Love Story: In The Web of Life Read online

  I was incredulous as I scanned the book. Steve Manteo had been an undergraduate at Stanford taking a lower division psychology course. One of their lab sections had an ESP test to see who could perceive large printed numbers taped to the entrances of different buildings on campus while their lab instructor viewed them. For example, at the start of the lab session the instructor, without announcing his destination, would walk to the location of one of the numbers such as at the campus post office. Students are asked to meditate and perceive the number that the instructor viewed. Although few in the lab section had any success in perceiving the numbers, Steve perceived nearly all of them.

  The class did not know that the professor was doing both legitimate academic research and searching for candidates for a classified government sponsored research program at SRI, the Stanford Research Institute. Soon, Steve was interviewed by a researcher at SRI and asked whether he would like a part-time job. Since Steve was working his way through school, he accepted the offer. He filled out an employment form that he thought required an unusual amount of detail on his personal history and family background. A few weeks later he was called to a SRI office where he signed security pledge forms and was briefed on a highly classified psychic spy program under development for the CIA. He worked part-time until he graduated in architecture, after which he went to work for one of the CIA's classified contractors, known as Power Industry Consultants, or PIC.

  He worked on the CIA–sponsored program for twenty years, spending hours each day perceiving assigned cold-war psychic targets, the location and activity of people of interest, or the nature of activities in buildings or factories in the Soviet Union. In the book, he was only able to give two examples of his work, which had somehow escaped the classification process, to describe the process.

  I closed the book as I heard the jet's flaps go down in preparation for landing.

  Dore closed her laptop and said, "Amazing stuff isn't it. The psychic spy program went on for twenty years, and nobody ever heard of it. The contractor Steve worked for had annual incremental funding from the CIA, which meant every year someone had to justify the program's effectiveness for it to continue. Our company funds startups. We positively don't continue ventures that aren't panning out. Someone high in the Government must have valued the program."

  I nodded and looked out the window as we descended to the Palo Alto airport, trying not to reveal my skepticism about this whole turn of events in my life. I was still mulling over what I had just read.

  I saw another black Towne Car waiting by the hangar.

  Colson Associates was in a modern but unassuming building, on a slight rise, in an office park surrounded by trees that were leaving-out with spring foliage. One was in bloom with bright pink flowers. The building was finished in brown stained wood and had many windows.

  An attractive receptionist sitting at a modern glass-topped table with a laptop looked up and greeted Dore. "Dr. Colson said to send you right in."

  We walked into a glass enclosed room overlooking a large space, which looked like the waiting rooms in the private clubs that many airlines had at airports where for an annual fee, or a first-class ticket, you could wait in luxury. Groups of overstuffed maroon chairs sat among carrels, and small tables filled the room. People sat around the room working on their laptops, or clustered in quiet conversation, or talking on cellphones in semi-enclosed soundproofed cubicles. The color scheme of the room was maroon and grey, obviously the product of an interior design studio. There didn't seem to be any offices. It was a quiet but somehow busy place.

  As we entered the glass room, a man of about fifty years old, medium height, slightly balding, salt and pepper black hair, sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs, tapped a button on his laptop. He closed the lid, looked up, and walked over to us.

  Dore said, "David Willard meet Vince Colson." Vince Colson had a very relaxed demeanor, in a blue and white stripped button-down shirt with no tie, khaki pants, and black, leather-topped running shoes. As we shook hands, I felt as though I was going through a security scanner at the airport. With one piercing look he knew everything about me. I had been 'made' again.

  As we sat down at a glass topped table, Dore asked, "Latte, coffee anyone?"

  "Latte," I said, as Vince nodded "yes."

  Dore texted a message, smiled and said, "We have a 'den mother' who operates the coffee bar at the end of the building for everyone. As you can see, we don't have offices here. Everyone, including Vince and I, spends our days in what we call the 'uncommon area'."

  "Is this the Foundation or the VC building?" I asked.

  "Both," said Vince, "Mostly financial activity takes place here. The accountants keep track of which hat we are wearing by how we log into our laptops. You saw me switch my laptop identity as you came in. Right now, Dore and I are in the Foundation."

  "Could you tell me a little about the Foundation?" I asked.

  "I have enjoyed some business success because of what I, in my younger years, called 'intuition.' It was a skill I sharpened for evaluating ventures and people. With experience, I learned that somehow I could read a lot about people by simply concentrating on them and getting a feeling. I also seemed to be able to get a feeling about the probable future of a venture someone was pitching. As I investigated, I found there were many practitioners in other fields that used 'intuition,' such as a medical doctor who could mentally scan a person's body and sense pathologies. It was kind of my private secret for years.

  "Then, about a decade ago, a fellow appeared at my office, saying he was a former member of a highly classified CIA psychic spy program that had been declassified. He claimed he had recently been making a killing in the silver futures market: a fact I later verified from other sources. I learned about the Remote Sensing CIA spy program and how the ex-spies were offering consulting services in many areas. I have used him over time to assess people and evaluate ventures. I use him to produce 'data points' that I combine with other information: providing me with another dot when I am trying to connect the dots, so to speak.

