by Peter Idone
“Is there a point to all this?” Natalie asked. She seemed a little fed up with Glass’s pontificating.
“Of course. Natalie has heard my rant often enough and grows weary. Allow me to enlighten…what this darknet file did for the very first time was name names of those directly in charge of the Pine Haven project. Gerald Siebert, Marshall Plante, and Eric Havermeyer. Siebert was an experimental physicist that came out of MIT and had worked with the USAF Research Directorate shortly after getting his doctorate. He was sucked into the black hole of military defense research for his entire career. He worked out of Kirtland mostly, with stints at Area Fifty-one and Lawrence Livermore. Plante’s background was a little sketchier. Psychiatry, parapsychology, psychotronic engineering, and cognitive science. He went to Yale, Stanford, MIT, where he must have known Siebert. Next to nothing is known about these men, but I plan to do a complete and thorough research on them once we’re through. Now, after Nine-Eleven, when the psychic spying program was refitted and amped up, Plante was asked to get on board. He had worked for a private company that provided remote viewing for corporate clients, police departments, and private security agencies. The work centered mostly on locating missing spouses, kidnap victims, the whereabouts of serial killers, Mideast terrorists, and things of that nature. Havermeyer was a civilian specialist in Information Technology, tops in his field and worked mostly as a consultant for a lot of big firms. Not much of a mystery there, although a lot of background info has been expunged since the accident due to his association with Siebert and Plante and a number of military contractors. He was put in charge of computer interfacing and integration on the project. Although not terribly detailed, the darknet file stated that the Pine Haven project was the continuation of years of research that had originally discovered an exogenous signal from an unknown source that is being received in a certain portion of the human brain. There are theories as to who is sending this signal, from where it originates, and how broad an influence it has on the individual and the culture at large. One thing that has been confirmed is that the signal isn’t organic to anything on this earth, and it isn’t local. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Some folks are more influenced than others; that is to say, the reception of the signal is more highly attuned in some brains than in others. Two distinct groups descended on Pine Haven. First, the remote viewers, the very best in the field, with a very pronounced psychic capability, along with their handlers or controllers if you will. Some of these remote viewers had come into contact with an unknown, alien, and for some quite possibly demonic intelligence which proceeded to combat any psychic probing. They were literally stopped in their tracks when focusing on particular targets— the coordinates of which were on this planet and off-world.”
“What do you mean off-world?” Logan asked. “Like other planets?”
“I do. The moon was mentioned, as was Mars; Io, the moon of Jupiter; and as far away as Pluto. These remote viewers had located a presence, activities, of an alien intelligence that is so sophisticated and highly tuned that it could detect the psychic presence of the human remote viewer. Who they were and what they were trying to achieve. The same occurred on our own planet, as well.”
“Did the darknet file explain where?”
“Places in the southwest United States were mentioned. Asia, Siberia, and regions in South America. There apparently was an alien satrap in the metropolitan New York area.”
“This stuff is out there, Glass. I don’t know if I necessarily believe it. Maybe the Air Force and FBI went about shutting down the darknet file as a ruse to give it more credibility. You know, like a disinformation campaign.”
“An astute observation on your part, Logan, but no. It was too extensive an operation for that. A lot of personnel were involved—man-hours, resources. There isn’t that kind of money lying around to waste on a counter-intelligence operation of that magnitude. Besides, I heard vague hints of this story circulating among the intelligence community, through contacts I had at the time, well before the Pine Haven file ever showed up on the darknet.”
“So the darknet file is saying, basically, that the human race is being infiltrated by some extraterrestrial expeditionary force that has established a bridgehead in our solar system. That sounds totally fucked.”
“More than a bridgehead, I’m afraid. You know, for the longest time I have wavered between two opposing hypotheses. The extraterrestrial or the interdimensional hypothesis. Which one could I wrap my head around? The concept that interstellar beings were visiting our earth for purposes as yet unknown, or entities from another dimension, a parallel universe, that have existed alongside us since the beginning of time and have taken unique guises for each and every culture, shaping civilization, perhaps human history itself. Maybe these ‘aliens’ aren’t from a particular place but are everywhere, and yet they originate from nowhere in particular. This particular idea, concept, call it what you will, has been stifled, dampened by the extraterrestrial school of thought. They patiently await contact with these marvelous star beings from some faraway, highly evolved, altruistic super-civilization, when in fact they just might be some devious, or worse, malevolent intelligence with an agenda we can hardly imagine, and they exist at arm’s length, but only at their whim do they present themselves on the same plane of consciousness as us. Which brings me to the second group of the project: abductees. They alone had repeated contact with these entities of a most extreme nature.”
“Is the signal transmitted to the abductees more intense?” Logan asked.
“I’m not sure if the darknet file intimated that detail, but I would imagine the signal’s influence would be more pronounced in an abductee. I think that is one aspect the project was attempting to discover. Marshall Plante oversaw the abductees, was project manager of that phase. Siebert and the engineers employed the technology to both shield and augment the abilities of the psychics and remote viewers. How the two groups interfaced is still unclear.”
