A phone call roused Blake from bed in the morning. He answered, “Hello?”
“Blake Hunter,” an emotionless voice stated.
“Speaking.”
“Have you seen any UFOs lately?”
“What makes you think I’m looking for them?” he replied sternly, masking his concern about the nature of the call.
“All those books you keep in your room.”
“Who is this?” Blake demanded.
“Someone who can answer your questions, and then some. Just calling to make sure you’re home. We’ll catch you later.” The line went dead.
Blake wanted to call the professor, but didn’t know how to reach him. He looked in Trevor’s room, but remembered he was working a breakfast shift. Feeling uncomfortable in the apartment, he decided to go for a long bike ride until Trevor returned from work.
His bike was locked in a carport behind the apartment building. Wearing his riding gear, he set off down a narrow alley lined with garbage cans. Up ahead he noticed a van squeezing between trashcans and a parked car, traveling in his direction. It was an older model Econoline with no rear windows. Easing to one side, Blake tried to let the van pass, but it veered closer, pinning his body and bike against a parked car. “What the hell?” Blake yelled, thumping his palm against the van.
Lurching to a stop, the van’s side door slid open. Blake’s mind raced to process what was happening as he found himself confronted by a thug wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and dark sunglasses.
“What up, Blake Hunter? My friends have some business they would like to discuss with you,” Teneil said, peering down at Blake from an elevated position in the van and presenting a smile that contrasted with his gangster look.
Blake knew this wasn’t a typical street jacking. Street gangs conducted cowardly drive-by shootings, this guy called first. “Are you the punk who hung up on me?” he asked. Blake had taught himself not to take crap from anyone in Los Angeles. He knew some might question his sanity, but he also knew letting someone get the best of him without at least flexing his muscles would leave him stewing for days with pent up frustration.
Before Teneil could enter a war of words with Blake, Rebecca’s voice interjected from inside the van, “Knocking on your door would have been a logical approach, but you never know who’s watching.”
Although Professor Eldred had assured Blake his research associates were legit, he suspected the professor was somehow in trouble, and these people in the van were part of it. Poking his head through the van’s sliding door, he saw the woman who had just spoke on a rear bench seat.
“You’ll be okay. Go lock your bike back up and get in,” she said.
Their approach was unorthodox, but their actions also seemed somewhat friendly and sincere to Blake. Deciding to cooperate, largely out of sick curiosity, Blake obliged. He sat in a captain’s chair and swiveled to face Rebecca, but he couldn’t see any distinguishing features on her face because she wore a scarf over her head and dark glasses. The whole scenario seemed too unbelievable to be real.
Teneil slid the door shut and Jimmy eased the van down the alley and began a leisurely drive around Blake’s neighborhood.
“I truly considered knocking on your front door and talking to you in your house,” Rebecca said in a kind, reasonable tone, not her usual bossy style, “but this is a serious situation and our anonymity is crucial. I also can’t assume your apartment is a safe place to talk.”
“You have a name?”
“Not for now. Just call us your friends from Nevada.”
“Friends?”
“We can help one another. I’m taking a great risk in exposing our operation to you, but we have done some research on you, your interests, and your associates.”
“I’m a student. I work for one professor, and I don’t have any associates.”
“I understand. We’re actually interested in Professor Eldred’s associates, and you’re the safest link.”
“I don’t know anything beyond what I do for the professor.”
“Let me pose it to you like this: we have information to give, but no one to give it to. You are looking for information, but before now, you’ve had trouble getting what you want. I’m hoping if our intentions are similar, we can join forces.”
“My intentions are good,” Blake said, “and I know the professor is a good man, and assume his intentions are good too.”
“We’ll make that determination as we progress.”
“That’s great,” Blake said, “but so far you’re speaking in general terms. You’re going to have to get specific and tell me what this is really about.”
Rebecca and Trace had planned how she would present their team. Blake’s assertiveness and confidence made a good first impression on her, and she began to understand Desmond’s interest in him. “My associates and I have connections to the Dreamland facility in Nevada, and a second underground facility in the Papoose Valley codenamed The Dark Side of the Moon. It’s this second facility where the government is hiding technology that I call beyond conventional comprehension.”
A tingling shiver crept up Blake’s back; she had hooked him. Her words were enlightening, a confirmation. His interests, which sometimes seemed like a waste of time, now had new possibilities. “Beyond conventional comprehension,” he repeated, pondering her choice of words. “I’ve heard others speculate about that region. Their descriptions often used phrases like not of this earth or extraterrestrial.”
“I’m not here to speculate, Blake.”
“Are you going to tell me about little gray aliens? Antigravity propulsion systems? Back engineered spacecraft? Because, to be honest, that’s what the professor had me researching.”
“I’m aware of your work. If I thought it to be outrageous, I wouldn’t be here. I’ll start by saying this about the technology: it’s not limited to one project, such as back-engineering a spacecraft, or one specific development like antigravity. Papoose is home to a few operations — Unacknowledged Special Access Programs. But even if you knew everything about Area 51, you’d just be scratching the surface. There are multiple ongoing projects, eclipsing everything known by mainstream science, all of which combine to pose a devastating threat under their current covert conditions. Origins of the technology and the security measures surrounding it, in some cases, date from the late forties and early fifties. We haven’t yet ascertained if anything relates to the Roswell incident and little gray men; the timelines may be a coincidence. What we do know, however, is in the fifties, after developing the atomic bomb, the government possessed technology they wanted to protect with greater secrecy than what they used at Trinity. Participation in new programs was minimized and control was placed in the hands of small isolated operations. While we can only assume the discoveries can benefit society if made public, there’s no debate that extreme secrets are dangerous when controlled by groups not responsible to the public. Nothing in our constitution justifies the ongoing secrecy, and that’s the premise behind our intentions. Are you interested?”
“You knew I had an interest before coming here?”
Handing Blake a piece of paper, she said, “You should find this interesting. Consider it an act of good faith on our behalf.”
Blake studied the paper’s contents:
D + 3He + p(14.7meV) + 4He(3.7meV) + 18.4meV
“Can you make sense of that?” she asked.
“It’s a formula: deuterium and helium.”