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Declassified: Operation Sleeping Beauty |
| Written by David Neve | |
| Wednesday, 06 August 2008 | |
Sergeant Garret Simmons sat in the reception room across from the secretary and recounted his day. Somewhere and sometime in the last twenty-four hours, he managed to do or say something that landed him in this room. He really didn't know whose room it was, but the person on the other side of the door must be of some importance. The fact that a pair of heavily armed Military Police officers escorted Garret here didn't make him feel any better about the situation. He looked around the front office and could see no clues to uncover the mystery person behind the door. The room was as bland and uninviting as an office could possibly be. The secretary's desk was no exception. There was a nameplate, identifying the secretary as Alice Johnson, an intercom, and a telephone. All attempts to start a conversation with the secretary fell flat on the floor. Every question was answered with, "He will be ready for you in a few minutes. Please, just relax." Minutes passed like hours, leaving Garret feeling like he was back in high school, sitting outside the door to the principal's office. Finally the secretary's intercom buzzed, and without stopping to acknowledge it, she looked up at Garret, "Sergeant Johnson will see you now." Garret immediately jumped to his feet and headed for the door. "Sergeant?" he thought to himself. Garret walked through the door and was greeted by an office as sparsely decorated as the reception room. The room contained one desk with a man occupying its matching chair, one telephone, one window, an intercom, and one empty chair. On the wall was the only decoration he had spotted since entering the building. It was a plaque with the words "Cogito, ergo sum" - smashed in half, with each half hung on separate nails. "Simmons?" "Yes, um... sir?" this man was no Sergeant. His bearing said Colonel or better. "Sergeant Johnson, just call me Johnson or Sarge," he pointed to the vacant seat, "Pull up a chair." Garret sat down in the seat across from the man and looked at the broken plaque. The man at the desk followed his gaze, "Just a little reminder that there's plenty of idiots walking the earth." "Sir, Sergeant Johnson - didn't that quote come from the Discourse On Method, written by..." "Rene Descartes, yes, as a matter of fact it did. Now explain it to your chair." "I'm sorry?" "Your chair does not think, yet it still is - is it not?" "Yes, but..." "I put that up on the wall to remind me that just because a person can think, it doesn't mean he is thinking, or will be willing to think in the future. It also doesn't mean that if he is thinking, that he is thinking of anything remotely relevant to what he should be thinking. So whether a person is, or is not, according to whether he "thinks" or "thinks not" - doesn't really mean anything, does it? The statement is utterly without value, beyond philosophical fodder designed to entertain and enthrall mindless followers." "I hadn't though about it that way, but outside of the philosophy of the times, I guess it is rather meaningless." "Good! Now that we've plowed over that hump, lets discuss why you are here." Sergeant Johnson got up from his chair, walked around to the front of the desk, and sat down facing Garret, "Today, one of the men in my unit overheard you speaking to another soldier regarding a conspiracy theory, I believe?" "No Sir...no Sarge, not a conspiracy theory - really just a theory." "Regarding?" "The recent assassinations over the last five or six years." "Perhaps you would like to get me up to date." Garret was visibly shaken by the request. This "sergeant", was clearly no sergeant, and Garret had apparently come way too close in his estimates regarding the forced government changes that were occurring globally. He was just grateful that he never spoke beyond vague comments when talking to others about his thoughts. Now that he was sitting in the hot seat, he knew obscure answers and vague comments weren't going to fly with this man. "Okay. I studied the last five assassinations and compiled a list of common points. First, the same method of assassination was used in every instance. Everybody in the building was rendered unconscious - the leaders and a few random people simply never woke back up. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that while it is nearly impossible to poison a country's leader, it is relatively easy to ‘poison' everybody else in his immediate area. There were traces of an odorless and tasteless gas in all of the locations, so I figured that the immediate general population was administered the antidote to the lethal side of the toxin, and the leadership was not. I personally, would have put it in the water source. Most political leaders in third world nations don't trust their own water sources, or their citizens, and are always seen with bottled water. First immunize the non-targets and then gas the entire building or compound - only those selected, or in this case not selected, fall over dead. Second, I noticed that only helicopters were used in the operations. What is most unique about this is that no two helicopters