Vostok

by Steve Alten

  “Because you’re here. Because you made it out of Vostok alive when there wasn’t an escape option—No, that’s not true. I was your escape option. Unfortunately, Captain Hintzmann told you a conspiracy tale that obviously painted me as the bad guy. I’m not the bad guy, Zachary.”

  “Bullshit. You threatened to leave me stranded in the borehole.”

  “It was only a threat. I didn’t trust the personnel inside Vostok Command, and I needed answers. I never expected you to climb out of the sub and disconnect the umbilical. That’s what’s known as being hero-stupid. Suicidal. And yet, in a hundred multiverses of death, your consciousness managed to find the one possible outcome that led you back to that extraterrestrial vessel. And that, my friend, was your emergence point into the higher dimensions.”

  Colonel Vacendak popped a straw into another box of apple juice and held it up to my parched lips. “You asked me what is real. Every possible outcome in our lives creates an alternate universe, and every one of them is real. Our consciousness selects the routes. Who knows, perhaps somewhere out there exist trillions of parallel universes and hundreds of each one of us living out these alternative lives. But I’ve spent the last two weeks scanning your memories, Zachary, and you never made it out of Lake Vostok alive.

  “I know you think you piloted the Barracuda through a subglacial river. I’m also certain you’re convinced that when you ran out of river and found yourself trapped, you were able to use the lasers to create your escape. But it never happened.

  “That river you saw on the satellite chart, it wasn’t complete. To make it out through the Amery Ice Shelf, you would have needed a hundred Valkyries powered by a small nuclear power plant. Not to mention air. The most you had left while the umbilical was still attached was twelve hours. Even with two completely functional lasers fed by an endless surface supply of power, it would have taken you eighty hours to cover eight hundred miles through near-solid ice. So how did you do it? How did you manage to get to Prydz Bay and the airfield at Davis Base to board your father’s chartered jet, which just happened to be there to whisk True and his crocodile egg to safety?”

  “I don’t know. I was out of it. I spent a month in the hospital. I remember bits and pieces, but the rest is a blur. Yet I was there, and I’m here. I didn’t die. You can’t go from being trapped beneath the ice to Davis Station without the journey in between.”

  “Or maybe you can. Have you ever heard of quantum tunneling? No? When we examine the inner workings of an atom, we know that it is about 99.99 percent empty space. In fact, all matter is mostly empty space. So why, then, if that’s true, can’t we walk through walls? The reason is electrons. Electrons are tiny, but they pack a strong negative charge. These electrons are continuously moving around the circumference of the atom at the speed of light, repelling each other. It’s their repelling charge that prevents us from walking through walls. Did you know we go through our entire lives without ever actually having touched anything? When we stand, the electrons in our shoes repel the electrons in the floor, levitating us about a millionth of a centimeter. Of course, you already know that from having spent the last seven years marketing an alien electron generator.

  “Quantum tunneling is the quantum mechanical process by which a particle can pass between two separate points without passing through all the intermediate points. Extraterrestrial aircraft move from point A to point B in the blink of an eye, appearing to stop on a dime when in fact they’re quantum tunneling. Oh, yes, we know a great deal about our alien visitors, and I want to share everything with you.”

  I stared hard into his eyes. “Why? So you can start some bogus space war predicated on a false flag attack that your phony spacecraft initiated? How many innocent people have to die so you and your big-oil allies can stay in power? These beings mean us no harm. Why do you want to kill them, too?”

  “Don’t be so quick to pass judgment. There’s a reason they gave you access to the higher dimensions, and it wasn’t so you could battle the Loch Ness monster and sell books.”

  He looked up at Dr. Stewart. “Give us some privacy, please. I’ll call you when I need you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I heard the physician leave, the door hissing closed behind him.

  “I need to trust you, Dr. Wallace. More importantly, I need you to trust me. So I’m going to debrief you. In doing so, I’m going to reveal events so incredible they defy belief, things that are so shocking your first instinct will be to dismiss them simply out of self-preservation. The truth will sound like a combination of fiction and conspiracy theory, but it’s absolutely real. To keep these truths from the public, the Constitution has been trampled upon and the United States government subverted. Good, moral individuals like yourself have been murdered, including a world leader who attempted to derail the people who now hold power. If someone of this man’s stature was expendable, then you and I are barely an afterthought. And yet you may hold the key to saving our world, or destroying it. Thus, you need to know everything.

  “Are we alone in the universe? Far from it. There are countless species out there vying to influence our evolution. The question now is whether humanity can survive the encounter. Although these visitations date back thousands of years, the first modern-day encounters occurred two years after the atomic bomb was used to end World War II. The crash outside Roswell, New Mexico, occurred when a new electromagnetic scalar weapon was switched on, causing two of the E.T. aircraft that were phasing out of super lightspeed to collide. Between January 1947 and December 1952, our EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapon brought down thirteen alien spacecrafts: eleven in New Mexico and one each in Nevada and Arizona. Two other crashes occurred in Mexico and one in Norway. Sixty-five bodies were recovered, including one alien that was kept alive for three years. Of special importance was an alien craft, one hundred feet in diameter, recovered on a mesa near Aztec, New Mexico, on February 13, 1948. In addition to its dead crew, the vessel contained stored human body parts.

