Dulce Truths

Ellis watches them go. When they’re gone, however, he stops forcing himself to smile and lets his frown come out. He lets out a sigh and shakes his head while putting hands on his hips. He’s just about to say what’s on his mind when he happens to glance up. The expression on Stu’s face stops all thoughts cold.

“What are you lookin’ at me like that for, Stu?” he says with a laugh, though a nervous one at that.

Stu immediately straightens up and looks away, stopping the intent staring he was giving Ellis’s way. “Uh… it’s nothing. Nothing! Just had my mind wander off there for a sec.”

Ellis narrows his eyes at Stu, as if he’s not sure he’s getting the full story. For his part, Stu just hopes what he was told in his room after the debriefing isn’t true. If it is, well… he knows this could very well be the last time he talks to Ellis.

“Been a long night, I know,” Ellis says a moment later, then focuses back on the matter at hand. “How much of what she says is true?”

“Heather?” Stu says, relieved that Ellis has changed the subject. “From what we’re getting or from the other reports?” Stu asks the question then scoffs. “Why, all of it!”

“All of it?” Ellis says, turning to look back at him with his face screwed up in disbelief.

Stu nods. “Over 90 % of the female abductees report being inseminated by aliens… and the other 10 % probably were but can’t remember.”

“Are they trying to hybridize our species?”

“Yes,” Stu says without pause. “They’re breeding slave-warriors for the upcoming war with the other alien races.”

“The Pleiadians?”

Stu nods again. “Them, as well as the Sirians. The Grays will have help from the serpentine races in orbit around Earth, Venus and Mars.”

Ellis sighs, looking very much his 65 years. He glances around, sees the table that Heather was just sitting on, and gets up on it himself. He begins to slowly kick his feet back and forth as they hang down from the table and above the floor, much as a child would as they waited for the doctor to come and see them. The only sucker that’ll be seen at the end of this examination, Ellis thought to himself, will be me.

“How could we have been so dumb,” he says after a few moments of sitting there, his legs swaying.

Stu scoffs. “What’s ‘dumb,’ exactly? Making what we thought was a good decision twenty-five years ago only to find out it was shit?” He scoffs again, shakes his head. “And much of what’s taking place was set in stone long before Ike made that deal back in the 50s. Hell, remember what your own son said back at the briefing last night before we even went into Dulce?”

Mark narrows his eyes at Stu as if he’s not quite sure, but says nothing.

“The first Gray motherships came over a three year period,” Stu continues, using that near-photographic memory of his to recall exactly what Mark had said just hours before, “from 1787 to 1789… right as the French Revolution was getting underway. He talked of probe ships that they’d sent way back in 1645.” He scoffed again as he said that last, drawing Ellis’s eyes. “Can you believe that? My God, 300 years ago! And they kept comin’ — another mothership behind the sun in 1859 and then one behind Mars fifty years after that.”

“Don’t forget the one behind Pluto, either,” Ellis says, “the one that looks like a moon.”

“The moon we haven’t discovered… yet.”

Ellis looks up at Stu. “You know that Mark has spent a great deal of time off-world, and you know that he’s served with the 177th.”

Stu nods. “I know.”

“Ellis, you know how I feel about time travel. If we can—”

Ellis holds up his hands, stopping Stu’s words. “Stu, you know how I feel about this, and you know how General Anderholt feels about this.”

Stu’s face screws up in exasperation. “I know, but—”

“Stu,” Ellis says sternly, and with a stern look, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

A silence falls in the small exam room, the conversation replaced with tension. It lasts several moments, awkwardness filling the space between the two men. It’s finally broken by the door slamming open, Carl standing behind it.

“Ellis!” Carl shouts as he starts across the room.

“What is it?” Ellis says, getting off the exam table, alarm in his voice.

“Been lookin’ all over for you — a report just came over the wire from Scoff Air Force Base in Illinois.”

“General Herres,” Ellis says without pause, and Carl nods. Ellis does too, saying, “Let’s go.”

Ellis takes three steps and then a deep rumbling sound fills the room. Stu and Carl both narrow their eyes and look at Ellis questioningly.

“Haven’t eaten since before the mission,” Ellis finally says, his face reddening a bit.

“Well Damn, Ellis,” Carl laughs, “they just served chow thirty minutes ago!”

A smile creases up one corner of Ellis’ mouth. “You buyin’?”

“Shit!” Carl says, and turns to the door, waving his arm in a following gesture, “c’mon.”

* * *