Dr. Franklin and Proffesor Catchpole, chapter I

Two more shy, pencil and chalk pushing, mathematicians the world had never known. Like attracted atoms they smashed together to create an inseparable bond and to release a greater energy. The observable and measurable, testable and peer reviewed relationship seemed contradictory to it’s continuing sense of destiny, and of pre-ordainment that they each felt for each other in those first months, as they witnessed the many events that brought them together, like the war, the bomb, their shared love of physics, and the coincidence that the navy had them sitting side by side in that first meeting of Operation Crossroads in nineteen forty-six. The Navy and the newly created Atomic Energy Commission had become their matchmakers, the military Quanset Huts were the dance halls where they each stopped being wall-flowers, where each of them forced themselves to be social, forced themselves to feel beautiful and wanted, a overcoming a common phobia for the two hyper intellectual study and research devotees.

It was the eve of the first Atoll test at a place called Enewetak, in warm and moist air, on calm and starlit waters, on a Navy supply ship, five decks down, where they had both been assigned tiny officer’s quarters across from each other. When Dr. Lois Franklin crept carefully across the gangway and into the tiny gray painted steel bunk room of her romantic interest Professor Christopher Catchpole. Under the dim light of a small desk lamp which cast a yellowish tint to the quarters, just enough to see each other. At first, in the two intellectual minds that faced each other, it was the laws of thermo-dynamics that flashed across their gray matter, it was Newton’s laws of motion, inertia, and force, it was the first few chapters of Gray’s Anatomy, it was Einstein’s Relativity, and it was friction that explained the physical. But as lust and sensory stimulation of body parts, never before fully touched by another, unexplored by the pressure of flesh on flesh, the numbers and the theories drifted happily away and an egg was fertilized on that warm pacific night. Like a live catch of two sardines, still writhing in the can before the lid is affixed, the two made love for three hours, on a bed not much wider than a man’s shoulders.

It was during preparations for the first South Pacific testing, that they were asked to take two weeks off, for needed rest and relaxation. They were married at the Memorial Church on the grounds of the University of California Stanford, under the redwood beams and illuminated by thousands of shades of sunlight color through stained glass. They honeymooned at Bodega Bay, at a quiet bed and breakfast, where they barely left their room, except to watch each sunset, what’s slow motion explosion of color and brushed cumulous marked a celebration of each of their days spent together. But the sunsets of pastel colors in horizontal strokes also demarcated the fast approach of honeymoon’s end, when once again, physics and details of controlling nearly instantaneous explosions of zillions atoms would be foremost in their minds.

In the Bikini and Enewetak atoll tests the salt air and rich humidity all but ruined the testing equipment. Radiation counters failed in three out of five locations and brisk ocean winds directed radiation fall-out in odd and elongated directions making a true radiation perimeter reading impossible. As a result all testing was moved to the continental United States and the flat and calm, dry and clear desert of Nevada was chosen.

The Southern Site was half a day’s drive from Las Vegas and most staff on the project lived in military housing assembled just for the project. Early in nineteen forty-eight Lois and Christopher had been there for six months and the first of many ground tests was about to occur. A concrete bunker had been built which was ten miles out from ground zero and could hold approximately twenty observers. Dr. Lois Franklin and Professor Catchpole sat side by side in back of the bunker behind the Rosenberg’s, the only other couple to have the distinction of being married and working on the project together.

