DHS 77

For the first couple of months, Major Mitchell tried to flirt with me but, when I showed no interest, he left me alone. I think he decided that I was a lesbian, that way he didn't have to feel rejected when his charm didn't work on me.

Dr. Moore was the strange one in the group. He was always friendly toward me and, when he talked to me, it was almost as if he was being conspiratorial, although he never talked to me about his project. In time I got the impression that Dr. Moore was not happy working on the CIS project. I sensed that he would rather be somewhere else. It wasn't anything he said but to me it was apparent in his overall demeanor.

During my second year at the lab, there seemed to be an increase in the level of stress among the members of the CIS team. The pressure the team was under was palpable. You could see it in their faces and hear it in their voices. Even I was feeling the stress although I didn't know why. I guessed it was contagious.

I went through a period where some strange things happened to me, which I attributed to the stress. There was a period of about two months during which there were several days that I remember reporting at work but waking up the next morning and not remembering anything about the previous evening.

I thought that somehow the stress was causing this and I was worried that I was having a nervous break down. One evening when Brenda was working late, I had dinner with her and told her about the problem I was having and said I was thinking about seeing a doctor about it.

For a moment, Brenda looked worried but the expression on her face quickly disappeared and then she smiled at me.

"I wouldn't worry about it. This place gets to everyone at some point. I wouldn't be surprised if just talking to me about it helps. Besides, if you go to a psychiatrist you might get transferred out of the lab. These people are not real comfortable having employees talking about their work with anyone outside."

That scared me a little. I sure didn't want to be reassigned. "You're probably right," I said.

"If you feel you need to talk to someone," Brenda said, "I'd be glad to stay late any night you need me."

"Thank you. I might just take you up on that offer. You are really the only person I can talk to."

As it turned out, I never had to take her up on that offer because I never had that problem again.

Chapter 3

Over the next several months, things seemed to go smoothly and the stress level dropped significantly. Everyone seemed to be more relaxed and in better spirits. By that time, I had learned a little about the project. Nobody told me anything specific; I just put little pieces of information together over time and started to see the picture. The lab was working for the CIA trying to create a drug that could be used to gather intelligence. I didn't know how the drug was supposed to work, only that the CIA would use it to get information from people without them knowing they were giving away any secrets.

In January of 1984 things began to change. We started hearing that the CIA wasn't happy with the progress the team was making and they were threatening to cut our budget. Major Mitchell was reassigned and went back to the Pentagon and there were rumors that some highly placed people in the government wanted to kill CIS. It was about this time that I decided that when my enlistment ended in June, I was going home to California and go to college rather than re-enlist.

It turned out that was a wise decision. In May we got word the funding for the project was cut off and the lab was given a month to shut everything down and destroy all records of the project. The fact that I wasn't very vested in the project made it easier for me to walk away but I felt bad for the others. They had invested more than four years in the CIS project and now they would never see the final product of their efforts. The odd thing is that they didn't seem to be as upset as I would have expected.

The last week was frantic. I would not have thought that shutting down a project would take so much effort. That day I was asked to come in early and make sure no one carried out any classified information. I felt bad standing guard over the people I worked with for the last three years. I didn't know what I would do if any of them had tried to smuggle out any documents. Luckily, nobody tried.

By 5:30 that evening, everyone had left except Dr. Moore and myself. For the last hour Dr. Moore had been sitting at his desk waiting for the others to leave. When we were finally alone he came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"I am sorry about all this," he said. "If I had been stronger, I might have been able to keep things from going too far."

I had no idea what he meant by his last remark and was about to ask him about it when he said, "Please come with me."

I followed him to the door that led into the back room. The room I had never been in. Dr. Moore opened the door with his badge and I followed him through. The room was empty except for one steel cabinet against the wall next to the door we had just come through.

"They emptied this room earlier this week. All that is left is in here," Dr. Moore said as he pointed at the cabinet.

Dr. Moore pulled a key from his pocket and opened the cabinet. The only things inside were a cardboard box and a roll of packing tape. Dr. Moore pulled the box out of the cabinet and set it on the floor. He lifted the flap on the box and showed me the contents. All of the books I had brought in to read over the three years were stacked in the box. Dr. Moore then picked up the roll of packing tape and sealed the box. On the outside he wrote 'Personal Property of SP5 Martin.'

This worried me a little. I knew from the size of the box that it contained more than just my books. The books had been arranged to hide whatever was underneath them. Was this what he meant when he said, "I am sorry about all this. If I had been stronger, I might have been able to keep things from going too far."

Was he asking me to help him smuggle classified materials out of the lab?

I was in a panic. I didn't know what to do. My job was to make sure that didn't happen, not to help some one do it. Then Dr. Moore put his hands on my shoulders and looked directly into my eyes.

"I want you to take this home with you. I think it is best that you have the contents of this box. In time, you will understand."

I had no idea what he was talking about and I was too afraid to ask. I knew that I should not take the box but the look on Dr. Moore's face told me that it was important that I do as he requested.

