Nobody will believe you. That's exactly why I'm telling you. It didn't start at Roswell. Try World War I. "Otherworlder War" If it helps you sleep at night: a work of fiction. Copyright (c) 2000 rivetsandsteam.com Sorry about the smoke, kid, but lung cancer is a problem twenty years down the road. I'll be lucky to see tomorrow. You're dead just by talking to me. Or worse. Want one? You followed me through the tabloids, websites, police files - whatever. You had your chance to turn and run but you got into the van of your own free will. Yeah, that's another thing you've just gave up. Here's a gun. Jesus, kid, point it away from you! At the floor! At the floor! It's fully loaded and there're two spare clips and a box of ammo in the glove compartment. I'll teach you how to shoot it later. You might want to use it on yourself after you hear what I'm about to say. This is the shit they don't teach in school. Every culture had its prophets. Each gained insights by the various means available at the time. Hallucinogenic fungi, plants, volcanic vapors, self- denial of extreme proportions, constant meditation; these allowed glimpses into the nether realms, the eather, the afterlife. The Other. And each interpreted their visions, and even visitations, through their cultural filters that turned the frightening into the manageable. Those that couldn't wandered the wilderness or hid in caves, tortured by the images burned into their memory. The experimentation with gas weapons in the War To End All Wars made it possible for the average person to experience the altered mental state necessary for the psychic leap, however fleeting. Most died, the few that survived jibbered and drooled an incoherent stream of nightmarish nonsense. But, being the methodical creatures we are, all the rambling horrors were recorded and reviewed, then filed away. But not forgotten. Case after case was studied. Data was exchanged, patterns formed, and conclusions drawn. A committee was created in the newly erected League of Nations to try to make sense of it all. How could they? Five hundred years ago the Earth was flat and the universe revolved around it. The world only recently embraced evolution. Flying had just stopped being a novelty and turned into a weapon. They didn't know for certain that the Moon wasn't made of green cheese. As if they could grasp conflict on a galactic scale? The Sybil Project was initiated before the League had its first "official" meeting. It never appeared in any of the transcripts. Money was siphoned off from the participating governments. Test subjects were recruited from the prisons, orphanages, and shelters. Hell, they were disposable. Special facilities were scattered across the globe. Rebuilding the world was a good cover story. All in the name of peace. Get your head down. Now! Shit, that was close. Stay low for a few more seconds. Okay, heads up. Slowly. Damn cell phone towers. I lined the van with tinfoil. That and its metal body should've blocked the passive scans. Why do you think they're switching over to plastic body panels for civilian vehicles? Fuel efficiency? If we don't run into a very un-random D.W.I. check in the next few miles we'll be okay. Otherwise you'll learn the hard way how to use that gun. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Compounds both natural and synthetic were forcibly ingested in hopes of finding the path to that other place beyond the here and now. It was all very hit-and- miss with a huge body count as the result. Once the PhDs discovered how to stabilize the desired effect they needed to learn how to control the leap of consciousness that lets one explore the Otherworld: hyperspace, the void, warpspace, whatever. Some of the Leapers -that's what they're called by their minders- didn't come back. Their bodies, the only link with the Earth, died. They're considered M.I.A. but, unofficially, no one is looking for them. Unfortunately, these experiments chummed the cosmic waters. And now we're on the defensive. Have been for nearly a hundred years. Simply put: the monsters are real. Aliens, if you will. They are Extra- Terrestrials, but not like the media would prefer you to believe. Flying saucers are just a hoax. They don't need UFOs to travel to other worlds. And soon, neither will we. Vampyres exist, too, but they drain psychic energy, not suck blood. Well, the wannabe's do, and they're encouraged by the Men In Black to spread the disinformation. Did you know that movie on the subject was shot entirely on location? Some of their agents made it sexy to be a prince or princess of darkness by publishing romanticized fiction, produced ratings grabbing syndicated T.V. shows or high-grossing movies. And the general populous eats it up. An abandoned body makes a tempting host. That's where all the legends of zombies and ghouls were born, I suppose. The Psychic Manifestation of the Otherworlder occupies the empty shell of a once living person. This automatically severs the tie with the Leaper. There have been cases where the possessor lies dormant, some times for years. The