  "I created the Foundation to further explore the general idea of remote sensing and other forms of unexplainable communication or foreknowledge of events. These ideas did not fit any known scientific paradigm. Most scientists would debunk the idea of any kind of ESP phenomena having any validity.

  I have been funding academic research to get us a reputable scientific paradigm. The Foundation now has the pieces of one.

  "One of our consultants, Steve Manteo, the former participant of the CIA program I referred to, lives in the Sierra Mountains north of Sacramento. Last winter, he was driving home when he came upon a Rocky Butte Sheriff's Department search and rescue operation command post in a roadside diner, coordinating the search for a lost girl. He offered his help to find the girl, and the Sheriff just blew him off. He was about to leave, back in his car, when suddenly he sensed exactly where the girl was, that she was very cold, and crying. He took a copy of his book and a folder of credentials he had in the car, documenting his psychic spy CIA experience, including the picture of him and the President, and the letter of his citation for a Congressional Medal, signed by the Secretary of Defense, and showed it to the Sheriff."

  Dore interrupted, “That is the book I gave you on the plane."

  "Steve insisted in placing an 'X' on the map the Sheriff had spread out on a table and announcing that the 'X' marked the girl's location. The Sheriff got mad and said that the girl couldn't be in that area; they were concentrating the search where they were sure she had gone missing. The Sheriff ordered Steve off the premises and threatened him with arrest.

  "Later that night, they found the girl frozen to death in the place identified by Steve on the map."

  The 'den mother' appeared with the lattes, a bowl of fruit, and a bowl of healthy snack bars. Dore introduced her as though she was part of the family. "David, this is Maureen; she runs this place. David will be here working with us sometimes."

  Maureen
was fiftyish, grey-haired, a little frumpy, wearing a navy blue polo shirt, starched khaki pants, and a glowing smile. I felt like a teenager being served dinner by my mother.

  Maureen smiled and said, "Pleased to meet you, David. Feel free to visit our coffee bar any time, and let me know if you need anything, anytime. That includes office supplies, secretarial support, travel arrangements, or someone to listen to you, or to bounce an idea off."

  "Thank you, Maureen," I said as her smile beamed.

  Dore added, "We try to keep an informal atmosphere around here and it is Maureen's job to inspire informality and enforce the policy."

  Vince sipped his drink and continued, "Our corporate counsel has filed a civil suit on behalf of the parents of the girl against Rocky Butte County. We are seeking damages for negligence, for not using all resources available to prevent the death of the girl. Our counsel suggested we get Bracken and Stevens to handle the case. That is where you come in."

  Dore nodded to Vince and said, "Here is the file on the suit. It is yours from here on out.

  "We have a starting point for you. We have sponsored mathematical research by a LA mathematician, Candice Montgomery, for a couple of years. She has come up with a theory that can explain how ESP works. Now, we are underwriting a movie she has written, which can explain that theory to people with only eight–grade mathematics training."

  "I know her," I answered, "She delivers such interesting and entertaining lectures that students such as history majors who are not registered for her classes, sometimes crowd into her classrooms to hear some of her most famous lectures on subjects such as Statistics. I first heard of her at a professional seminar where she had the audience laughing uproariously while she explained Statistical Optics, not normally a very funny subject."

  "I'll call her to introduce you and tell her to contact you," said Dore.

  "You should go up to visit Steve, get to know him, and visit the area where the girl was lost. Dore, can you let Steve know about that also?" Vince added. "Dore will be your contact at Colson." Vince got up and shook my hand. "I am delighted that you and Bracken and Stevens are handling this for us."

  Dore led the way out of the conference room, down the stairs, to one of the maroon chairs in the large room. She took a seat and motioned for me to sit down. Possibly responding to my puzzled expression, she said, "We all work here in the den." She paused, texted something on her Blackberry, opened her laptop, pressed a key, and paused. "Your return transportation will be here in a few minutes. Are you comfortable with all this?"

  "Yes, but I must say I have only started on this learning curve."

  "Good," she replied. "We wanted a clean slate. But, I must warn you, the first time you discuss this subject with some scientists, you will run into what I call 'The Bigot's Protocol.' They will get incensed, maybe mad, turning red, and lecturing you on how any idea of psychic phenomena is pure gullibility. It is really a hot button with many scientists and other people. Don't be discouraged: they're wrong and we are right. It is like telling a southern tent-revival preacher there is no such thing as Salvation.

  Now if you will excuse me, I am working for the company." She tapped on her laptop.

  I thought briefly about telling her about Uriel but thought better of it. As I opened my book I saw Vince walk into the other end of the room, sit down, and open his laptop.

  In a few minutes, Dore walked me out to a waiting Towne car.

  ****

  As I walked back into my office, Zaza said, "I thought you were going to Palo Alto."

  "I did," I replied. "These people are fast company."

  "Is there going to be an address in Palo Alto where I send flowers to?" Zaza inquired sarcastically.

  "No, this is going to be 100% business."

  "Mr. Bracken said to stop in when you got back." Zaza said. "Shall I check to see whether he is available?"

  "Yes."

  "You can go right now," said Zaza after a brief telephone conversation.

