Deep beneath the towering behemoth of stone, glass, and
steal that formed the Los Angeles Herald Building, was an
area where only the strangest of creatures dwelled. It was
an area that was so foreboding, so mysterious, so removed
from the real world, that it was not even accessible by
elevator. Of the buildings seven lifts, only the freight
elevator went to the two basements known only as B1 and B2.
But somewhere below B2, through a steel door and down a long
ramp was the paper's archives.
Most of the Heralds records from the last four years
had been computerized and could be called up on a terminal
within a matter of seconds. Those that weren't on the
computer, were on the eighth floor in the Microfilm
Department, and could be view or printed on request. Yet,
in a deep, dark, dungeon of a room, filled by row upon row
of black, steel filing cabinets, was a group of people who
clipped and filed the same stories by subject.
As a way to speed research, one of the Herald's
founders suggested important articles be clipped and filed
by subject. This was meant to avoid the inherent problem
with typical archive methods where newspapers were stored by
date, and subjects were found in an index. He felt that it
would save time checking the background of a piece if a
reporter did not have to search an index volume, for every
year, then find the particular edition and page. Under the
present system, a reporter can request the folder covering
Oil Spills, Atlantic, and have all pertinent information;
sometimes dating back as far as 1919. The Herald's new
computer system was designed to accomplish the same task,
but only covered the last ten years.
One of the people responsible for this task was a man
in his early thirties named Harry Jennings. Jennings was
the quintessential nerd. If you were to imagine the
ultimate dork, the most ridiculous looking geek on Earth,
you'd almost have a picture of Jennings. But looks aren't
everything, and that's why he'd gained such an infamous
reputation throughout the newspaper.
Jennings was the kind of person who you could ask to
recite the Encyclopedia Britanica, and he'd ask you what
page you wanted him to start on. To make matters worst, if
you gave him a page number, he'd start reciting-- and be
right. For this reason, if a reporter needed a detail on
anything that had been printed in the Herald, and often
things off the wire services, he could call Jennings and ask
where he'd find it. The man had become so renowned for his
speed and accuracy, that when the paper set-up a special
computer program that could find related subjects from the
thousands of stories on file, people wouldn't use it because
Harry Jennings could answer their questions faster.
But, alas, Jennings' job was a lonely one. It was to
easy for a reporter to call rather than take the freight
elevator and walk the ramp to the archives, that hardly
anyone visited the department. Furthermore, the successful
reporters respected Jennings for his ability, but didn't
want to be seen with the man. Considering the questions
Brad had to ask, he thought it safer to take the long trip
underground. After all, if one of his colleagues overheard
him asking about flying saucers, they'd ride him until
retirement.
When he arrived in archives, he found Jennings and
several of the lesser known clerks clipping and filing news
stories. Jennings was so involved in his work, that for a
moment he didn't notice Brad standing in front of him. When
he did notice, he was so shocked to see that a human had
descended into his abyss that he looked at Brad as if he was
an alien.
"Hello, Harry. I'm Brad."
Jennings was not impressed.
"I spoke to you on the phone once. I'm one of the
reporters."
Jennings still wasn't impressed, but answered anyway.
"What are you looking for?" he asked nonchalantly.
"I was wondering if you knew anything about the Air
Force's Stealth fighter."
"No more than any other civilian."
"Do you remember where the Air Force is keeping them?"
"There's a report on a press conference in the
computer, dated about the second week of September. You
didn't walk all the way down here to ask me that, did you?"
"No, there is something else. Do you think it was
Nellis AFB?"
"Yeah," answered Harry as he pushed his horn-rimmed
glasses back on his nose. "At least that's what the
government said. Of course they could be anywhere. One of
them crashed here in California about six months before the
press conference, so they were flying them in civilian
airspace. Since they don't show-up on radar, they could
shuffle them from airfield to airfield, and not even the FAA
would know."
"I see," responded Brad as he turned his back to the
nearest clerk before asking his next question. "I was also
wondering if you would know anything about... you know...
strange happenings?"
"Strange happenings? What do you mean?"
Brad could feel that he was beginning to blush with
embarrassment. How could he admit that he was looking for
information about flying saucers? He didn't care what
Jennings thought of him personally, but if anyone else ever
found out that he'd been asking about them, he'd immediately
be tagged as a weirdo. "Well, maybe a story about something
out of the ordinary."
"Like ghosts?"
"Yes, but not ghosts."
"Poltergeist?"
"No," answered Brad.
