Then there was Al and Bud, were they dead, were they killed to keep them quiet because the attempt to brainwash them had failed? Did Wilson actually go AWOL, or was that just an excuse to explain why no one was able to locate Wilson’s dead body?
So Joe was supposedly at a base in Georgia, did the military feel that they had successfully reprogramed Joe, or was he still there being reprogramed, like I was?
Maybe the military hadn’t yet decided whether or not to kill us and come up with some story to explain our deaths.
I wish I could talk to Joe and compare notes, but I knew that was not going to happen.
I just had to go with my gut and hope that I was a good enough actor to convince whoever was watching that I was no longer a threat capable of exposing whatever the hell they were trying to hide at Roswell.
Or just possibly, I was crazy or the explosion that I was allegedly involved in was making me hallucinate and imagine I had been at Roswell.
The next few weeks I played along the best I could. My muscles were almost back to full strength and I was able to walk normally once again.
When asked any questions, I tried to give the answer that I thought was expected of me, that or I claimed that I couldn’t remember.
I must have been successful, because I was soon released from the hospital and sent back to my old job, transporting air to air missiles for the F-15 squadron. Of course, they had to teach me what to do. I claimed amnesia, but I knew I had never done that job before in my entire life.
Six months later I was called into the Captain’s office. He explained to me that since my accident that I hadn’t been the same and he was concerned that I was unable to perform my duties any longer. He informed me that I was being discharged, with a full disability pension of course. He thanked me for my service, was sorry for my condition, and told me that I would be going home at the end of the week.
My dream of retiring from the military with a full pension had finally become a reality, but not in the way I had imagined.
The best thing was that it looked like I was going to make it out of the military alive. Something that at least three of my friends we not lucky enough to accomplish.
It made me wonder what had we really stumbled upon at Roswell?
Did we really find a conspiracy to cover up alien contact?
Could our government really be cooperating with aliens, and if so for what purpose.
Was I beginning to believe in aliens? I wasn’t sure, but I can say that I wasn’t going to dismiss the idea as quickly as I once did.
Did we stumble upon a top-secret government weapons testing facility?
Whatever we had found, it was something that the government was willing to kill to keep it secret.
I should probably just be happy to have come out of this with my life, but I didn’t know how long I would be content with just that.
I knew that I wanted to know more, that I wanted someone to pay for the deaths of my friends, but also that I didn’t have the least idea where to start.
I also knew that if I ever stuck my nose into something like this again, I would probably end up dead next time.
This was something that was way too big for one man to take on by himself. I also firmly believed that whatever we had stumbled on, has been going on for many years. It was also possibly that at this point, even if I could find some help and people who would actually believe me, that is was probably way too late to stop it.
That being said, the one big question remaining is: What is it that may be too late to stop?
The facility at Roswell was obviously created to accomplish something, in a way I hoped that we would never learn what that purpose was.
That knowledge would be too dangerous for anyone to possess and still live.
Then another thought hit me.
As horrible as what I had seen taking place in the lower levels of that hangar at Roswell was, there was also another way that I could find out what they had been doing there. This thought was even worse than the possibility of being killed for what I knew.
If what ever they were working on was to ever be unleashed on mankind……..I didn’t even want to think what that could mean. The idea was too horrifying to even consider the possibilities.
“Shit, what the hell have I got myself into?” I wondered.
Chapter 14
Six months later in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
After I was discharged, I didn’t have anywhere to go but home with my mother. Even if I would have had another place to go, I think I would have still come here. My mind was, with all the conflicts going on inside me, confused and in many ways frightened. I was beginning to doubt myself and what I had experienced. I was no longer in the military and I was not able to talk with anyone that had been a part of what I had remembered experiencing, no one that could tell me that I wasn’t crazy. I was almost certain that I wasn’t crazy, but without anyone to tell me that I really did see what I believed I had seen, I was no longer as convinced as I once was.
I also had another problem that made me want to be around friends or family. I had experienced it once when I was in my so-called coma, then again before I left Denver. I have begun to experience it again after returning home. A sharp pain that shot through my head. The pain is so bad that it blinds me for a few seconds. When I first arrived home, I had experienced the pain about once a month. Now I have the pain once every other week.
I have a theory about the pain, but there isn’t anyone that I dare tell about it. I keep thinking back to Wilson telling us about the alien brain implants at Roswell. I’m not sure I believe in alien brain transplants, but it does give me one more thing to worry about.
I also always had the feeling that someone was watching me, but that could just be that I was being paranoid.
“Ma, I have to get moving so I don’t miss my appointment,” I said. Part of my discharge agreement was that I had to attend a weekly counseling session for six months. I believed that it was the military’s way of making sure that I was certified unstable in the event that I decided to talk to anyone about what I had seen at Roswell.
