A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact (18 page)

But it is in the area of information technology that the most dramatic (and for our purposes, relevant) changes are likely to take place. For here, we are on the verge of entering a completely new world in which computing power achieves capabilities we could not dream of just a few years ago. Within the next few years, we are likely to see widespread use of solid state drives, making computers and portable electronics devices lighter, stronger, faster, quieter, and requiring less power. There will be breakthroughs in the areas of holography and virtual reality, enabling people to immerse themselves within realistic artificial environments. We should also expect improvements in the ability of the human brain to interface with the World Wide Web via direct interface with computers or even implants.

Most profound will be the improvements in artificial intelligence and quantum computing. According to computer and AI experts such as Ray Kurzweil, by around 2020 we can expect to see computers embedded everywhere throughout our world, even more so than today. Virtual reality environments will be more common, as will “computer assistants.” By then, it is expected that the computational power of a leading edge consumer brand computer will be equal to the computational power of one human brain. That does not mean that your computer will necessarily be “smarter” than you are. But it does mean it will possess an awesome computational and “thinking” ability that current computers lack (excepting computers within the classified world, where this ability may have already been achieved).

By 2030, it is possible that a typical computer will have the processing power of 1,000 human brains. The human brain itself may well be mostly “decoded”—that is, digitized somehow. And if it is digitized, it can be uploaded. There will probably be direct neural pathways between human and machine, implants of all sorts to enhance human abilities, and computers that claim to be “conscious.”

Within such a period of dramatic technological change, can we really expect that our ability to create forward motion on the matter of UFO Disclosure will not somehow be enhanced? Consider how portable electronic devices—smart phones—have changed the way we communicate within the short span of five years. We are all communicating with each other in ways that were unforeseen just a few years ago.

Indeed, the world of the next 20 years promises a transformation of global civilization. It may also see the beginnings of a transformation of the human species itself via developments in biotechnology. All of this will happen whether or not the Others are acknowledged.

The Breakaway Group may not have considered this, but they should. Even though they have had a head start thanks to exclusive access to alien technology, the rest of us will soon have the capabilities necessary to find the Others, definitively, without anyone’s help.

The Others

Finally, however unlikely it seems, there is one trigger that trumps all others, and brings Disclosure instantly and openly.

No one really knows how these “Others” think in the most general terms, much less how they think about the prospect of revealing themselves to us. It may be that they do not think about it much. They have not landed in a public space and announced their presence, like the extraterrestrials from
The Day the Earth Stood Still
. Nor have they been entirely successful at remaining hidden. Indeed, they have been seen by millions of people.

If the Others have anything to do with maintaining the status quo, then they are not apt to announce their presence in any new way. However, it may be that the idea of slow acclimation is not a human one, but theirs. Perhaps their craft do not really crash accidentally. Could it be that, although they could disguise themselves from our radar and our eyes, they choose not to? Maybe one day they will decide to end the debate here on Earth once and for all.

Facing the Light

Throughout the years, this discussion had come up among the human secrecy elite, the Breakaway Group. Always, the rule of secrecy prevailed. On this occasion, the deadlock could well go on for some time, except for one thing:
The world already understands what is going on
.

There are many routes by which Disclosure may arrive. Some undoubtedly will merge with others, and what starts as a trickle will become a river,
then a flood. Once the process starts, there will be a free-for-all by many people and institutions to reach the truth first.

When that moment comes, the people of the world will offer less resistance than prior generations would have. By now, the public has seen it all. Our collective capacity for shock is lower than at any time in history. We have lived through the death of Soviet communism, impeachments, natural disasters, rogue nuclear states, 9/11, destructive wars fought on false pretenses, disputed elections, collapsing economies, and an African-American in the White House.

The old choice between the truth and the lie will vanish. The accumulation of knowledge by ordinary people, the cracks in the stonewalling response, the expanding consciousness of our planetary condition; all of these together will move the world closer and closer to the tipping point. For the insiders, it will now come down to either getting in front of the issue and leading the discussion, or remaining hidden and letting it slip from their grasp. Such a result will be unacceptable for the secret-keepers.

So, at the end of the debate, members may discuss the state of planning for Disclosure. As far back as the purported November 1952 Eisenhower Briefing Memo, it was mentioned that “contingency plan MJ-1949-04P/78 (Top Secret Eyes Only) should be held in continued readiness should the need to make a public pronouncement present itself.”

Whatever the authenticity of that document, there can be no doubt that a contingency plan of some sort has been periodically dusted off and updated throughout the years. Studies would have been commissioned, polls taken. At the meeting, this data will be available, and expert testimony will be read.