ultimate sleeper agents just waiting to spring into action. Not all of them require a corpse to do their dirty work on Earth. Some are so powerful that they are able to force incursions into real-time. We see them as ghosts, apparitions, or worse. The researchers in The Sybil Project started pairing up Leapers. One was to explore and the other to guard their bodies from attack or possession and occasionally call the other back from the brink. This was usually a child scout teamed up with an adult guardian. The great beyond was a whole new game with a completely different set of rules. It's all a matter of perspective. It runs on the speed and power of imagination. Children proved the least resistant. They still had flying dreams and used these images to travel farther and faster then the older subjects. They had less to unlearn than adults. It was a kind of game for them, hide and seek, if you will. At first. Adults always had difficulty adjusting. All the comforting sights and sounds were ripped away. Their greatest fears could be preyed upon. There was no up or down, nothing to navigate by but their own anchor point: the body they just left. But they could fight better than the children, understanding death and their own mortality more clearly. Killing was always a grown-up responsibility. What the hell is - we're being tailed. Okay, here we go. There, the saftey's off. Pull back the slide from the rear. Good. The button on the side releases the clip so you can load in a fresh one. Push this lever down to release the slide and chamber a round. Nothing fancy, understand. Aim for the center of your target. Don't try to wing 'em as it'll just get them angry and you killed. Besides, odds are they're already dead. Just under new management. ------ I think we lost 'em. They'll find us again. It's only a matter of time. We'll head for a safehouse, swap vehicles and get out of the county. There's a place up in the hills we can lay low for a few days. Put that fucking cellphone down or I'll blow your brains out myself! You just don't get it, do you! It's over! It's all fucking over! You have walked with the Fallen and you are tainted, damaged goods! The World is no longer an option for you! What future you might have had is forfeit, gone! Is this getting through?! No house in the 'burbs, no country club, no spouse, no 1.2 kids, and you can kiss the pooch good-bye, kid! Hell, by now they're probably turning off your electricity. You can never go back. They will kill you and anybody they think is trying to protect you. It's that simple. There's too much at stake. Besides, the body count has gotten too high to be concerned with the ramifications of another corpse. I can fix you up with a new identity easily enough. I need one every couple weeks myself. You weren't ready for this, were you? All you wanted was some sort of joyride, a quick glimpse into the fringe and then run off some chain of mass-produced coffeehouses to brag about how esoteric you are or thump your cyber-chest on some freak-filled chat room. Sorry, babe, but I warned you it was a one-way ticket a long time ago. Go ahead. Call your congressman. Like he'd believe you. They'd trace the call and find us. Everything below federal level is monitored; so going to the local police is useless. They'd turn you over to some mysterious Fed agent and that would be the end of that. Mainstream media is either controlled or won't care about your drug-induced delusions. Only the lunatic fringe would listen to you, and 10% of them are plants for either side of this war. And, yes, every file sent over the Internet is inspected in some way, though it can still be exploited if you have a clever enough code. And change it every 10 seconds. There are no White Hats anymore, just different levels of evil. And those who are blissfully oblivious as to what's really going on. Like you used to be. We're here. If you want to survive do everything I tell you to without hesitation. Or you're dead. Period. Understand? Good. Grab your gear. Get in the green SUV. Yeah, the one with the peeling paint job. Passenger side. I will be back in 45 seconds. And hide the gun, Capone. ------ Good, you didn't run off. You might make it yet. Here. There's food in the bag and hot coffee in the thermos. No, they're not passive burgers. Not hungry, huh? Don't blame you. It's overwhelming, to say the least. Belt in. This car is fitted with a low voltage transmitter that'll make us read normal to any casual scan. Cell phone towers, remember? If the scrutiny gets too close, thought, it's a firefight. No, that's just a radar detector. But, whatever you do, don't touch the cigarette lighter, okay? You can sleep if you want. It's going to be a few hours 'til our next stop. No? Then I'm going to ramble on as long as my voice lasts. The Sybil Project granted humanity it's first organized glimpse into the Otherworld. Sages and madmen had been doing it since humanity could bang two rocks together on purpose, but this was a controlled experiment carried out by a global - albeit secret - endeavor. One hundred Leaps