Ghosts of the Secret Desert

By Alan VanMeter

I hope you enjoy this read, as it was my first published story. I do not know where the Scifi begins, or where the truth ends.

Part autobiography, and part science fiction. Almost 20 years after my father died, I found out he had lied to the whole family about where he worked while we were being raised. Suspecting him of being a serial killer led me to discover that he actually worked at Area-51 from 1968 to 1988. This information spurred me to have some further insights into what might actually be our destiny as a race. This in turn led me to realize first contact

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan VanMeter
• Release date: Jan 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386410874

Book preview

DEDICATION

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For the  first, second, third, and fourth teams of the LRB project.

CONTENTS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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The insights garnered, which led to this book were only possible by the sages’ previous insights, and transmissions. Sages named Lao Tzu, and Chen Tuan. 

1 The Land of enchantment

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Sandia National Labs’ headquarters are situated near the base of the majestic and beautiful Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was here in the late 1950’s that my father and mother met. Father was a tall lanky man of Dutch decent from a small town south west of Chicago, Illinois; who had a stern disposition to say the least. Mother was a tall, dark haired, young Caucasian lady from a small Hispanic dominant town south of Albuquerque. Both were very religiously oriented as was the norm for the time, especially mother. It would be later that father delved fully into the religious realm in scholarly depth, and pride.

As far as I have been told by my mother, father was employed by the labs as an electronic security expert, and capable locksmith. Yet she has also let slip that he worked on one of the world’s largest stop-motion cameras of the time; perhaps with Henry ‘Doc’ Edgerton’s crew. This must have been before the formation of Edgerton’s own company EG&G. It is hard to get anything of real substance from her, as she was well indoctrinated in the need to know protocol. Hell the whole family was as well. Don’t ask, ‘cause they sure won’t tell.

My mother worked in the lab’s secretarial pool, eventually rising up to be the personal secretary of what she calls ‘a genuine egg-head’; a true to life genius research theorist. She has told of times when he would send her to the base library to search for anything that was interesting, or unique. Even what might appear as common place or mundane, if it interested her. It seems he had no set projects to develop, instead he was to create the ideas, and potential hypothesis from which projects might eventually arise. Though she also says that she thought these excursions were just to get her out of the office, so he and his buddy scientists could tell bawdy jokes. Mother had the deepest respect for the man though, as is apparent from the way she talks of him. It is too bad that he eventually ruined his reputation by making an incorrect prediction of the exact time and location of a severe earthquake, which never occurred.

By late 1959 mother and father had wed, and she was immediately pregnant. This was the end of her career at the labs. My brother was born the next year, and I soon followed in 1962. That same year Kirk Douglas finished filming my favorite movie of his, Lonely are the Brave. It was shot in Albuquerque, and features the rugged Sandia Mountains in it prominently. I have heard Kirk’s son, Michael; who is a wonderful actor in his own right, say that this movie was his father’s favorite as well. If you have never seen the film, you really should.

My early years in Albuquerque were filled with mixed emotions. On one hand we were very close to my Mother’s family, who were filled with love for my bother and myself, as was quite obvious. Yet the ‘balance’, if you will, was from Father. As far back as I can remember Father lived in constant, and terrible pain. It seems that the year I was born he had suffered from a misdiagnosed stomach ulcer, which very nearly killed him. After he had to be rushed to the hospital and emergency surgery performed, which left him with only one third of his stomach and less quite a bit of intestine; he was never feeling well afterwards. Mother tells that she had talked to a lawyer after this, and that the lawyer said that she did have a firm case of malpractice from which to sue, but that the consequences would have been being ‘blacklisted’ from all other doctors in the area. So they chose not to sue. It was also during father’s recovery afterwards that his Mother came out from Illinois to help take care of him. This is when my Mother relates that she almost left my Father.

The story goes that her family invited everyone down for New Year’s dinner, and that my Father and his Mother had adamantly refused. They even told her she could not go, as Father was far too ill. Yet my Mother says that the doctor had told him to start getting out of bed and getting around. Anyhow she really wanted to go see her family, so she packed the two baby boys in the car and made the 30 minute drive to her folks. She says the guilt trip that Father and his Mother laid on her was just too much, and she really considered not going back. With no job herself, and two babies to care for, she opted for the dismal return; instead of burdening her folks with the kids.

