Information: Dark Matter Volume 1

Chapter 8

Version of 2023 August 06

The next day, another coffee shop, but what to do? Drink her latte and stare into space. Something was missing. What was she missing? Besides any hard data? At least she knew it was out there. She could feel it. And it wasn't far away. That electric tingling through her body. But not ready for a preliminary report to her client. Not yet. Not yet...

Ah, it hit her, why nothing on the artifact? Energy beings were clearly a solid maybe, but artifacts? Not a hint. If they were associated with the aliens, as Spaceboy claimed, then there needed to be more. Only one bowl-thing made no sense. He'd picked his up in a curio shop, for fucks sake. That suggested they were lying about.

Or was that true? She only had his word for how he'd gotten his. His story implied an improbable chain of coincidence, ignorance, and lack of interest. Certainly she knew enough about people that the idea wasn't completely farfetched—there were ignorant idiots everywhere. But still, this wasn't something you could overlook that easily. So tag that thought for further exploration. He was hiding something.

How much was she missing, here? She'd been completely taken in by his slow-talking rube persona. Who said that was true? He'd said he did research. That was unusual and indicated someone who asked questions and was alert to unusual possibilities. If that was the case, then there was a chance he'd known exactly what he was looking at. She had nothing past his word that he hadn't known. Following that line of logic, were there offworlders who knew what was going on? That could explain why she wasn't finding anything substantive—it was all going on elsewhere. But then Spaceboy should have clued her in.

So, no, that didn't really make sense. This wasn't common knowledge off world or she would have found indications in the data. It made more sense to think that the cover-up she'd begun to accept as real extended out to the colony worlds. If there were people who had at least some sense of what was happening, and if they were covering up things here on Earth, then they wouldn't have stopped at that. Spaceboy wanted her research because he didn't know. He hadn't known.

She let her mind drift for a bit. Something was bubbling underneath her thoughts, if she could let it come up.

She thought hard. Energy beings are speculative but there are legitimate hints they exist. However, the psychosis definition effectively shut down real exploration of the possibilities. That was certainly a good way to cover-up their existence.

But that could only take place in the absence of artifacts like Spaceboy's bowl-thing. A single artifact would blow the whole cover off. If it could be established that the bowl was a real artifact from some alien civilization, then everything changed. But artifacts were hard to hide. They were exactly the tangible evidence everyone was looking for—the definite proof. She couldn't imagine how anyone could truly keep that kind of information secret. Mind you, the Peruvian mine murders indicated that such things did happen. So maybe?

Was that why there was so much interest in Spaceboy? He'd not hidden the bowl and someone knew what it was and they wanted to know who he was, what he thought, or what he planned to do? Or a whole bunch of someones? That made sense. If the goal was to cover up the hard evidence, then any sign of it would gather intense interest. Any of the groups that might be interested in covering up the presence of aliens would put a lot of resources into finding them as they showed up, plus tracking down what they knew. That would mean they were primarily tracking the bowl-thing, not him. The bowl was hot, not him, as she had initially thought.

Of course, it was possible something else going on. He did have offworld connections, so they might be the source of the interest in him. Criminal connection? Other states? She didn't know. So she couldn't rule out that this was a unique search. But that did not feel right. No, the most likely conclusion is that there are others and someone knows.