Psychic Warrior

Chapter Three

The walls of the conference room were covered with plaques and photos from Special Operations units all over the world. From the Royal Danish Navy’s Fromandskorp-set, to the now defunct Canadian Parachute Regiment, to the Norwegian Jaegers, the plaques were tokens of goodwill to the men of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) for various training and operational missions conducted with those elite units.

Dalton knew that each of those plaques represented a lot of sweat and time, and in some cases blood. He knew that because he’d been to every country represented on the wall and had taken part in practically every type of exercise with the A-Teams of 10th Group. What he also knew was that there were plenty of exercises and deployments that would never have a plaque to commemorate because they were too classified to be acknowledged.

Dalton had been in 10th Group, off and on, for twenty years, with some other assignments sprinkled in over the years. He considered the unit to be his home in the Army, although he had served in it at four different places. Fort Carson, Colorado, was a new posting for 10th Group, the unit being transferred there in the mid-nineties during a round of base closures that had shut down its longtime home at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. The 1st Battalion of the 10th Group had been staged forward in Germany since the unit had come into existence in the late fifties. First at

Bad Tolz, a former SS training barracks, where Dalton had done two tours, then, more recently, when Bad Tolz was given back to the Germans, at Stuttgart.

If there was one constant in Dalton’s military life, it was change, and this morning he was ready for whatever was going to be laid on the table. As soon as he’d come to work, he’d been grabbed by the battalion adjutant and told that there was an important meeting in five minutes in the conference room and the colonel wanted him to sit in on it.

Since the briefing hadn’t yet started, he had no idea what this was about, but he had a bad feeling, mainly due to the glimpse he’d had of the two people in the colonel’s office, which adjoined his. The man wore civilian clothes— a black turtleneck under an expensive blazer— but it was more than just the usual military distrust of those not in uniform that generated Dalton’s negative feelings. Dalton had been in Special Operations for over thirty years now, and he could read Agency in a man as easily as if he had the letters of his organization imprinted on his forehead with a bright red tattoo. The man was either CIA, DIA, or NSA. The other person in the colonel’s office was a woman, dressed in a tailored suit, her blond hair drawn tight. Dalton hadn’t been able to get a read on her.

When Dalton had walked into the conference room, he’d noted there were two other people already there: Captain Anderson and Master Sergeant Trilly, a combination that Dalton found strange. Anderson was the battalion assistant operations officer. Trilly was the team sergeant for ODA 054. Dalton had greeted them both, then taken his usual seat next to the head of the table.

ODA stood for Operational Detachment Alpha and was the official designation for the basic organizational element of Special Forces, more commonly called an A-Team. The company headquarters, one hierarchical level below Dalton but one above the ODA, was the ODB, or B-Team, each of which commanded five ODAs. Dalton was the sergeant major of the battalion, or ODC, which had three ODBs in it, and fifteen ODAs. Anderson was the man who helped plan the missions all those teams went on.

What set the Special Forces units apart from the rest of the Army was that SF troopers rarely operated tactically at any higher level than the A-Team. The B and C teams existed mainly for command and support purposes. This placed a great deal of responsibility on those at the lowest levels and was the major reason Special Forces looked for very mature soldiers to fill its ranks.

Dalton had a lot of respect for Captain Anderson, who had commanded a team for two years before being brought up to battalion for the past year, but not as much for Trilly. Anderson was a West Pointer who had commanded a company in the Infantry before going through Special Forces training. He was six feet tall and in great shape, able to keep up with the physical demands of the training a team went through. He had dark hair cut tight against his skull, flecks of gray already appearing along the sides. The most important traits Anderson had, in Dalton’s opinion, were the ability to know what he could do and what he couldn’t and his willingness to trust his men to do their jobs. Too many officers that Dalton had served with over the years had held back their implicit trust from those they commanded, and in a self-fulfilling prophecy, that lack had eaten away at the integrity of the unit.

