Altered Children

Two additional tours had been scheduled, both on Friday, August fourteenth. Three German children were given a tour of the Federal Chancellery. Its offices had been relocated in 1999 from Bonn to Willy Brand Strasse in Berlin. Nearby was the beautiful Tiergarten, one of the largest urban parks in the world. After touring the Chancellery, before heading home, they stood for a short time alongside the Spandauer-Schiffahrtskanal and watched tour boats, pleasure craft and barges drifting lazily on the canal.

Five Japanese children, including Yuriko, toured the prime minister’s dazzling official residence: the Kantei, in Tokyo. With hundreds of solar panels providing all its electricity, it was one of the most modern and environmentally clean government buildings in the world.

The children and others participating on those tours reached the same conclusions as had the Americans: if government officials were to be informed, it would have to be a country’s most senior leader.

At five in the afternoon, Mountain Time, on Thursday, Sarah Alonso sat in her Sandy, Utah home and gazed out the window at the nearby ten-thousand-foot peaks of the Wasatch Mountains. She thought of Anna Burgio, and fretted that Anna’s father wanted her to influence his boss to promote him. At a quarter past five, she decided to elicit help from Yuriko, Jason and Peter in trying to persuade Anna not to accede to her father’s unethical request. It was 4:23 p.m. in Port Townsend, Washington and 8:23 a.m. on Friday in Tokyo when Sarah contacted them. Yuriko immediately agreed to assist Sarah.

“Jase, Pete, please help us,” Sarah begged him.

“Yes, we really need you,” Yuriko added.

“We’re both too . . . too . . . oh, hell, I don’t know,” Peter said.

“What’s wrong . . . Jase, can’t you tell me?” Yuriko asked.

“No, not now,” Jason replied. “I want to, but I can’t right now. It’ll all come out Sunday.”

“Okay Jase,” Yuriko said. “It’s all right.”

Jason could feel the disappointment emanating from Yuriko’s mind.

Sarah wasn’t ready to give up. “Both of you have talked with Anna about her dad before. She trusts you, and you know she needs our help.”

Finally, Jason and a more reluctant Peter agreed to assist them. The children touched Anna’s mind shortly after she had finished eating dinner and was alone in her room studying.

“Have you done anything yet to help your father get a promotion,” Sarah inquired.

“No, I’ve managed to keep putting him off.”

“I saw where you participated in the Ethics Forum on our website,” Peter said. “We know you agree it would be wrong to influence your father’s promotion by telepathic hypnosis of his boss. Is your father making it real hard for you?”

“Yes, he sure is.”

“Do you need help with your dad?” Yuriko asked.

“Uh-huh; I really do. I don’t like to see him so unhappy, and he keeps nagging me to make his boss give him a promotion.”

Anna was sitting at her desk. Her homework assignment was displayed on the computer screen in front of her. She sighed heavily. “The thing is, his boss would have to fire or demote someone else, . . . and even if my dad got the promotion . . . I know he’s not ready for it. He’d just make a mess and be more miserable than he is now.”

“Should we try to change Mr. Burgio’s mind about a promotion?”, Sarah asked.

“It’s easy to make someone forget or do something,” Yuriko replied, “but difficult to change a person’s emotions and personal goals—and we could harm him!”

Jason had been quietly listening to the conversation and mulling over Anna’s quandary. “Keep resisting, Anna. I’ll talk to Dr. Murphy about it. Maybe he can help.”

“How can he help?” Anna wanted to know.

“Maybe your father can get a job with the foundation,” Peter said enthusiastically.

Peter’s eagerness was contagious, and Jason jumped in. “Or maybe Dr. Murphy can figure out a way to talk to your dad and help him to accept what he has now.”

“Yes, or even Dr. Pacheco since she works with you,” Sarah added.

Jason and Peter promised to speak to Dennis that evening, for which Anna was very grateful. Everyone except Jason and Yuriko broke contact. Anna got back to her homework with renewed energy. Sarah helped her mother prepare dinner. For five minutes, Peter reviewed comments from people who were beta testing the space navigation simulation for their computer space war game. Then he shut down his PC, went downstairs and turned on the television to watch one of the old Laurel and Hardy comedies they had in their home theater library.

“I’m entering a piano competition at the end of the month,” Yuriko told Jason. “It’s extremely exciting.”

