Vignette: It Did Happen Here
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
By Roshita Narasimhan.
On the Sea Lion Press Forums, we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly).
The theme for the 90th contest was The Nineties
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Washington DC, the American Republic, 1994
The statue stood proudly as rope enveloped it. Tall, bronze, dignified. The figure still raised his hand much as a preacher would, making an imaginary speech to an imaginary crowd. His face frozen in a smile.
The image of the 33rd President of the United States and the founder of the Corporate and State Patriotic Party came crashing down as the ropes were pulled. His once imposing figure now flat on the ground as protestors cheered.
No great loss, thought Svetlana Migunovna. Most of these statues were not from the man's original reign of terror in the 30's. President Ripper had them constructed in the 60's to legitimize his coup and tie his legacy to the ‘martyr’ Buzz rather than the man’s suspect, unstable, or bureaucratic successors.
The crowd gathered to destroy the pedestal of the statue, as Svetlana waited for her source to arrive. Ironic, given the tyrant's own death at the hands of Red Army partisans in France. Beaten to death.
Pravda had all new bureaus across the former United States. Her assignment was in DC, which was undergoing a cultural revival following the collapse of the USA. Posters littered the area, particularly ones for upcoming election between the socialist President Bulworth and his liberal opponent, a former dissident economist named Bartlett.
Finally, she turned to see an unassuming man in a trenchcoat, wearing a dull brown suit underneath with a black tie. He was vaguely handsome, with long brown hair and dark eyes. He had a sort of aloofness to him
“Miss Migunova?”
“Mister X.” She shook his hand.
“There’s a bar we could go to, away from… all this.” The man gestured to the crowd cheering the collapse of the statue.
The two walked to Tom Joad’s, one of the new food collectives to have sprung up in the wake of the Second American Revolution. Named for the famed labor activist who rose to become one of the resistance leaders during the Second Civil War.
The two navigated the many young people who had congregated in the bar before finding a spot near the end, next to the kitchen, to begin their interview. Lana grabbed her recording device and notepad.
“Before I turn this device on, can you hand me the folder?”
The man reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled a massive, bulky folder out. He slid it towards her.
“This is everything I could get out of the archives. When McKay disbanded the Minute Men, it was a lot easier to ‘get’ information and items from the Bureau archives. I have spent the past few years grabbing as many of these as I could. A couple of ex-Minute Men had the same idea.”
“Were they stealing the same folders?”
“There were a few. Most just took the ‘less’ secret files for their own means. Some to settle personal grudges, some brought them out to California and Texas.”
“Texan President Ewing said he had evidence that the Corpos were deliberately trying to stack the state corporations with ‘labor interests’ to offset free markets. Do you think he got that idea from those files?”
He shrugged. “Doubt it. But he definitely has some of them. Don’t know what exactly he’s doing with them. A lot of those files are now missing from the archive.”
“So we’ve heard. The KGB has spent several years trying to retrieve some of them floating around. Nothing of the magnitude that you have alleged.”
“I hear they have some of their own folders.”
Lana chuckled.
“I’ll get to that later when I get back to Moscow. For now.”
She turned on the recording device, and began.
--
S: Interview, American whistleblower [REDACTED], aka “Mister X”, former agent of the Security Bureau of the United States, dated August 18th, 1994.
First and foremost, what was ‘Project Atlas’”
X: It began with the crash at Roswell. It was right after the Civil War, the nation was exhausted, and then, this spacecraft came into the picture.
S: How did they react?
X: They originally thought it was a new advanced Soviet attack system. Some new aircraft they had built after they had conquered Europe. That is, until the bodies were recovered.
S: Bodies.
X: Two bodies, completely charred, but definitely not human. Had these very thin bodies and very huge heads.
S: The Army didn’t even try to come up with a cover story. They just covered up the entire incident and pretended it didn’t happen. But rumors abounded.
X: They just took the ship and hid it in the Nevada desert. It was never declassified, even during “Transparency.” But they got spooked. President Haik saw this as an all-new national security threat. Something far greater than “negro separatism” or “Judeo-Bolshevik infiltration”. He would order the formation of a new department, one that could properly handle the threat of extraterrestrials.
S: And he specifically made it separate from the Minute Men?
X: He felt they would not handle these matters with the delicacy that it perhaps deserved. They were good at breaking up communist meetings at Hudson [University], but not at investigating less Earthly matters. Plus, their more aggressive methods might lead people to discovering the existence of aliens.
