“Breaking the Veil with Erik Bell?”
For some reason, the name carries the smell of antiseptic and a feeling of happiness, which is odd, because those two things definitely clash in my mind. I hate hospitals. They scare the hell out of me. But the hospital stay was a good memory for Bruno, Kelsey’s homeless patient. To him, it was almost like a vacation, the first time in four years that he’d felt completely secure. He didn’t like the needles, but the food was decent enough, the bed was warm and clean, and for part of the time, he had a TV remote all to himself. Kelsey even came to the hospital for his appointment, and she brought him a big tin of cookies. He was sad when they released him, even though the hospital stay had been enough to ensure him a guaranteed spot in a shelter until the worst of the winter weather passed. The shelter would be warm and he’d have food, but who knew when he’d get the TV remote again.
“Yeah,” Aaron says. “That’s it. You’re familiar with the show?”
“Sort of. One of my hitchers. Bruno. He watched every episode. Are you saying Bell got his ability from this same program at Meade?”
“No . . . he was a touring psychic years before that. But in that Guardian article, Magda—that’s Bell’s wife—claimed that Python Diagnostic hired him to work with them around 2002. Promised to boost his natural abilities. She said she thought they actually did boost his psychic powers—that’s about the time he started doing the Breaking the Veil show. But he had a nervous breakdown and quit in 2008. Only did theater performances, mostly in Great Britain, after that. He disappeared after a show in Edinburgh in 2017. His wife said someone contacted him, asking about his time with Python, the week before he vanished.”
“And that’s the only mention you could find of Python? Or anything that might be related?”
“I’ve searched government records, all the major news organizations. Every credible source out there.”
I have the feeling I’m going to regret it, but I grab the laptop out of Deo’s bag. “Then maybe we need to start rummaging around in some of the not-so-credible sources. If there was a government program operating for what—five years?—at Fort Meade and it had anything to do with psychic abilities, there’s no way that would have escaped the notice of the conspiracy nuts. Bruno . . . he’s the hitcher I mentioned? He spent a lot of time at the public library, combing through the conspiracy websites. And even though he was more into alien abductions, some of these sites have a little bit of everything.”
“Okay . . .” He sounds dubious.
“Hey, I’m not saying we’re going to find unassailable facts on these sites. But occasionally, there’s a nugget of truth hidden inside the layers of crazy.”
I don’t add that those nuggets are really rare, and usually only tiny nuggets with so much crazy around them that it’s hard to find the true bits. I’m tired of sitting here doing nothing, and it can’t hurt to see what’s out there.
I type in allglobalconspiracies.com. That was Bruno’s one-stop shop for everything wack. I’m relieved to see that the site is still active. It actually looks almost identical to the memory I have.
Aaron sits next to me. “Well. Somebody likes bright colors.”
“Yeah. Web design skills seem to be sorely lacking among conspiracy theorists. This particular site is sort of a hub. It’s been around almost as long as there’s been an internet. It doesn’t have a search engine, but it is well organized . . . well, it was back when Bruno was using it.”
“When did he . . .”
“Die? I was six, so . . . early 2008. Bruno was a nice guy, he just had some weird ideas.”
And he liked to take stuff that didn’t belong to him, but I decide Aaron doesn’t really need to know that part. Bruno did his best to make amends—his entire reason for being in my head was to make sure that Kelsey and a few other people got their things back.
I scroll through the index. “Does psychological operations sound like the right category to you?”
He nods and I click the link. It takes us to a site called EyeOnPsyops. A big, garish eye stares out at me from the top of the page, and the article’s title reads Exclusive!!! U.S. General Admits Role in 9/11 Planning. That headline alone is bad enough, but it’s on a solid black background page, and Exclusive!!! is coded in bright red. The word actually blinks.
“This one’s from 2014,” Aaron says. “And it seems to be the most recent. Before that, new stuff was being added every couple of days. The site admin must have found a new obsession.”