The Once and Future Man/Ambro Pyrce

The Once and Future Man:

The Exaggerated Death of Ambrose Bierce

By Ambro Pyrce

Dedication

To the memories of two of my long-gone contemporaries—Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), who would say to me, “Bierce, you’re a damn good journalist, but you’ll never find a better story than one that I can concoct”; and Harry Houdini, who bragged, “When it comes to deceiving mortal death, I am the undisputed master.” Gentlemen, I admire the greatness you both possessed, but it is my contention that I have proven you both wrong.

And, from this current generation, this work is dedicated to Yvonne, a stalwart female whose help with many matters proved invaluable to a weary traveler.

—Ambro Pyrce, née, Ambrose Bierce

The imagination reels and staggers under the effort

to comprehend the inconceivable,

to conceive the incomprehensible!

—Ambrose Bierce, 1870

The only talent I have is the knack

of hating hypocrisy, cant and sham.

—A. B., 1878

Now mark you, rogues of all degrees,

and lettered fools . . .

I am among you to remain.

—A. B., 1882

—Ambro Pyrce, 2009

An excerpt from

A Note on the Lexicon

(full version on p. 155)

How could we be expected to expand your vistarios in a languse thru which so many lawyers have spun their truth-evading intricawebs; a language in which diplomats have perfidiously cloaked their intentions and govleaders have glibly explained invasions as peace-keeping; a languism in which you’ve been bammed and boozled into purchasing products promising to be the panacea for your health and happiness; a lexicon thru which you have all been nitwitted and dumbfucked over and again?

So, to use standard English while attempting to teach the tenets of a supernally sublime wisdom, after it has been stripped, beaten and raped, would be for me an exercise in semi-futility. To further metaphorize, it would be akin to dragging a dying horse to troubled waters. We need a wordism that has not been sacklooted by hyperflating admakers, euphamissive politicians, hackneyed writeporters and nickel-a-word novelists.

When I say what I must say, I needquire that it not be in the same devalued words and idioms of the rogue’s corridor that currently holds sway here – those who have bastardized, trivialized and whorified this once-wonderful language into a blanded husk of its former glory. I wish you to have only fresh mental associations when you read my words and phrasings, not hollow echoes from the blitherings of the linguistic perpetraitors who have twisterated and nebulized English to suit their nefarious purposes.

—Commander Troablo Tetrov

CONTENTS

The Story

Section One:

Preword ............................................................................…. v

Newly Found ......................................................................... 1

The Commentaries

Section Two:

A Reporter’s Report: Comparative Culturology .......................... 125

Section Three:

Fun with the Fictional Future: Some Satire ............................... 143

The Story Behind the Story

Section Four:

Letters from the Commander: Tro Makes Contact.............…....... 153

Preword

There are those who will read this book in search of a good tale, and that, I promise, they will get. But there are others among you who want to find more within these covers, to draw away the Curtain to see unembellished truth—to reach for actuality and grasp factuality. For those of you with such a quest, I likewise promise not to disappoint.

This volume was written for those who seek to discover the hidden facets of existence, who are dedicated to the pursuit of all things mysterious. I speak of those who know how many US presidents have been members of a secret society, who have realized what Mystery Babylon stands for in the Book of the Apocalypse, what Jesus meant when he said “My Father’s Estate has many mansions,” who know your Bilderbergers from your Trilaterals, your Rosicrucians from your 33rd Degree Masons, for those of you who have investigated the meaning of symbols in stone and steel, from the Sumerian tablets to the Rockefeller Center iconography.

You have been disparagingly called Conspiracy Theorists, as if the label alone disproves anything you say. Call yourselves, rather, Reality Seekers, as that is the correct appellation for those who are not content to swallow the misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies of a centerstablishment too long accustomed to hiding the truth from the people. If I were born in this age, I would be shoulder to cybernetic shoulder with you, researching the shadows behind the façades.

For those of you who rebel at the humdrum daily drone, who yearn to tread the stars, who immerse yourselves in whatever science fiction you can, imagining it as real, at least for the fleeting moment, this volume was also created for you. If I were born in this era, I would be among you as well, pursuing what I could of cosmic vistas from an earthbound position. This is an effort emblematic of your desire to escape the prison of this paradigm, this less-than-fulfilling charade called “the world.”

In the sooncoming age, the science fictioneers and mystery mavens will hold high station, in that they will be shown to have been justified in their efforts. And it won’t be long now. No, not terribly long at all before the dawncoming day arrives, when the tables are turned and respect is finally achieved.

Newly Found

Between dawn’s paint and moon’s ebb

A world spins in the dark.

Between the whole and the sum of its parts

Intercedes the spark.

. . . Speaks a man, just one man.

Between heart’s plea and echo’s ring

Stands the stone-faced mountain.

Between the vision and the quest

Springs the endless fountain.

. . . I search the abyss for signs.

Between grim truth and beggar’s bag

Sits unvanquished hope.

Between the penance and the pain

Swings redemption’s rope.

. . . My only ally the turning tide.

Between melody and lyric

One hears the silent keys.

Between the noble and the vain

Stretch the seven seas.

. . . Seeks a sailor through the mist.

Between character and destiny

Falls the certain stroke.

Between the power and the glory

The wearer of the yoke.

. . . I bow my head and keep on moving.

Between the pleasure and the sigh

Comes a crying need.

Between the decision and the will

Many a fallen steed.

. . . Let victory be my rider.

Between the lion and the gate

A seeker strides the court.

Between the player and the truth

Lies the grandest sport.

. . . I return to Urth, newly found.

Introduction

(Ambrose by any other name)

I used to be a writer when I lived here, by which I mean this planet. My name is Ambrose Bierce. Some of you may have recollection of my work, or know a little bit of my story. I suppose I owe you all an explanation, and that you’ll have.

I disappeared out of here in 1914, and have done some far-traveling since, but regularly returning for long stretches with the interplanetary ship I was stationed on. But it appears now that I’m back for good, having been dumposited back here on Mother Urth just recently. (I’ll get to those details shortly enuff.)

My reporter’s blood is in a boil to put down the facts of the matter, and I mean to tell it straightly as it occurred. It’s a long and sometimes hellacious story, full of drama and fantasticisms and not a few curlyturns. During my earlier career in fiction, I stretched my mind to conjure legends of the unlikely, but those stand small and commonplace beside the story I’m prepared to tell you. An acquaintance of mine in D.C. used to say, “If there’s a story behind the story, Ambrose will ferret it out.” (By now I forgive him for always adding, “Emphasis on ferret.”)

But first, let me make plain, it is not strictly necessary for you to believe my claim of identity to derive from this literary labor that which I hope to impart. While I certainly wish to be believed, I would understand if you considered it to unlikely a yarn to be true. So if it is more to your inclination, take it as a fictitious tale told by one of your contemporaries, but kindly invest your open-mindedness to the possibility of a wider universe, and give some thoughtfulness to the language-related innovations herein contained, as those are among my primary purposes in writing this.

My predicament is that I am unable to prove that I am indeed one Ambrose Bierce, late of San Francisco, California, and the District of Columbia. The body I now inhabit is not the same one as the one I was born with—the one that has long since died. In point of fact, it is my fourth flesh engine—my third replacement—this owing to the marvelous mediciques at the disposal of my erstwhile hosts.

Just to brieffact you, I was given the body of the murdered Judge Joseph Crater in 1930, which I maintained (in a much better manner than he did) until 1967. He was an occasionally valuable contact of the offworlder crew, so we tried to revive him; but, failing that, the ship medicos did an emergency transfer. Of course a little rhinoplasty, some green-eyed contacts, and a hairpiece were necessitated. Even then, owing to the voice and general face and body shape, I was told on a few occasions by people who knew him that I reminded them of him.

So then, in the late ’60s, as I was getting on with the oldifying Crater fleshbod, and requiring morenmore medical attention, I was fortunate to receive the fresh body of a well-physiqued Norwegian alpine skier who died in a mountain accident that left him buried beneath a few dozen meters of snow.

I carried forward in that body until 1997, during which time many contactees, most famously Travis Walton, referred to me as “the Nordic human on board.” As for my current modality, I will maintain that in private for now, for a variety of reasons, but mostly to harbor my privacy, at least in the sooncome.

Getting back to my predicapickle, I couldn’t even prove in a court of law that I was on a spacecraft, let alone that I journeyed to other inhabited planets. Aside from my files and notes, I wasn’t allowed to take even one artifact with me when I de-boarded. I had hoped for some easing of restrictions in the matter, considering my long friendship and service with them; at the very least some 3-D star maps or floating globalls, but the situation that devolved at the end led to our parting company on less than cordial terms. But that’s yet another tale. (Here I am getting knee-deep in stories to tell, and I haven’t even started my saga.)

What’s most important to me at this juncture is that those who come to read this volume give some attention to what I’m delivering, especiallymost the news of the existence—indeed, proliferation—of inhabited planets in this and other galaxies. And I refer again to the neologisms (which I am calling Newvo, for “new vocabulary”), nearly half of which have their source with the folks I’ve been traveling with. They’ve given me permission to pass their contributions along, but the mostjority of the Newvo were devised by myself and a former—long-since missing—associate of mine, one Maxx McCoy. (Maxx, if you’re out there, please contact me thru the publisher.)

Their creation was an opportunity to fulfill that which I had long desired, to help revivify this language, this proud stallion English, so we can ride it with gusto another few hundred years. As of now, it’s badly bleeding from its spur wounds, and panting for a cool pond. Between the politicians, adverhucksters, news typers, and an ever-descending lowcommonator of verbal intelligence that these play and prey upon, it’s a sadly damaged carrier.

The average word-recognition vocabulary of a high school senior in 1950 was over 35,000 words; by now it has dropped to below 10,000. Should you be alarmed? The news and entertainment media, businesses that advertise, and the political community aren’t. They like it that way; it makes their work easier.

I am, after all, the man who wrote these words a hundred years ago: It is “. . . the bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense.” I was often told, to my frustravexation, that I was a hundred years ahead of my time, and to leave off such prattling, and give over to the lexicographers their duly reserved province. Well, it’s long been my habit to have the final laugh, and so here I am, the returning pilgrim, come laden down with a treasure-trove for those who love the art of wordal communication, as I have these 150-plus years.

So, to summarize: I mean for this volume to accomplish three objectives: 1) announce my survival and return; 2) provide informadata concerning our cosmic neighborhood, and our possible future inclusion in it; and 3) establistart an upgrade to our languism, beginning with the work of infusing new words into the English language.

For legal and personal reasons, I must write this under my new ’plume of Ambro Pyrce, most notably that my estate has long since been settled, and I have no desire to meet a new generation of relatives.

CHAPTER 1

A New Civil War, But This Time I’m a Rebel,

as fifty years later I ride again

When I left my lodging back in 1914 and made for Mexico, my mindmood was that of desultory refrains and darkening scenarios. A life dedicated to brightminded creattude was crowned with all the success I could have hoped for, but nearly forty years of such a life had grown stale and worse. I feared, and rightly so because it was true, that I had run out of both ideas and the caringness for ideas. Also-add, that a life spent on the blade’s edge of mental formulation and cultural progressiveness was sputsputtering to an unsatisfying conclusion.

My well-founded ennui was exgasperated by a new age dawning, that of shallow pretenders and mass-produced opinions. Regarding the latter, I’ll give it a name: The Age of Hearst! Too few of you know of whom I speak, the newspaper monopolist (William Randolph), father to war and controversy, manipulator extraordinaire, an Industrial Age Machiavellian, but with truly broadnet powers to ply his tumult and nefario. I’ll restrain myself from spewing bile in this volume, except to say that he and his minions—and yes, I was once one of them—began the manufactory of American pseudo-culture in whose descendancy you now find yourselves.

Suffice it to say that my sense of well-being was being blighted by the shadows beginning to subsume all that was light and bright in my America, a nation that was slipping inexorably toward committing to a war in Europe’s fields and cities, a conflagration that would be fought with vastly more horrific warmaments than I struggled to survive against during the Civil War (which I did survive, let the record speak, rising to the rank of Major), including new

weapons of mass destruction like tanks, super-cannons, mustard gas, and the first issue of the infernal machine-gun.

Down Mexico way I encountered a different kind of war, indeed a different kind of world from that which I had grown accustomed to and disenthralled with. The people down there, by which I mean the general population (a pleasant enuff race, humble and laugh-loving), had been under the thumb of a cruel class of landowners. A minuscule percentage—a few dozen extended families—controlled upwards of 90% of the land, capital, and resources. With their power they drove into bankruptcy and ruin many independent agrarians, taking over their land at will, making them work it as little better than serfs. Those who opposed this ruthlessness were treated savagely, often murdered, sometimes buried alive.

When I arrived, the Mexican Revolution was in full flame, led by Pancho Villa in the north and Emillano Zapata in the south. I joined Pancho Villa’s men and rode and fought with him for two exhilarating months. His soldiers were a fiercely brave group, hard-charging and loyal to the cause of a fair society. (Of course some were just cutthroats, as with all militaries.) They followed Villa with no question, sometimes raiding contingents ten times their size, rarely losing more than a few men and horses.

Pancho Villa and, later, General Zapata were the only ones who knew my real identity. I had grown long hair and a beard as I was traveling south, and used a fake name and an English accent while I was in their revolution. Most of them only spoke Spanish, which made it easier to pull off and, to the ones who could understand me, I never mentioned that I was a writer. I would just say I was from England and had moved to America several years previous, and most recently was a gold miner in the Black Hills region (where I had indeed oversaw a failed venture). I did all this to prevent word getting back to my family and Californian friends who might surmise that I had gone insane and organize some kind of “rescue team.” I had given them the impression that I would pass thru Mexico on the way to South America, and then Europe. I did spill the beans a little in an El Paso hotel along the way, after too many drinks with some old reporters I knew, telling them my plan of joining the revolutionaries. I made sure to swear them to secrecy, not that any believed me at the time. Their account made it into print, but not until several years later, as they probably waited until they were sure I wasn’t coming back before they recounted our conversation.

I may have been seventy-one years old but I could still ride and shoot. Within a week, I had gained Pancho’s innermost circle, impressing them all with dead-eye aim, brazen exploits, and ideas for deployment. I was given full respect at the strategy sessions and helped formulate the overall plan that led to the later capture of Mexico City.

The white-haired old man who had crossed the Rio Grande with rickety bones and despondent eyes, never absocertain when he went to sleep if he would awaken alive on this tear-streaken vale, became reinvigorated and robust. My heart was consumed with purpose anew and my eyes blazed bright as they hadn’t since I did my part against the Confederacy nearly a half-century previous. My asthma was all but forgotten during those campaigns, especially during the ride’n’fight phases.

In battle, I became the scourge of the Federalés, often taking the first shots of the fray as I sped my steed to the front of the raiding party. My horse Champion and I were quite a team. One of my few remaining old-days possessions is a photograph on that horse the morning after I won him in a poker game—my second night over the border. He was a courageous white stallion, huge-chested and exceedingly tall, with wide, red nostrils. As our gallop would push us ahead of our fellows, they would shout, “La Muerté Blanca!!” And we truly were The White Death for the hated enemy during those glorious two months.

My attitude became that of a living wraith, liberated from what little fear of death I had remaining, detached from, yet in full enjoyment of, my senses. If I could put into words my emergent mindset, it would have been, “My life has already been lived. Let me now exist in this noble dream and die proudly.” Other than putting some cats out of trees and paying my bar tabs on time, I had done very little in the category of noble during the previous forty years. (Well, I’d have to mention the assiduous discouragement of mediocre writers from pursuing careers, which I accomplished with my brutally honest reviews, but that was more of an obligation.)

So then, to the story. My contingent of insurrectionistos was facing into what promised to be a formidable confrontation with the encamped Mexican Army. Pancho called me to his tent and solemnly handed me an envelope, instructing me to ride south to a small town where I was to give it directly to Zapata. The plan was to hold the Mexican army in abeyance until Zapata’s army—growing even faster than the Northern contingent—could affect a pincer movement from the southwest. Also in the envelope was the location of a secret government storehouse of gunpowder and munitions, which was along the path Zapata’s army would be taking.

“A plum to be picked,” the bullet-bedecked leader told me as we walked out of the tent. “After this, our way to Mexico City will be more clear. Not too long from now, you and I will drink a toast on the balcony of the National Palace. The hoof will be off our necks, and you will have helped us, my friend.” With that he gave me a final hug that, altho I made no sound, nearly broke my ribs. To him, I was not a frail man of letters to be mollied, but a fellow warrior to whom he was entrusting a crucial mission.

2

CHAPTER 2

Two Drunken Amigos Hatch a Plan,

as I get “this-close” to the story of the century

I headed south immediately, pushing Champion to his considerable limits, arriving around sixteen hours later, and found Zapata in the farmhouse he had converted to his headquarters. I walked in, led by two of his heavily armed soldiers. When the general saw me, he waved his men out of the room and reached for a bottle of tequila. We had met on a few previous occasions, once in long session with Pancho Villa. A man of very little formal education, he was nonetheless very quicktelligent, and at Villa’s behest had studied the generalship of, among others, Ulysses S. Grant and Stonewall Jackson.

He silently poured us drinks, then opened the envelope, studying its contents. After a minute of nodding and grunting, he let out a bellowing laugh. Zapata spoke in a mixture of Spanish and a better English than was generally credited to him, but cleaning it up and paraphrasing him somewhat, he said, “Pancho is always in such a hurry to turn the tide his way. Tacticians like us know the tide rises and ebbs, and it is always best to swim with it.” I thought he was vetoing the plan, but he continued, his voice rising. “But sometimes a sudden storm can bewitch the tide. A sudden southern storm! My men will ride with the sunrise!”

After some discussion, Zapata pulled his chair in closer to mine, fixing me with his intense brown eyes. “I was going to do something tomorrow that I will now turn over to you. I need you to wait for the arrival of a rich gringo bounty hunter; I believe that is what he is. He has some dirty business near here, I’m not sure what. He has offered to pay 8,000 US dollars, in gold, for safe passage for him and two horse-drawn wagons to and from the border. My men are with him now, heading this way. One of the wagons will be empty, but he will use it to take something back, I won’t guess what. He said it was some nasty foreign business that Mexicans would be happy to get rid of anyway, that it didn’t belong on our soil. He wouldn’t tell me more over the wire. I was going to conduct him on the last leg and get the money when I saw that it was not anything that would bite my ass later. I want you to handle it for us. The gold comes at a good time.”

I opined that gold always comes at a good time, and he handed me a crudely drawn mini-map with a nearby location. “Put the money in this drop bucket. But make sure it’s not anything we’ll regret. By the looks of Pancho’s plan, we’ll be back here in four or five days. You can stay here till then, maybe write a story or two. Be sure to spell my first name right. The American papers sometimes get it wrong. And please to mention that Zapata is very handsome, and a great lover of the beautiful women besides being a fearsome soldier and leader!” With that he laughed his bonjovial laugh and stood up. “I will inform the men of their duties.”

I retired to a back room with the rest of the bottle and woke the next day to a mostly deserted farmhouse.

I met Simon McBurr halfway between towns along the rail tracks. Three of Zapata’s men formed his contingent, two others having dispatched earlier to ride ahead to the headquarters to set up this meeting between us.

He was a big man, red-faced and red-haired, and as he got out of the wagon I saw that he believed in personal weaponry. He had three long-barreled pistols at his waist, two holstered and one tucked, and ankle holsters on both legs, which I later learned carried Bowie knives. Bullets girded his barrel chest.

“I know you ain’t Zapata. What’s this?” he said in an accusatory voice.

“The general is generalling just at the moment, sir,” I answered, taking an immediate dislike to his bastardesque manner. “He gave me the details, such as they are. Wants me to secure the gold and see to your safety.”

“I’ll show you all the money, but you’ll only get half now, and the other half when my compass is pointing north again.”

“Fair enuff,” I said. “But I have to know a little more about the business at hand before we finalize the transaction. Zapata’s orders.”

“Yeah, he wired me back that he wanted to make sure it wasn’t something against his people or friends. Where can we go to get some drinks and discuss it? It ain’t no easy story.”

A few miles from there sat a notorious saloon called No Mañana. We had the three Zapatistas go in whilst talking to us, so the locals would see who we were with.

This Mr. McBurr was a Scotsman, lately of Tucson; he was mostly a big-game hunter by trade. He kept up the stocks of various zoos and exhibit arenas with both living and stuffed animals, specializing in the large fierce types, like lions, bears, rhinos, and elephants.

We settled quickly into serious consumption. “A writer of the macabre and fantastic are ya, Mr. Pierce? Well, I have a tale tall enuff for you and H. G. Wells to walk around in. With room left over for that Jules Vernon. If you’ll accompany me to the place I’m going, I’ll show you with your own eyes what you’ll hardly believe!”

He told me the story of how he and his partner were down this way, doing some recreational hunting and taking advantage of the local whorehouses, when they came across something that astounded them.

“I know of a depot under the earth, carve-holed right into a mountain, where a circular ship from the cosmic high comes and goes. This I’ve seen. Me and my partner, who . . . um, took sick and left back for Arizona, so I’m working alone. And we saw the people, if that be what they should be called; tiny creatures, most of ’em about four feet tall from our reckoning. Smaller’n pygmies. I went back across the border to get what arms I could, including ten boxes of dynamite and a small cannon.”

“What in Sam Hell are you planning to do?” I exclaimed into the clamor.

“Shoot the sumbitch down with the cannon and capture some little folks for the circus. Barnum’ll pay a big pile of his lucre for somethin’ like that. Or I may even open my own place. As for you, I’ll have you watchdog me while I set the dynamite. We’ll seal up that entrance. Another thing is that pretty soon I’ll need a publicity writer. Money no object. This is the story of the century, man! The goddamn story of the goddamn century!”

I was a bit dazzledazed by it all, but I was beginning to like his dangerventurous style. “How big was this craft?”

“Maybe thirty, maybe forty feet across, with no wings, like a discus. It would hover a bit, then shoot up into the sky, or when it came back, it’d hover a bit, while the big door opened. That’s when we’d shoot it down and set off the dynamite all around the entrance to cause lots of rock sliding. That’ll keep whoever’s inside trapped long enuff so’s I can scoop up what I can. You can do the look-out while I get ’em. I know you can handle yourself with a rifle, judging by the company you’re in. I’ve got some of the best guns in manufacture. Just take your pick tomorrow.”

