Ret Balclass="underline" My friends you will not believe this but I have the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Advanced Defense Concepts and Testing, Dr. Roger P. Reynolds online with us this evening. Great to have you here on the Truth Nationwide, Mr. Deputy Secretary.
Caller: Thanks, Ret.
Ret Balclass="underline" Why are you contacting us tonight, sir?
Caller: Well, you see Ret we have posted all the information we have on the alien menace on our website at www.neighborhoodwatch.gov. Again, that is www.neighborhoodwatch.gov. We would like all the smart folks across the globe that can still access it to look it over. If you have any insights please contact us immediately through the contact lists on the site.
Ret Balclass="underline" That doesn’t sound good, Mr. Deputy Secretary. If the United States Department of Defense is asking for help what does that mean?
Caller: Just the way it sounds, Ret. More than half, nearly two-thirds of the world, our planet, has been overtaken by these alien machines and we have lost contact with those occupied regions. We have rallied our troops, evacuated our cities, and gathered as many brilliant minds as we can find to help solve the problem and stop these alien machines. But we aren’t certain of our chances and will listen to any, and I mean any, advice.
Ret Balclass="underline" I see. Anything else?
Caller: Yes Ret, there is one more thing. We desperately need to speak with one of your regular callers. He uses the name Megiddo on your show. We have reason to believe that Mr. Megiddo is actually a quite brilliant scientist and would very much like to speak with him.
Ret Balclass="underline" You heard it fans. Megiddo, if you are out there, your country, no, humanity needs you…
Chapter 22
Richard and Helena had spent the better part of the last two weeks moving everything they wanted to keep — and everything the Von Neumann probes hadn’t taken — into the mine. Richard patched the hole in the cabin where the stove had been but did not see the need to waste further time on fixing the interior. The cabin had been a convenience and a temporary location from the beginning, but Richard just could not see leaving a gaping hole in the side and roof for the weather to intrude through. It was still a decent shelter and had taken him months to find, fix up, and move into.
After her conflict with the alien machines, Helena had come around on the subject of leaving the cabin for more underground digs. The mine suited her just fine, although she did insist on carrying a large piece of stove wood around with her everywhere she went. She had even carved and sanded down one end of it for a handle and wrapped it with cloth and tape.
Richard at first had thought Helena would be a humorous sight wielding her oversized handmade billy club. But there was something about her slender five-nine Russian frame and accent, her long black hair, her insistence on wearing low cut worn-out jeans and skin-tight tank-tops, no bra, canvas sneakers, and toting around a mammoth war club that gave her a “warrior princess” quality that really got Richard going.
Other than science and solving problems, getting Richard excited was usually a hard thing to do. He even debated with himself at times whether he actually loved her — though he knew it was quite likely that she didn’t really love him. Mutual convenience best described their marriage. He had needed companionship and she needed to get out of Russia. But he found he liked it a lot when she wandered around with her club.
The mine was fully operational at least to within the limitations of the power available by the waterwheel. The little hydroelectric plant that Richard had put together would power the water heater, refrigerator, freezer, a few lights, a television, a computer, and maybe one piece of scientific equipment at a time. Using the backup battery systems at the same time enabled him to power a few more of his scientific instruments. The batteries had to recharge all night. He had hoped for a little more horsepower out of the underground stream, but the flow rate was just too low to create enough torque for instantaneous power needs.
“I wish I could have found enough fissile material to go nuclear,” he said to himself. As it was he didn’t have the power to drive the electron microscope. “Would be nice to do some X rays and some microscopy of your friend.” He nodded at the bot laid out across his workbench at the edge of the entrance into the lab shaft from the main chamber.
“You don’t tink dat you could’ve stolen plutonium and gotten away with it?” Helena peered over the book she was reading and glanced at Richard. He had been quietly working for some time now, but when he spoke out loud to himself Helena had a hard time ignoring him. He was her entertainment.
“Huh? Plutonium? Oh, no. If I did, we would have it, ” he said nonchalantly and smiled through his thick, unruly graying beard at her. “Maybe I’ll figure something else out.”
“Well, de goddamned robots fly. Dey must have batteries or someting in dem.” She popped a handful of shelled pecans in her mouth from the Ziploc bag on the folding end table near the couch. “Ought to use de goddamned ting for sometin,” she said through a mouthful, brushed her bangs from her forehead, yawned, slipped her shoes off letting one dangle from her left big toe, and went back to reading.
“Yes, yes, power. They must have power, but where and how…” Richard had been examining the bot that Helena had killed for him but was not progressing as fast as he had hoped. He needed X rays and electron microscopy and he didn’t have the power for those machines. So, he didn’t have that detailed of data. That is, until he heard the latest posts on the Ret Ball show.
Fortunately, most of the data he wanted had been measured and compiled by a government program and was posted on a website for everyone to see. And oddly enough, they particularly wanted him, Dr. Richard Horton, a.k.a. Megiddo, to look at it and get back to them. Irony.
But Richard didn’t trust the government. No sir, not as far as he could throw them. He knew that they had been covering up the knowledge of the alien probes for a long time. That was no different than the other conspiracies they had performed. There was the Kennedy assassination, the real reason behind Viet Nam and the Gulf Wars, Roswell, the giant floating black triangles, the secrets of the pyramids around the world, remote viewing, Watergate, alien stealth technologies discovered at Area 51, the real reason for double blind drug testing, and countless others.
Their mishandling of these technologies and this knowledge now had humanity in a bind. It was their fault. And now they wanted Megiddo to bail them out. Why didn’t they want his help when he tried to operate within the confines of the system? Why had academia run him out of the community? It was their fault — a conspiracy to keep the truth from humanity! But Megiddo was a bigger man than that and he would save Helena and the rest of the world. Well, Helena probably didn’t need saving, but the rest of the world most certainly did.
So he had downloaded the information carefully, analyzing it for government imbedded spybots and other tracking software. Fortunately, he didn’t even have to use the government site. As soon as it was posted, it had been mirrored across multiple servers, including two in which he had inserted trojans that gave him full security control.
Once he had scrutinized it and was convinced that the data was real and bug free, he started studying it. He studied it intensely for several days, stopping only occasionally for a snack or a nap. Helena mostly ignored him and went about her business, but every now and then she would check on him or offer him a sandwich or tell him that he should come to bed.