Groom Lake (21 page)

Despite not paying much attention to Trace’s explanation, Liebowitz caught on quickly to poker and was enjoying himself. While Trace dealt a new hand, Rebecca asked, “So, where’d you go to school, Aaron?” She knew the answer, and a great deal more, but wanted to make it appear otherwise.

“School was never my thing. My thoughts always drifted elsewhere while I waited for the other kids to catch on. I was the smartest kid in high school, but had a terrible GPA. My only collegiate option was community college, with some of the same souls who made high school intolerable. So I enrolled at a trade school.”

Liebowitz quit talking and picked up his cards, leaving his educational background at that, not telling them how he had mastered computer classes. Upon graduating, the career center arranged an interview for him with the Navy. Nothing exciting: a low-level civilian job programming and managing databases. He got the job, placing his talents in Big Brother’s realm where his existence, performance and talents were more readily visible to supercomputer tracking than had he stayed in the private sector.

Jimmy, Rebecca and Trace folded out of the next hand, leaving Liebowitz and Teneil to battle for the pot.

“Looks like Aaron might win his first hand,” Rebecca said jeeringly.

“Tshhh!” Teneil said in disgust before adding more chips to the pot. “This is my hand to take.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Liebowitz argued in disbelief. “Aren’t you paying any attention? You can’t win this hand.”

“What?” Teneil asserted, taken aback by his candor.

“Unless you’re cheating, you can’t win this hand.”

“He’s bluffing,” Rebecca explained. “It’s part of the game.”

Frustrated, Teneil insisted, “I’m not cheating or bluffing. I’ve got me a damn good hand, and I’m bout ready to throw it down and clean your trade-school ass out.”

“What’s the point of bluffing when I know what he has?” Liebowitz asked Rebecca.

“How do you know what I have?”

“I saw the cards.”

“You didn’t see my cards. I’m holding these mothers in tight.” Teneil flapped the cards against his chest.

“I didn’t see them in your hand,” Liebowitz explained. “I saw them after the last round. We all did. I guess you guys weren’t paying attention to their order, or that Trace didn’t shuffle the cards. He just picked them up and cut the deck. All I have to do is look at my hand and I know how they were dealt. The best you could have is three jacks.”

Dumbfounded, they all stared at Liebowitz in amazement, except Teneil, who tossed his cards on top of the chips, revealing his three jacks. “Man, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. But somebody had best start shuffling the damn cards.” He stared at Trace. Liebowitz showed off his full house and took the pot.

“Forget shuffling,” Jimmy said. “We should take our new buddy into Vegas and hit the casinos.” He exchanged eye contact with Trace and Rebecca; Liebowitz had just confirmed what a good catch he was.

Liebowitz smiled. He liked the fact that Jimmy called him their buddy. He had few friends. His lack of social interaction made him forget most people’s mental inadequacies. What seemed so obvious to him was incomprehensible to most. He promised to himself that he would be more careful, not wanting to offend anyone, especially Teneil with his fiery personality.

When Liebowitz wasn’t looking, Trace winked at Rebecca who excused herself.

Behind the bar, Rebecca turned on a frequency broadcaster and it began emitting a silent, but strong 425-megahertz signal that bounced between the basement’s cinderblock walls, affecting Liebowitz like a silent and invisible airborne virus. The signals worked by hypnotic suggestion, combining with the lithium in his blood to put him in a relaxed conscious sleep. The actions around him seemed like a dream, as if he had dozed off watching television, still hearing the broadcast, but creating a different picture in his mind.

Trace and Teneil retrieved an electroencephelograph and electrocardiograph from behind cabinet doors. They placed the equipment on the poker table, which Jimmy had cleared. Rebecca then began attaching electrodes to Liebowitz’s head and chest. Finally, Jimmy lowered a hood over his head. Liebowitz sat motionless as Rebecca slowed the pulse on the frequency broadcaster. The changing tones merged the brain waves of his left and right hemisphere, inducing him to fall further into a state of altered consciousness—a deep sleep state. Rebecca had achieved a similar state with Skyles, but through hypnosis alone, and he exited hypnosis prematurely because she failed to use tonal frequencies. Seeing Liebowitz respond to the 425-megahertz signal reassured her that hypnotizing him wouldn’t cause another mishap.

