Room 3-14 was on the penultimate level of S4. Below was where Abra was contained and the other biological samples were preserved in glass containers shaped like bullets. His official duties were a box ticking exercise. He would review each research station, check for signs of progress or promise that were absent from reports and consider the potential for progression. His strategy was already decided. He would recommend that work on reverse engineering of power and propulsion, interface and systems, and material science had to be continued as they were all interdependent. The likely outcome would be a reduced budget in the face of little return, which he would then shift to the contractor model in favour of the militaristic approach that had held them back for years. His portfolio here was shrinking unless they could make progress but he had to be realistic. The ESP work helped compensate but overall his workload was decreasing. In a year or two he might be reassigned or be offered the opportunity for a quiet departure. His powerbase was in terminal decline.
He pondered his true objective: to somehow advance communications with Abra. It was an interrogation in which he was the one being interrogated. They had not managed to exert any power over Abra and had no understanding of its motivations or desires, meaning that they had no leverage. If Abra was a machine of sorts, it may simply not respond to any attempt at negotiation or to threats. Paranoia, as Harriett had said, was what had brought them to this point and pervaded the entire way they managed the situation.
His presence in S4 was a multi-layered deceit. His official Burbank identity was false, his purpose was hidden and his role was a high risk, self-induced perversion of his actual position. Sanctioned deceit had enabled him to enter the base and pass the challenges of the access station. Without Burbank’s level of clearance, he would have been subject to armed escort. Ironically, it became easier to deceive people because of their own assumptions about what his unescorted status and presented clearance level must mean, in their eyes, not his. Compartmentalisation was not just a concept. It became a state of mind that set up boundaries to mentally hem in people. He exploited this. Who Harold Burbank, Senior Lead Research, with full access clearance actually was was a question that they simply wouldn’t ask, because they knew they were not authorised to know.
“Monitoring station,” said the curt voice over the phone.
“May I speak to the ranking soldier on station please? It’s Burbank in 3-14.”
“Speaking, Sir. This is Sergeant Bukowski.”
“Sergeant, I’d be very grateful if you could join me in office 3-14 when you have a convenient moment, please. If you bring an appetite, I’ll be happy to provide lunch, and I promise to get it from the canteen and not just the C-rations we’ve got in endless supply down here.”
The Sergeant was astute enough to accept his first invite to lunch with a high ranking researcher. It had never happened before. At 11:55 he, Corporal Philips and Private Caron made their way down to 3-14, which was a windowless concrete box off the sub-level corridor in the base’s penultimate level. He pressed the button at the side of 3-14’s black metal door. After 10 seconds a loud clunk told him the door’s lock had been disengaged and it was swung open by Burbank. The mid-height, round-faced man smiled warmly and waved him into the room.
“Thank you for coming, Sergeant Bukowski.”
“As requested, Sir. Thank you. What can I help you with?”
“Come in.” Thomas stepped aside to let Bukowski enter, then stepped forwards to address the Sergeant’s escort. “Gentlemen, I appreciate your patience. I’ll do my best to have him back to you soon.”
3-14 was a 5 meter square box. The white walls contrasted in the fluorescent lighting with the dark gray carpet tiles. An oak coloured, steel framed desk sat towards the back of the room, behind which a comfortable recliner chair backed up against the rear wall to give the desk jockey a view of the door. A round meeting table and four folding chairs sat in the centre. The table was covered in a plates and bowls of food from the canteen, still wrapped in cling film. A trolley for the food stood in the corner, its lower shelf covered in cans of soft drinks.
“Well, first things first. I need help with this lot…” he said, waving his hands over the the excessive selection of food that he’d carted from the surface level. Sandwiches, hots, fresh coffee and juices. “There’s pretty much a bit of everything. What you and I can’t handle we’ll deliver to your fellas, unless you think Marvin might fancy it?”
“Thank you, Sir!” He collected a plate from the trolley and began breaking into the sandwiches. “It’ll be wasted on Marvin, Sir! We’ve been trying and offering the whole time I’ve been here. He’s as sensitive about his figure now as he was back then!”
Burbank put his hand on the young Sergeant’s shoulder, interrupting his movement. They looked each other in the eyes as Burbank spoke.
