The find soon grasped Fogler’s attention and he eventually threw his tool down and rushed over.
Fogler grasped at it furiously, making him wonder what he was doing! He looked really angry at something and he was sure he now thought it was just a perfect brick, as it seemed too heavy to be hollow!
When he uncovered all the muck from it he saw his point and that it looked like it had been put there by someone else, and Fogler washed it with some water he had!
To their surprise it was a corroded metal box, and had not been part of the wall. Cameron was sure it had been on the ground and at one point water had flooded the well and it and the muck had become embedded on the wall.
He recalled the well wall when he had first been there and that the muck had also been on the other sides of the wall and that it had been cleaned away on the other walls by Simpson.
Fogler started banging the side of the box against a boulder on the ground and he found their was a hollow sound after all and they both realized it was really something, and Fogler shouted up to the others and gave them a description of what they had found and they started climbing down the rope to see it, and while they waited for their arrival they checked it and tried opening it, and Cameron found a keyhole and proved the metal box was locked.
Clouds of powdered dirt and stones came crashing down and also swirled about through the well in the torch beams as the two soldiers raced down on the rope, and Cameron held the ropes and allowed them to move down better and wondered if they had made a mistake in giving them the impression that it definitely was something, wondering what the outcome of it all would be, and he considered seeing a specialist on memory loss and its causes.
Cameron watched them come down and land on the ground and he was amazed that Fogler was already trying to smash open the metal box with different objects, and they all examined it and him at work, and when he stopped and allowed them to see it properly Simpson picked up a hammer and chisel and smashed the top off the box with one blow, and they stood with their mouths open as it opened to reveal muck and stones, and Simpson put a newspaper over the ground and emptied the box and they rummaged through it and found nothing but dried muck and pieces of smashed glass.
Chapter 13
The NASA Investigation
Early the next morning they were taken to where the crash site was, to investigate what was there for the army, where they met officials and scientists from NASA and the US military, and they were to help answer their unanswered questions.
They were carrying out examinations on what they could find, and removing samples of everything, and had clearly been there some time, as their equipment was all over the site and their large tents surrounded the area.
What astounded Cameron was that they had clearly found things and a major find and their activity was immense, and they seemed disappointed that it was located there!
What the hell could it be? Was it a highly confidential airplane, weapon, or rocket, and why were they so interested in getting so much information about it. They clearly were not going to let anything go!
The faces on the other soldiers with Cameron were considerable and surprising and he knew something was happening!
Malone could not believe the amount of attention there and made many unsuccessful attempts trying to investigate things and question them.
It was incredible! It was like being beside something of immense size that was hidden behind something! He could almost feel the gravity off it! Like an immense mountain hidden away behind trees in a wood he could not get what was there and just got scraps of information. Yet he knew they would eventually let something go and that they only had to wait. Malone was getting desperate for answers and was clearly running through ideas to get them, and he could sense it.
The heat from what had crashed there had been immense and had more of an effect on them than he had realized! It seemed to go far further than any of them had imagined! Things were far different than damage from normal energy sources and they all looked closely in detail for why.
“What’s going on!” he finally asked an aged scientist, at the edge of the action, and he eyed Cameron up, and studied his face with some astonishment and amusement for some seconds.
“Well! For starters there was originally a massive energy surge detected here from a satellite? They are still investigating all the information!”
“What interest has NASA in it?”
He listened to Cameron’s voice with some surprise and he considered what they had realized.
“A piece of metal was recently discovered here too, and it was analyzed and is thought to be part of a rocket!”
“One of your military rockets crashed here?”
“Wrong! Not ours! They still haven’t detected where it came from! We were brought in to investigate the incident! I’m not fully sure what we’re investigating now!”
“Who else could have such a rocket?” Cameron asked, confused, considering it. “Could it have been a spy rocket?”
“A spy rocket!” he gasped back. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t ours! They did a search and investigation of other countries and nobody claimed it!”
“So it’s a new form of rocket?”
The scientists laughed at him, with a peculiar expression.
Cameron went over to where Malone was questioning a leading scientist, where he was sure he was getting some proper information.
Cameron was sure it had to be one of their rockets, and an experimental rocket or projectile. Yet if it was theirs why were they discovering things that they never knew existed? Yet it could have been a more secretive project that they had not known about, or it belonged to Russia!
“But we do not fully know what it was!” the scientist moaned to Malone, answering something he has asked earlier.
“So why such an interest in it?” Malone asked.
“Interest in it?” he gasped. “Haven’t you heard, that they shot it down ... A powerful military laser shot down the undefined object! They screwed up on where its remains went, and they did not want the story to get out ... It is still confidential! If it had turned out to have belonged to a major country there would have been problems!”
