The Past Is Calling

[F2d5thCav]

Roberts glanced over to the left side of his desk, seeking a particular folder.

"Ah", he thought, "there it is" as he reached to grab it.

Just then, the voice of Adrienne, his admin assistant, came through over the intercom:

Mister Roberts, Line Five. The Past Is Calling.

Reacting automatically, he picked up the handset and punched the fifth button in the row along the bottom of the telephone ...

For a moment, he did not know where he was. It was cold and darkness was closing. Snow all over the place and an uncomfortable sensation of long-forgotten weighty items. Ahead of him, a guttural voice spoke in a commanding tone. Instinctively, he dove into a snowbank just as a loud ripping noise rent the air above, with smacking sounds in the earthen bank behind him. Machine gun! Fear seized him and he curled into a fetal position as a vehicle with a loud motor and squeaking tracks approached his location. More voices in that other language. He realized he was tightly clutching a rifle, but couldn't shake his fear enough to point it to his front ...

A strange high-frequency noise steadily increased in volume and the entire area was suddenly illuminated as if a huge spotlight had been turned on. Roberts looked up as a loud pulsing sound accompanied what looked like elongated blobs of ... light ... energy ... shot over his position and impacted to his front.

Loud explosions and then screams ... and then silence.

But the illumination was still there and increasing in intensity. Finally it seemed centered over Roberts himself, bathing him in brilliant light. Shaking in terror, Roberts stared at the source of the illumination, amazed at how large it was. Putting his rifle down, he forced himself to speak.

"Are ... are you God?"

The "light" suddenly vanished and Roberts closed his eyes and felt as if he was falling.

After a moment, the familiar sound of the office air conditioning system filled his ears. Startled, he opened his eyes and stared at the telephone handset he was fiercely grasping. The line was dead, and he carefully replaced the handset on the receiver.

It took him a moment to stand; he felt shakey. Staggering to the door, he opened it and walked into the reception area. Glancing apprehensively at Adrienne, he mumbled, "I'm taking a short stroll, I'll be back."

Adrienne simply side-eyed him with a mysterious little smile.

-END-

[F2d5thCav]

=2=

Markman regarded the document on the table.

Typewritten: itself a characteristic indicative of an older era.

The contacts they had developed at NARA occasionally payed off.  The document was what they called, with good reason, an OOPART.  It had simply emerged in the archives, at least according to the archivist who was an expert on those records.  Before a month ago, as far as they could determine, the document had not existed.  Yet, today, here it was, with a date indicating it was written in the waning days of World War II.



Markman poured a mug of coffee from the 'Silver Bullet' and began reading ...

- - -
The two jeeps pulled up behind a slight rise, the drivers keeping the vehicles close to the road because of the deep snow.  Lieutenant Raker wordlessly signaled "Tiny" to cover an obvious avenue of approach with his Browning Automatic Rifle.  At the jeep, Miller had trained the .30-caliber machine gun to cover a trail leading into the forest.  Pointing to Kline, Raker grasped his carbine and indicated they should move forward.

The mission statement had been ambiguous.  "Something" involving lights and explosions had happened to the front of the 1st Battalion, and Raker's I&R Platoon was tasked with assessing the incident.

Raker and Kline moved forward in short bounds, one covering the other as they moved.  As they came around a bend in the road, Raker stopped, taking in the scene before him.

Something like fifteen German soldiers lay dead in the snow, ahead and along the sides of an assault gun, which was clearly out of action.  There were no shell or bomb craters, no sign that mines had detonated.  Just dead men and a wrecked self propelled gun.

Kline examined one of the corpses.  The man's Wehrbuch stated he had been in the SS mountain infantry.  But the wound ... like nothing Kline had ever seen.  There was a big part of his torso gouged out in a neat cut ... but no blood on the ground.  It was as if the wound had been immediately cauterized.  Raker stared at the wrecked gun.  The battle damage was very odd.  There was a spherical chunk of it missing by the gun mantle that included a complete and large penetration of the frontal armor.  Clearly there must have been considerable heat involved, as the ammunition inside the vehicle had detonated and cracked its hull.