The problem with Trilly, in Dalton’s opinion, was that he simply didn’t have enough Special Forces experience. Trilly had gone through the Special Forces qualification course as a senior E-7, after fifteen years of duty in the air defense artillery. He’d come to 10th Group three years ago, been promoted to E-8 six months ago, and, despite Dalton’s misgivings, been given the team sergeant slot based on his rank. Dalton had convinced Colonel Metter to assign Trilly to 054, which he felt had the strongest team leader in the battalion, commanding what was probably the best team. But where was the team leader? Dalton wondered. If 054 was going to be used in some sort of operation, the team leader should have been present.

Dalton knew both of the men from a training experience they had gone through as part of a two-team contingent three years ago— a classified experience that was not represented by a plaque on the wall.

Dalton turned his attention from the other men as the colonel and two civilians came in.

“All right,” Colonel Metter said as he walked to the end of the conference table. “Let’s get this going.” He pointed to his right. “This is Mr. Raisor, from the Central Intelligence Agency. He’s brought us a high-level tasking direct from Washington for one A-Team to participate in some rather unique training. Accompanying Mr. Raisor is Dr. Hammond.” Metter pointed to the woman. “Mr. Raisor, Dr. Hammond, this is Captain Anderson and Master Sergeant Trilly. As you’ve requested.”

That answered one of Dalton’s first questions.

Raisor and Hammond leaned across the conference table and shook each man’s hand. Raisor’s grip was strong, his body lean. He had thinning black hair and a thin face that was bland in a way that Dalton associated with bureaucratic spies. But the man’s eyes caught Dalton’s attention. They were flat and emotionless, almost bored. Dalton had seen that look before. Dead eyes, the sign of someone who had done dirty work in the covert world, and the only time eyes like that came alive was when someone’s life was on the line. Dalton had worked with men like that, who relished combat, not concerned about the cost in terms of human suffering and death. That put Dalton on alert, because it meant the CIA had assigned one of its few killers to this project. Raisor had something in his hand that he was fingering, but Dalton couldn’t make out exactly what it was, only catching a glint of gold.

“And this is Sergeant Major Dalton, my senior enlisted man.”

Raisor met his gaze briefly and Dalton swore there was the hint of a cold smile on the agent’s lips, as if recognizing a kindred spirit.

Raisor pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase. There was a red Top Secret cover stapled to it. “Gentlemen, what I’m going to brief you on is classified top secret, special compartmentalization. You may not discuss this with anyone, even if they have a top secret clearance.” Raisor’s voice was low and smooth, one used to speaking in dark rooms about secret material.

“The subject matter may seem a bit, shall we say, strange, outrageous even, but let me assure you that this is a very serious issue. First, though, let me make sure we can get the right people.” He slid a piece of paper to the colonel. “Besides the two men we requested be here, we need a complete team, drawn from those who participated in Trojan Warrior.”

“Trojan Warrior?” Metter asked. He had taken command a year and a half ago.

“It was a classified training program two of our teams— 054 and 055— participated in three years ago,” Dalton quickly told the colonel.

Metter didn’t even look at the list, passing it to Dalton. Raisor’s statement answered the question as to why 054’s team leader wasn’t here; he hadn’t been on the team when it had gone through the Trojan Warrior training program. Anderson had gone through the training as the team leader of 055. Dalton didn’t need to look at the list— he knew every man who had gone through that training and how many were left in the battalion from the twenty-five original members.

“It would be advantageous if you picked men from that list who did not have families,” Raisor added.

Dalton put the paper down in front of him. “Because you think men without families are expendable?”

“Because we think men without families are better security risks for the duration of the operation,” Raisor answered.

“Do you need a full team?” Dalton asked.

“Yes,” Raisor said.

“We can’t do that. Of the twenty-five names on this list,” Dalton said, still not looking at the paper, “there are only seven left in the battalion. The others have either left the service or moved to other assignments.”