"Demonic possession, Bigfoot, human spontaneous
combustion, the Loch Ness monster, man-eating plants,
talking furniture, people from the future, people from the
past, people turning other people into rats, people eating
other people, unsupported levitation, gremlins, gnomes,
beasts from hell, canine-human transmutation..."
"Canine-human transmutation? What's that?" interrupted
Brad.
"Werewolves."
"You don't mean to say you've got a story about
Werewolves, do you?" Brad asked in a skeptical tone.
"Sure. A wino uptown said he saw a man turn into a
wolf and kill a teenager."
"Did the police find the body?"
"Yep. In about ten pieces covering two blocks."
"What did they do?" inquired Brad, almost afraid of
what the answer might be.
"Arrested the wino. Was that what you were wondering
about?"
"Actually, no."
"Okay. How about the dead people raising from the
grave, dead people calling on the phone, zombies,
vampires..."
"Hold on," interrupted Brad. He wasn't about to ask if
he had a story about vampires. "I was looking for stories
about," he paused to check the room and his voice fell to a
whisper, "flying saucers."
"UFO's. Well you should have said so. What in
particular?"
"I guess give me everything you got."
Jennings burst out laughing and the other clerks looked
at him and Brad. "He wants everything we got on UFO's!"
announced Jennings. The clerks joined his laughter.
"It not for me. Its some crazy guy I was interviewing.
He said he saw an alien from outer space."
Jennings cleared his voice and pushed his glasses back
on his nose. "Oh, don't get your feelings hurt. We've got
three drawers full of UFO stories and are thinking of
starting another."
"That many?"
"Yeah, and that's just the stuff that's not on the
computer. A week doesn't go by that we don't run at least
one UFO story. What did he say the alien looked like?"
Brad reluctantly withdrew his steno pad from his blazer
pocket and opened it to the page with Gatewood's drawing.
"He said he saw it when he was in the Air Force."
Jennings examined the sketch. "Yep, that's what they
look like."
Brad recoiled in amazement. "How do you know?"
"What's wrong with you: Didn't you see Close Encounters
of the Third Kind?"
"No, I don't like science fiction."
"Not even Cocoon?" questioned Jennings in disbelief.
"Yeah, I saw that... I went out with a girl who wanted
to see it. Do you think this guy just copied what he saw in
the movie?" asked Brad in a concerned tone. He realized an
affirmative answer would only substantiate Gatewood's
insanity.
"Where do you think Hollywood came up with the idea?
They got it from the newspapers! You can't begin to imagine
how many of these pictures I've seen in the last ten years.
The reports are usually the same: big head, long eyes, no
ears or hair, around four feet tall. You know the Air Force
has a couple dead aliens at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio?"
"Who said that?"
"Dozens of people. Doctors who have performed
autopsies, secretaries who have typed the reports,
scientists who have studied their spaceship, even guards who
had been assigned to keep unauthorized people out."
"Okay, but where did the Air Force get the aliens?"
"Whenever a UFO crashes, they go to the scene and
recover the pieces of the saucer and the alien bodies."
"And you say this stuff is in Ohio?" asked Brad, as he
wondered why Gatewood had said he'd seen them in Nevada.
"The bodies are in Ohio; the saucers are at Edwards,
maybe Alamogordo. I've even read articles that said the
aliens had a base at Groom Lake, Nevada."
Bingo, thought Brad. "Where's Groom Lake?"
"Don't know, but I know who would. There's a guy at
the main branch of the public library, who is really into
UFO's. His name is Don Ralston, he's asked me to make
copies of any good stories I get. I take him maybe three or
four a month, and he does favors for me every now and then."
Brad made a quick note of the name in his notebook.
"I'd like you to do me a favor. Get together a few articles
about UFO's, and let me look at them."
"How long can you give me?"
"I'm going out of town in the morning, can you have
them this afternoon so I can look at them while I'm gone?"
"It's short notice, but since you don't seem to know
much about UFO's, I'll do a rush job. Meet me at the
freight elevator at five thirty."
Brad thanked Jennings for his help and turned to walk
out. Before he could get the door open, Jennings yelled
after him. "Hey! Are you going to Nellis tomorrow."
"Yeah."
"If you see any aliens, tell them I said hi!" The
office burst into laughter once again, but Brad just smiled
and closed the door. He didn't mind being the brunt of
Jennings' joke, as long as he came through with the
clippings. He figured that as long as he was going to
Nellis, whether hunting aliens or not, he needed all the
ammunition he could get.
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