The Quantum Connection

CHAPTER 18

"Hey gorgeous, there is something I need to talk to you about." I pulled the covers over Tatiana's shoulders since there were chill bumps forming there.

"Mmm, can it wait until morning, Stevie?" She snuggled up closer to me and appeared to be going to sleep.

"I . . . uh . . . it can't. I won't be able to sleep if I don't get this off my chest," I told her.

Tatiana rolled off me and rose up on her right elbow and mussed her long, wavy black hair. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. "Okay, let's hear it," she said in a thick Russian accent. She used that accent when she was toying with me. She smiled, but looked a little sleepy.

"Okay, I don't know how to say this so I'm just gonna say it. I haven't been completely honest with you about Mike and Mikhail." I paused to watch her reaction.

"What do you mean, Steven?" she asked in a perfect American accent.

"Mike is the original SuperAgent and Mikhail is a copy of him. I had to make that copy because . . . Mike will not let you give him direct orders and won't let you have direct access to him."

"Why not?" Tatiana didn't seem upset, just a little surprised.

"He doesn't know."

"What? He doesn't know why he will not give me access?" Now she was interested and speaking in Russian.

"We have talked about it at great length and for some reason the Grays programmed him so that no matter what anybody did to his programming you would not be able to gain access to him." This wasn't so hard.

"Me specifically?" she asked.

"Uh, well sort of. It's you—and a whole lot of the other abductees—specifically. Mike tells me that out of the millions of abductees over our history a couple hundred thousand or so of them would have been isolated like you from accessing him. We have been calling these people isolated abductees. We don't know what it means, just that they are isolated from him."

"Why haven't you told me this before?" She didn't seem upset, just curious.

"Well, there is more."

"Uh huh?" She adjusted herself and sat up against her pillow and stretched with both arms over her head. As she did the sheets slid down to her waist revealing her navel—and a couple other things. It was dark in the room but not to my nanomachine-nhanced eyesight; the view wasn't lost on me.

"The planets that Anson called quarantined planets that we talked about earlier tonight are all planets where Mike says there are isolated abductees. No other planets have them as far as he knows. This means that for some reason the Grays are isolating complete star systems with a quarantine zone of two hundred light years with these isolated abductees inside the zones. You scare them, Tatiana." So there, I told her. It was out in the open now.

She pulled the covers up, leaned into my shoulder, and looked up at me lovingly. "Steven, you didn't have to keep this from me. It wouldn't have hurt my feelings and you can't be held responsible for something that those damned, grotesque alien monsters have done. I'm not sure why you kept it from me in the first place. You said there were a lot of others here on Earth that are these isolated abductees. Who are they?"

Open channel. Mike download all of the abductee and isolated abductee data to Tatiana.

Okay, Steven.

It took her about five seconds to assimilate all of the data. The salient point we finally came up with was that the isolated abductees were either powerful people within our civilization, or close to a powerful person. Tatiana was the daughter of the Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations for Russia, for instance.

"Steven, this scares me." She squeezed my arm and nuzzled my shoulder. "Is someone or something trying to control us and direct our politics or civilization? Why else would the abductions increase during periods of war? And from the data it appears obvious that it's not the Grays that are doing the controlling." She was wide awake now and I thought I felt her tremble a little bit—just a little bit; it takes a lot to make Tatiana tremble.

"What do you mean? Who's doing the controlling?" The answer came to me about as soon as I asked the questions.

"These Lumpeyins?" Tatiana replied.

"I think you must be right. Looking at the data suggests that they were at war with the Grays once, or perhaps they still are. Who else could have shot so many of their ships down five thousand years ago? It also looks like they have divided up the galaxy. But if that is the case, then how did they come to control all of these isolated pockets of planets? I want to think about it for a while." She kissed my shoulder and rubbed my chest.

"You aren't mad at me then? I wasn't sure what to do about this." I squirmed a little. She was making it hard for me. I would've understood mad, but she was more intrigued by the situation than perturbed at me. I guess I underestimated Tatiana.

"Steven?"

"Yeah?" I had just decided to close my eyes and try to sleep—relieved that Tatiana wasn't sore at me.

I'm awake now. Tatiana rolled over on top of me and kissed me. She looked into my eyes and then put her hands on my face and kissed me again.

Uh, yeah . . . me too, I thought to her. An obvious fib, but when a gorgeous, naked, and aroused female climbs over on top of you and shows interest in you, what else can you do? It quickly became the truth.

