Replay

My line of work requires a little “cloak and dagger” now and then, so it was fairly easy following Samantha back to her home and even easier finding John…because he was already there waiting for her.

She lived on a quiet little cul-de-sac not more than a mile from the police station. There were only 4 homes on the cul-de-sac, so they didn’t get much traffic, which made it impossible to follow her into the cul-de-sac and difficult to see anything without exposing my presence.

But, I could clearly see John sitting on her front porch as she pulled her car into the driveway. They embraced, said a few words to each other and went quickly into the house. Curiously, there was no vehicle for John in the driveway.

I waited patiently for hours and finally when I could see the sun setting over her home with the mountains in the background; Samantha came out of the house and got into her car and drove off, alone.

I laid low on my seat as she drove by. Once she was out of site I drove into the cul-de-sac and up into the driveway. If John was in the house I was going to confront him.

I knocked on the door and there was no answer. I walked around to the back of the home through a gate that had one of those inside locks that was easy to lift up and open. She had sliding glass doors that clearly exposed the entire living area and it was obviously void of any activity. The darkness had settled in and the few small lights scattered throughout the kitchen and living room were enough to see there was no one inside.

The backyard was entirely walled, at least 7 feet high. And the only gate was in the front. Either John Smith is a very good illusionist or, I was going blind and crazy at the same time. I’m not blind, and I’m not crazy, and I really don’t believe John is an illusionist, so there must be another possibility.

I kept going over in my mind:

(1) John entered the bathroom, and never came back out.

(2) John left the police station from that same bathroom.

(3) Kerry Albertson entered the bathroom, and never came back out.

(4) John arrived at Samantha’s by no visible means.

(5) John left Samantha’s by no visible means.

When you have eliminated the most likely possibilities, whatever remains must be the truth, no matter how improbable that possibility may be.

Five, seemingly impossible events and as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might surmise, however improbable, John Smith has devised a new form of transportation, at the very least.

I was determined to get down to the bottom of this mystery immediately. There was nothing to gain waiting around Samantha’s home so I high-tailed it back to the police station to see if there were any new developments.

I was dumbfounded to learn that they had already apprehended the kidnapper. Talk about an open and shut case! This was a no-brainer if I had ever seen one.

I could see Det. Harry Murphy through the glass window of his door and saw that he was alone, but before I even knocked he motioned me to come in.

“Hey, Harry can you give me anything at all about this little girl?”

“This is all new ground for me, Jim. I have never seen a case like this. I mean, this one is really weird!”

“I can’t give you much, but I can tell you, shortly after we found this little girl, I get an email from an anonymous person with….well…..ah…..I….can’t say. It was something like I’ve never seen, but anyway, it was directions to the kidnapper’s home. That’s it, that’s all I can tell you. You can quote me that much, Jim, but that’s all I can give you right now.”

I wanted to tell him what I knew, but that may be less productive until I get more than just improbabilities so I thought best to keep it to myself for now.

My office was only a few blocks away, so I headed back there to try and put the day into perspective, I thought this latest development needed a very special person.

I have a “high-tech” buddy that can pretty much do anything on the Internet. Philip is his name. I called him and gave him the details. He called me back in about 15 minutes, he not only had Detective Murphy’s email account but a copy of a very peculiar video that by his description was probably the one Det. Murphy wasn’t able to talk about while I was in his office.

Philip is pretty laid back. When he isn’t working, he’s either on his computer or he’s sleeping. No social life and no excitement. I have never seen him excited about anything, I knew we were on to something. Yes, something so spectacular that it could change the world. Yes, earth shattering.

He was ecstatic, almost delusional about this “hologram”. He said, “you had better get over here at once because you won’t believe it if you don’t see it for yourself.”

Philip lived in a high-rise condominium complex just off Las Vegas’ famous strip. It was a beautiful complex with two main buildings. Philip lived in the taller of the two on the 25th and top floor, the penthouse.

Heavily secured and gated with security guards at the gated entrance, as well as the entrance to the building. You couldn’t even use the elevator without a key or the guard at the front desk opening the elevator for you.

The guards knew me and they were expecting me, so I had no problems or delays getting up to his home. And a beautiful home it was. Philip’s day job was some kind of classified work that he didn’t speak of much, although I did know that three days a week he gets on to an unmarked airplane at the airport and travels to an unknown destination.

His home was always immaculate. Never even a speck of dust on his mass of computers and monitors that, I imagined, could rival the CIA or the FBI.

He had bought two large condo units and gutted them both to create one very large unit. Both units were corner units, which gave him spectacular views of the famous Las Vegas strip, as well as the northern, eastern and most of the southern mountains and sky.

His unusually large living room was divided with one-half living room and kitchen with the other half loaded with tech gadgets of all kinds. Six large monitors spread across in front of his desk, each monitor with something different going on. I guess that’s multi-tasking alright.

“You won’t believe this,” muttered Philip! He clicked on an icon on one of his monitors and, “WOW.”

Like magic, the entire room was engulfed with a transparent type video, like a hologram or a movie that was playing, not on the monitor, but all around us and inside us. It was like watching a movie in 3d and being inside, standing in front of the cameras with everything going around you and through you. It was virtual reality without the headset.

I am standing in Philips living room and yet I am also standing in the middle of the street watching 2 little girls walking down the street right in front of us. It was the weirdest and most amazing thing I have ever seen. I recognized the street immediately. It was just down the street from Samantha Garcia’s home. And…my God, those little girls are Kerry Albertson and her sister.

“Look behind you,” blurted Philip. Holy cow….look out, a white van headed straight for me. No time to move, damn…slam…shit…cover my face…the damn thing went right through me. I turned quickly and saw the brake lights just in front of my eyes. I don’t know whether I’m going to laugh or cry or shit bricks, this is an actual movie of the kidnapping and this is the kidnapper right in front of me. And, not only can I see, but I can hear it. For Christ sakes, I can feel it.

A tall heavy muscular man jumps from the van and grabs Kerry as quick as I could walk up to the front door of the van. Right there in front of my eyes, a screaming terrified Kerry snatched back into the van through the side door and slammed shut. The kidnapper passes right through me and climbs back into the driver’s seat and the van peels off with Philip and I floating right behind.

It’s as though we’re on a circus ride hanging on to the rail as everything passes us by. “Watch this,” Philip barks! See this little control panel? Wow, didn’t see that! Philip pointed to a faded out control panel, just standing there in mid air with nothing holding it up and you could actually touch it.

Philip hit one of the buttons and all of a sudden the entire scene was going so fast you could barely see it. Everything was in fast mode, the van moving through intersections, making turns, finally pulling into the driveway of a home and into the garage.

Philip pressed another button and everything slowed down. We watched this guy take Kerry from the van into the house, and suddenly the camera panned out to the front of the home with the address clearly visible, and the movie stopped.

“I knew you were brilliant Phil, but this is out of this world.” “How on earth did you do this?”

“I’d really like to take credit for this, but this is even more incredible than if I had made it up.” “Do you know what a 1KB file is?” Well, sure I do, it’s the smallest file size you can have, 1 kilobyte. Like one or eight letters of the alphabet?

Well, close! More like a small sentence, 128 letter, but this entire movie was emailed as an attachment that is 0 kilobytes in size. It’s some kind of Quantum stuff going on. Everything you see here is impossible. Up until the time I downloaded this I never in all my dreams have ever even thought something like this is possible. I didn’t do this Jim. This is technology that is literally, out of this world.

What do you mean? Alien? Yah, if there was even a whisper of this kind of technology, I would have heard of it. This is not from earth my friend.