When the next vote is taken, the ayes will have it in a super-majority. As looks are traded around the room, the chairman realizes the enormity of what has taken place. He asks, “Well, who’s going to tell the president?”

A.D. +1

Today on the eve of the one year anniversary of Disclosure, commonly referred to now as AD1, we begin a series of “Where Were You?” articles, prepared by our staff, detailing the moments immediately before the news broke and immediately after. Some of these people are famous, and were involved directly in the events of that day. Many more were just average people, like the Franklin family of this first in a series
.

One Family’s Story

Looking back, Bob and Jennifer Franklin remember AD1 for how normal it felt when it started. With three children that spanned junior high school to junior college ages, the breakfast table was typically chaotic for a Friday. Rides were being arranged, plans for movies and sleepovers were in progress, dress codes were being discussed, and reports were waiting to be printed until a new ink cartridge could be found. Bob had a presentation to go over with the CFO that was three days overdue and he was scared and frustrated when he left without kissing Jennifer goodbye. She barely noticed because today was the last day she was working with her partner who was retiring from the police force and she was in charge of the cake. The kids were left to sort out their own schedules for themselves. But they would see each other again in a couple of days for the family’s regular Sunday dinner. That much was for sure.

At lunch, Jennifer’s partner got the news that his retirement party had been canceled, or at least postponed. Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security had just raised the threat level to orange. She paid for lunch, got her partner a slice of pie with a candle, and gave him a long hug. Both had been approved for overtime until a department re-evaluation following the president’s speech. The cake would have to wait.

The CFO made Bob wait in his outer office for 45 minutes, where he watched CNBC’s coverage of the stock market fluctuations over all the rumors. Bombing Iran was emerging as the consensus for the announcement, but Bob thought it was stupid beyond belief to telegraph your punch like that. No wonder the markets were freaking out and had just closed down 237 points.

In the hour before the president was to speak, it became clear that other world leaders had reserved similar times to also speak to their own people. When the president soon stood at that familiar lectern and uttered the phrase “intelligent non-human species,” both Bob and his boss uttered the same expletive. Bob instantly dialed Jennifer and got through. “Are you seeing this?” She answered that the word was the governor was going to call for martial law and that Bob should leave the office immediately and head back home. She would call the kids right away and call him with their locations, providing she could get through what was sure to be a monumental overload of the cell tower infrastructure.

That night Jennifer did something she had never had to do before in her law enforcement career, which was to discharge her service revolver. She fired it into the air to stop a crowd of looters at Stark and Whitman, and three were arrested. It took twice as long as normal to book them at the station, not so much because of the extra perps that were getting fingerprinted, but because all the intake personnel could not stop watching the TV—and neither could the perps. When Jennifer got off her shift at three in the morning and came home, she found Bob still watching with both younger kids under his arms asleep like they used to do when they were in grade school. As she filled the coffee maker with water, she looked up at the stars and thought she saw something, but she wasn’t sure.

Chapter 4
Threat Analysis: Who Goes There and What Do They Want?

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition
of a higher order than our own is one
that soothes all children,
and many writers
.

—Joan Didion

If the Breakaway Group decides to disclose, it will need cover. Its members will need to appear lawful, not as renegade outlaws. They will need the President of the United States to make the announcement, backed by the flags and affectations of civilian power. They will need to co-opt his trappings of power, and he will need to let them do so, in order to maintain the appearance of relevance.

So one unfortunate soul will trek to the Oval Office to brief the man who is supposed to be in charge. This conversation will not be comfortable for either party.

Only yesterday, the so-called Leader of the Free World had no “need-to-know.” That will change now. The president offers coffee, his executive secretary closes the doors, and the small talk ends. Now begins the briefing as we might imagine it:

Mister President, please accept our apologies for you having to receive this briefing under the current circumstances, but when I lay out the content, I believe you’ll appreciate why this had to be the case.

We can start here: the so-called Roswell crash was a surveillance craft of some kind, and it was not a solitary event. Over time, we have recovered several working vehicles of different manufacture, extensive crash wreckage, and multiple bodies, several of which were able to survive in our custody for years. We have had some, but far from complete, success at reverse-engineering the key technologies, and even less success at communicating with these survivors, which may have psychic abilities.

They have stated they come from another planetary system, however, we are not yet certain this is the actual truth. Additionally, there appear to be multiple species of these visitors, each with different technology and possible motives. Some of these beings have shown an interest in our own nuclear technology. We urge you to refer to them as alien or extraterrestrial, although know the matter is under study.