I made a paltry attempt at a properspective. “Well, sir, you tempt me as the devil himself, but even after six drinks it crosses my mind that such an unprovoked attack might lead to something like an interplanetary war. Wouldn’t we be madmen to do such a thing?”

I said this aloud, but I already knew that I was into the breach with the rapacious scoundrel. Maybe it was the liquor, or maybe just my trouble-seeking nature, but this seemed just the perfect thing to do, the perfect capstone to my career. I internally reveled in my destiny’s moment, my Fortuna Major, my Story of the Century. I’d sell it to the highest bidder, Hearst or whoever, and write the full tale in a best-selling book!! My happy visions were inebriatingly rosy-hued.

In answer to my question regarding the repercussions of such an attack (plus carting them off as hostages to a freak show), McBurr hollered, “Let the politicians sort it out on the Potomac, or on Mars, or wherever they’re goddamn from! I say the bastards are trespassing on Terra Firma. Who invited ’em, anyway? Probably stealing our gold. The people will see that we’re heroes! Are you with me, Albrose?”

Fully committed to the rashfoolishness, I stood up and hoisted my glass, shouting above the din, “Their little asses with buckshot!” And the die was cast.

CHAPTER 3

The Big-Game Hunters Foiled,

as I meet the new boss

I’ll spare you the particulars of the fracas, but suffice it to say that, as battles go, this was a rout. Badly hung over, and arguing from the get-go, we were as subtle as a bull in a china shop. We were ourselves ambushed and taken into the aliens’ mountain lair.

I was led across a giant rotunda, over what looked like a black onyx floor, except it had diamondy sparkles embedded within it. There were dozens of floating radiant globes hovering above the area, providing illumination. (These globalls were remote-controlled for intensity and position, and served inside the ships as well.)

Against the far other side of the expanse sat a hooded figure, positioned behind a large desk made of ornately carved crystal, with platinum lattice work. He stood up as I reached the area in front of him, and let down his hood to reveal the most astonishing face I had ever encountered, awake or asleep. His melodious voice filled my head.

“Speak.”

“I was only there for the story!” I protested defiantly.

“But sir,” came the dulcet-toned reply, “you were carrying a shotgun.”

“Strictly for self-defense,” I attempted.

The entity conducting this inquest was a very tall Exoterrian by the title of Commander Troablo Tetrov, or “Tro” to those on his good side—which I was decidedly not. Tetrov was bald-headed and had large, bulging dark eyes on a somewhat canine face. He raised his prominent brows. “I’ve never known your species to be short on bulltwaddle, but that may be the pudding on the cake.” This elicited a coughing sound from the gathered others that I would come to recognize as their version of a snicker. He continued: “The evidence against you regarding these dastardeeds is rather factactual.”

These were the first new wordisms that I had heard from the far-foreigners, and Tetrov’s obvious high intelligence brought a kind of calm over me. So, despite being in hot water turning to boil, and rather desperate to change the immediate subject, I raised my finger and genially inquired, “Just whose dictionary will we be using in this proceeding, your High Falutinship?”

“We’ve taken the liberty of stretching your local language, in the natural course of usage, to better suit our expressive needs. Plusly, it’s a source of amusement to us when we’re not busy with our work, which is that of an expeditionary survey and assistance team sent by the local federation of planets in this starzone to assess your various attempts at civilization before what will likely be a worldwide war breaks the horizon.” (He seemed pleased to be explaining something, and rather more comfortable than when he was grimacing angrily.)

“We’re non-military; in fact most of us are what you would term government anthropologists—cultural studies with a heavy emphasis on social practices, languages and history. I must say, the English idioms are very rich and enj—.” He stopped. “But back to your culpacriminality.”

[Allow me to background some of this before we continue: Tetrov was the leader of the survey mission, sent by the local-sector organization of planets. The outfit that Tro was in charge of was from the Sector Service Corps. Think Peace Corps crossed with Margaret Mead crossed with the CIA. The operation and decision-making was very democratically run; Tetrov would take votes, sometimes referring to himself as “ChairBoard Tro.”]

The Commander had very wrinkly white/yellow skin, befitting his age, which was in excess of the big 4-0-0, and a long-fronted face that was hairless but snoutlike, giving him a likesemblance to a large canine—I’d say a cross between a rottweiler and a bullmastiff, but with human-looking ears. He was a Majestican, from a small planet around seventy lighties from here, a world knownround for its telempathic inhabizens—telepathic and empathic. (Good luck getting something past them.)

He was the only one of his kind that I noticed there, as the others were mostly quite short, except three or four human-looking men, from the planet Agania. I found out later that there was rarely more than one Majestican on any ships, as the adults could not stand to be in continuous close contact with each other. On their planet, mates usually had separate, adjoining quarters, and most group activity was thru a fancier version of what we call teleconferencing.

Commander Tetrov touched a mechanism attached to his wrist, and the room was filled with the sounds of No Mañana. Then a boombastic voice I barely recognized as my own: “Their little asses with buckshot!”

I was stunfrozen for a second, but recovered a little to declare, “Pure metaphor! Figuratively speaking! I do that a lot, sir. Called literary license. Did I tell you I’m a writer?”

My mouth was suddenly dry as I looked around the cavernous room at the assembled creatures—about forty of them. It was true that I held no animosity for them; that emotion was reserved for the cur McBurr, whom I could have unreservedly bloodgeoned on the spot. He had been detained elsewhere; the last I saw of him he was being carried into a side-room, as if by ants with a big morsel. The evil greedster had wounded two Ankorians with the one shot he made before the beamguns did their paralyzing work on him. As for me, I had dropped my rifle straight off and signaled surrender, not receiving any bursts.

“I was awful drunk at the time, Sir. That no-good bastard I was with, whom I just met by the way, had me worked into a frenzy with defending our planet and such. Not that I don’t have some questions on that score.”

The Commander leaned closer and lowered his voice, as one does when discussing evil doings. “We’d been aware of this hunter’s scheme since he and his partner came across our little hideaway while tracking some beast. After they set off our perimeter alarms, we followed them and put a soundlink transponder inside their hats while they slept in their encampment. Perhaps you would like to hear the part where he murders the other man. Maybe that would have been your fate as well.

“We lost track of him right after that. He apparently left his hat at the campsite, but we picked up his location again just about the time he met up with you. Luckily for us, we have that drinkhouse you went to fully soundlinked, fascinating den of thieves that it is, and we recorded your talkversation.”

“As God is my witness—” I began, using the oath I reserved for my most serious predicaments. But then I had a sudden thought about the pertinence of such an invocation. So, between my ever-troublacious curiosity and my died-wool cantankerousness, it came out: “What do you critters think about all this God and religion business we have here? Or do you have some Monster-Master Supreme you bend your knees to back on the homeworld? Not so incidentally, why aren’t you there now, instead of trespassing on our soil? Who in hell’s blazes invited you here anyway?”

“Mister Bierce, while obsequiousness and oblation are not a strict requisite here, I must caution you that such obdurance regarding your hosts will be harshforcatively dealt with. I mean to say, sir, that I’ll order you beaten like a lazy mule, and if that’s to no solvation, you’ll be dropped from 40,000 feet. And I’ll picto your screaming descent for my Monster-Master Supreme holiday cardgrams, to show my friends back home how much fun I’m having here. Do I clarify your position for you, Ambrose?”

The Commander said this with full cooltrol and succeeded in filling me with, if not exactly fear, the serious trepidation that verges just below it. As was his way, he succeeded in a short moment, and with a minum of mussfuss, to enact his intentions—in this case the corralling of this new mustang, but without fully breaking his pride. The word-game gambit (stringing similarly prefixed words), as well as the give-take of mordantly mixilated humor, left me standing with some face. So, despite what I considered to be a sincerely delivered threat, what I was thinking was, “This is a guy I can deal with.”

“Begging Master’s pardon if I was being obstreperous. Preferring not to be oblivionated, I will oblige your request.”

He nodded at my sudden adeptness at one of his favorite games, and at my stretch-coinage of oblivionated, not yet knowing that I had long been a coiner of neologisms, and had advocated it to other writers. I in fact had a running dispute with editors everywhere who would censure any word not in their standard dictionary.

That exchange softened Tetrov further, and from then on I made absosure to speak respectfully to the Commander, recognizing him as a gemstone of wisdom and wit. It’s just that I had gone decades without any real overthority, in the sense of really over me, as all my publishers and bosses, even Mr. Hearst, knew to leave me alone and let me produce. Some would say that this islandization was the cause of my “problem.” I would respond that it was the source of my “solution,” which is to say my creative independence and hold on sanity.

It was about then that Komo, the head of research, stepped forward and spoke on my behalf, that he was familiar with my writing, had in fact previously cited a number of excerpts from my work for their culture studies, and that I might prove very useful to their mission. He went on to suggest that, in exchange for their leniency with me, I could serve as an information reservoir for them. (“Why waste the resource, if it’s facilitative?”)

They had in their six years on Urth picked up a few hundred humans for interview purposes, hypnojecting them when they were finished, to forget the experience. These individuals proved to be of limited use during their on-board interviews, as they would often faint or experience nervous hysteria, even with the human-looking Aganians doing the interview. Most were just returned to their places as soon as could be arranged.

After some further hashing of my role in the McBurr scheme and some questions concerning my writing career and personal life—a plusfactor was that I had settled my matters, and had no dependants—Commander Tetrov decided not to deathecute me, or leave-drop me with McBurr, who was dumposited in an Amazon jungle. This was without any of his guns, only a knife and two days’ food. They deliberately chose the wildest area possible, full of ravenous animals and poisonous snakes.

“It’s settled then, Mr. Bierce. You’ll stay with us for as long as we find you to be a useful adjunct. I must say I’m optiminded about it. You certainly appear to be both more intelligent and less malemotional than the others we’ve brought onship. You remind me of another writer we had in here, name of Samuel Clemens.”

In fact, I had had much contact with Clemens (Mark Twain), sharing lively conversation and good brandy when our paths crossed, and I had noticed a definite starstunned attitude from him the last time we had bent elbows together, long about 1909. He was talking of life on other planets and reincarnation and “going out with the comet he came in on,” which he did indeed during Halley’s pass in 1910. It seems they had picked him up thrice, and altho he sweated considerably much and consumed large amounts of water, he was their best interviewee. They all remembered him with appreciation bordering on fondness, and were sorry about his death.

Of the eight or so items on the Service Corps priogenda, the firstmost was a general assessment of our planet’s readiness for what they called “Openization,” which is when a planet assumes its place in the Sector’s political/social/economic structure, ie, becomes a member of the Astanian League of Planets. (Ship’s shorthand for this status was “O’z.”)

I should pause my narratext at this juncture to insert some Big Picture sketch-outs. A Sector is, when fully settled by member planets, an approxim 1000 worlds. Being in a (relatively) recently developed arm of the Milky Way, our Sector only numbers at present some 620 orbcultures. To contextualize, a Sector is mere precinct in the galaxy, which is itself merely a province in the larger scope of 274 inhabited galaxies. I was informed that the eventual llong-term plan called for the settlement of all the billions and billions of galaxies, so we’re practically in on the ground floor at this point.

So, as of now, in all the starry creation, there are only, I say only, around three trillion worlds inhabited by sapients. There’s an overseer government for the whole ball of wax, and several intermediate levels of political organization, none of which really concerns us or this story. But getting back to our Sector, I will also mention that there are about fifty other planets approaching within a mere millennium or two of candidacy for membership (including us) and the HQ goalgenda projects that the 1000 target will be reached in three to four hundred thousand years.

So then, as Urth (that’s the way they spell it, as a tie-in to the first point of human civilization here, the city of Ur) moved to maturity and modernity, the Sector wanted to know what our prospects were. How culturated were we? What products and resources were abundant? What animals and plants were available? How soon might we have computers and space travel? And the most pointed question: Are we really as viohaviored as they’ve heard?

106

CHAPTER 4

Long Night’s Journey into Space,

as thru a viewport I contemplate my fate

Around three months after my capture/enlistment, the Archduke was assassinated, setting off “The Great War,” also known as “The War to End All Wars.” Europe became ablaze with bullets and bombs, a continent suddenly blighted by mass, unthinking carnage.

A new Service Corps ship arrived, with military observers and emergency field teams, to save, where possible, some especially “important” individuals, Mission Impossible style. Their attempts many times failed, most notably in the case of preserving the Romanoffs in Russia—not so much for their governing style, which was sorely dreadawful, but for their terrific bloodlines and what our projections said regarding what would follow if they were overthrown.

So The Pearl was reassigned to an elseplace a few solar systems away. It would be for about three of our years, being a prelimasketch survey assignment of a young, pre-industrial planet. But our permanent-standing assignment remained Urth. In what I took as a courtesy, I was given the choice of going with them or being returned in some fashion to the surface.

But I had already made my peace with my situation, having reconciled myself to this new destiny, one I’ll admit had the added ego appeal of being what no other man had done. I had said goodbye, and a great many good riddances, to the people I knew, and after so much time it would be too bizarre to try to explain. Well, I did toss it back and forth a little. What would I tell them? Would I make up a ghastly tale of kidnap and intrigue, or the real story, which might be even more unbelievable? They would both expect and disbelieve a tall tale from such a practiced promulgator as I. But, in the end, I decided to stay the course with those who had become, oddly enuff, my good friends, and perhaps odder yet, a source for my renewed intellectual stimulation.

When my heart turned melancholy with missingness during this initial sojourn, especially during that first year, I would remind myself that I had actually gotten my wish and was delivered at last of the new century’s increasingly loathsome presence. America was all on bended knee to the massively wealthy “robber barons” (a term I think I started, but I frankly forget now), men with not the remotest conscience concerning anything but profit. And the cities had become polluted with so many urban Philistines and croaking crassholes, glutting the night spots and social occasions of that era with their pathetic political posturings. Then there were the sanctoidiot religionists, with whom I had waged a war of words for nearly forty years, sprouting a new gargoyled head—by which I refer to the damnable prohibitionists.

I remembered how often I had wished to turn my back on city living, lacking only a place I could go which could afford me not only proper refreshments and suitable transportation, but the blissvana of a peaceful intellectual climate. A move to Middle America or a rustic village wouldn’t meet my requisites, as I had my minimum requirements concerning literary sophistication, well-stocked taverns, and news-knowledgeable types to bend an elbow with. Knowing this about me, my acquaintances never took me seriously when I would say I could do without the whole quacking lot of them and go live among the Zulus and ride a zebra. Or to the South Pole with the penguins.

I had long since lost hope of such a retreat, as those places which provided the aforementioned were lacking of any plentitude in the quiet harmony department, and any new locale would merely mean a different set of Philistines, crassholes, and parading sanctoidiots. Altho, in retrospect, it was certainly true that my last three long-term habitations—San Francisco, London, and Washington D.C., and “the last straw” of New York City, where I worked toward the end—were all on the high end of any list of places where such aggravating types as these (almost not to mention horsefeather politicians and stuffed-shirt socialites) were in most grossacious supply.

So, in some general sense, I did get what I wanted—to be away from the irritations of tiresome people and the darkening horizon of Western culture; to be instead in an intellectually stimulating enclave, but without all the pomp and pretension. Concerning my food and drink requisites, I’ll detail those arrangements later, but I was suitably cared for. And as for transportation, the vehicle that became my home for eighty-five years was quite more than adequate.

But during those first several days, under a “confined to quarters” restriction, I adapted to my new habitat. After that, when I became an actual member of the crew, there were plenty of adventures. I even had my own shuttleship for awhile. (That’s a book in itself.)

Our ship was called by a name, Rotallaba, which meant pearl in the original language, so I called it The Pearl. (This name caught on with the crew, especially since “Rotallaba” has a double tongue-roll when said properly.) It was a metallic 330-foot tricorner cruiship, with hover capability, a sheer-proof air speed of 7600 MPH, and an I.F. (Intervortical Factor) while in space of slightly over 46—which translameans it had an above-average “warp-speed.” We could go 46 light years in one year of “real time.” Our main base was in Belgium, altho we maintained several other “parking” facilities, depending on what we were concentrating on.

(For the more curious among you, I will mention that while we stayed on the ship as much as possible, due to its extraordinary facilities and capabilities, the Service Corps does have bases in Belgium [main land base], Mexico, Arizona, Russia, Hawaii, Peru, New Zealand, Antarctica, the moon, and an underwater facility in the Atlantic off the southeastern US coast.)

As for my value as a research asset to the Urth-studying Corps members, and the academic/political matrix they were a vanguard for, I am convinced that it was I among my contemporaries who was most ideally suited for this task—to be the Interlinker, the one to explain Us to Them. So many times had I figuratively cast myself off my mind’s cliff, seeking anything New and True, accepting any result, just so long as it brought me closer to the larger actuality of mankind’s existence. It seemed that the more erudite men of my time, in terms of metaphysical acumen, were most often a bit cowardly with regard to their person, tremulous in the face of any perceived danger. This sort of fear I had left on the ba ttlefields of the Civil War nearly fifty years before my “abduction.” On the other hand, among the truly tough and fearless persons I did know, not a one of them could duplimatch me in terms of being a True Searcher of the philosophies and life’s mysteries.

The Pearl’s specialty was “Pre-Openized” worlds, so on most planets we visited we were undercover. It was fun and sometimes exciting, but always interesting, as I got a chance to see what lay beyond the closed confines of our teeming shores. My well-practiced bluster and audacity proved an asset on the ground missions. As well, my size came in handy on the smaller planets (where persons are bigger) as the crewmen were mostly less than five feet, six inches tall.

CHAPTER 5

A Specimen for the Exoterrian Crew,

as I finally find a captive audience

At first, I was sequestered in a cell-like room with rotating guards stationed outside the door. After a few days, I received a visit from Corrina, who is Commander Tetrov’s aide-de-camp, ie, a leader’s assistant, but also managed the much-needed role of chargé d’affaires, ie, a person who holds the helm in the absence of said leader.

Corrina and I discussed many things that night, and she gave me news from the Revolution, that the latest battle had gone well for my compadrés. Corrina then asked me where my personal belongings were, so they could pick up whatever I needed. I gave her the directions to a rooming house/brothel near the border, where I had rented a vault, then gave her the receipt and a password for the owner to recognize. They sent Randa, an Aganian, who came back the next night with the full contents. (As I think I mentioned, Aganians resemble humans and easily pass.)

Among those things were my most-prized books, including most of my own volumes. Corrina sat with me quite late that evening, having me read her some of my stories, as well as entries from The Devil’s Dictionary.

When she was preparing to leave, I mentioned to her that I had enjoyed the exchange. She replied, “That’s good, because this is exactaprecisely the kind of activity we will be conducting with you. I’m confident you’ll find it more fillingfull than being stood up against a Mexican mud wall and shot.” (I had told her of the everpresent possibility of that outcome, if ever I would have been captured by the Mexican Army.)

It was at this point that I finally felt relaxed in my new surroundings. The previous day, Corrina had dismissed the guards who were stationed outside my door, and that certainly helped. But talking to her person-to-person was the major part of my mood resurgence. She is much liked and respected by the crew, if for no other reason than when the Commander would get called away from the ship on some business, she would expedite the settlement of any disputes and interdepartmental conflicts that might have cropped up onboard.

We all loved the Commander, but we always wished to avoid his attention to such matters, as he would treat everything as full-scale conflict resolution, employing obtrusive mindal probes (who knows what he might find in there) and asking the participants to write detailed reports on the case before him. It was not uncommon to let such disputes fester until the Commander was off-ship, then the rush would be made to Corrina’s office. (The fact that she is an intriguingly beautiful Charlingian, with large hazel/gold eyes, and has an enchantingly seductive voice, has very little to do with it.) Corrina would handle most things, on pleasant terms, in less than an hour—sometimes only a few minutes—and the matter would be resolved and closed.

The following night Corrina returned, bringing with her a coterie of various species, who proceeded to sit in a group and listen as I read. Corrina, Komo, and gradually the others would ask me questions pertaining to the readaterial, but discussions would inevitably veer into a myriadica of directions.

The audiences grew larger until soon I had as many as twenty of them in my quarters after dinner. The readings would be followed by discussions of human nature, clarifications of recent history and culture, the social scales, and our sexual proclivities. Apparently, we’re among the megamost sex-centered species in this starzone, with rageously high-revved libido engines.

Komo, Randa, and a few of the others would often stay on afterward to play one of a variety of word games they had. Some of these were set up within a post-electronic tabletop format, with voice response and touch-screen activation; some others were just round-robin spoken competitions. Sometimes we could get Corrina to join us, as she was quite skilled and a valuable partner in Four-Corner Wordspressia.

As is my wont, I never declined to offer an opinion at the readings, and would podiumize at the drop of a question. Many were the times I would find myself holding forth, facing the oddsortment of buzzing Ankorians, chirping Reznidians, and teeth-clacking Bergians, some of them hand-typing notes onto their beltboxes, palmtops, or even flip-down chestplates.

When I would pause, several of them would jump up to ask another question, sometimes arguing as to which one spoke first. Keepmind that these were professional sapientologists, and I was a willing specimen. More than that, I was myself a professional “humanologist,” a man of letters, an only recently retired journalist of four decades, a virtual fatherlode of observations and analyses regarding the many-faceted human condition. I was for them, especially after the disappointing lot they previously had aboard, a virtual talking encyclopedia. It wasn’t long before we had a fixed schedule, with a regular starting time, and a computer-posted agenda of recitations and discussion topics.

The first time they asked me if I would read from other word-artists I agreed, but with two caveats: Only writers from some recent time, so I could better affect synchpatico, and answer their usual bevy of questions. “And no Oscar Wilde!” (I considered him a decadency, and some mud had been flung between us, in both directions.) I asked for previous day’s notice of these, in writing, so I could assemble the necessary volumes and encyclopedia references. My library soon grew to fully half the size of my large one in Washington, as anything I requisitioned would appear shortly therefollowing. I myself was allowed, eventualater, to go aground and visit bookstores and libraries.

As the years passed, I addcluded prose and verse to the readings, from all eras, even the ancient Greeks, whom I muchly admired. I shied from Shakespeare, altho I enjoyed reading him in private, because I would get tongue-twisted on some of the passages. Also, decade by decade, as we would scout back to Urth, I would add some new writers to my repertoire. Notable among these were my protégé Henry (H. L.) Mencken, T. E. Lawrence (the brave Lawrence of Arabia), George Orwell (a veteran of the Spanish Civil War), and Norman Mailer (World War II foot soldier). In later years, I enjoyed sharing the wordworks of such as Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, Stephen King, Thomas Pynchon, Hunter S. Thompson, and Don DeLillo, but the earlier group remained my favorites because, besides their literary skills, they all shared with me having faced death in battle, and lived to write deeply of the human experience. (Well, not Mencken, but he had survived my rantravings and my by-then-embellished war stories.) And, like me, they all used their pen as a cudgel, battering society for its shortcomings. In addition, they were all vanguard expostulaters of the English language.