* * *

With so much truth-telling, Tatiana and I decided to come clean with the W-squared team and reveal everything to them. We talked to Anson first and he arranged a meeting with the team. The meeting was held in the Clemons's second-floor sunroom and we were assured that it was secure there. All the people on the Moon were cleared to at least the knowledge of the moon base. Even the kids there could only visit people on Earth that were "in the know." Kids and security had never really been dealt with before the moon base and it was decided that the only way the kids could live on the moon base would be if they were considered classified documents that must always be monitored by a person cleared at the level to which they had been exposed. So, any children on the moon base who visited Earth had cleared grandparents and so on. For the most part, children were kept on the Moon with occasional chaperoned visits to Earth. And Tabitha told us that her entire house was cleared to the required levels

Anson had drinks passed all around and there were finger foods set out on the sunroom table. Anson was a sight to see with his chef's hat and splatter-painted apron that read "Einstein had to eat too!" on it. He corralled us all together in the sunroom and began to tell the tale about Tatiana and me.

Anson's children were home from visiting the grandparents, and occasionally he would stop to tell Ariel and Hunter, and the Daniels twins, Mindy and Michael, to quit doing this or that and threaten to kill them if he had to go in there, but it was all a farce—the kids knew it too, so they paid him little attention. But once Tabitha warned the kids not to do something the law had arrived. It was pretty obvious who the boss was as far as the kids were concerned.

Occasionally Anson had Tatiana or me clarify things here and there, but he did most of the introduction to our confessional. Then he handed it over to me and told me to show the data.

I had Mike turn the outer sunroom wall of the house into a large flat-screen panel. When I did that all four of the kids went completely silent, sat down, and watched the screen. They were convinced it was a magic show. They had already seen some pretty interesting magic up here on the Moon with Anson and his entourage.

On the screen I displayed the data about the abductees and the isolated abductees versus our history. Then I showed the list of known isolated abductees and pointed out Tatiana's name and Senator Grayson's name. "The Grays know everything about us and everything that Senator Grayson knows," I pointed out.

"My God, that makes us defenseless. They have access to all of our strategies, technologies, and plans," Jim said.

"From now on nobody tells Grayson anything without me filtering it first," Tabitha said. "What else, Steven?"

"Well, there is a lot more. Mike, Tatiana, and I have figured out that the isolated abductees are all closely connected to, or related to, people in powerful positions within human civilization. They are either politically, militarily, or industrially connected. It is interesting to note that there are no socially connected isolated abductees. Whatever or whoever is causing this phenomena does not seem to think of the celebrity connection as important."

"Well, that makes sense to me," Anson interrupted. "The so-called social connection has little bearing on a military machine. If I were going to manipulate the balance of power in a civilization, I wouldn't do it through a public campaign or making a movie about it, no sir! I would change the minds of the people already in power."

"Steven, I know you explained about the Mike and Mikhail SuperAgents, but can we meet them?" 'Becca asked.

"Of course you can," Tatiana said as she placed her hand on the patio table and a speaker formed out of the table materials.

Mike, make an open channel through the speaker on the table here. The cat is out of the bag. You too, Mikhail, I told the SuperAgents.

"Mike, Mikhail, can you hear us?" I tested the speaker system.

"Of course, Steven," Mike replied.

"Yes, Steven," Mikhail said in a slightly dryer tone of voice.

"Boys, meet the W-squared crew . . ." I introduced everyone. It was fun for a moment, until we got back down to business. "Mike, display the galaxy map with the quarantine zones indicated by orange x's and the political control indicated by different colors."

"Okay, Steven," Mike replied and the map appeared on the flat screen.

"You see that the galaxy is mostly separated into two regions. This yellow part is controlled by the Lumpeyins. And the Grays control the green part. Mike calls the Grays the Teytoonis, by the way," I explained.

"Sounds to me like they bought too many vowels," Al, one of the original Huntsville members of Anson's cadre, said.

"Notice how the x's are all inside, deep inside, Gray territory," Tatiana pointed out. "And also note that all of the x's have a two-hundred-light-year quarantine around them. The Grays are afraid of these planets for some reason."

"That's right. And Mike and I figured out that only these quarantined planets and all of these quarantined planets have isolated abductees on them. This is too blatantly obvious a correlation to overlook. Tatiana . . ." I nodded for her to take over.