I told my mother that the military just wanted to follow up on the head injury I had experienced in Denver to make sure that it was healing properly. I didn’t want to tell her the truth, that I was required to see a shrink. Besides, today was supposed to be the final session, provided that Doctor Lester was satisfied.
“OK dear, you just be careful in that traffic,” my mother replied. “Pittsburgh traffic has gotten so bad. There are so many cars on the road now days, I don’t know where all the people are coming from.”
“I will Ma,” I replied. I was taking the bus to Oakland for my appointment like I always did, but for some reason my mother couldn’t seem to remember that. I suspected that her memory was starting to go, but I didn’t want to explain it again to her, I didn’t want to embarrass her.
As my mother walked through the living room looking through the mail she had just picked up off the floor in front of the mail slot on the front door, she said, “Here, it looks like the letter you sent to your friend Joe has been returned again. It says that the letter was unable to be delivered, no forwarding address. Maybe you should talk to Joe’s mother and get his new address.”
“I tried that, Ma,” I replied, “but Mrs. Bennett doesn’t have a different address.”
“I don’t understand why the Army can’t forward the letter, surely they know where he is stationed,” my mother said. “I would be concerned if the letters I sent to you were returned like that.”
“She is concerned, but she thinks that maybe he has been sent on a special assignment that has to be kept secret,” I replied. “When he gets back from the assignment, she is sure she will hear from him again.”
I started for the door.
“Here’s another letter for you,” my mother said.
“Who is it from?” I asked getting nervous as I looked at my watch, worried that I was going to miss my bus
.
“There isn’t any return address on the envelope,” she replied.
I took the letter and looked at it curiously. I tore open the envelope and pulled out a typed letter and began to read it.
Dear fellow baseball fan, Like me, I’m sure you are a Pittsburgh Pirate fan. If you buy a ticket for a future Pirate game and send it with this letter to three of your best friends, and they do the same, in three weeks you will receive twenty tickets to future Pirate games. Be sure the tickets you buy are not for games in the same week, blah, blah, blah and so forth. The letter went on for another page.
I tossed the letter down on the coffee table.
“What is it dear?” Ma asked.
“It’s some kind of chain letter about baseball tickets,” I replied. “I don’t have time for this now, I have to get going. I’ll see you tonight when I get home.”
“Be careful,” Ma said again.
I ran off the porch and jogged down to the corner as the bus pulled up to the bus stop. I paid my two dollars and slid into the second seat and moved over to the window.
I liked sitting next to the window when I rode the bus, I found it easier to let my mind go blank when I could watch the passing scenery instead of being stuck in the aisle seat where I had to look at the other passengers. My mother was always worried about the traffic, but if she saw some of the shady characters that rode the bus, I’m sure she wouldn’t be so critical of the traffic.
The bus crossed the Liberty Bridge, turned right onto the Boulevard of the Allies and drove into the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. Ten minutes later, the bus stopped in front of the Cathedral of Learning, the building where Doctor Lester’s office was located.
As I took the elevator to the thirtieth floor, I wondered how many patients Lester had that he was treating for fear of elevators or the fear of heights, and then how they managed to go up to his office.
His office was empty, except for his secretary when I arrived. She showed me into Lester’s office where I made myself comfortable on the couch.
Doctor Lester walked into the office a few moments later.
“Hi Mike,” Doctor Lester greeted me, “How have you been since our last meeting?”
“I’ve been fine,” I replied.
Doctor Lester picked up his writing pad and sat down across from me on his leather chair.
“Have you had anymore nightmares or any trouble sleeping?” Lester asked. “Any unusual pain?”
“No, I’ve been sleeping OK,” I replied. I was lying, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I definitely wasn’t going to tell him about the sharp pain that I have been experiencing in my head.
“Have any of your memories about the explosion in Texas come back to you yet?” he asked.
“You mean in Denver,” I smiled at his effort to trip me up. “No, nothing at all. I don’t think those memories are ever going to come back after all this time.”
“You might be correct,” Lester said. “That happens sometimes, especially after a severe accident happens, like the one you had.”
“If you couldn’t get me to remember anything even under hypnosis, maybe there isn’t anything left in there to remember,” I smiled.
Doctor Lester had tried to hypnotize me on four separate occasions. I say tried because I was very careful not to let myself be hypnotized. I’m not sure if I believe that anyone can be hypnotized like they showed on TV, but just in case I made sure it wouldn’t happen to me, then I just played along.
