The Goldilocks Zone Read online

  She yawned. “Probably a drone or something. What time is it?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked at my smartwatch. “Eleven.”

  “Can we talk about this later? I’ve got work in the morning.”

  “I know. I just wanted to tell you.”

  The line was quiet for a moment, and then she pressed, “You’ll be back tomorrow night, right? We’ve got to shop for Gabriella’s baby shower on Sunday. Don’t forget.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve got an interview in the morning, then I’ll be catching my flight. Love you.”

  “Text me when your flight lands and you’re on your way,” she said, and then hung up.

  I got undressed and into bed, still thinking about what we’d seen that night. Before I hit the light, I checked my phone for news. Nothing. Social media feeds had nothing. What was it? Had to have been a hoax. Flares, Japanese lanterns. Whatever it was, I couldn’t wait for the interview in the morning.

  2: Proxima b

  The Proxima Foundation grounds stretched down a long dirt road of flat valley terrain, about 20 miles east of Missoula. Finding the entry gate open, I drove in, raising a cloud of dry dust. The surrounding hills were a peachy orange and blanketed by a fast-disappearing mist. I noticed a massive white tent off to the left and more than a dozen metal shipping containers with residential doors and windows around the back part of the property.

  Byrne’s house was farther down the road beyond a bluff of trees—a big ranch-style two-story with a wrap-around screened porch, a red-walled barn and large horse corral off to one side. Nadine Byrne greeted me at the front door. She was in her late forties with cornsilk hair, indigo eyes, and a warm and welcoming face. I had learned earlier at the Proxima Foundation website that she was a Harvard lawyer and the Chief Financial Officer.

  “Good morning, you must be Ben,” she said, smiling broadly. “You’re younger than I was expecting.” She held my hand for just a few seconds longer than a normal handshake. Was she trying to get a psychic energy read on me or just flirting? I found myself wondering what the Byrne marriage was like.

  She led me through the house to the back porch where Daniel and Mike were sitting at a round table with a gas patio heater radiating overhead.

  “`Morning, Ben, welcome to our humble abode,” Daniel said, raising a smile. A small blue light flashed from the Bluetooth receiver planted in his left ear. Large plate of pancakes, steaming scrambled eggs, and glistening vegan substitute bacon beckoned from the bamboo Lazy Susan.

  “So, what did you think of the sighting last night, Ben?” Nadine quizzed, filling my earthenware coffee mug.

  “I’m still… in awe, I guess. I wasn’t expecting to see anything like that.”

  She smiled. “That’s the response we always get when people have their first experience at one of Daniel’s events. They are life-changing for so many. Have you ever had an extraterrestrial experience before?”

  “Actually, yes. I was witness to the Phoenix Lights in 1997.”

  Daniel’s and Nadine’s eyes widened. “Lots of controversy about those lights. What do you think you saw?” Nadine asked, passing the sugar to me.

  “I don’t know yet. I mean, I know I saw something, like last night, but I’m not really sure what.”

  “Well, you are in the right place to learn more. Dig in everyone.” She gestured to the bamboo centerpiece. I was hungry and loaded my plate.

  “I read your story on the Hanford nuclear facility,” Nadine added. “Very impressive writing. And to be nominated for a Pulitzer already at your age. Your parents must be proud of you.”

  I smiled, equally impressed that she’d read my article.

  She still had her eyes on me. “So how long have you been with Hot Reports?”

  “I’ve been freelance writing for them for about three years now.”

  “Do you come up with your own story ideas?”

  Plainly, she was sizing up my angle for the UFO piece. I needed to play it cool and shift the attention back on her and Daniel.

  “My editor assigned this story, but the Hanford one was my idea. I spent two years on it. I like to thoroughly understand things before I write. I have a few questions for you, is that okay?” I took out a small notepad.

  “Shoot,” Daniel said, chewing

  “Tell me about how you all got into UFOs.” I narrowed in on Daniel first.

  “I had a life-changing event when I was in law school,” he began. “Some of us from my class went to Newfound Lake in New Hampshire, about seven or eight of us. We stayed in a cabin. I was teaching my friends how to meditate when we saw lights descending over the lake. They sparkled and grew brighter, hovering over the surface of the water. Some went outside to look at the spectacle, but I kept meditating. My eyes were half open when I saw an EBE.”

  “EBE?”

  “Extraterrestrial biological entity. We don’t call them ETs anymore,” Byrne clarified. “It raised a three-fingered hand, and our minds directly connected for a minute. The EBE told me that my destiny was not to be a lawyer but a teacher of humanity.”

  “But you continued with law school and went into practice?” I remembered that from his bio.

  “Oh yes, family pressure. No complaints, though. I went to work at a law firm in Chicago. That’s where I met Nadine.” He glanced at her, nodding. “We’d spend hours meditating together, talking about mysteries, didn’t we, honey?”

  She nodded, sipping her coffee.

  “We were on the same wavelength, if you know what I mean,” Daniel continued. “After a few years, we both realized that corporate law was not for us. She convinced me to leave.”

  “So whose idea was it to start the Proxima Foundation?”

