by George Noory
Greg asked, “What were you working on with Rohan?”
“Yes, Rohan. He arrived at my door with his story of having been labeled delusional because he experienced being abducted during a university sleep study. I spent several weeks going over his story and emotional state before I reached a conclusion that he had in fact been abducted. He wanted me to go public with my support of him and reveal how many other people had been labeled as psychotic. I have been wrestling with my conscience and my courage about going public with my diagnosis of him.”
“Rohan is dead,” Greg said.
She sighed. “Yes, I know; so little, so late on my part. Ethan has also crossed the great divide. I only met Ethan briefly. Rohan had referred him because Ethan was very curious about the onslaught of extraterrestrial activity starting in the forties. Also, Rohan thought I might be able to help the young man with his addiction. I’m afraid I was of little help to him. He saw me only once, asked me many questions about extraterrestrial sightings and didn’t come back when I asked if he wanted to consult me about his addiction. He wasn’t ready to deal with his personal demons.”
“Has Mond been here?”
“No. He’s very much aware that it would be futile because I won’t speak to him. I haven’t gone public and he’ll leave me alone as long as he thinks I will keep my mouth shut. He worked for the interagency when I was there. I knew of him but never quite understood his function except that mention of his name would bring an uneasy silence with people having coffee in the break room. A prototype man in black, pitch black with not a hint of light, working among those of us who were only in shadows.”
“Will you continue to keep your mouth shut?” Ali asked.
“I think I’m ready to go public. I worry about it, but I’m getting old and I would hate to be on my deathbed agonizing over the fact I hadn’t shown even a smidgen of the courage my mother had.”
“My show is temporarily off-hook,” Greg said, “but when I get back to it, I’d like to have you on. Assuming that there will be a show after Mond gets through with me. He’s a fascinating creature—like looking at a snake under glass in a zoo.”
“Just don’t stick your hand in the cage,” Inez said. “We can talk about how to get my message over to the public if you two manage to stay alive or not get shut away in some black-op prison.”
She smiled at the look on their faces. “But I may be able to help a little in that regard. You need friends, allies in a better position than an old woman with dry bones. The opportunity to do this is with Aaron.”
“Who’s Aaron?” Ali asked.
“Aaron isn’t a who but a what. It’s a group of people interested in making sure that the Internet and Web are kept free of control by governments out to enslave people and ideas.”
“Hackers,” Greg said, “a secret organization of them.”
“Hackers? I don’t know, I’ve never asked about their methods. You’ve heard of them?”
“No, but I suspect they’ve chosen a name in honor of a young man who was accused of hacking into MIT and killed himself when the government charged him with serious crimes.”
“I admit I don’t know anything about them except for their goal. I was contacted by them after I met with Ethan. I got a call from a woman who asked if it was all right if someone from the organization dropped by to talk. A few days later a young man about Ethan’s age came by.”
“What did he want?”
“The same as you. He asked about the UFO invasion and how the government dealt with reports of extraterrestrial encounters. Particularly as to whether we had reports of electronics such as computers or programs that were far beyond human capability.”
“Were there reports?”
“Yes, I heard about one now and again, usually someone claiming their computer had been taken over by some unknown entity. Unfortunately, in this world, where most of us are linked through our computers and smartphones, there are so many Trojans, back doors, rootkits and other malware that aliens would have to get in line behind the local invaders.”
“Was Ethan an Aaron?”
“He said they were helping him with a project. I didn’t get the impression that he was an Aaron, especially since he used his real name with me.”
“Can you arrange a meeting with these people?” Ali asked.
“It’s already been done. The phone call a few minutes ago was confirmation. An Aaron will meet you at Universal CityWalk in an hour.”
“You called them after you buzzed us in,” Greg said.
“I actually returned their call. They called earlier and asked me to let them know when you showed up.”
Greg exchanged looks with Ali. How did the hackers know they would end up at the woman’s place?
“Did they mention both of us?” he asked.
“Only you. You’re wondering why only your name. I can’t help you with that. Perhaps because you’re so well known.”
“The person meeting us—no name but Aaron?” Greg asked.
She nodded.
“How do we make contact? CityWalk’s big and usually crowded.”
“The Aaron will find you. I’m not sure what they meant but I’m to tell you to stand by the big guitar but don’t make it obvious. The Aaron knows what you look like and that you will be with Ali.”
“You don’t know if it’s a man or a woman?”
She shook her head. “I’ve spoken to both.”
Greg asked a question that had been bothering him. “I wondered how you knew both that Rohan and Ethan were dead. Was it the Aarons who told you?”
She slowly nodded. “If you want to know if that scares me, the answer is yes. But I am determined to just close my eyes and keep taking steps forward.”
49
They were back on the street, on their way to the car, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary and not look too obvious, before they spoke.
“Do you believe Kennedy was assassinated because he was going to expose a UFO cover-up?” Ali asked.