Raker and Kline checked the other corpses.  Similar "cauterized" wounds and no blood.  The two men pulled back to the jeeps, eased onto the icy road, and slowly made their way back to friendly lines.
- - -

Markman clucked his tongue and took a sip of the coffee.  The description of the wounds reminded him of mutilation reports, although those were usually more precise.  Whatever had happened, it sure as Hell wasn't caused by weapons fielded by the Army in 1945.  Thanking the archivist, he requested the document be scanned and sent to him via the classified email system.

One more piece of the puzzle, he thought.

=2=

Cheers

[F2d5thCav]

=3=

Markman took a seat in his cubicle and logged into his workstation.  Standing out in his list of emails was one with a shouted subject line:

HEADGAME

Messages with that as their subject were from a special information feed.  A by-product of IC programs involving psychiatrists and psychoanalysts was that many of them had been recruited with the sole mission of reporting interesting or unusual patients and cases.  From mundane reports concerning persons of interest to accounts of high strangeness, the HEADGAME feed provided a variety of tips that were often missed by conventional intelligence collection methods.

Markman clicked on the message, and began reading.

Holy Cr**, he thought after reading the first paragraphs; This is no coincidence ....  A certain Charles Roberts had a run-in with the unknown and was so disturbed by it, he called on a psychiatrist.  The details related by Roberts dovetailed very well with the OOPART report he had seen the other day at NARA.  No, thought Markman, that wasn't God, Mister Roberts.  Far from it.

Picking up the handset of a yellowish-gold telephone, he dialed a four-digit number.  His supervisor, as usual, did not pick up, so Markman summarized his finding to her voicemail.  His final statement underlined a concern all of the people in his work group felt: "They're getting bolder."  And how, he thought.

=3=

[F2d5thCav]

=4=

As Markman sat before his boss, he was, again, dismayed by her skepticism.

While her appointment to head the division in which he worked had been disparaged as "equal opportunity in action", he was well aware she was very sharp intellectually.  It was just that she held preconceived notions with which she was unwilling to dispense, and in the field Markman worked in, that kind of bull-headedness was a disadvantage.

What she wanted was a neat and orderly world; one which comported with the standard histories of the postwar era.  What Markman and his colleagues had been try to convince her of was a reality altogether different.

"Look, Markey", she said.  "My grandfather was a black man in what was a segregated American military at the time.  He was in a disadvantaged group, yet he and his fellows bested the toughest soldiers Germany had to offer at a town called Crossen ... I mean, America won completely in 1945 ... yet, you're trying to tell me that Germany was far ahead of us in terms of technology.  If that is so, then why didn't they win World War Two?"

Markman sighed.  Where to begin?, he thought.  He recalled reading the report of a senior British officer who had been tasked with the recovery of German high technology as the Reich collapsed in 1945.  His words had been stark: "We won the war with no time to lose."  The implication was clear-- the Germans had projects underway, that had they matured, would have completely altered the nature of warfare as it was then understood.

"Boss", he said, "I hear what you're saying, but the truth is that some of the research done by the Germans is even today only partially understood.  Yes, we won the war.  But when our technical recovery teams sifted throught what they had found, they realized the Germans had looked into topics that were completely unknown to both us and the Soviets.  None of this is as straightforward as it has been made out to be."

She was staring hard at Markman, yet, her skepticism seemed a bit dented.  "Okay", she said.  "Educate me on this topic, Mister Markman."

=4=

---

=5=

Markman spoke up as his supervisor stared at him.

"Well, to give one example.  You may know that when our physicists theorize about space-time, they use mathematics as a way of modeling how it works."

She nodded her head.

"The German approach was different.  They rejected what they called Jewish science" ...

Her head pulled back.  "Say what?"

Markman nodded.  "Yeah, their ideology tainted almost everything in their society, to include pure science.  Anyway, their approach to exploring space-time was much more hands-on.  They didn't want to model it at all-- they wanted to gain control of it and change its characteristics at a given point.