“Then give me all seven.” Raisor sounded irritated.

Dalton held up the list. “What does Trojan Warrior have to do with this briefing? That program was dropped two years ago.”

“We’ll get to that later in the briefing,” Raisor said.

“Then why don’t we get started so we know what we’re getting these men into?” Colonel Metter suggested.

Raisor looked at the other three Special Forces men. “I assume those of you who were in Trojan Warrior heard of Operation Grill Flame?”

Dalton glanced at Captain Anderson, who returned the look with a roll of his eyes. Trilly looked like he was about to answer, but Dalton beat him to it. “That was the code name for a Defense Intelligence Agency operation using remote viewers.”

Raisor nodded. “That is correct.”

“Remote viewers?” Metter asked.

“Psychics,” Dalton said. “People who supposedly could see things at a distance just by using their minds.”

“Not supposedly,” Raisor said. “Grill Flame was real. And, contrary to what people believe, it still exists. We just renamed it. It’s called Bright Gate now and we’ve taken over operational control of it from the military.”

Dalton didn’t blink at the implied slam from the younger man. “Besides Trojan Warrior, I know about Grill Flame from an operational standpoint.”

That gave Raisor pause. “What was that?”

“When I was in Lebanon in the early eighties, your people brought in some Grill Flame operators to help search for the hostages in Beirut. We busted a few doors where they told us they ‘saw’ the hostages being held. We came up with nothing and almost got our asses shot off a few times.”

“The success rate has increased dramatically since then,” Raisor said. “So much so, that we’re ready to take the next step. Combine Trojan Warrior with Grill Flame for something completely new.”

The others in the room waited as Raisor stood. He walked to the podium in the front of the room. Using a remote, he turned down the lights. Dalton could see that the object Raisor had been playing with was a ring, which he had slipped over his left pinky. It looked like a college ring but it was much too small for Raisor. The slide projector came on.

Raisor’s voice came out of the darkness next to the screen. “Gentlemen, we are passing into a new age of warfare.

We are literally entering a new dimension. One where the commonly accepted limitations of physics and the way combat has been conducted no longer apply.”

Dalton sighed and leaned back in his seat. He could just see Raisor briefing the Select Intelligence Committee in Congress with the same words and the same slides. It was the same way the initial briefings for Trojan Warrior had been conducted. He knew the slides hadn’t been made up to impress a bunch of green beanies who were going to have to do what they were ordered.

“There has never been a jump in warfare such as the one we are making with Psychic Warrior. The commonly accepted nexus points of war technology— the use of iron, the invention of the firearm, the plane, the tank, even the atomic bomb— all pale against the radical nature of Psychic Warrior.”

A new slide came up with the words Grill Flame written in bold black, with red flames encircling the letters.

“A little background is necessary in order to understand where we are now,” Raisor said. “Operation Grill Flame was started in 1981 as a joint Army-CIA program to examine the potential of remote viewing, or RVing— the ability to psychically see objects or locations at a distance. The primary responsibility for the project lay with the Army and the unit was based at Fort Meade.

“As your sergeant major has noted, the project had some growing pains. In fact, to read open source material on the project, you would think that the Army disbanded it four years ago and that no government organization is currently conducting research into any form of psychic operation.

“However, I can assure you, gentlemen, that while our government has publicly disavowed any current psychic operation, four years ago Grill Flame, under the auspices of a group called Bright Gate, went deep underground at a very classified level.

“At the same time as it appeared Grill Flame was gone, we used Bright Gate to instigate the Trojan Warrior program here in the 10th Special Forces Group. Three years ago Trojan Warrior was conducted here. It was a six-month training program designed to significantly enhance the capabilities of the participants through the application of emergent human technologies and concepts.”

