“Maybe.” I’m doubtful, though. I think it’s more likely the guy joined Bruno in the great beyond. Once they start down the conspiracy path, people don’t tend to move on to video games, or knitting, or whatever. “There’s a lot here. Why don’t you grab your tablet and start at the bottom, while I start from the top?”
We spend the next twenty minutes skimming to see if there’s anything of interest. Some of the links go to an outside site, and it’s about fifty-fifty whether the link is dead. Luckily, a lot of the articles can be dismissed by the title alone, but about every third title is vague enough that I click to see if it’s at all relevant.
And yes, I also click on a few that mention aliens. I know it’s garbage, but I’ve got memories of almost every X-Files episode. Bruno had the first six seasons on VHS before he lost his job and his apartment.
Aaron nudges me with his elbow. “Hey, I may have something.”
I quickly close an article on Area 52 at Dugway Proving Ground and go back to the main index.
“Scroll down to the section that says Psychoactive Weapons. There at the bottom. Two articles on something they call the Delphi Project. I haven’t finished reading the first one, but it mentions Fort Meade, and also the Stargate Project. From the video I showed you, the one that was on Frontline back in 1995?”
“Nightline. Yeah, I remember.”
The first link, dated 2008, reads: 22 Dead or MIA from Top-Secret Delphi Project. Right below it is a link to another article, this one written in 2014: Second Gen Delphi?
“I’ll skim through the second article while you finish the first.”
It begins with a summary of the author’s 2008 article, the one that Aaron is reading. Conspiracy Guy’s source, an unnamed former subject he calls Smith, claims the Delphi Project was located near Aberdeen, Maryland, rather than at Fort Meade. The project emerged “phoenix-like from the ashes of the Stargate Project,” pulling in around fifty individuals who ranked as slightly gifted on an entry test for psychic abilities. Most were from military backgrounds, including the anonymous source, but Mr. Smith claims several civilians, including Erik Bell, were attached to the program as well.
Delphi participants were treated with a drug designed to increase native psychic abilities. And according to Smith, it did—by several orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, the drug had unexpected side effects. Mental instability was the biggest problem. More than a dozen of the participants committed suicide between 1995 and 2002, when the program closed. Four of them took out at least one additional person when they went. This one guy appeared completely okay when he left work one evening in 2001. The next morning, he walked into a Denny’s just north of Baltimore and opened fire, killing three customers and the guy behind the counter before turning the gun on himself.
But the key focus of this article is Smith’s claim that the drug had epigenetic—that is, gene-altering—effects that were transmitted to offspring. Delphi participants were contractually prohibited from reproducing during their time in the program and for six months after it ended, due to a concern that the drug might be carried in the egg or sperm of the test subjects. But Smith says they didn’t factor in the possibility of transgenerational epigenetic impacts—that possibility that the subject’s genes might be altered in ways that would be inherited by all future offspring.
Hundreds of these children have been born during the past decade, not just to the official Delphi participants, but also to parents in the control group, those who didn’t pass the Delphi entrance tests. Some of those offspring are perfectly normal. Others can at least pass for children with emotional or psychiatric problems. Many, however, are wholly unable to function in society. Those children are being rounded up by the corporation that ran Delphi, supposedly for the children’s own welfare.
Smith has simply relayed the facts of the case. It is for others to consider the implications of what he has seen. What is this unnamed organization overseeing and possibly brainwashing these children who have the ability to read minds, predict the future, or even control the actions of others? Is it connected to the US government? Or perhaps to the UN? Are these children being protected or are they being trained by the New World Order as weapons to be used against an unsuspecting populace?
“Whoa, Aaron. You might want to take a look at this—”
I start to hand the laptop to him, but he’s staring at his tablet, mouth open. “You need to see this.” He looks at the laptop in my hands and his mouth twitches nervously. “Okay, yeah. Let’s swap. You can skip the part in the middle where he goes off on a tangent about how the Delphi psychics contacted the Grand Duchess Anastasia while on these drugs. Pretty sure she’d have been dead by then—”
“Never stopped me.”
He pauses for a moment. “That’s . . . true. Very good point. Anyway, start here with the stuff that happened at Bragg.”
He taps the screen and I read: