Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization

  ~ ~ ~

  After two days of oatmeal and soup fare she had enough strength to reach the toilet mostly on her own. The front porch lounger was endlessly comfortable, weather was sunny and warm, and the ancient clock de n?on made a better night-light than daytime companion. Her caretaker kept busy with unseen activities, had not been very talkative and, for the time being, she hadn't much mood for conversation. In a dream, she remembered Doug and, despite the pure joy of being alive, thinking of him and of Dedra only caused her depression. She sorely wanted to see them and there was no telling when that might happen. There was no telephone at this compound and wherever the hell she was, it was quite far and away from that thing called civilization. Still weak and limping, she resolved not to press issues. Not yet.

  One day her guardian roared out of sight to stock up on supplies and find her clothes. He had found her an old robe and a walking cane. Warned not to venture beyond the porch, she wobbled through the house and found it somewhat normal, untidy but clean, no doors or windows locked anywhere-a large dwelling with a deep hallway lined with shelves and boxes of books and unidentifiable male ephemera. From one shelf, squeezed against Winnie the Pooh, the words No Exit ambushed her. She almost lost grip on the cane. "Oh geeezzz. Not here."

  Loitering around it were more unsettling titles. Freeing a dusty The World of Will and Representation, she randomly paged through it and shoved it back into its sneering barracks. A slim volume of Wittgenstein beckoned from its hiding place. She pried it free, let her fingers slide over and open it, sniffed through a few pages and sighed before letting it drop into the robe's pocket. "Forgive me," she said, "for I know not what I do."

  Most of the doors fronted empty chambers, an attenuated closet, a spare bathroom, and behind one door was an unemotional bedroom, a stack of notebooks on the bed. The corridor ended at an enclosed porch facing a vast emptiness. Squinting down, in the distance she saw what could have been a windsock and maybe vertical rudders of aircraft. Turning back to the hallway, she detected a slender, high-pitched whirring. A shiver traveling her spine, she ceased exploring upon discovering a dark room filled with banks and tables of glowing electronic gear; like nothing she had seen before. Definitely, they didn't seem like computers. It seemed prudent to stay in already known territory.

  Again on the front porch, there was a rustling beneath a shrub past her perimeter of focus. Making out a snake slithering and coiling itself around a rock, she blew a whistle of relief. The temperature was dropping. She pulled the book from the robe pocket, yawned studiously at it in the afternoon light, nestled into the warm bedding of the lounger and dozed off.

  Near sunset the car rumbled her awake.

  Dinner was vegetables, potatoes and broiled chicken. Solid food at last. A table was set and he was a decent cook who knew his spices. If this was how men behaved when a woman was seriously injured, she could easily develop a fetish for extreme pain. He also did well on the acquisition of clothing. Having lost some weight, she gave him a list of ideal and alternate sizes; he returned with a box containing some thrift-store dresses and jeans. There was a package of underwear, socks, some bras, t-shirts, a sweatshirt, a sweater, a pair of sneakers, used work boots and a box of tampons. "It's not Victoria's Secret," he said, "but it's the best I could do."

  "My god. They fit." She was behind the curtain discovering that some of the bras were properly sized. The undies were comfortable too. Cinching back into the robe, she emerged to sit on the futon. "You did really good."

  "I have my resources." He had cleared the dishes away and was leaning back in his chair. "Plus, I was married once to a very picky woman. I learned how to not buy the wrong stuff."

  "Gee, I almost feel human again." She reclined back into the pillows and, after a minute, asked, "So, when can I, uh?get out of here?"

  "June, I've been meaning to discuss that with you but haven't really been sure how."

  "Uh oh."

  "I'm afraid you need to stay here awhile. For one, you need a lot more recovery time. Secondly, and this is where it gets difficult, you're not legally allowed to be here and there's only certain times when it's safe for me to get you all the way out of here."

  "Huh? I understand about the recovery but what do you mean about the other thing? Legally allowed?"

  "OK." He kneaded his forehead. "I have a lot of explaining to do."

  "Oh geeezzz. I think you do."

  "This is going to be rough. How 'bout I make us some tea?"

  "I guess. But I'm ready to hear it now."

  "Look, I've got the hard job here. I want a cup of tea and it'll only take a few minutes."

  She said nothing. He walked to the kitchen. The front door was unlocked and she was certain that seeing one snake earlier meant there had to be more. It was nighttime and the odds were against her. Until this moment he had seemed like a nice, decent person. Jeffrey Dahmer, to most people, had seemed like a nice young man. Logic dictated that a house of unlocked doors and windows did not a prison make. The given was that she was at a physical disadvantage. An observed variable was that he had slept unobtrusively behind the black curtain for nights in order to assist her any time she needed. Another observed variable was that he had touched and bathed her naked body more than once without acting creepy. A universal given was Murphy's Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

  There was a whistling of teapot. He walked back with two steaming cups and a saucer and set them on the table."Hope you like peppermint. It'll be good for your stomach."

  "Sure."

  Dropping the teabags in, he leaned back in the chair and studied her. "I imagine you may have looked around the house while I was gone today."

  "Uh, yeah. I did."

  "It's only natural curiosity. And you saw the room with all the electronic gizmos?"

  "But I didn't go in or touch anything. Honest."

  "It would only matter if you broke something." He contemplated his lap and rubbed his chin. "I hope you noticed that nothing in this house is locked up."

  "Yeah."

  "I have nothing to hide from you. I had to think about this for a long time. And I've decided that I'm going to tell and show you things I really shouldn't."

  "Ooooh boy. Houston, we have a headache."

  "Uhhhhh?"

  "What?"

  "That?" He shook his head. "Uh, nothing."

  "Did I say something wrong?"

  "Uh, no."

  She laid stiffly, waiting.

  "Listen, June, I can only imagine what's going through your mind right now but what I'm getting ready to tell you is the absolute truth. It's my ass that's on the line. I'm the one who needs your trust here. Are you with me?"

  "I don't know. Will you please not beat around the bush?"

  "Fair enough." He bobbed the teabag in and out of his cup. "This is basically a research facility that no one is supposed to know even exists. You're on restricted access government property without clearance and the only reason you're here is because I brought you here. And I breached security in the process."

  "Where exactly are we?"

  "I'm sorry, but I can't tell you that. It would be another breach of security. But, trust me, you are safe here."

  "Am I supposed to believe this?" She sat up and glanced at the walking cane next to her.

  "It's the truth."

  "I?don't know." She clutched the lapels of the robe and tightened it shut against her neck. Blood drained from her face. She bit down on her lower lip and her breathing quickened.

  "Are you OK?"

  "No. You're scaring me."

  "But?"

  "You know I can't run," she sobbed. "If you're going to kill me or rape me will you please just get it over with?"

  "June! Stop it! That's not going to happen!" He jumped up and stomped down the hallway, returned with a couple of identification laminates and threw them down in front of her. "Quit your crying and look at those!"

  She ca
utiously studied them. There was no name-only the initials JHH and his photo. One granted top security clearance with the CIA; the other did likewise with what called itself USAF/77th Defense LG WS.

  "I can understand your fear," he said, "but I am not going to hurt you. Don't you think I've had enough chances to do that already?"

  "I don't know," she sniffled. "Maybe you're just fattening me up for the kill."

  "No, no, no." His harsh demeanor shifted to amusement. "I'm sorry, but that was funny."

  "Why?"

  "Because that would be immoral." He stifled the laugh. "And wasteful. Besides, if I hadn't brought you here you would have died. No question about it."

  "Are these real?" She turned the cards over and over in her hands.

  "Either one gets me into the Oval Office or the deepest recesses of the Pentagon any time I want. I'm also cleared to pilot Air Force One in event of national emergency."

  "Are you?a moralist?"

  "Wow." Lifting the teabag from his cup and dropping it onto the plate, he took a sip. "No one has ever asked me that question."

  "Am I here because of some grand moral agenda?"

  "No. But if compassion for humanity is considered a morality, then yes. Why not. I've seen far too much preventable death in this world."

  "Are you a doctor?"

  "No, but I should be."

  "Why didn't you take me to a hospital?"

  "Because I can't trust that system." Taking another sip, he frowned. "You needed attention that a hospital could not give you. That was my gut feeling and I acted on it. OK, I took personal responsibility for your life and if that's a moral agenda, it's my moral agenda. So there."

  She turned her head and stared at the clock, at its crown of sparking neon. Turning back, she lifted the teabag from her cup, tossed it next to the one already on the saucer and took a sip. "How can I not thank you for that?"

  "You don't have to thank me. You just need to stay alive." He took another sip; a sadness in his eyes faded. "You see, there's always been a lot of talk about morality, and it's usually more than there should ever be. Somehow, I think you know that. But you may find that dignity holds a bigger candle; dignity may be what rules morality."

  "But why does one have to rule the other?"

  "It doesn't. That's just how it seems to work."

  "I'm not so sure."

  "You could ask any of the gods if only all the loudmouths will shut up and let them-or him-or her-answer."

  "Who do you ask?"

  "No one, anymore."

  "Oh. Man as an island?"

  "Woman as the water?"

  "Oh, geeezzz." She rolled her eyes. "Never mind."

  "It's your call, June."

  "No, cut it out."

  "That's just it. Right now I can't." He smirked.

  "I think you can," she said, staring into her teacup, "I really do think you can."

  "Hmm. June, you're amazing."

  "Don't get fresh." She laughed and held her head. "Oooh, that hurts."

  "We've all got our limitations."

  XXIV

  "I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented.

  If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it.

  Volunteer for it, I swear to god I will."

  -J.D. Salinger

  When day broke, after breakfast, JHH gave her the tour. In the gizmo room he patiently explained that stealth technology was one of his areas of expertise, this room being an advanced, specialized research lab. An awful lot of techno babble, he knew not to go overboard in the explanation. He had been working on paint formulations and, lately, fabric treatments that not only resisted detection by radar but, with applied electrical charges, could be used to generate false images to further thwart detection-even into the infrared realm. He offered to give a full demonstration later, and he also found her a wheelchair.

  "How do you come up with these things?"

  "There's all kinds of stuff stored in that building out there," he said, "You'd be flabbergasted at some of the things I've found."

  "Is it all your stuff?"

  "Mostly not. But at this point most of it doesn't really belong to anyone. There was once a plan for a full development of the facility but?well, funding issues. Now it's just a lot of phased-out military gear from some old bases and hospitals. Real boring kinda stuff. Get in the chair and I'll show you some things like I promised."

  It was June's first day fully clothed since she landed. Clean gauze shielded the sutures on her bald head, and a long housedress, a sweater and sneakers were most practical til her legs and ankles strengthened. He was a typical jeans and work boot kind of guy and today, the weather cool and grey, he wore a dark jacket with a large Moon Equipment logo on the back. Wheeling her off the porch and around the side of the house, he steered her through a mini junkyard of old automobiles that led to the metal corrugated building. Inside, the structure was a storage hangar in whose shadows were the forms of an old jet fighter and a partially dismantled P-51-she could recognize that plane anywhere. The rest of the space was crammed with boxes, pallets, and beyond the WWII relic was a loft he accessed via a wooden staircase. She heard him rummaging through things and he descended with a dusty box, which he placed on her lap. "I almost forgot about these. There might be something that works for you in there."

  Opening the lid she saw a tangle of eyeglasses-all kinds, men's, women's-piled in with a set of binoculars. "Whoa, sight," she chirped. Pulling up a few spectacles she settled on a pair of black horn-rims. "These might work for now. They seem kinda close to mine."

  Outside the door he dragged a tarp off a hoodless old military Jeep, sat behind the wheel and pushed a button that started it instantly. He helped her into the passenger seat, threw the wheelchair and box into the back and they drove off. "I'll try not to bump you around too much but it can be difficult on this terrain."

  "I'll hold on," she said.

  In the open space behind the hangar she saw it. The Grand Prize itself: a gorgeous specimen of aviation history. "Oh no. That's a B-17!"

  "You know your airplanes."

  "I know B-17s." This Flying Fortress was complete-a full complement of armament-propless, one engine nacelle lying on the ground below it. "It's one of my favorite airplanes ever."

  "How so?"

  "I've always loved old warplanes. They're so?human. I've always wanted to fly in one."

  "They are incredible machines."

  "The closest I ever got was?well, being a flight attendant a few years back."

  "Really? That's a very valuable job. You'll have to tell me about that sometime."

  "Sometime." The four-engined beauty receded over her shoulder. She turned face forward, saying, "I'm sure you have much more interesting tales to tell."

  "Maybe. But don't think you're not an interesting person. I can tell."

  Driving onward they reached a wide stretch of road, then there was the windsock and the realization that the road was actually an airstrip. Facing it on one side was a motley assemblage of airplanes-one large 4-engined cargo transport, an old DC3 without engines, three biplanes, a couple of single-engined civilian craft. Past them was an open metal hangar, inside, a broken-down helicopter and two drab-green military trucks. Next to the building were two rusting gasoline pumps and, about 100 yards behind them, in a weedy field, languished a collection of inactive radar antennas. The airstrip ended and they proceeded down a dirt pathway that wound its way through shrubs and barrel cactus. A few miles farther they approached a black, twenty-foot tall pole atop which sat a rusty blast siren. There was a small metal box attached to the pole at chest level. He pulled up next to it, opened it, entered a series of numbers on a keypad and drove on. Another mile, he stopped, dismounted from the Jeep and said, "Have you ever seen an underground missile silo?"

  "Uhh?"

  "Watch." Stepping ten feet away he knelt and brushed dirt from the top of a f
oot-square box that stood mere inches above the sand. Opening it, he punched three buttons and June felt vibration, then heard a low mechanical rumble. Directly ahead of her a large, industrial mound of land was sliding. When it stopped moving there was a gaping hole. He helped her from the Jeep and steered her over the cement apron. "Be very careful."

  Already on shaky legs, her knees turned to jelly when she reached the edge and peered in. "Oh? My? God." A massive nosecone pointed at the sky and she wanted to faint. If phallus phobia really existed, here it was.

  "That is a genuine U.S. Government Issue Titan rocket with nuclear warhead that you're looking at. There's 17 more silos like this out here; 17 more missiles in them."

  "Get me out of here!"

  "Sorry." He chuckled and patted her back. "I was just kidding about the nuclear warhead. These Titans have all been deactivated. Nothing to worry about."

  "Nothing to worry about, he says. You have a very disturbing sense of humor."

  "I'd take you downstairs and show you the launch room-still intact. But?you're not quite fit for the hike yet. Still, you haven't seen anything yet."

  A push of buttons and the hatch slid closed. Back in the Jeep, it was nearly twenty miles before a large, modern warehouse appeared about two miles off to their left. At an unmarked fence post he turned and they bounded over an uneven, roadless area. There were three huge roll-up doors at one end of the stout cinder-block building and a miniscule-by-comparison steel entry door on the side wall. He helped June down and into the wheelchair. Again, a box with a keypad inside. This one he unlocked with a standard metal key that was on a ring with others. After a series of keystrokes he said, "There's a one-minute delay on this system. This is about the only thing that's kept locked out here." At the proper time he jabbed a second and a third key into the door's two locks. He pushed the door open, wheeled her in, fiddled in the darkness and threw an electrical breaker. "There they are. The last of the Saturn Vs."

  The missile silo had been impressive; this rendered it mundane. It was the opposite of being on a date with a guy who talked big and showed little. This man was delivering in spades. Before her was the most gigantic machine she had ever seen and, lying on its side, stretching into the distance, it was a sight indeed. An unexpected essay to an era and language when Americans hung breathlessly on every motion of fledgling space exploration, which was all disintegrating into a nothingness of hoax theories propagated by an "information superhighway." That was more incredible than the idea of any man actually setting foot on the lunar surface, and she was rolling closer and closer to laying a hand on the historic irony. The only thing she could say was, "You have got to be kidding me."

  "No. They're real."

  "I think Dolly Parton said that once," she gulped.

  "Now I hope you know I've been telling you the truth all along."

  "Geeezzz almighty." Her hand shook. The huge fin at the base of the first stage was coated with a sticky substance, most likely an aerospace wax job to preserve its finish.

  Wheeling her down the length of the launch stage, he said, "No matter what anyone says, we did actually put people on the moon. For some reason it's gotten very popular to deny that reality. I really don't get it. When a culture starts replacing its own history with convenient conspiracies, things go downhill."

  "Uh huh."

  "I worked on the Apollo program."

  "Really? That must have been?"

  "Definitely an experience," he said, almost under his breath. "And it's never really stopped."

  "You must have some stories to tell about it."

  "Yeah, I do." It was the farthest away a voice could sound without vanishing into nothing. Shaking his head out of a daze, he resumed the show-and-tell. "The Saturn V is still the most powerful thrust machine ever built. That's what matters. I could fill your ears with all kinds of technical junk but there's really no point in it."

  "Do you miss it?"

  "That's a difficult question to answer. We'll talk about it later."

  The three separate sections of the rocket were resting on trailers so big they could each hold a house, or two, or three. Past the third stage were additional cylindrically- and conically-shaped parts encased in plastic sheets as if newly bought items. Deep in the shadows was an oddly shaped, non-cylindrical package whose clear plastic wrapping betrayed a square-ish, framed thing on angled legs.

  "No. It can't be." She stood and limped toward it, the notes of Also Sprach Zarathustra frolicking in her head, and stretched arms into the plastic til she felt the metal ladder attached to one of the gold foil-encased struts.

  "A genuine, Grumman-built, Apollo Lunar Module. All original, never flown, showroom condition. I'm sure NASA would give you a good price if you made an offer." With an impish grin, he stood next to her, saying, "If you walk over there a bit you'll see another one of these behind it. And there's a couple of dismantled lunar rovers in the far corner there."

  "Oh, geeezzz, this is too much." Her eyes bugged out when she saw a second set of Saturn V stages stored next to the first. "Omigod. I need to sit down."

  Laughing, he pushed the wheelchair behind and rolled her between the two rockets til they were back at the enormous first-stage engines. Encouraged to inspect it closely, she limped up to one of the bell-shaped cones and he boosted her onto it. She ventured a few feet in, examined its texture, laid down to take it all in, drew her legs up and sat. Lost in unspeakable thoughts, she spotted him sitting in the wheelchair with a vacant expression.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "Umm, no. I just kinda thought about something I haven't thought about in a long time." He rubbed his chin. "Nothing to worry about. But we should probably get out of here. I'd have hell to pay if any of the guv'mint boys somehow waltzed in here and saw you."

  "Oh, so I'd get you in trouble?"

  "Much." He helped her down and back into the chair. "You're unauthorized, remember."

  "And you just pulled me out of a river, took me in like a stray cat and showed me secret stuff? Just like that?"

  "A man's gotta live and do what he needs to do."

  "I don't know. You gotta explain this shit to me."