Owens strolled the length of beds, reviewing the medical devices monitoring each man. All were in a peaceful unconsciousness: Val Vaden, Grason Kendricks, the congressman, Blake Hunter, Trevor Sinclair, Professor Bertrand Eldred, Desmod Wyatt and Trace Helms. He felt no pleasure, eagerness or excitement about the daunting task in front of him. A task he would handle alone before burying the memories deep in his soul. A task that could keep him busy for days, or a week, and longer if he discovered there were more individuals involved. He spent extra time studying the congressman, contemplating the implications if his actions weren’t flawless.
Maybe someday there wouldn’t be the need for this type of security. But that day wasn’t today. For now Owens reminded himself of the larger picture: the military’s secret space program. A program designed to protect the country, and the need to keep it secret to limit other countries from following suit by trying to stake claims on the moon.
PART 7
CHINA MOON
CHAPTER 55
I don’t know if the literary gods would bless my style or presentation, or even say there is cohesiveness in the way I have asked my story to be told. Certainly my high school English teacher would challenge the switch in tense from third to first person, but I felt it important for you to understand the events of 1994 in a light that did not overtly manipulate you into bonding with a particular character. Instead I wanted you to see each for their independent patriotic beliefs, as they each believed them to be, and determine your own allegiance to a particular cause. Now, however, times and intentions have changed, and I find it imperative for you to understand the current state of affairs related to this quagmire.
In my Letter of Introduction, I told of my mental challenges, which lasted over a decade. What I did during that time, and what the others in the story did are really not relevant. But it did take a decade for me to remember the events of 1994, and I didn’t remember on my own accord.
I had been living with my mother in the house and room I grew up in. I subsided on a disability check my mother deposited and used for groceries and basic necessities. She still worked, not for money, but I suppose to give herself a break each day from seeing me stare at the television with little drive or care about my future and past. Diminished mental capacity from a nervous breakdown was how the government explained my condition to my mother, and who was she to question or understand any more than that?
Sometime in 2003, I began seeing a therapist who paid house calls. I assumed my mother had arranged it, and she had assumed it was the government offering a caring hand, but the government stopped caring about me long ago. Jasmine, my therapist, was a beautiful Asian woman. She took me places, like field trips to San Diego and Nevada, sometimes meeting others she counseled.
My mind was like a storage facility, each memory locked behind rows and rows of steel doors. Jasmine was slowly beginning to open those doors, letting me sift through the memories sequestered in the doldrums of my mind. I won’t delve into the technological details of how she did it. The government’s mind control programs and technologies were addressed earlier. Rest assured, in the years after 1994, even with the national focus on the Middle East and presidential affairs and ineptitudes, a few groups around the globe furthered the science.
So Friday, May 21, 2004, I’m sitting on my bed watching television, a packed duffle bag at my side, and Jasmine arrived to take me on another field trip.
“Hello, Wormmeister,” she said, her usual greeting for me. At one point it had a subliminal implication, like a pass code, but no longer. I already understood the purpose of this trip. Jasmine had unlocked enough doors that I could put the pieces together.
We drove to the airport, neither of us saying much as we considered the seriousness and implications of our journey. I also knew while we drove that my bond with Jasmine was more than a therapist-patient relationship. I first met Jasmine in 1994. She went by the name of Janice back then. We shared the same psychological demise at the hands of the shadow government. I, Ben Skyles, knew Jasmine as the Chinese intelligence operative who tried to seduce and manipulate me when I worked for the government at Groom Lake.
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.