mind.
After that April visit by Penny and Ryan, he had begun listening to Bob Fellows, and he had started watching television in a way neither he nor Ruth had ever done in the past. He had been curious about what messages were turning teachers into people who made Ruth roll her eyes and change the subject, what kind of messages made Ryan imply that his own parents were ripe for crazy talk.
That constant drumbeat of conspiracy theories, hate talk, fear-mongering had been too much for Ruth to bear, and if he had been driving her to distraction by inactivity, his new activity had made her doubt his sanity. He was finding more and more of the same kind of madness on the Internet, but his computer usage was all stored on his personal external drive he had named X, and their household remained peaceful. After a month he stopped listening to Fellowes, and he stopped watching the television shows she despised. He had seen and heard enough, and now he simply tuned in occasionally to see if they were still doing it. They were, louder all the time.
In the kitchen he whistled softly as he put potatoes on to start cooking. Although his dinners were simple comfort food that he remembered from his childhood, Ruth was appreciative and, to the surprise of both of them, something had been rekindled that had been dormant. Her eyes sparkled, and to his eyes she looked younger and prettier than she had just a few months earlier.
Not long after the visit by Penny and Ryan, he had begun to mull over the question Ryan had raised: what allegation would be crazy enough to make his parents draw the line? At first Mel doubted there could be such an allegation, since the ones being voiced appeared to be more than enough to have that effect already.
A thunderstorm in July supplied an answer to the question. Both he and Ruth came awake when thunder shook the house, followed almost instantly by lightning. He patted Ruth’s shoulder and got up. “I’ll see to windows. Go back to sleep.” She murmured something, pulled her pillow over her head and remained in bed.
Standing at a window watching lightning flare repeatedly, it came to him. Lights in the sky. UFOs. But it had to be different from the many UFO sightings and visitations reported and debunked over decades. He began to smile, then chuckled, and by the time the storm blew over, he had decided to do a little research and then launch his own conspiracy theory and put the idiots to the test.
First, he needed some cover, a reason for his new-found cheerfulness. The house had a partitioned-off section of the basement where a previous owner had set up a wood-working shop that would serve his purpose. He bought a few tools, wood, several books with plans for home projects, shellac, varnish, paints, thinners, and a box of surgical gloves.
Everything he purchased during that period was simply to account for the gloves. Ruth never questioned any of it, and even expressed her satisfaction to Penny that finally he had latched onto a hobby.
He invented a whistle blower from a never-to-be-named top secret government agency, and named him Cyrus Cornwall. By September Cyrus was ready to write his first letters, to be accompanied by several highly redacted, top-secret government memos and other documents.
—I am employed in a unit of (redacted). Our unit is composed of three tiers of investigators: Tier 1 receives a copy of every sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) reported in the United States. Most of these sightings are readily dismissed as natural phenomena: commercial and private aircraft, armed forces craft, planets, swamp gas, reflections of lights on clouds, and so on. A number of them are sent to Tier 2 for further investigation by operatives who go into the field to question observers, examine alleged landing sites, and otherwise seek to prove or disprove the authenticity of the sighting. Among the reports escalated to Tier 2 are some that are sealed and immediately escalated to Tier
After that April visit by Penny and Ryan, he had begun listening to Bob Fellows, and he had started watching television in a way neither he nor Ruth had ever done in the past. He had been curious about what messages were turning teachers into people who made Ruth roll her eyes and change the subject, what kind of messages made Ryan imply that his own parents were ripe for crazy talk.
That constant drumbeat of conspiracy theories, hate talk, fear-mongering had been too much for Ruth to bear, and if he had been driving her to distraction by inactivity, his new activity had made her doubt his sanity. He was finding more and more of the same kind of madness on the Internet, but his computer usage was all stored on his personal external drive he had named X, and their household remained peaceful. After a month he stopped listening to Fellowes, and he stopped watching the television shows she despised. He had seen and heard enough, and now he simply tuned in occasionally to see if they were still doing it. They were, louder all the time.
In the kitchen he whistled softly as he put potatoes on to start cooking. Although his dinners were simple comfort food that he remembered from his childhood, Ruth was appreciative and, to the surprise of both of them, something had been rekindled that had been dormant. Her eyes sparkled, and to his eyes she looked younger and prettier than she had just a few months earlier.
Not long after the visit by Penny and Ryan, he had begun to mull over the question Ryan had raised: what allegation would be crazy enough to make his parents draw the line? At first Mel doubted there could be such an allegation, since the ones being voiced appeared to be more than enough to have that effect already.
A thunderstorm in July supplied an answer to the question. Both he and Ruth came awake when thunder shook the house, followed almost instantly by lightning. He patted Ruth’s shoulder and got up. “I’ll see to windows. Go back to sleep.” She murmured something, pulled her pillow over her head and remained in bed.
Standing at a window watching lightning flare repeatedly, it came to him. Lights in the sky. UFOs. But it had to be different from the many UFO sightings and visitations reported and debunked over decades. He began to smile, then chuckled, and by the time the storm blew over, he had decided to do a little research and then launch his own conspiracy theory and put the idiots to the test.
First, he needed some cover, a reason for his new-found cheerfulness. The house had a partitioned-off section of the basement where a previous owner had set up a wood-working shop that would serve his purpose. He bought a few tools, wood, several books with plans for home projects, shellac, varnish, paints, thinners, and a box of surgical gloves.
Everything he purchased during that period was simply to account for the gloves. Ruth never questioned any of it, and even expressed her satisfaction to Penny that finally he had latched onto a hobby.
He invented a whistle blower from a never-to-be-named top secret government agency, and named him Cyrus Cornwall. By September Cyrus was ready to write his first letters, to be accompanied by several highly redacted, top-secret government memos and other documents.
—I am employed in a unit of (redacted). Our unit is composed of three tiers of investigators: Tier 1 receives a copy of every sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) reported in the United States. Most of these sightings are readily dismissed as natural phenomena: commercial and private aircraft, armed forces craft, planets, swamp gas, reflections of lights on clouds, and so on. A number of them are sent to Tier 2 for further investigation by operatives who go into the field to question observers, examine alleged landing sites, and otherwise seek to prove or disprove the authenticity of the sighting. Among the reports escalated to Tier 2 are some that are sealed and immediately escalated to Tier
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