Raisor flashed a humorless smile. “At least that is what we told you it was. In reality, the training you men received in Trojan Warrior on such subjects as biofeedback, visualization, conscious psychological control, meditative states, cognitive task enhancement, visual control, and other subject matter”— Raisor waved his hands— “all that was part of the master plan to prepare you for Psychic Warrior.”

Dalton felt a flush of anger. He’d wondered himself at the time what the purpose of some of the Trojan Warrior training had been for— six months of intense work on all the areas Raisor had mentioned, along with martial arts training. Dalton had no doubt it had made him not only a better soldier but a better person. However, there had been aspects, like the biofeedback and visualization training, that he had never quite understood the purpose of— until now. He’d seen the obvious reason for the martial arts training, but many of the subjects had seemed esoteric. He’d been lied to before in his military career, but he’d never grown used to it.

Raisor continued. “Psychic Warrior takes Trojan Warrior another step. It merges two programs, one psychic, the other medical, to come up with something completely different from the original Grill Flame operation in remote viewing and Trojan Warrior’s training. Something that we feel it best to keep classified to prevent both disclosure of our capabilities and to protect those involved.

“While the Trojan Warrior training was being conducted, the remote-viewing program itself became much more efficient after years of modifying its personnel and operating procedures. Remote viewing has become an accepted intelligence-gathering apparatus of our government, and as such we must keep the extent of that capability secure from potential enemies.”

“It’s been over two years since we went through that training,” Dalton said. “When were you going to let us in on all this?”

“When Psychic Warrior was ready for you and when we needed you,” Raisor said. “Recently, an external factor has entered the scene which brings a new sense of urgency to this entire operation.”

Dalton just wanted to smack the CIA man upside the head and tell him to get on with it, to tell the facts and details and stop being so melodramatic. If one of the battalion’s A-Teams had conducted a briefing like that, Dalton had no doubt that Colonel Metter would have a boot up the team leader’s ass in a heartbeat. The fact that Metter sat silently next to him told Dalton that his commander’s secure phone to the Pentagon must have rung in conjunction with this visit and Metter was under strict orders to support the CIA.

“If you had let us know Trojan Warrior was preparation for further training,” Dalton said, “we could have kept most of those men in the battalion and we wouldn’t have only seven left.”

“The ball was dropped on that,” Raisor conceded. “My predecessor did not have much faith that Psychic Warrior would ever become operational. He was wrong. When Grill Flame was first brought into being, it was very much an experimental operation and more concerned with testing concepts than actually conducting operations. In places such as Lebanon, it was used, but only as a last resort, and the results were mixed.”

Dalton could sense Raisor looking at him from the shadows. “At times,” the CIA man went on, “Grill Flame personnel were used before they were trained sufficiently or prepared to conduct live operations.

“During the Gulf War, Grill Flame was employed to find Iraqi Scud missiles. The success rate was about forty percent, which actually is not that bad.”

The slide changed and a picture of a destroyed Scud missile launcher was displayed.

“More recently, we have been using Grill Flame to surveil Iraqi weapons sites. Some of the recent tensions in that area have been the result of things the RVs— remote viewers— have picked up in places that satellites or even the UN human inspectors on the ground cannot gain access to.”

Another slide, this one of a fenced compound in a desert region. Dalton heard Colonel Metter shift in his seat impatiently.

“You must have been planning on using my people for a while,” Metter said.

Raisor nodded. “Bringing some Special Operations soldiers from Trojan Warrior on board has always been part of the master plan.”

“But you didn’t plan on it happening this soon,” Dalton interjected.

“The timetable has been moved up somewhat,” Raisor acknowledged.

Dalton held up the list. “You still haven’t said exactly what you want these men for.”

“To be Psychic Warriors, of course.” Raisor clicked the remote. The next slide showed a large, clear, vertical tube, with Dr. Hammond standing next to it, giving some idea of its dimensions, about ten feet high by four in diameter.

