A Dragon's Tail Ch. 04-05

I was left to contemplate my little savior, and her convictions. I picked up the mirror again and looked at my face. I looked at a face that had smashed into the windshield, and then was cured by a girl who could not age. This was the same girl who had also saved my son. Somehow, I knew that the red string of fate had brought us together, and that I had a debt to this girl that had to be paid. I also knew the payment that my father wanted me to pay, but I could not rationalize how this could ever make Ahiko mature into a woman. I was left to ponder while the little angel prepared dinner.

Chapter 5 -- Another Victim

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, in a supersonic transport.

Janice Williams continues with her briefing.

"Before we took off, I gave you the simple physical elements of Robert, and the emotional elements. I am about to give you information about what is happening scientifically, and our current understanding of the nature of the Universe. I was Roberts Psychologist, and I am not one of the Physicists who worked with him. I will do my best to explain this stuff to you."

This information is thirty years old, so some things may have changed. We would not be assembling three teams of agents to try to find him if there wasn't more to this. Robert IS very special. Robert has a more powerful soul than other humans. His soul can actually alter the physical properties of the world around him. I want to mention that there is a difference between a man's ego and a man's soul at this point. While I worked with Robert, his ego and self worth were pretty much shot, but his convictions and heart were unquestionable. This is an extremely honorable man, and you will have to treat him with dignity and respect. Like I said, treat him like he was an actual living breathing angel, and you will be OK."

"We believe Robert is actually manipulating cosmic strings. If you don't know string theory, these are the things that make up sub-atomic particles, like quarks. String theory says that space-time has eleven dimensions. I am not going to try to explain Calabi-Yau manifolds, or anything like that. Here is my basic knowledge of what is going on.

Time is one dimension, and our normal three dimensions are called the physical plane, but there are also additional parallel three dimensional planes. We now believe that dark matter exists in these parallel planes, and that our actual souls are made up of this dark matter. So, we actually exist in at least six dimensions at the same time. We have a real body, made of normal matter, in physical plane of existence; and a real soul, made of dark matter, in the spiritual plane of existence, and they are attached to each other. This may sound weird, but we believe this because Robert can actually see and pull energy from the spiritual plane."

Click. An acupuncture chart appears.

"We believe that we have isolated a nerve cluster, made of eleven neurons, that forms throughout our nervous system. This cluster is what attaches our physical body to our soul made of dark matter. You each have hundreds of these clusters in your brain, but you also have clusters at the points in this chart. We now believe that acupuncture works by targeting these nerve clusters. As weird as it sounds, acupuncture now seems to have validity in science. A person going through a rebirth gains an additional set of these nerve clusters. Robert has three complete sets, so he had triple the number clusters that you or I have. We think the additional clusters mean that he now has tripled the amount of dark matter that composes his soul, and that is what gives him enhanced abilities."

Click. An image appears of Robert holding the hand of a spirit, an angel with wings.

"I know, this sounds like ghosts, and goblins, and weird paranormal stuff. Robert talked about having hallucinations, or, what we thought were hallucinations. I had a hard time believing until Robert touched and 'activated' a dark matter spirit. Spirits are real, and using Robert, we could see them. A ghost or spirit is composed of only dark matter. When we blindfolded him, he was still able identify any one of us, and point to any person by seeing our soul made of dark matter, even through walls. The walls around you are made of physical matter, and not dark matter, so dark matter sight is not blocked. Don't try to talk to Robert using rooms with one way mirrors, he will close his eyes and identify the people right through the glass. I have personally seen Robert illuminate the soul of the Virgin Mary. So through Robert, I have seen the Virgin Mary, and this reason alone is enough for me to treat him with the reverence of an angel."

Click. An image appears of Robert and a much younger Janice holding hands, both with a visible aura, but especially their heads are surrounded by a halo of energy.