“Now, I’d just like to say that I and everyone I work with is extremely grateful for the great dedication you and your men show down here. We all know that it’s tough, tedious and, well, isolating work with seemingly small reward. Once you get used to the reality of what we’re dealing with here. Thank you, Sergeant. What you do and how you do it is important to this nation’s interests and security.”
“Thank you, Sir, that’s kind of you to say. You’re right, it is strange, although I think most of us see the work and the access as privilege enough.”
“If you’re comfortable with my clearance, I’d be interested to hear your view on interactions with Abra, if you don’t mind.”
They sat opposite each other at the table. Burbank picked a sandwich from a platter and began to eat as he listened to Bukowski’s account. As per the reports, there was no insight that Bukowski could offer. The restricted protocols and limited topics of interaction had led nowhere new. Within a matter of minutes, Bukowski had relayed the tedium of his 18 months at the station.
“Well, Sergeant, today I’m authorised to change the protocol and I need to ask for your assistance with that. Out of respect for you and your position, I’ll explain what I can about the reasons, but you’ll have to forgive me if that’s short. I stress this is for your ears only.” Bukowski nodded silently as he devoured his food. “I’m here to communicate with Abra but under modified conditions. In short, we’re gonna turn off the cameras and audio recorders. The reason is because we are testing a theory based on quantum mechanics. Are you familiar with Schrodinger’s cat?”
“Yes, Sir. It’s in a box, it could be alive or dead, you don’t know until you open the box and take a look. Something about looking being to do with influencing whether it’s alive.”
“Excellent! That’s not on the Sergeant’s course!”
“Well, Sir, we get a lot of time to fill down here, so I fill mine with reading. Given what’s in here, it seems to make sense to read science.”
“It’s my lucky day that I’m with someone on just the right wavelength.” Burbank looked slightly impressed and relieved. “So, our idea is that if there’s a quantum element to Abra, the cameras and recorders as measurement devices may actually be having an effect on his behaviour. We’ve never actually taken this in to account before. So, we’re gonna turn the system off when I try and talk to him. On a simpler level, if he knows that we are always recording and he has any discernible sentiments that we don’t know about, maybe we will change things by turning them off after all this time. Also, we are going to introduce an element of sound. We’re gonna play certain tones to him and I am also gonna employ those sounds myself when I communicate with him. How do you feel about all that?”
Bukowski paused mid-chew as he considered the proposal in context.
“It’s certainly the biggest change in protocol in my time here. I can see why you might want to try something different. As far as protocol goes, Sir, you have the clearance and authority, but what about our chain of command and my men’s safety? Practically speaking…” He stirred in his chair and sipped his drink, betraying a degree of discomfort, “…we’d need to agree appropriate monitoring and safety while you do this.”
Burbank reached back and took a black folder from the desk, then handed it to the Sergeant.
“Again, Sergeant Bukowski, this is EYES ONLY, and I am empowered to determine that you are cleared to read it.”
TOP SECRET - NORFORN - EYES ONLY
Temporary Authorisation S4 Protocols Governing Entity Interaction
13 Sept, 1975
Temporary authorisation is granted to Burbank, Harold, Senior Lead Research Badge 766-929-E to conduct the following communications profile with NETV01(A).
Vary use of recording equipment at discretion during the following.
Subject NETV01(A) to a selection of audio test frequencies (“music”) to observe responses.
Personally use music during interaction events to investigate effects.
Personally engage with NETV01(A) for exploratory communications per profile NC-00345.
Derive appropriate support in safety protocol variance from S4 personnel. Expectation is nearby physical presence on non-aggressive basis and time window limits.
If appropriate, entry to NETV01(A) containment is authorised in line with profile NC-00345.
Results to be reported directly to Program Leadership.
Authorised by
Thomas Allard III
Deputy Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Special Projects
“My feeling is that we just keep this as simple as possible. I accept that there’s a degree of risk to my personal safety. I accept that.”
“We’ve never actually played Abra any music, have we?” asked Burbank.
“No, Sir. It’s never been in the protocols.” Corporal Philips replied. They were sat in the monitoring station. Bukowski, Caron and Philips were back on their 4 hour afternoon shift. They’d brought the feast with them back up to the station.
“OK, well, we’re all about to witness a first.” Thomas took out a tape marked “HSF” and handed it to Philips. “Can we let Abra know what’s coming?”
“Yes, Sir, you can speak over that mic there.”