I found out Father’s disposition myself, the hard way. The memory is one which I tried to bury, but which was eventually dug up again. I remember being four years old, it is a very clear memory, and of being in the shower for the very first time. Father was showering with me, I guess it was his turn to bathe me, and he must have gotten lazy about it. This alone didn’t bother me, as the shower was for grown-ups, and I liked it! This was far better than the bath tub, until that is; I noticed Father’s thing. It was so much bigger than mine and different looking that I could not fathom they were similar at all. So as I reached out and touched Father’s penis with the tip of my finger, I asked; Daddy, what’s that? That was when I caught my first backhand from a full grown man. Don’t you ever touch another man’s penis! he yelled in anger. I screamed in pain, and ran from the shower, I felt the blood running down my face. My nose was twisted and bleeding, my lip was split open, bleeding, and my gum was split and bleeding. No apology ever came, as that was not Father’s way, rather some tissue was tossed at me with the orders to cleanup. Of course I told Mother as soon as she returned home, but he lied and said I had slipped in the shower. She believed him, and right then and there I knew I was in the wrong place. After that I don’t remember much abuse save for the regular whippings with the belt, and these became a normal part of existence. If it weren’t for the love from my maternal grandparents, I don’t know what would have become of me.

Within a year something happened which seemed to change father’s disposition somewhat; my sister was born. She was instantly the apple of his cold blue eyes. Then a dark time descended upon our family. Sister became very ill with meningitis as an infant, and everyone, including the eternally joyful Grandpa and Grandma Brown were deeply worried. Yet this darkness passed as sister got well, and things returned to ‘normal’. This normality was not to last for long, as something had beckoned Father from afar. Something which the rest of us never knew of in truth, yet the call had been issued forth; the call from the secret desert.

2 Fabulous Las Vegas

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In late 1968 Father took a transfer, along with a substantial raise, to Las Vegas, Nevada. The family, now numbering five, took the trip by car. This was a quite exciting adventure to brother and myself. We stopped by the Grand Canyon, which I still remember vividly as a magical place, and of course we stopped at Hoover Dam. Strange that I was most impressed by the large diorama of Black Canyon at the visitor center, this is not to say that the dam did not impress, it’s just that I remember the diorama the most clearly. Then we entered Las Vegas at dusk, and none of us had ever seen such lights! As we did not have a house to move to yet, we stayed for a few weeks at a motel just across from the Landmark Hotel.

My first lasting impressions of Las Vegas were of this hotel that looked exactly as if a large flying saucer had landed atop a circular pillar. At night we would wonder at the neon lighted exterior glass elevator as it rose and descended along the pillar, eventually disappearing into the saucer on top. All of the large hotel shimmered in bright cobalt blue, and cherry red neon lights. Soon though we moved into a brand new house on the far western side of town, right at the edge of the vast foreboding desert. The name of the subdivision was Charleston Heights, which within a scant few years would become known as heroin heights.

When we had been staying at the motel, Mother and the rest of us would drop Father off at the airport, and watch him takeoff in the company airplane, a four engine turbo prop passenger liner with a quad finned tail; for Tonopah, Nevada. In the evening we would all go and pick him up from work as well. Father had taken a position with the labs at the Tonopah test range, approximately two hundred miles to the north of Las Vegas. He was to be the new meteorologist for the range, and as such he had to learn meteorology rather quickly, as he had no experience within the field. I remember him reading books on the subject at the motel after work, and into the evening. As I was only seven years old at the time, this did not seem strange to me at all. Then as soon as we were in the new house, we never dropped him off or picked him up again, as he began carpooling with a bunch of other lab employees who lived in the same subdivision. 

The Las Vegas public school system was far advanced from the Albuquerque public schools I had been in. We had moved shortly into my second grade year, and I can recall the tasks in the Albuquerque school math section. There I had been counting cowboys in a cartoon like picture, and determining whether the corral was open, or closed. In the new school I now attended they were teaching multiplication tables, and even some simple division. This was anything but simple to me however, and I found I was far behind the other kids. Fortunately the teacher, Mrs. Keever, was patient and more than understanding. She personally invested the time after class to help me catch up. Though I was almost held back; her persistence paid off, and I was cleared for third grade.

The summer of ’69 I sat with my mother and brother one fine clear morning in late July, and watched with awe on a small portable black and white TV; as Neil Armstrong amazed and mystified the whole world by simply taking a step. The broadcast was Live from the Moon directly to Earth, and it was strange that the astronauts moved as if someone had hit the fast forward button on a