He let the question hang for a moment as he wondered if Inez had been honest about her dealings with Mond. It didn’t seem likely that Mond would back off from harassing her as easily as she indicated. But it was possible he didn’t push her because she knew so much.
“The interesting thing about the Kennedy assassination is that there are a large number of reasonable conspiracy theories about why he was killed and each of the theories has identified a perpetrator having a motive. The most bizarre thing is that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting on his own, didn’t appear to have a motive. Jack Ruby silenced Oswald so quickly that we’ll never know the truth about Oswald or Ruby. Mafia, CIA, Cubans, Russians, J. Edgar Hoover, Vietnamese are just a few of the dozens of alleged conspiracies that have identified over two hundred people as potential conspirators. A UFO cover-up fits as well as the rest of them.
“A while back, a British tabloid put out a purported letter from Kennedy to the director of the CIA demanding information about UFOs shortly before he was assassinated, but the word ‘defense’ was spelled in the British manner, with a c rather than an s, raising questions about whether a White House secretary would use it that way.”
“So the letter was a hoax?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what it was. Bad spelling by a secretary? A hoax prepared with an obvious flaw to make it appear that the notion of Kennedy being killed because he sought information about aliens was ridiculous?”
After they got into the car she said, “You know how your head is telling you that everyone else seems to know more than you? Well, that’s what mine is telling me. I just don’t know how much of it is true.”
50
CityWalk was several blocks of tightly packed cafés, night spots, shops, entertainment and dining venues for tourists to throw money at before entering the Universal Studios Hollywood tour. There were enough bright, flashing, garish lights to entertain astronauts on the International Space Station.
Greg and Ali parked as close
as they could get to the big guitar but the complex was large enough so that even what was called “front gate parking” made a quick getaway impossible.
The brassy big guitar Inez told them to hang around was in front of the Hard Rock Café. The restaurant stood like a neon-trimmed Rock of Gibraltar at an intersection where the Walk split into two lanes.
It was a good spot to hide in plain sight because of the colorful eye candy for tourists, who could take pictures of each other and buy things that would be shown to friends when they returned home and eventually end up at a yard sale.
Greg and Ali shied away from the big guitar itself because a group of Japanese tourists were using it as a backdrop for pictures. They wandered in the area, trying to fade into the crowds while looking for someone that they hoped would stand out like a sore thumb. If an interagency tech was watching on the cameras that kept the Walk under constant surveillance, she would have easily spotted Ali and Greg because their attempt to act like carefree tourists was belied by their tense body language and the fact they looked at people and not things.
There hadn’t been much discussion between Greg and Ali about the Aarons on the way over. That there was a secret organization involved in tackling the nation’s electronic spy apparatus didn’t surprise him. Snowden wasn’t the first to attempt it, and after his revelations, more people certainly would try it. The fact Ethan had dealt with them gave Greg hope that the group could provide information about what the hacker had done and maybe even offer him and Ali safe haven.
He didn’t know how long they could duck being discovered while running around in Franklin’s car and hoping someone would give them a bed for the night. It wouldn’t be long before they had to attempt to get money from an ATM for gas, food and a roof over their heads. Both were certain that a cash withdrawal would result in their capture.
He realized Inez’s narration about the history of UFO sightings wasn’t just to inform Ali, but to make him comfortable with the fact that there had been genuine encounters with visitors from the beyond. That wasn’t necessary when it came to him. He knew that the encounters that had begun in the forties and were still going on today involved too many people who were hard to discount. Hoaxes, natural phenomena of one sort or another and earthly aircraft explained most sightings, but it was a stretch to discount those that happened when weather was reasonably clear and the reports came from people who had credibility.
The phrase that came to Greg’s mind was that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But how Ethan and the NRO fit into the sightings was something he hoped the shadowy Aarons would answer.
A child, a girl about ten, ran up to them.
“Hi, Mr. Nowell.” She handed him an envelope and dashed away.
Inside were two VIP passes to the studio tour.
“Close to eight hundred dollars for two,” Greg said, showing Ali the passes. “I treated important guests with VIP passes. The Aarons must have somebody with money behind them.”
“What are we supposed to do with them?” she asked.
“Do what comes natural: take the tour. Let’s find the VIP entrance.”
In the VIP section they were directed to a trolley driven by a woman and took a seat in the back row. They were the only passengers and the trolley didn’t move. Aaron apparently hadn’t arrived. Greg wondered if Aaron, he or she, was watching to see if the coast was clear.
“Interesting,” Greg told Ali. “If we are being watched, it won’t be easy for Mond’s people to commandeer a trolley and chase after us. They’d look like the Keystone Kops.”
“I wonder where we’re going. Getting the whole tour?”
The answer to that question climbed aboard and took a seat in front of them.
“Welcome aboard. I’m Aaron.”
Aaron was big, a couple inches over six feet, with a large head and broad features; thin, rimless glasses straddled a wide nose. He carried a lot of body weight, most of it soft, probably from too many years spent hunched in front of a computer. His food choices didn’t appear to help, either—he had a sausage dog overflowing with mustard and beans in one hand and a giant soda in the other.
