by Steve Alten
“What do you mean?”
“The eyes. He stares at his eyes, sometimes for hours while he lies in bed with a hand mirror. It’s as if something significant has changed.”
“What color are his eyes?”
“Black. Just like Michael’s.” Leaving the highway, Julius heads south into the neighborhood of Vista Allegre. They pass rows of single-story homes, each dwelling no larger than a double-wide trailer, harboring families three or more generations deep, the young ones relegated to sleeping on the flat open roofs beneath a ceiling of stars, livestock inhabiting the backyard.
The Gabriel abode is located across the street from a bottling factory. A massive huangaro tree occupies the entire front lawn, with groves of saplings growing on empty parcels of land surrounding the stucco habitat.
Years earlier, a Cambridge University research group, headed by Julius and Maria Gabriel, had discovered that the huangaro tree (Prosopis pallida) was once the keystone species of the Nazca valley. Fifteen hundred years ago the indigenous Indians, in direct violation of Viracocha’s teachings, systematically deforested the region, using the trees for food and timber while clearing more land for corn and other cultivated crops. Without the nitrogen-fixing trees the soil became less stable. In AD 500, El Niño floods struck the area, washing away the crops. Weed pollen quickly took root, collapsing the ecosystem and with it an entire civilization.
Before she had succumbed to pancreatic cancer, Maria Rosen Gabriel had spearheaded an aggressive reforestation effort. The local government had donated the land and house in her memory.
Julius parks the Jeep. Laura grabs her duffel bag and follows him inside.
The interior is an open space, more library than home. Walls are precious real estate, covered in maps. Books are simply stacked in high piles on the floor. The furnishings are limited to an old torn leather La-Z-Boy chair, several oil lamps, and a large picnic table that serves as a desk. The kitchen consists of a gas stove and refrigerator, a freestanding sink, and a warped Formica countertop littered with canned goods labeled in Spanish. A small card table sits against a yellowed stucco wall, surrounded by three folding chairs. A bedroom is cordoned off by a colorful wool blanket. Wood steps, built into the far stucco wall, lead up to the roof.
Laura shakes her head. “What is this? A home for wayward archaeologists?”
“It is what it is.”
“Can’t argue with that. Where’s the loo?”
“If you mean the toilet, it’s out back.”
“Is it an outhouse, or just a shrub with a roll of toilet paper?” She looks around. “Where’s the damn back door?”
“I didn’t design the place. I just live here.”
“Marvelous.” Laura drops her hiking boots and bag on the floor, then heads outside and walks around the side of the house to the back, her bare feet burning on the hot yellow soil. Cursing, she hustles for the shade of a huangaro tree, wishing she had never left Spain.
The deflated hot air balloon occupies most of the backyard, its orange and blue envelope laid out beside the six-by-six-foot wicker basket.
And then she sees the stranger.
He is standing beyond the wood outhouse at the edge of an open flat parcel of land. Shirtless and bronze, he has muscles chiseled and oiled in sweat. His broad V-shaped back is to her as he tosses a football to her bare-chested nephew, who is running a deep route fifty yards away.
The pass hits Mick in stride, a perfect spiral.
Without thinking, Laura claps—revealing her presence.
The stranger turns, startled.
Oh, my … he is a Samson, isn’t he?
He continues to stare back at her.
“Hey!” Mick jogs over, his body lathered in sweat. Passing Sam, he punches him on the shoulder, laughing as he dodges the bigger man’s playful retaliatory roundhouse, the blow momentarily breaking the spell.
The two athletes approach.
Now it is Laura who stares, her scalp tingling. Though separated by twenty years, the stranger and her nephew could be father and son, their physiques and facial features eerily similar.
Mick leans in and kisses her on the cheek. “I can’t believe you actually came out here. You look great. I guess being single again agrees with you.”
“Yes. Wait, what did you say?”
“Your divorce?”
She breaks eye contact with the stranger. “My divorce, right. Yes, what a relief. Two years of hell, now I’m single … no ring, no ties. God, listen to me babble.” She extends her hand. “I’m Laura, Mick’s aunt. And you must be Sam.”