"This is Robert fully illuminating the edge of our dark matter spirits. You will notice that Robert's spirit is considerably larger than mine, but that we both appear to have a halo. All of you have a soul, so if any of you were to be fully illuminated, you would appear to have a halo. I want to repeat this, WE ALL HAVE HALOS! As I told you before, the brain had hundreds of these clusters, so your own spirit extends past your physical form. A full spirit, with its enlarged head, actually looks like a space alien to me. We actually believe that the alien image that people claim they see is a fully illuminated dark matter soul. Usually, when a spirit appears, they will usually not illuminate their complete form, but only the boundary that was their once physical form had. We call this a partial illumination."

Janice turned to Bob. "I would now like to introduce to you Bob Alexander. He is FY3105, and also has the ability to see the spiritual plane, just like Robert does. I will let him talk about the spiritual part of this."

Bob came up and nodded to the group. "I know, my name is also Robert, but please call me Bob, so as to not cause confusion. We have called this talent of seeing the spiritual plane clairvision. There are two other clairvisionaries working on this case, and they are already in route to Japan. I am here to report on paranormal activity, and in this case, there is a lot of non-activity. Your war room was devoid of spirits, which is rare. There should have been three or four spirits milling around, but I saw none. There are two transports full of equipment and technicians are already airborne and on their way to Japan. The two clairvisionaries got onto the same transport plane, and reported two jackals getting onto the other transport. It seems that they are interested in our activity, but giving us a wide birth.

Janice walked forward, "Thank you, Bob. I guess I'll have to explain what a jackel is now."

Janice went to the computer, and after a little searching pulled up a new image. It was a drawing of a half man, half wolf. It appeared to be a man's torso and arms, with the legs and head of a wolf.

"This is a drawing of the Egyptian god Anubis. He is half man, and half jackel. He is the leader of the Egyptian army of the dead, so he has considerable power in the spiritual world. We refer to any spirit of this race as a jackal, just like we refer to members of another race of spirits with wings as angels. Jackals can be good or bad, and I should not have to remind you that angels, too, can be good or bad. I need to remind you right now that Lucifer... is an angel."

"Let me repeat that, Lucifer is an angel. I need that to sink in a bit. After that gets through your head, and simmer for a while, you'll figure out that just like humans, we have to treat each entity we meet on a case by case basis. The two jackals that got on the transport are probable watchers, and will not actively help or hinder our progress. The fact that the war room was clear of spirits means that this case is incredibly sensitive. Even the spirit world is treating this search and recovery mission with kid gloves."

"Get out of you mind that these are flesh eating violent werewolves, and that they are bad. The Japanese call these creatures kitsune, and believe that they guard the material world from an invasion from the demon world. Kitsune is fox in Japanese, and even though they consider these creatures playful and pranksters, they also recognize them as vigilant defenders of the human world. The Egyptians also recognized this, and they believe these people will form the army of the dead. We believe that at the future battle of Armageddon, most jackals will choose the side of light against the darkness, and will act as our ground forces. We also believe that most angels will also be on the side of light, but several angels, such as Lucifer will be on the side of darkness. While on this mission, we should probably refer to these creatures as kitsune."

Janice started to notice that the men were starting to have their eyes glaze over. She had seen this many times, when introducing the paranormal as a known commodity. She had dealt with the concepts of angels, jackals, and a man who could vaporize a person, for over thirty years now. It was sometimes hard to take it all at once. She knew that these men would be returning home to a different world than when they got up to this morning. She decided to give them a break, and try to make this seem more normal to them, possibly by going into traditional folklore for reference.

"I now need to get back to some basic information."

"You may have some notion of ghosts and spirits being cold, and may have heard of accounts of people being chilled as a ghost passes through them. That is the effect of a spirit pulling energy from the physical place into the spiritual plane. That has a chilling effect. Robert can pull matter the opposite way, so he generates heat or light. When there is a light component, which accounts for the halo or aura of light that many of you have seen in paintings of angels and divine beings. Robert usually has a halo when pulls energy into our universe, even if he is trying to pull only heat."