“Great news,” Jason said. “I hope you win. Wish I could be there. Hear you play again.”

“I wish you could too. Maybe we’ll be moving to Washington soon.” Yuriko’s heart raced at the thought of seeing Jason again.

Jason blushed as he pictured Yuriko when they had exchanged gifts following her recent performance at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. “I hope so.”

“Jason! Oh my. I like you, you know.”

“Me too, Yuriko.”

After four or five minutes of small talk, they too disengaged. Moments passed silently as Yuriko and Jason each sat still, separately contemplating their brief encounter as if side by side, though separated by thousands of miles. Jason then joined his brother watching the movie.

Dinner completed, Jason and Peter called Dennis about Anna’s problem; he agreed it would be best to have Karen Pacheco talk to Anna’s parents. Dennis and Karen would work out the best approach in dealing with this situation and try to stop Anna’s father from pressuring her.

Mary Roberts had posted information concerning their encounter with Alain Lovett on the children’s website. Kathy Haller added her information regarding the clash they’d had with Little-C.

Bhagwant Kumara in India and Rafael Lopez in Costa Rica had entered descriptions of their initial contacts with Jagathi Servai in India and Eduardo Velêz in Brazil, respectively, who had made them and other children very uneasy. Bhagwant and Rafael noted that all the children felt these children were not as innocent as they appeared.

Neither Jason nor Peter had had a decent sleep that week. Thursday night was no better. Their early Friday awakening and recent troubling activities left them enervated. So, that night, using meditation to relax, they were asleep before nine and slept until seven Saturday morning. Jason and Peter spent most of the day in virtually constant communication with other children.

The biggest issue on the children’s mind just then was developing a formal statement of ethical principles by which everybody would agree to abide, and what to do about a child who violated them. By Saturday evening, a preliminary statement had been prepared, posted on the children’s website and e-mailed to Ramaraju Gupta. He, in turn, posted it on the foundation’s primary website and passed it to the members of the new Ethics Committee.

The week leading up to the August 23 conference had been extremely hectic for everyone and very worrisome for the children. It was also one of their most productive weeks. Separately and in teams, their activities produced new information and recommendations they posted on their websites and distributed by e-mail.

The parents of Tom Wallace, Dione Anderson and Luci Ischer had called the FBI agent assigned to their individual cases two or three times during the week, as they had each of the previous two weeks, ostensibly to find out what was happening in the investigation of their children’s disappearances.

In reality, however, they bravely—if nervously—made those contacts to convince the FBI of their continued worry over their children. Any agitation they demonstrated during the earlier calls had been due to discomfort over the lies they had to tell as much as the anger they felt regarding the incident itself. The agents consistently interpreted it strictly as worry and frustration.

By the fourth or fifth call, the parents had become so used to talking to the FBI they struggled to keep from appearing nonchalant. The agents accepted the parents’ growing calmness as grieving parents becoming resolved to the inevitable, acceptance being the third stage of grief after denial and anger. As expected, the investigations had uncovered no new information, evidence, or suspects. The probe into Donald Locke’s disappearance was similarly stymied.

The agent in Virginia working on Tom Wallace’s alleged kidnapping had reported to his superiors his nagging suspicion the four recent cases were connected. He said what really bothered him was their similarity and timing, the lack of a ransom demand, and the fact that these disappearances were the only ones in the country recorded in an exceedingly narrow time period. He was assigned to lead the investigations, with the other agents reporting to him, and instructed to find any connection that might exist.

The initial round of publicity wound down and the media began to leave the parents alone. Reporters finally stopped requesting information from the FBI’s press office.

In the previous four years, many of the children had learned how to strengthen their paranormal abilities through exercise and practice. They shared their techniques on a more or less informal basis with other children, and recently with Karen Pacheco. She was working closely with Zahra Fakherdin and three other children whose interest in parapsychology paralleled her own. Together, they completed a structured paranormal skills enhancement program, and made it available to the other psychologists and psychiatrists who worked with altered children.

Dr. Pacheco had posted the program on the foundation’s website so all the children could adopt a common approach. The children regularly informed Zahra or Karen about what worked best and what proved inefficient. Karen had kept the program updated on the website with the latest revisions. She also advised Zahra and the other three children concerning their university level psychology studies.