Red tinted, heavy, goggles were passed out to each observer to enable them to see with their eyes the actual blast through the twenty inch high viewing slot in the front of the bunker. As the clock ticked down, anxiety rose to a level that could be felt by anyone at all sensitive to emotion. It was noon and the temperature at the desert floor was not yet warm, still fall-like at about fifty-five degrees and most observers were wearing coats or heavy jackets. Starring into the sun is the closest description to the experience of watching an atomic blast, but only as a basis to begin to describe it. It’s like three suns. No one averted their eyesight from the blast. Each observer painfully remained fixated on the explosion as if not wanting to be seen to be afraid of looking into the blast. When the blast was finished and the immense cloud of sand and dust sped towards them, the group removed their goggles and like a chorus line, tipped their heads and rubbed their eyes. Then came the dust storm and with it, warmth, a strange warmth that was not felt from the outside in, but began with warm bowels and organs, lungs inflating, and sinuses dilating. The observers grabbed their coats and jackets and unzipped and opened the fronts, men removed their caps, generals even took off their uniform hats. No one sweated as the dry wind beat it’s way through the viewing slot and sand whipped about the faces and through the hair of the observers. The warmth tingled within everyone. At the post test meeting not one person mentioned the warmth that penetrated the entire group. As if each person attributed the feeling only to themselves, and the perceived uniqueness of their own bodies.

Lois Franklin Catchpole was born on a spring Saturday in Las Vegas, with ten toes, ten fingers, and an adorable smile. A quaint white three bedroom home in Las Vegas was made into a castle devoted solely to little Lois’ happiness. Dr. Lois Catchpole retired from the project to remain at home with little Lois and coddle and love the small beauty. Her growing body was not questioned in the usual fashion by the two intellectual giants who were her parents. Upon seeing her in the maternity ward of the Las Vegas hospital, all that detail was forgotten and it seemed insulting to speculate on her physiology, her protein intake, her calcium levels, the rate of her bone elongation. She was instantly granted the status of Goddess. Above all that mortal complexity, predetermined to have a perfect body, and a mind that emulated her Earth dwelling parents.

In less than one year after Lois the child’s’ birth, her father began to be ill, weak and coughing, appearing pale and growing thin. The medical team at the project made him, and four other sickly project staff, guinea pigs to be prodded at on the base, and kept there five to six days a week under constant examination. Soon after, the numbers of incapacitated project workers had risen to more than twenty. Some of them so weak that walking was impossible. When it appeared that her husband would not recover, Lois the new mother fought in argument with the base commander and the doctors to have him returned to his home. For three months and a few days he was cared for delicately, and he was able to watch little Lois grow and play, laugh and cry. Through his hours of morphine induced delusion, and between his hours of the narcotic’s anesthetic sleep, he saw his wife and child when his eyes were open, and his awareness of his pain became the small price to pay for the sight of them.

When he stopped waking up and it was clear it was over, Lois became angry immediately, blaming the military for what she now knew was radiation sickness.

In the middle of the afternoon, Lois Franklin sat in her dark living room, as little Lois slept in her crib, and she stared at a portrait across the room, of her departed husband, standing in his lab at Stanford, at the chalkboard showing off his new equations, smiling wide and proud. In the weeks that followed the funeral she began to realize the horror of the atomic bomb. She imagined hundreds of thousands of wives and children, good men and innocent families, suffering the anguished and prolonged terror of this depletion of life in front of them. She wished that if the bomb were used, it would kill everyone instantly and spare the hoards of families on the outlying perimeter of the detonation. Lois contemplated the future of the bomb:

“Peace around the world. That’s what we thought. A weapon that would forever prevent international conflict. Better lives for our children, without wounds, lost limbs, brain damaged teenagers. No casualties. No nation dare. A large price, the risk, the risk. It can’t be worth it. How easy it would be to learn how to make the bomb, easy. Jesus, I know how to make one, and I sit here steaming mad at the United States military! Einstein is right. We are but children playing with fire. We are arrogant. We are over confident. The risk is significant. The risk is overbearing to the dream of world wide peace. Which might in itself be a delusion The Rosenbergs are right.”

