraphernalia. She opened a closet to show him the rack of alien suits, along with the extensive makeup kits utilized.
Myers walked over to a large machine which looked like a high-tech film projector. “Hypnosis device, I take it.”
“Yes.”
“And so you stage these abductions, examinations ... what have you ... here.”
“And in other Safe Stations through the country. The environments vary according to the nature and intensity of the abduction experience desired. Let me show you one of our fancier stages. This way, please.”
They walked down to a room with a lock that needed Cunningham’s ID. She slotted her card, and the door clicked open. A shush sounded; the room had been slightly pressurized. Myers noted this.
“Yes, that creates the desired effects on the patient—that sense of being in an aircraft or a spacecraft. Purely associational, of course. The only experience the average person has of that is passenger jets. We create that kind of environment, although significantly enough altered to appear alien. Come on in, gentlemen.”
They waked into a small room that had on the walls a multitude of gemlike encrustations, which seemed to be a curious coppery metallic alloy. The angles of the room were of a different geometric design than human rooms, and the ceiling, containing clusters of lens-like devices peering down onto the floor like eggsacks, was tilted at a disconcerting angle. The entire effort was one of otherness. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie designed by Bosch.
“Christ, this could be from the planet that the creature from Alien came from!”
Richards coughed and smiled knowingly at Cunningham. “Let’s just say, Ed, that White Book has had some significant input in Hollywood, financially and otherwise. A terrific source of cultural manipulation.”
“Although not, I take it, with Steven Spielberg?”
Richards immediately frowned. “No. Although we cannot prove it, we feel that Spielberg’s influences are quite different.”
Myers walked to a wall and touched it. “Yes, yes, this is quite good that you showed me this. And I ta
ke it that there’s a lab someplace. Beakers? Tubing? A bubbling cauldron, perhaps.”
“I can show you the lab if you like, although it’s just a lab, albeit quite advanced,” said Cunningham.
“Advanced. Right. Gotcha. So you haul these poor people out of their homes in the middle of the night, after you’ve selected them for their big mouths. How the hell do you do that?”
“Again, with the use of hypnotics, subliminals—but most important, we introduce a highly effective gas into their homes that places them into a highly pliable form of unconsciousness,” said Cunningham. “That was developed in the seventies by a separate branch of the CIA working on chemical weapons and nerve gases. As soon as White Book saw its potential, they began to use it.”
“And you haven’t gotten caught by local authorities? Surely you’ve slipped up from time to time.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Richards. “Sometimes it is necessary to actually deal with certain people biochemically to relieve them of their memories, but without the introduction of the alien abduction motif.”
“An awfully dangerous weapon! What do you use it for, to change people’s minds about whom they’re going to vote for?”
“A far too extensive proposition. No, we’re interested in politics only to the extent that it affects our operation. The Publishers, of course, are most definitely supra-political. Let’s just call us Editors their executive branch.”
“The Publishers. The fucking Publishers!” Myers shook his head and leaned against the special-effects wall. “You know, I’d heard rumors about them ever since I made high-grade. But I always thought that it was all just paranoid conspiracy bullshit, you know? Robert Ludlum territory!”
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 61