“Lauren?” His eyes tear up. “Lauren, my God. Lauren, it’s me … Sam!”
“Dude, she knows.”
“No, Mick … I think your friend remembers something about his identity. Do I remind you of someone, Sam? I’m Laura Salesa. Who’s Lauren?”
He says nothing, his eyes locked onto her face, his jaw hanging open as he struggles to isolate a memory.
“Okay, well, this is a bit awkward. Tell you what, while you’re gathering your thoughts, I’m going to make a mad dash over to that outhouse. Now you stay right here.”
She tiptoes over the hot ground, wrenches open the squeaky wooden door, and ducks inside, gagging at the stench. Bolting the lock she drops her shorts and squats over the porcelain bowl, quickly relieving herself.
Keep your head, Laura. Forget that he’s gorgeous. He’s lost, a mystery man clinging to a shard of memory and a woman named Lauren. Most likely his wife, probably living back in the States with their two cats and seven kids. Or maybe she’s dead? Maybe he killed her?
Stop it! He didn’t kill her. Isn’t it obvious—he loves her. Settle him down, clean yourself up, then wait until after dinner before you begin rerouting a connection to his past. Just take it slow, he’s obviously a live wire.
She fixes herself. A gorgeous live wire.
Laura exits the outhouse. The hot yellow soil again scorches her bare feet, forcing her to sprint back to the shade of the huangaro tree.
Mick laughs. “Where are your shoes?”
“Inside the house.” She removes her sunglasses, wiping sweat from the lens. “Stupid me. I took them off on the plane, not thinking—”
The stranger drops to his knees, staring at her bright blue-turquoise eyes. “Lilith?”
She glances nervously at Mick. “What did you call me?”
“Lilith. But you’re not Lilith. You’re Hunahpu but you’re not Lilith and you’re not Lauren!”
He’s losing it … it’s coming back too fast for him to process. “Sam, stay calm—”
“Who are you? Who am I? Why am I here? How did I get here?”
“Dude, chill out.”
“It’s okay, Michael, I can handle—”
“Michael … you’re Michael Gabriel. How can you be Michael Gabriel? How can he be Julius? Something’s all wrong—”
“Sam, listen to me … I want you to take long, slow breaths, nice and easy. Mick, get us a wet towel and some water. And my shoes! Slow, deep breaths, Sam—”
“Not Sam. I am not him!”
“Okay, just keep breathing. You’re not Sam, but you are someone. Who are you? Can you remember?”
“I am … Chilam Balam.”
“Good, very good. And what brings you to Nazca, Mr. Balam?”
“I was sent here … to prevent the end of humanity.”
TESTIMONIAL May 9, 2001: National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
My name is Enrique Kolbeck. [ … ] I work in Mexico City as a radar controller at the International Airport of Mexico. And I am going to give an example about these sightings that we have in Mexico for several years on this issue. It happens a lot of times in my country, unfortunately. For example, on March 4, 1992, we detected fifteen objects west side of the Toluca airport. It is very close to our international airport, at fifty miles, more or less. Then, July 28, 1994, we have almost a collision, or something that we can name in that way, with a domestic flight of Aerome
xico 129, commanded by the pilot Raimundo Cervantes Arruano, that has a crash with something about his main landing gear [ … ]. This occurred at night, 10:30, more or less. Then in the next week, the same year, in the same moment, the Aeromexico flight 904 has another almost collision that was reported by the pilot, Capitan Corso, at 11:30 in the morning, and we detect that object on radar, suddenly, just for a moment. Then the next week we have a lot of sightings reported by the pilots that gave us information about the weird traffic or something—bright lights, on different times, and we detect some of them in that week. But in September 15 of 1994, we have a detection of about five hours more or less on the radar, new equipment that we believed that the equipment was working in not a good way, because it’s not common that you have a detection for five hours of the same object and apparently without moving. Well, we concurred with the technical persons [ … ] that the radar system was working well. And it was very exciting and we surprised when at the next day, we received information about a reporter named Jaime Maussan that is studying these cases in Mexico, about a sighting from a lot of people in the Metepec City. There is another point located southeast of the Toluca airport about a sighting of the big flying saucer apparently, of fifteen meters of diameter, by a lot of people, that lit or crash or something on the ground. Well, next November 24, 1994, we have in service officially our new radar system and after that moment we have information very exactly about these sightings at the same time with the pilots and detections. [ … ] We have a lot more cases, but I don’t want to use more time on this. But it’s very important that the people in the world knows this evidence and consider that it could be very dangerous for an aeronautical situation, especially in my country. I don’t know why in my country that’s occur frequently but the point is that it happens and we consider it dangerous. And we have only, fortunately, one crash, but we don’t want to have another one. Thank you very much, and I’m sorry for my English.
