“You know gentlemen,” Peter Rollins said in his smooth, East Coast Brahmin tone, “I think you might agree on more things than you disagree.”
Rollins, sitting between Knight and Pike under the glaring lights of the CNN New York City Time Warner Center studio, glanced back and forth between the two men. There was something about the host’s minimal movements, his mannequin-like ramrod-straight bearing, that made Knight think of a Disneyland animatronic puppet that looked stunningly lifelike, but not quite natural enough to pass for the real thing.
Pike spoke first, the words rolling deliberately off his tongue with all the measured theatricality of a veteran stage performer. “That would happen in an unbelievably fantastic world where fallacies are fancied over facts.”
The man, in both his writings and public performances, was passionately in love with alliteration. He liked to slosh his words and phrases around his mouth, seeming to savor them like fine, aged wine. But Pike’s entire appearance was geared toward powerful visual impact. Fifty-five years old and with a rotund physique—along the lines of comfortable, well-fed middle age rather than obesity—Pike’s main trademarks were his shaved, gleaming head and his very large, ostentatious handlebar mustache. The ex-magician also favored brightly colored outfits, as he did today. His burgundy suit looked like it could have been tailored from the drapes of a Louisiana whorehouse. Underneath the jacket he was sporting a vest with a red and green Scottish tartan pattern. Knight wondered if Pike had chosen that vest in honor of the globe found in Scotland, a setup for explaining how the globe was nothing but a trick of the light at sunset.
When Rollins let out a muted, mechanical chuckle, Pike arched an eyebrow and paused before replying.
“In other words,” the phrase oozed sarcastically out of Pike, who then stopped again. He held his pause for yet another melodramatic beat before tagging on “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on,” Rollins said with a thin, plastic smile. “If some red-staters and blue-staters can get along in harmony, why can’t you find a common ground?”
Before Pike could say anything, Knight jumped in with “I don’t know, Peter. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything other than we need to look for a scientific explanation for these globes.”
Knight knew well enough that he would, like usual, have a low tolerance for Pike’s bullshit theatrics. Before the interview would even be half over, he would be itching to smash the magician’s nose in. But Knight knew better than to appear ruffled and angry. As long as Pike seemed to think his foppish obnoxiousness was amusing, Knight could actually look like the more reasonable of the two, no matter the fact that he was arguing the reality of supernatural phenomena.
Rollins looked at Pike. “Well, isn’t the professor making a good point? What’s wrong with a scientific investigation with an open mind?”
“As long as the professor leaves the door open to the possibility of the globes having been carved by dancing troops of feathered fairies flittering about on flying unicorns, I don’t think there can be any common ground because—”
“Since when has the scientific process,” Knight shot back, “ever included making up your mind about an outcome before gathering the facts and looking at data that support your preconceived notions, and ignoring everything that contradicts those preconceived notions?”
Rollins leaned toward Pike. “Isn’t that what you’re doing when you rule out the existence of something that’s out of the ordinary? Are you not being unscientific?”
Pike’s head was shaking vigorously even before Rollins finished speaking. “I’m doing something the good professor in his ivory tower might have run across once or twice. It’s called having a hypothesis based on existing data—”
“Is that what it’s called?” Knight couldn’t help interjecting and laughing.
“Since there is absolutely no preexisting data whatsoever in the history of all of science to suggest that goblins and rock-carving beasties exist now or have ever existed, I think I can be fairly sure of myself when I refuse to find common ground with Dr. Knight.”
“If we had a longer show, I would be happy to discuss an embarrassment of riches in unexplained aerial phenomena, as well as phenomena that have no known rational explanation—”
“You couldn’t do that in a ten hour show and be convincing,” Pike almost yelled.
“But these phenomena could possibly have an explanation one day, correct?” Rollins asked.
“Absolutely,” said Knight. “And not in the sense that it was all caused by ball lightning and swamp gas. But I want to make a point about these globes….”
“Sure.”
“The point is that you have these giant granite globes appearing in impossible locales. The only way they could have been placed where they were would have included an airlift by a helicopter. And there is no way a helicopter cold have been behind the placement of these stones.”
“Hog…wash!” Pike yelled at full blast now. “Absolute, unadulterated, ninety-nine proof hog—”
“You really think a helicopter was used?”
“Of course.”
“In Watchung, New Jersey?”
“Yes!”
“Have you even bothered to visit Watchung?” Knight demanded. He knew Pike’s fast-and-loose record of visiting the actual sites of paranormal events he debunked was a good weakness to attack.
Pike snorted in derision. “I didn’t visit anything.”
“Just like you never bothered to visit most of the UFO landing sites you regularly dismiss.”
“I didn’t visit Watchung—a wonderful neighborhood, I’m quite certain—because there was simply no reason—”
“And an unscientific, preconceived conclusion you didn’t bother to test.”
It was Rollins’ turn to arch an overly melodramatic eyebrow as he glanced at Pike. “You know, Mr. Pike, many of your critics would have a major problem with you refusing to even look at a place where the globe appeared.”