"Why?"

"Some of the German scientists believed there were worlds parallel to our own that we were normally unaware of, yet that could be accessed if one knew how do it.  Another way of describing what they were attempting was interdimensional travel.  They didn't want to imagine such a door existed, they wanted to kick it in so they could access those other worlds!"

Her gaze had become one of concern.  "And did they succeed?"

"The Germans?  We're not sure, but we think that although they made progress in their research, they never actually got that 'door' open.  Of course ..."  Markman's voice trailed off.

"Of course what?"

Markman grimaced.  "A bunch of Nazis disappeared after 1945.  Some of them could be tracked, some of them resurfaced in other parts of the world.  But some of them ... never seen again.  I don't know if you ever watched the original Star Trek series on television ... anyway, there was one episode in which the characters encountered a world modeled on the Third Reich.  I can assure you that several figures in the community were highly incensed when that episode came out.  No one believed the producer and writers came up with that on their own ... there was some kind of leak regarding the analyses of just what the Germans had been able to accomplish with their space-time research."

She shook her head.  "I don't like where this discussion is going."

=5=

[F2d5thCav]

=6=

When Markman arrived at the office, his division chief was waiting for him in his cube.

"Hi Boss!"

She scowled.  "Good morning.  I need your help.  I got a call at oh-dark-hundred that we have a VIP coming today and I have to brief him on that ... what did you call it, U-TARP?"

"OOPART".

"Right, the OOPART document that NARA sent over.  Apparently, a SENTCLAVE already looked at it and returned a 100 per cent confirmation.  So, we can start here.  Why does a group of asocial types seeing colors mean anything to us?"

Markman couldn't resist a half-smile.  The first time he had heard about "Sensitives Conclave", he was skeptical as well.  

"Technically, the SENTs are not asocial but autistic, and not just any autists, but a very small percentage of their population who happen to have a unique ability.  After OOPARTs were detected, we realized we had a Hell of a problem -- how could we confirm they were truly anomalistic and not just the product of someone's faulty memory?  By chance, one of our operators had an OOPART on his person when he encountered an autist he knew.  The autist wanted to know why the OOPART document was glowing with an odd color.  Except it wasn't, only the autist, who happened to be a SENT, "saw" the color.  Well, that guy was -very- well examined and the conclusion was that he had an unusual set of physical and mental characteristics that only occur in something like one-one thousandth of the autist population.  It tooka couple of years, but a collection of SENTS was identified and ... eh ... persuaded to perform services for us.  The 'conclave' is just having a group of them indivdually examine a suspected OOPART and to tell us what they 'see' in terms of color.  We look at the individual reports and determine if a majority of them are seeing the same color."

She sighed.  "Okay, Markey.  The meeting is at ten-thirty.  I want you there."

=6=

[SomeJackleg]

a good back ground tune for your story,

[F2d5thCav]

=7=

The meeting with the VIP had heated up quickly.

To begin with, the VIP turned out to be a civilian of some unholy rank that was described as "beyond SES" (whatever that meant, thought Markman).  And he was no clown; definitely a Type-A personality who was used to calling the shots.

The director of the field office had attempted to give him the standard "here is our mission" briefing for outsiders.  In other words, a lot of happy horse-sh** that communicated very little despite the impressive verbiage.

About two slides into the brief, the VIP slammed the table with his hand and uttered one word: "STOP"

"I want the no-holds-barred briefing", he said ... "total disclosure".

Well, that went over with the assembled personnel like the proverbial turd in the punchbowl.  Stammering but still game, the director said, "I'm sorry, but even if I knew to what you are referring, you have neither the requisite clearance nor the need to know!"

At that, the VIP's face turned beet red, and he whipped out a cell phone.  Quickly keying in a number, he spoke to the party on the other end, and then turned the phone over to the field office director.

Listening to the voice on the other end of the line, the director sat up straighter in his chair with his jaw a bit slack.  Shortly, he replied, "Sir. YES SIR, crystal clear.  I understand and will comply."