There was a thick-looking, greenish liquid inside. And floating inside the greenish liquid was a man wearing just a black bodysuit with no sleeves or legs. Various lines and leads went to his body. His head was totally enclosed in an oversized black helmet out of which ran several tubes and wires. He floated freely, arms akimbo, his back slightly hunched over.

Everyone in the room sat up a little straighter and leaned forward.

“Gentlemen, this is a picture taken of an RVer working under the auspices of Bright Gate just last week. As you can see, we have come a long way from the days of sitting in a dark room with subdued music playing. This is the direction Bright Gate has gone, combining natural psychic power with technological breakthroughs in physiological psychology.

“With proper input, Bright Gate RVers can now view with a seventy-two percent success rate of finding the correct target, with sixty-eight percent accuracy in the intelligence picked up.”

Dalton combined those numbers in his head and he wasn’t that impressed. He’d conducted special operations, including reconnaissance missions at the strategic level, and he knew nothing could beat a set of eyeballs on target. Real eyeballs. With a thinking brain behind them. He wasn’t too keen on technology either— if Grill Flame or the high-speed satellites that the National Reconnaissance Office boasted of were so great, why had Special Forces soldiers had to go deep into Iraq during the Gulf War to do live reconnaissance missions?

“Gentlemen,” Raisor said, his voice rising slightly, “we are now ready to move to the next stage of military action: Operation Psychic Warrior. We will no longer just remote view, we plan to conduct actual combat operations on the psychic level.”

There was a long silence before Colonel Metter spoke. “How?”

Raisor stepped in front of the screen. “That is Dr. Hammond’s area of expertise.” He sat down.

Hammond took his place. She was tall, maybe an inch shy of six foot, and in her mid-thirties, with very pale skin and an angular face. Her voice held the slightest tint of a New York accent. “First, let me tell you, Colonel, that three years ago when I initially learned we were to take soldiers, men with no background in the field, and make Psychic Warriors out of them, I thought the plan would not work. But when my people checked out how the soldiers in your battalion did during their Trojan Warrior training, we were extremely impressed with the quality. The names on that list, each of those men, could possibly be one of my Bright Gate personnel.”

Colonel Metter stared at the woman. “Ma’am, with all due respect to you, and I don’t know you or what your role in this whole thing is, the men in my battalion are the best soldiers in the world. They are some of the best people in the world. Don’t stand up there and try to put me waist deep in bullshit. Just tell me what I need to know.”

A red flush had climbed Hammond’s cheeks, her face tightening. “All right, Colonel. Much of the science we are dealing with on the psychometric or virtual plane is un-proven, or even if proven, not completely understood. Our philosophy at Bright Gate is to concern ourselves with what works, sometimes well before we even have a clue as to why or exactly how it works. Unlike our counterparts at the universities, we are pragmatic first and foremost. While they dabble in theory, we have gone places they only chat about over a glass of wine at academic receptions.

“As Agent Raisor has indicated, Operation Psychic Warrior has been under development for many years. The basic concept is to project not just a remote-viewing capability into the psychometric plane, which we have already accomplished, but an actual capability to project an avatar into the virtual plane, travel along jump points to the target, or far point, and then out of the virtual or psychometric plane into the real plane at the far point.”

“Whoa!” Colonel Metter interrupted. “Some background and definitions would be helpful. What the hell is an avatar?”

“An avatar is a form that represents the original in the virtual plane,” Hammond answered. “If you play a computer game, whatever form you take in the game is your avatar. In Psychic Warrior we go one step further. We can take that avatar from the virtual plane into the real plane at the far point. We make the avatar real.”

“What the hell is the virtual plane?” Metter asked. “And the real plane?”

Hammond considered her audience for a few seconds, then spoke. “Scientists in the last couple of hundred years have been digging deeper into the physics of what makes up reality. If you’d asked a scientist two hundred years ago what they thought reality was, you would have gotten a very different answer than a hundred years ago, and fifty years ago, and so on.