“There are ways of making two—two mind you, two, and not one—full-grown elephants appear in this studio right here. Not by supernatural incantations and magic spells, but illusions. Trickery, gentlemen. And if I could make those elephants appear in here, some enterprising hucksters could conjure up one of these magnificent, mind-bending globes on each side of the country for people whose malleable brains like to bend too easily.”
“Dr. Knight, some magicians have, indeed, pulled off some seemingly impossible tricks on stage. I’ve seen some incredible stuff in shows in Vegas and Atlantic City.”
“That’s not the same thing, and Mr. Astounding knows it. A magic act on a stage, in a controlled environment—”
“It doesn’t have to be on a stage.” Pike yelled, and flailed his right arm. “I can do street magic for you with those animals. I can do close-up magic. Right in your face. I’ll swallow razor blades for you. Right here in front of you. Not on a stage. I’ll put a blowtorch in my mouth. I’ll eat fire.”
“Then, by all means, tell us how you can put a twenty-ton piece of granite in someone’s backyard overnight.”
Rollins’ attention snapped to Pike. “A fair question?”
“Maybe it wasn’t put there overnight,” Pike replied, his demeanor melting from outrage into haughty, pedantic condescension. “Quite a prickly possibility, isn’t it? What the eye thinks it sees is not what it sees.”
“Come on, Mr. Astounding,” Knight shot back, “let’s cut to the chase! How would they get these stones out there? Tell us exactly how these phantom pranksters move these giant stones to all the places they show up. And now we have them in Scotland, I understand.”
Pike gave a dismissive shrug. “Just look for activity in these areas where someone was supposed to have been doing something that—”
“The chase, Mr. Pike,” Knight couldn’t help himself. “The chase.”
“Doctor, if
I may finish….”
“Just give us the facts.”
“The facts, if you care to listen, are very simple. What might have appeared to have been a forest crew in New Jersey, or a truck making deliveries in California and Scotland, was our squirrely perpetrators delivering the globes, unloading them when no one was looking, camouflaging them, then presto! as the arcane saying in my trade goes, you have a globe that appears out of thin air.”
“Let me just repeat myself. Perhaps what you need to do is go out and actually visit these places you debunk. I’d like to hear a magical explanation for how a twenty-ton globe can be camouflaged in the middle of a road. So that way you won’t need to substitute character assassinations and personal attacks for a scientific examination.”
“All right, gentlemen,” Rollins suddenly cut in. “We’ll need to hold that thought while we go to a quick break.”
“Let me just say one thing,” Pike interjected. “My message to all the hoaxers: you tell tall tales and you get the acid test! And that one can burn.”
A moment later, by the time he thought the broadcast would likely have cut to a commercial, Knight couldn’t help but smirk in Pike’s direction and say, “So how about we get some of those elephants in here before the ads are over…?
The magician, however, didn’t get a chance to respond. His attention, along with that of Rollins and Knight, was distracted by someone running toward the set. A young man wearing an earpiece, Knight noticed. A production assistant of some sort, no doubt.
“OK, we gotta go to some live coverage when we come back from the break, Peter!” the man yelled, breathless, agitated.
“Excuse me?” Rollins said, irritated sarcasm edging his voice. He was not about to stand for this sort of a disruption to the routine without a damned good explanation, the look on his face said.
But then Rollins appeared to stiffen. His hand went to the tiny earpiece in his right ear. He must have been getting instructions of some sort from the director’s booth.
“There’s more of them out there,” the production assistant blurted out, apparently concerned that the director was not yet telling Rollins the true gravity of the situation. “They’re everywhere. The globes. They’ve just found them in Russia, in Italy, in Singapore….”
Knight couldn’t help but notice his own pulse quickening now. Everything he and his team had seen over the last several days was incredible, but this was….
“Hold it!” Rollins said sharply, raising his left hand to quiet the production assistant. His right hand was still pressed against the earpiece. “Jesus,” he gasped at length, then looked from Knight to Pike and back again. “Well, gentlemen, it looks like we’re doing this interview at the right time. There are breaking stories from all over the world. They just found one in a back alley in Portugal. There’s one in Cairo. Unbelievable…one in…right here in Central Park.”
Knight couldn’t help letting his next words slip from his mouth. “Maybe we have a global conspiracy to camouflage giant granite globes all over the world.”
When he glanced at Pike, he saw the magician’s face look something like a frozen, waxy mask of tension.
6.
“GRANITE ARTIFACTS STUN THE WORLD AND LEAVE EXPERTS BEWILDRED.”
By: Jennifer B. White, Newsweek
As the appearance of mysterious globes has taken over the headlines around the world and trends faster than the latest celebrity scandal on social media, Dr. Jonathan Mercer is not a happy man.
“I don’t think that’s wise,” Mercer explains. “I realize that we’re experiencing what appears to be some kind of a global phenomenon, but let’s not just jump to the conclusion that this is the most important thing in the world. Or even that it’s as mysterious and inexplicable as many people are saying.”
The professor of astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology has often been invited to offer commentary on such paranormal topics as UFOs, ghosts, and lake monsters. But unlike many skeptics, Mercer typically sticks his well-sharpened debunking pins into such claims with grace and charming good humor.