Neither of us spoke again. I watched as Dr. Moore finished packing up his personal belongings and we left together locking up the lab behind us. We went to the front desk and turned in our keys and badges. The guard at the desk asked what we had in the boxes and we both said personal items. Then the guard made Dr. Moore open his box. He looked through it, told Dr. Moore it was okay, and then he looked at me. I was petrified.

I said, "You want me to open this?"

The guard said, "No, we trust you."

Dr. Moore and I walked silently to the front door and once outside he said, "You may want to let some time pass before you open that box. I hope in time you will be able to put all this behind you and do the right thing, because I couldn't. Good-bye."

I was puzzled by Dr. Moore's comment and I didn't know how to respond to him.

"Goodbye, Dr. Moore."

As I walked to my car, I felt like I should have said more but I had no idea what to say.

I locked the box in the trunk of my car where it stayed for the next three weeks while I finished out my enlistment back at the Pentagon on security detail. When I received my discharge papers, I packed up my apartment and arranged for the movers to come get my things. When I got to California, I put my belongings in storage and moved into my parents' house while I looked for an apartment and a job.

Over the next three months, I got a part time job for Alpha Security and Investigations, a private security company, started college and found a small apartment. The apartment was too small for all my stuff so I left some furniture and some boxes in storage. Among the boxes left in storage was the box from CIS.

Chapter 4

I met Allen in my first year of college. He was tall and handsome and I knew he was the one for me. Allen had also been in the military, which gave us something in common. He was a year older than me and was in his sophomore year when we met.

We dated for three weeks before we had sex. It wasn't that I was making him wait; it just seemed that things kept getting in our way. School, jobs, people - but we finally got together. Allen came over to my apartment for dinner and we ended up on the floor five minutes after he walked in. It started with a hello kiss and we almost immediately started pulling each other's clothes off.

I guess we both knew what was going to happen that night so it didn't take much to start it. I had been celibate for the last three and a half years and I had been nervous and excited all day by the prospect of finally having a man inside me again. I almost felt like a virgin until Allen pushed his beautiful cock inside me. No virgin ever felt that much pleasure on the first penetration.

After that night we were nearly inseparable and Allen moved in with me three weeks later. We got married soon after he graduated in 1988. I finished school the following year and we both managed to land good jobs. Allen got a job at a large bank in their mergers and acquisitions department and I took a position with an advertising agency.

Everything was going great for us - the marriage, the careers, everything. So in 1990 we bought a house in Glendale, California. The day after we moved into the house Allen had to go to New York for a week of meetings on a large corporate merger. He kept apologizing for leaving me with the unpacking. He said he would find a way to repay me. I told him I would take it out in trade.

Allen caught a flight out Sunday morning and by the time he called me Sunday evening I had already unpacked the kitchen and bathroom stuff. I had arrange to have the week off to settle the house and by Monday evening I had put away all of the normal household items.

Chapter 5

Tuesday morning there were just a few boxes of odds and ends left to deal with. One of the remaining boxes was the one from the CIS lab. For two days I had been avoiding the box. Every time I looked at it I felt uneasy. The only reason I could think of for feeling that way was because of what Dr. Moore had said to me that last evening.

"You may want to let some time pass before you open that box. I hope in time you will be able to put all this behind you and do the right thing, because I couldn't."

I decided I had put it off long enough. It was time to see what was in the box. I carried the box into the kitchen and set in on the counter and then poured myself a cup of coffee. I open the box and removed the layer of books. Underneath I found a notebook, which was labeled DHS 77. There were also three industrial videotapes. Not VHS tapes but three quarter inch tapes. I recognized the tapes because we used the three quarter inch videotapes at our agency. The final items in the box were two jars. One jar was filled with small gelatin capsules. The capsules looked like they were filled with an oily substance. There was a label on the jar that read 'Antidote for 77.' The second was a sealed canning jar which contained a clear liquid that had the consistency of liquid dish detergent. The label on that jar read 'DHS 77.'

I took the notebook into the living room with my coffee, hoping it would shed some light on what DHS 77 was and why I had it now.

I opened the notebook to the first page and found that a note from Dr. Moore addressed to me had been inserted. The content of the hand written note read as follows:

May 27, 1984

Dear Pamela,

I am writing this note to explain why I gave you my notes and the formula for DHS 77 and to try and apologize to you for what you may already know happened or will know as soon as you watch the videotapes.

I never wanted Major Mitchell to use you in his tests but there was no one else that we could bring into the lab without identifying them as a test subject, which would have defeated the purpose of the test. I suppose I could have prevented what happened if I had just declared the project completed and turned the test results and the DHS 77 formula over to the CIA. While I felt terrible about what I allowed to happen, I felt it would have been much worse to give the CIA a tool that could be so easily abused.

In the end the project was canceled and I was able to keep DHS 77 away from them. Now you have the only remaining DHS 77 and the antidote. You also have the only notes remaining from the project.

After you view the videos you will know the danger this formula would represent if it fell into the wrong hands. I probably should have destroyed this myself but I just couldn't bring myself to throw away four years' work.

I trust you to know what to do with this more than I would have trusted anyone else on the team.

