Chapter 1: Awakening

"It's a good thing the public doesn't really know what we do at Groom Lake," the colonel stated.

"Yeah I know what you mean, Colonel," replied Corporal Steiner. "It's amazing how many aliens have visited Earth."

"Well, let's get these alien artifacts packed up and ready for shipping. I'm putting you in charge of guarding them until they are loaded on the transport, Corporal."

"Yes, sir; you can count on me, Sir."

Corporal Steiner finished loading the artifacts into the crate and sealed it. 'If these artifacts weren't so important to the military I doubt we would be going to so much trouble to move them to the other end of the base maybe they won't notice one missing, ' thought CPL Steiner to himself.

Ah, here comes the jeep now.

Several years ago an alien spaceship had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. These artifacts were from that ship. They weren't leaving the Air Force base they were just going into a storage facility deep under Groom Lake.

Corporal Al Steiner had been in the Air Force for over 5 years and never made it past the rank of Corporal. He was tired of being a lowly Corporal so he was planning on getting out of the military. Al put his right hand in his pocket and felt of the lone artifact that he had hidden there.

Once the jeep arrived Corporal Steiner helped load it; then stood there with his hand in his pocket watching them drive away. His shift was almost over and he was looking forward to getting off base. He already had a buyer for the thing in his pocket. Al didn't know what it was, what it did or anything about it. Not only was he not privy to the research done on the alien artifacts, but the scientist didn't know either. Nothing they had done to the object had revealed anything about it. Neither x-ray nor ultrasound could penetrate the skin to see what's inside. They tried drills and lasers but nothing worked. It was egg shaped and perfectly smooth polished to a mirror shine but made of some material not found on earth. Without some way to get a sample of the metal they couldn't even determine if it was on our current periodic chart.

Evening came agonizingly slow for Al Steiner. Time always seems to pass slowly when you are waiting anxiously for something. Al knew that everybody had to pass through a detector when exiting Nellis Air Force base. Testing had shown that it couldn't be detected by the advanced metal detectors on the base so he was sure he could get it through them. As a precaution CPL Steiner had taped the artifact to his penis in hopes that it would look like a woody and he wouldn't be strip searched or patted down.

Al disliked the men that guarded Groom Lake. Referred to as "cammo dudes" the guards had the best in surveillance equipment: FLIR (forward looking infrared) equipped Sikorsky MH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters, remote electronic sensors as well as some equipment that was so advanced it could smell the difference between a human and an animal.

The guards knew that Al Steiner was just a lowly Corporal so they wanted to harass him a little. They searched every spot they could inside and out of his bag. Then began talking amongst themselves about something seen on the x-ray scanner and a strip search. CPL Steiner broke out in a cold sweat at the mention of the scanner and a search. He thought for sure that he was busted. He knew that if he was caught he would just disappear, no arrest, no trial just gone. All trace of his existence would be gone, medical records, school records, birth certificate, even his social security number would vanish without a trace. So you can imagine how worried he was about the idea of being strip searched at the guard gate. The people who were stationed or worked at Groom Lake were not permitted to drive to and from the property. All transportation was provided by EG&G and the people were flown to and from a guarded terminal owned by EG&G on the northwest side of McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. Here they board one of a small fleet of unmarked Boeing 737-200s. Using three digit numbers prefixed by the word "Janet" as their callsigns, the 737s fly off North every half hour.

When the guards saw the look on Al's face they laughed, slapped him on the shoulder and said, "We're just messing with you Al; Lighten up, man. After you get your stuff back in your bag you're free to go."

Al Steiner visibly relaxed, repacked his bag and boarded his plane to Las Vegas. He knew that if they had found it he would have been shot. Area 51 was so strict about security that soldiers who broke their clearance were known to just disappear. That's not something Al was looking forward to.

What Corporal Steiner didn't know was that the guards did find the object. If fact, they had been informed about it before Al even got to the guarded terminal. For months Colonel Richmond had suspected that Al was going to try something. In order to control what Corporal Steiner did he had set up the whole thing with the artifacts; making sure to tell Steiner about the one object that could not be tested.

Al sat on the plane running through the events of the day that led up to this point. The testing of the alien objects; some had clearly been weapons; others appeared to be medical instruments, sensors and other stuff. After all of the testing they have done so far they have added eleven different items to the periodic chart; metals, gases, liquids and other non-metallic compounds. It has definitely been worth the trouble.