Page 46 of Identity Unknown
“And you’re aware that much posted on social media and elsewhere isn’t necessarily real or to be trusted?” I buckle the respirator blower around my waist, making sure the batteries are charged.
“Janet helps me know what’s real and fake,” Marino replies. “She thinks the truth about Roswell was covered up immediately after the whole thing happened. The government knew damn well it was a flying saucer.”
“Janet is an AI algorithm that’s the result of human input. She isn’t a person and doesn’t actually think for herself.”
“The hell she doesn’t.” He acts insulted on her behalf. “Janet thinks better than anyone I know and comes up withstuff nobody else would. And I don’t have to deal with her making judgments about me. Anything out there, she’s going to find it, including facts about Roswell, which definitely was real. I don’t care what you say.”
“I didn’t utter a word.”
“You don’t have to for me to know you think what I’m saying is stupid.”
“You might be surprised by what I think,” I reply without telling him the rest of it.
I can’t share what happened toward the end of my tenure at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Marino would be far too interested in what I came across one day while in a largely forgotten storage room. I was excavating for paperwork relating to the donation of Robert Hooke’s seventeenth-century microscope, and found myself in an area of the basement where I’d not been.
Shelves crowded with glass jars of pathological specimens and rows of fireproof filing cabinets were coated in a fuzz of dust. Skeletons on wheeled stands showed anomalies like Marfan syndrome, gigantism, dwarfism, rickets. They stared with empty eyes and grimaces while I riffled through musty files, happening upon one jammed in the back of a drawer where it didn’t belong.
Sealed in layers of red tape accompanied by warnings not to open and stampedTOPSECRET, it was labeledRoswell Incident, 1947. Judging by the weight, I suspected there were hundreds of pages of documents and possibly photographs inside. I carried the file upstairs to the curator, a by-the-book retired Air Forcecolonel, tall and thin with a clipped mustache and the ruddy complexion of a drinker.
Getting close to eighty, he began his career with the Armed Forces M.E.s during World War II and had little use for women doctors. He spent his days running the museum as a volunteer, and I walked into his office, placing the file in front of him. For a flicker he was stunned, then rattled. He went from polite and pleasant to stern and distrusting, his gray eyes turning to slate.
Why were you looking for this?He spoke to me in a way he hadn’t before.Who told you about it?
No one. I found the file by accident.
I described exactly where it was, explaining that I had no reason to think something like this was here. Therefore, I couldn’t possibly have been looking for it.
Something like this?he echoed accusingly.Sounds like you opened it.
No, sir, I brought it straight to you. As you can see for yourself, it hasn’t been opened since it was sealed many years ago, possibly decades ago,I said, and his demeanor changed again.
Gotcha, didn’t I?He winked with a phony grin.
I’m sorry…?
A hoax, a prank. He’d never make it as an actor.
If I opened the file like most people would, I’d discover nothing’s inside except blank sheets of paper, and the joke was on me. That’s what he said, and I was sure he was lying as he went on to order me never to mention what I found.
It would be misunderstood,he said sternly.
I wasn’t to repeat our conversation, and I haven’t. The one exception was Sal, and his response was a Mona Lisa smile.He had no comment beyond the usual about the government’s need to obfuscate the truth in the name of security.
Not just the White House and Ten Downing Street but the Vatican,he often said.What it’s really about is keeping humanity in the dark.
Marino and I pull on our yellow hoods, our voices muffled through the rubber speaking diaphragms, our in-ear headphones amplifying sounds. We push through the airlock, greeted by bright lights inside a small autopsy room.
Sal’s pouched body is on top of the pedestaled stainless steel table attached to a sink, a surgical cart set up nearby. Behind glass on the second floor is a pantheon of distinguished witnesses, and my heart lifts at the sight of Benton. Seated in the front row, he’s wearing a midnight-blue suit that accentuates his lankiness, his platinum hair and strong chiseled features.
He looks as fresh as he did while we were getting dressed this morning. I envision us drinking coffee in our bedroom when we hadn’t a clue what the day would bring. Everyone has taken a seat inside the observation area, and I know some of the notables gathered. The director of the Secret Service, Bella Steele, looks unusually grim in black, her long dark hair tightly pulled back.
I can tell she’s distressed, her strong vibrant face slack, and I know she and Sal were friendly. The last time the three of us were together at the White House, it was obvious they were fond of each other. She’s talking to General Jake Gunner, the commander of the U.S. Space Force, dressed in camouflage, his rugged face granite.
Next to him is Gus Gutenberg from the Central Intelligence Agency, nondescript with gray hair, a gray beard, everything about him colorless and vague like a faded daguerreotype. I recognize the director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), and next to him the former U.S. senator who now heads NASA.
I’ve met the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aerospace engineer several times at the Pentagon, and know the agent from Interpol’s Washington, D.C., bureau. The National Security Agency is here, also the U.S. secretary of state, and a scientist from NASA Langley. I imagine Sal amused, wanting to know what all the fuss is about. He’d have something risqué to say about being naked and dead on a cold steel table in front of such an esteemed audience.
Marino and I get our bearings in the unfamiliar environment, walking around. The white tile walls and floor, the scratched zinc countertop probably go back to when the blockhouses were built. I’m reminded of medical school days spent in old hospital morgues. Only this one is stocked with every modern necessity, including total containment body pouches like the ones I use.