“So you shot down an undefined object in space, with some form of weapon system, and it came crashing down here!”
The scientist stared up through a hole in the above trees, where it had to have come through, and at the above sky.
“So who did it belong to?” Cameron moaned, trying to get some answers to what they were talking about. “You’ve come up with all the abnormalities of the find here and none of it matches another country’s rocket or spacecraft ...!”
Malone looked at Cameron annoyed, but with pleasure when he saw that the scientist reacted as he wanted.
“It’s an unidentified flying object!” he replied firmly.
“Of what origins?” Cameron asked swiftly, before anyone else said anything, and the scientist looked closely at Cameron’s face with some surprise.
“Of alien origins!” he replied, and his face went blank, as he stood controlling his emotions.
Malone stood gasping, with his mouth wide open, finally realizing what he was missing!
“You’ve detected and shot down an alien encounter?”
“We don’t actually fully know its origins in the universe! It appeared, and our weapon systems detected it and destroyed it!”
“Appeared from where?”
“We don’t know! It seemed to emerge in space, accelerating out at an incredible velocity ... For the moment it’ll be classed as an undefined space vehicle!”
Cameron and Malone realized something simultaneously and that if it was of alien origins that they might have declared war on another world, with a far more advanced species!
Chapter 14
The Bar
People kept buying Cameron drinks in the bar and he could barely even stand, and he was amazed the three soldiers had talked locals into it and he thought he would never m
ake it back to the camp.
The newspapers one of the soldiers brought in were astonishing and he did not know what to think of the crash, and if he believed it were aliens that were behind it! He was sure that they were covering up what had happened! Why had they told him anyhow? They all seemed to doubt what had happened in different degrees!
He carefully read the accounts in two newspapers and was surprised that they claimed that they had the definite story and that a giant spy satellite had come crashing down into the wood, and might have been shot down by one of their advanced fighter planes by accident.
After some thought he thought they had shot down something thinking it belonged to someone such as Russia, but he no longer thought it was of alien origins and was some form of advanced technology that was part of some confidential project.
While Cameron finally got up to go to the bar one of his feet seemed to go astray and caught the side of a wall and he flew forward and through the air and landed on his arms, and he saw that he had embarrassingly did it in front of a group of woman at a table and he launched into doing a perfect somersault across the floor, to cover it up being stupid, even though he already looked stupid by his standards, and, to his surprise, they clapped at it and he wondered why he could do a somersault as he had no knowledge of ever doing so, which lead him back to wondering what all the missing information in his head was!
Cameron suddenly had an idea and wondered if there was anyone in the bar that knew him and he could question! He was desperate to investigate ways of getting his true identity!
He wandered around and found a pensioner slumped at the end of the bar with a whisky and realized that he had seen him there on many occasions and was clearly a local, and had been visiting there for some time, and he sat near to him, avoiding going to near him as he did not want to put him off.
After a few minutes he started to realize that he was drunk and after making attempts to talk to him and not even getting a reply he realized he was far drunker than he had realized and he was not even able to communicate.
It annoyed him more than anything and he realized that it could be the only opportunity he might ever have to question someone there, as they would surely move the army camp away in the near future, and he would be put faraway and too far to visit the place.
He had to do something! He had to find something that would get him what he wanted! He needed to!
It surprised him that at the same time as him looking for something the pensioner was collapsing in a heap over the bar and even started falling over and off his stool, and the barman rushed around and stopped him and propped him back in his seat, and Cameron decided to take action and help him further and he immediately started helping the barman shift him against the bar so he would not fall.
“I wouldn’t worry about him so much!” the barman announced, seeing Cameron’s worried face. “He’s always in here, and gets like this most of the time!”
Cameron nodded, looking more happier that he was a local that did hang about the bar and that he surely had seen him with the three soldiers drinking there, and he started thinking of ways to question him.
Who the hell was he? Why would none of these blasted soldiers give him anything on his identity! No matter what he did they refused to say anything and it was driving him crazy!
So when the pensioner started slipping off his stool again, and the barman left, he moved up to him and started telling that man how drunk he was and that he should take him home and he decided to take him out the door to a taxi, which he had seen parked outside!
Yet after trying to get the man up and to the door, with him collapsing all over the place and over the floor, he got annoyed and started wrestling with him and lifting him up and he started trying to stop him and he started pulling him across the floor by the legs, but he awoke more and started clutching part of the bar to stop him, and he grew more annoyed with the pensioner and his behavior and immediately broke his grip on the bar and pulled him away from it.