  Byrne tapped his chest. “It was my idea to focus on alien contact, and Nadine is the business end. I don’t know what I would do without her.”

  “We all have our special talents,” Nadine said, looking softly at Daniel.

  I turned toward Mike. “What about you, Mike? What got you into all of this?”

  “I was in the Navy, a boatswain's mate on the USS Enterprise. One night I was on watch out in the middle of the Pacific, and we saw some lights trailing after us under the water. It wasn’t bioluminescence but an EBE craft. Eventually, it shot out of the water at an angle into the sky and disappeared. It was small, rainbow colors. A bunch of us saw it.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Is there a record of this event? I’d love to see it.”

  Mike looked me in the eyes. “We were commanded to keep our mouths shut.”

  “Typical military,” Byrne added.

  That was when I noticed that all three of them had the Proxima Foundation symbol stitched somewhere on their clothing.

  “Proxima. Is that where the aliens are coming from?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Daniel. “Proxima Centauri b is the closest planetary system to Earth that’s in the habitable Goldilocks Zone—just under four and a quarter light-years from Earth.”

  I was skeptical to say the least. “Wow, four light-years is pretty close. And how do you know that’s where they are from?”

  “They told me. Ever had a psychic download, Ben?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t think so. What’s a psychic download?” Bullshit and more bullshit, I thought.

  “It’s when you are telepathically given a download of information.” He and Mike shared a knowledgeable smile.

  “Wish I’d had one for graduate school,” I grinned.

  Daniel returned the grin. “You’d know it if you had one.”

  “Are you open to experience, Ben?” Nadine asked, reading my skepticism.

  “I think so.” I assumed she was referring to openness as a personality trait.

  “That’s important. People who aren’t receptive will never wrap their minds around this.”

  I turned my attention back to Daniel. “So, you’ve had one of these downloads from the aliens?”

  “Yes, I have, several times. They told me about their vi
sits here, and that our meditation protocol is their preferred way for interacting with us. You can’t fake intentions through meditation. We invite them to appear in peace, and they know that is exactly what we want and what we expect in return. Peaceful communication with open hearts.”

  “You mentioned that they’re multidimensional. What does that mean exactly? Are they coming from another dimension? Bending time and space?”

  “As I mentioned to you last night, the EBEs communicate and travel on a different dimensional wavelength than ours.” He reached over and pinched the skin on my forearm. “This physical realm is but one of many layers of dimension in the universe. I explain it all in my books and my workshop. You should have come earlier yesterday.”

  “Why do you think the ETs, I mean EBEs, don’t just appear to everybody so it’s more obvious that they are here? Why not land on the White House lawn or something?”

  “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked that. They’re not making a diplomatic visit. Maybe they don’t trust government. They’re subtle in how they interface with us. As I said before, they trust the way we communicate with them.”

  I struggled. “It just seems like they could do something to make their presence more known, assuming that it’s important for them to be known. Why are they so elusive?”

  “They’re not that elusive. You saw them last night, didn’t you?” said Nadine.

  “They want to be known but in a calculated way,” said Daniel. “They are as curious about us as we are about them. They’ve been coming here for a long time and know to be careful.”

  I sipped my medium roast. “So how long have they been coming to Earth? I’ve watched some of those documentaries on ancient aliens, and you hear all kinds of hypotheses.”

  “Routinely, for the last seventy years, but of course there’s evidence that they’ve been interacting with humans for thousands of years.”

  “Could you ask them?” I said, trying not to smirk.

  Nadine saw straight through me. “Ben, they don’t have to provide evidence of their presence or justify it. They don’t have to answer to us.”

  I took another tack. “So what do the EBEs look like? Are we dealing with the grays? The ones with the large slanted eyes?”

  “The types of grays you see in the movies and TV are fake. The species that have been coming here have gray skin, but no pointy chins or oversized eyes. Their eyes are larger than ours, though, to let more light in.”

  Mike pulled out his smartphone and showed me a fuzzy, pixelated photo of an EBE, a humanoid gray figure with a large forehead and obsidian eyes.

  “Is that real?” I asked, silently considering the wonders of Photoshop.

  “Yep,” he said. “I took this during an event at Mount Shasta last year.”

  “We have other photos, too,” Nadine added.

  “Did it walk up to you? You talk to it?” I asked Mike.

  “We were all meditating, and I saw a flash of greenish-blue light. A moment later I saw him peeking from behind a bush. I asked if it was okay to take the photo, and he told me yes.”

  “Wow,” I said, “he spoke English? You must have been freaked out.”

  Mike put his phone back in his pocket. “Telepathy, and not at all.”

  I addressed everyone. “So let me make sure I’m getting this. You’re saying that they’ve been coming here for a long time, and the government knows but is keeping it secret, but the government also has fakes to scare people. Is that right?”

  “Almost, Ben,” Daniel said, replenishing everyone’s caffeine reserves and drizzling molasses in his own. “Let’s be concise. I was personally told by a very high-ranking Cabinet official in the previous administration, whom I cannot name, that part of the shadow government controlled by the globalist oligarchy, has been collecting recovered EBE technology and will do anything to keep it secret. You see, the EBEs understand energy technology that will revolutionize how we power the world. No more fossil fuels. The rest of the government is kept in the dark and fed misinformation about the UFO phenomena to keep their technology secret. The fakes are coverups and distraction.”

