LUNATIX

The Misawa Air Base seems a silent place to Bonnie Bell. Flanked by her father (USAF Chaplain Christian Bell, six feet tall, strawberry blonde hair, sky blue eyes, in his late fifties) and her mother (Koto Bell, five feet tall, black hair, brown big eyes, in her mid forties) Bonnie walks her denim shorts, displays her hanging out pockets and swings her tank top left and right with the nervousness of a curious rabbit.

“Do you have jets on this base?”

“We do.”

“Does anyone fly them? The air feels quite calm around, don’t you think?”

“The jets? Not any more.”

“Papa! Are you angry with me?”

“Oh, my little pumpkin, why should I be? I love you. I respect what you do. I am eager to hear what brings you here.”

“Chris, give her some space. Let her rest after the tiring trip. Will you?”

“No, mom. It’s all right. Think that I’m even more anxious to hear Papa answering my questions. Because I’ve got many.”

“You’ll excuse me then. I’ll go get dinner ready.” Koto hugs her daughter twice, slightly bows to her husband, jogs to the parking lot where she mounts her purple pink Kawasaki.

“Keep your mom clear of this stuff, Bonnie, will you?”

“Yes, Papa. I wish to ask you about...”

“I know what you wish. All your questions have slipped through my mind ever since we’ve hugged first, at the airport. But let me take you to the tower.”

“Mmm, Papa, do I have clearance for the tower?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Since when?”

“Ten minutes ago. I’ve got you cleared after reading your mind. Need to show you something. Follow me.”

The Chaplain sprints ahead, leaving his daughter way behind.

“Oh, Papa, you are surpassing me. What do they feed you here?”

“I don’t eat their food. You know that. But this athletic performance is something new, even to me, and has nothing to do with eating. Pardon my manners. I still have a hard time controlling myself.” Speaks Christian after waiting a minute for Bonnie to catch up.

“You can read my mind, you run faster than me, you have something to show me, to surprise me,” pants Bonnie hands on her knees, “and I don’t know how to impress you, how to make you proud of me, Papa.”

“Oh, my little Bonnie, I love you.” Hugging session. “I am very proud of you.” Hugging session. “I have always been.” Hugging session. “Don’t fret about your Russian hacker and nudist lifestyle. I was upset enough when you told me, five years ago, mainly because you hadn’t told me earlier, because you kept me in the dark for a couple of years.”

Pausing, he looks at her. She stares at the concrete tiles, balancing on her heels.

“Bonnie, it took your grandpa three decades to accept your mom. I did it to him. You did it to me. Looks like a pattern, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. Really.”

The tower gives a better perspective over the planes. “What are these, Blackbirds? Not sure, Papa, tell me.”

“Black Mantas, Bonnie. That, at ten o’clock, is an SR-71 Blackbird, a museum piece.”

“You mean, you mean UFO’s. These are triangular UFO’s. Saw them many times on Youtube.”

“Actually, they are identified flying objects. TR-11 Black Manta is no jetplane but an electromagnetogravific aircraft.”

“That’s where from you get the EMG acronym for the sensors, the scanners, the sub-ma-ri... Pyotr! Pyotr?! What are you doing here??”

Pyotr Pavlovich Pavlov, former Captain First Rank of the Russian Navy, taps the airman operating the computer he was staring at, turns around and steps ahead. “Bonnie! How do you do?”

“Well, how do I do?? Asks the master con artist of all Russias. Papa, do you know that Pyotr is a Kremlin shill? He turned rogue so he could skip the chain of command and the rules of engagement. He is not a pirate but a privateer. His allegedly black market bought submarine is...”

“...Putin’s privateer. One of the many. I know, pumpkin. I know everything he knows. And he knows that I know.”

“I-I... do not understand. Russia and America are rivals. You, Papa, did everything in your powers to prevent me from moving to Sakhalin, to live with Boris. I don’t understand!”

“Calm down, Bonnie. Things change, especially at the surface. Like fashion: the same fabric, the same stitches and the same colours, yet a new design every year, a couple of permutations and voilà! We keep the consumers interested.”

“The Russian Federation is part of this USAP for a long time,” intervenes Pyotr. “Some rumors go back in time to the regime of Andropov, to the fiercest years of the Cold War.”

“USAP, not USAF? Anyway, nothing makes sense to me.”

“USAP stands for Unacknowledged Special Advanced Project.”

“Guess that I watched a documentary few years ago. Not sure that I can remember the exact words: ‘Unacknowledged - We are not alone. We never were.’ You made those UFO’s. The military!”

The men in the tower stop their business to grin at the hysteria shouted out loud by this little lady.

“Some of them. Not all of them,” Christian tries to calm his daughter. “The show must go on, my dear.”

“The show?, Papa? You call this a show?” Bonnie shakes his hands off of her shoulders and steps back in horror. “You are all buccaneers, like Pyotr. A mafia! Oh my God.”

“The military industrial complex is a business bigger than any state, more powerful than any government.” Confides Pyotr. “This is the show, Bonnie, the real show!”

“Right. The business of war. Wondering why some extraterrestrials are disgusted and horrified by us? Look no further. Crime is the best business on this planet.”