“What about some of the stuff on the mainstream Internet relating to the creation of some portal? There were some pretty strange ideas mentioned about Aleister Crowley and the occult—an entity called Lam, which is a prototype of the ‘grey’ aliens. Is there any truth to that?”
“Some type of field was being generated in an attempt to establish a link as to where or how these entities managed to penetrate our space and time. What type of technology used has yet to be ascertained. As far as Crowley was concerned and the Amalantrah Workings of nineteen-nineteen and the Jack Parsons shenanigans back in forty-seven, they had been taken into account by the project team. It was one of several details to investigate, as were the rituals and visions of Lapland and Siberian shamans. They were thinking out of the box. All facets of the phenomena were taken into account. Nothing was excluded. Neither Siebert nor Plante were devotees of the Temple Order, although they interviewed those who were and they possessed some familiarity with Crowley’s writings…which brings me to the final and, for our purposes, the most important aspect of this briefing. What I’m about to explain hasn’t been reported on the mainstream or darknet. It concerns a woman who I will refer to only as Viv. I don’t know what my research assistant, Ms. Schneider, has told you, but I’ve been doing some investigating of my own over these past difficult weeks which hasn’t involved her. It was delicate stuff and there was no real need to know.”
Natalie pulled a face that was a combination of surprise and loathing. “You never left me out of the loop before, so why now, Glass? When did you communicate with this Viv person?”
“You’d be surprised at some of the loops I have left you out of,” Glass said, adding some obscure hand gesture that signified nothing comprehensible. “Viv was brought in by Eric Havermeyer, the IT project lead. They were friends and had worked together before on projects outside of the military. Viv doesn’t want her whereabouts or present employment broadcast. Not that she is in hiding or anything as melodramatic as that. She had been questioned by Air Force OSI around the
same time as me. Grilled very thoroughly, by her account, but could offer the OSI agents very little. She had a part-time contract, and once her work for Havermeyer was completed, she was let go just as the project got off the ground. In retrospect I think Viv feels rather fortunate. Besides several Air Force security personnel, she’s one of the survivors of Pine Haven. I’ll let Viv speak for herself. I submitted some questions, and she was kind enough to record some answers and anecdotes.”
Glass produced a small plastic liner, removed a disc, and placed it in the tray of a thin laptop that lay on the drafting table. Logan and Natalie, having grown weary of standing for so long, pulled up a couple of matching upholstered chairs and sat down.
A woman’s voice emanated from the computer’s diminutive speaker: “My main assignment was to create a duplicate computer monitoring network which would provide backup to the lab computers involved in the primary aspects of research. There was double, triple redundancy. The backup station I was responsible for had been established outside of the main building where the servers and backup computers were set up as part of the campus area network. This third tier was housed at the gatekeeper’s or groundsman’s cottage. We referred to it as the ‘pump house.’ When I got there, all the power lines, cables, and fiber optics had already been fed into the building. The air conditioners to keep all the servers cool had already been installed. Security was unbelievable. Nothing in my professional experience prepared me for it. Then again I had never worked in this type of military atmosphere before. Even Eric said he found it unbearable at times. If you were discovered outside of your designated work area, there would be serious hell to pay. Detainment, interrogation, even for minor infractions. In a way I worked off-site, at the pump house. The only time I went to the main building was to take lunch and dinner at the mess at a set time with the IT crew. For the short time I was there, I slept at the pump house in a room upstairs with another gal, a lab tech. We never spoke about our work, as I’m sure the rooms were bugged. All social interactions were kept at a minimum.
“One interesting detail of my job, almost an afterthought, was to funnel data from several computers in the lab to a computer at the pump house. It was an old, clunky, industrial-grade laptop running on an equally old Windows XP program. This laptop was jokingly referred to as ‘Iron Mountain.’ This was Siebert’s terminology and his computer. He did this for years, hauling around this old rugged spec Dell with a couple of external hard drives attached when working on research projects, and had me tuck it away at the pump house. Siebert liked to keep a record of some of the more nuanced aspects of his works in progress and used Iron Mountain explicitly for this purpose. He could then review the data at his leisure, search for anomalies, gain some kind of insights into the work. It was something of a chore to interface ‘IM’ with the right computers in the lab. It was no easy task. Like I said, this was Siebert’s thing, and aside from Eric and me, I don’t think anyone knew about the computer. Maybe a few of the staff, I’m not really sure.
“Toward the end, a diagnostic had to be run on one of the computers right inside the lab in order to tie it in with the IM platform back at the pump house. I tried to do it remotely, but some glitch would get in the way. They were almost a hundred percent up and running at the lab—a matter of days, hours before all the machines went online. Eric couldn’t do it because he, like a lot of the personnel, was out with the flu. I couldn’t describe what I was looking for at the lab computer, but I would know intuitively once I sat in front of it. Five or ten minutes were all I needed, and the problem would be solved. Siebert was totally affable about letting me come down to the lab and do what was needed. After all, I was bringing his darling Iron Mountain on line. His little quirk, his fetish. I was escorted down to the basement laboratory in the main building by two Air Force policemen. Armed guards, biometric scanners everywhere, security locks. The space was enormous. Someone had mentioned that back when the owner of the estate lived there, the basement supported a large functioning bakery, laundry, and a pantry annex that was the size of a small warehouse.