For three months Lois walked in the dark shadows of mourning, camped inside the house, she had blocked the cheerful sunlight at every window by curtains, and cardboard and tape. The silence of walls, and rugs, and furniture was only broken by little Lois’s cries for attention. This dark confinement was her way of giving proper sentiment to the death of her husband. It was a combination of self punishment to alleviate guilt, no matter how unmerited, of time in reflection worthy of her husband’s life. Her vigil was enough to drain the heavy load of loss from Lois’ psyche, to a manageable position where doing nothing any longer had become frustrating, and taking action was plausible. Dr. Lois Franklin placed all of her husband’s possessions in wooden crates and nailed them shut with swift and determined hammer strikes. She sold the house in Las Vegas and moved to San Diego with little Lois, to live again with her parents. Her parents orange grove was vast and beautiful and Lois had cherished her upbringing on this farm. For the grieving widow it was a perfect place to find solace and to concentrate on caring for little Lois. Her parents were delighted, and especially because the presence of the baby made them parents again, feeling the joy and energy that swells within a child occurring again in the lives.

Dr. Lois Franklin chose not to return to the sciences, and not to teach, but to stay with her daughter as much as possible. She worked the orange business, relieving her parents of much of the tedium of the paperwork, and management of the transport, and of the management of the payroll. Very often little Lois was at her side, whether out in the fields, or in the office attached to the farm house.

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Little Lois was eighteen months old when the men came to the farm. A fat Chevy painted a dull military green with a white star on it’s doors, churned up the dust on the quarter mile drive to the Catchpole farm. Flying a Major’s signal flag, before the dust settled across the fields of green leafy trees speckled with oranges it was obvious authorities from Lois’ life past had found her. In the office Lois swiveled around in her desk chair and her heart seemed to skip a beat as the realization that the inevitable had come. “Damn, must have been that electric bill I sent back to Vegas,” she concluded in her thoughts. She picked up baby Lois in her arms as if to protect her, and she rapidly paced out to the front of the house to meet the men and to show them what they wanted to see, her child.

Two thin officers emerged from the car and removed their hats upon seeing Lois with her baby. Lois nervously greeted them with a forced smile of cordiality. The driver was a young man with a boyish face and a pleasant smile and he remained silent and nodded his greeting towards Lois. The higher ranking officer was in his mid to late twenties and did the talking.

“Dr. Lois Franklin, I’m Lieutenant Jack Boot. You might remember meeting me at the project’s Christmas party the year before last. I’m so glad you are well.”

“I’m just fine Lieutenant, thank you for your concern. I vaguely remember meeting you, so many of you Army types look alike to me, you know, with the same haircuts across the board.” Lois smiled and bounced little Lois upwards on her hip.

“We won’t trouble you for long Dr. Franklin. I’m sure you are aware the Army likes to keep careful tabs on participants in the project, such as yourself and your husband, God rest his soul.” The Lieutenant carefully commented to Lois’ gaze without blinking.

“I understand Lieutenant. Let’s all go inside and have some tea to wash this dust down our throats. Shall we?”

As baby Lois scampered about the house, entertaining her grandmother in the kitchen, teasing an annoyed beagle, and eating cookies, Lois and the Army bureaucrats sat in a triangle of soft seats in the living room and sipped iced tea. Lieutenant Jack Boot drew documents from his attaché case and began to take notes, and check off items on list of required questions. Most of the questions were about her health. Questions such as weight, menses regularity, tooth aches, bone pain, hair loss, weakness. It made Lois uncomfortable, but knowing she would not likely see these men any time soon, made it easier to answer. When the questioning moved to her daughter, her concern peaked and the session was no longer easy to get through. The thought of little Lois getting sick and dying was abhorrent, torturing, horrific. Cringing, unknowingly shredding a napkin in her lap, she answered the questions.

When Dr. Lois Franklin-Catchpole became ill she requested of her parents that her daughter not see her in sickness. She was made as comfortable as possible, in a back bedroom of the ranch house. Young Lois saw her only in carefully arranged moments with Mrs. Franklin by her side, should she need to vomit, or a tooth should come lose while her daughter was near. Her depression in the knowing she was dying before she could raise little Lois and see her life, was enough to exacerbate the destruction of her already stressed immune system. The entire horrible event from first symptoms to a quiet, overnight death, took less than four months.