In the 1990’s I also added to the recitations list some excerpts from two funjestical “dictionary” authors, Rich Hall and Rick Bayan, the former done in a fluffilious style and purpose, with the latter being a well-done modern version of my D.D., which he titled The Cynic’s Dictionary. (And the whippersnapper had the good grace to acknowledge me properly.)

Of my personally written fiction, by far the most requested were my so-called tales of macabre. For these, and similar stories from others, especially Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft (who was an instant hit and much-requested), I would dim the lights, excepting the lamp at my table, to create a proper mood. I’ll never forget the first time I read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” to them. A minor uproar ensued when I gave them the last sentence, as all two dozen attendees gasped and jumped to their feet, exclaiming aloud and inquiring of each other if they had suspected the outcome.

I was requested to read this tale on several other occasions over the years. Among my most funny-fond memories is how, after those repeat readings, they’d mimic their original reaction, staying in their chairs but gasping and exclaiming, as if newly shocked. (Altho there were occasional new crewmembers and attachees, for the most part it was the same bunch.) I guessed this was partly in deference to the storyteller—and it did help me to re-evoke the tale— and partly to create the optimum effect for any newcomers. But also, like humans, especially the young, they enjoyed being involved in surprises. I should point out that most of these creatures had a childlike quality to them—owing to their being from more peacefully settled worlds, without war and strife and poverty.

When I would read the more eerie pieces written by myself, or Poe or Lovecraft, they would hold rapt, barely breathing, their mostly large and black eyes firmly upon me. During the parts about phantasms or scary creatures, I could observe their shudders and little twitchings, amused by the universality of the mechanism. What stories of unholy hobgoblins and demon-eyed specterbeasts pranced across their many memoryscapes and childhood frightmares? What headless hunting horsemen and evil talking dolls haunthabited the foggy marshes, forbidding woodlands and creaking houses of the various lands they called home, reigniting long-buried feartriggers? (Possibly some of their boogies looked like you and me.)

Another piece they especially liked was Lovecraft’s “The Shadow out of Time,” which is sametimely a sci-fi and horror classic. In it, a race of strange creatures has evolved to conquer the bounds of time and space. The narrator has direct contact with them, leaving him in a state of consternation. The last sentence (altho one could about guess it was coming) has a shock value to it, as the narrator reveals the full truth of the mystery, ending with the words, “. . . in my own handwriting.” At this, every time I read the piece to them, the fellows would react as they did to “Owl Creek,” with a full minute of exclamatories—their way of having fun.

Many of my fables were satisfactory to them, especially with a little explann, but what failed altogether with my shipmates were the satire pieces. Those fell flat and were discontinued. They had an aspect of “inside story,” and required for understanding some direct experience with the subject. It was a nuance thing and not easily conferred without tedious inclusion of detailia.

Handnhand with that, they generally had a non-connect with overmuch irony in a piece. (BTW, of all the planets I’ve studied, ours is among the highest in its usage of this methique.) As my written body of work is rife with irony, I worked to impress upon them the value of such depthlayered dimensionality. (I must add that the current overuse of irony in Western culture self-defeats its former impact, devolving itself too often into unweaned and insipid sarcasm.) They had trouble, as well, with the Civil War stories, especially the longer ones, so it was rare that I would dust off one of those.

An intriguing sidething about the readings was that some passages would unexpectedly make one racial group or another laugh or recoil, while the rest sat quietly and continued to listen. Altho rather homogenized after so long together in the Service Corps, the different cultures aboard (six to eight) did have their own racial mindstreams and idiosyncratic ticklebuttons.

Behind Poe, their two favorite authors from my era were Mark Twain and O. Henry. They would give O. Henry’s twist endings, as in “The Gift of the Magi,” the same treatment they did with “Occurrence,” each time declaring things like, “Who could see that coming?!” Their favorite Mark Twains were the jumping frog one, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and The Innocents Abroad. Since they were travelers and explorers themselves, they enjoyed most anything about traveling to different times and places. In that vein they liked also The Wizard of Oz, H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

The other oft-requested thing during my nightly speaking was The Devil’s Dictionary. These “definitions” they liked not only because of the content, but because I would launch forthwith into various reminiscings and anecjokes to bolster the given reference. These would usually be of a starkgritty nature, about some treachery or embarrassment, or about how some person or group was ravsavaged politically, emotionally, or financially, and they learned a lot about life on Urth this way.

On occasion, before I would respond to a query, I would ask them, “Do you want the lollipop-sucking, fairy-land version of this, or the real McCoy?” Komo would usually be the one to answer: “Give us the real Ambrose!” It is unalterably true (to make a point about fiction and drama) that the best stories are the ones laced with somebody else’s triumph over pain, misery, and evil foes, and the illumination of the double-dealings of others. Plus, I’ll be the first to admit, stories about something wicked afoot are more fun to tell—and more plentiful of supply.

In time the fellows grew to understand and even appreciate my crustaceous cynicism, cognating that it grew out of my hard-wrought life experiences, and realizing further that in my writings I would exaggerstate things somewhat to create a more profound effect (or, in some cases, a humorous effect). But over the years I grew out and away from my former acidulous persona, even blanching occasionally at some of my harsher references, especially to women and those less endowed mentally. (The old Ambrose Bierce would have ended that sentence with, “but that’s redundant,” but you can plainly see how I’ve grown in this regard.)

I accompanied The Pearl to its ports of call, gradgradually being chosen for my share of missions and assignments on alien soil. Except for my several years in the Emergency Corps – much more action-oriented than the Service Corps—I became somewhat of a reflective academic, a studier of species, a surveyor of culturedata from around the Sector. My protoriginal existence here as “Ambrose Bierce,” especially with the fact that I’m three bodies and nearly a century into my newfound life, became like an old family house one visits sentimentally, retaining basic memories and emotions, but whose resonance has become dulled by the passing years.

Some of my attitude change was undoubtedly old age, as that original body approached and passed eighty before it was replaced in 1930. But, more importantly, I was in an atmosphere of amity. Without heads to butt and malefactors to lay the verbal leather to, I lost the steam that had propelled me to what heights I had statuschieved. As well, after having certain mysteries finally explained to me, my search to know the secrets of the supernatural realm (the desire which drove my earlier fiction) became dissipated. Except for occasional short stories, when irresistible inspiration occurs, I hardly make fiction anymore, becoming more a reader and researcher, a commentator, and for the better part of ninety years, a recitator and lecturer.

I greatly relished those evenings on the ship (and elsewhere when requested) performing and sharing viewpoints, and verymuchly miss both the experiences and the crewmembers. This has caused me to consider taking up some kind of reading/lecturing here in the States. I never did any public lectures back in my previous time here, altho Sam Clemens would wax sentimotional about the pleasures of “the circuit,” recommending that I get a manager and do the same. At the time, I didn’t feel comfortable in front of groups of several hundred, as he so demonstrably did.

But that may be something I look into after my backjam of writing gets caught up. Speaking again of Clemens, I noted with great pleasure the wide and enthusiastic reception some years ago given to the late-great Hal Holbrook’s one-man-show of his readings. I saw this stage enactment on two occasions—once in New York and another time in St. Louis, near the shores of my friend’s beloved Mississippi River. That crowd was bursting with applausovation, and I was quite moved by it. I still think back to the great feeling in that auditorium, and may just end up doing something like that myself eventualater. It would be a bit of a sticky wicket, but I suppose I could “pretend” to be Ambrose Bierce.

CHAPTER 6

Into the Vastance I Go,

as a space-traveler I become

The planet Maqua was the aforementioned assignment for The Pearl, back there in 1914. This was around a hundred days’ travel—the days being of the 25-hour variety—to which I adapted more easily than I thought I would, probably owing to the absence of the sun and its 24-hour cycle. (During my first month back on Urth, I kept feeling as if the day was over too fast.)

When it was mutually agreed that I could accompany them, I felt excitement such as I hadn’t known since that misty yesteryear when I first set sail for London. My heart and brain gave race to each other, filled with the expectations of an eager traveler. I put in for a long list of provisions, including a crate of typewriter ribbons (they had gotten me the best Underwood made) and 100 reams of paper. They offered to rig up a computer for me, but it was too strangistic for my writing habits to fathom—until years later when I ran out of paper while on my shuttlecraft and was forced to use the ship’s computer for some reports. That was when I was finally converted to the conveniences of “word processing.” But I’ve always kept that old Underwood as a keepsake; even now it sits on a lampstand in my office here in Florida. Occasionally I dust it off, just to type a short note, or as an occasional pleasant reversion—to feel the old contentment induced by the soothetone clacking of the keys. (Of course, if it’s anything long, I then scan and word-process the pages.)

I was allowed to convert an alcove in my pri-quarters into a small but serviceable wet bar. I gave Randa a list of potables, starting with well-aged Scotch, that I needquired to stock it, and before our first away-trip I brimfilled the cabinet. I should inform you that there's no such thing, at least in this starzone, as those “replicators” on Star Trek that instantly make any item or refreshment. Wouldn’t that Just Be! (Not that I’d trust any such contraption to reproduce a proper-tasting bourbon, or a medium rare London broil.)

My stores would last fairly long as, first, I was less the drinker as my age progressed, and two of my next three bodies were from people who didn’t imbibe much, so there was a quick result when I did. The other thing was that the majority of the crew were non-drinkers. Commander Tetrov could throw it down pretty good — and I may be compelled later to recall a few of those episodes. The main problem occurred with the Aganians, who liked to drink and thought they could hold it, which they most definitely couldn’t, by a wide margin of certainty. They reminded me of Amerindians that way. I had to cut ’em off after three drinks, and weak ones at that. Otherwise, they’d be standing on the furniture doing impromptu renditions from their homeworld stage and screen, in their native language (ughh) and usually musicals (double ughh).

I had room to set up four chairs around a table next to the bar-counter. My large viewscreen could easily be seen from there but most often I would just sit and talk with my guests. Speaking of the viewscreen, this was of course before television was invented here. My unit, made on Parm, could be used for Sector broadcasts, interlinks with the bridge, outside lookviews, and playing info pins (like flash drives but the size of a matchstick and containing oodles more data and video). Also games, not unlike the better ones being played here now, except much more “3-D ish.” I never spent much time with those, but some of the crew were rather borderline addled by the things.

As for my culinary needs, it was handled as follows. I had stovelike devices, but cooked from scratch very little. Prepared foods and sauces were brought in from the ground, which I would mixnmatch into meals. Before trips, I’d stock up heavy, using the main kitchen for freeze-storage. This was a very nice facility, with an adjoining dining area, staffed by two full-time chefs, who would receive shipments of foodstuffs from the home planets.

Since he was our main ground agent, Randa would usually be the one to go to the restaurants for me, getting enuff to last a week to ten days. He became quite a well-known gourmand in some places we frequented, as he first would be seated for a fullicious meal at whichever place we picked, during which he would give them his take-out list. As he sat, he would liberally sample other things that the place served, or from the chef’s personal menutoire, adding whatever he liked best to the order. Randa would sometimes create a rumor that he was a restaurant critic from suchnsuch publication, to sharpen their disposition toward pleasing him. Later, in the ’50s and ’60s, in his undercloak guise, he became somewhat of a high society guy so he didn’t have to do anything extra to get special treatment. He became enamored with Urth food, even preferring it over his native dishes, and published a book of favorite meals, recipes, and restaurants, selling the reprorights to over fifty worlds, as well as here on Urth under his assumed identiname.

I had menus from about thirty fine restaurants on three continents, plus Istanbul, where I’d often send him, when I didn’t go myself, for curry and lamb, and their baclava. Where Randa would go depended on our proximity and his schedgenda. He would take a saucer, usually the one Bob Lazar termed the “Sport Model,” to the outskirts, then roll out some land vehicle currenthenly in use. Over the years we had a Model T, a Model A, a Packard, a few Buick Lesabres, a HarleyHog, and, more lately, a minivan, a Camaro, two SUVs, and a few unmarked black sedans, Lincoln Town Cars for the most part. These last I would sometimes employ, as wheelman and doorknocker, when contacting stray witnesses to “UFO sightings,” especially ones with some sort of filmage or hard evidence we preferred not be spread about.

On too many occasions, Randa would be the source of these UFO sightings, forgetting to put on his invisiofield while wandering lost and half-drunk over the countryside. His inebriation was the reason such a highcentage of saucer photos (the ones I couldn’t retrieve) show the saucer in a slanted position. One of his favorite things to do (and he just wouldn’t stop) would be to fly alongside a military or commercial jet and play peekaboo or tag with them. I’d say he was responsible 20% of UFO sightings most years. But he was our main assignee, and he worked mostly alone, going down (or out, if we were parked) on an almost daily basis for one thing or another. He was the only crewman who had more Urth time than I, and I used the flyers much less; besides which I was a much more careful driver.

Sidedata: On the problem of “unscheduled” sightings—which is also to say that there was a whole program of “scheduled sightings” for’purpose the gradgradual acclimatization of the populace—there were as well the visiting students, on their various school projects, or serving as interns. They were often related to crewmembers, and most seemed to view it like a vacation, or “camp.” Many air sightings, and almost all the ground sightings of “UFO occupants outside their craft,” were these careless youths. This bunch was constantly carousing about and were a general source of nuisancy on the ship as well, peeving me off more times than I care to remember.

Then, of course, there was the 1947 crash near Roswell, New Mexico that you’ve heard so much about. This was a truly disastrous occurrence caused when some young ones took (unauthorizedly) two of the flycraft for a spin during a lightning storm, and probably not realizing how the drive mechanisms were affected by lightning, or the military radar at a nearby base, tragically collided the roundabouts with each other.

CHAPTER 7

The Passing Show:

personalities thru the march of time

During my tenure in the Service Corps, I spent between a third and a half of my time on Urth assignment. My main mission during those years, other than my MIB duties and supervising targeted individuals for pickups and/or dream manipulations, was that of a “human pollinator.” With my identity that of a somewhat eccentric rich guy who liked to generously entertain the famous (and discuss intriguing subjects) I would bring talented people together and seed ideas and projects that they could achieve together or singly.

Utilizing those experiences, I plan a book entitled Meetings with Remarkable Humans, which I’ll outline later, but so many of the most interesting occurred in the golden year of 1927 that I want to devote a separate volume to it, and just call it 1927.

In these next several chapters, beginning with an episode of that year, I will hop, skip and jump thru the twentieth century, briefsketching some of the high and low points along the way.

The contacts I had in 1927 included Charles Lindbergh, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Gershwin, H. P. Lovecraft, Babe Ruth, Nic Tesla, Albert Einstein, Gloria Swanson, George Bernard Shaw, Ernie Hemingway and Thomas Edison.

That year had such a fullheaded buzz about it, an air of unlimited possibilities, especially in the US. It was the height of the Roaring Twenties and people were genuinely having a good time with it. The memory of (what they called back then) the Great War was fading, as was the horrible flu pandemic that killed millions and rattled the nerves of all. I’ll provide a few glimpses into that year and several others, to whet your appetite.

I was fully engaged with my underguise identity of an old, very rich, stock market maven. This allowed me the luxury—and, ah, so many luxuries there were—of meeting people of renown and influence in clubs and on my splendidly large yacht without the need to pretend that I had to go to work. Besides that which was provided by the Corps in support of my anonydentity, I had actually made a small fortune on the ballooning stock market of that era, using as my investorstake the money from McBurr’s gold. So very little actual pretending was involved.

I’ll start with a yacht story, more precisely a tale about the glorious but ill-fated Harbinger, a 67-foot sleek beauty that slept ten (and occasionally a few more than that).

In early September of that happy-go-lucky year, as I did at least once a week, I was having a small party on the boat; there were nine invitees, including Babe Ruth, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. Nic Tesla and Howie (H.P.) Lovecraft were no-shows. No surprise on the latter, as he invariably avoided my imprecations to leave his dreary abode and, as I would say to him, “join the living.” My primary target group that day would have been the troika of Einstein, Tesla, and the aging Edison. There were several concepts I had planned on dropping into the talkversation, including the unified field theory and spatial energetics as a source of unlimited power. Oh well, I never did get that triad together, much to my disappointment.

The threesome that did develop was that of Ruth, Edison, and Einstein, the talk mostly centered around moviemaking, everything from a director’s methiques to acting mannerisms and production financing. This was the not-so-secret infatuation of both the Babe and the professor, and here they were with the genius who had invented “moving pictures.” They were both gushing with awe, and shamelessly fawning over The Genius of Menlo Park, especially Einstein, as Ruth mostly listened and glutaciously devoured half the food on board in less than an hour. (One other thing about Ruth: he wasn’t educated or book-smart, but he obviously had a highq and a lightning-fast wit.)

I had hired a man to be my yacht captain and he had theretofore handlehelmed the boat, mostly on the Hudson, but also into the ocean, whenever I had guests. That particular day, however, he was laid up sick. Not wanting to cancel, I took the wheel myself, thinking, “How hard can this be?”

Well, it was a damn sight harder than I envisioned, and within an hour I had run us aground along the Hudson shore. Some rocks burst the hull and she was taking on water fast, so I had everyone put on life-jackets and jump overboard.

Ruth and Einstein had bonded as buddies during the party. This quite-unlikely Mutt ’n’ Jeff duo leaped off together, holding hands. (That would have made a great photo!) Before they did, I heard Ruth bellow, “Onna counta three!” He then proceeded to count “One,” then “Three,” pulling the surprised little physicist over with him, both laughing as they went.

The Babe was up past 50 homers at that point and everyone was abuzz that he would break his old record of 59. If I had injured him, there would have been mobs with torches to tar and feather me. But, other than an expensive boat and my ego, there were no casualties that afternoon.

I can chuckle about that day’s events now, but at the time I thought it to be an unmitigated disaster. Once safely ashore, we commandeered, for a larcenousprice, an unused school bus and made our way back to New York. I was somewhat jokingly pulled away from the steering wheel by Ruth, who said. “We’re suspending your driver’s license until further notice,” and sat down to drive the thing himself. I was feeling quite downhearted about losing the yacht, and Tesla not showing up, but the gathered group cheered me up.

Besides those mentioned already, the assemblage included Bill Mellon, of the grotesquely rich Pittsburgh Mellons, and Jake-something from the J. P. Morgan bank, and his cousin, another Bill. Also present was the as-yet-unpublished Henry Miller, who went on to publish Tropic of Cancer and other steamacious works. I had invited him for’purpose Lovecraft, another no-show, and he stayed mostly taciturn and a bit sulky on the boat, unhappy that no other writers were there. So I let him bend my ear about his literary projects and the series of bossholes he had worked for.

Clustered near the front, they all consoled me with their pats on the back and handshakes, saying it could have happened to anyone, and they would join me another time after the boat was fixed (which it was, at large expense, becoming the Harbinger II). We then commenced to have a raucous bus party back to the city.

The Babe had stopped at the first liquor store he saw and bought a large bag of potables, a block of ice, and an ice chest. After the bottles were opened, and various vulgar toasts were made to “the captain of the doomed ship at sea,” Ruth started the singing of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which the others joined in on, and the festivities began. The mood was one of high adrenaline and exhilaration, for having braved the elements and survived. By the time we arrived back in New York City, the whole lot of them were haplaughy and goofacious, pounding my old spine with their hearty thank-you’s for a grand old time.

The eighty-year-old Edison—five years younger than I—was the only one who didn’t sing, only mouthing some of the tunes, but he had a large smile on his redolent face, and kept beat with his cane. Einstein knew only a few of the songs, which were mostly of the drinking variety, with various show tunes thrown in, but he pretended to conduct the rest of us, as if we were an orchestra, instead of a damp and besotted coterie of mixmatched older gentlemen. (The one exception to that was Henry Miller, who was only around thirty-five at the time.)

Miller began the singing of a very bawdacious sea chanty, and I started to interrupt, but several on the bus launched wholeheartedly into it, and I sat back down. After this the floodgates were opened, and you should have heard some of the songs these men knew! As the emptied bottles of Scotch, rum, and champagne rolled about on the floor of the bus, most everything that anyone said created a pandemonium of boisterous highlarity.

Ruth declared that we weren’t a proper team unless we all had nicknames, so all the cohortizens got titled, starting with me, Captain Cook. That wasn’t so bad, I thought in the moment before it got changed, by loud acclamation, to Captain Cock-Eyed. Babe said that he was Ishmael, Einstein volunteered himself as Chalkboard Al, Miller became ’Enry the Thirteenth, and Edison was Mr. Electricty. The bankers became Jake the Rake, Wild Bill, and Dollar Bill. As a group we were Captain Cock-Eyed and the Seven Saved Souls, the idea being that all the other passengers perished in the wreck. We took turns giving overwrought eulogies to our unfortunate shipmates, lost to the (this from the come-to-life Miller) “churning waves and the hungry, hungry sharks, who had their fill of human flesh that awful day, when the sea ran red, and helpless screams filled the air.”

All-in-all, it turned out to be an afternoon of unforgettable funcitement. As we entered the urbarea, I hoisted myself up and asked everyone the favor of not publicly recounting the tale of our shipwreck, as I did not want to dissuade others from joining me in the future. (This was a true reason, but I also did not want any publicity, as I was someone of seeming credentials, but fake ID, and I didn’t want the authorities looking too closely.) When I made the request, most of them, by then skunk-drunk, yelled out obscenities, saying it was the best of stories, and one they would tell for all their living days. But seeing how desolate I became, they all demurred at the last, agreeing not to mention the boat accident, only that we ran out of fuel and had to bus back.

It was even harder for the bankers to pledge secrecy, as they lived for this sort of name-dropping bragging rights (“. . . then me and Ruth and Professor Einstein jumped over the side”), and did me many favors, like land and stock tips, for allowing them to meet some of the personages I would assemble. But they also agreed to modify the story.

After the yacht was repaired, I had several more salon/soirées, to no comparable excitement, but had to desist after the summer of 1928 as my old, original bonebag began crumbling to a halt.