"We know he has three paranormal abilities. The first is regeneration, his body heals itself, we think this is the only reason he survived this disease. The second is his ability to see into the spiritual plane of existence. The third is his ability to exchange energy between the two planes of existence, that's how we were able to see spirits, and this process generates heat. We have some theories as to why Robert's body doesn't burn up, we have termed this phenomenon the burning bush effect, but we have no idea what's really going on. As you can tell, we are naming some of the effects to explain biblical phenomenon with Robert."

Click. A video of a restaurant plays in a loop. Several families are shown eating. Robert enters from the left side of the image, walks by the tables, and disappears out of frame to the right. The video repeats itself every fifteen seconds.

"I want you to know that Robert is being followed by a spirit. Robert told us that he was present and told us to make this video when he got up to go to the bathroom, so he could prove that he was not hallucinating. It is an angel, and it is floating above and behind him. I want you to pay attention to the babies seated at the tables. The babies will seem distracted, and will track an object above and behind Robert. This was early in the testing, before we went to Area 51. Robert was not able to illuminate spirits at this point, and we thought he was having hallucinations. It clearly shows the three infants tracking an unseen object."

"I am showing you this because we believe that all of us have these abilities to some degree. Robert went through the rebirths, so his are amplified. We believe that every one of you had the ability to see spirits when you were in your mother's womb. It is pretty dark in the womb, and your normal vision will not produce results, but dark matter vision would work. We believe that every child imprints on their mother's soul in the womb. After you are born, the ability fades away, slowly. We believe this allows a baby to recognize its mother, until it can get used to seeing their mother in normal light. This might also explain why little children see monsters under their beds; they are actually seeing spirits that we can no longer see."

Janice waited for a while, until she felt that every member could see the babies tracking the unseen angel in the video clip. The agents could possibly imagine that they, too, had at one time, the ability to see the spiritual plane of existence. It was important that they feel connected to this phenomenon. That they too, had this ability, and possibly, could have it again.

"As for the other two abilities, like healing and transferring energy, we also have that, to some extent. If we get a cut in our skin, we can heal it. Robert's ability is just enhanced. As for the transferring energy ability, the nerve clusters that we all have can somehow attach to dark matter, so in that vein, our nerve clusters in our bodies are pulling on the spiritual universe, and attaching to the dark matter to our physical bodies. Robert just has our pulling ability enhanced."

"We now believe that the biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah can be explained by two individuals like Robert. We also believe that if Robert were to land in Antarctica, turn himself on, and took a little walk; that he could easily melt enough snow and ice to cause it to rain for forty days and forty nights, worldwide. With his growth of the additional shoulder blades, we also believe that this virus may also have converted other individuals into things seen in other religions from around the world, such as the multi armed gods and goddesses of Hinduism."

"The last day I saw Robert, we were testing his ability to generate heat. He was submersed in a tank of water and his body was vaporizing the water into steam. We ran the steam into steam turbines to generate electricity at a power plant and fed the condensed steam back into the tank. And YES, you heard me correctly, Robert can power a small city. He was generating over 50 megawatts of power when the return water supply couldn't keep up with the heat he was producing. We had a cascade failure, equivalent to a meltdown. The remaining water in the tank vaporized. The rubber tubes delivering breathable air to his lungs melted, producing a superheated sulfuric acid steam that attacked the walls of the tank. On total, 8 scientists died that afternoon, and many others like me ended up with permanent damage. As I said before, we believe that Robert blames himself for the deaths at the lab, and ran away".

"Here is the reason we want him back. We actually want to hire him, give him a purpose in life, and use him to figure out the details of string theory. We want to rerun the tests, but not in a tank. We thing we can place him in the river below Hoover dam, and just let him vaporize the river. We should be able to estimate the amount of energy that he is producing by the amount of water being released by Hoover dam. If we can duplicate his ability to transfer energy between planes of existence, we would have an unlimited clean power source. We would solve our energy crisis and global warming at the same time. The only thing we have managed to do in the five years with Robert is build a detector that allows us to detect when Robert is manipulating strings. He does this naturally during rebirth, so four months out of the year; we can use this device as a 'Robert Detector'. We currently use these devices to detect and recover new victims of the virus."