She first gave him directions about how to interpret the evening: not to remember the hypnotism; only to remember playing cards; they were nothing more than his poker buddies.

The final preparatory step was crossing the bridge that would give Rebecca access to the memories in his controlled state. “Listen closely, Aaron …” she said, readying him for his password, “… Tycho Brahe.”

His neck straightened under the hood, as if he had been aroused, but he remained silent.

“Tycho?” Rebecca asked, summoning a response.

“What’s going on? Who are you?”

“Copernicus sent me.” She knew Damien Owens as Copernicus, having also heard his codename on the recordings from Ben Skyles’ house.

“Where’s Copernicus?”

“He couldn’t be here. There have been further complications with the program, similar to what he tested you for at your house recently. I’m a psychologist and I’ll be administering some more tests to ensure your continued safety.”

“My memory is fine. I told Copernicus there’s nothing wrong with me.” Liebowitz was assertive, a dramatic change.

“I understand …” she cautiously pieced together her ad lib answers, “… but it’s essential that I make sure there haven’t been any changes. I’ll be testing you for subtle gaps in your memory that may suggest you are susceptible to the problems we’ve discovered in others. If you’ve been affected, you wouldn’t realize it until the problem reached a threatening level.” He didn’t reply, and the hood prevented Rebecca from gauging his reaction. “Are you okay?”

“I’m waiting for you to start.”

Rebecca anticipated more resistance, maybe a question about the hood, but also knew he could have been conditioned for such unorthodox treatment. Surprised by his obedience, she studied her list of questions: “I want you to walk me through a typical work day. Let’s start with your first memory in the controlled state, and give me details.”

“My day starts on the underground shuttle. I sit in the car five or ten minutes. I’m always alone. I go straight to my office, passing two control points, requiring retina and palm scans. My operating plan for the shift has already been prepared and is waiting my attention. When I finish my assignments, I leave. My memories end like they started, on the shuttle car. As for my workday, it varies. Sometimes I work a few hours; sometimes I’m there a few days.”

“And where is there? Tell me where you work?” She tried sounding authoritative, focused on remaining unfettered by his answers, no matter how revealing or shocking they might be.

“The Dark Side of the Moon.”

“And where is The Dark Side of the Moon?”

“At the end of the tunnel.” His vague response suggested that he didn’t know details unrelated to his assigned tasks.

“The tunnel that leads to Papoose Valley?”

“If you say so; to me it’s point A and point B with a tunnel connecting the two.”

Trace knew his shuttle ride originated in Groom Lake’s main hangar, below ground. The tunnel would have to be at least ten miles long, but he knew that was possible; at the Nevada Test Site they had used large tunnel-boring machines to network miles of manmade tunnels and caverns. And now Trace and his team had a codename for the facility: The Dark Side of the Moon.

“Are there entrances to the facility besides the tunnel you described?” Rebecca asked.

“There’s a silo opening used for mongooses and hoots.”

Trace knew mongoose was radio lingo for helicopter. Hoot, however, was an unfamiliar term.

Rebecca received a note from Trace: “What’s a hoot?”

“For someone in charge of administering such a sensitive test, I’d think you’d know more about the answers.”

She hesitated, knowing her ignorance would show if she engaged in a conversation about the facility. “Any response to the questions besides the correct answer may be viewed unfavorably. Understand?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Very well. Now then, what is a hoot?”

“Hoot is the codename for the birds we fly.”

Rebecca made eye contact with Trace. She knew he would want details on the hoots, but they had decided not to let curiosity steer them onto spontaneous tangents. She watched Trace swirl his finger, signaling her to continue with the questions on the list. Patience, he had told her, would be the key to a successful interrogation. He wrote new questions, giving more thought to each than if Rebecca had asked a question spontaneously.

“What’s your job?”

“I calculate atmospheric windows and develop flight plans for lunar deployments and stellar flights.”

Trace’s next note said to probe the flights.

“What is being deployed to the moon?” she asked.

“The hoots.”

“Tell me what technology a hoot is.”

“You tell me. I’ve only seen them on a monitor.”

“You call them flights, not landings. So you must know something about the technology.”

“It’s not a rocket. Half the state of Nevada would see the contrails, and it doesn’t need a runway. It’s a hoot. That’s all I know.”