Most of the sessions when I was under hypnosis was Doctor Lester asking me questions, trying to get me to reveal what I saw at Roswell. I answered his questions by telling him that I didn’t remember anything about Roswell and that I wasn’t aware that I had ever been in Roswell. He ended the sessions, before bringing me out of the hypnotic state by pretending to read my chart about my time in Denver and about my accident. I guess that was to reinforce the information he wanted me to remember.
I quickly figured out what Lester was looking for during our first meeting, and like I did in the hospital, I did my best to tell him what he wanted to hear. To convince him that my brainwashing had been successful and that I would not be a threat to what was going on at Roswell.
Once a week for twenty-four weeks, it was the hardest thing I had ever done, but I knew that if I failed, I would probably be hit by a car or something on my way home.
Doctor Lester and I talked for about thirty minutes. He tried to trip me up a few more times, like he always did, but I finally make it through our session. Hopefully convincing him that I couldn’t remember anything that I wasn’t supposed to.
“Mike, I think you are doing as well as we can expect,” Lester finally said. “The fact that you have been unable to remember any of the details leading up to your accident may mean that you may never be able to recall those details. This is not unusual. However, if you find that you are beginning to remember anything about the time before your accident, even the slightest details, call me right away. If that were to happen, the sooner we get together, the better the chances that I can help you while the information is fresh in your mind.”
I just nodded.
“It would be nice to remember something, I feel like a part of me is missing,” I said.
“I can understand that,” Lester smiled. “However, I don’t believe that there is anything else we can accomplish with our weekly sessions. I feel the best thing now is to give it a little more time and hopefully some event will trigger something in your mind that will lead to you beginning to remember the events leading up to your accident. I just want to remind you to call me immediately should you start to remember anything at all.”
“Calling you will be the first thing I do if I remember anything at all,” I smiled.
“Good,” Lester replied. “I will have my secretary set up another appointment with you in say, six months from now,” Lester said. “In six months without the pressure of coming in here every week, maybe I’ll have more success in helping you reconnect with your past.”
“Thank You, I appreciate everything you’ve done,” I said, just happy that I didn’t have to play this game ever week any longer.
“Good Luck, Mike,” Doctor Lester said as he shook my hand.
‘Thanks again,” I replied, turned and walked out of the office. I made an appointment with the secretary for six months from now and happily left the office.
I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders, even though it was only for another six months.
When I got home, my mother was sitting on the couch reading the chain letter I had received in today’s mail.
She looked up and smiled when I stepped into the living room.
“I hope you don’t mind but I read your letter,” she said. “I think we should give this a try. It would be nice to get tickets for twenty Pirate games for the price of only three tickets.”
“I don’t know Ma, I’ve never had any luck with chain letters. I tried one that said if you sent a dollar to five friends that within a month you would receive a million dollars. I spent five dollars and I think I only got two dollars back.”
“Hmmm, I still think we should try it,” my mother said. “But whoever sent you this letter can’t write very well. The last page just seemed to ramble on and it didn’t really say much. Half the time the letter was talking about walking around Pittsburgh and didn’t really have anything to do with baseball. I wonder if that last page got put in with the chain letter by mistake.”
“Let me see the letter,” I said to humor her. I didn’t have any interest in the chain letter, but I was hoping to see something that I could use to discourage her from wasting sixty dollars.
I sat down next to her and she handed me the letter.
As I read the last page of the letter, I had to agree that it seemed to ramble on and didn’t make much sense.
But then something started to feel familiar about the letter.
“Ma, hand me a pencil,” I said as
I studied the letter.
My mother slid over and opened the drawer on the end table where she kept her crossword puzzles, dug out a pencil and handed it to me.
I studied the letter for a minute, then I began to circle letters.
When I was a kid, Joe, Wilson and I had our own secret code that we used to send letters back and forth to each other. We made up our own secret code so if anyone intercepted the letter, they wouldn’t be able to read it.
Most of our letters were about girls and the crude things that most teenage boys thought about, things that would get us grounded if our parents found out about.
We called our secret code, Code Five. The first word in the first sentence was the key to line one. If the first word was three letters long, then we would circle the last letter of the third word in line one.
The second word in the second sentence told us that if the word was five letters long, we were to circle the last letter of the fifth word. The same went for the third, fourth and fifth line. Then we would start all over again, using the first word in the next line and so forth, until we reached the end of the letter. We would then write down all the selected letters in the order that we circled them to reveal the real message.
We tried to make it complicated enough that if anyone got their hands on our correspondence that they wouldn’t be able to easily decipher it. That’s why we had a separate key for each line instead of just one key that applied to the entire letter.
When I was done circling letters, I copied the letters on the bottom of the last page, spacing the letters when I felt a full word had been created, then I sat back and looked to see if results made any sense. After all, I had no idea who had sent me the letter and I was just playing a hunch because the ramblings of the last page just felt so familiar.
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 11