CHAPTER 8

Meeting the Lady of the House,

as I listen to Eleanor talk

It was a gorgeous late morning in West Palm Beach, Florida on the day I sat down with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932, I was in the guise of a rich, well-educated man interested in contributing money to her husband’s presidential campaign. Actually, I was scheduled to meet with Governor Roosevelt, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party that presidential year, but he was otherwise occupied, and his wife came to meet me at the grandly appointed Bradley House Hotel. (I had my TM17, which was a gizmo the size of a cigarette case that had the functions of a videocorder and long-range walkie-talkie rolled into one.)

In a way I was glad about the switch, as I was still a bit self-conscious about the Judge Crater body, and even though I was wearing a toupee and colored contact lenses (which I hated), and had the nose made smaller, the wide-shouldered six-foot body and baritone voice remained the same. I was afraid that Franklin would say something to me, how I reminded him of the missing judge. I had gotten that two or three times in the few months that I was out and about after the surgery and had been avoiding people who knew him.

Also, I was still not feeling full strength, even tho the new body was that of a forty-one-year-old. It was a known fact that FDR was a vibrant and garrulous man, one who required a lot of energy even to be in conversation with. The physical problems I was experiencing were the hangover effects of the brain transfer to Crater’s body, as I had to recuperate not only from the effects of a brain/spinal cord reconnection but also Mr. Crater’s apparently savage last beating and several bullets.

As it turned out, the Mrs. was quite the vocal tornado herself and thoroughly dominated the conversation with me after first, politely and graciously, asking me to help support her husband. In the moment, I produced a check for $30,000, not a minor sum at the time, let alone the fact of the Depression ravaging the bank accounts of many formerly rich persons. She lit up in the most beautiful manner at this, not only for the size of the check but also, I perceived, for the fact that I did not first require her to jump thru any hoops of promises and returned favors, as was generally the case in such meetings. But I wanted to create a genuine genialsphere, one in which I could share ideas with her without any undue pressure or tension between us.

She spoke at length on many subjects, barely allowing me a full sentence in between her various discourses (which was mostly fine with me, as I was not at peak strength). True, Mrs. Roosevelt was loquacious, but not in an egoful way; she was someone who had ideas and ideals, and was justifiably intent on sharing them.

As I noted in my copious transcription, she both defended and found fault with the philosopher-economist Adam Smith and the economist John Maynard Keynes. She launched into a virtual lecture, quite wonderfully evoked, of the writings of the nineteenth-century economic historian and social idealist Arnold Toynbee (who had died at the age of thirty, she noted, her voice cracking a bit). She was enamored of his insights into the workings of capitalism and the need for governments to foster and protect the working class while not overly restraining the engines of capitalism. She impressed me with her sincere empafeel for the less privileged members of society.

Moving from there, after I asked her a question about the current economic predicament and how one could balance the needs of the citizenry with the problem of reinvigorating the banks and big business interests. She spoke for a quarter-hour on the projected Roosevelt domestigenda—on labor unions, the need for social justice (especially in regard to universal healthcare coverage), the race issue and improved educational initiatives.

I perceived very little hint of the New Deal to come, ie, the necessity of a benevolent government to marshal its forces to create programs for the working class, except that she outlined how her husband’s administration would provide for a rapidspansion of the relief agencies, to tide people over until economic conditions could be allayed. I offered the suggestion that some of this public dole could be combined with work projects, jobs for the able-bodied in federal programs. “There’s quite a lot of work that needs to be done, in the cities, in the towns, in the countryside,” I offered. Her face lit up with the glow of a do-gooder, which she was down to the marrow of her manor-born bones.

“In fact,” I continued, alluding to their cousin Theodore’s appellation, “what we need in this country is a new Square Deal. The people deserve a chance at an even playing field, a fair game.”

“Yes, I agree. Maybe we could call it A Fair Deal.”

“Whatever it’s called, times like these call for the government’s fullest intervention. That’s the power that a country has, if it’s dedicated to the general welfare. The combined power of a nation can benefit the masses of people, if done in the right spirit, the helping spirit.”

“Oh, I certainly agree! The people have been let down by the old way of doing things. It’s time for a new deal for them.”

At that I raised my eyebrows and finger, and she smilingly did the same in my direction.

After this, in response to a comment I made regarding the recent drastic cuts in the education budgets of many states, she became quite animated on the topic of expanding and improving the edusystem, from the earliest age to post-graduate facilities. She concluded with warmspressionistic finality: “With good education, an individual or a country can conquer many things.”

I asked her if she thought that the day would come when the world’s peoples would all live as one large extended family, and tying into this question, I brought up the possibility of life on other planets—other peoples that we might someday meet. Her answer was at once practical and inspirational. “It seems to me that the cause and purpose of mankind is, first, self-preservation of course, but then the self-development and progress of the whole of humanity. How can we deny that we are all children of the same Great God? We cannot. And didn’t Jesus say that the Father’s kingdom has many mansions?”

When she had finished this statement, I held her gaze—which was somehow, sametimely, gentle and steely—while I reached into my breast pocket for my checkbook and pen, and wrote a second check for $20,000. Our meeting was scheduled for thirty minutes and it was by then over an hour long, so I stood up while handing her the additional contribution and said, “Promise me to ask if there’s anything else I can do for you or your husband.” She put the check in her handbag, stood up, and shook my hand with a strong grip, her eyes sparkling with the success of having gained another ally for Franklin.

A major side-benefit of my meeting that day was my introduction to Wendell Willkie, the Roosevelts’ erstwhile associate. Eleanor had said to me, “You must meet someone when you go back to New York. I’ll give you his telephone number. He’s such a bright and thoughtful man, as you are. I wish we could convert him to our side for the election.” I promised her that I would have a chat with him.

Following thru on my pledge, I contacted the man, a big-time corporate lawyer and Democratic Party operative who was supporting Cleveland Mayor Newt Baker for the nomination. About the first thing he said was that I reminded him of Judge Crater, which shook me a bit because he knew him fairly well. From that moment on, he would call me “Judge” as often as my real (assumed) name. We had a quite robust meeting of the minds, lubricated by a bottle of the best bootleg Scotch in the city (courtesy of Joe Kennedy); and after a spirited butting of heads, he ended up seeing the inevitable reality of the FDR primacy.

“The son-of-a-bitchin’ train’s leaving the station! All aboard who’s comin’ aboard,” I remember barking out as we sat on the plush red leather in his spacious New York office.

The thing about him was that he could charm the teeth off an alligator, and at one point he had me halfway going for Baker, but I had turned it around during another two hours of persistent reasoning, amid filled-and-emptied shot glasses and lit-and-extinguished Cuban cigars. What Willkie also had was the damnest combination of sheer idealism and utter pragmatism that I ever met in a man. I appealed that day to the latter, but in the years to come, after we became friends, I went hard at the former, creating a fulcrum that paid large dividends.

He turned his support to FDR, which greatly assisted the Roosevelt cause. I attended the convention in Chicago as a New York alternate delegate and witnessed it turn into a wild horse-trading affair, owing to the fact that Roosevelt was a little short of the two-thirds he needed to lock it up. Willkie was like a magnificent maestro, helping to conduct the last necessary supporters needed to put the Governor of New York over the top. Wendell convinced the ambitious Joseph P. Kennedy to swing his contingent to Franklin, and spoke to William Randolph Hearst just before my old boss gave over his bought-and-paid-for delegates.

Standing at W.W.’s side during that meeting in the proverbial “smoke-filled-room,” I interjected to Hearst, “This sure isn’t no Aught-Four, Billy.” At that he looked at me sharply (as Wendell elbowed my rib). “Billy” was a nickname Mr. Hearst forbade anyone to use, myself as Ambrose being the only one with the brass to use it to his face. And the reference to ’04 was a painful jab, as in that year Hearst was actually the frontrunner for the Dem nod—mostly because nobody else wanted to run against the popular TR—but it slipped through his fingers, a defeat that he took hard. Anyway, that was the last of the maneuvering, and the third ballot was the clincher, becoming a swirling maelstrom of Roosevelt signs and half-drunk delegates prancing about.

After the convention, Willkie not only campaigned strenuously for the Roosevelt team but also contributed large sums of his own money. But soon after the election, he found himself in opposition to FDR over the Tennessee Valley Authority utility federalization. You see, his biggest client was a huge power company, and power companies didn’t like anything that decreased their eminent domain, or had, as they would say, “the whiff of socialism” about it.

We drifted apart around then (Okay, I might have called him “a corporate whore with a nose for the money”) and I didn’t see him for several years, during which time he switched to the Republican Party and became, altho never in his life holding any official office, a viable candidate for the nomination. (We’ll never see that again in this country, barring an Oprah announcement.)

Wendell visited me in the spring of 1940 and asked me what I thought about him running—could I possibly consider supporting him? I think that he just used that as a pretense to shoot the shit with an old buddy, because he must have known that I was still deep with the Roosevelts. Anyway, I encouraged him the best I could, telling him, “You should grab for the brass ring if you’ve got the chance. It may never come around again.” (Little did I know that he had only four years to live.)

At that point he was still a dark-horse candidate, and not even the leading dark-horse candidate, but he somehow, against all earthly odds, passed the field and then streaked past Thomas Dewey. I back-channeled to every Republican I could think of, and well over a dozen folks in the news biz, that I thought that only Willkie had a chance of defeating FDR. (To confess, I had untruthfully intimated to some in the press that the Democratic leadership hoped Dewey would get it, so that they could reveal what they knew about some scandalous skeletons he was hiding.)

Altho I knew Wendell wasn’t going to win in November, no one was more delighted than I about his ascendancy, and I arranged to have secret drinks with him on several occasions.

After his unanimously predicted trouncing in that election (but he was proud of getting 22 million votes—“the best ever among the losers”), in which he was an isolationist who called for non-participation in Europe’s problems, I had some serious discussions with him on the need to stop Hitler and the Japanese, and how the world was shrinking by the year, and the world’s problems could no longer be ignored as they once could be. He gradgradually became convinced that the only course for America was a positive involvement, not only in the war itself thru support of Great Britain and troops if necessary, but also in the building of a “new and stronger League of Nations” after the conflict was over.

I helped him mend his fences with the Roosevelts, and he became FDR’s ambassador-at-large during the war, traveling to England, Russia, China, and the Middle East on behalf of the United States. I accompanied him on a few of his overseas excursions, which gave us time for long conversations about the state of the world, its imminent future, and its long-range ideal future.

On a few occasions I broached the subject of life on other worlds, and how they probably handled their problems. He agreed that any world that was advanced enuff to be sending spaceships to other stars must have progressed beyond their internecine squabblings and become a unified planet.

I agreed, and said that “only a unity of nations could accomplish the great work of mastering space travel. Maybe some day we’ll reach that goal ourselves.”

Out of these talkversations came the core ideas for his book, entitled One World, which became the best-selling book of its time, and was perhaps the biggest impetus to public support for the creation of the United Nations within our shores.

Unfortunately, I could never get Wendell to alter his eating habits or aversion to exercise, and he was taken from us by a heart attack in 1944, at the ridiculously early age of fifty-two. It remains my firm conviction that he would have been the ideal choice as the first US representative to the world body in New York. His untimely death still saddens me.

CHAPTER 9

All Hail the Queen of the Air,

as Amelia joins the crew

In 1937 we returned from an elsewhere mission to find Europe on the brink of World War II. But a major event of that year was to take place on a jungle island in the far reaches of the Pacific.

Attempting to be the first woman pilot to circle the globe, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan became lost, ran out of fuel, and subsequently crash-landed on a flat reef on Gardner Island, 350 miles south of their planned destination of Howland Island. They survived for nearly two weeks on rainwater and the scant vegetation they could forage, but the island was little more than a rock and held very little means of sustenance. Seeing other islands in the distance (in the Phoenix chain) and hoping to find better conditions for survival, they set out in their plane’s small inflatable raft. They further hoped that they might be spotted by a passing ship or plane as they made their transit.

But they were weak paddlers, both having sustained body and head trauma—Fred from the crash landing and Ms. Earhart from a fall—and they were pushed out to sea. Their meager provisions lasted them only about a day and a half. We had been monitoring this situation from the very beginning and realized the dire straits they were in; not one plane or ship was within 50 miles of them. So we decided to rescue them, nurse them back to health, hypnoject them to forget our intervention, and place them back on the raft near a coming ship.

They were both unconscious when rescued—on top of their injuries they were badly dehydrated and suffering from sunstroke. Fred came around in two days, but Amelia remained in a coma for an additional twenty-four hours.

After she returned to consciousness, they had me go into the infirmary to speak with her. Just before that, as she was stirring from her coma, I had requested that the wide-angle portview be covered up, to obscure what at that point was a Saturnian vista, as we were hiding in that planet’s rings, as we sometimes would.

Ms. Earhart was still heavily sedated, and bandaged around her scalp and eye injury. She lay there, her one ungauzed eye fluttering, mumbling incoherencies, not yet noticing me standing next to her. I asked Jaka, the ship’s chief medico, to give her a mild stimulant, just enuff to break her thru to full consch. A minute later, she was blinking up at me. “Father, is that you?”

“No, Madam, I am Ambrose.”

“Amrose?

“No, Ambrose.”

“Ambrose? Like in Ambrose Bierce?”

I chuckled but contained myself. “Yes, precisely like that.”

She gained a better focus and looked me up and down. “You look like Judge Joe Crater. Are we both dead, and is this the afterlife?” While I paused, a bit stunned and realizing that I didn’t have on my toupee or colored contacts, she added, “The music sounds like we’re in Heaven.” (We had been playing soothing instrumentals—what you folks would term New Age music.)

“No, no,” I stammered, “no on all counts, dear. There is much to be explained to you, but it’s my responsibility to ease you into the reality you now find yourself in.”

For some reason, this brought out a flash of temper. One can surmise that she bridled at the protection from life’s harsh realities that her parents and husband George Putnam attempted to enforce upon her, something she deeply resented—being a distinct breed of strong-minded, independent woman.

“Just give me the damn facts, whoever-you-are!! If this is hell, just say so. If I’m paralyzed, just say it! If Fred is dead, just tell me the straight truth of it.” At this last, her voice cracked a little. “Is Fred alive?” she asked in a very different voice. “Please just tell me.”

“Fred is very much alive, Miss Earhart, as are you. He will be in to see you momentarily. It’s just that you need to know some things first.” She started again with her impatient demands, but I shushed her (the first and last time I ever did that) and proceeded to tell her, as briefly as possible, the unvarnished facts concerning her crash, our rescue, and the kind of craft we were on.

When I informed her of this last part, she pulled herself up a bit and looked around until she spotted a window. “Let me see!” I walked over and pulled the drapery up, giving her a good view of Saturn and two of its moons.

“My God, my God, my God!!!” she shrieked. But it wasn’t the shriek of a fear-filled woman, but more that of a person happily excited to be experiencing a great adventure.

A few days later I was authorized to give her the same choice I was given almost a quarter-century before; she could stay with us and join the crew or be returned somehow, perhaps put back on the raft and set adrift near a passing boat.

Amelia looked pensively at me, her eyes sparkling. “I just don’t know what to say, Ambrose.” She gazed out the portview, sighed, then said nothing for a long minute. “Let me think about it, and talk to Fred.”

I had not yet told her about my real identity, and the mediciques onboard that made body transference possible, so she did not know about the prospects of semi-immortality that being with us would afford her. So her decision to stay on the ship and travel with us was based on other considerations, primarily the grandness of the opportunity. She asked if she would be allowed to return to the ground sometimes, especially to fly planes, and she was told that, of course, all that could be arranged—that we would provide her with fake identification papers, including a pilot’s license.

Her only other consideration was that she be allowed to inform her family of her survival, and that was agreed to by the Commander, who had taken an immediate liking to her and was eagerceptive to the prospect of having her (and the intrepid Fred Noonan) as part of the ship’s crew. After getting those assurances and talking with Fred, she and he both agreed to stay on.

When I did get around to telling her about myself—about my disappearance into Mexico and subsequent “capture,” about my missions with the crew on Urth and overspace, and how in 1930 I was getting into my eighties and rickety, she interrupted me to say, “I think you’re about to tell me that you took on Judge Crater’s body. How could that be?”

That made it easier for me to ford that chasm, as I then told her about Judge Crater’s murder and explained to her that the onboard surgeons could perform a transference, in most cases, within two hours of death. I went on to suggest that one day in the future she may be given such a chance to prolong her physical life.

“It’s just such a strange thing to even think about, Ambrose. Maybe I’ll consider it when the time comes.” Just then she sat up straighter in her chair and said, “You know, between me, Judge Crater, and Ambrose Bierce, we represent the three biggest missing persons cases of the twentieth century, the ones where no body was ever found. So if this ship ever landed on the White House lawn, that would be one heck of a big story for the newspapers!”

“If this ship did something like that, our story wouldn’t be the headline, it would be that The Aliens have Landed!!” I said a little too seriously, considering the humorsense of who I was talking to.

“Don’t be so sure,” she said with a big grin on her face, “the newspapers loved me to death. And there are still ships at sea and airplanes looking for me all these months later. And

didn’t I tell you about my many fan clubs?” (She said this all self-mockingly, as she did things for the challenge, not the fame.)

“Okay, then,” I said, conforming to her mood. “ If this ship landed out in the open, the headline would be, Amelia Returns!!! And the sub-headline would be She Appears to Be in Good Health!! Then about two-thirds of the way thru what’s mostly an interview with you, it would read, ‘Also on board were Ambrose Bierce, Fred Noonan, and several dozen persons from other planets.’”

“Exactly,” she chortled.

Without completely redoing her face with radical plastisurgery, there was little chance of A.E. not being recognized as who she was if she were sent on assignment. All agreed that there was no disguising that tallness or that distinctive bone structure. It was decided that whenever she assumed an undercloak identity Urthside, she’d simply go as a man, to fit in more easily. This was at first quite fine with her, as she had labored against gender discrimination all her life, being mollied and coddled when she just wanted to be a regular, unbridled person. But she grew to dislike the play-acting of this assumed role, and the disparity between who she was and how a man would speak and act became too much of a stretch for her.

So Amelia didn’t operate on the ground much, mostly concerning herself with shipside duties and being our chief pilot (she wouldn’t let us say chauffeur), the one who would ferry anyone who needed a ride anywhere, to or from Urth or wherever we were stationed. For a while, she also operated a plane on the ground, for when Randa or I or one of the other undercloaks needed to be somewhere and a diskcraft wasn’t available, or we were accompanied by a regular human. This was soon discontinued after a few “Amelia Earhart sightings” at small airports.

There was one project, in San Diego, related to propulsion systems, in which she played an integral role (as a financier), but for the most part she stayed on board or in the pilot’s chair of the various flycraft we had. On some of our excursions out and about to other worlds, she was more active, but wherever we went, she would always seek out the native aircraft and take them up for a spin. And when it came to the ship’s mini-fleet of disks and the space-traversing shuttlecraft, she became an expert pilot of all and sundry, re-earning the “Queen of the Air” title she was once hailed by.

Speaking of names and such (the one she hated was Lady Lindy), Amelia was never called Amy back on Urth , as that was the name of one of her female flying competitors. But Fred and I often called her that, and she didn’t mind. Her actual family nicknames were Meelie and A.E, which we sometimes also used.

On several occasions A.E. gave me rides, and she never missed a chance to do some dipsy-doodle stuff, flying upside down or doing figure-eights. It rattled the hell out of me, but she could never get me to complain. I acted as if it was all very humdrum, not to give her the satisfaction of “scaring” me.

She and Fred were almost inseparable, and they were married very early on, officiated by Tro in a ceremony considered legal on over 600 planets. I had the privilege of giving the bride away, something that both delighted and dismayed me, as I had somehow fallen quite in love with her during the previous several months—a condition that never went away. I believed that she and Fred never suspected a thing, and we carried on as a friendly threesome for nearly thirty years—being the resident Urthsapiens of The Pearl.

Having Amelia onboard filled the ship with a newfound energy, that of exuberance of spirit. She delivered joy in large doses to a crew that was starved for it—and yet we didn’t realize the deficit existed until she joined on. Not that the crew were anything but content before her arrival, but it was more a workaday contentment, rarely displeased, but rarely haplaughful. I honestly don’t know how we managed before her, or how we survived after her departure.

One of my enduring images is that of Amelia crossing some area of the ship, surrounded by half a dozen or more of the mostly short crewmen, all acting enraptured. I never said this out loud, because it would have been disrespectful of the crew (all of whom were akin to PhD’s in some field or another), but it always made me think of that Disney movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, especially the scenes where her bountiful beauty and happiness made the dwarfs act a bit giddy around her.

I’ll share one thing with you that will give you a good picture of the effect of her presence on The Pearl. Amelia had a gloriously pitched laugh, which was easily provoked—especially by Corrina, who would buddy around with her on occasion. All who were within range of that sound were themselves tickled, whether or not they knew the actual cause or subject. If a group of us were in the next room, or across the dining area or exercise room, and we heard those peals of laughter, we would all laugh out loud for a few seconds. It was that infectious.

A.E. and I teamed up several times on away missions, the first time being in 1940 to the planet Perthix, a water-rich, two-mooned world.

The Sector was very keen on getting Perthix onboard as a member planet. They had gone thirty-plus years without a war, had rich resources and a great electronics industry, wide-ranging and stable democratic institutions and no slave races. Also, they had achieved rudimentary space travel, having explored all the orbs of their solar system. The only requisite they were lacking was an international governing body.

Perthix was a planet of about three billion, two-thirds of whom lived on four smallish continents spread around the orb. The other 900 million inhabizens were resident on the large country/continent of Terlidia, a powerhouse state that dominated the rest of the world. All the other countries (an approxim twenty) wanted to join the Astanian League, but Terlidia opposed the move. In a pre-shadowed way, this was mirrorflective of what the Service Corps would face with Urth’s dominant country, the US. Terlidia liked the status quo, being the big dog, the undisputed leader of the planet.

They were aware of one of our requirements, that of an international organization that was democratically run and would speak as one voice for the world in the Sector councils. Terlidia did the math and figured that they were outnumbered 20-1 in countries and 2-1 in persons. They figurized that their dominance would end with the Openization agreement.

The Astanian Service Corps mission was to convince Terlidia at least at least take the step of participating in the establishment of such a planetary council, as a preliminary step to future entry into our league. At the most—and we didn’t hold out much hope for this result—we would get Terlidia to join with the other countries in accepting Phase One of the Openization protocol, in which ambassadors would be exchanged, and some representatives from the Interplanetary Traders Agency would come to begin talks about imports and exports.

