The number of investigators searching out clues to the mysterious northern New Hampshire events mushroomed from 10 to 150 in the field, with many more involved in electronic surveillance. The 150 agents spread out across New Hampshire and Vermont, looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the Salston family.
Mark Cahill, a long time reporter for the Boston Messenger, arrived in the area early on Friday morning, parking his car in the main municipal lot just off Main St. A native of the area who left to attend college in Boston, he well knew the area and its inhabitants.
Mark easily initiated conversation with most everyone he talked with. He tried not to hurry people or bludgeon them for information; nor would he treat people shabbily in the reporting. Typically, Mark let an interviewee find his or her own way in conversation, and simply gleaned what interested him from the flow of that conversation. If he wished to clarify, he became part of the exchange, rather than assume an interviewer role, not averse to offering an opinion of his own.
Three days after the alleged incident, an anonymous message found its way onto his message machine at work, claiming something described as ‘an anomalous event’ occurred earlier in the week in this upstate area, such that it drew ongoing federal government interest.
That something happened or was purported to have happened was evident by the several US government plates spotted around the town. In a town of 3,000, you rarely ever see any such plate, but Mark saw five on the short drive into the village once off the interstate.
With such a presence, the government undoubtedly had sufficient evidence to warrant such application and diversion of resources. The next question to ask became clear: what draws their interest?
Now late afternoon, Mark sat and took stock of the copious notes and recordings from his day with a few of his former townsfolk. While Mark was folksy and placed people at ease, he was also a seasoned reporter, among the best in a major metropolitan area. His accomplishments included several regional awards for ‘best story’ of various types and categories.
Finding information did not take long; this town had a few major focal points of activity, one of which was the regional hospital. Mark started there, and while many people turned away not wishing to talk, one simply mumbled the word ‘lab’ in walking by.
Mark found his way to the door outside the lab, and waited for a technician to emerge. This area was not as busy as other parts of the hospital, and so chatting without direct observation was not difficult. That initial conversation led to three others, two of whom refused to comment, one of whom did offer information – and likely sent the envelope, with its stunning information, now in his possession. Also surfacing in the conversations was the name of a family – the Salstons – who disappeared and for whom authorities searched.
By the noon hour, Mark sensed he had enough information from his morning’s conversation with the four people to warrant writing a front-page story, but there was one more thing he wished to have before sending the story to the newsroom. He held back submitting the story for this reason – with the added information, it would become a front-page headliner – something that would have created a special edition years before, but now would find immediate release on the internet.
A half-hour before, he returned to his hotel room to find a manila envelope on the floor, just inside the door. Looking through the documents, part of him wished to walk away from the story.
Mark was a go-where-the-facts lead you type and he avoided speculation and insinuation as if it was a journalistic plague. He would run as the wind from stories on UFOs and the paranormal; such things never had any real evidence, and were reputation killers in his chosen profession.
Now… now he had evidence, direct evidence that someone in this area recently, carried DNA that diverged from him and every other person on the planet. Not much of a difference to be sure according to these documents, but a professor’s name was on the documents in his possession, and this professor claimed the records indicated a divergence of DNA 15,000 years before.
Mark would report the story, he would report these facts, but he would also not draw conclusions. A whole world was undoubtedly poised to do this, and he very much feared where the speculation would go. By all accounts, this person of interest was very human and quite sentient – in fact, the accompanying IQ test given by a therapist by the name of Dolores O’Brien showed a result of 251, 21 points higher than the world’s previous IQ test best. IQ tests were notoriously flawed, and Mark would not include this in his story, but it did call out his reluctance on the overall story – behind all of this was a real, live, human being.
A normal human being was out there that a world would talk itself into fearing, simply because of conclusive proof of slight deviation from the rest. As a gay man, Mark well knew how some viewed different – it was one reason he stayed in Boston after leaving this area. Times changed, the area was quite accepting now, but he long ago made Boston his home.
Mark grabbed his laptop and set it up, next setting up his portable scanner – something he deemed more indispensable than a portable printer. He sat down to coalesce and coagulate the information into a working story; from there he would go back and edit through, verifying the details, making sure the story flowed from fact to fact.
He grabbed the documents and began flipping through them. One more thing to do, before he forgot: always check a manila envelope a second time; things have a tendency to lag behind other papers. Grabbing the envelope, Mark puffed it open, finding one more page stuck inside.
Pulling out the page, his eyes fell transfixed on the blonde haired, Azure-eyed woman staring back at him. As a gay man, he was immune to how a heterosexual male might view her, but Mark well knew beauty when he saw it, one more element that would send this story circling the globe within an hour of his uploading it to the newsroom editor on duty.
The story wrote itself, or so it seemed to Mark. The writing took an hour; the scrutinising, fact checking, and self-editing 40 additional minutes. He moved to scanning in the hospital records – excepting the IQ part – and the photograph of the mysterious woman lying awake but unsmiling in a hospital bed.
He bundled his work as attachments, readying to send it via encrypted email to the newsroom. He sat back, exhaled sharply, and drew in a deep breath, as if this would help him to cross a story-sending threshold that would inexorably alter his career. He sat back up, clicked send, shut down the programme and the laptop. Feeling emotionally dirty, he stripped off his clothing and moved into the shower, trying to flush away the imaginary dirt.
An hour later, the imaginary dirt remained lingering on his already cleansed body, leaving Mark with second thoughts over the story’s submission. He called his editor, but the editor had the same facts in her possession, and she refused to stop the story.
A knock called out the arrival of someone at his door; Mark turned to look at the door, half annoyed at the interruption of his phone conversation, curious on who might be calling. Mark liked Marice, but the discussion was pointless, so he ended the call, jumped up and moved to the door, and opened it to reveal two sets of identification held out a scant two feet from his face.
The individuals then produced a search warrant, and as Mark stepped aside, gently pushed past him into the single room unit.
Seeing his laptop, one sat down and activated the machine. Reaching an encrypted log in screen, she turned to Mark. “Your password, please.” Knowing he had little choice, Mark relented – they would likely seize the machine anyway, and once in their labs, crack the password.
The other individual spotted a manila folder, picking it up and dumping out various documents. “Andi, look at this” left his mouth even as Andi called partner Bob over to view the laptop.
Within ten minutes, they completed the search of the spartanly furnished and occupied room, exiting with his laptop and documents, calling out a cursory “thank you for your patience and understanding” rendered to Mark, a comment followed by “we may wish to speak with you later, Mr Cahill.”
The investigators left with more information than they held before entering, but they were too late to stop The Messenger from placing the story on its website, and from there, the wire services that sent it around an as yet unsuspecting world.