The men in the tower begin to move around, to mind their own business. The Chaplain nods to the ex-Captain. They both invite the little lady downstairs, to a private room.

“Look, Bonnie,” begins Christian, “your hippie opinions have been noted. We expected this type of reaction from your part.”

“We staged this little show up there,” continues Pyotr, “for you and for the record.”

“You mean?”

“I mean that you haven’t got to be a hippie and a nudist to love peace, to hate war.”

“Do you hate war?”

“More than you can imagine.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Really? Then please explain why the US and the USSR were joining forces in black ops as the Cold War heated up to a maximum during the early 1980′s? If we hated each other half as much as the politicians make you believe, then mutual destruction would have had happened decades ago. It is a dangerous game we are playing here, and the politicians are not the ones holding all the cards.” Enchanted by his own words, Pyotr slides a blade of Wrigley’s Spearmint from his breast pocket. “Want some gum?”

“Yes, please. Thank you.”

“Sir?”

“No, thanks. Bonnie! We need your help.”

“You don’t say, Papa. Come on. What can I do?”

“Call Boris and tell him that his hottest dreams will come true.”

“When?”

“Within the hour.”

“When should I call Boris?”

“Now.”

Bonnie calls Boris. “My darling, Papa told me to call you and to tell you that your dreams, no!, your hottest dreams will come true. Boris! Bo? Can you hear me?”

“Think I lost the signal. Papa, how can I lose the signal in the middle of the tower at Misawa Air Base? What is going on?”

“Come with me.”

Bonnie and Christian follow Pyotr down the stairs, out to the platform where a Black Manta lands in majestic silence. Boris descends out of its belly, looks around disoriented, sees Bonnie waving and runs like mad towards her.

“Bonnie, Bonnie, what is going on? A minute ago you called me, the signal dropped, some kind of light flashed around me and now here I am. Is this Misawa?”

“Indeed it is. Welcome to Japan!”

“Sir. Nice to meet you, Sir. You look taller in real life.”

“Ey Boris Berlinsky!, idi syuda, syuda. You’re the winner, Boris. I knew it.”

“Pyotr Pavlovich? Eto ty? Can’t believe my eyes and my ears. You at Misawa. What the heck?”

“Yes, Boris, what the heck? So I said to myself and I’m not sure that I’m done asking.” Bonnie extends an acrimonious rant. “They just abducted you in a false, man made, UFO. This means that all of your conspiracy theories have been proven correct.”

“A dream came true. More coming. Boris, Bonnie, follow us please. We’ll get you some clothes on the way.”

Did you wonder why a two story tower needs an elevator? For safely hauling the hardware up and down, yes, but also for reaching the twenty story bunker below.

“Lady, Gentlemen, have your seats. Coffee?”

“Chai, green.”

“Black, think I need a strong one. Pyotr, what the heck, man? Explain it to me. I deserve to know.”

“You do, Boris, you do. I can fly a submarine. Go figure!” Holding the kettle in one hand, an empty cup in the other, Pyotr looks stupid. And sounds crazy.

“We all agreed that you’re capable of everything. This is a fact. Now you tell us that you’re a lunatic.”

“Believe it or not, Boris, I am, in a way. Because I’ve taken my Akula to Luna. Thirty-five... no!, thirty-six times.”

“An Akula can fly?”

“Dive and fly, yes.”

“Why didn’t it dawn on me, so far? Any details you can provide. If these are not classified.”

“You are sitting at this table. Nothing is classified any more. The Americans reversed engineered some UFO aggregates. We’ve captured some prototypes from the Germans, in Poland, at the end of World War Two. An underground industry developed around these new electromagnetogravific reactors. Admiral Vladimir Nikolayevich Chernavin proposed an innovative idea: why not equip our submarines with these experimental engines?”

“Brilliant! Why didn’t I see this coming?”

“You mean?”

“While analysing your data, I kept asking myself how on earth should an EMG scanner look like? How could you gather so many parameters about each molecule of water? If you did that, what else could you do? This kind of questions.”

“You won the Great Prize when understanding that all nuclear weapons on the surface of the Earth have been disabled. I have disseminated the same data to thousands of hackers. You’re the best.”

“Wow. Guess that the Great Prize is having us here, at this table. But let me tell you that Bonnie has actually inspired me.”

“We know.”

“Really? Were you spying on us all the time? Papa?! Should I get sick?”

“No, my little pumpkin. Only after Boris has activated the key, the access key provided by Yuri. It’s protocol.”

“Pirates with protocols. Oh my.”

“Why do you need me here, Pyotr?”

“I’ve got some exaFLOPs to spare if you don’t mind.”

“How many?”

“About a hundred, give or take. But you can upscale if needed.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Boys! Boris, he is not kidding you. Move on!”

“Okay, where’s the console?”

“Hold on, Boris,” chimes in the Chaplain, “before you immerse yourself in computer code, I wish to brief you about the greater picture. It is instrumental for you to have...”

“Sorry to interrupt, Sir, but I would rather work with a virgin mind. The results may be surprisingly better.”

“Virgin mind?, you say. Tell me that you had zero expectations when you first entered this data base. Can you?”