—Enrique Kolbeck,
air traffic controller
Used by permission of the Disclosure Project
17
MCCARRAN AIRPORT, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
JULY 4, 1990
The United 737 airbus touches down with a heavy skid of rubber on concrete, its spoilers—small hinged plates situated along the top portion of the wings—flipping up into the air stream to slow the plane’s forward inertia.
Pierre Robert Borgia glances again across the first-class aisle at the long-legged woman in the pleated gray business skirt and see-through blouse. It had taken the fifty-three-year-old anthropologist and son of Congressman Robert Borgia a mere three minutes to catalogue the thirty-one-year-old hazel-eyed redhead as a Tony Robbins disciple with a chip on her shoulder. Leading her easily into her favorite topic (herself) he had listened politely and nodded, all the while peppering their conversation with a few of his own superlatives—that his family were power brokers in the defense sector, that he was being groomed for a senatorial race in either 1994 or 2000, only his backers insisted he settle down first, that voters preferred their candidates married with children. “I told my father I’d rather remain a bachelor than date another former fashion model whose only aspiration as an adult was to be a millionaire’s arm candy. Give me a smart, emancipated woman any day—one who’s as dominant in bed as she is in the boardroom. I mean, am I right or am I right?”
By the end of the ninety-minute flight from Los Angeles, the mid-level assistant holding down a dead-end job at a second-rate insurance company was ripe for the picking, but by the time they began their descent, Pierre found himself already losing interest. To the Cambridge graduate, the final conquest in the hotel room was never as good as the game of mental masturbation, and with a “chippy” there was always the dangerous moment afterward when she realized his only interest after sex was a shower, room service, and a brief respite to catch the baseball scores on ESPN before he fell asleep. Which is why Pierre usually preferred a pro, where the outcome was predetermined and the only game was hiding his wallet before his “date” arrived.
“So, Pierre, I was thinking, if your meeting ended early, maybe we could meet somewhere for dinner.”
“What’s early?”
“I don’t know … eightish?”
“Eight may be tough, but give me your phone number and we can catch a nightcap together back at my hotel … unless you’re tired of hearing about my terminal bachelorhood.”
“I’m sure we can find a cure.”
“Now, don’t tease me. You’re way too hot for that sort of thing.”
The plane’s arrival at the gate triggers the usual chaotic rush of passengers fighting to claim standing room in an aisle of immovable bodies. Retrieving his bag from the overhead bin, Pierre turns back around to the redhead—
—the woman’s raincoat concealing her hand at his genitals. “Call me. We’ll have some fun.” She slips the business card into his pants pocket and exits the plane.
Borgia’s eyes remain glued to the back of her skirt. By lunch, she’ll have authenticated his story; by tonight, she’ll be primped and properly motivated to please.
Pierre smiles to himself. Even a pro couldn’t outperform a woman with ambition.
Joseph H. Randolph, Sr., is wearing a cowboy hat and matching boots, neither accessory matching his charcoal-black business suit. The silver-haired Texas businessman and former CIA operative greets Borgia with a wry grin and a bear hug. “Lucky Pierre, good to see you, son. How was the flight?”
“I’ll let you know tonight.”
“Balls deep in poonta, huh? Just like your old man. Of course, I could have never taken him where I’m taking you.”