  “In December of 1947, President Truman secretly approved Project Sign, a program that recruited America’s top scientists to study the alien phenomenon. A year later Sign evolved into Project Grudge, which included a disinformation campaign known as Blue Book. Special Ops groups known as Blue Teams were trained and equipped to recover the crashed spacecraft and their alien crew, everything overseen during these early years by the newly formed United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency, the latter created to deal exclusively with the alien presence.

  “On November 4, 1952, President Truman established, by secret executive order, the National Security Agency. The NSA’s primary task was to decipher alien communications and establish a dialogue with extraterrestrials. They were also charged with monitoring all communications worldwide for the purpose of gathering intelligence, both human and alien, and to containing the secret of extraterrestrials’ presence. Truman’s executive order exempted the NSA from all laws that did not specifically name the agency in the text of the law, essentially placing the NSA and its activities above the law, allowing them to operate free of oversight. President Obama learned this the hard way when he found out the agency was eavesdropping on the German chancellor without his administration’s knowledge.

  “Truman’s actions created a plausible deniability buffer between the White House and the ‘do whatever is necessary’ tactics of his newly established intelligence agencies. In years to come, this order effectively prevented future presidents from accessing information from the intelligence communities regarding E.T.s. In other words, when it comes to aliens, these intelligence agencies report to no one.

  “Truman’s Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, objected to the secret executive orders and was asked to resign. Convinced he represented a threat to their secrecy, the CIA tailed him around the clock. The resultant paranoia was diagnosed as a mental breakdown, and Forrestal was forcibly committed to the mental ward of Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was isolated and denied visitor
s. When Forrestal’s brother notified authorities that he intended to remove James from Bethesda, CIA agents tied a sheet around the former defense secretary’s neck, fastened the end to a room fixture, and threw James Forrestal out the sixteenth-story window. The sheet tore and the fall killed him, his murder made to look like a suicide.”

  “I don’t care about your conspiracy tales, Colonel. I’ve heard them all before.”

  “Have you heard about the captured alien? He was a Gray. Grays come in different sizes, but they all share the same basic DNA structure. We’ve encountered reptile-like beings as well as humanoids, which we call Nordics. Each species has a different agenda, but I’ll save that for later. The first Gray was called Ebe, short for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. Like all Grays, Ebe was hairless, with a slightly elongated skull and big black eyes that had no exterior lids. A Gray’s neck is centered at the base of its skull, giving the head a top-heavy, unstable appearance. Their hands are thin and double-jointed, possessing three long fingers and an opposable fourth digit.

  “Ebe’s sexual organs were internalized, but after two years of attempted communications, we were pretty sure he was a male. The alien’s internal anatomy was chlorophyll-based, and it processed food into energy and waste material in the same manner as plants. It had to be kept in a Faraday chamber, which disrupted its ability to control electromagnetic currents. Otherwise, Ebe would escape by walking right through the walls.

  “We learned a lot from Ebe, everything compiled into what became known as the Yellow Book. Unfortunately, the Gray became ill in late 1951. Medical specialists were brought in to treat him, along with a botanist. In a futile attempt to save the being’s life and demonstrate our peaceful intentions to a superior race of beings, the United States began broadcasting radio signals into deep space. These distress calls, part of a project called SIGMA, went unanswered. Ebe died on June 2, 1952; Spielberg’s movie E.T. was loosely based on these events.

  “Fearing an alien invasion, Truman made sure our allies and the Soviet Union knew about the E.T.s and their technology. Because Congress couldn’t be trusted, a small group of world leaders were organized to strategize how to deal with the threat. This ruling body became known as the Bilderberger Group, named after the hotel where they first met.

  “The alien encounters grew more frequent in 1953 after President Dwight Eisenhower took office. To deal with the problem, Eisenhower appointed Nelson Rockefeller as chairman of a Presidential Advisory Committee on Government Organization. His first assignment was to create a secret task force.

  “By 1955, the new entity, known as MJ-12, was placed in charge of all alien activities. The secret society included Nelson Rockefeller, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State John Dulles, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur Radford, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. There were also six men selected from the Council on Foreign Relations and six from a scientific group formed during the Manhattan Project, known as the JASON Society. Policies could only be mandated by a majority vote of twelve, thus the name MJ-12.

  “Power breeds contempt, Dr. Wallace. Over the years MJ-12’s top positions were dominated by members of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission. This group of elitists ruled in favor of its own special interests. Buoyed by Eisenhower’s hands-off executive orders and Rockefeller’s restructured government, this secret society had essentially been given the keys to rule the world, and they intended to shape it in ways that ensured they remained in power.