The president of Terlidia, who was first on the agenda, was the main stumbleblock to the planet going Sector. Petris Kataro had campaigned on the slogan, Terlidia First and Foremost!! and was considered a tough nut to crack. He was an aviator hero from their last war who had gone into politics, eventually rising to the top elective office. He was reputed to be well-read and sharptelligent, and was himself the author of three books—an autobiog and two adventure novels. When I heard the part about him being an aviator and read in the notes that he was still an active and avid pilot, I suggested to the Commander that he allow Amelia to be on the delegation team with me.

I should mention that I had just previously been given the promotion to Ambassador, and this was my first major assignment as such. My job was to accompany Tro to the planet, give preparatory remarks, and introduce him at the functions we would be attending. We were undecided as to the question of anyone else being on the diploteam, as in such circumditions on pre-Openized worlds the smaller the contingent the better.

Tro readily agreed with my choice of A.E., saying that “birds of a feather will flock together.” To conform to Sector guidelines, he gave Amelia the rank of Acting Ambassador. (She had, in a few short years, moved up already to Envoy First Class.[1])

The one hitch in the itinerary was that The Commander had to detour to Jebbla for a day, to finish up some business in one of the “elseplace troublenests” that always seemed to be calling for Tro’s special skills. Amelia and I had as our mission to act as a diplomatic vanguard during the first day, familiarizing President Katara with our general parameters and feeling out what his nessquirements were. Or as Tro put it: “Prepare the table, and I will serve a lovely meal.”

We were ushered into a magnificent, ornately appointed room, which had four heavy, stuffed chairs situated near the middle, with a small, round table set between the two pairs. Amelia and I sat across from Katara and his chief-of-staff, a slender fellow named Jorkon. The president had also apparently researched us, and the basic story of Urth.

“Ah, well, the writer and the aeronautical princess. What a combination I have been sent! Someone has apparently read my autobiography. But do proceed with what you want to say to us. Tell us why we should open a door when we have such fine windows?” I thought that was kind of a clunker, so I checked my translator unit, which was set correctly. I speculated to myself that his books might have been ghostwritten.

Holding my stack of index cards, I launched into my little speech about the Sector’s collectivization of planets and the concomitant enrichment of cultures and economies brought about by their enjoinment into the League. My eyes on my cards, I thought I was doing a quite competent job, when I heard Amy giggle. Looking up, I saw her and Mr. Katara both with their arms out, simulating a flying motion, completely ignoring my carefully prepared remarks.

Amelia was beaming brightly and, hearing me stop my recitation, she started rattling off the names of the planes President Katara had piloted during his illustrioventurous career. He smiled for the first time, then laughed as he realized that Amelia cared not a whit for the negotiations just then, only the art and science of flying, a passion they shared.

“I think the lady would rather be elsewhere. High up and elsewhere. Let’s go flying, Amelia Earhart!” At this A.E. and I both threw up our hands, mine in resigned exasperation and hers in the moment’s victory. “Ambrose can stay at the hotel and review his notes, his many, many copious notes. Let’s go, Mr. Katara. Your skies await us.” They swept away and out the door of the grand chamber, and I went back to the hotel where I, yes, reviewed my copious notes. This was the most responsibility I had been accorded by the Commander and I was determined not to disappoint him.

As Amelia told me the story later, they went first to the hangar where he kept five of his personal flycraft, all sleek beauties but individuated by form, size, and engine type. He took her up in one, then the other, then the next, letting her fly most of them. “These were seriously wonderful planes, Ambrose. Every one of them a champion thoroughbred. I swear I could have left Fred and married the man right there in the hangar if he’d asked me.” She then made the hand-wave gesture and girlishly funny face that told me she was just kidding.

Next, she took him up in our shuttlecraft, one of the larger ones (120-foot diameter) and showed him some of her patented gyronautical moves, diving and pirouetting thru the skies over their vast countryside and beach-filled coastline, giving names to all her better moves. Then she had an idea. “I know what let’s do. Let’s go to that canyon I saw when we were coming in!”

Before long they were flying over Perthix’s greatest geologic wonder. It’s like a smaller version of our Grand Canyon, but even narrower. She asked him how wide it was and he told her, the answer being not much wider than the ship.

“Oh, what bad luck that we brought this big ol’shuttle; if we had a smaller one we could do this.” At that she went into a steep dive, almost vertical, heading into the mouth of the canyon. Amelia then turned on the retroburners, creating a slowing effect and a high-pitched whining sound that gave the move the name, “The Screaming Banshee.”

“But it was two screaming banshees, let me tell you,” she told me laughingly back at the hotel that night. “He was howling like a stuck pig all the way down and half way back up again, until he realized I wasn’t going to kill him. I reached over and patted his arm as we got near the top, but just then I clipped an overhang. I’ll have to get the dent fixed without the Commander finding out.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, there’s no such animal as ‘without-the-Commander-finding-out’? Then what did you do?”

“Well, I continued straight up with the shuttle and back to The Pearl. I know,” she stopped my start at a protest, “that it’s strictly prohibited. But he was only on the ship for a minute, while we switched shuttles. I brought Big Blue down.”

“What?! You didn’t!” Big Blue is a 290-foot behemoth that takes up a whole level in the ship’s hangar bays, and itself carries three diskcraft, small-, medium-, and large-sized. The mid-sized one is a 52-footer, the so-named “Sport Model” that Bob Lazar saw at the S-4 facility within Area 51. These are like the Ferraris of the Astanian fleet: awesomely serious take-off velocity, with a cruising speed of 4500 MPH and a top speed over 6000. (Between planets they can go a good deal faster than that.)

Amelia positioned Big Blue in stationary orbit and escorted Katara down the shuttle’s escalater to where the disks were sitting. Choosing the model I just described, she zoomed out the into open space with the president in tow, heading for their nearest moon. They sat side-by-side in the cockpit, and she activated the viewscreen between the two chairs to display her collection of files showing dozens of flycraft from around the Sector, interjecting as to which of them she had already flown, and which she was itching to get into.

Katara enjoyed this immensely, astounded by the beauty and variety he was being shown. He agreed that this would be one large advantage of being a partner of the wider starzone. Suitably softened up, the president was told about some of the other advantages of playing on a larger field. She then displayed, in quickcession, around fifty pages from the Traders’ shopping catalog, eye-boggling products for home, office, recreation, and road, giving a brief description of some of their features. “Not to mention that Perthix’s products will be listed in this same catalog, read religiously on over 600 worlds. Especially Terlidia’s exquisite electronics. They’d be instant big sellers for sure.”

“So, you’re about the business after all, Amelia Earhart,” Katara teased.

“Not specifically, but I like to see success—in people, countries, worlds. Perthix is ready to join the success club, and so are you. A big-time fellow like you is wasting himself on just one little planet. We have a saying on my world: ‘You’re a pearl, and the world is your oyster.’ A pearl is a gem and the oyster grows it and contains it. The Sector should be your oyster, Petris. You should take advantage of your chance to have anexpanded playing field.” She then explained to him that non-member citizens are severely accesstricted in their travel.

“Think of the places you’ll never visit. Here, I’ll show you a few examples.” She then screenflashed a dozen or so of the loveliest planets, displaying sky-shots and ground-level vistas. “And then there are the resort centers, Mr. President. I can barely begin to tell you how much fun those are. For instance there’s Bolla, not far from Perthix as the disk flies.”

Amelia then put up some screen shots from Bolla’s 3-D brochure, and told him about some of their best features. “This place makes that casino city you have look like a dusty farm village. So what are you going to do next, Captain?”

“What? What do you mean?” he asked.

She pointed out that the red light on his side of the panel meant that he had helm control. “You’ll have to help me, Amelia.”

“Gladly, sir.” She got up and stood behind Katara, placing his right hand over the joystick and pointing out the ancillary controls, giving him quick lessons until he could smoothly maneuver in open space, even helping him enter high orbit around the moon, then showing him how to steer the craft down to a lower altitude.

“You’re right at home flying something like this, aren’t you? Something you might not know yet is that if a planet goes into Phase One, the Sector picks the interim planetary leader, until elections can be held with the new world council. I can guarantee you that you’ll be our choice.” (We had been saving this plum for the last day’s negotiations, but what the heck, the lady had the tiger by the tail.)

“You can become the planet’s leader, and after you do a splendid job, they’ll re-elect you. A lot of your time would be spent out in the Sector. Most of the conferences and such are held in places like Bolla. They have all the exciting things a man like you could enjoy. Even the naughty things.” She whispered this last line, salaciously, into the bachelor’s ear as they flew over the panorama of their moon’s mountainous region. He lurched a little, and she had to guide his control-hand to maneuver the ship away from the approaching peak.

At this point President Katara was well in hand, literally and figuratively, and A.E. moved forward seamlessly into recommendations for their transition to Sector memberhood.

Amelia told him about the Traders, and the League entrance fee (sortalike the things I run thru in Chapter 28), giving him various useful tips on handling that portion of the negotiations. “The amount of gold and gems they’ll at first request is exactly double what they’ll settle for, just so you know. Come back with a figure that’s 40% of that, and force them to nudge you up.”

The next morning Commander Tetrov arrived barely in time to splitlickety make it to the conclave, having just come from taming a nasty dispute between two planets who shared a solar system. We all gathered in that same grand chamber, only this time there were over 100 individuals in attendance, reps from all the countries on the globe, and a large contingent of Terlidia’s enchiladas.

I was first up and gave what I thought was a rather solid and succinct overview of the Sector’s interest in Perthix, and why Perthix should be interested in Sectorhood. I then introduced Tro, who gave them a rousing forty minutes or so, full of dazzling holoprojections and hilarious anecjokes and spintales from his many years on the job.

I turned and whispered to Amy, “I think he’s done this before,” noticing that she and Katara were making hand signals back and forth.

“Yes, he is quite good, but it’s in the bag already. Petris just signaled me that he is ready to take his planet to the next level with us.”

After the Commander’s talk was concluded, with the applausovation still resonating in the chamber, President Katara sidled up to the dais and said to Tro, “I see no reason to delay matters. Let’s move to Phase One at once. I’ve spoken with the major leaders, and we’re all ready, including myself, thanks to Ambassador Earhart, who filled me in quite admirably on the various inherent advantages.”

As we walked off the platform, the Commander put his long arm around Amy’s shoulders. “So, Amelia, I see that you’ve done some of your fancy flying since you arrived here.”

She feigned disappointment with herself, saying, “Oh Commander, I was going to tell you, but I wanted to wait until after the presentation. I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my mind blank.”

“Not bad, if I must say so, my dear, but that made me want to probe Katara, and his mind was a kaleidoswirl of flying images, all of which had you beside him, and some of which were in craft I could have sworn were safely secured in our ship above.”

“Oh, please let me explain, Commander—”

”No need, my child. I sent you here for that specific reason, altho I may have underestimated your impetuous bravado. Not unlike a younger version of myself, to tell the truth of it. The ironikarmic thing is that I was knownround as a rulebreaking maverick when I was young, and now I’m the keeper of that damn rulebook.”

“And one other thing, Miss Amelia. Dents in metal can be fixed. Just don’t bruise any of those lovely bones. Seeing you that way once was quite enuff.”

Some official papers were signsealed, the Commander announced that we were all going to the resort center on Bolla for a few days, and that Katara and his chief-of-staff would be our special guests. The assignment to Perthix was expected to be thornacious and was thus scheduled to last for six days. The planaction had been for us to have the two meetings in Terlidia’s capital (with Katara and then all the assembled dignitaries), then travel around the planet for a few days before returning to more meetings with President Katara. This is where we would have pulled out the heavy artillery of trade inducements and the offer of the planetary presidency.

But all that was obviated by Amelia’s splendiferous coup, so we suddenly had time to burn before we were expected back at our Urth post. Besides which, The Rainbow, our secondary ship, was there holding down the fort, so there was no rush to return fastmediately.

Tro couldn’t smile in a normal way, but if you saw his eyes widely open and his head making quick nodding motions, then that was the equivalent. I mention this because all the way to Bolla, then on the trip back to Urth, he did this in Amelia’s direction, or whenever her name was mentioned. He even issued a directive removing the Acting from her title, making her the fastest achiever of the Ambassador rank in Service Corps history.

I was frankly a little envious at first of all the attention and accolades she was getting, but then I realized that the thing I was worried about going into Perthix was that I would somehow flub something up and diminish my standing with Tro. This not only didn’t occur, but the Commander was as pleased as I had ever seen him—this owing to my friend and protégée, she whom I had mentored and recommended for the mission, having come thru with, excuse me for saying, flying colors. Cognitioning on all that, I was suddenly as happy as all the others. And we were going to Bolla!!

So anyway, we spent three full days there, with Katara having the time of his life, accompanied everywhere (except the “naughty places”) by Amelia and Tro. Soon afterward, Perthix entered Openization and has been a model citizen of the Sector ever since. And Petris Katara served four terms as planetary president, three of them by election.

When the time came, in the late Sixties, when Amelia was debilitated by several afflictions, she and I had a talk about her continuing on in a newly found body, as I had done already (and was myself due for sametimely as her). She told me that she couldn’t picturemagine it; that she wanted to “pass on in the normal way. Fred will be there for me. I just know he’s waiting.” (Fred had died several years before in a shuttlecraft accident.)

During her time as a crewmember, she had the chance to learn of the afterlife setup, had even conversed with the angelic operatives a few times, so she knew that she was about to embark on another, more wondrous sort of adventure, one with even wider vistas than the one she was currently involved with.

When the Norwegian skier was retrieved from the snowdrift a short while later (the body I would assume next), I insisted first that Amelia be given the chance to choose it. As was I, she was bedridden and degressively frail, so I went to her in my motorchair. I wasn’t making any headway with her, so I ended up shouting at her about the matter, stopping just short of ordering her to take the Norwegian. But she declined, sweetly and firmly, saying, “My dear Ambrose, my way is set. It’ll be onward and upward for me, to the new wide-open yonder.”

Seeing the tears on my wrinkled old cheek, she signaled me closer and took my hand. “Such a marvelous man you are . . . and so very special to me. I’ve always known how you felt about me. A woman knows. I’m aware that people have sometimes said that I was a man in a woman’s body, but I was always a woman. And my heart could always feel your heart, my dear Amby. If it weren’t for Fred . . .” she tailed off, words unnecessary.

Doing my damnest to retain my emotional control, I said, “So you’ll soon be reunited with him. Give him my warmest regards, Amelia.”

“I will. I will.”

Just then, a young crewman came into the room and informed me that I had to take the table immediately for the transference operation. I bent over and we briefly kissed, and I wheeled myself away.

When I awoke a few days later, still blind and in the usual extreme head and neck pain common to the transfer’s post-op condition, I was informed that Amelia had slipped into a coma and wasn’t expected to live much longer. On the third day after that, I was allowed to be in a wheelchair, and immediately went to her room in the ship’s infirmary. There I kept vigil, only leaving to receive the many treatments and infusions required for my new sustenance, and to sleep.

After a long couple of days and nights of this, she awoke briefly and saw me by her bed. She smiled that wonderful smile of hers, the one that caused my heart to flutter, which it did that one last time.

“Oh, here we are still, Ambrose.” (She had seen a photo of the Norwegian when I was trying to talk her into going the transference route, and she realized that I had since gone under the knife.) “This makes the second time I’ve awoken, thinking I might be in Heaven, but instead found you.” She paused and shook her head a little. “Well, I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. I’ve never been disappointed to see you, Amby.”

“Nor I you,” I managed to choke out. “So are you going to pull out of this dive, m’lady? I really wish you would.”

“No, no, not this one, no,” she said weakly. “Oh, let me tell you, dear. Just now, I was with Fred and we were flying over the world, you know, at airplane level, circumnavigating the globe. And my parents and grandparents were there, and a few others. And it was all quite marvelous. They said to me, ‘No crashing this time, Meelie, you’re circling the world.’ You know, it felt so real that I think it was real. I think I was in my soul body. Oh Ambrose, how ecstatic it was! I can hardly wait now to get rid of this disgusting bag of bones. I shan’t tarry here an extra minute. Wish me bon voyage and send me on my way. And promise me that you’ll find me when you finally do come.”

“That I shall most certainly do, Amelia, assuming they let me in.” She grinned at that, knowing my reputation for such talk. I pushed myself up off the motorchair, and we looked into each other’s eyes one last sad, happy time. “Goodbye, dearest. Bon voyage!”

I departed the room and went for a long sleep. When I awoke the next morning, the Commander was there. “Amelia?” I inquired. “Gone to her rest, Ambrose. Gone to a better place.” At that I began to cry, longer and harder than I had since my young son’s murder almost eighty years previous. Tro stood by my side thru it all, never saying a word, taking my hand in his long, gnarly fingers, his wizened visage streaked wet with his own tears for our beloved Amelia.

Of sidenote significance—and a full retelling in a future volume—is the story of Howard Hughes visavi Amelia and myself. He was one of the few Urthians who knew of Amelia’s true fate, as she so desperately wanted to fly some of his experimental aircraft (for many years he had the leading aviation company) that she broke cover and revealed herself to him. Amy took secret flights in, among others of Mr. Hughes’s pioneering flycraft, the H-1 Racer and the XF-11, the latter being the one that Mr. Hughes subsequently crashed in a Beverly Hills neighborhood.

We followed his circumnavigation of the globe in 1938, managing to keep out of sight or behind cloud cover. We all hoped that it wouldn’t be a repeat of the Amy and Fred scenario, as we certainly didn’t want the guy on board, with his oversized ego and licentious appetite for all things carnal. Even Amelia, who was his biggest fan, agreed, saying, “Well, he is a bit of a rake.” When he succeeded, setting a new record at 91 hours, she exulted, “Howard is so, so incredible!”

I suppose Amelia and myself may have been partly responsible for how weird this man later became, altho he was already a phobic megalomaniac to start with. If ever there was a true-life “Man Who Knew Too Much,” it was Howard Robard Hughes, Jr.

In fact, the main reason the Watergate burglary occurred, and why Nixon so strenuously covered it up—to the point of screwing himself out of the presidency—was that Nixon was fearful of what information Hughes was passing on to Lawrence O’Brien, who had been made head of the Democratic National Committee. O’Brien, still under payroll to Hughes when he was given the post as head of the DNC, had his desk, files, and vault all ransacked that night by the burglars. Not incidentally, the “burglars” were all top henchmen of the intelligence cartel behind such other things as the Kennedy assassination and the plot to kill Castro. They were the top go-to “plumbers” when something big and important had to be fixed.

Among the things Howard Hughes knew, and could tell O’Brien about—for a potential “October surprise” in the ’72 campaign—was Nixon’s involvement in the botched Eisenhower dealings with offworlder races (see Chapter 11 for details). This had dovetailed into the highly classified usage by the US of Exoterrian tech from crashed saucers. This contested commandeering, and the subsequent cover-up, was one of the highest priorities of the top echelon of the US government and their controlling puppetmasters. Completing the loop was the entangled proprietorship of certain Exoterrian technology that was being converted to military weaponry by, among other companies, Hughes Aircraft.

The Nixonites didn’t know how far the increasingly unstable Hughes was prepared to go, as he was on a hysterical rampage to get nuclear testing stopped near his holdings in Nevada, and when an offer of a million-dollar bribe (in the form of a “loan” to Nixon confidant Bebe Rebozo) didn’t stop the testing, it was feared that he might resort to more drastic methods, ie, actual blackmail.

OK, I’ll tell one little Hughes story. I had already met Howard once, in an airport hangar he owned, while accompanying Amelia (she was flying the disk) to the surface where she was going to do some recreational flying with him. My main business was elsewhere, so after we hid the diskcraft in his hangar, I left to take care of my matter. Returning several hours later, I entered the hangar and spotted the two of them standing face-to-face, and very close to each other. Howard had his fingers on Amelia’s shoulder and brought it down slowly to her elbow, then her hand (a move he no doubt had practiced many times on the Hollywood types he so enjoyed).

I took my scopics (eyeglasses with 20x telescopic power) out of my pocket and zeroed in on them. I also turned on my “magic ears” but, since they were barely whispering, I heard only fragments.

“Just one kiss, Amelia, my darling . . . forbidden fruit . . . but he will never know . . . please just this once . . .” The rogue’s voice was breathily seductive, intoning just above a murmur as he moved even closer to A.E.

I was going to interrupt the moment with a loud entrance, but then I was seized with curiosity. What would she do? Was she vulnerable to such an entreaty? Could she cheat, even in a minor way, on her husband? And the pertinent, selfish question on my part: If she kissed Hughes, was she seduceable by me, at least for the same? I shuddered physically for a moment, a combination of desire for her and revulsion at myself—perhaps mixed with a growing anger toward the rascal Howard.

Then, the near-impossible happened before my spying eyes. Their lips met, and their arms went around each other, strongly entwining each other as their mouths partook in mutual ravishment. Well, I remember thinking, if they were to have one kiss, they were making it a good one, one that lacked only an orchestral flourish to make it worthy of the silver screen romances so popular back then.

After what seemed to be an excruciating ten minutes, but was probably only one, they pulled back from each other, inch by inch, their gazes locked. Amelia spoke first.

“Well then, sir, I can tell you’ve done that before!”

“You’re no slouch yourself, lady,” Hughes replied.

“So that’s that, you won’t mention such silliness ever again, you promise.” Pause. “I said, do you promise, Howard?”

“Oh, damn it, Amelia, I’ll promise, though it breaks my heart to do so.”

“Then it’s a settled thing. And a secret thing. Hey, is that the twin-engine speedster over there that you were telling me about?”

As they walked over to a sleek, black plane that had a tarp over half of it, I started to amble across the hangar floor.

“Oh look, Amby is back! Can this thing seat three? We can all go for a ride. That’ll be the cat’s pajamas.”

And we all did go up and about, and it was indeed a speedster, and one capable, in first Howard’s, then later Amelia’s hands, of profoundly unreasonable gyrotechniques, the proof of which was that my eyeballs weren’t the same until the next day.

But from then on, from what I could detect (and I am a proficient detector), there was no more combustion between the two aviators. And that pleased me immensely.

CHAPTER 10

Beauty and the Beast,

as Amelia saves the world from Hitler

I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention one other aspect of the Amelia story. (I’m frankly hoarding most of the best A.E. tales for a separate volume I’m planning to do.)

During World War II, Amelia Earhart, with some assistance from yours truly and various crewmembers, played a vital role in the demise of Nazi Germany. The work that we undertook, under the auspices of a fully committed Service Corps, was meant to confuse and misdirect the German war machine and help the Allies to victory over what was clearly a menacing regime.