S: Which they believed the Soviets were also repressing.
X: We learned later on of the Los and Lenoid incidents, but we obviously didn’t know at the time.
S: The department was called “Majestic-12”?
X: No, no, technically it was the “Special Operations Division”, but it was led by the Majestic-12, twelve prominent scientists, businessmen, corpo leaders, who could guide the mission.
S: The then-Vice President Ted Scott was its first leader?
X: It became the tradition for the Vice-President to lead them. Right up until they were disbanded. Vice President Ryan apparently attempted to use SOD resources in his coup attempt against Stillson.
S: There wasn’t a whole lot of action until the Gort incident in Moscow.
X: When that happened, at least then the Soviets and Europeans knew about the existence of aliens. We, of course, couldn’t have any aliens on our soil.
S: Any particular reason?
X: I guess ideological. Who is more foreign than someone not of this Earth? Also, the aliens were all attacking communists, so obviously, on some cosmological level, communism must’ve the main cause.
S: I remember the flying saucer lodged in St. Basil’s Cathedral.
X: While we were sort of separate from the Minute Men, we basically filled the same function. Any extraterrestrial visitor, any strange being, we arrested and interned at Area 51.
S: They interned an entire town in California that was taken over by…
X: Plant pods, yes. We couldn’t risk an infestation spreading.
S: You also spoke of giant ants, giant octopi, a giant bird in Mexico, some mysterious poisonous snow in Argentina, shapeshifters and infiltrators, Aubrey junior, so-called Martians.
X: [Chuckles] A lot of Martians.
S: And abductees, like Private Pilgrim?
X: He claimed to have been abducted by these 4 dimensional aliens who kept him in the zoo. One of the more far-fetched stories we’ve heard. Although he was one of the disappearees, so it was probably true.
S: Disappearees?
X: Some of the figures in the prison would just disappear. Vanish. Sometimes they would have technology to bypass our own.
S: You were also involved with a salvaging operation with Corpo leader Jonas Cord.
X: We had this longstanding partnership with Miskatonic University, and we provided samples for them if we could. When we discovered that spacecraft at the bottom of the Pacific, we got Cord to bankroll an expedition. This fellow Pitt figured out this new method of raising objects from the bottom of the sea. We also found these strange substances littered on top of it, adamantium, byzanium, carvorite.
S: Did the arrival of the Soviet-British superhero team “the People’s Science Cooperative” affect your work?
X: They interfered a lot, especially during our interventions in San Theodoros and Courteguay, but the kinds of threats they faced were very different from what we did. We weren’t interning Solaris the Living Ocean.
[.....]
S: You mentioned earlier, the coup put an end to the SOD. Were there any signs beforehand?
X: When those cosmonauts landed on the moon and discovered the monolith, it became clear that we had really fallen behind in the sciences. We had driven away any intellectuals that opposed our worldview. Now, they were building tech for the Soviets.
S: Does this have to do with the fact that your Soviet counterparts [Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry] had been boosting the Soviet technological edge using the tech taken from close encounters?
X: I’d imagine part of that was the reason. Simply put, the work got harder, and harder to handle. More incidents that couldn’t be contained. Larger UFOs that could make music, Giant God Robots, journalists and dissidents like Kulchak and Trout revealing more and more in the underground press. Goldman began making deals with….
S: Goldman?
X: Sorry, an agent who oversaw our bionic soldiers program.
S: Alright.
X: He began making alliances with alien empires. In exchange for their tech, to do what the Soviets were doing with their institute.
S: And this all came out during the coup?
X: Ryan didn’t have much of an edge with his cadre in the Army, so he attempted to use the tech Goldman and Majestic-12 were assembling to overcome his opposition. Unfortunately, he never got to that point, and after Stillson’s death, McKay disbanded all of the security apparatus, especially the Minutemen, and Majestic-12 was dissolved.
S: What about the technology they’re hoarding?
X: Already being sold off to pay for our states. Already, I hear OGAS has been “upgraded” thanks to some of the processors we sent over.
S: Why did you decided now to allow the files to be shared.
[Silence for a moment]
X: Because it’s not right, keeping those aliens prisoner still after so long. We now have this more equitable society, and we’re keeping them from sharing their amazing insights with the world. And people deserve to know the truth is…
[Tape ends.]