  “So, the shadow government has retrieved alien craft and presumably reverse-engineered it. Roswell…”

  “Not Roswell: that was a weather balloon. But there are others, and the cover-up is real. We’ve collected mountains of evidence,” Daniel said, sipping his coffee.

  Mike’s eyes were on me.

  Daniel continued. “We estimate that about 80 percent of UFO sightings are either hoaxes or natural phenomena. Twenty percent of them are the real deal.”

  “It’s pretty easy to fake a sighting with special effects these days, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Sure, some are fakes created by people, and some are ginned up by the shadow government. We have an archive of more than two thousand videos of alien craft, all verified by science like radar evidence, independent eyewitness testimony, and more.”

  “With so much evidence, why can’t you convince the President or Congress to just come out and admit that we are not alone?”

  “The government and mainstream media love to make contactees seem like tin-foil-hat fools, complete idiots, so that no one takes them seriously, yet the power elite and their media shills tease the public with stories about mysterious lights in the sky and the occasional leaked video or document. Even with the recent Department of Defense acknowledgment of unidentified aerial phenomena, they won’t come out and admit that they know—not yet, anyway. It’s all part of the game to keep people partly in the truth and partly in the dark to confuse, manipulate, and obfuscate. Classic cover-up and propaganda techniques.”

  “You mentioned fakes. Who creates them, and what’s their purpose exactly?”

  “Artificial Intelligence robots built by the government to spook people and make them think the aliens are here to harm us. And why? Well, that’s the worst part. We had the Cold War, then the Global War on Terror, and what’s next?”

  “Alien invasion,” I grinned.

  “That’s right, Ben. Fake an alien invasion to expand military-industrial control.”

  “When do you expect that to happen?”

  “By next year. That’s why we’re rushing to build our new facility and network.” Daniel kept his eyes on Nadine.

  I scribbled a note. “I saw your website, but tell me more about you about your mission.”

  Daniel leaned forward, holding up three fingers. “We have three primary goals. The first is research. We want to learn everything we can about the EBEs and what the government has been doing with their technology. Think of us as a central hub for scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and others who want to study alien technology and culture.” One finger down. “The second is knowledge dissemination and training. We want to share what we learn and educate the public so they are no longer in the dark about all of this.” Second finger down. “And three, we serve as cosmic ambassadors, so to speak.”

  “Ambassadors?”

  “Yes, ambassadors.” Nadine chimed in. “The more people who know the truth and how to communicate with our friends, the better.”

  “And people can receive training on this?” I asked.

  “Yes. We have a training and certificate program, and we also have a publishing company,” she added.

  “So how many people are part of the Foundation now?”

  “We’re structured like other nonprofits,” Nadine explained. “We have a Board of Directors and a leadership team, but we are also an organization made up of its members.”

  “We just hit 300,000 members worldwide this past week,” Daniel said.

  “Wow, impressive!” I said. “And you’re building your new facility here. Can I get a tour of the compound?”

  “We don’t call it a compound. It’s a ranch, so we call it that,” Daniel corrected. “Our research and training center is in the pre-construction phase, so we’re using a large tent for group assemblies. It’s temporary.”

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sp; “How many people are staying here?” I asked, thinking about the shipping containers.

  “We have pods for two dozen visitors,” he said, “and run it like a bed-and-breakfast. We’re open to visitors who are here to participate in our visitation protocol and lectures, and to the general public.”

  Nadine smiled. “We have a five-star host rating online.”

  I smiled back. “Why did you decide to build here?”

  “We considered other places too. Jackson Hole was one, but it felt better here. It’s a good spot for the Center. Nadine and I felt like this is where we needed to be.” He glanced at his wife, smiling and reaching across the white tablecloth for her hand. “Didn’t we, honey?”

  She took his hand. “The change of pace from Chicago is very nice, and we needed the space for the horses to run.”

  “I saw the corral. How many do you have?”

  “Six—three thoroughbreds and three American quarter horses.”

  I thought about how expensive six horses were. “Did the Foundation buy the land and the new building.”

  “The land was donated by Robert Petulli Jr. You probably know who he is,” Nadine said.

  I nodded. “The son of Dr. Gordon Petulli, the Apollo astronaut. Robert’s into UFOs, like his late father. Wrote a book, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, a very good one, too, about alien energy technologies,” Daniel said. “He’s been very supportive of our organization.” He looked over his shoulder, pointing to a large house perched on one of the peaks to the east. “That’s Petulli’s place up there.”

  I squinted at what looked like a castle. “I’d love to talk with him. Do you have his contact information?”

  “He’s very private, doesn’t like to talk to the press, but I can ask him about talking with you,” Nadine said.

  “That would be great,” I said. “So, Mike, what exactly is your role with the Proxima Foundation?”

  “I’m the Chief Operations Officer,” Mike said through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “I handle anything that needs getting done.”

  “Why the sidearm?” I asked.

  He stared at me. “I provide security as well.”