“I was taken to a prefab ten-by-twelve room built especially for the project. A large window with thick glass looked onto the lab area. The computer, one of many, crowded in the room along with a console which controlled the machinery set up on the lab floor. It was so enormous, that space. Existing walls must have been removed before the project began. On a far wall was a large control panel with bundles of cables and wiring that snaked down the wall and across the flooring, all carefully and neatly fastened down. You could tell a tremendous amount of voltage was entering that room. There were more computer stations set up in the lab space a good distance away from another piece of machinery. I don’t know what it was or for what purpose it was to be used for. It had the appearance of an oval framework built on a dais or platform. It was approximately four or five feet across at its widest point and over six feet high. Numerous sensors and wiring had been woven all around the outside edge of the frame. Metallic boxes, at any rate I’m only assuming they were sensors. It was a very odd-looking piece of technology.
“Another thing I remember seeing, actually I only caught a glimpse, and I think it was very important: beyond the oval-shaped framework, there was a long, opaque screen, more like portable sections of screening. Technicians would walk in and out of the narrow opening. The cables continued along the floor past this screen and were laid out very symmetrically. Some type of object was being kept hidden. Only techs and engineers had access. From the little I saw, every time the curtain parted, the object seemed to be metallic, like the color of lead or pewter, bright but not highly reflective. There were thin seams on the surface as if it was constructed of tiles or blocks. It struck me as ziggurat-shaped, with an opening or chamber in the center. I’m not really sure. Was I imagining this, with the little I saw, every time the curtain parted? I really don’t know, but it’s the best and only impression I have.”
After several silent moments passed, Logan asked, “Does the technology described by this Viv person give any indication of what the Pine Haven project entailed?”
“With so little hard data,” Glass cogitated and then said, “that ziggurat-shaped object had a specific purpose utilizing psychotronic mind-machine interfacing. I’m guessing that it was an amplification device augmenting the projections of the human brain, perhaps even telepathy. I also believe some kind of magnetic or energy field was in play, but how it all connected is anyone’s guess.”
Glass removed the disc from the laptop and slipped it back into its slender case. He shuffled some papers on the drawing board, found a particular map, and spread it out. He took a clear overlay with a number of lines and markings drawn on it and laid it over the map. He pointed to a small black rectangle on the overlay. Other markings indicated the location of the mansion on the estate. “This is the pump house. As you can see judging by the map legend, it lies approximately half a kilometer from the main house. It’s right on the road that cuts through the back end of the property and continues west and ends at some point near or directly into the parking lot area. You have a certain amount of tree line, good cover, up to this point. Then the ground opens. Meadows, separated by copses of trees. This is your objective. Make entry and see if the old computer is there, perhaps the external hard drives, and then get out.”
“This is all new to me,” Natalie said, irritated, “and there’s no indication what that building is used for now. It could have Tacticals living there, some kind of communications center.”
“You’re right, it could be. If it’s not viable, if you can’t gain entry, then forget it. Make use of your time documenting the immediate surroundings, possible anomalies.”
“Creech has never mentioned the pump house,” Natalie said as an afterthought. “It just might be possible that the building has been abandoned and they haven’t figured out a use for it.”
“Ask Creech when you see him again—indirectly, of course.”
“I know how
to get information out of people, Glass. I can be subtle, so don’t you worry about it. I won’t tip our hand.”
“I have the utmost faith in you. Have you any questions, Logan?”
“I’m still trying to process everything I’ve heard so far. Those machines Viv talked about, have you any ideas as to what they might have been?”
“Still obsessing on that detail? I’ve a theory or two. The metallic ziggurat chamber, if that was indeed what Viv saw, could have been some type of psychic augmentation device as I just mentioned. Probably one of several multifold purposes. The oval framework is another matter. It might have generated a field, perhaps even created a portal or opening. With the sort of voltage entering that building, a small substation built solely for that purpose, anything is possible. That kind of electrical energy is Tesla-sized in scope. An engineer or a physicist would have to listen to Viv’s account and possibly make some sense of it. If we have the hard drive off the Iron Mountain computer, then the information analyzed in the right hands, we’ll be able to form a fairly accurate guess. We will have to see what we get first before I determine the right individual to contact about it. That may take some time. What’s the matter, Logan? You look perturbed.”
“I was thinking about something I had read. Actually it’s a known fact. On the night of the accident, there was an EMP burst that ruined electrical systems in a wide radius. Maybe the researchers knew beforehand that some danger was possible and a backup system was placed some distance away. It would have ruined the equipment in the pump house, don’t you think?”
“It’s safe to assume it had, but Iron Mountain was kept in the basement where the power and communication trunk line entered the building. Intercommunication on campus was all hard-wired. Land lines. The switching system, relays, converged at the pump house. Once again another redundant system. There was a control room in the main house that served the same purpose. Being below surface may have provided protection to the computer when the electromagnetic pulse projected from the initial blast.”