by Bryan O
While the Chinese military lacked the ability to transcend the seas, they had over a billion minds contributing to catch the United States in other technological areas that could help bolster China’s position in the superpower arena. Psychological weaponry was one category the Chinese strived for years to perfect, and had achieved greater success than most realized.
After being captured and questioned in the Nevada desert back in 1994, Damien Owens had his agents return Jasmine home to China, minus her memory. Her mental state was intended to be a warning: Don’t send spies to Area 51. What Owens never envisioned was China’s ability to combat the psychological technology used on Jasmine.
Manipulation of the mind presented a new era of espionage; gone were the days of breaking and entering a filing cabinet and snapping pictures with a miniature camera. Instead, foreign agents were breaking and entering the minds of top-secret workers. In my case, however, the process of having China break and enter my mind was also rescuing me from psychosis.
Jasmine told me about aspects of my past that she learned through countless hours of working with me in a drug-induced hypnotic state. She claimed I had worked for the government in an Unacknowledged Special Access Project. She said I was an astronaut, and flew to the moon to retrieve payloads of rock that were dusted with an element called helium-3. But her claims did little to fully enlighten me, as she was struggling to unlock details about those memories. I did remember my wife, who Jasmine said absconded with a large severance package I had received from the government in 1994, as well as the rest of our marital assets. Jasmine claimed I was America’s most accomplished astronaut, but not only was America unaware of my feats, so was I. And apparently my duties and accomplishments were not confined to the moon harvesting project because she also claimed I was part of a deep space program. Jasmine said some day I would be remembered for one special trip, a pioneering trip, as I was the first human to navigate a wormhole in space.
Her words were little more than conjecture to me. Initially, she couldn’t dig deep enough in my mind to unlock the necessary snapshots to make me remember. Some might argue she was lying as a means to involve me in her scheme. But why me? Certainly the Chinese government had better options at their disposal. Why choose me, Ben Skyles, a certified psychological imbecile, to assist them in their most secretive espionage efforts? Unless there was some truth to their claims. But wormholes?
While I had no specific memories of the claims Jasmine made, her work was having an effect on my mind. I began to have random flashbacks I could not comprehend—the moon, the stars, Earth, spiral galaxies—frequent feelings of déjà vu. Jasmine encouraged me to follow these thoughts, insisting they were paths to the memories locked in my subconscious, the memories and details she needed. Despite Jasmine’s efforts, however, and modern Chinese secrets, she had reached a dead end.
The wormhole information, I’m sure, was fascinating to the Chinese, but not an imminent concern. Their primary objective was to obtain details about the moon-harvesting project: landing sites, mining coordinates, spacecraft technology—information the US accumulated over time, through trial and error, and research missions. The Chinese needed immediate results. They wanted to harvest helium-3 on the first trip and make maximum use of the payload. They needed answers to questions an astronaut in the harvesting program would have. Are all rocks the same? Did helium-3 accumulate more in certain locations? Was it non-existent in others? What existed on the dark side of the moon? Did the US have surveillance equipment, weapons? All questions that Jasmine tried to retrieve from me, unsuccessfully, through a combination of drugs, frequency stimulation and hypnosis.
Mind control technology worked similar to the remote controls you get from the cable company, which don’t control your television or DVD player unless you have the codes set to the proper frequency. Jasmine didn’t know the frequency, or combination of frequencies, necessary to unlock my deepest secrets. And that is why we were traveling today. She hoped to take me someplace where the government was broadcasting the proper combination of frequencies.
We were catching a flight from LAX to Las Vegas and then transferring to Salt Lake City. The cattle-call boarding procedure at the gate inspired one of my déjà vu moments. I remember having a strong desire to sit in front and not be the last one off in Vegas.
A brief layover in the Vegas airport wasn’t brief enough, as I managed to squander twenty-dollars on twenty-two pulls of a slot machine; a sign I still had one foot in life’s port-o-potty of luck.
In Salt Lake City I claimed two duffle bags from the baggage belt and lugged them over to Jasmine who was signing for a four-wheel drive Durango she had reserved. Jasmine’s bag was much larger, not due to womanly necessities, but various surveillance gadgets. We made a couple of stops at a market and sporting goods store to buy provisions, then headed out of town.
To better understand the purpose of this trip, let me shed some new light on government affairs in the latter half of the nineties, and why Jasmine, and the Chinese Regime, brought me to Salt Lake City.
The feds knew during Bush senior’s term that a new facility would be necessary to replace the Groom Lake complex. Various government arms, controlled by the same mind, began acquiring acreage in the Rocky Mountains, and not in Colorado as most associate the Rockies with, but the vast unadulterated lands of Utah; a combination of government and private holdings that appear in the records as independent plots of land. Some plots were already in the federal government realm. Most people don’t realize that, like Nevada, a significant portion of Utah is federal land. A new base was conceived—Air Base One—generations more advanced than the Groom Lake and Papoose Lake facilities.