As the trolley got started Greg said, “VIP, nice touch. I hope you didn’t have to go out of pocket for the tickets.”
“Not a problem. We have their computers trained to ask how high when we tell them to jump. Unfortunately, the only thing we will be using the trolley for is a quick ride. It would take too much time to hit the attractions.” He grinned. “Besides, I think you have your own house of horrors to deal with.”
Greg took an instant dislike to the guy. He reminded him of another Murad, a smirker who thought he was superior. He was superior, of course, when it came to understanding computer programs but that was the limit of it. From the looks of him, Greg decided a more fundamental problem for the arrogant jerk was to know when to come in out of the rain.
“You asked for this meeting,” Greg said. “What do you want?”
The trolley veered off the path and went behind a building, where it stopped in a dark area off the tour path.
“What did Inez Kaufman tell you about us?” Aaron asked.
“Not much,” Greg said.
“We’re techs who track down and expose the outright spying and invasions of privacy that the computer age has permitted governments and corporations to engage in against the common person. You know what’s happened to the country, to the whole world. People used to worry that J. Edgar Hoover had them under surveillance or their social security number was like 666, the number of the Beast that would arise to control their lives.
“Today’s surveillance is all-seeing. What’s crazy is that Snowden sat in Hawaii with his computer and showed how easy it is to access all that information, and there are thousands of Snowdens out there who have access to our information. Every phone call we make, e-mail we send, everything we buy from carrots to beer, our financial deals, all are tracked electronically. Government surveillance by electronics has to be curtailed and the only way it’s going to happen is if people like us Aarons who have the tech knowledge fight back.”
“Sounds like a full-time job for an army of computer experts.”
“It is, but there aren’t that many of us because most people are too scared of the consequences of being caught. We operate undercover and keep our identities secret as much as possible, even from each other, so that if one of us is busted, he or she won’t be able to name all the others.”
Not knowing the names of other conspirators was a standard tactic of secret cells of dissenters dating back to the days when interrogation automatically started with a torturer and a bone-breaking rack.
Greg said, “What you do can’t be that illegal. Unless you’re hacking into secret sites to check them out. Are you?”
Aaron shrugged with a little grin that boasted that he was indeed hacking. He took a bite of his sausage dog, then talked while chewing with his mouth open, letting some bean juice dribble down the corner of his mouth.
“We need anonymity to keep down reprisals. Some of us work for the very business or governmental entities we expose. We’re all called Aarons, but we have a second handle so we can tell each other apart. I am Aaron one-one-one-oh-one.”
Ones and zeroes were computer-speak. It made the guy sound like an android. A little over the top to someone like Greg, whose heart didn’t beat to the same rhythm of positive and negative binary bits, but maybe 11101 and the other geeks really were flesh-covered motherboards. It was an era of game playing in which individuals and vast military complexes jockeyed to decide the fate of nations. From the sound of it, the Aarons were into game playing, too.
Greg didn’t like the way the guy ate, talked and failed to hide his contempt for mere mortals who didn’t care what 11101 spelled. The mission the man described was admirable—the government needed oversight by citizens to keep it in line with its security needs and the Constitution. Saving the world from invasions of privacy, however, was more likely an ego tri
p than an idealistic venture for this Aaron. Even his sausage dog and giant soda annoyed Greg. Worse than the man’s food intake, Greg had decided that the guy was not going to be any real help. But he needed to learn as much as he could about Ethan before everything went to hell with 11101.
“Was Ethan Shaw an Aaron?” Greg asked.
“Shaw contacted a programmer who worked at the NSA, asking for information. The person is one of us.”
“What did Ethan want?”
“Access to a quantum computer system the NSA had developed to break computer encryptions. He wanted to crack an NRO program that was locked tighter than anything he’d seen before. And he needed to do it on a zero-day basis.”
“Which is?”
“He had to crack it on the first try by finding a vulnerability no one else had ever attempted because he would only have one chance. Once they became aware of an attempt to enter by an intruder, the file would be moved and buried somewhere else.”
It was all going too easy. He was asking questions and the man was answering. There had to be a catch.
“What was he looking for at the NRO?” Greg asked.
“He had a theory that the visitors you discussed with Inez Kaufman can hide from radar because of their stealth designs, because even we unwashed earthlings can do that. And when conditions are right for people to get an actual glimpse of them, the sightings can be explained away by the weather phenomena or be ridiculed. But there’s one thing that can’t be explained.”
“Pictures,” Greg said, “hard evidence. A picture would be worth a thousand eyewitnesses.”
“Exactly.”
“‘Vigilance from above,’ ‘nothing is beyond our reach,’” Ali said. “Not even flying saucers would be invisible to cameras pointing down from satellites.”
Aaron 11101 said, “A ring of satellites whipping around the world, filming twenty-four/seven, has to be the worst scenario for the visitors. We expected Ethan to find those pictures in the program he cracked.”