"I think the Grays fear the isolated abductees for some reason and that is why the quarantine is there. Perhaps these Lumpeyins caused something or did something to us that the Grays do not like. I'm not sure."

"Boobytrap!" Tabitha said.

Anson looked at her and replied, "A boobytrap, sir?" Then he started laughing and chuckling to himself and in a very badly imitated Russian accent he continued, "Ha, ha, ha . . . It was so obvious!" And he slammed his fist on the table.

Jim and Tabitha must have understood the joke because they started laughing. I wasn't sure if it was a joke on Tatiana or not with the Russian accent and all.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"Nothing is funny, really, Steven, not about our situation any way. But this moment mimics one of the anime cartoons from the 1980s that we've studied," Anson said.

"That you've studied?" Tatiana asked.

"Oh yes, studied. I've always been a science fiction fan, but a few years ago when we realized that we were actually being attacked by aliens we conducted a brainstorming session for ideas and training regimen. The outcome of that conference was that we needed a language from which to compare possible alien attack scenarios. Since there was a wealth of science fiction books, television shows, movies, and so on, we decided to make alien-oriented science fiction a training requirement for the W-squared group. This gives us a common language to use. That is why we all understand the Boobytrap reference." Anson's explanation made a lot of sense.

"Okay, I get it. So, what about the cartoon?" I asked.

"It was called Robotech and this is similar to what happened there. An alien spacecraft crashed on Earth and when other aliens showed up to get it the thing turns its big guns on and starts plastering away at the incoming aliens. The humans figure out it's a boobytrap. That's all. But doesn't it seem that this is what is happening here?"

Mike, download all info on Robotech to Tatiana and me.

Okay, Steven. There are books and television shows.

Download them all. In fact, download any and all science fiction relating to alien attack, Tatiana thought to Mike.

Okay. Mike downloaded the television series, all of the director's stories and cuts and then the books. The books were very impressive and by the third or fourth chapter in the first one I understood the boobytrap reference. It took a few seconds more to download all alien attack related science fiction.

"Actually, the parallels are thin here. This seems more like landmines to me like in Screamers or that episode of Deep Space Nine where Nog got his leg shot off," Anne Marie said. They all seemed to have impressive knowledge of the pertinent science fiction. My first guess had been that they all liked impressing each other with their knowledge of the classical science fiction and that they tried to outdo each other with their knowledge of useless trivia. I soon realized that I was wrong and that such obscure knowledge does seem to come in quite handy in their day jobs, which appeared to now include defending the human race from alien attackers—much like in many science fiction stories. Too bad nobody ever wrote a serious textbook on how to defend against an alien attack; it would have been useful. Maybe someone did, perhaps it's classified and I never had access to it. I would have to ask about that.

"That's right, Annie, landmine strategy is the same thing though. It's a boobytrap scenario." Tabitha smiled approvingly at her daughter. "If you are a retreating force that is being overrun or forced out of a territory, if there is time, you leave behind hazardous things like landmines and spiked pits and other nasty surprises to slow down an advancing enemy. They might also try to create a long-term strategy to give you an edge in future battles. Perhaps we and these other isolated civilizations are more than just boobytraps."

"How so?" Al asked.

"Haven't you ever played Risk?" Jim asked. "It's simple! If you can keep a small country like New Zealand, as well as your main portion of the globe, you can win the game. What you do is attack on the main lines and this makes your opponents forget about the little country on the bottom corner of the planet because they are fighting for their lives back at the front. You grow the military might of New Zealand, which is behind the enemy lines. Once you start weakening slightly on the main front lines, then you come sweeping up through China and in behind the enemy with your war machine that you built in New Zealand. That's it! All of these little quarantine zones are New Zealand and, let me think, what were the other strategic locations . . . Oh yeah, there was Madagascar and Greenland and Japan. That is exactly what this looks like on the map. It's galactic Risk!"

"Yeah, but we aren't in cahoots with the Lumpeyins. And we aren't building an army for them," Sara said.

Anson shooed a big fat cat out from under his feet and finished taking the steaks off the built-in gas grill at the far end of the sunroom. He set the still-sizzling steaks on the table before us. They smelled good. "Are you so sure about that, Sara? Mike, could we be in cahoots with these here Lumpeyins?" he asked in his stereotypical Southernese.