In the spring of 1941, The Nazis had gained a string of victories in western and northern Europe and were in the lead in the development of the A-bomb. We in the Service Corps were worried that they would either defeat Great Britain within the year and institute a reign of terror in Europe and beyond or, if the war was prolonged, would succeed in producing nuclear weapons of mass destruction. If the latter were the case, they could possibly do great damage to America and England on the way to vanquishment of those bastions of democracy.

Commander Tetrov held a series of meetings in which we studied the situation and came up with various plans of curtailing Germany’s ascension to nuclear statehood, with the corollary that the US achieve this dominance instead. It was our belief, mostly but not entirely sustained since then, that America would remain a benevolent force in the world, one on which the Service Corps had a not insignificant influence.

True of any “war-room” contingency planning, the ideas and opinions put forth in these meetings ran the gamut from the non-action—trust that the Allies would defeat the Axis, and that the Manhattan Project would catch up—to the extreme—kidnap Hitler, destroy Germany’s military factories and nuclear labs. What was finally decided upon, without taking most of the other things off the table, was something in the middle.

The general plan was that, taking devious advantage of Hitler’s inherent susceptibility to mystic-styled beliefs, especially as they pertained to Aryan superiority, we—a small group led by Amelia and myself—would convince him that we were representatives of “the Ancients,” the progenitors of the Aryans, and that we lived in a hollow portion of the planet under the North Pole. Amelia played on many of these half-baked mythtales, things Hitler’s demented mind fervently clung to. (The funny thing is that an American religionist/philosopher got hold of some of this misinformation and promulgated it to his adepts as fact.)

Amelia claimed to be descended from some great proto-Aryan ruler, with myself described as her mate. She assiduously studied what she could find on this subject, and together we wrote a kind of script covering “the survival of Thule” below the earth in a fabulous city, beginning at the time of the Great Flood. Also part of the concoction was that alien races considered our root race as the planet’s true heirs and future leaders; as proof of this we introduced Himmler to several Exoterrians. He nervously informed us that we shouldn’t do the same with poor Adolf, as he was easily spooked by people with odd features, to the point where he forbade from his presence midgets and dwarves.

Moreover, we led Hitler to believe that the rulers of this “root race” accepted him as the true heir of the once and future empire, that he was indeed the “One” who would lead the expanded German nation, with a subservient world in tow. Among the things he would become indoctrinated with was the claptrap about a thousand-year Reich. He was told by Amelia that he would be kept alive (by surgeries and drugs) for that entire span in his present body, after which he would be given a glorified body to rule the world from—for as long as he wished.

I was in the same room as Hitler three times. Although fastidiously dressed in impeccable clothes and uniforms, with brightly shined shoes and manicured fingernails, the Fuehrer reeked so badly that it was sometimes difficult to concentrate on the charade we were perpetrating. Himmler was present for all three meetings and acted as if he didn’t notice the odious smell, a toxic combomerge of body odor, feces, cigar smoke, and, on one occasion, rocket fuel, as if he were using that as a cologne.

And I have to mention his eyes. Fueled by amphetamines, sleep deprivation, and his own deep-set madness, Adolf’s eyes were like angry daggers that he would throw around the room as he ranted and pranced and gesticulated.

Himmler, by the way, was our primary contact, as he was the one among the leadership most immersed in the occult. After we convinced him of our identities, which included a short ride in a diskcraft, he arranged the meetings with Hitler.

During the third mini-conclave (only the four of us), we presented them with two “flying saucers” and the design specifications for having them assembuilt. These were actual specs, but with a few gummed-up numbers that would prevent final completion of the craft. (A team led by Randa later stole these two vehicles back.)

Amelia fed to Hitler the false information that the US had a new plane coming, showing him fake specs of something like an F-15, and told him that his fighters would be useless in six months to a year. This caused Hitler to slow down production of his fighter planes and convert some of his factories to the building of the diskcraft. This was done in compartmentalized pieces, each facility given a portion of the project, so as to cloak the overall nature of the craft.

This subterfuge was perpetrated at a time when Germany’s warplane factories were operating at full strength, and cost them as many as 3,000 fighters, before the retooling could be revoked and returned to normal operations. Our successful gambit, combined with later Allied bombing of their factories, led to Germany being short of planes in the critical years of 1944 and 1945, thus losing the air superiority it had previously maintained.

In that summer of 1941, while Hitler was still convinced of our fake identities, we initiated phase two of our plan. We induced him to change his covert plan to attack Russia in April of 1942 to late June of 1941. This breaking of Germany’s treaty with Soviet Russia, and the subsequent attack of that large frontier from the west, was one fraught with peril, beginning with the concept of “a war on two fronts” and including the danger factor of being caught (as Napolean’s troops had been) in the unforgiving Russian winter.

The inclement weather started in September in the northern part of that massive country, where sat the critical city of Leningrad. Amelia and I convinced Hitler and Himmler that the invasion had to be done that summer—that the communist nation (“a bastardized people with a highly flawed governance”) would not be a worthy post-victory partner, would in fact pollute the scenario we were setting up for him and a triumphant Germany.

And here’s the kicker. We promised that, if necessary, we would employ our technovanced capabilities to delay the onset of the cold weather until after the German military had accomplished its purpose. A weather control demonstration was enacted, in two separate places, proving that we could do such things; one in northern Finland where we caused the temperature to rise 40 degrees in one afternoon.

This is the hidden reason why Hitler, despite near-unanimous opposition from his generals and advisors, continued the suicidal incursion into Russian territory even as the snow fell in tremendous quantities. We sent him messages that our weather modification was temporarily delayed because of an atmospheric anomaly, but to have faith and push on with all possible vigor. Although the toll in human life was staggering, this disastrous incursion into Russia, as much as any other factor, led to the defeat of the Nazis’ bid for world domination.

Historians have long wondered about Hitler’s obstinate refusal to pull the troops back while he still could, and why he frothed so mightily at those who opposed him and “the Fatherland’s true destiny.” Up to the last minute, at a point too late to save his Reich of a Thousand Years, he believed that the weather would change miraculously, and that not only would the troops be spared, not only would Russia be conquered, but that the world would see it as a divine sign that The Almighty Forces were on his side. Furthermore, that it was Hitler’s willpower and unbending resolve that had created the fulcrum of the miracle. Then the Allies would realize that he was some kind of demigod—as we told him he was—and would desist from their foolish opposition. In his delusional mind, peace would then come, as the world’s nations acquiesced to their Aryan Overlords.

Another critically important mission to which Amelia and I were assigned—a series of actions that nearly got me killed twice—was the spiriting away of German nuclear scientists. We would relocate them to a base in New Jersey, where they would be debriefed and reassigned to the Allied nuclear program. Altogether, we nabbed and transported six major scientists and sixteen minor technicians to the West’s cause.

The most dramatic of these instances occurred in 1943. Using purely conventional means, we abducted three of the top four German scientists who worked at a “heavy water” plant in German-occupied Norway. This is where they were making their breakthrough preparations for plutonium-enriched water—for eventual use in a bomb.

At gunpoint, Amelia and I snatched up the three of them, who traveled together by car to the plant, on the morning of the Allies’ destruction of the facility. (To give credit-due, this was a brave squad of British-trained Norwegians working with the R.A.F.) We kept them bound until the news came of the destruction of their workplace, the Vemork power station at Telemark. At this point, we informed them that we had saved their lives, but would instantly reverse that condition if they refused to switch sides and go to the US to continue work in their field. Resolvedly unpolitical men, they agreed on the spot, and our “Brain-Drain” project was successfully underway.

Amelia, myself, and two of our crew loaded the scientists into our plane, a Hughes Aircraft prototype on loan, and we set off for the long journey home. The plan was to take the over-water route to England for refueling, but we encounterd heavy rifle fire during takeoff. This nicked one of the fuel tanks, meaning we had to head to the nearest safe haven—a secret Allied base in eastern France.

The vaunted aviatrix skillfully piloted us across the entire stretch of western Germany, zigging and zagging the wheezing craft as she maneuvered thru the intermittent ground fire. She turned the plane 180 degrees onto its side when the flak was at its worst, to show the smallest target possible.

All the while, she maintained a kind of half-smile, occasionally whispering “Oh shit” when the shells got too close. When we finally made it to relative safety, she gave out a loud “Hallelujah!!” At the French location, a small airport maintained by the French Resistance, we had the plane patched as best we could.

Soon we were crossing the ocean, and the steady hum of the engines was a balm to our battered nerves. I sat with Amelia in the cockpit, neither of us saying a word for a long while. She then reached out her long-fingered hand and took mine in a firm grasp. Altho otherwise cooltrolled, her eyes on the horizon ahead, her hand was shaking from the ordeal.

Breaking the silence, she turned to me, and lavished me with those blue eyes. “Oh, Amby, isn’t this marvelous. We’re really making a difference. We’re helping win this damn war!” Then, barely audible: “Let’s pray that it’s the last war.” She proceeded to speak a short but touching little prayer, to which I added, “Amen.”

We kept our hands clasped as we flew majestically above the pillowed clouds, and I felt a bliss approaching joy in those moments, a feeling I hadn’t experienced in such unabated form since the nineteenth century (and wouldn’t again until early in the twenty first).

After an hour or so of this, with my heart so full it was crowding into my throat, I slipped into sleep. I entered into a reverie of dreams, but more like visions than dreams—to a place where all wondrous things were possible. I awoke a long while later when Amelia could no longer fly one-handed and had to pull herself free. We chatted intermittently during the ensuing hours over the dark ocean expanse, mostly telling stories of our younger years. Finally, amidst sighs from both of us, we began the descent to Norfolk, Virginia, to refuel for the last leg to Howard Hughes’s place in Texas.

When we returned the badly scarred craft to Howard, with copious apologies for the damage, the man laughed so hard that tears came rolling down his cheeks. He gave me a quick hug, then Amelia a much longer one, and declared a night of celebration, something that, in the world of Howard Hughes, entailed a serious amount of champagne, caviar, exotic foods, and entertainers sprung seemingly out of nowhere to fill the night with feast and festivity.

CHAPTER 11

Disaster and Debacle:

the ill-fated Eisenhower meeting

[Note: The following chapter has been partially censored as a result of various security agreements that are apparently still in force.]

I’m about to step a little over the line here, and I hope that my ex-superiors view it in the spirit in which I am engaged. It’s now been over fifty years since the meetings with President Eisenhower, a project I was second in command of (under Commander Tetrov), and what was supposed to be a breakthru of great histifigance (Official First Contact) somehow remains an official secret.

The account I am about to present is considered to be the “third rail” of UFOlogy (not-to-be-touched), for reasons that will soon be clear. I recall writing in a personal journal sometime in the 1880s that my middle name must be “Hell-To-Pay.” Well, the more things change . . . This chapter is being brought to you by Ambro H-T-P Pyrce.

By February of 1954, I had established three contacts in the State Department, xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxat, xxxxxx xxxxxxxx, and xxxxx xxxx, and one in the president’s immediate inner circle —xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx. All four of these gentlemen were aware of my being from an alien ship, and the latter one of them had actually traveled up in The Pearl for a one-hour voyage and tour. He was allowed to take pictures within the ship, of the Commander and several different species of onboard personnel. The other three, as well as someone from the British Foreign Service, Sir xxxxxx x. xxxxxxxxxx, were shown these pictures.

I had written up an overview of the whole kitboodle, from basic facts concerning Urth’s history, to details of interspecies contacts that had occurred over the millennia, to the level of involvement in our modern development. I further gave a short synopsis of the Roswell crash, certain other incidents, and our official position on the disposition of the Roswell crash survivor, recovered bodies from several incidents, and the return of ships and high technology garnered in those unforturns. I made this last as conciliatory as I could, as it was a source of great tension on both sides of the fence.

I did, in these preliminary talkversations, clearly state that we would be willing to supply the US with limited technization, but that this would be non-inclusive of anything that could be used by the military—something we would have strictly monitored. It would have been a bonanza of several types of “free energy” devices which would have totally solved Urth’s energy needs within a quarter-century to a half-century (ie, by this time now) and ushered in, by introgradualization, a virtual paradise planet (including flying cars), all without the downside of pollution and global warming.

A meeting was set up at an airbase in the California desert, then called Muroc, but later becoming Edwards Air Force Base. The President of the United States, at the time the retired World War II general Dwight Eisenhower, would sit down with Commander Tetrov, myself, Komo and Randa. Among the officials to be present were xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx, xxxxx xxxxxxx and xxxxxxx xxxx. Civilian representatives were Bishop MacIntyre of Los Angeles, Franklin Allen of Hearst Newspapers, Edwin Nourse of the Brookings Institute, and Gerald Light (a metaphysical leader of some renown).

Unfortunately, at this point, the Rigmodians (a rogue race, known by some as the tall grays) made direct contact with a high-ranking general and insisted on meeting Eisenhower themselves for’purpose offering a better deal to them.

The Rigmodians are an unconfederated planet, and the ostensible leaders of about a dozen such unconfederated worlds. These are planets that have achieved space capability but were not invited to join the Astanian Confederation because of their unrepentingly violent tendencies, unresolved rich/poor disparities, or refusal to give up their WMD. A second category, to which the Rigmodians (who now came interfering onto the scene) and one other race belong, were worlds that were once members of the Confederation and had been officially disjoined due to serious infractions. To put it mildly, none of the agencies of the Sector were on speaking terms with the Rigmodians or their rag-ass allies, and we were frankly shocked by their interloping usurpation of our usual prerogative.

We found out about the Riggie gambit thru xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxat the State Department, one of my active contacts, but frankly considered it a non-threat to our mission, as we had so much more to offer a budding orb, from lucrative trade provisions to cultural exchange programs. As it turned out, we underestimated three things: the Rigmodian’s perniciousness, the Americans’ self-serving greed, and our own maxacious bunglement.

So here’s how it went down on that long February day. The Pearl and two support ships were hovering above the cloud cover, at around 30,000 feet, directly above a large tent that had been set up on the grounds of Muroc Test Center. The president and all his men were assembled in front of it, facing the tarmac area they expected us to land on. What was supposed to happen—I guess you could say for a surprise “dramatic effect”—was that Commander Tetrov was going to teleport down (all right, I’ll say it: beam down) to a spot in front of the president, greet him formally, then wave his hand to signal the three ships to land.

But the person at the controls on The Pearl, perhaps in her excitement at being part of the historical moment, reversed the coordinate readings and instead brought a pale and shaking-with-stunmazement President Eisenhower onto our ship. Komo, Randa, myself, and the Commander were all taken by surprise and jumped back as if struck.

We immediately surrounded old Ike—who was bedecked (impressively, if somewhat humorously) in his full-medaled general’s outfit. Closing in on him that suddenly was probably not the best idea, as it no doubt appeared aggressively hostile, and he fell to one knee, hyperventilating terribly. Tro called for us to back off, and he spoke into his wristcomm for our chief medico to rush to the helm. Meanwhile, to the American military personnel on the ground, already no doubt nervejumpy, it looked as if Eisenhower had been vaporized.

Our coulda/shoulda might have been to send him back the instant he materialized, altho that would have been dangerous on his health. It would have constituted a double-whammy of a shock on an old man’s system (the process has its inherent risks, especially for the elderly), combined with the physical/mental/emotional stressure he would have been under during the second transport because of the traumasode of the first.

Jaka, the ship’s doctor-in-chief, burst into the room about 15 seconds later. This exacerbated the already precarious situation with the president, who was kneeling on the floor taking slow, deep breaths at my urging (the offworlders having moved out of eyeshot). You see, Jaka was probably the weirdest-looking person on the ship, being from Sparlak, and having green skin, a multi-ridged face, and two short head-tentacles (which bobbed maddeningly whenever he spoke).

Seeing the president in the fallen position and surmising what had occurred, he bounded the last twenty feet to his side, causing Eisenhower to faint dead away. Jaka signaled us all to give him adequate room, and he laid the ashen-faced man onto his back while he proceeded to analyze his vital signs. Determining that he was in no imminent danger of demise, Jaka administered a shot of delpa, a codeine/xanax type drug that we would give to abductees who were overreacting. Jaka’s plan was to let that settle into his system, so that when he woke up he’d be in a hazy but more calmplacent state.

Tro had ordered a quick descent to get the president back, but as we passed downward thru the clouds we were hit by a scathing mortar attack. The Urth group, justifiably believing that we had just assassinated Eisenhower in front of them, turned their full vengeance on what then appeared to be a frontal assault by a football-field-sized enemy aircraft.

The Commander ordered our ship fastmediately to move straight up into high hover. As soon as we began to move the American ground force connected with at least twenty rounds, severely rattling the ship (and our ears), but only causing minor dentage. A side-comment here is that it was pre-agreed that no weapons would be present at the conclave, but when we finally did meet later, we chose not to bring up this blatant abrogation.

Anyway, we quickly assumed a position several miles up and waited for the doctor to give us his prognosis. Jaka determined that Ike’s heart had some underlying weakness and that the current strain was substantially adversifying his coronary status. (He would have a major heart attack the next year.) When asked by the Commander, who was obviously eager to bring this nightmare situation to a quicksooner conclusion, the doctor said it might be unwise to jar him awake with a stimulant just yet.

Tro asked for quick opinions, and we all concurred that sooner was better than later, as the Americans were no doubt in a total state of angerpanic at what had apparently occurred, ie, the aliens had set up a meeting under false pretenses, abducted or killed their beloved leader, and now had escaped into the atmosphere.

As to the question of contacting the ground and telling them that we had accidentally beamed the leader of the free world on board, and that he couldn’t talk to them at the moment—which would have been their first demand—it was agreed that this was not a good course, as it made us look like either dumwits or evil prevaricators who, having just abducted Eisenhower, were possibly torturing him for military answers while further duping those on the ground with stall tactics. (This is how military men think, which is to say, assume the enemy is a monster planning to do monstrous things, and prepare accordingly.)

Tro asked Corrina, who was manning the commchair, to beam an interception ray down on the rendezvous facility and put it on what we here call “speakerphone.” Well, you should have heard (or maybe you should be glad not to have) the cursing and screaming that was going on in that tent. From the sounds of crashing and shooting, there was apparently at least one fistfight, and two shots fired.

We found out later that the fight and shot officer were the result of one of the generals putting out a call that the president had been killed. His superior (actually, a rather famous retired general whom Ike had made first officer for the day) reacted strongly that Eisenhower’s death was not confirmed, and even if it were true, he himself retained the prerogative on the release of such information. The general who had made the call, resentful as were the others that the “old warhorse” had been put over them, used the magical F-word back to the retired general and was summarily shot in the head. OK, I might as well tell you his name; I’m in trouble anyway for making this report. It was xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx. Incidentally, the “news” of Eisenhower’s death made it temporarily onto the Associated Press wire transmissions but was quickly withdrawn. (You can look it up!)

Our sensors then picked up over fifty jets climbing toward us, but they had to desist their upward vectors as they reached a height well below us. Before they planed off, they shot what armaments they were carrying in our direction, which we easily evaded. They then, at the highest altitude they could handle, began to do loops beneath us.

As to our recommendations, Tro said, “The major damage of this situation is already done, and won’t be made worse by one minute’s delay or twenty minutes’ delay in waking him. My hope is that he will wake up on his own, altho the sedative counterstands upon that probpossibility. What we mustn’t do is further traumatize the fellow, or give him a coronary. That would indeed doom our efforts here, and ensure that the bastard Rigmodians would add Urth to their growing band of thorns in our necks.”

We stood about like this, discussing our options (bad, disastrous, and catastrophic) for perhaps another five minutes when the transmissions from the ground revealed that the Rigmodians had landed two ships at the airbase and were about to have their own conclave. The Commander swore some scary-sounding oaths in his native tongue, then said, “Helldamn it, give him a shot, Jaka. Make it a half-dose, then another half-dose, and a third if nessquired. We have to do something now and get us all back down there!”

After the second shot, the old general started to stir, mumbling and drooling like an inebriated person. Tro called for an ice-pack, towels, and jazra, a sweetnsour herb used for wounds but which also could be used like smelling-salts. He asked me to alternate a cold compress to his face and neck with the jazra, which I did, and Ike opened his eyes in about two minutes.

“Be calm, my friend,” I whispered to him. “We are here in peace, but there has been a mistake made. You were accidentally pulled onto our ship by a mechanism of ours, and you passed out. We will return you momentarily. Please forgive us.”

Tro moved over behind my shoulder. “Well said, Bierce. Sit him up in a few seconds. We have to chop-chop the process as much as possible.” I sat him up, continuing to talk comfortingly to him. His first words were, “Who in hell’s blazes are you?” I kept it simple and just said, “I’m an American, born and raised in the great Midwest like you, Mr. President.” This took most of the anguished strain out of his face, and he tried to get up on his own, but slipped back into my arms. Tro called for the third stimshot, after which Randa and myself pulled him up. The Commander positioned himself about twenty feet away, I suppose to appear less menacing (remember that he is very tall and, by his own picscription, “uglacious”).

Bowing to a 45-degree angle (which, besides signaling abjectitude, served to conceal his disturbingly canine face), Tro said, in his most melodious voice, “Please accept our greatest apologies, Mr. President Dwight Eisenhower. A terrible, and I fear costly, mishappenstance has occurred. It was meant for me to molecularly transpose myself to your proximity, but the reverse became true instead. This unforturn of events has caused your military men, with all fulljustification, to launch their guns and missiles at us.”

The president, looking for a window, wheeled around suddenly and lost his balance, but I was still right next to him and able to grab him around the shoulders. But he was able to see thru the viewport, and what he saw was this planet, blue and white and far, far below him. He began to speak but didn’t find any coherency, his mind assembling the pieces of the complicrisis.

The Commander continued. “We have every intention of returning you safely to your station, but there is the problem of the gathered force of several dozenings of your aircraft.” (A second contingent had relieved the first and had held their fire, which meant they were still in possession of their missiles, possibly including something nuclear.) At this point, Tro’s voice become laden with emotion. “We humbly beg your forbearance and plead for your assistance in resolving this extremified situation.”

Eisenhower, returning then to his full stature of military/presidential bearing, quickly said, “What kind of communications link can you get me, posthaste?” Tro turned to Corrina at the commchair and directed her to establish a frequency with the people at Muroc.

Eisenhower strode over to the commchair, slowly but resolutely, and waited. In a matter of seconds, Corrina said, “I have it.” Ike looked at Tro, who nodded back at him. The president spoke: “Attention, United States personnel, this is your Commander-in-Chief speaking. I am alive and well and on one of the spaceships. An accident occurred, which mistakenly transported me to here. I was unconscious until a moment ago. Please stand down all forces and allow us to return to base.”

