Groom Lake, Nevada, USA
Schneider walked down the dark corridor at a brisk pace; his heart rate increased with each step. He tried his best to act normal: he couldn’t risk bringing any unwanted attention to himself. His breath caught in his throat when a couple of MPs emerged from a connecting hallway, but they just walked straight past him. No one has suspected anything yet…so far so good. Almost there now. Steadying himself, he dug his right hand into the pocket of his white coat and pulled out the stolen access card. Moments later, he came to a stop, turned his head right and looked at the only thing that stood between him and his prize: a chrome colored, steel door that gleamed in the low light. The black, bas relief stamp at the top read PU-38.
It was the most secure room in the facility; this is where they kept the stuff that wasn’t supposed to exist. Most people that worked down there called it “section thirty eight” and had no idea what was in there. But Oscar knew; he had known for some time now. Beads of sweat began to dot his brow and he wiped it with the back of his hand, access card gripped tight. He turned and faced the door directly, took a deep breath and then glanced left and right. He ran the tip of his trembling finger over it, as he listened for the dreaded, and inevitable, intruder alarm. But there was nothing except for the sound of his heavy breath and pounding heart. Deciding to act while still brave enough to do so, he slid the access card through the door swipe with such force it almost snapped in two.
PU-38 was in the sixth level underneath Area 51; special, Above Top Secret clearance was required to gain access to Level 6. Not even the President knew about Level 6: Presidents were told the facility only went down three levels because that’s all they needed to know –Exopolitics was not part of their job description. Those were the levels that primarily dealt with back engineering crashed extraterrestrial craft. The real work was done at the lowest three levels, however: it was there that they kept live Aliens in vats; it was there that they did their bizarre cloning experiments, which even attempted Human and Alien crossbreeding…and many other things of this nature.
Dr. Oscar Schneider II, a forty five year old physicist that had been recently transferred from Level 3 to Level 4, had managed to get access to the infamous Level 6 by slipping some tranquilizer into the morning coffee of Dr. Cameron, head scientist of Projekt Ubermensch, and taking his security card. He’d planned this for several months. Each morning, before everyone started their day, all but a handful of Area 51 staff flocked to the cafeteria situated on the ground level. For security reasons, there was no food or drink allowed in the underground levels, except for limited amounts of water, and they were not permitted to go out during their lunch breaks either. So it was common practice for most personnel to have large helpings of breakfast and plenty of coffee in the café before their shifts began.
Oscar managed to put the tranquilizer pills in Dr. Cameron’s coffee, as well as a diuretic (water pill), which forced the geneticist to go to the restroom not soon afterwards. Dr. Schneider had experimented with the two medications a great deal and added just the right doses. The plan was for the tranquilizers to take effect around a couple of minutes after the water pill: the head scientist of Level 6 would go under while he was in the restroom and Oscar would be there to tie him up, gag him and stick him in a cubicle before anyone even realized what had happened. And the plan had worked. Flawlessly. He didn’t know what would happen when Cameron woke up, however. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d gotten past the iris and fingerprint scanners at the Level 6 entrance by using a synthetic iris and thumb, reverse engineered from the original samples he secretly obtained from Dr. Cameron months earlier.
He was now inside room PU-38. The automatic sensors turned on the fluorescent lights above, which flickered and, after a few seconds, illuminated the small room. He squinted and, when his eyes had adjusted to the bright light, he saw it: the most important artifact in all of Level 6, and possibly the entire world, which he only knew by its nickname, “the eight ball”. It had been extracted from a downed Alien ship, whose sole survivor was being kept on Level 4. The Alien was a “friendly”, as they called the non-hostile species, and it was the first ever time one of its kind had crash landed, let alone been captured alive. Oscar had been assigned with the special task of interrogating the EBE. The mysterious prisoner communicated via telepathy alone and, over time, he and Schneider came to develop a close bond. Once he’d gained the Alien’s trust, it told him about the special device on its crashed ship and that he needed Schneider’s help to get it into the hands of the right people. The plan was hatched soon afterwards.
He walked up to the reinforced, bulletproof glass window, six feet from the door and edged nearer; he peered through into the adjoining room. Right in the center, and inside a small, rectangular, plexiglass display case, sat the eight ball. It was spherical and transparent, like Clear Quartz, and about half the diameter of a billiard ball. There was no trace of man made milling on the orb’s perfect surface –a construct of a technology most Human Minds could not even begin to comprehend. As he stood there, transfixed as if under a Trance, his earlier unease fell away: the object, which appeared to have a consciousness of its own, began to connect with the deepest recesses of his Soul. In a language that transcended the limitations of linear, 3D space-time, it, for lack of a better term, spoke to him. He could not explain it; he could not understand it…he could not fight it; but it was happening all the same: the Alien sphere spoke to Oscar’s core self and he was changed in a profound, mystical way. He no longer felt any fear, not even the natural fear of death. It was as if he had seen the other side and, upon liking what was shown to him, was not in the least bit concerned about leaving the Material Plane.
Some moments later, he regained his senses and thought back to the amazing Mind Power techniques the friendly had secretly taught him in the past months, and the rigorous training he’d subjected himself to, in preparation for this pivotal moment. This had better work…for all our sakes. He shut his eyes, concentrated for half a minute and slid his hands straight through the reinforced glass as if it was made of water…