It was clear to all present that their boss had just gotten a world-class ass-chewing by ... someone ... who was apparently "up there".

Markman's boss was quietly assessing the psychological state of those present.  Markman's only thought was, "Hoo boy.  THIS is going to be interesting."  And then he quietly whispered in his boss' ear: "Hold onto your seat.  The truth won't be fun to hear."

=7=


Cheers

[F2d5thCav]

=8=

The field office director excused himself and left the meeting.  Shortly thereafter, he returned with a red file folder stuffed with documents.  He reached into the folder, extracted the executive summary of the Von Reitershof interrogation, and turned it over to the VIP, saying "We might as well start with this."

The VIP grunted as he scanned the summary, and then asked, "What kind of piloted weapons platforms?"

"Flying disks.  But they were prototypes, and the Germans didn't have enough time to field them as operational systems before the war ended."

"Was their research followed up?"

"Oh yes.  It came to be called 'antigravity', although the eggheads didn't like that term.  The German research, along with a bunch of their scientists were brought to the United States as part of PAPERCLIP."

"And?"

"With our people teamed with them, the research proved quite fruitful ... as in practical flying craft that didn't employ conventional propulsion."

"UFOs?"

"Some of the early reports were sightings of our technology."

The VIP massaged his chin with his right hand.  "So if this stuff was so advanced, why are the world's aircraft still running on technology from the 1960s?"

The director gave him a wan smile.  "Part of the reason was the most advanced technology was reserved for fighting an all-out war with the communists.  But the situation dramatically changed in the 1950s, and that is ... eh ... the other shoe to drop."

Cocking his head, the VIP replied, "I'm all ears."

=8=

[F2d5thCav]

=9=



The Director resumed speaking. "It turned out that several of the German scientists that were brought over had looked into the properties of space-time.  Their ideas intrigued our physicists who were working with them, and so, our people took this research further.  They determined, by using the forces generated by the 'antigravity' ... uh ... 'devices', that local spatial topology could be, well, 'tuned'."

Now the VIP had a sour expression.  "What are you talking about?"

Markman spoke up.  "You may know, sir, that every conceivable location in our universe can be mapped to a set of three coordinates: X, Y, and Z.  The 'tuning' of a door-shaped matrix of such coordinates was the matching of them with a similar matrix in our own universe ... or, in other space-time domains altogether.  In practical terms, it opened a door to elsewhere.  But there was a serious problem: the act of matching the matrices was highly unpredictable and they couldn't know what they were opening a doorway to ... and so, the research was ordered to be terminated."

Markman's boss had turned her gaze on him.  Other than slightly widened eyes, her expression was blank.

The Director slid another document over to the VIP.  The room was silent.  Everyone Markman worked with, with the exception of his new supervisor, had been long briefed on these topics.  And they all knew that more revelations would come before the meeting was over.

The VIP spoke.  "So this research was just stopped?"

The Director pulled a long face.  "Officially, yes, and that was what was believed by our people who headed up classified projects.  In actuality, what happened is that the research continued without authorization.  It was a colossal failure on the part of the security people.  It is difficult now to determine precisely what happened and when."

"Why?"

The Director clasped his hands and looked at the VIP directly.  "The principals all disappeared."

"Disappeared?  You  mean defected?"

"No, disappeared.  Our best guess is that they succeeded in opening a stable doorway to a location that we cannot access ... and they went there, the whole kit and caboodle of them.  No one knows how many voluntarily went and how many were coerced.  But go they did ... and they took their research with them.  This happened in the spring of 1958, and efforts since then to duplicate their research have been unsuccessful."

The VIP was astounded.  "Jesus!"

The Director nodded.  "The informal term for them is the breakaway civilization, or 'BAC'."

=9=


Cheers

[F2d5thCav]

Like a BAC out of Hell ...