“With all due respect, sir,” came the halting reply, “how do we know this is you, and not some new trick?”

“xxxxxxxxx, tomorrow you and I and xxxxxx will hoist some Jack Daniel’s and laugh about this. And tonight you can tell xxxx that you had an eventful day, and kiss your little namesake goodnight, and climb into your blue pajamas. Does that answer satisfy you, or do I have to talk about what happened in Bethesda last year with you and those two—”

“Understood, Mr. President. I am giving orders now for all to stand down. Awaiting your return.” A pause, then, “Uh, we have much to discuss when you get back. It seems the other aliens showed up, and they have just left to chase down the ship you’re on.”

Just then, in the side viewindow, there appeared two of the Rigmodian saucercraft. “Open a link with them, Bezra,” the Commander intoned with a combination of anger and trepidation.

A few seconds later: “Link open, sir.” On the wallscreen an image appeared, then a voice. It was Zarlo, a tall gray with a smirking face (which was not easy considering their almost non-existent lips). I turned on my language translator to hear the following:

“Well, Tetrov, what sort of mess have you got yourself into here? Never mind how you did it, I am here to take back the prisoner, fully authorized by our new partners on the ground. How well you’ve played into our hands!”

“Not so fast with your assumptions, Zarlo. Your instructions have just this moment been countermanded by the so-called prisoner and his next-in-command at the airbase. Perhaps you can notice, if you take your head out of your armpit, that the Urth ships have retreated back to the base.”

“That is no doubt because they have been told that their newly established friends, by which I mean us, have taken over the situation, and chased down the criminal ship that has done something terrible to their leader.”

The president stepped forward a few paces, putting himself on screen. “I am the leader in question. These people have done nothing terrible to me, and will now take me back to the ground. I don’t know who you are, but we will discuss this all in a short while. In the meantime, if you will not interfere, we wish to proceed at once.”

The commlink to the ground had been left open, and we then heard General xxxxxxxxx’s voice saying (shouting, actually) “Let them come back, Zoolo. We’ll straighten things out shortly, as the president said. We will discuss further your proposal when we’re all settled back here. Please stay in orbit.”

Eisenhower jumped in, a vein in his forehead fairly popping. “No, return with us to Muroc, and land! I mean to get to the absolute bottom of this. For starters, are you two peoples at some kind of war with each other, with us as some kind of booty between you?” (He was his sharp selfperson again.) “This we want to know about in the goddamn first two minutes when we get back. Over and out. Shut this damn thing off! Let’s descend immediately.” Bezra glanced at Commander Tetrov, who nodded for him to do just that, cutting off some protesting words from the gesticulating Zarlo.

Several minutes later, we arrived back at the airbase. During this interval, Tro huddled with Ike, as Komo, Randa, and I stood several feet away, still within earshot of most everything they said. Tro told him, in quick detail, about the Sector government (“not that different from your federal system, with the various planets simulike your various states”), the Service Corps (“we are a source of beneficence and aid”), and the ruthless nature of the Rigmodians, and how they were trying to establish a counter-league among rogue elements in the Sector (“they’re akin to if the Nazis had conquered the world, then became spacefaring.”)

Eisenhower listened to all this, his wisdom-etched face focused on the Commander’s words, then said, “Well, that’s quite impressive, and I tend to side with you, but let’s just go ahead and hear what those other folks have to say before we decide anything.”

Well, long story shortened, the Americans held several meetings with us and the Riggies and then signed an accord with the Riggies. I led the negotiating team, which mostly consisted of us listening to the American side talking about the various Rigmodian promises of advanced tech, and “Can you match that?” and “Why don’t you trust us?”

Our firm position with the US was that we would not give any technology to them that could be used in warmaments, that they had already retro-engineered things from the Roswell crash, and these they were using to augment their military superiority over the Russians, thus serving only to ratchet up the Cold War. The tragedy of the Cold War was that it diverted the resources, physical and human, of the United States and Russia to an idiotic competitiveness that left the rest of the planet as helpless bystanders. And, amazing to those who come from peacefully advanced worlds, all this brinkilating suicidalism was caused by the two countries having differing economic systems.

President Eisenhower was in favor of an agreepact with us, one that would properly phase in Openization, but he was overruled by the vastjority of his generals and civilian advisors, including ten of the twelve members of MJ-12, the high-level secret committee that oversaw the whole “alien problem.” Underlying this quiet revolt of the president’s men was the mostly unspoken fear that, while in our custody, he had been altered in some way, brainwashed or implanted with some device.

The leading expounder of this loaded conjecture was none other than the brash and ambitious VP, Richard M. Nixon. Without any question he saw the whole situation as an opportunity to skullduggerize his way into the presidency. Between Ike’s heart condition and the possibility of his having been brainwashed or some such, Nixon was salivating at the good prospects of his ascension. The other members of the elite squad who were dealing with these mind-shaking questions all disliked Tricky Dick, but had to swallow their antipathy given the chance that he could become their new leader.

In the negotiations that followed, the US wanted to 1) gain from Exoterrians advanced technology that would assure them of mastery over the world—which they justified on the grounds that America alone was the shining light of the planet and would use its accrued power wisely and benevolently, something the others would probably not do; 2) based on such an evaluation of itself visavi the other powers prohibit alien powers from having any contact with other countries; and 3) keep their nukes as a protection against Russia, possible hostile offworlders, and, eventually, the Chinese.

On all three of these scores, the Rigmodians agreed with the American position, and we disagreed. The only tech we were willing to give them was what is sometimes called zero-point energy, non-polluting devices that would have obviated the need for fossil fuel and nuclear power, but they would have had to give up all their nukebombs. We informed them that it was necessary for us also to contact the other nuclearized nations and make similar swaps. But the Americans, at barely 5% of the world’s population, wanted to run the whole show—wanted, in fact, to be the whole show, with the other 95% playing the role of background shrubbery. So as much as we wanted to break the deadlock, we couldn’t cut a deal anywhere close to what the US side was demanding.

Additionally, you can throw in a fourth and a fifth bone of confrontation, in that we hectored the Americans about cleaning up their environment, and the other race did not even broach the subject, and we required a large initial fee of gold and diamonds. (See Chapter 28.) The Riggies asked for nothing of the kind, but see below regarding how they got their gold and gems anyway. Clearly, or so it appeared on the bald face of it, the Americans’ best interests were with the Rigmodian proposal.

So it was practically a lost cause to begin with. But further compounding the situoblem was a critical mistake that I made while handling negotiations. Faced with the Americans’ frustravexing intransigence, I one day let loose with the comment—a threat, you could say—of us contacting instead the Russians and/or the Chinese, and working with them; in effect, boxing out the Americans. This threat, which wasn’t even a true possibility, backfired, as the Americans stood up and stormed out. You see, the Riggies had promised never to contact the Russians or Chinese, did in fact state that they found these countries abhorrent and inferior, and that they only cared for the USA. (This is a boilerplate bullshitter methique for conning someone, and the Americans swallowed it hook, line, and lead sinker.)

The agreement that was entered into by the US government and the Riggies was signed by President Eisenhower during a meeting aboard a saucer at Holloman Air Force Base in 1955. The agreepact called for the transfer of certain technologies to the US over time (including the zero-point stuff, which some Americans termed “Tesla-Plus”) and the assistance required to re-engineer these modalities into things like fighter planes, American-made diskcraft, surreptitious eavesdropping mechanisms and stealth aircraft.

It is little wonder that none of the men, mostly military, did not break the oaths of secrecy that have kept this historic day hidden from any public light. Every witness was sworn to nondisclosure, with the stiffest of penalties attached for any who dared to break it. Besides what was written on the papers they were forced to sign, things such as court-martial for treason followed by long imprisonment or execution, loss of all pay and pensions, they were all further threatened with grisly images of what more likely would happen to them and their families.

The only one who put anything in writing after the Eisenhower meeting was Gerald Light, the well-known metaphysical leader from California. He had been invited, as part of a small delegation of civilians, to serve as a gauge of public reaction to the offworlder contact. This contingent of four persons wasn’t ushered in until the very end, well after all the unfortunate activity had concluded. Gerald Light wrote to some others in the metaphysical community about what he had witnessed at Muroc. Being quite elderly, he was obviously not fearful for his life, and the military problikely didn’t see this break in the oath to be one that would reverberate into the general media (which it didn’t). In the letter, he states that “I have never seen so many human beings in a state of complete collapse and confusion as they realized that their own world had ended with finality.” This confirms the story I previously told in that, if a straightforward and successful contact had just occurred with a superior civilization, then at worst the attitudes of the American leaders would have been serious, soberized, and cautiously optimistic.

More likely, if they had achieved a “regular’ First Contact with another species, they would have been very pleased and self-congratulatory, swaggering about the grounds as some kind of historic heroes. The fact that they were in a kind of shock was because of what they had just gone thru, the temporary abduction of their top leader, the murder of one of their cohorts, dire threats to them and their families, and the mind-blowing appearance of a second group of offworlders, with both groups warning them about the other.

Mr. Light also reported that he observed military men inspecting five different types of landed airships. Those were our three: The Pearl, a 100-foot diskcraft and a 33-foot saucer, plus the two Rigmodian craft, a cigar-shaped 200-footer and a smaller ovoloid.

CHAPTER 12

I Knew Jack Kennedy . . .

my meeting with a future president

In 1958 I used my Democratic Party connections to get a sit-down in Boston with Kennedy patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, whom I had met on occasion during the Roosevelt years but had long lost touch with. After a brief conversation, in which he managed to use a curse word in every sentence he uttered (and this was a friendly chat), he said that he would arrange for me to meet his son, whom Papa Joe had put on the fast track to the White House.

A private lunch was scheduled with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (and rather brash) senator from Massachusetts. I met him in West Palm Beach, at the very same hotel, the Bradley House, in the very same dining area, in which I had talked with (or been talked at by) Mrs. Roosevelt. I made a point of mentioning this to him, and we spoke briefly about Eleanor (“As my dad would say, ‘Helluva dame, but what a face!’”); FDR (“He knew how to run the country because he knew how to run the party”), and the Roosevelt presidency (“I’m still trying to figure out if it was great despite the depression and the war, or because of it”).

Kennedy was not unrealistically idealistic, but neither was he cynical. This, in the finalysis, was his blessing, something that he imbued upon the country. One could even say that his forward-looking positivity was his greatest legacy.

As we sat there, he wolfishly eyed every attractive female within range and winked at several. I recounted to him the Eleanor quote on humanity’s conjoined purpose (“. . . the cause and purpose of humanity is . . . the self-development and progress of the whole of mankind”), and he looked down into his iced tea for a long moment, then said, “Maybe that’s true, but there sure are a lot of folks who need to be pulled up by their dirty bibs. Quite a job, humanity.” He said this with his usual wry style, but I detected that just below that flippant surface of machismo—produced by wealth and good looks and the influence of his father—was not only a laser-beam sharptelligence, but the unyielding optimism of a person who had generated much more success than failure.

He confirmed my opinionalysis of him by sharing several lucidly delivered ideas for national programs and betterficient modalities of government. “First off, and crucial to the formula for success, is to get on board in the executive branch just the brightest people around, instead of a load of piss-ant party hacks who’ve never had an original idea and owe their success to being yes-men to those in power. You know the type. Their nose is so far up the ass of their benefactor that when the leader farts, they think they’re breathing.” As we guffawed together at this, I felt myself magnetized by his keen wit and deft charmisma.

One of his ideas that I was gladdened to hear him expostulate was that of what was later known as the Peace Corps. “Let the world know that we’re the good guys, not the damn Russians. A program like that, besides engendering relief for the poverty-stricken overseas, will create positivity in our direction, building up a reservoir of good will that will come in handy when those places develop as new markets for American products.”

When I inquired (as would be expected of a man of my supposed station) how he stood on the activities of the business world, ie, federal regulation of the markets, Kennedy became thoughtful and said, “Wall Street and big corporations are the engines of progress in a society like ours. I don’t believe that should be overly curtailed, but every so often they’ll need to be reminded that the federal government is in charge, is in fact the final arbiter of the public welfare.”

He went on to add that he wanted to create an envirosphere that fostered young companies on the go, supporting these enterpriseurs with tax breaks and even federal subsidies, “to help create the General Motors or DuPont of the future.”

I then asked him about the early rumblings of the environmental movement, especially on the issues of DDT and chokeful car emissions. While he firmly believed that Detroit could make cars that were safer to drive, more fuel-efficient and less polluting, he didn’t see any danger of ecospoilation for at least a century. “The world is bigger than most people can imagine. I’ve been around it, by air and by sea. I should know. The planet can absorb more than people give it credit for. But I am not opposed to a general, worldwide reduction in the population explosion, on general merits of resources and livability.”

Over dessert of key lime pie I broached the subject of UFOs and aliens with him. He was eagerceptive on the subject and enthused over the “monumental evidence,” citing the well-documented saucer fly-bys of Washington D.C. from a few years before, the Roswell case, the many pilot sightings, and the works of Donald Keyhoe, especially The Straight Line Mystery, which he had recently read.

In that book, the retired Marine Major Kehoe (referred to now as the father of UFOlogy) detailed how a large centage of saucer sightings reports could be laid out on a map and straight lines drawn connecting American military bases—especially those with nukes, like the one near Roswell—as if they were doing routine surveillance on the status of the US nuclear capability (which was exactaprecisely the case).

Kennedy told me, point blank and with the most seriousness he had mustered during the entire lunch, “When I’m elected, I’ll open those secret files and get to the bottom of the whole thing.” He then paused, and with the twinkle returning to his eye, added, “Or should I say ‘the top’?”

I then said, “What about the US going into space ourselves, starting with the Moon?”

Kennedy replied, “As much as I liked Jules Verne and Buck Rogers when I was growing up, I don’t think it’s in our best national interest to spend the enormous sums that it would take on a project with no guaranteed success. And earlier this year, under Dr. Van Allen at NASA, the Explorer came back showing such a high radiation above the Earth that it might be too hazardous.”

“Balderdash!!” I stormed, pounding the table for effect. “Did Columbus stay in Spain because he heard there were storms at sea? Did the westward pioneers stay in Virginia because they heard there was rugged terrain? No, they girded their goddamn loins and prepared as best they could, then faced into it. Because they wanted, they needed, to achieve their goal. If ever there was a Washington man who I thought could grasp that bull by the horns, it was John The-Man-of-the-Hour Kennedy!” He sat up straighter at that and, looking more like a college student than a US senator, took a deep breath and listened.

“What do Americans do, Jack? We build a better car. We build a better battleship. We build a better jet plane. And we can sure as shit build a better airship to withstand the radiation out there. Otherwise the damn Russians will, you can bet your Hyannisport ass on it! Then they’ll own the fuckin’ moon and militarize it, and what will that say to the Third World about who to side with?” (I spoke to him just this side of ferocity, in a dead-on mimic of how Papa Joe spoke, and he responded, as I expected, as the wayward youth being chastised for not trying hard enuff.)

“Well, I suppose you may be right. I’ll have to look into the possibilities.”

“‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!’ That was an American at war, facing the worst of dangers. We’re at war right now, Jack, with the worldwide communists. A man like you, when you’re president, can rally the people, and the scientific community, into beating the goddamned Russians to the Moon. I say you can do it before 1970. It would probably take Nixon twice that long, and he might not have the balls to win this space race, but you do!!” (I mentioned this so as more fully to stoke his innate competitiveness, piling it onto the America vs. Russia angle.)

“When you lay it out like that, sir, I can certainly see the wisdom of it. Thank you for shedding some light on the matter, or should I say, some red, white, and blue. Jules Verne and Buck Rogers, here we come! And I am rather curious to see whom we meet out there.”

“And if they’re any good at touch football,” I added.

We both laughed so hard that we had tears in our eyes, and the well-heeled blueblood types shot us disapproving glances. The senator gripped my wrist and said, “You remind me a little of my father, only funnier.”

I told him then that I thought he was the class of the presidential contenders for 1960, and put my money where my mouth was by pulling from my suit pocket a check for 75 grand. He told me that he much appreciated it, and that he hoped I would “be in touch with me or Bobby or the old man if ever you need something, and if I don’t see you before then, I’ll certainly see you at the Inaugural Ball.” (This last part he said with the calmplacent assurance of a man confirming his dinner plans.)

I did in fact see him at the Ball (and was impressed with how he seemed ten years older—but in a good way, seasoned and more mature) and in a brief conversation he told me that he had been “thinking about the ‘humanity’ thing, and the UFO situation” and that the solution to the latter may play a key role in the assistance to the former.

“And one more thing. Hush-hush, but stay tuned for my announcement on our going to moon ahead of the Russians. It’s all in the works.” (Not long after, before a special joint session of Congress, he announced America’s goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth by the end of the decade.”) I shook his hand with all the gusto I could manage, and bid him good luck and Godspeed.

By the time he was assassinated, he had laid the groundwork for the revelation of not only Roswell, but many other UFO-related secrets, including his predecessor’s meetings with us. He had made it clear to a contact I had in the White House (xxxxxxxx xxxxx) that he wanted to have a meeting himself, like Eisenhower, to “work some things out with the Visitors.” By this he no doubt intended, as he alluded to at his Inauguration, the uplifting of humanity thru the utilization of higher technvancement. This would be derived and delivered not only by a working relationship with scientifically advanced species, but from the freeing up of resources at the end of the no-longer-plausible Cold War. Humanity would come to the undeniable realityization that it comprised one cohesive unit of the universe, not merely fractious sub-units on a squabbling planet.

Our on-ground emergency team had foiled two previous attempts on his life, and I had personally gotten word to him, thru xxxxx, about the danger in Dallas, but to no avail, as he trusted his Secret Service team to protect him. As well, he felt somehow that he was bulletproof, a nearly invincible man of destiny, as he had conquered many obstacles and overcome many foes to reach, in essence, the pinnaclepeak of the world.

My reading of events, and this includes several overhearsations we managed to intercept, is that there were several items on the “Kennedy-must-die” agenda, including his pledge to “break the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind,” his soon-to-be-finalized decision to go against the Pentagon’s wishes and pull out of Vietnam, and his betrayal of Giancana and the Mafia. But the straw that broke Jack’s back, because it would implicate the highest of the high in a coverup of the grandest proportions, was his intention to create transparency on the subject of alien contact, starting with a shared database with the Russians.

The powers-that-be shuddered at the thought of what effects this would have—on religions, the stock market, our cultures, and, not leastly, the electropower and transportation industries. These mega-fiefdoms were controlled (in a literal death grip) by the fossil fuel corporations, and were the biggest cash cow on the planet.

Pertaining to that very thing, a large part of the cover-up centered on keeping the recovered Exoterrian technologies in the hands of an elite cartel, to be developed in secret facilities and used by the US military and certain businesses, like Lockheed, Bell Labs, Westinghouse, and GE, to make the American military-industrial complex the most powerful entity in the world. And, I admit, you have to give them their creditdue, this they accomplished.

Sidenote: I suppose that an intrepid reporter might consider that, if they had access to the records, they could cross-reference those who contributed large sums to both FDR’s 1932 campaign and JFK’s 1960 run, who were also New York delegates to the ’32 convention, and thus deduce my identiname while in the Crater body. But the problem with that is that it is unlikely that either Roosevelt or Kennedy properly recorded the transactions, as the regulations on such things back then were somewhere betweet loose and nonexistent.

CHAPTER 13

A Jump to Freedom

as D.B. Cooper finds his role

That night in November of 1971 I was flying Blue Streak on a solo mission (okay, a restaurant run) and, maneuvering below radar thru the Washington State countryside, I got flashlighted by a tree. It was in the middle of nowhere so I looped back and put my infrascope on it. Sure enuff, there was a man dangling in the tree, tangled in a parachute.

I contacted The Pearl and asked if there was anything they’d heard about a distress call in that region. Randa informed me that there was a dramacrisis unfolding involving a hijacked plane, ransom money and the perpetrator jumping out of the airplane with the loot.

I’ll admit that my original intention was to separate him from what I was informed was a hefty 200 grand–back when that was a very large sum of moolah. Just like any operation, we had our expenses, and I would occasionally do what I could to replenish our coffers. In fact, that had become almost my exclusive responsiduty over the decades, as I seemed to have what Tro called “the money knack.”

I landed in a nearby hollow and walked a beeline for the location. As I approached, the man focused his flashlight on me as I did the same to him. We squinted at each other as we began an odd conversation.

“What are you doing up there?” I gently inquired.

“Nothing much. Just hanging around.”

“Did you see that flying saucer a minute ago?”

“In fact I did. I tried to get its attention. I was thinking that I wouldn’t mind going with them. You know, all things considered.”

“Aren’t you afraid of the little green men?”

“Honest to God, not as much as I’m afraid of men behind desks wearing suits.”

Despite myself, and with the knowledge aforehand that he had just hijacked a plane and held hostages, I found myself taking an instant liking to the guy. He was young, confident and ballsy, but not in an overly arrogant way.

Succumbing to my impetuous streak, and figuring I could sort things out later, I said “So we need to get you out of this tree. I’ll be right back. I have some implements in my vehicle.”

I strode off and went back to the diskcraft, which I started up and flew to a position just above the tree. Opening the lower portal, I looked down on Cooper as he stared wide-eyed up at me.

“I’m glad I wore two pairs of underwear today,” he said with a wry grin.

I released a double-sided rope ladder until it came even with his waist, then climbed down. “We have to hurry. The law will be arriving in a few minutes.”

“So you know about it? Is it all over the news? Are you an alien? Jesus Christ!!

“I’m neither of those, be assured,” I told him as I snipped the cords connecting him to the chute. I’ll explain things when we get you into the craft.”

I quickly finished disencumbering him, then gave him a hand onto the ladder. In a moment we were back on Blue Streak. I kept the portal open while I sent down two pincer hooks on extension cables. These I latched onto the parachute and yanked upward, bringing the material onto the dcck with us.

“No need to leave evidence.”

We stood and faced each other for a moment, eyeballs to eyeballs, both of us about the same height. He slipped of his bulky backpack and placed it on the floor at his feet, his hand still on the strap.

He spoke first. “Okay, then—what, who, why and wherefore? And after that I’ll have some more questions.”

“Not yet. Follow me to the cabin. We have to leave this area first.” I turned and hurried back to the control pit, with Cooper fast on my heels. I quickficiently lifted the disk off the ground and over the treetops a ways, then took her “straight up the elevator” to where The Pearl was waiting—60 miles above. (Note: As a radar-dodging methique, we would often pursue a low courseline followed by a straight-upward climb.)