The Franklins adopted little Lois but saw it appropriate to keep her full family name. She lived a life of a spoiled grandchild on the vast orange grove farm. She had a pony, and her own playhouse in the lush and green backyard. Bicycles and Barbies and friends surrounded her daily, as Lois was popular at school, and the Franklins were happy to entertain groups of her friends on any occasion.

In nineteen sixty-five Lois and three friends piled in her new red Ford Falcon convertible and took-off in search of the Beatles. They traveled to fifteen cities, chasing rumors in most cases. The sight of Paul in the flesh was all they wanted. To touch him would be even better, to smell him would be “to die for,” and for some of his hair they might just kill-off near by competition. In New York City, at three o-clock in the afternoon, Lois drew the short-straw to go into a hardware store and buy a huge sledge hammer. In New York City, at three o-clock in the morning, four high school seniors from North Orange County high school broke into a hotel kitchen using a thirty-pound sledge hammer on the back door chains, in hopes of getting to the fifth floor, where it was rumored the Beatles were staying. With a ten minute chase through the hallways and down the stairwells, and a great struggle of clothes pulling and falling on carpeting, they were arrested on the second floor by two bellhops and three security guards who had to fight harder than they could have imagined to wrestle the four crazed young women to the floor. Lois wrote her grandmother a letter from the third precinct holding cell the following morning.

Dearest Nanny,

I got arrested last night! It’s Ok, don’t worry, we are fine. They said our bail would probably be twenty-five each. We have it, but it means we’ll have to come home after we get out tomorrow. We are supposed to see the judge by noon tomorrow. In the jail cell we have to pee in the open! Fortunately there are four us and we take turns hiding each other around the commode. Everyone can see us. They took all our things, our make-up included. The food is horrible, worse than Granddad’s pepper relish on sourdough! (ha ha just kidding Granddad). I think they served us meatloaf, but Cindy insists it was a chicken patty of some kind, and Sally wouldn’t eat hers and we think that by tonight it will transform into a hockey puck (we’re watching it closely). I’ve been thinking about college, and specifically UCLA, and I’m feeling more and more ambivalent about the whole thing. I’m thinking I would like to take a few years and explore myself. Maybe live on my own for a while. It will likely take us about ten days to get back to you. See you then!

P.S. We still haven’t seen Paul, or John, or George, or even Ringo.

Your loving and grateful, but disappointed about the Beatles, granddaughter.

- Lois

A Magical World, chapter II

In the summer of nineteen seventy-one the newspapers were all a buzz about The Pentagon Papers, and the 26th Amendment was enacted, lowering the voting age to eighteen years-old. The young owners of the limbs and the lives lost in a land where they were not wanted, where they did not belong, in the jungles across the Pacific, were not much older than eighteen themselves. Men drove a small car on the surface of the moon and sent the live moving image of their road-trip to televisions across the world. A twenty-three year old waitress named Lois Franklin-Catchpole began dating a man whose name she would soon vow to never utter again, but of whom privately she would refer to always as “Asshole.” Before him she had already been married and divorced before the age of twenty, and she thought that her lesson was learned, that her wisdom would now protect her from another crappy relationship. Her fast and furious first marriage left lessons, but they were lessons undigested by the mind, still emotional, un-nurtured. Lessons not contemplated enough to prevent her from the longing of the romantic and sexual consumption of another good looking man, at the drop of a hat, at the smell of his musk. Because wisdom, like a good wine, requires decades of age for fermentation, to reach the senses most efficiently, Lois’ wisdom was under refined, young.

He was incredibly handsome, like one of those hunky men from the cigarette commercials, and his muscles large and firm, and his posture perfect. He was an older man of thirty-eight. His chiseled jaw and Colgate smile were like that of a male model, and his runway strut occurred right in front of her one morning while she was pushing eggs and bacon and refilling coffees at The Waffle House, off the strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. She still remembers that morning’s sights and sounds, the bright and glaring yellow sunshine from the dawn’s rising beamed into the restaurant windows and the local am station played the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun.” His brunette hair was barely combed, lose and defiant like Robert Redford’s, and his lamb chop sideburns were like fat strips of burnt bacon draped in front of his ears. He was the most handsome man Lois had ever laid eyes on and when she turned away from his table, she performed her special tip enhancing slow walk, emphasizing her ass, swaying slightly left and right, rising and falling on each side as if walking on a broken shoe.