- insider quip among Markman's work group

=10=

"So", continued the Director, "not only did this so-called BAC exit our world, they took the knowledge of how to do it with them.  But that's not all: they know how to come back here, and have done so many times since their departure.  We also believe they have agents, sort of "stay-behinds", who have remained here and operate on their behalf."

The VIP was frowning.  "Then this, uh, 'BAC' is the source of UFO sightings?"

The Director nodded.  "Yes, we think many of the sightings have been of BAC technology based on the original German research."

The VIP placed a beefy palm on the table.  "Well, this would be a Hell of a disclosure for the public.  The Nazis took off to La-La Land and occasionally return for reasons unknown."  He rolled his eyes as he considered what he had just heard.

As the Director grimaced, Markman spoke up.  "Not all the reasons are unknown.  Their departure only took certain examples of technology with them, and it is believed that the BAC occasionally needs resources found on our world.  So they make raids to examine the state of our technological development as well as to seize things they need.  And if that isn't problematic enough, the initiative for contact resides entirely with them because we don't know how to open that 'door' they found in the late 1950s."

The VIP narrowed his eyes.  "How many people know about this?"

Now the Director spoke again. "It is a very light and tight group that has the entire story.  While we have been frustrated in our attempts to duplicate their technological feats, we have used the situation for our own purposes.  An example of this has been the use of BAC 'UFO' sightings to provide cover for our own classified research projects, as well as allowing notional 'aliens' to be blamed for abductions made by the BAC. "

The VIP's head hurt.  How am I supposed to brief this to my bosses, he thought.  "Is that all of it ?  Anything else that has been this close hold ?"

The Director's expression was grim.  "Yes, I'm afraid there is more to consider, and its implications  ..."

He was at a loss for words.

=10=

[p358]

If you ever want some help with editing and such like, just ask.

This is really good!

Sir, may I have some more?

MORE!!!

Lol.

P

[F2d5thCav]

If you ever want some help with editing and such like, just ask.

This is really good!

Sir, may I have some more?

MORE!!!

Lol.

P

Funny how that image I uploaded with the "TOP SECRET PENUMBRA" heading suddenly disappeared from that image hosting site.  How absurd.

Let's see if it disappears again

Cheers

[F2d5thCav]

=11=

At this point, a fifteen minute break was called and the participants filed out of the conference room.

Markman saw his boss' expression and followed as she walked down the hall.  Catching up to her, he said: "We all like to think we want to know the truth.  But knowing the truth is rarely rewarding."

She looked distressed.  "Everything we've learned was a lie."

Markman cocked his head a bit to the right and nodded.  "Not everything, but yes, much of the history we were taught has been whitewashed in the name of national security."

Her eyes flashed with anger.  "Security ?  What kind of security ?  The people my grandfather fought are still in operation and waging war against us!"

This time, Markman shook his head.  "It is more complicated than that.  Nazi Germany was defeated.  While some German scientists were part of the BAC 'departure', a bunch of Americans went with them.  In effect, they are a new 'country', although one that is not part of our everyday world.

Boss, you are far from alone in your frustration with this situation.  Practically everything the government has undertaken in reaction to the UFO phenomenon was driven by BAC operations, and most galling is that public confidence in the government has taken serious hits because the BAC succeeded in making the phenomenon look like black operations of the U.S. Government.  Yes ... they made us look like the bad guys because it would be political dynamite for the authorities to admit that a bunch of labcoats pulled off what they did.  The real cover-up was preventing the public from learning what the BAC is and how they came to be.  All kinds of measures were taken to protect that secret."

She looked at Markman.  "I noticed the articles about 'anti-gravity' stopped appearing in publications after 1958 or so."

Markman nodded.  "Exactly, and now you know why.  Part of the security measures were to seed the notion that the program went deep black to explain the sudden absence of the topic in journals.

I won't kid you.  The situation is grave and is growing more so.  We're in reaction mode, which isn't good.  But all indications are that we have far more resources than the BAC ever will, even if they are more advanced in some technical fields."

A frown etched her face.  "I guess we should head back to the meeting."

=11=


Cheers