Two seconds after I began the ascent, Cooper started in with his pointed queries. I gave him a short overview of the Exoterrian presence, and told him that I was fully human—not nearly the full outline, not the part about being Ambrose Bierce, nor the assumption of the Judge Crater body, then the Norwegian. I merely said that I was born and reared in the Midwest, and had been a member of the crew “for many years.”

“Well then, how did you manage to secure such an ultra-cool job, and can I apply for something similar?”

“Ahhh,” I replied, “so many questions seeking answers, but first I must insist on questioning you. Starting with your real name.”

Cooper then provided me with a short self-bio, neatly packaged and trenchantly delivered. Because he still has living relatives, I won’t reveal his real name or birthplace, other than to say that he came from the western United States.

The young man was quite involved in the wild times of that colorful era. He was at Woodstock, The March on the Pentagon, and the ‘68 Chicago Convention. Just before his hijacking gambit, he converted his look to that of a conservative young businessman.

“If I hadn’t cut my hair, the media would have been all, “The Hippie Hijacker!” “The Hippie Hijacker!” They just look for a hook or a label on everything, just something they can present to the simple-minded masses—whom they keep simple-minded. Then all the long-hairs in the country would have been held vaguely responsible, and possibly suspect, because one of them did this thing. So, I loved my long hair but I had to avoid that craphole.”

Turned out that Cooper was a writer, mostly of short stories and screenplays. In his backpack, jammed in with the ransom cash, were several packets of his manuscripts. These I read shortly afterward, and judged them to be quite good, if perhaps a bit formulaic and preachy. I asked him if he had ever published anything, or had any of his screenplays picked up.

He became agitated and animated on this score. “I kept sending in perfectly good screenplays and having them rejected because I didn’t follow every one of their anal-retentive formatting guidelines. Can you imagine the sheer audacity?”

“Yours or theirs?” I inquired.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well,” I lectured, “there’s a reason for the uniformity requirements, not just to irritate the writers. They need to judge a work on an equal playing field, and part of that is ascertaining the length—which is determined by having the pages formatted in a particular, repetitive way.”

“Bullshit and balderdash I say! They’re Nazi dictators, the lot of them. And they don’t even read the scripts. I’ll have final proof of that soon enuff.”

“How’s that,” I asked.

“In my last screenplay the main character pulls off the exact hijacking I just did, complete with the name of the airline, the cities involved, and the amount of money demanded. With this all over the news, someone who, if they’d actually read the script—and this was in the first ten pages, mind you—will report it to the FBI for a chance at the reward money. I used my real name and address in those send-ins. My apartment in _______ is paid for until March, so let’s see if they ever raid the place.” (Note: They never did.)

“Well, all I know is that if they use your screenplay, you make a large amount of money, much more than I ever made in any given year (I had by then told him my true identity). Seems that he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

But getting back to that night: I took Blue Streak into The Pearl’s vehicle bay, then left Cooper in the disk while I went to talk to the Commander. His first reaction upon hearing my report was in the negative.

“You’ve brought aboard a common criminal?”

“No Sir, not common at all. Quite uncommon, in fact. And “criminal” is such a judgmental term. He’s committed just this one spectacular act of culpitude, from which he planned to retire to a cottage in the Northwest—to write and mind his business from the world at large. I’ve spoken with him and he’s agreed not to hijack anything else—unless specifically instructed by us. He wants to join the crew, and I’m ready to sponsor him. And, by the by, he’s on our POI list for having two sightings, and writing to some UFO magazines.” (The POI list was for “Persons of Interest,” ranging from contactees to sightings witnesses.)

Tro looked at me for a long five seconds, then said, “All right then. On your say-so, and under your wing. And your buttbone on the line.”

As for the money, we soon found out that, altho unmarked, it was mostly L-Series bills, all of which had been photographed by the FBI. We found this out thru our surveillance of Assistant FBI Director Mark Felt’s office, a person who we felt was next in line for the top job, and someone who will play a role in the upcoming Watergate portion of my narrative. So, unfortunately, we had to ditch the money out an airlock ninety-some miles above the planet, where it floats, tiny piece by tiny piece, to this day.

Added to my growing list of future writing projects is one I’ll title, Me and D.B., about the relationship and various adventures I shared with this fellow. One of his prominent characteristics was a non-fear of death. This was illustrated a few years ago when I discussed with him the possibility of extending his lifespan with a new body when the need arose.

“I may change my mind, but right now I’m looking forward to the afterlife. I experienced it for a few minutes on that operating table (he had a “near-death” episode when he was 18) and it was quite wonderful. I was floating around in a sea of color and ecstacy, and even saw my parents and grandparents. I’m pretty sure that what we call death is just the beginning of a more exquisite life in a non-corporeal body.”

“Then there are those who reincarnate,” I interjected.

“But I hope not to do that. I prefer to pass all the way on. You know, America is largely maladjusted emotionally and spiritually. But the worst sickness of all is the fear of death. This leads to many other negatives, ending up with a crazy medical system that spends over half its cost keeping people alive past their expiration date—bankrupting families, companies and governments along the way.”

Because of his love of dangerous undercover projects, “Secret Agent Man” (from a popular song back in the day) became his nickname. This monicker turned into S.A.M., which became Sammy, which eventuated in Sammy Cooper, which is what we called our highly opinionated and invariably entertaining newbie. In retroview, about half of my impetuous decisions have turned out well, and rescuing this young man from that tree turned out to be one of them.

In the years since 1971 the man infamously knownround as D.B. Cooper has proven himself to be a loyal friend, a skilled pilot, an extraordinary undercover operative and a great crewmate. He made my job easier in many ways, not least of which was that he took over most of the (non-official but emotionally rewarding) pranking of such as professional skeptic Philip Klass (now deceased), Saucer Smear’s James Mosely and “Mr. UFO,” Tim Beckley.

For those of you who care for the mental exercise, you may want to check out Sammy’s blog on the Internet. It’s at cooperscomplaint.blogspot.com. It’s mostly composed of (I think well-targeted) rants and plaints about American culture, but also includes tidbits from his recent missions and escapades.

CHAPTER 14

Elvis Has Left the Building:

the surrealistic exit of The King

Some of you young readers may not know much about Elvis Presley. He was not only (back in the ’50s and early ’60s) the biggest musical performer AND the biggest box-office draw AND the biggest live performance ticket, but he was several times more largistic than anyone else on the scene.

Elvis was not, as he sometimes suspected and speculated, “part alien,” or “from another dimension.” He was, however, genetically and spiritually predisposed to greatness, in a way that caught the attention of the ministering angelic overseers, who turned the case over to the Service Corps. Our job was to facilitate his greatness, believed at first to be that of an inspirational leader, a Billy Graham type, if you will. What he became was a rock star, but he did fulfill, to no small degree, the hopes that were laid out for him at his first earthly breath. Some people have forgotten, or never knew, that Mr. Presley’s three Grammies were for his gospel albums. Millions of people were touched on a deep level by his work in this department.

When he was born, to impress upon his parents the importance of his life-to-become, we brought The Pearl down to a point just above the clouds and shone a blue light around the entire property. We maintained it long enuff for the father, Vernon, to notice it, and he shared this information with his wife, a few close friends and, eventually, Elvis himself.

Presley was a searcher, a devout seeker of the truth. He had just about every book ever printed in the categories of UFOs, mystical and metaphysical. When he went on the road for performances, he would take three steamer trunks full of these books, so as not to be without the right one that he needed for whatever he was puzzling thru.

We had given Elvis over a dozen sightings of diskcraft, some of them within 200 yards, to impress upon his mind not only our existence, but our heightened attention on him. What we had frankly wanted, just as with the other big-name performers of the time, was for him to write songs with lyrics accepting of Urth’s visitors.

Then, in 1976, we took matters to a higher level. Through my rock connections I set up a meeting with Elvis, posing as someone who had not only seen some flying saucers, but who was a contactee. In that meeting, in an otherwise deserted house outside of Memphis (which I had rented for the purpose), I cut almost immediately to the core truth. “Mr. Presley, I not only am a contactee, I live on one of those UFOs.”

I remember how we stared silently into each other’s eyes for a full ten seconds. He was torn between wanting to believe me and fearing that I was another sham huckster, like ones who had tried to con him before, knowing his vulnerability for all things paranormal.

“But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, Elvis,” I broke the silence by saying. “I think it’s time you got a clearer picture of things. So tell you what—just snap your fingers and beckon a saucer here. Take my word for it. You can do it.”

“Just snap . . . my . . . my . . . fingers?” he stammered, a bit nonplussed.

“That’s all. That’s all a king need do.” I was sort of playing with him, to augment the effect, as I was ready with a signal-sending watch to bring the waiting saucer up from the nearby field it was sitting in.

Like a man with a purpose, he stood up and walked to the window. He cracked his knuckles first, looked back over his shoulder at me, and said with that famous grin, “I don’t need no ruby slippers or nothin’, man, just snap my fingers? And they’ll fly right up to this house?”

“Yes, indeed, and then we’ll go inside and take a little tour, and fly around while you meet some of my crewmates.”

His eyebrows went way up at that, so I added, “Big fans, all of them. Probably involve a lot of autograph signing.” He laughed out loud at this more familiar scenario, then raised his hand up to the windowpane and gave a clear snap. Simultimely, I pressed my watch’s stem.

In a matter of seconds Randa brought the 52-foot Sport Model within view over the trees on the far corner of the property, gliding it in a straight swoop toward the yard beside the window we were standing at.

“Whoooeeee!!!” yelled Elvis. “That’s the real deal, Jack!!” This brought his buddy racing in—Sonny or Red or one of them good ol’ boys he hung with—and he looked out the window too.

“Hot fuckin’ damn, Elvis! Hot fuckin’ damn!”

“You wanna come for a ride? He can come with us, right?”

“Well, he can meet the pilot and co-pilot, but, for now, he’s not cleared for entry. You understand.”

“Sure thing. Sure. Hey, Let’s meet us some aliens!”

When I looked at Elvis, I was seeing and hearing the face and voice of someone twenty-five years removed from the burdens of his life, like a sixteen-year-old just shown a red Corvette and told it was his. He was jumping and waving his hands in the air as he flashdashed out the door.

Randa popped the hatch and peeked his head out. Elvis went right up to him and extended his hand. After enthusiastically pumping Randa’s hand, he turned to me and asked, “Is everyone here a human like you guys? Where are the little bug-eyed dudes?”

“Well,” I answered, “there are many different species on the big ship, but your greeting party here is composed of humans and human-looking Exoterrians. But Randa here is from a planet thirty light-years from here.” At that, my crewmate pulled back his hair to reveal a ridged forehead.

As his buddy tremulously shook hands with Randa, from about four feet away, just touching his fingertips, Elvis said, “Hey, that’s cool and all, but I don’t mind meeting the weird-looking ones too. Let’s give me the full tour, man. Let’s go up to the mothership!”

Randa and I laughed hard at this, and I agreed. We went on board and introduced him to Komo and Corrina, and I said, “Elvis wants to go up to the main ship, and he wants to see all the ugly critters we have up there; says he’s not afraid of no space creatures whatsoever.”

And it turned out that he wasn’t, never blinking or showing any trepidation as he met the whole crew of forty-five, including Jaka and his bouncy tentacles and the foreboding-looking Commander Tetrov. Tro looked down and said, “You’re not wearing your blue-suede shoes,” something I’m sure Elvis had heard a thousand times before, but he graciously replied, “I promise to bring them next time, sir.”

The Commander ordered The Pearl to proceed to Saturn, where we did a U-turn just past the rings and headed back around past Jupiter, Mars, and the asteroid belt to return to Urth. During this flight, I briefed Elvis on our purposes, our missions and our agenda for Urth.

We then went into medium-high orbit, about 50 miles up. While Presley peered out the portview, Randa and I stood on either side of him, respecting his peaceful ponderflection.

“So damn tranquil-looking from up here, isn’t it?” he finally said. “This must be the grand life, living on this ship, and going around the galaxy.”

I baited him with my reply. “Some people would say that the grand life is Elvis Presley’s life. Mansions and hotel suites and adoring throngs. And women. And money to burn.”

“No, sir, it ain’t exactly like that. Not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s more a burden than anything. I’d be happy just to be a bartender or something if I had some good, solid friends and a fine woman like Priscilla who loved me. And of course my book collection, helping me get to the bottom of what’s true about life.”

“Well, today should answer some of your questions. And the next time I visit you, we’ll talk of many things.”

“I’d like that very, very much,” he said earnestly. “And hopefully there’ll be a time after that. But what I would most love, let me tell you right now, is to leave the whole damn ‘Elvis Life’ behind, and be an agent like you, a crewmember. I could help you and Randa on your assignments. I know a lot of ins and outs. I can be a valuable asset.”

I had thought such a proposition might be a harder sell, and had planned on a few more meetings and ship visits—that giving up a celebrity’s life, going downhill or not, would be asking a lot from a man. But Elvis was fed up with most aspects of his Urthside life, from the demanding road tours (150 people and many trucks and trailers) to the show business falsity, to being treated like a relic of the past by the bulk of the media, to death threats from drug dealers on whom he had (while taking seriously his commission as a special DEA agent by Richard Nixon) made accusatory reports. And, with all that, everyone he met seemed to want a piece of him, whether it was money or advice or a photo or a job recommendation or a script or a song they wrote. And then there were the grieving and desperate folks he would meet, or who would write him, entreating him to pray for someone in their family who was sick or dying.

Starting soon after this meeting, Elvis became involved with me in what was called The Rock Project. This was something I had brainstormed, and was put in charge of, in the late ‘60’s, but the helm soon passed to Presley (and, later, to Sammy Cooper). It’s primary purpose was the inducement of top bands to write songs with lyrics accepting of Urth’s cosmic visitors, to influence the youth of that generation, a youth increasingly receptive to new and larger concepts, unbridled by their parents’ squeamish conservatism.

Using his intimate knowledge of the performance landscape, and his prodigious creative talents, Presley took charge and expanded the program. Under me, the project had mostly involved staged sightings for the benefit of major performers. Occasionally I would manage to meet with some of these performers (usually acting as a would-be promoter) where I would have what I called “seeded conversations,” talking about aliens and UFOs and similar subjects. (I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Dude, you’re blowing my mind!”)

Elvis set up a program that included the transmission of words and lyrics of a cosmic nature into the minds of the targeted recipients. This was done primarily thru their dream states, but also included, in those who were meditaters or “natural channels,” direct resonance broadcasting. With several others, who I won’t specifically name, implants were used.

These impla-units, placed high up the nasal cavity to a point just beside the optic nerve, could be used for a radio-like transmissions, as well as serving as location transponders. Set low, Presley would transmit barely audible melodies and/or lyrics to certain individuals, music of his own continuing creation. Most of these performers, hearing the transmissions, believed they were receiving divine guidance from God, or an angel, or their personal spirit guide (or had taken an especially good combination of drugs).

This is not to minimize the song-writing talent of any of these artists. In the first place, they had to have the talent to be chosen for such a treatment (Elvis liked to call it “muse-ic”). Second, they had to have the capacity to comprehend and assimilate the transmissions. Third, they would often improve on the received package—making it an even better song.

Among the groups and individuals contacted by one means or another were Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane (which then became Jefferson Starship), Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, Yes, Judy Collins, Jim Morrison, Steppenwolf, Laurie Anderson, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful and David Byrne. In later years, the project was taken over by Sammy, and the list included U2, Moby, Coldplay, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Blink 182, Foo Fighters, Bjork, and Oasis.

In ten to fifteen years, perhaps I’ll write the full story of The Rock Project. By then, the still-performing musicians will have retired—or will they have?!

In further conversations with Presley, and another ride on The Pearl, I told him my full story, including the periodic new bodies, detailed what life was like in the Service Corps, and cautioned him that he’d have to detox completely to be on our team. He was gung-ho on all counts, and we fleshed out some ideas, starting with how to pull off the body hoax.

We decided to surveil every Elvis impersonator, celebrity-lookalike Elvis, and those who would finish high up in upcoming Elvis Lookalike Contests, some of which we would have our ground operatives sponsor. Morbid as it sounds, what we were waiting for was one of them to die. If it were in a car accident, we would fake a car accident; if a drowning, then we’d set up a boat accident scenario. If it was a heart attack or drug overdose, then that we could easily accommodate.

We presented the case for a faked death to the Commander and he assented. “If it can be done right, then let’s do it. Mr. Presley would be a useful addition to our ship’s crew. And he could be a pozfactor with the music initiative.”

Less than six months passed before we had our “dead Elvis.” It was one of the Elvis impersonators, a man who fastidiously (fortuitously for us) kept his hair and sideburns in match-synch with the real Elvis. He had apparently been suffering from chronic depression and committed suicide alone in the woods with a pharmacopeia of drugs. We quickly swooped in from high cover and gathered his corpse, taking less than a minute for the operation. We had the man’s body kept in a cryonic freezer until the transfer could be accomplished.

The only problem was that the deceased gentleman was fifty pounds heavier than Elvis. Other than that and a slightly more pug nose, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Presley. When informed of the weight discrepancy, Elvis laughed and said, “Good, I can finally eat whatever I want.” And in that one last month, he did indeed, with full gusto, gain the requisite fifty pounds. He also used this time to prepare for his getaway or, as he put it, “cross some i’s and dot some t’s.”

Using the rear entrance, we brought the dead man into the private quarters of the mansion, put Presley’s pajamas on him, and laid him face down on the bathroom floor. We had already thawed him out in anticipation of the transference. When the medics came, they were surprised by the unusual stiffness of the body, as if a quick rigor mortis had set in, but no one at the time suspected anything untoward.

During the autopsy, a plethora of drugs were discovered in the corpse, including Demerol, Placidyl, and Valium, but being very protective of their king, even in death, the local coroner’s office gave the cause of death as a heart attack.

But now I come to the truly tragic part. Immediately after the switch was made, with everyone back on the ship toasting its success, Elvis experienced serious heart pain and palpitations. His face turned bet beet red and right there in front of us he keeled over, hitting his head on the floor with a sickening thwack.

Jaka was summoned immediately by Cooper, while I did an impromptu heart massage and Tro did what he could to stop the bleeding from his head injury. Jaka came within a minute, and administered emergency care with blurring speed. But . . . but . . . nothing could save him.

We later learned that he had a massive coronary, compounded by a brain hemorrhage and a broken neck from his fall to the floor. Even if we had a body standing by for a potential transference, it wouldn’t have been done, as his brainwave pattern was next to nil from the wicked fall. But the reason for the heart attack was no mystery; it was the sudden gain of fifty pounds and the pressure he had been under to get his affairs in order, followed by the stress of the faked-death operation. This was all on top of a life of physical abuse, especially from food and pharmaceuticals.

The shock to the nervous system of The Pearl was palpable. Everyone had loved Presley and looked forward to him becoming a crewmember. So close to acquiring our new prize, then to have it cruelly snatched from us.

Everyone took Elvis’ death hard, but probably none harder than Sammy. First of all, he was a huge Presley fan going way back, and was thrilled to have personal contact with the man. Secondly, he was in charge of the planning and execution of the mission that ended up killing the icon he so adulated. He had approved the usage of the overweight Elvis impersonator, and had urged Presley to gain the weight to make it look realistic. So, of course, Sammy blamed himself for the event. He offered his resignation twice, the second time actually going AWOL. He was found in the city of his birth, living in a “Skid Row” section, and brought back to the ship. There he was given intensive grief counseling sessions, and a 30-day leave of absence. Despite all that, tho, he was hardly the same man for a full year or so.

About a month after the burial of the fake Elvis, we had the distinct displeasure of—after a quick excavation using special equipment—removing that corpse from the casket and replacing it with the real Elvis. I placed in his hand the following poem. It was found in his breast pocket after he died, as he was apparently planning to read it at his Service Corps induction ceremony.

The poem is a “seventeener,” a form that Elvis invented. I was reminded of a conversation I had with him several months earlier.

He said, “Unless I write a book, and I will, nobody will know what I experienced—especially the backstabbing I endured, the tens of millions I was cheated out of, the death threats for my DEA work, the pills, losing Prissy. Nobody has any idea, man, because I kept most to myself.”

As an outlet for his these and other feelings and thoughts, Presley wrote various forms of poems. His favorites were haikus, even tho he couldn’t quite master the nuanced last lines, continually investing the last syllables with some heavy-handed imagery.

“A haiku is like a croissant,’ I told him. “A delicate, flaky crust over something soft and warm. Yours are like fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches—tasty but not subtle enough for the haiku format.” He chuckled at that, because that used to be his sandwich of choice, and patted me hard on the back.

“Mr. Bierce, you are one funny cat, sir, I gotta tell you.” (He always called me that, like the polite kid his parents raised.) But he later started writing longer poems that strung together stanzas of seventeen syllables each, investing in those his penchant for big imagery. The ones I read, amongst the bevy he had written, were uniformly good, and I congratulated him.

“Haven’t been too many new forms invented lately.”

“Thanks, Mr. Bierce, that means a lot coming from a professional writer and critic like yourself. I like the rhythm they have, and I like the challenge of doing them.”

So here it is, probably the last thing Elvis wrote.

Blue Phoenix Rising

I’ve slipped the surly bonds of fame

Through twilight’s zone to amazing grace.

Long and winding were the yesterdays

That have led me now to this place.

I set my sail on stormy Monday

For Ruby Tuesday’s port-of-call.

Bruised my knees on Mammon’s altar

Stayed late at the Celebrity Ball.

From a watchtower saw knights in white satin

And riders on the storms

Running on empty down desolation’s road

Passing frightful forms.

Caught between the Moon and misbegotten

I crashed in the sea of love.

Caring not what became of me

I shook my fist at the skies above.

Spotlights and spectacles . . .

Trapped in a Graceland where wonders never ceased

Carrying that weight but knowing one day

One day I would be released.

After long night’s journey is morning’s due

With the rain a garden grows.

This much I know is true:

From the seed beneath the snow becomes the rose.

* * *

Now the circle still stands unbroken.

In joy a beginning is brought.

Yet some pain for roads not taken

But laughter last for this path I’ve wrought.

Passing now into the blue

Rising from ash a phoenix greets the sky.

One last trip for a trav’lin man --

I’ve with these wounded wings learned to fly.

---

[1] The Service Corps ladderchain of command, toptbottom: Commander, Ambassador First Class, Ambassador, Envoy First Class, Envoy, Shipman First Class and Shipman.