were done in a matter of months at the cost of thousands of human lives. Libraries of notes were amassed. But expending that much psychic power was the equivalent of ringing the galaxy's dinner bell. Too late we discovered there's a war going on all around us. Until we proved we could consistently Leap, the Earth had no tactical significance. Now, we're a rich source of foot troops for their conflict. The people of the Earth needed to be told, but there was the ever-present reality of global hysteria. The existing power structure needed to be intact if anyone was to survive the onslaught from the Other side. It's 1931. All the member governments of the League of Nations were briefed. Hitler was informed, just like everyone else. They were given access to the less sensitive departments of the Project. Hitler wanted faster results. He decided that a race of supermen could defend the Earth from the Others and he wasn't going to wait the hundred-plus years proposed by the scientists. He was filled with hate before he found out the truth and was driven mad with fear and the desire for glory after being told. He might have even been a Leaper. Who knows? All his atrocities were - in his mind - to save the world. The Soviet Union and Imperial Japan didn't believe a word of it, but they weren't going to give up a chance to extend their territories. Good, old- fashioned human-on-human aggression ensued. You might have seen the movie, but odds are you've never read the book. After the war they were brought into line. The Second World War was a tragedy that should have never happened. As a species, humanity is not very sophisticated. Even now. Resources that should have been channeled into the Project were squandered. Scientific strides were made, true, but not as fast or as far as they could have. Sidebar, kiddo: nuclear weapons were invented not to end a war or make it untenable, but to end all life on Earth if we lost to the Others. Everything else was just a happy byproduct. When the League of Nations officially dissolved in 1946, The Sybil Project had its mail rerouted to United Nations. Many years were lost, though by this time much of the secrecy was dispensed with as any question could be answered with "it's for the war effort." The Sybil researchers liked that type of efficiency, skulking around took far too much precious time. Lucky for them the Cold War came along, free of charge. Petty wars were erupting across the planet. Power vacuums needed to be filled, political ideologies clashed, revolutionaries played out their fantasies. The media carried it to the naïve, lurid pictures and self-serving slants for all. Television made it even easier. The Project wanted to get the world used to the idea of fighting for what they believed in at the sacrifice of all else. The battle for basic human rights around the world, even in the supposed "Land of the Free," should have done the trick. What they got were jaded couch potatoes who needed something else to focus their discontent upon. You all started to distrust the government in a very uncomfortable way. The Powers That Be decided that a new stage in the Project was necessary. Huge demands were placed on the participants. The belligerent Others had finally reorganized after squabbling amongst themselves to see who'd get the Earth for a recruiting office, or food source. Armies of Leapers were needed and fast. Square miles of bases had to built. The Kennedy assassination was just a crackpot with a gun. Period. But even such a dark passage in the history of this country had its uses. The smoke cloud of a government cover up distracted the masses and redirected the watchdog groups to less sensitive areas while obscuring what was really going on. A carefully choreographed anti-government movement was manufactured. The loonies had something to latch on to. Paranoia being contagious, it spread to most of the first world. A species thirty minutes from Nuclear Armageddon on it's own home planet isn't psychologically equipped to fight a cosmic conflict. The Cold War had to end, and it was decided that Big Communism had to go. Down came the Berlin Wall. Uncle Sam, along with the rest, could do things out in the open because everyone was looking the wrong way. The citizenry were too busy whining about taxes and Medicare to notice that homeless children were disappearing off city streets in larger numbers every day. They encouraged the teen-pregnancy syndrome by not supporting condom distribution and stifling abortion just to get more test subjects, using things like the S&L scandal to confuse the populous. The War On Drugs is a clever ploy to slowly eradicate civil rights to a point where they can micro-manage your life. No, drugs are not part of the equation. Again, it's just us being human. Cigarettes aren't, either. Numbers rackets, extortion, prostitution, all the old favorites are, well, on the level. The only honest business is crime and cancer. Funding? Do you think the Air Force actually pays 12,000 bucks for a toilet seat? Please. Black budgets are something for the legitimate