Click. An image of an 18 year old Prince Takashi appears.

"We currently think he is using his ranger survival skills to live in a cave in Japan. He used these skills successfully to evade us in Vietnam, by using some of the old tunnel systems the Viet Cong used. Robert was a Tunnel Rat, so he knew where many of these tunnels were. One of the members of the Japanese Imperial family, Prince Takeshi, has gone missing on a retreat. He is currently fifth in line to become the Emperor of Japan, and is a nephew to the current Emperor. He is on a side branch of the royal family, and will likely be passed over when one of the emperor's sons has male offspring. Prince Takeshi's blood was found on a trail at the retreat. The Prince probably just crawled in to the cave, and thinks he is with a child. We don't think Robert has actually kidnapped the prince, but is extremely lonely and using Prince Takeshi as a companion. Our goal is to find the two and return the prince to his mother, and Robert back to the United States."

Janice holds up her disfigured hand again. "THIS IS IMPORTANT! You are to not engage Robert physically under any circumstance. Robert can go from 98.6 degrees to over 5000 degrees within a few seconds. We do not know how hot he can become, and he may be the only human that can survive on the surface of the sun. You are 98% water, and it is possible that he could boil you off and leave a pile of salt. I want you to treat him as if he was a real angel, because he may actually be able to pull off the Sodom and Gomorra thing and vaporize a city. You need to tell him the accident was not his fault, and that he is free to come home. DO NOT, and I want to repeat this, DO NOT try to force Robert to do anything."

"I also want you to think about the failure of this mission. He can generate a halo, and can easily pass as a supernatural being, and is using the term 'Angel' to describe himself. We are having enough troubles with Islamic extremists calling us the 'Evil Empire', and we don't need to give them any fuel to add to their hatred of America. I now want you to imagine that you are the leader of an Islamic Sect, and want to spin stories of hatred and fear of the United States. I want you to imagine what you can do with the fact that we may have held an angel in Area 51. Robert asked us to amputate his extra set of shoulder blades, and we did, only to have them grow back. Imagine what an Islamic extremist would say if you knew we had surgically removed the shoulder blades pf an angel. This can be the worst event for homeland security, and we could be made into the true 'Evil Empire' in the eyes of the world. It won't matter that he is an American citizen, or that he served as a ranger in the United States Army, or that he willingly authorized the amputation of his shoulder blades, twice. We will lose, Period!"

"I have one final note before we land. Since I have been linking some things to biblical events, I probably need to bring this up. In the book of Revelations, it speaks of seven plagues before the apocalypse. We believe that the FY virus could be one of the seven plagues, because it strengthens the soul. Each plague is supposed to kill off 75% of the world's population. If this virus strengthens ones soul, it would be a logical step to have every person contract this virus before undergoing rapture and entering the spiritual plane of existence. If we can understand how Robert was able to survive, we may be able to help others to survive this virus, when it mutates into a form that is easily contracted. We need to figure out how to increase the survivability of the human race from this plague. This virus is global, and people are succumbing to this disease on every continent. This is a race, and I don't think we want to lose."

"You are on this case because you are America's best intelligence gatherers. We need your help in finding Robert, as discretely as possible. It is not just America that needs you, the world needs you to perform at your best. I hope I can count on you."

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

United State Forces Japan Headquarters, Yokota Air Base, Fussa Prefecture, 30 kilometers west of Tokyo.

The first of two waves of specialists arrived in Japan. The supersonic transports from Nevada didn't need a briefing before departing. The technicians promptly set up their base equipment and started to outfit three vans as mobile tracking units. Three helicopters were immediately dispatched with additional base stations. The first to be set up was at the Atsugi Naval Air Facility in the Kanagawa prefecture. Two hours later, base units were also running at the Misawa Air Base in the Aomiri Prefecture, and at the Iwakuni Marine Corp Air Station in the Yamaguchi prefecture.