Is it me, or is it a little unnerving to find the words, “United States” inside a UFO?

With two time-frozen men in hoods.

Generations ago, Ojiichan saw a Japanese boy in a black hood flying a Zero toward Pearl Harbor.

That same Sunday a second-generation Japanese-American guy named Daniel took offence to the bombing of his island.

He dropped school and quit his job to become eligible for the Army, but got classified 4-C…

“Enemy Alien.”

He never gave up trying to get in, and finally, under the novel influence of logic and reason, D.C. allowed 4-C’s to fight.

Shortly thereafter, Daniel met a strange warrior.

In this photo, the phenotype is evident in his right eye, forever determined.

“If you must give your life, do so with honor,” Daniel’s father told him.

In combat, Daniel became a legend. Near the end of his fighting career he found himself prying a live grenade from his own nerve-dead right hand and lobbing it at the enemy with the accuracy of his left.

Then, after an insane one-man charge, right arm useless and dangling, gut shot with an exit wound near the spine, propped against a tree to take pressure off the bullet in his leg, Daniel noticed his men catching up, thinking to carry him from the field before he bled to death.

“Nobody called off the war,” he growled, and ordered them back.

These things are documented. All the witnesses from the Japanese-American 442nd Regiment recounted the details of his bulletproof confidence, the innate tactical genius, the deadly absence of fear. One of my own relatives fought in the 442nd.

Daniel lost his arm, but not before delivering the message of Samurai DNA…

“Honor alone defeats the sociopath.”

Thirty-three of Hitler’s hardened troops saw the signature in the cell that day.

Later, when Daniel became Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and found himself in the heated Iran-Contra hearings where a US President was accused of unconstitutional behavior, our elected Samurai said…

“[There exists] a shadowy government with its own air force, its own navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances and free from the law itself.”

Until now I refused to connect those words to President Eisenhower’s warning of 1961…

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment… and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet… we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”

A black triangle in near space…

US Government policy dictated by an unelected elite?

Rule of thumb – (can I say this in a novel, Talmage?) – Don’t be shocked by UFO’s, just chew before swallowing.

Classified defense contracts are logical in a world that generates Hitlers.

But if we’re hiding zero-point energy from starving kids, perhaps we have a sociopathic technological elite making our biggest decisions.

My mind still resists that notion as I sit on an ancient Indian carpet in space and stare at a triangle that I’ve heard called the TR-3B.

In front of it, a time-frozen corkscrew mist stretches out for six hundred yards into space. It looks like the “camera-shutter artifact” captured on reentry of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, just before she exploded. God rest their souls.

Here’s that “artifact,” from a video documentary…

Despite two punctate stars (forget the circular pointer), NASA says that this photo “suggests” a jiggle in the camera’s shutter. I can’t imagine they believed that, but the cloudless ionospheric lightning theory would have flown.

No?

“What in the world is that purple trail?” I ask Vedanshi who’s in cobra pose to my right. Always yoga.

“Looks like smoke from an unbalanced missile, but I don’t know,” she says. “The chemistry’s buried in phase shift.”

The Ganga’s orb touches the triangle and dims as it moves into the hull.

“They’re ghosts,” Vedanshi says.

The Ganga takes us closer, then eases us slowly through the hull and into an ethereal cockpit. The top halves of the two men come up through the carpet behind us as we study the control panel with our bodies leaning through the backs of the bucket seats.

I notice a clipboard beside the Chief of Staff’s chair. On it there’s a memo from “Paul Adolph Volker, Jr., Chairman of The Federal Reserve Board.” It’s dated, August 21, 1984, and says…

“The economically disruptive nature of zero-point technology demands it be kept from the public. Your ongoing cooperation is imperative. I would remind you that all conversations are monitored.”

“Does The Ganga run on zero-point?” I ask Vedanshi.

“Yes, but she prefers zero-point gravity over the electromagnetic spectrum. She claims it’s the taste, but I think it’s pride.” Vedanshi winks at the carpet beside her. “She has the most advanced technology in recorded history… At least the parts of history that a sixteen-year-old was allowed to read.”

“Did other ships from your era survive the asteroids?” Maxwell asks.

“Probably. But not in stasis. I don’t think anyone but my mom’s techs could rig a ship for controlled quantum stasis. And even they botched it. To do the job right you need a pyramid.”

The Sea of Tranquility peers down from the moon. I could imagine a well-stocked ship going there to miss an asteroid storm. Or maybe they’d go to Mars. A photo of a pyramidal mountain on Mars pops into my head…

“Wait,” I say to her, “you mean the pyramids were used for suspended animation?”

“Among other things,” Vedanshi says. “Most pyramids had multiple talents. My favorite thing was mood enhancement.”

There’s a piece of white paper under the foot of the hooded Chief of Staff.  The name on his lapel badge has no vowels.