media to parade in front of the uninitiated. Everything is skimmed off the top. Most governments have to force an error now and then to give themselves the veneer of ineptitude. How could any regime that created AMTRACK or the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin be an effective part of a global, century old conspiracy? They can't even keep one little Cuban kid under control! Enough of the history, let's talk current events. How do I know so much? The Sybil Project: Subject Number 1078, Rating: Alpha- Alpha-Alpha, class of 1919. Ever so pleased to meet you, old girl. Of course this isn't my original body. I've gone through three this year, alone. That looks like a helicopter. Worse than the zeppelins. Hold on. ------ Hey! What do you know? Something in the universe that doesn't revolve around me. The helicopter's long gone. Let's get out from under this overpass and make up some time. Steel reinforced concrete is our friend. Yes, it's my third body this year. People die all over this planet every second. It's just a matter of timing. One life force out, one life force in. I've learned enough over the years to repair the host to a point that after the dearly departed leave, I can enter and get the show rolling again, provided it isn't too far gone. Claim near-death experience, get religion, light at the end of the tunnel, whatever, and merrily wander my way on. You haven't lived until you've been a voodoo priestess for a couple of weeks. I can make some serious mojo thanks to my experiences. Set her relations up really nice then split when a better host came along. Wonder how they're doing? Ah, well. Gender, race, religion, none of these are issues for me. Any port in the storm, you see. Don't look at me like that. It. Beats. Being. Dead. Right: current events. The Human race has two major advantages over our opponents. The first is we breed like bacteria. What we do in a decade would take most of them over a century. Second: a disproportionate percentage of our race is capable of Leaping. It's not restricted to a caste or sect, eye color or socioeconomic level. It was discovered that an infant born into a fluid environment alleviates most of what we call Birth Trauma. No spanking, easy adjustment. This simple procedure lessened the learning curve by almost 50 percent. And we needed troops fast. Most subjects are nurtured until eight or nine. Then the injections start. Seven out of ten die in the first six seconds. Those that live are taken on small Leaps that are programmed and chaperoned, made as fun a possible. Real "E" ticket rides. Some don't want to get back in their bodies when the fun is done. Over all, less then five percent survive the first 24 hours. The kids that are left are engrossed in the "I'm magical and most of the world isn't" shtick and are eager to learn more, though only a few of them will live to eventually suffer puberty. Those that do have to be watched very closely. Some have to be sedated, a few killed. Minor gods going through the awkward turmoil of metamorphosis, and all that. But if they survive to adulthood, they can shake the very foundations of the universe. We adults who were trained had a one percent chance of survival, but are much less upkeep then the children. I was 19, fighting the Hun in France, when I got a lung full of an experimental gas weapon. I was first in a hospital, then an asylum, and finally in the Project. Six months later, I was drifting through the cosmos. Six months after that I was flying with a purpose. Then the killing started. I was among the first. The five original classes, or test batches, were exclusively adult males. That changed overnight when our reports came back about the state of the galaxy. They needed magic meat and they needed it now. I'm surprised they didn't pick you up. Your aura's a royal pain to hide. You could be Alpha rating in no time. My guess is you were way out in the sticks or went to a private school. Neither are scanned too closely. Urban areas are ripe for the harvesting. Did you ever stop and think why the Feds gave all those tests to chart your "development?" Something about how you psychic field resonates with a Number 2 pencil and the special test forms allowed them to sample huge populations before the microchip became so cheap. Here's our turn off. Don't bother trying to look for landmarks in the dark. All the trees look alike. ------ You awake? We're here. You nodded off. No biggie. You look like shit. Yeah, yeah, I love you, too. Come on, follow me. Let's get out of the rain. It's just a short walk to the cabin. Whoa! Put the gun down. They're on our side. Good reactions, though it works better with the safety off. Get in. No fire, it'll attract attention. It's not that cold. Sit down. Here's some hot coffee. That's it. Drink up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Good. Lay back. Relax. You're not dead. That's a good sign. Just keep listening to my voice. Ignore the sounds of gunfire, breaking glass, splintering wood. Whoops. Sounds like someone else played with the cigarette lighter...