From: ztsindi@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (The Independents - SUNY Buffalo)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: Maximum Effective Range
Date: 30 Jul 92 05:16:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41


	In the dead salt plains of Nevada are several areas used
exclusively by the United States Government. The Military to be
specific. 
	Most of these forsaken places are called, "Test Ranges" and/or
identified by number/letter combonations on obscure military 
topographic maps. S-51/A was one of these.
	The Government likes to keep secrets. One of the ways they
like to do this is bury any information about a project inside 
enourmous mountains of data that only the most muckracking reporter
searching for a pulitzer prize would sift through, much like the 
little boy digging in the horse shit looking for a pony.
	Barbra Sorlai felt that thats just what she was digging in,
a load of shit.
	"Want some of my tasty Maxwell House?"
	Barbara looked up from the desk in her cubicle and saw
her editor walk over with a giant styrofoam cup filled with the
evil liquid she had sworn off two weeks ago.
	"You know there are people who would be very upset to see
you using styrofoam", she said, turning in the chair which complained
loudly at having to do so.
	"They'd be even more upset to see all the disposable diapers
I buy."
	"You don't have a baby."
	"You could be my baby."
	"Are you Sexually Harassing me?"
	"I haven't offered you a coke, have I?"
	"No, just coffee, which is worth a kick in the groin about 
now. Are you here to chit-chat or overwork me some more?"
	"Neither", under his arm he had a manilla folder, he handed
it to Barbara, "look at this".
	Barbara opened it up and saw topographic maps like the ones
she had been examining for the last three weeks. Except these maps
had red lines drawn on them and two areas circled in red and the
military nine digit co-ordinates written next to them.
	"Whats this?"
	"A clue. If this stuff is genuine, and I think it might be,
then the Government is doing something very strange and very 
dangerous."
	"Like what? Bioweapons? Nuclear? Chemical? Is that why those
little towns where cleared out?"
	"None of the above. The maps and papers in that folder 
intimate that the NSA is doing experiments with space and time."
	"Like the Philedelphia Experiment?"
	"Yup."
	"Ed, thats bullshit! I thought this was the 'Times' not the
'Enquirer'!"
	"Believe me, I'll feel pretty funny printing it, but if its
true its true. Those maps and that affadavit are from an ex Army
Colnel. He says he's been there. Look it over. At least its a lead."
	Barbara said, "Yeah, a lead", with a glance at the reams of
paper and maps overflowing her desk.
	Ed shot her with his finger and thumb and went away.
	The maps matched a sector of the test range on one of her
maps called S-51. The circled areas on the new maps where nothing but points
on a field of salt according to her official GPO maps. The areas
indicated where also prone to flooding during the winter months.
	The affadavit accussed the NSA of using uninformed soldiers
in experiments that often resulted in madness, catatonia or 
disapearence. They where being used as human guinea pigs. They
did not take an oath to do do that but to 'protect and defend
the constitution of the United States'. Thats why the writer
(Colnel R.H. Boitschenko) felt compelled to leak what was
going on to the press. 
	"Very angry statement", she thought.
	The Colnel also stated that the towns of Hopewell, Four 
Points, and Salt City had not been, 'evacuated' but accidently 
subjected to the process that the NSA was experimenting with.
The only thing he knew about that process was that it was
called 'Phase Shifting'.
	The article went on about how the Army would be used as
the patsy for this when they where not responsible and in fact
had individual soldiers suffering for no good reason because
of the experiments.
	Barbara rubbed her eyes under her glasses. It has been
a long day. She dropped the folder in the big file drawer of her
desk, then she hesitated and pulled it back out. She lock up her
desk and said goodbye to the few people left in the office. Ed's
light was off, he'd probably went home right after giving her the
folder. She wanted a drink. She had bought a bottle of Seagrams
the previous week. It was good to have something to look foward too.
	As she passed Ed's office she heard a shuffling noise and
paused.
	"Ed? Ed you in there?", she rattled the knob but the door
was locked.
	Shrugging she walked down the hall to the elevators.
	Six hours later the hispanic woman who cleaned the offices
on that floor would find Ed slumped forward on his desk...dead.