“Mood?” Maxwell asks, forgetting to close his mouth.

Vedanshi nods. “Some pyramids were resonant. You could hear them for miles. The Builders made them in sets of three to produce a haunting minor chord. They sang every seventh day. If you sat and breathed slowly, the sound brought new enthusiasm. Spiritual technology. I miss that sound more than… even the garden in my bedroom.”

“You had a garden in your bedroom?” James asks.

She nods wistfully. “You know, this science-spirit dichotomy of your era is bogus.”

James just stares at her – an unusual response from him.

“Have you seen the pyramids at Giza?” I ask and put my forehead against the deck to see if anything’s legible on the paper under the Chief’s statuesque foot.

“I’ve seen images,” she says and leans over to see what I’m squinting at. “You want to go check ’em out in person?” There’s the child in her voice again.

James straightens up his lotus position. “To Giza KFC,” he says solemnly, and raises an index finger. “Make it so.” As his hand falls, I see Captain Picard in my head…

“Let’s do it,” I say as frozen words from 1984 shift in and out of focus, most of the message probably hidden under a wide boot:

“All international bank debt will henceforth be transferred to taxpayers through the International Monitory Fund. Breakaway civilization is re-established.”

The pages of a book I skimmed in an eight-year-old pout, The Creature From Jekyll Island, appear again. Since I was thirty-three days shy of my fourth birthday, I’ve been able to read faster than I can turn pages. I’ve always been able to re-read from memory at least ten times faster than I can read from a book. Bottom line on Jekyll Island?

The Fed is inconceivably evil.

Thomas Jefferson might have agreed…

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt…

The Earth spins beneath us as we descend. The enormous African Continent fills the horizons. Everything becomes a tan blur, but before I can worry that we’re about to crash, we’re looking through double glass doors at the tops of the Giza Pyramids…

“Yesssss!” James hisses. “I’m so hungry I could cry!”

“In a minute I shall cry,” I say, channeling Scarlett O’Hara.

James chuckles, looks at me and shakes his head. “Man, you sound just like her… Hey, anybody got some Benjamins?”

I shake my head, Maxwell checks his pockets and Vedanshi unzips her purse. She pulls out a crisp fifty dollar bill as the glass doors in front of us burst open and a large man walks straight through me at full tilt, stops at the counter behind us and seems to be placing an order in the local tongue.

My heart pounds at the horror of being a ghost. I’m not dead, though, so it shouldn’t be a big deal, right?

James starts chanting, “I’ve never seen a man eat so many chicken wings,” repeating it with increasing anger as Vedanshi smiles at him and giggles.

Now I ask you, how could she get that joke? It’s a spoof on Korn, for heaven sake! She’s never heard of Korn.

Has she?

Maxwell is leaning back on his right elbow managing not to look startled by our first encounter with lunch traffic.

“Tourist info,” Vedanshi says. “The Ganga informs me that there used to be a library under the right paw of The Great Dog. She says there’s a statue similar to it in the very same spot… Called the Sphinx?” She looks at me and smiles broadly. “You want to…”

“We’re eating first,” James says and pounds the rug.

Maxwell holds out his right first, and the boys bump knuckles.

…

M. Talmage Moorehead

…

This in-progress story starts here.

Join my email group here and download my e-book, “Writing Meaningful Page-turners.” Sounds boring, but if you’ve never read a book on fiction writing, this will be the best one ever! For you. So far. I’m pretty sure.

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…

Personal note to fiction writers:

Sweet, this chapter was shorter. Still too long, but next chapter I’ll try to add some conflict and make it yet shorter. I realize conflict is probably the second most important part of energy flow in a story (from book to reader, vs the opposite), so why is my story lacking conflict?

First, it’s early and I’m hoping to build. But let’s be honest, it’s not that early.

OK… plot twists with conflict are best designed to highlight your characters’ strengths, weaknesses and especially big motivational changes. When I manage to do things that way, I don’t feel arbitrary or manipulative. But writing plot conflict in general is energy-consuming because “working memory” is pegged out quickly (at my age) when I put characters in complex grave dangers that leave only a less-than-obvious (but logical) way of escape. Writing in pegged-out mode is exhausting and challenging. I try not to be lazy, but it requires all kinds of self-control and exercise of free will to build meaningful conflict into the plot.

Plus conflict is risky, and I’m somewhat afraid of it. I might get one of my characters killed. I would deeply hate that experience! Yeah, I know that attitude is unprofessional – what would you call it? “Sentimentalism?” But hey, it’s me. Your humble and yet infallible hack. We must all go with what we are, facing our limitations and striving to overcome and work around them.

At least I realize I need conflict to salvage the energy flow of this story. Otherwise it’s going to be boring. I’ll try harder next chapter. You do the same, maybe. With your talent, you could blow the doors off any complex plot issue. Don’t hold back.

Keep going. Stay pumped!

Talmage