The contractors and construction workers were put in transport planes and flown around for over eight hours before landing at a nearby staging facility and taken by helicopter to the site. They thought they were at a military base somewhere in Europe. Most worked on only a portion of the project, limiting their understanding of the full concept. Any roads that existed to facilitate building Air Base One were temporary. And rest assured, the few individuals that had an understanding of what they were building at the time probably have little recollection now. Today, Air Base One is accessible only by air, or determined feet. The entrance is a portal in a mountainside, large enough for spacecraft and helicopters to enter, but invisible to satellite surveillance, or Google Earth, I tried. Underground exists a self-sustained spaceport, larger and more advanced than the dated predecessor complexes in Nevada. An exceptionally small number of people consciously know of its existence and exact location. Anything that exists at Air Base One might as well not exist.
So Air Base One had become the new Holy Grail of black budget secrecy—the new Groom Lake. Jasmine hoped getting me close to the base would expose me to frequency transmissions used on the workers, at which point she could unlock my deepest memories about the moon.
CHAPTER 56
Jasmine drove the Durango while I tried to nap in the passenger seat, but our first stop came within twenty miles when she exited the interstate and detoured several miles on a rural road to a horse farm—apparently you can rent horses the same as you can cars. I’m not big on horses, but Jasmine insisted it would make the first leg of our trek easier and faster.
With steeds in tow, we traveled on highways for about two and a half hours before turning onto a county road that took us ever further from populated areas. I couldn’t help but stare at the remote farm houses we passed, or entrances to farms—I couldn’t always see the buildings—and wonder about the people living in this area. Some wanted their privacy, a fact reinforced when they used the term compound instead of ranch to describe their property. And while I don’t have empirical data to offer, I am of the strong opinion that an individual owning a compound probably has a weapons cache to protect said compound. Jasmine was of the same opinion, and thought it critical not to trespass on these grounds during our journey. Technically we had to trespass to reach our ultima
te destination, but she just didn’t want any trouble in the earlier stages.
One problem the government encountered at Groom Lake, and a key factor in blowing the decades of secrecy, was that some of the surrounding land was ranch land. And when the ranchers started seeing strange lights in the sky, they called people. Compound owners, however, would be less apt to call people under similar circumstances. Another reason Utah was a more suitable location for a secret air base.
Jasmine’s plans were quite detailed, and obviously devised with insight from satellite surveillance and other Chinese intelligence documents. We traveled to a point where the road neared national forest land. Jasmine stopped several times, looking at satellite photos that showed clearings just off the main road, large enough to park the SUV and trailer, but hidden from passersby. The first two sites proved unsuitable to pull the trailer off-road, but the third site Jasmine had specked out served our purpose.
Jasmine downshifted into a low, four-wheel drive gear and eased the Durango from the shoulder to pristine terrain. Some ruts jostled the trailer as we began to drive into the forest and I heard a whinny from one of the horses. I’m sure this was a violation of the rental agreement, for both the vehicle and the horses, but Jasmine knew what she was doing, managing the wheel with relaxed austerity, and I didn’t foresee any trouble coming from this task.
Upon parking, I stepped from the vehicle into a calm, high-sixties afternoon that featured puffy cotton-like cumulus clouds dotting a blue sky. Jasmine had been studying the weather patterns and tried to time the trip so atmospheric conditions would not hinder our journey. Weeks earlier and we might have been marching those horses through snowpack. I guess weather prediction is another thing we can say the Chinese intelligence agents are good at—certainly better than the bozo weathermen in LA who can’t confirm rain until some imbecile slips on wet pavement. Good weather or not, we were still anticipating a nighttime temperature in the forties, and Jasmine had the appropriate sleeping bags, jackets and camping supplies to get us through the cold. As we were unloading the gear from the back of the Durango, the horses suddenly seemed like a good idea. I just wondered who would be carrying the brunt of the load once we left the horses, and thought about myself dragging the bags through the airport.
Jasmine was fearless in her quest—no sign of nerves or indecisiveness in her actions. During my recent years of staring at the television for much of the day, I once watched a program on prison inmates that discussed the psychological makeup of lawbreakers, and a genetically based lack of fear was what allowed them to operate in situations that made most people unnerved.
With the Durango and horse trailer covered under camouflage tarps, we mounted the horses and disappeared into the woods with Jasmine and her horse leading the way. My horse’s name was Snow because of his mostly white coloring, but I called him Beacon because you could see me riding him a mile away. At least Jasmine had a brown horse; she was the one that needed to stay out of site. What could the government do to me at this point that it hadn’t already done? Jail would be less humiliating than being in my forties and living with my mom.
The elevation when we started was somewhere around 6,000 feet. This region was an extension of the Rocky Mountains, a wooded area, unlike the high desert and Joshua Tree Cacti of Area 51. We would be traveling to higher elevations, but Jasmine said she plotted our course to stay in valleys and cross divides at their lowest point. Otherwise the high altitudes would make our trek on foot difficult, if not impossible.
Utah has about nine million acres of National Forest, and in 2001, with White House backing, the National Forest Service initiated a Roadless Plan that prohibited the building of new roads, and in turn limited access, development and logging of remote areas—perfect timing for those developing a secret military installation and using the remote land as a buffer.