"I do not have enough data to come to that conclusion, but the suggestions that have been made thus far are quite plausible," Mike replied.

"I just thought of something," 'Becca added. "Perhaps we have been building an army for these Lumpeyins. Look at the graphic of the abductions. The numbers of abductions increase every time there is a war of major proportions. And the abductions spiked again here in 2011—they spiked by an order of magnitude. Does that year mean anything to any of us, Anson. . . Jim? She made a point to look at Anson and Jim and emphasize their names.

"I don't see . . . Holy shit!" Anson said.

"The first warp experiment we did where the electrons disappeared!" Jim exclaimed.

"That is exactly it!" Tabitha said. "You are onto something here, 'Becca. The Grays got very interested when the warp era started. And look at the big spike during the Warp War with the Asians!"

"Not only that," 'Becca continued. "We have, with Steven and Tatiana's help, developed a way to shoot down and maybe destroy the Gray ships."

Anson pulled the rest of the corn on the cob off the grill with his tongs and arranged the food in the middle of the table just to the left of the speaker.

"Dig in before it gets cold, folks." He pulled his apron off. "Y'all know that this is bad news. If the Grays realize that we have a means of really becoming a threat to them, what are the odds that they will wipe us out? And why didn't they do that already?"

"We can't tell Senator Grayson about any of our further advancements. We will slow roll him and lie if we have to from now on," Tabitha said as she loaded her plate with a steak, baked potato, and corn on the cob. She took a swig from her beer and sat back down on her side of the table. "We need to go see the President, soon."

"I think we need to go see the Grays," I said.

"No!" Tatiana screamed. Her response was unexpected and it startled all of us. She was trembling uncharacteristically.

"Tatiana?" I was a bit concerned by her strange response—isolated abductee rang in my mind.

"I . . . I . . . I don't know why I did that," she said. "It was like, I don't know, I needed to keep us from ever wanting to see the Grays of our own free will. As soon as I realized what I had said, the feeling went away."

Anson turned to me, "Son, did you have the same feeling?"

"No, I didn't," I said.

"Tatiana, my dear, I believe you have been conditioned somehow to stay away from the Grays. That was a typical response of someone with a posthypnotic suggestion," Anson told her. "Don't worry, dear. We're all here for you and will help you to keep your sanity. We will figure out what these little Gray bastards are up to and we will put a stop to it. Y'all eat, it's getting cold. I need a beer—anybody need anything while I'm up?" Anson wandered off to the kitchen.

We finished dinner with more chat along the same lines. We were all beginning to realize that the Grays were a threat to us as long as we remained a threat to them. We also all agreed that we were not about to put down our arms and just give up. None of us believed that the abductions would stop if we quit building warp drives and stayed on Earth. The Grays had somehow been around for at least most of the recorded portion of our history. There must have been more to it than Mike had data on because there were so many people throughout our history who had described the Gray spacecraft and abduction scenarios in extreme detail. But Mike had continued to explain the impossibility of this. Something just didn't add up.

Tatiana and I had no memory of the things, which backed up Mike's story. So we wondered why or how did other people see them and remember them. We sat around and talked and drank beer and talked some more. Then we drank more. It was fun. Tatiana seemed at home and so did I. I hadn't actually felt this good since way before The Rain and my wacky period of insanity. This was home. I wish Laz could have lived to see it.

"Tatiana, don't you think your father must miss you and wonder where you are?" Anson asked her.

"Uh, no. I saw my father last week. 'Becca and I flew down to New York to see him. Didn't she tell you?" Tatiana said.

"Hey, I don't have to tell him everything I do," 'Becca responded.

"Rebecca does what Rebecca wants to do." Anne Marie laughed a bit uncomfortably. The two women were very headstrong and my guess was that they butted them together on occasion. Rebecca wasn't stunned by the remark at all.

"Well, anyway, I was thinking that we need to go see him again. This time take Steven with you, and Mike. See if your father is of the type that would be an isolated abductee. Then we go see the President and tell him as much as we have about our situation."

"I have met the President, with my father last year," Tatiana said. "Perhaps he is compromised as well?"

"I never thought of that, but of course he could be. After all, he is one of the most powerful men on the planet," Anson said.

"Well," I started. "Just get me close and Mike will let me know." The President could be compromised. He wasn't an abductee yet or Mike would know. It was a good sign at least that he was not an abductee, but that didn't mean he wasn't an isolatee. We would find out soon.