These days, however, Mercer is up against a mystery that resists most of his pinpricks. Around the world, the appearance of enormous stone globes—each weighing precisely twenty tons—is baffling some of the most brilliant minds of our times.
“Sure, granite balls this size could be reproduced in any reasonably well-equipped stone-mason’s workshop,” argues Boston University professor of archaeology, Martha Selby, “except that does not explain the mystery. In fact [it] raises more and more unanswered questions. Just where is the mason’s workshop? And, of course, how were those globes delivered all over the world without anyone noticing? And for what conceivable purpose?”
At press time, five globes have appeared in the United States, three in Italy, three in Russia, one in Scotland, two in Egypt, one in Singapore, one in Portugal, two in Poland, two in Romania, two in Brazil, three in China, one in Switzerland, four in Denmark, six in India, two in Ethiopia, one in Bolivia, three in France, one in New Zealand, three in Australia, one in Malaysia, and one in South Africa.
For those given to attaching numerical significance to the globes, or any kind of geopolitical meaning, New York University professor of political science Herbert Tudor advises patience. “These are all the globes that have been found so far. So there is really no reason at this point to speculate why the U.S. has five globes and India six, whereas Russia only got three and South Africa only one.”
University of Chicago history professor Harry O’Brien remarked, “In truth, we still know absolutely nothing about this phenomenon, except that whoever, or whatever, is responsible wants our attention.”
For that reason, O’Brien does not believe that other globes are hidden and undiscovered in the Colombian jungle or covered in snow somewhere in the Siberian tundra. To date, all the globes have turned up in the middle of populated areas or very near populated areas.
For University of Hawaii professor of comparative religions, Thomas Kelekolio, this is the very core of the mystery and the reason to believe that the world is witnessing the work of something that will offer no easy, prosaic explanation. “The skeptics, the debunkers, the people who explain things like this away as a hoax, are very nervous right now,” Kelekolio says bluntly, “and they probably have every right to be. We are on the verge of discovering something that will shake all of science, all of our understanding of the natural world to its foundation.”
Dr. Daniel J. Knight, a professor of anthropology at Bakersfield State University, who has been at the center of the globe phenomenon since his TV production team discovered the first globe at Mount Shasta, California, agrees. “Of course this is going to be frightening to a lot of people because we are witnessing the handiwork of someone, or something that seems to be toying with us. How many thousands of [surveillance] cameras are all over New York City? It’s probably impossible to walk down any street in Manhattan without being seen by at least one camera. So how did one of these globes get placed in the middle of Central Park? Whoever is behind this has just demonstrated that they can do anything anywhere and not get caught if they don’t want to get caught. So sure, I think that’s a pretty frightening idea.”
While Knight wouldn’t speculate about who or what is responsible for placing the globes all over the world, plenty of other people are willing to give their theories. According to Don McKay—and the two million readers of his Global Conspiracy Exposed blog—there is significance in the fact that the mysterious artifacts are made of granite. For him, the culprits behind the phenomenon are the favorite whipping boys of conspiracy theorists everywhere: the Freemasons.
“The ancient secret society of the stonecutters,” writes McKay, “that has become one of the most powerful, secretive, and destructive forces ever to have plagued humankind, is now sending a signal about their global end-game. They’re here and they’r
e taking over.”
The world, according to McKay, is a heartbeat away from a fascist takeover. Others, like New Mexico’s Church of the Universal Dawn, believe that the globes are signaling the return of the Atlanteans. According to this group, the citizens of the fabled civilization of Atlantis relocated to a planet in the Orion constellation when their island home sank.
While the Internet is being flooded every hour by every conceivable theory for the origin of the globes, none of them can be proven or disproven yet. This, perhaps, is the most heartening fact for a skeptic like Mercer. He continues to insist that a rational explanation—or maybe an underhanded explanation—might still be out there.
“For over four decades some of the best minds in paleontology believed the Piltdown Man to be the genuine article, instead of the hoax it was eventually revealed to be,” Mercer points out in his reasoned manner.
Chapter 3
Invitation to San Francisco. An Altercation.
The Powell Street Incident. Tell It Like It Is!
Bruce Cheung. Conspiracy? An Invitation.
1.
Cornelia kept forgetting that she was not supposed to break the fourth wall. Her gaze skipped to Matt Cooper’s camera once again. Then she noticed his left index finger pointing back toward the notepad on the desk in front of her.
Their job had mutated into something other than the production of a speculative reality show, but Jerry kept insisting that they maintain the documentary-style coverage of everything happening to them. Since they now sat in the conference room of his Beverly Hills suite of offices, Jerry hovered over and stage-managed each of their recorded movements.
So Cornelia forced herself to shift her gaze away from Matt’s camera and look only at the phone and her notes.
“Look, Sarah,” she said, “obviously if some government conspiracy is behind all this, it wouldn’t place a globe so close to a military installation, right?”
“I know that,” Sarah Robinson’s voice came through the speaker phone. “And I think Dad does, too.”
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