  “Trillions of dollars have been secreted into covert funds over the years, to feed the military industrial complex without congressional oversight. Billions more were raised by exploiting the opium market. Working with South American drug cartels, cocaine shipments were brought by boat to offshore U.S. oil-drilling platforms, where CIA operatives would then transport them ashore with the rig’s supplies, bypassing customs. New Orleans and California were the primary destinations, targeting minorities and the poor, an element the elite considered to be our nation’s weakest links. Even today, the CIA controls most of the world’s illegal drug markets, as well as its major newspapers and media outlets. Some of these vast appropriations were used to build elaborate underground facilities, supposedly to house the government in case of nuclear war. In reality, these bunkers are part of a plan known as Alternative Two. Alternatives One, Two, and Three are contingency plans that deal with the threat of an alien invasion.

  “When President Kennedy learned what the CIA was doing, he threatened to shut down the agency, and with it MJ-12. In doing so, he underestimated the lengths the elite would go to, remain in power. If you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald and his magic bullet assassinated JFK, then I’m wasting my time with you. Most of the Warren Commission was made up of CFR members; you know how that investigation played itself out.

  “There are secret underground military bases across the United States, including one in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, run by Army Intelligence, which houses nine extraterrestrial vessels and the remains of their crew.”

  “Is that where we are?”

  “No, you’re in Dreamland, better known as Area 51. We run a program here where our pilots test alien aircraft. We also run a fake test program to fool the public.”

  “You mean like the bogus alien craft you used to launch your false flag event?”

  “That wasn’t us. But I can see you don’t believe me.” He touched something in his right ear. It must have held a communication link because a moment later, the door hissed open and someone entered.

  Her perfume arrived before I saw her. “Susan! Susan, are you all right?”

  She knelt and kissed my cheek. “I’m fine. It’s you I’ve been worried about.” She looked up at the Colonel. “You’ve accessed enough of his memories for a lifetime. I want these tubes taken out of him.”

  “In a moment. He needs to know who we are and where we stand.”

  Searching through a drawer beneath my table, she located gauze and tape and then set to work removing my I.V. tube. “Zach, MJ-12 fractured into two ideologies years ago. Our group is made up of intellects from the JASON Society and seeks peaceful relations with the E.T.s. The other group, composed of radical members of the Bilderbergs, Trilateral Commission, and CFR, seek to exploit the aliens’ technology for their own New World Order.”

  I winced as the tube was extracted from my vein. “You’re a part of this?”

  “I was recruited into the JASON Society my senior year at Yale.”

  “What about… us?”

  “I was told to get close.”

  “In other words you used me.”

  “Yes, but for the greater good. There’s so much you don’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  Colonel Vacendak interrupted. “As I explained before, we’ve figured out how these saucer-shaped E.T. vessels appear to violate the laws of physics, hovering in mid-air and changing directions at will, moving at beyond-lightspeed. They’re phase shifting in and out of a higher dimension, using a device similar to what you wanted to unleash upon the world, an energy device that creates a powerful rotating electromagnetic field that interacts with gravity. For some reason, the being you were in contact with seven years ago chose you to deliver it to humanity. Care to tell us why?”

  “Maybe because it knew you and your kind would exploit it instead of share it, like the other assholes.”

  Susan stepped in between us. “The E.T. communicated with you while you were in a lucid dream state, something we refer to as a conscious-intelligent visual, or CIV. Existence is all about consciousness. Among higher souls like your alien friend, it transcends the limits of both time and space. While the Creator represents the absolute universal mind, physical beings like ourselves can tap into the same energy, or light vibration, to experience precognition, inspiration, intuition, creativity, and even remote viewing. This can be achieved because a link exists between awareness and matter. When you entered the ice tunnel, the puri
ty of your consciousness allowed you to gain entry into the ship.”

  The Colonel nodded. “Tell him more about the different species we’ve encountered.”

  “Nordics are physical beings that resemble humans. They prefer to observe from a distance, though at times they’ve flown over our nuclear missile bases and short-circuited our weapon systems. They have communicated messages intended to awaken a spiritual evolution. Grays and Reptilians are darker beings who visit evolving worlds under the guise of serving as a ‘mentor’ species. They come bearing gifts, which they offer those who share the same negative vibrational frequencies as their own. Secret societies like the Bilderbergs, who are misled into bringing about mass destruction on a planetary scale, become their puppets.

  “Zachary, a spiritual revolution is already upon us as the masses refuse to accept poverty, inequality, and endless war spawned by class warfare and greed. In order to control the populace, the elites have once again created the illusion of wolves stalking the flock, this time in the guise of aliens hell-bent on destruction. These contrived threats will lead to the forfeiture of even more personal freedoms, in this case the energy system you introduced to the public. It’s a page straight out of the 9/11 playbook, except on a global scale, spawned by a Faustian agreement entered into between the elites and their alien counterparts, placing all of humanity in grave jeopardy.”

  “How is humanity in danger? And what does all this have to do with me?”

  “It had nothing to do with you,” the Colonel said. “All we wanted you and your team to do was plant a few sensors around that damn ship and get out of Dodge. Instead, you triggered a portal that our alien visitors have been trying to access for years. If Susan and her fellow JASONS are right and some kind of cataclysm is going to hit—”