Dumbfounded, they all stared at Liebowitz in amazement, except Teneil, who tossed his cards on top of the chips, revealing his three jacks. “Man, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. But somebody had best start shuffling the damn cards.” He stared at Trace. Liebowitz showed off his full house and took the pot.
“Forget shuffling,” Jimmy said. “We should take our new buddy into Vegas and hit the casinos.” He exchanged eye contact with Trace and Rebecca; Liebowitz had just confirmed what a good catch he was.
Liebowitz smiled. He liked the fact that Jimmy called him their buddy. He had few friends. His lack of social interaction made him forget most people’s mental inadequacies. What seemed so obvious to him was incomprehensible to most. He promised to himself that he would be more careful, not wanting to offend anyone, especially Teneil with his fiery personality.
When Liebowitz wasn’t looking, Trace winked at Rebecca who excused herself.
Behind the bar, Rebecca turned on a frequency broadcaster and it began emitting a silent, but strong 425-megahertz signal that bounced between the basement’s cinderblock walls, affecting Liebowitz like a silent and invisible airborne virus. The signals worked by hypnotic suggestion, combining with the lithium in his blood to put him in a relaxed conscious sleep. The actions around him seemed like a dream, as if he had dozed off watching television, still hearing the broadcast, but creating a different picture in his mind.
Trace and Teneil retrieved an electroencephelograph and electrocardiograph from behind cabinet doors. They placed the equipment on the poker table, which Jimmy had cleared. Rebecca then began attaching electrodes to Liebowitz’s head and chest. Finally, Jimmy lowered a hood over his head. Liebowitz sat motionless as Rebecca slowed the pulse on the frequency broadcaster. The changing tones merged the brain waves of his left and right hemisphere, inducing him to fall further into a state of altered consciousness — a deep sleep state. Rebecca had achieved a similar state with Skyles, but through hypnosis alone, and he exited hypnosis prematurely because she failed to use tonal frequencies. Seeing Liebowitz respond to the 425-megahertz signal reassured her that hypnotizing him wouldn’t cause another mishap.
She first gave him directions about how to interpret the evening: not to remember the hypnotism; only to remember playing cards; they were nothing more than his poker buddies.
The final preparatory step was crossing the bridge that would give Rebecca access to the memories in his controlled state. “Listen closely, Aaron …” she said, readying him for his password, “… Tycho Brahe.”
His neck straightened under the hood, as if he had been aroused, but he remained silent.
“Tycho?” Rebecca asked, summoning a response.
“What’s going on? Who are you?”
“Copernicus sent me.” She knew Damien Owens as Copernicus, having also heard his codename on the recordings from Ben Skyles’ house.
“Where’s Copernicus?”
“He couldn’t be here. There have been further complications with the program, similar to what he tested you for at your house recently. I’m a psychologist and I’ll be administering some more tests to ensure your continued safety.”
“My memory is fine. I told Copernicus there’s nothing wrong with me.” Liebowitz was assertive, a dramatic change.
“I understand …” she cautiously pieced together her ad lib answers, “… but it’s essential that I make sure there haven’t been any changes. I’ll be testing you for subtle gaps in your memory that may suggest you are susceptible to the problems we’ve discovered in others. If you’ve been affected, you wouldn’t realize it until the problem reached a threatening level.” He didn’t reply, and the hood prevented Rebecca from gauging his reaction. “Are you okay?”
“I’m waiting for you to start.”
Rebecca anticipated more resistance, maybe a question about the hood, but also knew he could have been conditioned for such unorthodox treatment. Surprised by his obedience, she studied her list of questions: “I want you to walk me through a typical work day. Let’s start with your first memory in the controlled state, and give me details.”
“My day starts on the underground shuttle. I sit in the car five or ten minutes. I’m always alone. I go straight to my office, passing two control points, requiring retina and palm scans. My operating plan for the shift has already been prepared and is waiting my attention. When I finish my assignments, I leave. My memories end like they started, on the shuttle car. As for my workday, it varies. Sometimes I work a few hours; sometimes I’m there a few days.”
“And where is there? Tell me where you work?” She tried sounding authoritative, focused on remaining unfettered by his answers, no matter how revealing or shocking they might be.
“The Dark Side of the Moon.”
“And where is The Dark Side of the Moon?”
“At the end of the tunnel.” His vague response suggested that he didn’t know details unrelated to his assigned tasks.
“The tunnel that leads to Papoose Valley?”
“If you say so; to me it’s point A and point B with a tunnel connecting the two.”
Trace knew his shuttle ride originated in Groom Lake’s main hangar, below ground. The tunnel would have to be at least ten miles long, but he knew that was possible; at the Nevada Test Site they had used large tunnel-boring machines to network miles of manmade tunnels and caverns. And now Trace and his team had a codename for the facility: The Dark Side of the Moon.
“Are there entrances to the facility besides the tunnel you described?” Rebecca asked.
“There’s a silo opening used for mongooses and hoots.”
Trace knew mongoose was radio lingo for helicopter. Hoot, however, was an unfamiliar term.
Rebecca received a note from Trace: “What’s a hoot?”
“For someone in charge of administering such a sensitive test, I’d think you’d know more about the answers.”
She hesitated, knowing her ignorance would show if she engaged in a conversation about the facility. “Any response to the questions besides the correct answer may be viewed unfavorably. Understand?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Very well. Now then, what is a hoot?”
“Hoot is the codename for the birds we fly.”
Rebecca made eye contact with Trace. She knew he would want details on the hoots, but they had decided not to let curiosity steer them onto spontaneous tangents. She watched Trace swirl his finger, signaling her to continue with the questions on the list. Patience, he had told her, would be the key to a successful interrogation. He wrote new questions, giving more thought to each than if Rebecca had asked a question spontaneously.
“What’s your job?”
“I calculate atmospheric windows and develop flight plans for lunar deployments and stellar flights.”
Trace’s next note said to probe the flights.
“What is being deployed to the moon?” she asked.
“The hoots.”
“Tell me what technology a hoot is.”
“You tell me. I’ve only seen them on a monitor.”
“You call them flights, not landings. So you must know something about the technology.”
“It’s not a rocket. Half the state of Nevada would see the contrails, and it doesn’t need a runway. It’s a hoot. That’s all I know.”
“Where do you conduct most of your work?” she asked, continuing with her original list of questions.
“It varies, but mainly in my office and the control center.”