  Phil greeted me with a smile, stood up from his desk, walked to his leather office couch, motioned for me to sit in an adjacent chair, and said, "Tell me about our new client."

  "They are really fast company and seem to be able to make fast decisions. They hold meetings that are three and a half minutes long and make important decisions in a snap."

  Phil smiled and said, "Vince used to be a Navy jet pilot, the top-gun type. He is trained to quickly assess things, make decisions, and take action. If someone fires an antiaircraft missile at you, you don't have time for a staff meeting; you simple begin evasive maneuvers. If you are coming in for a landing, all the gauges on the instrument panel suddenly drop to zero, all the red lights go on, and the flight controls stop working, you hit the eject button. It pays for a jet pilot to be decisive.

  "If he hadn't liked you or failed to have an immediate feeling of confidence in you, he would have fired you on the spot. Congratulations! You have a client."

  "Dore seems to be the same. I don't think she blinked her eyes for the first fifteen minutes of our meeting. I doubt that I will hear you complaining about an indecisive client."

  "What do you think about the case so far?"

  "I can handle it, but I will be a little uncomfortable about the subject matter for a while. Steve Manteo is a highly credentialed and decorated remote sensing psychic spy from the US cold war intelligence effort. He tried to help in a Search and Rescue mission in the Sierras. He told the Sheriff exactly where the lost girl was. The Sheriff blew him off and had him escorted off the premises. The search and rescue operation searched the wrong area, and the lost girl was found frozen to death later in exactly the place where the Steve predicted. The parents of the girl have a civil case against the county and the Sheriff, alleging that the Sheriff was negligent for not using all the resources available to him.

  "I will have to show that remote sensing is a scientifically valid way to locate a missing person: Steve Manteo was qualified to find the girl and that he was correct in what he told the Sheriff."

  Phil observed, "I sense you are a little uncomfortable with all this."

  "Frankly," I replied, "I am a little bit afraid I will lose my scientific credibility among my peers in the patent law crowd. I might become the topic of jokes among my peers. Colson assures me that the scientific validity is there. Dore is making the introductions for me to meet with people who have been doing research in the field."

  "Dave, we assigned you to this because if anyone can make the scientific case, you can. Let me know if you start to feel that there is not a good scientific case. We can pass the case off to one of the firms that specialize in legal circuses. Colson said he didn't want to go that way. He wants to establish the scientific validity of this psychic stuff, as well as help the distressed parents.

  "Keep me informed," Phil said as he rose from sitting, signaling the end of the meeting.

  I was sweating, and my hands were wet. I was apprehensive about where this was taking my career.

  As I returned to my office, Zaza asked, "Are you a bad boy? You look white."

  'No, everything is fine,' I lied and thought, 'what in the world have I got into?'

  I checked my email, then googled Remote Sensing. After reading a while, I thought of channeling and then thought of Tina. I texted her the message that I'd like to find out about channeling.

  As I was about to leave the office, I got a call from Tina. "I'd be delighted to introduce you to channeling. You are in luck. One of the best, Herondus, is having an evening of channeling Friday night at a hotel down by the airport. I have a staff meeting after school, but I can meet you there. It starts at 8:00."

  "Great!" I replied. "Want to make it dinner too?"

  "Can't. I wouldn't be able to get there until after seven. I'll meet you in the lobby. Oh, by the way it costs fifty bucks."

  "No problem," I replied. "My treat."

  "In that case it will be one hundred bucks," she said with a giggle. “I have to go now. I'll see
you in the main ballroom lobby of the Adventure Hotel about 7:30 on Friday. Bye."

  "Bye," I replied as she hung up. She didn't seem very friendly. I wished I could see her. I felt a little bit empty.

  Friday at 7:30, I was in the main ballroom lobby of the Adventure Hotel on Century Boulevard, the street that runs parallel to the runway at LAX. The hotel was one of the better ones at LAX. It had changed hands after the financial crash in 2008, had recently reopened after being remodeled and updated, now with a European-modern feel with backlighted glass panels, chrome fixtures, and chrome legged lobby chairs. I peeked in the ballroom and was surprised that it would seat several hundred people. A few people, early birds, were seated near the front, hands in lap, eyes closed, gently smiling: apparently meditating. Soft New Age music played. A door attendant said I couldn't go in until I had registered, and pointed to a table behind which two ladies were collecting money and credit cards and having people sign what looked like a legal form. I was surprised the people who were registering were very normal looking. Some were professionals in business clothes, others in jeans, and casual attire. Many looked as if they bought their clothes at those trendy stores on Melrose Avenue, where you can buy jeans with holes in the knees for hundred-fifty dollars. I noticed two ladies with long brunette hair, combed straight, hair much longer than it might be naturally, and probably weaved at some expensive Beverly Hills shop.

  'This is not New Age,' I thought, 'I had been expecting people to look more like the clerks in the health food store.'

  I saw Tina approaching, accompanied by another woman who was taller than Tina, with short black hair, in a kind of pixie cut, maybe in her early thirties, looking kind of academic, but with soft, friendly eyes They both were dressed as though they had come from a college classroom, in jeans, sneakers, and sweaters over simple tops.