He gripped his legs and dragged him across the floor, while looking about making sure that nobody interrupted him, but the man kept getting a grip of places and objects and he furiously tugged him away, forgetting that he was to get him to give him information on his identity, with nothing else in his drunk mind except getting him to the taxi.
For quarter of an hour he dragged and pulled at him, from when started getting him to the door, and once he was finally outside he thought his mission would be completed but he continued grabbing things like drainpipes stopping him, and it had clearly rained and he ended pulling him through puddles and mud, and he pulled a drain at the side of the road up, and he finally got him to the taxi where he explained to the driver that he was a relative and had to get him home in his drunken state, while the man shouted and swore, and they got him in the back of the taxi and locked the door, and Cameron rushed into the front seat with the driver.
Cameron realized that he never knew the man and he never had his address and that he had wasted his time, and he wondered why he had not asked the barman as he surely was a local man.
To his surprise the taxi raced away without the driver asking for his address and he sat for along time waiting for the outcome.
To his surprise the taxi took him straight to his house and Cameron paid him more for his help and he drove away, leaving Cameron considering what to do.
The problem was still there and the man refused to budge or talk to him when he questioned him and he kept showing him his face features so he would recognize him, and the pensioner sat slumped on the ground staring up at him as though he thought he was crazy, and no matter what he said he never replied.
Deep down he was starting to realize the truth and he never knew him and that the plan was a disaster and he would not be able to do anything again.
He grew annoyed with him and dragged him along the pavement by the legs, broke his grip on a lamppost, and pulled him up his pathway kicking and screaming, with him pulling up chunks of concrete from the pathway as he yanked him in jerks along it and dumped him in a heap on his doorstep, and rolled the pensioner around in a ball until his face was visible to show to his daughter, who came over to the door.
“Thanks very much!” she answered, when he told her of the incredible deed he had done her.
Yet as he turned to walk away, she moaned back, “But what happened to his wheelchair?”
He immediately ignored her and rushed away, and rain came blasting down, and as they vanished behind him he watched the pensioner waving his fist at him, and he wondered over and over why he had not used the taxi to get back, instead of having to walk through pouring rain, soaked through, tired, and he realized that the taxi driver had actually known him!
Chapter 15
The Dream
During the night Cameron’s dreams went into overdrive and it was beyond belief that he could dream such things and began as a fight for survival with his body constantly altering to stop it being destroyed by a colossal infernal!
He seemed to escape by darting out of it into a dark forest.
The dark wood was unrecognizable even though he did not know why, as it looked normally, but he enjoyed it and his body seemed to reform to it, and he considered what could have occurred and what was happening, and what his mind was generating for him.
It was strange and it seemed to adapt to the surrounding environment it had set itself in and he realized he was now some form of creature lurking in the long shadows of an unknown wood, and he realized he had to be a werewolf and that he had been forming into it and he treated it like his body’s hideous reaction and revenge on him for his treatment of it and his hangover, and he watched shadows of his formation like a monster demon wolf creeping about and he contemplated the vast dangers to his survival for no reason, and the contemplation of how he could survive without the technology that he had, and he wondered if it was his body’s way of informing him of something!
He realized his body had gone crazy and he co
nsidered opening his eyes and waking but he was so tired he could not even be bothered doing that, and realized that he would have to have more rest and it was perhaps what his body wanted him to know.
He had sensations of being trapped out on a strange celestial fantasy wood with unknown forms and realized as a werewolf creature he had to fight to survive and he fought to escape from the vicinity.
While he shifted monster shadow shapes of him shifted strangely through the wood and he watched a small black cat shift near him, and he examined it, and wondered if he was going to eat the thing and his body decided to alter his appearance to be more like it and his colossal monster form altered to it.
His strange giant cat shadows shifted in the moonlight, probing into the dark, and he shifted on like a cat and studied everything in his surroundings, expecting the worst hideous encounters to be lurking there.
While he propelled himself on he adapted and formed more powerful legs, razor-sharp claws, and creature fangs, and occasionally thick tentacles formed and expanded from his neck and slithered around, and while shifting his head tendrils formed from his ears and shuddered frantically testing the air for signs of dangers and life forms.
His monstrous cat shapes silhouetted everywhere as he made incredible leaps through trees, further than any other creature, and he sensed distant humans within the wood and realized that the cat formation he had taken took its energy from the consumption of small animals and he decided to wake himself!
Chapter 16
The Complaint
Cameron was tiredly resting on his bed, dreamily falling asleep again, wondering if he could have a similar dream as the night before and examine what happened and wondered if he could alter it to his original self and he might recall his memories of himself.
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