“A good cover story, don’t you think?” Boreas said.

Eichen downed the rest of the scotch and slapped the glass back on the desk. “What is it really?”

“It’s a weapon, of course,” Boreas said.

“A weapon from radio antennas?” the general was skeptical. Kirtley had yet to say a word, his dark eyes going back and forth between Eichen and Boreas like those of a spectator at a tennis match.

“A weapon beyond anything you could imagine,” Boreas said. “With it the United States can control the world.”

Eichen snorted. “A bold statement. I’ve been in uniform since I was seventeen as a plebe at the Academy. I’ve fought in Vietnam, the Gulf, and half a dozen other pissant places our President decided to send us. I heard my colleagues in the Air Force say the Stealth fighter and bomber would totally change air warfare, but they didn’t. They said smart bombs would do the job, but they didn’t either, contrary to what CNN and the Discovery channel tout on their specials.

“There’s always a new weapon that will change everything, but in the end it’s always the poor grunt with a rifle in his hand who has to take the ground from the enemy who determines the outcome of war. That’s the ultimate weapon. Always has been, always will be.”

“This weapon is different than those you mentioned. It targets here-” Boreas tapped the side of his head. “What is a soldier without a mind?”

“A good soldier, according to some,” the general replied sarcastically. “One who will follow orders without question. I don’t agree with that, of course. How exactly are you going to affect minds with a bunch of antennas?”

Boreas glanced out the window. A dark part of him appreciated the irony of the questions the general was asking. Plus this was information he needed to brief Kirtley on, so it wasn’t a waste of time. “A radio sends a wave through the air, the distance determined by the power and line of sight for frequency modulated waves-FM. Certain waves, such as high-frequency or amplitude modulated-AM-can bounce off the atmosphere and even go beyond line of sight, again limited only by power of the transmitter.”

“I have worked with radios,” Eichen said patiently.

“This transmitter is on a different frequency than those,” Boreas said. “We have determined that there is a frequency that affects the human mind.”

“Affects it how?” Eichen asked.

“Do you know how your mind functions?” Boreas didn’t expect an answer or wait for one. “Most people haven’t a clue. Do you know what a thought is? Is a thought real? It is real inside your head, isn’t it? But is it real outside of your head?”

Boreas was frustrated after years of trying to explain their work to idiots who only believed in things they could see and touch. The Priory didn’t need the money from the Black Budget-it needed the access to the land to place HAARP on, the satellites that were also to be part of the system, and the scientists the United States could provide.

The Priory had always used existing political structures for its own end. In days of old when a Prior could stand behind a king and whisper in his ear, it had been easier. It was difficult now but even in a democracy there were ways to manipulate power. Out of the paranoia of the Cold War and the legacy of the Black Budget, the Priory had found an avenue to operate within the shadows of the U.S. and Russian governments for decades.

Boreas rapped his knuckles on the edge of his chair. “To you, this is reality. But you will also agree that the voice you hear over your radio is real too. But you can’t see it, can you? What does a radio wave consist of?

“There are levels to reality. And the mind operates on one of those levels, which we call the psychic plane, or the virtual one. ‘Virtual’ means something exists in essence or effect but not in actual form.”

The general, as others Boreas had briefed, focused on one word. “Psychic? You mean like those people who advertise those 1-800 psychic hot lines? Or that fellow who claims he can bend a spoon just by looking at it?”

“All ‘psychic’ means is something that pertains to the mind.” Boreas held his anger in check. “Why do scientists constantly ignore the power of the thing they use the most? The core of our being, that which makes us different from the animals? And why do you military men ignore the vulnerabilities of the mind? Control the mind, you control the man. Destroy the mind, you destroy the man. Target the mind with a weapon, and every man is vulnerable no matter if he is in a highly armored tank or flying at Mach 2 in a plane.

“What we are doing at HAARP is taking warfare to the virtual level. This weapon-the waves that will be broadcast from these antennas-will work in effect but not in form. Once we fine-tune the proper wavelengths for the psychic or virtual plane, there are numerous directions we can pursue research in. There’s so much we don’t understand about the virtual plane, the physics of it. For example, what is distance in the virtual plane? If I can visualize in my mind a place a thousand miles from here, have I traveled that far in the virtual plane?”

Eichen didn’t seem satisfied. “Wasn’t there something on the Russian end like this that caused the recent snafu in Moscow? The nuclear weapons going off?”

“Something like it,” Boreas acknowledged. He knew the general probably wasn’t briefed on Bright Gate or the Russian’s SD-8 and the recent battle-there were only a couple of people in the hierarchy of government who knew of the existence of both Bright Gate and HAARP. In the Black Budget world, everything was compartmentalized so that the left hand rarely knew what the right was doing. Or did the general know about Bright Gate also? If Eichen had been recruited by the other side, he might know much more than he was letting on. Or if he was Nexus, he also might know about both.

“What exactly is a radio wave?” Kirtley asked, breaking his silence. The question surprised Boreas. Everyone he had briefed had either been too embarrassed to ask such a simple question or assumed they knew the answer, which Boreas knew to be wrong in the vast majority of cases.

“A radio wave is the electromagnetic modulation of particles we call photons. Photons have zero mass but we know they exist because of their effect. The study of them is part of what some call the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Photons are all around you, but you can’t see or feel them. At least not consciously.

“When you are in a big city, do you know how many radio frequencies are going through your body? Hundreds, if not thousands. And all of them you don’t even notice, but every so often, while driving your car, do you ever have a certain tune in your mind, and then you turn on the radio and that song is playing? How do you account for that? It’s because parts of your mind, mostly in the subconscious, are attuned to the virtual plane. Some minds are better at that than others and can even project some power into the virtual plane, but all humans are capable of receiving.”

Boreas had been forced to give this spiel several times to those who controlled the purse strings in the Black Budget-the 160 billion dollars the Pentagon spent on classified projects each year.

The general was once more looking at the antenna field. “How far can you transmit?”

“Currently line of sight,” Boreas said.

“Why so many antennas?”

“To affect the mind requires much focus and much power,” Boreas said. “It would be difficult to explain the exact physics to you.”

He didn’t add that he himself didn’t really have an idea of what the physics were. The scientists were like children walking in a dark room, reaching out with hands and feeling things in it, trying to figure out what they were. And they were scavengers, trying to work with what they’d stolen from others who knew the virtual world much better.