Burbank scribbled down a message on his notepad and handed it to Bukowski. “Gents, please read that out to Abra. I would prefer he heard the announcement from you, the local team, for this part of the test.” Each of the soldiers scanned the note.
“Corporal, carry on as Mr. Burbank requests,” ordered Bukowski. On the monitors, Abra was sat cross-legged in the centre of the spacious, furnished containment room that looked like a spartan human apartment with a large window for one wall at the end of which was a floor-to-ceiling, tubular airlock door. In front of the window, in the access corridor, was a table and chair against the window where interactions took place. It was an obscure scene, even to Thomas. Abra was a slender-limbed biped, light grey in complexion, about 3 and a half feet high, with an oversized head, bulbous in comparison to a human. It possessed a gaunt look in that its skin was tight; there was no discernible fat that added to its smooth features. From temples to chin, its face tapered into a soft almost V, in which a small slit passed for a seemingly useless mouth. It had little to no nose to speak of, just two elongated, vertical nostrils in a position that made human sense. The eyes were large, slightly bulbous and uniformly dark. Autopsy had revealed that its eyes were covered with dark translucent lenses, beneath which its actual eyes were similar to those of humans, but with irises that were nearly black. It was difficult to tell each of the four entities apart by looking at them in pictures. Abra was dressed in a simple, tight-fitting body stocking that looked textured and midnight blue under the fluorescent lighting. Electron microscopic analysis of the other suits had revealed a strange, 3D matrix construction in two bonded layers. A layer consisted of alternating thick and thin lines of the material, all structurally bonded. Thinner lines were more dense than the thicker ones. Underneath was a perpendicularly aligned layer of the same construction. The two layers were structurally bonded along some lines and at points that formed a logical pattern, as though it had been manufactured in that entire form or had been welded together. Material analysis demonstrated the suit’s ability to vary its structural density in response to temperature, light and various forms of electromagnetic emissions including radioactivity, which caused the material to adopt uniform thickness or density across its whole structure, while remaining quite pliable. Carbon made up about 35% of the suit. The other constituents had not been identified.
“Good afternoon, Abra. This is Corporal Philips speaking. I hope you’re well today. We would like to let you listen to some sounds. We call this ‘music’. We will play you the sounds for 10 minutes. If you want it to stop, please raise your hand. If you don’t raise your hand, the music will stop after ten minutes. The music will then repeat for another ten minutes.” On hearing Caron’s voice, Abra calmly rose to a standing position and nodded in response to the announcement.
“So,” coached Burbank, “we’ll start the tape and observe with cameras on.”
No discernible reaction was seen for the entire ten minutes. Abra did not object to the sounds played from the tape, which were the full range of Monroe’s Hemi-Sync frequencies.
“That’s his standard response, Sir.”
Thomas took a chinagraph pencil and traced Abra’s position on each of the TV monitors.
“OK, shut off the recording systems then play the tape again, please.”
When the screens and system were brought back up, there had been no noticeable change.
“Doesn’t seem to have done anything, Sir.” A negative test was still a result. They repeated the entire process three more times but to no effect. That the sounds did not invoke an obvious rejection in Abra was some of what Thomas wanted to know.
“Gents, I’m going to prep for an interaction, but there’s little point in me pretending. I need your help and advice.” Thomas had nothing to lose and it was foolish to ignore the men’s experience. “I feel nervous and I don’t want to carry that feeling into the meeting. Despite my knowledge, it’s still a strange and daunting experience for me. Please can you give me your advice about interactions?”
“We get that, don’t we, Sarge?” Philips’ sympathy was a relief. The men dropped the formalities at Thomas’ request and talked openly about what they had experienced and felt. They had all come to terms with Abra’s appearance and alien nature. People who had struggled in some way with that had always quickly spiralled into a negative state and this appeared to contribute to negative repetitive behaviours. After that, there was shock from telepathic communication; although the sensation was just like hearing, it was the notion that this was occurring directly in one’s brain that could lead to fearful or defensive feelings. Closing one’s eyes was the simple, primary means to normalise to telepathy.
“For me,” said Caron, “I’ve got zero beef with the little guy and I feel sorry for him that he’s down here. I wouldn’t want to be him, so I try to just be nice to him. Shall we tell him our secret?” They eyed each other. “It can’t hurt, can it?”