were the same. Each of the helicopters was representative of a different NATO country's main fighting machine. So no one nation would appear to be responsible based on machine identification. Third, no ground force personnel have ever been captured alive. If there was any chance of capture, they capsuled themselves out. My guess would be cyanide. All recovered individuals were always identified as nationals from different countries. An example would be the last pair recovered in the Asia "sleepover"; one Venezuelan national and one Swedish national." Sergeant Johnson was amazed at the data that Garret had accumulated with only the world media feeding him information, "So, what conclusion have you drawn? Who do you believe to be responsible?" This was the scariest part of the interview, but he had been honest so far, and he was too deep to back out now, "This is our work." "How did you draw that conclusion?" "I studied photographs and found another rather uncommon common denominator. All of the helicopters had a front loaded antenna mounted on their weapons platforms. An antenna that is unique to our military's "thru wall" radar systems. Three helicopters acting in unison could literally map a building and all of the personnel inside in three dimensions. We're the only nation with that technology." "Interesting. Very observant." "It's my job Sir - Sarge, I'm a forward observer." Sergeant Johnson returned to his seat and sat quietly for a few moments before speaking again, "Have you figured out the why of it?" "I think I have, but to be honest, I'm tired of speculating. Any chance you could just clue me in?" "In a nutshell, over the period of the last five decades, our country has made huge investments in people that we thought would make better leaders than the ones in power. Money, manpower, and time were invested; only to find that a few years later, we would end up in a conflict with the very person we installed. We ended up fighting against our own weapons and training, it didn't make sense. So, it was concluded that no matter how deep we investigated the person we chose to support, it ultimately was a roll of the dice. Consequently, it was decided that rather than invest and roll the dice..." Garret interrupted at that point, "We just bypass the investment, and just roll the dice. Take out the current corrupt leader, and see who fills the void." "Exactly. Except that the new leader has a little more incentive to do a good job." "He may go to sleep and not wake up?" "Yes. We call the operation Sleeping Beauty." Now came the part that Garret had feared since the conversation started, "I know too much." "True. You figured out everything else simply enough, I'm sure you must know I can't just let you walk out of here. Now that you know for certain, how do you feel about the process?" "I've been thinking about that since I first suspected what was happening. In New York City alone this year, somewhere around 500 people were murdered - most of them innocent. What's one more death in this world, if it could make things better?" Sergeant Johnson got up from the desk and returned to his chair, "Well then, I believe this concludes our interview." As he finished the sentence, two armed men entered the room and stood on either side of Garret. Garret looked at each of them then looked back at Sergeant Johnson, "What happens now?" Sergeant Johnson gestured at the two Military Policemen, "These gentlemen will escort you to your new quarters, and I will be in contact with you in the very near future. Thank you for your time Sergeant Simmons". He then picked up the phone on his intercom and Garret could hear the intercom in the secretary's office chirp in response. As Garret was being led out of the room he couldn't help but smile when he noticed that the Military Policemen escorting him were both named Johnson. The smile vanished quickly though; as he was passing through the doorway between the two offices, he overheard both sides of the conversation between the Sergeant and his secretary. "The usual sir?" "No let's do it a little differently, maybe a train wreck this time. I don't want the body to be recognizable." "I'll take care of it sir." The secretary hung up the phone just as Garret was leaving her office. She smiled at Garret as he turned her way, "You have a nice day sir." "Thank you, Miss Johnson. You do the same." Later that afternoon as Garret was sitting in his new "quarters" he turned on the television and caught the five o'clock news. "There was an unfortunate accident on Third and Main today when a truck and a train collided. It appears the driver of the vehicle, identified as Sergeant Garret Simmons, was trying to start his truck after it stopped on the tracks, when an oncoming train slammed into his vehicle. There were no eye witnesses to the accident." Within moments, there was a quick knock and then the door was opened from outside. A soldier poked his head into the room, "Sergeant Johnson?" Garret looked up at the soldier, hesitated for a moment and then smiled, "Yes, can I help you?" "We've packed everything from your former billet. Your transportation is waiting, are you ready sir?" Copyright 2008 David Neve |
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