“Exactly how classified is this place, Uncle Joe?”
“Put it this way, Carter and Reagan couldn’t have gone where you’re about to go even with an act of Congress and a C-5 cargo plane loaded with subpoenas.”
“What about Bush?”
“George Walker knows because he has backdoor access through Big Oil and the CIA. Even so, believe me, he don’t want to know.”
“And you?”
“I know because I’m the White Rabbit, and that makes you Alice. So, Alice, are you ready to go through the looking glass?”
“Hell, yes. Are we driving or flying?”
“Today we’re driving, but only because it allows me time to brief you in private. In the future, you’ll fly. There’s a private terminal located on the north side of the airport, it’s owned and operated by EG&G.”
“The nuke contractors?”
“Uh-huh. Every morning they move five to six hundred ultra–high clearance suits and techs out of McCarran aboard a small fleet of unmarked Boeing 737-200s. Only thing the FAA boys in the tower know about these flights is that they all use the call sign ‘Janet’ and that they all fly north every hour on the hour.”
They follow the baggage claim signs downstairs, then head outside into the Nevada heat and an awaiting limo.
Pierre climbs in back with the billionaire. The glass partition between the two passengers and the driver remains closed.
“Uncle Joe, you said you could never bring Dad to this place. Why not?”
“Your father was a smart man and a clever politician, but he was set in his ways, closed to new ideas … new realities. He lived in a world where you were either a wolf or a sheep, and being a wolf he believed he occupied the top of the food chain. What he failed to see was that being the top predator in the zoo doesn’t change the fact that you’re still in the zoo. You saw beyond that, you and Julius Gabriel, and your dead colleague, what was her name?”
“Maria.” Mention of his former fiancée strikes a nerve. “Listen, Uncle Joe, if you’re talking about extraterrestrials, then you can drop me off on the strip.”
“No, Pierre. I’m talking about existence. I’m talking about controlling the knowledge that will one day govern how this entire planet will power our civilization over the next thousand years, and just as important, who will control that power.
As an anthropologist, you and your pals searched and found a dark truth about man’s past. What I’m about to reveal to you are secrets that have been kept from the public for more than fifty years … secrets that you and your former colleagues stumbled upon but lacked the perspective to fully comprehend. My job is to bring you up to speed so your mind can accept the truth, but I can’t do that until you pull your head out of your ass and see the world for how it truly is.”
“I’m listening.”
“Your research with Julius Gabriel focused on an epoch of alien intervention that began ten thousand years ago after the last ice age. Our work began far more recently, back in 1941 with the first crash recovery of a UFO in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Reverse engineering of this aircraft is often credited to the success of the Manhattan Project, but that was just part of an intricate disinformation campaign, something we purposely fed to the public because it could be easily discredited. The real shit didn’t hit the fan until after the first tests of the atom bomb. That’s what brought the visitors to the zoo, and that’s what led to the July 4th, 1947, event in New Mexico.
“The Roswell crash created a ripple effect that would lead to a series of top-secret research and development projects and the greatest technological and biological opportunity in the history of human kind. You have to understand, Roswell wasn’t just physical evidence of extraterrestrial existence, it was a revelation that Earth is the zoo and we’re the animals. To extricate ourselves from that subordinate reality required a massive undertaking on three different levels: First, we needed to identify the flying objects that were moving freely through our atmosphere using technologies far beyond our own. Second, we needed to reverse engineer these technologies to make them our own. Third, we needed to keep everything out of the public eye, not to mention away from the scrutiny of the Commies.
“The first three Air Force projects designated to investigate extraterrestrial sightings were Grudge, Sign, and Blue Book. Between 1948 and 1969, these three programs investigated more than twelve thousand sightings reported by military personnel, FAA air traffic controllers, and commercial pilots, as well as civilians. The programs concluded that the objects were real and described the alien vessels as elliptical and disk-shaped, capable of extreme speeds, maneuvers, and altitudes. These projects also verified that the E.T.s had the capability to shut down our nuclear missile bases and weapon systems, which they did on several occasions during flyovers.”