FACE was incorporated in Switzerland and established its primary bank account there. Six committees had been formed and hard at work since the August ninth conference. They were folded into the appropriate divisions and departments. The August 16 conference was canceled because the workload kept almost everyone too busy to participate.

The Centers Selection Committee reviewed the proposed locations for the boarding schools and administrative centers. Of the twenty-three locations suggested, the committee narrowed the field to five and prepared a recommendation for discussion at the August twenty-third conference.

The Relocation Committee worked on the logistical problems associated with relocating children and families, but little could be accomplished until consensus was reach on their locations and a timeline to construct and staff them.

Scheduling and coordinating the tours of government offices and visits with legislators and executives of various agencies had been assigned to the Governmental Affairs Committee. Three more tours had been conducted before the end of the week. This committee was also tasked to prepare a plan to inform government leaders, whom the children had identified as trustworthy, about the children’s paranormal abilities and the alien’s Operation Pacify.

By now, the foundation was convinced American authorities at the highest levels were already aware of the aliens’ existence. This belief was due to information the three children had obtained from the mind of the alien admiral before their escape and death.

That view was corroborated by reports published over many years about bodies recovered from sites of UFO crashes near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947; Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in December 1965; and Hamilton, Ohio in 1977. Reports of other crashes in the U.S. and other countries had been circulating for decades. Mack Wallace had done an excellent job separating fact from fiction in these rumors.

Three other committees had been formed and were hard at work. The Bylaws Committee had made good progress in establishing procedures for the governance of FACE. Fundraising was in full swing and the committee polled the foundation members to identify the potential and actual sources of money and services they could provide to the foundation. The Operations Committee consisted of members who were active in the military, police or intelligence agencies or had such experience. They were just beginning to put together plans for dealing with the aliens and protecting the children.

The focus of the conference on August 23 was the previous two week’s events. As usual, most people participated—more than six hundred fifty. The deaths of the four children had frightened everyone, and scared the parents of six children so much they had dropped out of the collaborative efforts and the conferences. Three other families had withdrawn because they felt unable to deal with the complexities of the issues facing them. No amount of persuasion could change their minds. Their children, however, continued participating without their parents’ knowledge. Frightened though they may have been, other parents did what was requested—and expected—of them.

The members approved the foundation’s divisions and departments tentatively established on August 9. Names of people already active on committees or who had applied for various full time paid positions within the foundation were presented.

Henri’s statistical analysis provided the clues the children needed to help them search for altered children who’d not yet been found.

A summary of the reports on Henry “Little-C” Charles, Alain Lovett, Jagathi Servai, and Eduardo Velêz was reviewed. Dennis noted that the Charles and Lovett children had already acted unethically or criminally to the point of causing harm, but that nothing beyond feelings of unease had arisen concerning the other two.

Though everyone was relieved Alain Lovett had not been killed or injured, most participants expressed concern over how closely the children came to killing. The members directed the foundation’s psychotherapists to examine all the children to determine their emotional stability, identify their unique psychological needs, and prepare a plan to counsel whoever required it.

The children were permitted to monitor, more or less at random, Alain, Henry, Jagathi and Eduardo, but to take action only if necessary to prevent a serious illegal act. The consensus they reached was that a serious illegal act would involve the theft or destruction of valuable property or violence in which somebody could be injured or killed.

Acceptable action would be to frighten and threaten the offender with dire consequences if they persisted in their harmful behavior. If necessary, the children should make the problem child sleep unless that would place him or her in danger. Police should be notified anonymously whenever a problem child is committing or preparing to commit a serious illegal act.

The members discussed and approved a Statement of Ethical Principles. Two key principles were immediately identified. First and foremost, paranormal abilities should not be used to take unfair advantage of others. The second principle, that nobody should read another person’s mind without permission, was hotly debated because of the exceptions which had to be considered.

They decided it would be acceptable to read someone’s mind without their permission if the person was: a problem child being monitored, anyone who was thought to be close to becoming violent, someone important to the altered children’s safety whose reliability and trustworthiness were being examined, or an alien associated with Operation Pacify. The statement specified that an altered child should not divulge information obtained if it compromised national security or proved to be an unnecessary invasion of privacy.