“It’s like this…” said Philips. “We’re just three grunts, but we’re looking after a goddamn alien in an underground base. That’s nuts. We’re no one, by anyone’s standards, but in actual fact the Army or DoD or whoever has made us ambassadors for the human race! That’s crazy, when you think about it. We’re all really privileged, right?” The other two nodded and smiled, acknowledging the bizarre reality. “Well, we just tried to act a little bit like diplomats at first, real polite and respectful. We did the interaction tests like we were ordered, but it’s a bit… lame.”
“How do you mean?” asked Burbank.
“He speaks our language and he has a cool ship, and his buddies are dead. He’s come from God knows where and now he’s stuck here. He’s cleverer than us, probably, and the tests have only been about basic stuff. It’s all a bit…”
“Underwhelming,” interjected Bukowski. “We’ve always done the tests as ordered, or just monitored the others and intervened as necessary, but the tests themselves are narrow. All of us apologise to him for the nature of the interactions. We openly acknowledge to him now that we are a bit embarrassed by the whole thing.”
“Does this have any effect?”
“Well, kinda,” said Caron. “None of us have ever entered a spiral, like some of the others. We’re the longest lasting three guys in the interaction teams. We all get a… relaxed… vibe from Abra when we are doing the interaction tests. There’s more going on than those tests, but it’s not all words. There’s… vibes. But we can’t really explore that because the test profiles are just ‘introduce this object, read this script, ask these questions, stop at this time’ or whatever.”
“Yeah, honestly, Mr. Burbank,” said Philips, “do you treat conversations with strangers as a test about one thing, like a ball or a bed or a pen?”
“No, of course not. If there’s a secret here, I’m not sure if I get it yet.”
“We think that we’ve lasted the longest and never had a spiral because we’re sympathetic towards him. We all communicate with respect and politeness and don’t ever feel anything bad or a reason to feel threatened by him. When we escort him to his ship, we are in his physical space. All of us are talking to him, or at least he’s listening to us. If he was ever going to do anything, he’d have done it by now.”
“OK, but what about the security perspective? There’s a concern that telepathy means he can get more from you than just what you want to say. What do you think of that?”
“That was a specific briefing topic when we joined the station,” recalled Caron. “We talked about it a lot, then we kinda ended up thinking, ‘so what?’. If he can read our minds, we can’t tell and what’s he gonna find out? We don’t know that much. We can’t even stop him from reading our minds unless we know what to do. If he’s read my mind, he knows the layout of the base, the security access protocols and all the things I know and I’ve seen, which isn’t everything. And he’ll know about my life, which is pretty limited! He’s never tried to escape and he’s easy to spot!”
“The secret is just to be nice, be cool and be… honest,” said Bukowski.
“About what?”
“About the whole set up. We’re following orders, we have our tasks and we’re not running the show. That vibe… it sort of keeps us all on an even keel, if you see what I mean. We aren’t taking in really negative things with us. It’s all a bit sad when you really think about it.”
“How so?”
“He’s a prisoner, but then so are we,” said Philips. “The difference is that we will finish our sentences and have other things to look forwards to. Does he? We’re all on 40% more pay here, and we’re all saving for college. We’ve got a plan. What’s he got?”
Thomas felt a mixture of humiliation, agreement and extreme caution. What they said made sense within a certain frame of reference, but it was littered with warning signs. None of this was in the reports but it was more valuable than most of what he had read. Candour, it seemed, was the way to make progress.
“I have a serious question for you all. If Abra is a biological machine that is actually a form of sophisticated drone, robot, intelligence gathering machine or something like that, would that change how we should treat him? Assume that he’s here to collect intelligence on Earth and the human race for his controllers, for purposes unknown.”
“It’s too late.” Bukowski’s tone was certain. “If Abra can get here, so can more of them. There’s been no invasion. They can do more than we can, if they wanted to. We read the papers. There’s been a lot of sightings. Hard to know what’s real, but some of them might be. Does his ship have any weapons on board?”
“I can’t answer that, I’m afraid.”
“OK, well, look at it this way. Did we take weapons to the moon?”
“Not overtly and not for any purpose for operations on the moon. We didn’t go as invaders, we went as explorers. Plus, we were pretty certain it was uninhabited.”