“No Sir, I cannot tell you that.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Portals. Passage gates to other dimensions. Deep in the Pacific ocean.”

“Did this prejudice helped you to obtain the Great Prize?”

“No Sir, I suppose that it rather blinded me, slowing me down.”

“Will you be so kind to hear my briefing now?”

“Yes Sir. Sorry Sir.”

“Very well then. I will not talk science and technology with you, because I am a man of Faith. What I know, however, is that all these EMG devices rely on Uranian physics. A nature that is fixing on absolutes, a nature in which everything is constant but speed, although it intimately flows out of a constant tact. Historically, we’ve got Newtonian physics and furthermore the research of Faraday, Maxwell, Birkeland, Tesla, to name a few. All these men of science described aspects pertaining to Uranian physics. The aether, or the underlying lattice of the universe, the quasi-instantaneous movement of electrons, the soliton, provide a reliable conglomerate of currents that our engines, our aggregates, our modules can use in order to move across galaxies or to provide quasi endless energy. Consider Psalm 148:4 as context.”

“Psa 148:4

Praise ye Him, heavens of heavens, And ye waters that are above the heavens.”

“Consider the waters that are above the heavens. The meta-ocean in which circles are squared and spheres are cubed, in which quasi-all existence has been immersed.”

“Oh, Papa, I love listening to you. Let me guess, the next thing you’re going to tell is that one can drown in these waters, another one can swim in them, but we may jump above them. Like dolphins do.”

“I-...” Christian sketches a response to his daughter, cut out short by her passionate Russian friend.

“All my hottest dreams come true. Double that, Sir!”

“I will, I will. Three years ago, a new kid arrived to claim the block. This is no metaphor. Because Astarte, a giant female extraterrestrial biological entity, has been sent to our planet in order to give birth to Saturn, the new kid. As opposed to Uranian physics, Saturnian physics extensively relies on perception and imagination, on psychology and theoretical realities. Historically, Einstein’s relativity theory (where the only constant is the speed of light, the rest being relative), Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Schrödinger’s wave equation, are central essays to describe Saturnian physics. Of course that, unlike the Uranian nature of creation, the Saturnian nature accepts, and even operates, on psychology and almost every philosophical utopia one can imagine. Simply put: has anyone ever imagined this-or-that?; then this-or-that has already gained a fragment of existence only for having been imagined by a certain mind.”

“This is total nonsense.”

“Seems to me as well. But rubbish is not necessarily evil. Emotional?, yes. Hectic, definitely! Risky?, all the time. Saturn has informed me, along with several others, that he has altered what you were calling the harmonic oscillator, that he has hacked the neutron escape ratio of such a manner that has rendered all nuclear warheads, all nuclear reactors, useless.”

“Sir, allow me a few auxiliary questions. Saturn has altered the laws of nature, to what extent?”

“Twenty-four kilometers below sea level and two hundred and fifty-six kilometers above. I can only trust the former statement but I already checked the latter,” answers Pyotr.

“And how did you do that? Exploding a bomb on the Moon?”

“God forbid! You don’t wish to tinker with Luna! I glided a submarine in space, one with hybrid power: EMG and nuclear; and the nuclear reactor warmed up after crossing the aforementioned distance above sea level.”

“What is Saturn’s agenda?”

“An era of peace and prosperity for humanity. A new Golden Age.”

“What should I look for in the data base?”

“See the universe like an ocean where each particle is connected to its neighboring particles; where streams and waves bring the water to life and guide life by the ways of water. Look for opportunities, Boris.”

So much physics and philosophy, boring and irksome, sends Bonnie to boil a new kettle of water. To kill time, she goes to look for the latest Twitter trends on her handheld device. She reads the following.

“Kirisuto 2024, Hazuki 6 - Emperor Naruhito’s Speech: 79 years after Hiroshima. [link] - August 6”

She drops the kettle, runs back to the table room, shouts “You must see this!” and pushes the tweet up on the wall screen. Then taps the link. Ensues the speech of the Emperor of Japan.

“Today, we commemorate seventy-nine years after the first atomic bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima. The age of nuclear warfare has begun here and now it ends on our sacred land. I have been given the honour to announce that our entire planet has been relieved of the spectre of nuclear warfare.”

“Atomic and nuclear weapons have been completely eradicated from the face of the Earth.”

“In acknowledgment of this miraculous occurrence, at my own discretion, I hereby determine the new era in Japan, gengō Kirisuto 2024 - effective today. To which the Cabinet is...” The video breaks and the screen turns blank.

Everyone in the room is listening to silence, until Pyotr slides a new blade of Wrigley’s Spearmint out of his pocket.

“Give me one.” Cuts Bonnie short over his shoulder. “What date is today?”

“June 15.” Answers Boris.

“And I’ve got a tweet from August 6. From the future.”

“There’s no future, pumpkin, just the present, the here and now.”

“Then how do you explain this video, Papa?”

“I’d rather not. Instead, I tell you that now we need to focus on achieving the best premises for the rest of it. We are making our own future.”

“Especially when dealing with a hacker that is better than me. Definitely!” Figures Boris, in all modesty.