After much argument, they added a fundamental principle that no violent action should be taken against anybody caught breaking the law unless approved by the Ethics Committee or absolutely no other alternative existed to protect a likely victim from imminent injury or death.

Rama presented the report on children, such as Masanja, who needed to be rescued from a desperate situation. The Relocation Committee was instructed to determine if a child and his or her family needing rescue could wait until a boarding school was ready to receive them. If not, the committee was authorized to take appropriate action to affect the rescue. Regarding the children whose parents had stopped participating, nothing would be done for now other than maintaining contact with their altered children.

When they finished deliberating the merits of each of the five boarding school locations recommended by the Centers Selection Committee, the members chose three. Each of their locations had moderate climates, were somewhat isolated, but within a two-hour drive of outstanding cultural, educational and medical institutions.

The first one would also be the operational headquarters of FACE and be situated at a site on Discovery Bay ten miles south of Port Townsend, Washington in the United States. The quaint Victorian town of nearly twelve thousand people on the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula was forty miles from Bremerton and a short ferry ride from there to Seattle.

Another school would be located just outside Mohrane, Morocco, a town of about sixteen thousand on the Sebou River near the Atlantic Ocean on the route between the cities of Rabat—Morocco’s capital—and Tangier. It was roughly forty miles north of Rabat and fifteen miles upriver of the city of Kenitra.

The last school would be built near the small town of Morisset, New South Wales, Australia, adjacent to the west shore of Lake Macquarie. Morisset was forty-five miles north of Sydney and twenty or so south of Newcastle.

Jason Starkey summarized the children’s views and suggestions concerning how to deal with the abductions. Nobody disagreed with the children’s assessment that nothing could be done to stop the abductions until a way was found to disable the tracking device implanted into their brains and their parents’ brains.

Until Jason mentioned it, however, few people had considered the possibility of the aliens using the “tumor” to kill a person. This caused everybody a great deal of concern and they approved the children’s request to fund a project to disable the device.

Kamal Fakherdin of Morocco said he and two other children with strong interests in bioengineering and nanotechnology had already been working together to address the problem. A professor at Rabat’s Université Mohammed V was assisting him in an independent study project, though he was unaware of the project’s real purpose.

Claire Watson of Australia reported that she and Bhagwant Kumara, in India, were working with a bioengineer and a neurology professor at Macquarie University in North Ryde, a half-hour north of downtown Sydney. She added that both teams were coordinating their efforts.

Kamal made it clear they welcomed any assistance the foundation could provide. Left unsaid was the growing attachment between Kamal and Claire.

The children suggested they play along with the abductions for now and use the experience to learn as much as they could about the aliens. Since nothing could be done to stop the abductions, this was adopted without dissent. Their last proposal was to go on the offensive.

The first step was to ensure the tracking devices could be disabled and the boarding schools were ready for operation. In step two, all the devices would be disabled during a period of twenty-four hours, except those implanted in a small group of children within one Common Abduction Zone.

Step three involved some risk; let the children in this zone be abducted and taken aboard the spacecraft. Once on board, they would take over the crew, hijack the craft, and fly it to a secret location where it could be studied and the crew interrogated.

This three-step plan generated a lot of comments, but no decision. It was submitted to the Operations Committee for an in-depth analysis and their recommendation.

The last item they covered was the tours of government executive offices and what, if anything, they should tell the authorities. The children’s opinion that only the president of the United States and the leaders of two or three additional countries should be enlightened was discussed only briefly. They’d been at it for several hours. People were tired and some felt beleaguered. Also, an argument was developing over what countries’ leaders they should inform.

Almost no time was devoted to the proposal by Gerald Madden, the assistant secretary of the treasury, to arrange a meeting with the president. They agreed to wait until January 2027, after the presidential inauguration, before making contact. For now, they would arrange more tours but not meet with other government officials. They tabled further discussion on this issue for two weeks.

The meeting adjourned. Families generally followed their normal Sunday activities. Feeling exhilarated, some took a short time to gather their thoughts and then immersed themselves in tasks to which they were committed. Others went to church, prayed for the children and the strength to do their parts and not fall short. Most needed a few hours to relax and escape the problems which often seemed to overwhelm them.

Regardless how they spent the remainder of their Sunday, everyone felt a deep awareness of being on the verge of events crucial to the future of humanity.