“Right, so we didn’t go out in to space looking for a fight. We went to learn and gather intel. That makes every one of our astronauts what you just said about Abra. A kind of intelligence officer. It’s the same thing. The gamble is that we don’t know who Abra is or… his controllers, so we are basically afraid, but we don’t know what we’re actually afraid of.”
“That’s the secret, Mr. Burbank,” said Philips. “We try not to take monsters in our heads to Abra.”
“Yes, I see what you mean and it makes a lot of sense. But, and this is a serious but, what if your sympathies towards him are your weakness and could be exploited. This is a known phenomenon in prisons and interrogations. At the extreme, guards help inmates. Could that be a possible problem?”
“You know, Mr. Burbank, you shoulda come sooner.” Caron smiled and the others joined as they shared a knowing look. “We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this weird ol’ job we got. Boil it all down, and what’re we doing? Trying not to get killed by an alien. After that we do what the orders tell us: monitoring, security and tests. When we do that, we try not to piss off Abra, in case that increases our chances of getting killed. That’s why we act cool and be nice. What you’re saying, we all get. But, it don’t change certain things. If he wants out and he can do that by telepathy and take advantage of us or control us, he’s gonna still have a gun fight or gonna have to deal with every layer of security. If he wants out of the base, where’s he gonna go? His ship’s busted. So even if he uses us, he can only get so far. If he can read our minds, he’ll know some or all of what I’m sayin’. And he’s never tried to do any of it.”
“And another thing,” Philips continued, “is that it’s pretty obvious to all us that if he doesn’t eat, then he’s probably not alive like we think of being alive. He doesn’t take a shit, jerk off or lie down properly either. That don’t change what he hasn’t done.”
“But what about the spirals? That’s a destructive behavioural loop that comes from interactions, so it must come somehow from him,” said Burbank.
Philips shook his head. “We don’t see it like that. That’s never happened to us. You take in what you find and bring out is a little saying we have here. That was in a briefing. So some of it, maybe all of it came from them. Tell him what you think, Paul. Might as well see what Mr. Burbank makes of your theory.”
“It’s a good defence mechanism!” Caron laughed. “Someone starts throwing negative vibes at you and they get themselves so wound up that they end up useless and headbangin’ walls. Someone throws a bit of positivity or love at you and they wanna be your friend for life. When people learn that about you, they keep themselves on an even keel like we do.”
“You put that very well. We considered it in a similar way but…” Burbank tailed off as he hit a limit of their need to know. The reality was that cycling out the affected personnel was their way of protecting them and they had treated the spirals as a projected threat, assuming that Abra had conscious control over the mechanism. This drove the notion that telepathy was a form of potential weapon with possibly greater powers that drove their greater limitations on interactions.
“Mr. Burbank, we have a question for you, if you don’t mind,” said Bukowski.
“Try me. I can’t guarantee I can reply, but I’ll do my best to repay your honesty and insights.”
“Do you and the people you work for see Abra as a prisoner, someone you’re interrogating, or a visitor?”
Burbank sighed. Despite these men’s narrow frame of reference, the question was extremely poignant. “It’s… all of them. He’s all of them. And he’s something else. In some senses, he’s a definite threat and a potential threat. That’s evident from the secrecy of this place and his containment.”
“Right. Well, me personally, I don’t think anything’s gonna change any time soon, if ever.” Caron shrugged his shoulders.
“We’re at loggerheads from the get go, Mr. Burbank.” Bukowski explained. “We want to know who he is, what’s his mission, where he’s from and how his ship works. To get that, we lock him up and treat him like a mushroom. It don’t matter if he’s a machine or a live alien, if he ends up thinking ‘gee, these people aren’t too friendly, they’re jumpy and they assume the worst.’ Why would he tell jumpy people who put him in jail where his home is or give them the keys to his ship? What if he ends up being the guy who led an aggressive and paranoid bunch of humans back to his home and bad things came out of all that? In vibe terms, are we the Fonz or J. Edgar Hoover? What were the Apollo crews’ instructions in case that happened to them?”
“It’s real simple, Mr. Burbank.” Caron said. “If we all make each other jumpy enough to have secrets and wars and all this other stuff, what does that say about how we’d ever deal with aliens? Forgive my sayin’, but I bet you’re not even Mr. Burbank and we’re all on the same side. With everything you know about everything you know, would you really trust humans with the keys to his ship? What are we gonna do with it?”