“For centuries the most learned men of their age believed that matter and reality consisted of four basic substances: fire, earth, water, and air. We have made great strides since then, but it is foolish to believe we have reached the end of that path of knowledge. In some ways, people two hundred years from now may look at us as we look at those who believed in the four base elements composing all matter.

“Early in this century it was believed that the atomic level was the basic building block of matter, and thus of reality. But with the discovery of such things as quarks and further research into quantum physics, the realm of reality has been extended further into levels that couldn’t even be conceptualized by the early atomic scientists.

“We at Bright Gate believe the psychometric plane is beyond the plane of quantum physics, which scientists are still groping to understand. We call it the astral or virtual plane, and there are some proven laws of physics we can connect to it.” She smiled. “I don’t think we need to get into the nuts and bolts of the theory, do you?”

Colonel Metter glanced at Dalton, who returned the look, his face telling the colonel what he thought. “As a matter of fact,” Metter said, “I think we do.”

Hammond frowned. “Well, let me see if I can lay it out moving from the known to the unknown. You are all aware that there is such a thing as a magnetic field, which your compasses work off of?” With four heads nodding, she continued. “You are also aware that electricity can produce an electromagnetic field. But have you ever wondered what produces the electromagnetic field? What it is made of?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. “We call fields which produce the electromagnetic field, hyperfields. Quantum physics, with its quarks and wave theory, is a hyperfield. But there are others. They are around you all the time. In fact, there is a concurrent hyperfield to the quantum physical one. A virtual field. It is this virtual field that is the psychometric plane; the two terms are synonymous. Existing side by side at times with the real plane, at other times existing very separately from each other. It is the boundary between these two planes that is the entire focus of our efforts at Bright Gate.

“And without getting into the philosophy of it, a mental field— what you perceive in your brain— is a virtual field. If you perceive something to be with your mind, then it exists in the virtual field.”

“But not in reality,” Dalton interjected.

“Most physicists would say no, not in reality as it is currently defined,” Hammond said. “But if our thoughts are not reality, what are they? Everything man has ever invented or done has come out of his thoughts. So they are real in some way. So I say yes. I say that there is a link between the virtual world and the real world. That the line between the two is an artificial one that is constantly being breached. And that, with the proper equipment and training, we are able to breach at Bright Gate and will continue to go through with Psychic Warrior.”

“You say?” Colonel Metter said. “Is there any proof?”

“I’ve been there,” Hammond said. “I’ve been on the psychometric plane.”

“And what happened?” Captain Anderson asked.

“I RVed— remote viewed— at several points on the globe.”

“An out-of-body experience?” Dalton asked.

“You could call it that,” Hammond said, “but that is a crude simplification of a complex process.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a hallucination?” Dalton asked.

Hammond smiled, revealing even white teeth. “It might have been what you call a hallucination, but does that make it any less real? When we checked, we found out that what I saw was real, so how I saw is not as important as the fact that I saw it. I existed in the virtual world and saw the real.”

She tapped the side of her head. “We must stop limiting our minds with the boundaries of our physical brains. We accept that we can impart what exists in our minds to others through speech, or through the visual spectrum, or any of the senses in various modes. To understand Psychic Warrior, you have to consider that there is another way to bring our minds out of the physical limitations of our bodies beyond the methods that we use every day. Those of you who were in Trojan Warrior were introduced to these concepts.”

Hammond clicked through the slides quickly until she came to the one she wanted.

“These are the two planes I am talking about. Think about it. They quite clearly exist inside each of us. We have our minds, which operate on the psychometric plane, and then we have our bodies, which operate in the real plane. And somehow they are connected, are they not? We can take ideas from the psychometric/virtual plane of our imagination and make them real in the physical world, say in a painting. And we can process things from the physical world into our brains, remember them, even change them with our thoughts!

