Dulce Truths

“Shame what he did,” Carl says as he starts to the door, pauses to talk to Jake. “All that time off-world musta warped his brain.”

“Right,” Jake says distantly, his thoughts elsewhere.

“You get some rest, Jake… you like mighty tired.”

“Will do, sir,” Jake says in that same tone, and this time Carl gives him a clap on the shoulder and walks back into the hallway.

Jake is left standing there, wondering… worrying. Something’s not right, he thinks, something is very not right.

“Donlon will know what to do,” he says to himself. He goes back out into the hallway, intent on finding the man.

Part III

10 — New Realities

Area 51

Friday, May 25, 1982

12:25 AM

Turn comes out of the gate and into a room with concrete walls, a concrete floor, and a large meeting table in its center. It looks like a conference room, he thinks, but then turns his head and sees several rows of desks. It looks like a classroom too, complete with a blackboard on one wall, even some of those pull-down maps he remembers from high school. Ahead of him is Bennewitz. Then from behind him comes Walter.

“Sorry about that,” the captain says, referring to the push he gave Turn to get him through the gate, “but like I said, you had to see for yourself.”

Turn shrugs it off, then asks, “Where are we?”

“A safe place,” Bennewitz replies.

“Yeah, but where?”

“Might be better to ask, ‘when’,’” Walter says.

Turn’s eyes narrow at that, but before he can say anything else, Bennewitz speaks up.

“We’re at Area 51, which in the current time we’re in, is a safe place.” He looks Turn in the eye. “That time is the year 1982.”

“1982?” Turn says. “What the hell?”

“We have to hop around,” Bennewitz says, hitting a few buttons on the control panel near the shimmering gateway they’d just come through, then looking back to him, “no one place is safe for long.”

“We’re being hunted through both space and time,” Walter says with a chuckle, though when Turn meets his eyes he sees no humor there.

“So we hop around” Bennewitz says again. “Before I came to Dulce tonight, I did so from 1988 via 1981 and then to your 1979 before coming back through 1982 here.”

“And then where?” Turn asks, thinking right away that he probably should have said ‘then when.’

“A lot of that depends on what happens at Blue Lake following the attack on Dulce,” Walter says, glancing down at his watch. “By now Ellis should be giving his debriefing, and soon after that the pieces of the chessboard will begin to move about.” When Turn looks confused, he says, “The traitors, Turn… the high-ranking military officers that are working with the Grays and in turn the Reptilians.”

“Lot to digest, I know,” Bennewitz says as he begins to hit a few more buttons. Walter too sees that Turn has taken a lot in, and he moves over to watch Bennewitz. Turn just goes into his thoughts.

Traitors?

Turn’s eyes narrow as he thinks back to that day in the barracks right after their Montana mission.

“Yeah, but don’t you think it’s funny that none of the briefings we had over the past week or so have mentioned why the Grays are here, why they broke that treaty, and why we need to get back into that base so bad?” Lewie had said at the time. Turn remembers it because Tommy had answered by saying, “You know why,” and in the calmest voice Turn had ever heard the joker use.

Lewie had been about to say something but then Carl had suddenly strolled into the room, cutting the chatter off. Carl, Turn thinks, the man closest to the Dutchman… and perhaps one that means him harm. But I need proof, damn it! he thinks to himself, but he knows that’ll be hard to find.

Dulce Base is just the tip of the iceberg,” Bennewitz says, drawing Turn back from his thoughts.

Turn’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“He means,” Walter says, strolling over to the side of the room and drawing both men’s attention as he does so, “that Dulce is just one hub in a vast network of underground tunnels which honeycomb our planet.” He looks to Bennewitz. “How ‘bout we pull down the map?” and nods at something above his head before reaching up to the kind of maps that Turn remembers from grade school, all rolled up in a bunch at the top of the center blackboard, just waiting to be unfurled one at a time to illuminate the young children’s understanding of the world. Walter grabs hold of one of the metal handles at the end of one map and pulls. A map comes down, one that Turn had certainly never seen in his public education days. He stands there staring at it, not sure what he’s looking at.