I hope you can forgive me.

The note was signedAlex Moore.

Dr. Moore's note disturbed me greatly. What could I have been involved in that I didn't know about? I was a test subject? What did I do, or more importantly what was done to me?

I wanted to know what was on those videotapes but I didn't have a video player for three quarter inch tape. I was going to have to borrow one from work. I couldn't do that immediately so I went back to reading the notebook.

On the first page of the note book Dr. Moore had written the following.

"I have mixed feelings about tampering with peoples minds. I am not sure if the end justifies the means but I will press on and make a decision about that later.

What we hoped to accomplish here was to create a drug that could be used to put a subject into a deep hypnotic state (DHS) within a matter of seconds. While in the DHS, the subject would be programmed to perform certain tasks or provide requested information when given a key phrase command. The effects of the DHS programming had to last up to a year or more to prevent the need to constantly reprogramming the subject.

The programming had to allow for the control to erase the subject's memory after they had performed their task, give the subject an alternate memory or to have the subject remember what they did but not why.

That briefly is what Controlled Intelligence Sources is all about and what DHS 77 gave us."

That was all that was written on the first page. On the second page the date was written at the top of the page and under the date it said 'DHS Formula 77.' Below that was a chemical formula, which made no sense to me, followed by Dr. Moore's notes on DHS 77.

"The new formula works. The programming done during DHS should last no less than a year and, for some subjects, it will last even longer. Major Mitchell wants to try another test. While he agrees with the results from the 20 test subjects we used, he feels we need to try it on someone that does not know they are part of a test. He feels that it may be possible that subjects that know they are part of a test may be easier to program because of their willingness to cooperate.

I don't agree with Major Mitchell. I feel that the tests we have already done are sufficient proof that DHS 77 works. That said, I have decided to allow Major Mitchell to run his tests because I am not ready to turn DHS 77 over to the CIA and let them run amuck with it. My only hope is that they will get tired of waiting for us to finish and kill the project. For the record, I am not happy with Major Mitchell's choice of subjects but I understand his reason for the choice."

On the next page Dr. Moore commented on Major Moore's test with a single subject. His comment read as follows:

"Major Mitchell took the antidote for DHS 77 and, after waiting ten minutes for it to take affect, he took 5 grams of DHS 77 and applied it to the neck of the subject. The subject was only vaguely aware of what happened and was in DHS within five seconds. Major Mitchell then addressed the subject using the key phrase 'star kitten' to activate the programming.

The subject was programmed to follow commands given by Major Mitchell after the key phrase was given. The subject was then taken into the test lab and Major Mitchell gave the key phrase and then the Major gave several commands, which the subject followed without hesitation.

I assumed we were done but Major Mitchell insisted the subject be tested over a longer period of time to make sure the programming held up. He also wanted to test for memory residue. That is he wanted to see if the subject had any memories of things that should have been erased.

I strongly disapproved of Major Mitchell's tactics, as I felt he was doing this for his own entertainment, but the test for residual memory became important. It turned out that although the subject had no memory of the previous test the subject was aware of missing time. It became apparent that if you erase a person's memory of an event you had better replace it with some kind of memory.

On the next test, Major Mitchell replaced the erased memory with a false memory so that the subject would not be aware of blank spots in their memory. At that point the whole team knew that DHS 77 was ready.

Fortunately, when the budget cutting started Major Mitchell was transferred back to the Pentagon. After that, I was able to convince the rest of the team that we should never release DHS 77. So we sat on it until the project was shut down.

I had to reread the last entry again. There was something there that caught my attention. Dr. Moore said that the subject of Major Mitchell's test was aware of missing time. I had to think about that for a minute before it came to me. I remembered that there was a period of time when I thought I was suffering from some sort of mental blackouts. There were several mornings when I woke up and couldn't remember anything from the night before. I remembered discussing my concerns with Brenda and she told me it was probably the stress of the job.

That seemed like a good explanation then but now I wondered. Could it be possible that I was the unwitting subject of Major Mitchell's tests? Was I the subject that Dr. Moore didn't want to use?

I think I already knew the answer before I even asked myself the question.

I still needed more information so I kept on reading. The rest of the notebook described how the DHS 77 was administered and how the programming was done. I scanned through it quickly and put it aside.

Chapter 6

It was 12:30 in the afternoon and I had been sitting there reading the notebook since ten o'clock in the morning. My back was stiff and my neck hurt from sitting in one position for so long and on top of that I was filled with a sense of dread. . What had been done to me in that lab five years earlier? I looked at the videotapes in the bottom of the box and wondered if I really wanted to know what was on them. I thought about just destroying all of it, the notebook, the DHS 77, the antidote and the videotapes. In the end my curiosity was too great and I decided I had to know what was on the tapes.

I called my office and spoke to the department secretary and asked her to sign out a three quarter inch tape player for me and bring it down to the lobby. I said I would be over to pick it up in a few minutes. Thank God, she didn't ask me why I needed it.

I quickly ate a sandwich that I didn't taste and then took the forty minute round trip to our office building to pick up the tape player.