That morning his presence disturbed her concentration from her job, and in Lois’s mind he became the star of her favorite workplace fantasy, where she allows the handsome stranger to manhandle her into the janitors’ closet in back of the kitchen. Once inside, he would lift her buttocks up onto the sink counter and yank her panties off in one swift motion. His maple syrup kisses would press into her and wet her with passion all over her neck, and her lips and face, and he would make sweet love to her vagina with his fat and strong tongue, his gruff beard stubble scraping the inside of her thighs, already damp from work sweat. She would drop to her knees, next to the dirty mops and ammonia bottles, and frantically suck his penis and massage his testicles, causing him to stretch out his arms and brace himself on the walls spanning the tight space of the janitor’s closet. His breakfast sausage-greased finger tips would squeeze her nipples, hurting them beautifully and his fat penis would open her up as if a bus were trying to park in a one car garage. The stranger would leave her in the musty hot closet, flush with rapid breathing, where she would then mop-up his semen like a disciplined sailor on deck.

After having corrected four accidentally switched orders, she brought The Marlboro Man his ticket. He gave her a five dollar tip, but he also slid a one dollar bill towards her with a pen on it and asked her for a phone number. Her warmth and delirium seemed to be a yes indicator light she could not shut off. They dated for three months, and Lois fell in love, but she never told him her feelings.

In the months after dating “Asshole,” formerly “Marlboro Man,” Lois would pass through moments of regret and disappointment for having been so stupid as she recalled the warning signs that should have tipped her off when she first starting seeing him. Principally, it was Asshole’s apartment. After the first week of dating she had let him drive her there. As she stood inside the living room she was impressed, not with the interior design, but the lack of it, and the proliferation of aluminum foil covering every inch of the walls and ceilings. He kept a desk and three old chairs in the living room. The wall in front of the desk was covered in UFO paraphernalia, posters, newspaper clippings, science-fiction artwork of aliens and spacecraft. There was a small television turned backwards for it’s screen to face the wall, not so that no one could see the screen, but for the screen to be incapable of seeing anyone in the apartment. “smart thinking,” Lois thought to herself. While Asshole was using the bathroom, Lois crept over to the door of the only bedroom and opened it, but it wouldn’t open all way, but it did open enough to see the mess of leaning stacks of newspapers four feet high, in every corner and behind the door, with only a narrow pathway to the center for access.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Lois exclaimed under her breath while starring at the stacks of old newspapers.

She closed the door thinking that he would have rather not shown her this obsession in the bedroom, and she scampered over to the middle of the living room to be in place, as if she had never left. She sat in one of the chairs and contemplated whether or not the people who lived upstairs knew they were sleeping on top of a Roman Candle. He came smiling into the living room.

“Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got Pepsi, Tab, Tang or tea.” He asked.

“Uh, yeah I’ll have a Tab, thanks. Reynolds must love you. Huh?” Lois remarked.

“Oh. Yes the foil. I uhh thought that one day I’ll put in sun lamps and make the world’s largest rump-roast, you know, get myself into the Guinness Book of World Records.” He snickered and went to the kitchen to fetch sodas.

“What about the UFO and alien stuff, did you see a UFO once?” Lois said jovially.

“Oh no no. I just find it all very interesting. There may be something to it you know, all those different witnesses from all over the world.” He said in a speculative tone. Lois knew damn well he was lying, that he was a UFO “nutcase.”

“You seem to be a little more than just interested, I mean that’s a lot of stuff.” Lois pointed at the desk and it’s clutter.

“Well I know. Truth is it’s gotten a little bit interesting lately. I mean, I think I’m on to something. Getting closer to something big. But you must not tell anyone.”