Jasmine and I were not violating any laws at this point as we road the horses deep into primeval aspen and spruce forests, rich with deer and high-altitude lakes. So although hunting, fishing and camping were allowed, the chance of us seeing someone was about as remote as the land we were on. (Please take note that in the description above I’m talking about the North American quaking aspen with coarse toothed leaves that tremble in the slightest wind—a little fact I learned while reading one of Jasmine’s travel guides on Utah, and I wanted to mention so if you’re struggling to comprehend the discussions of mind control or moon missions, you can at least finish this story believing at least one fact.)
We camped the first night with pup tents and a roaring fire, luxury conditions we could only enjoy on the national forest land. Jasmine woke me at dawn and we saddled up. She used a GPS to guide us, and we blazed our own trail, pushing the horses hard, with only enough rest to keep them going. Our journey was dusk to dawn and traversed a path of nearly thirty-four miles up and down mountainsides, across plains and through streams and small rivers.
We slept in past dawn the second day, not needing as many hours to reach our next destination. I made sure the horses were securely tied to ropes that allowed them to roam far enough to eat grass and sip from a stream. Our larger duffels we hung from a tree to keep them out of reach of curious animals.
Jasmine and I set out on foot, each of us toting a small pack with minimal provisions. We carried canteens, but packing large quantities of water wasn’t an issue because there were ample amounts available along the way that we could purify with tablets. We brought food in the form of freeze-dried meals, sleeping bags and a camouflage tarp to sleep or hide under, and we each had a camouflage poncho. The plan was to walk part of the day and lay up until nightfall as we neared the perimeter of the military property.
I don’t know how far we hiked, but let’s say it was a hundred miles because that is what it felt like. I certainly wasn’t in shape to be doing what we were doing. I started off sore from riding the horse and the pain only got worse as my feet ached, blistered and begged me to stop. In reality, we had hiked about seven miles by mid-afternoon. We setup a makeshift camp and rested until dark.
Jasmine said we were about a mile from what she suspected was the base perimeter. As I stated before, we were headed to a government facility, but it wasn’t noted in land records or maps as military property the way other bases and installations were. This was government-controlled land, but managed in part through third party corporations and trusts, which held the titles.
Shortly after sunset, with little rest, we gathered our belongings and started hiking again. There were no signs or fences marking our transition from the national forest land to private land, but Jasmine was watching her GPS device closely, tracking our coordinates, and soon became more critical of our surroundings. She was starting and stopping with greater frequency, continually telling me to wait, stop, and be still, while she scanned ahead and peered through the various sets of binoculars and monitoring equipment she had stowed in her pack and hunting vest.
Jasmine figured we would walk through the night and spend the next day sleeping under our tarp. Hiding was much easier in the forest compared to her ordeal sneaking around the desert at Groom Lake, but we had to get through the night first before we could worry about keeping ourselves hidden during the day. Her intention was to make it out of the valley we were currently in by climbing to a ridge before sunrise and setup camp with a view to the next valley.
I decided it was time to have some fun with Jasmine and began talking so she could hear me up ahead. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”
Immediately she turned with a crazed look on her face. “What are you doing?” she hissed in a harsh whisper. “Be quiet!”
I knew precisely what I was doing, and exactly where we were. I hadn’t been there before, but studied it on a map. I knew the names of the valleys and mountains we were surrounded by. I knew the base was beyond the next valley, and I knew what was on top of the ridge in front of us.
I smiled and
said, “Keep going, we’re almost to the top.”
She was a bit confused by my remarks, but shrugged it off and kept hiking. We stopped atop the ridge, which flattened out and sprawled several hundred yards before it dipped into the next valley.
“What were you saying back there?” Jasmine asked between sips from a water bottle.
I didn’t reply. Instead I just stood in silence—waiting.
A branch broke to our right. Jasmine dropped to her knees and pulled me down with her, fumbling for her night vision glasses.
“Beijing,” I said, “we have a problem.”
A radio squawked to our left. In the distance up ahead, a light beamed upwards from the valley below. Then a helicopter could be heard rumbling, the source of the light.
Jasmine punched my chest in anger. “I rescued you,” she said with a betrayed look on her face.
A red laser appeared on her chest, then two, five, ten, bushes rattled and feet scuffed in every direction as soldiers emerged from their ambush positions and methodically closed in around us. Jasmine could do nothing but sit still.
Obviously I haven’t presented certain facts to you in linear sequence, but I think I have made it quite clear my mind hasn’t worked in a linear fashion in over a decade, and I am certified by the government as an imbecile if I may be so direct as to ignore politically correct jargon. My point is that Jasmine was a little more successful in accessing my memories than I let her, or you, know. One memory she triggered is what a devout patriot I was.
The helicopter landed in the distance ahead, its lights illuminating a cloud of dust from its rotors that rolled in like a bank of fog. From the haze, two silhouettes emerged, one man, one woman, but not in battle fatigues like the soldiers; their uniforms were dark suits.