“Where do you conduct most of your work?” she asked, continuing with her original list of questions.

“It varies, but mainly in my office and the control center.”

“It’s important I understand who you remember associating with. Tell me about the people you interact with at the control center.”

“I wouldn’t call it interacting. I have a chair in the control center and monitor the computer systems during flights, but for the most part, I sit and listen.”

“Have you ever had any interaction with Dreamland Control at Groom Lake?”

“Never. When we operate, they’re in a stand-down mode to minimize the number of people watching the sky. My personal interactions are typically limited to Copernicus. I correspond with others via computer, and sometimes phone lines, usually with contacts at SPACECOM. Other than that, I’m alone, even in the control center. I have a booth and my back is always to the mission commanders.”

Trace motioned for her to wait while he finished scribbling another note.

Reading his question, Rebecca asked, “Why do you communicate with SPACECOM?”

“They help me in planning the entry and exit windows so we can fly undetected.”

Liebowitz had just independently confirmed for Trace something Desmond had been claiming about SPACECOM for years. He looked to Jimmy who nodded, as it was confirmation for him too.

“What about Ben Skyles?” Rebecca said. “Do you know him?”

“No.”

“What about Sidereus Nuncius?” she asked, using Skyles’ codename.

“I know Sidereus.”

“Is he a slim, athletic man? Dark hair, in his thirties?”

“Never seen his face. We talk over the radio.”

“Do you know what he does?”

With a hint of admiration, maybe envy, Liebowitz said, “Sidereus flies a hoot. He’s an astronaut … and on many missions he walks on the moon.”

“Tell me what you know about the moon, and why Sidereus is being deployed there.”

“Are you sure I should be talking about this?”

“This is the best way to assess your susceptibility to the memory gaps we’ve discovered. It may be an unusual request, but this is an unusual situation.”

“Moon rocks,” Liebowitz stated. “They’re bringing back loads of moon rock in the hoots.”

“Tell me the significance of the moon rocks.”

“The moon is littered with an element called helium-3, which is rare on Earth; we have helium-4. So we bring back the moon rocks and extract the helium-3 element.”

Liebowitz’s audience listened with stares of surprise and wonderment. Could the US be running a secret space program from the Papoose Valley?

Rebecca didn’t want to keep Liebowitz in the controlled state much longer. Every additional second was a ticking tempt at fate. She didn’t wait for Trace. “Tell me about helium-3.”

“Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, and is generated by stars, like our sun, which fuse hydrogen atoms together to create helium-4—two protons and two neutrons. However, about one in ten thousand comes out missing a neutron and you have helium-3. The strength of our atmosphere prevents most of the lighter helium-3 atoms from reaching Earth, but not on the moon.”

“And what is the helium-3 used for?”

“Nothing. We’re just stockpiling it.”

“Then tell me why we would go through such extreme measures to stockpile helium-3.”

“Because of its potential. Nuclear power plants fuse atoms together and the byproduct is energy, but the process also creates radioactive waste. With helium-3, however, if fused with deuterium, there’s no waste. Just clean energy. And there’s enough helium-3 on the moon to power the Earth for 10,000 years.”

“Why do we stockpile it instead of use it?”

“The process isn’t perfected yet, but it will be. The challenge is that helium-3 is equally effective in a warhead. Except there’s no long term effects—no nuclear wasteland after the mushroom cloud. We could bomb the Arabs today and take possession of their oil fields tomorrow. The problem is, some other country can bomb us and build a house on our purple mountains majesty.”

“How do you feel about keeping something like this secret?” Rebecca asked.

“I feel the same as Copernicus and everyone else involved with this program does. The technology is in safe hands with us. We don’t plan on building a bomb, but if someone else does, we’ll build a bigger one. It’ll be the Cold War all over.”

“How do you know another country doesn’t have similar programs?”

“They do. It’s not as big a secret as you might imagine. All the signs exist that others are aware. Half a dozen countries are building shuttles for lunar landings. What they don’t know is that the US—our program—has claimed ownership of the moon. They try and bring back helium-3 and we’ve got hoots that can stop them. I’m proud to be in this program. In a conscious state I don’t have the personal gratification of knowing how important my work is, but in this state … I’m a patriot … serving my country … and there’s nothing wrong with my mind, Lady.”