“What my remote viewers are able to do is travel outside of the confines of their physical brains on the psychometric plane and observe what is happening at a distance on the real plane. It is the greatest journey man has ever made! Far more significant than the first travelers across the oceans or even our journey to the moon.”

“But you’re talking about something very different with Psychic Warrior,” Captain Anderson noted.

Hammond nodded. “Yes. What we plan to do with the Psychic Warrior is travel along the psychometric plane, then not only ‘see’ into the real world at a remote location, but act in it through the projected avatar.”

“Is there any precedence for this?” Colonel Metter asked.

“You’ve all probably seen or heard of psychics who can bend a spoon with only the power of their mind? Well, some of those are frauds who employ trickery, but some of them are quite real. This is a very base-level effort, given that the psychic is in the same room as the spoon and can physically see it. We’re going much further than that.”

“But this is theoretical, correct?” Colonel Metter pressed.

Dalton caught the glance Hammond exchanged with Raisor. “We’ve conducted some limited trials,” she said.

“And?” Metter prompted.

“And the trials were indeed successful.”

From long experience in the covert world, Dalton knew she was both lying and telling the truth.

“Amplify your answer,” Colonel Metter prompted.

“We sent an individual into the psychometric plane. That individual was able to, at a remote point, come out of the psychometric virtual plane as an avatar and influence the real, physical plane.”

“Doing what?” Metter asked.

“A simple task. Rearranging some blocks in a room on the other side of the country from where he— his physical body— was located.”

“Like a child in kindergarten,” Metter noted.

A flush swept Hammond’s face. “Yes, like in kindergarten, Colonel. We had to start somewhere and we started with the very basics.”

“What went wrong?” Dalton asked.

“Excuse me?” Hammond again looked at Raisor. The CIA agent gave a very slight shake of his head.

“I asked, what went wrong?”

“You have to understand”— Hammond was picking her words carefully— “that the psychometric plane is very much unlike our reality. In some ways it is much more complex; in some ways it is much simpler. The biggest thing to know, though, is that we hardly understand it at all.

“One thing we do know is that distance can be very confusing on the psychometric plane. Just because you are here, that doesn’t preclude you from being right next to something occurring on the other side of the world in the virtual plane. Something which we are only beginning to understand is that this space, the line”— she pointed at the empty spot in the center of the slide— “between the psychometric and the real plane, is very unique. We don’t know exactly what separates the two, even though we can travel through it. But in going through, there is some cause and effect, it appears.” Hammond paused, as if considering how to continue.

“Sometimes our RVers can travel great distances in an instant by jumping’ from one known point to another. At other times, though, especially if the end point desired is not clearly defined to the RVer, the trip may take time. Sometimes, the trip cannot even be completed.” Hammond shrugged. “It is quite complex and requires an understanding of very complex math to even begin to understand.”

“Who else is over there?” Dalton suddenly asked.

Hammond was startled, as was everyone else in the room. “No one is over there.”

“But your man ran into someone or something, didn’t he?” Dalton pressed.

Raisor shook his head as he spoke up. “No, he didn’t run into anyone. Something happened and his mission ended before we would have liked it to. But by moving those blocks you make so little of he did prove that it is possible to come out of the virtual world and into the real at a remote distance.”

“Where is this guy?” Dalton asked.

“That’s classified information,” Raisor said.

“This is a classified briefing,” Colonel Metter noted.

“That first trial with Psychic Warrior,” Raisor said, “occurred a month ago. Since that time we have been refining the procedure.” He gestured toward his partner. “Dr. Hammond has— ”

“What happened to your man a month ago?” Colonel Metter’s voice was flat, but it caused Raisor to pause.

“We had a problem with our equipment,” Dr. Hammond said. “The problem occurred in the real world on our end. A mistake was made, a mistake which I take responsibility for and which will not occur again because I have corrected the problem.”

There was silence as everyone in the room stared at her, waiting.

“Our man died. He drowned in the embryonic solution you saw on the slide.”