“It’s groovy. Your bag is your bag.” Lois smiled and sipped her Tab.

Two months and three weeks later Lois came to his apartment one mid-afternoon on a Wednesday to return his watch, which he had earlier misplaced at her apartment. From behind his front door she heard the sound of a woman moaning and squealing and she opened it to find a blonde bimbo, riding Asshole like a cowboy on a bronco. Lois angrily threw his watch over their heads, and it slammed against the far wall and Asshole’s face looked backwards and upside down at her from the floor, forming an “excuse me it’s not what you think,” expression, as his hands were still grabbing the bimbos’ ass. That was the last sight of him she ever saw, and it was not a pleasant memory to leave on.

Thirty-three weeks after the abrupt break-up, the twenty-one-year-old Lois lay in a Las Vegas hospital maternity ward, laboring to give birth to her first and only child. The boy was eight pounds and healthy, and she gave him her deceased father’s first name, Colby Catchpole.

Lois decided while laying in recovery for three days in her semi-private room that this little man in a crib beside her, would from now on be her only man. She would never have Assholes in her life again. Little Joseph would be the love of her life, and she would spoil him and do anything for him, to keep him safe and happy.

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Nineteen-Seventy-Six

The chain-link pen that was the small backyard, in the perfectly patterned and large Las Vegas neighborhood, was mostly dirt with some patches of grass left over from before Colby and his mother had moved in, and the yard had become Colbys’ playground. At five years old Colby was in his peak of energy, of learning, of curiosity and of playful rambunctious behavior. In his five year old mind it was a time of miracles possible, of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, of magic cast by wicked queens or good fairies, fire breathing dragons, enchanted forests and animals that talk, Pooh and Bugs, and of a funny monster who craves cookies and lives in a trash can. He hopes that perhaps one day, he would see the Easter Bunny, or Santa and Rudolph, or find buried treasure left by pirates from long ago which may include a genie’s lamp to rub and get three wishes from. All things were possible because ignorance was blissful and any day now, this five year old boy could run into some magic, around any corner, or under the ground of his own backyard.

It was a typically hot day in southern Nevada, and Colby was covered in the dust of the dirty backyard while the afternoon sun beat down upon his bare shoulders. Enjoying the feeling of being productive, Colby was digging a hole with a small red plastic shovel, and placing a pile of fresh dirt beside the hole. He had next to him two empty pie tins and he wanted to make pies but he would need water. He looked over at the hose and spigot protruding from the rear wall, over the small concrete back porch, it dripped and he thought of using it. He remembered his mom’s angry admonishment, from just yesterday afternoon, when she came home from work and found the back yard pitted with holes Colby had blasted into the dirt with the high pressure nozzle of the hose, while his babysitter was obliviously watching soaps. “No more hose Colby. No more anymore goddammit!” She had strained herself enough for Colby to realize this was a big-one, “a big no.” But he needed water for his pies and he couldn’t go inside for the water, the babysitter would wonder what he was doing and stop him. Colby stopped his digging and pulled his hands and his brown dirt caked fingers out of the hole. Kneeling back with his legs resting under him he held himself upright and he looked up to the sky, clear and blue. He thought about how rain would help him at this moment. His crystalline blue eyes darted about the sky as if waiting to see a rain cloud. As he continued to look up, his forehead began to sweat and he reached to feel his forehead like his mother does when she wants to know if he’s getting a fever. He began to frown as he felt a searing heat in the rear of his head, but he tried to ignore the feeling and continued to watch the sky. Then the wind came with no gradual warning, and toys began to tumble over and move across the yard, first his big wheel, then the Tonka truck, then the beach buckets and little shovels, all flipping over and flying towards the rear fence. But Colby kept watching the sky, and he starred straight upward, as if focusing on a single small piece of the sky above.

From the altitude of five-thousand feet, the north Las Vegas neighborhood looked like two hundred upside-down white Lego blocks with square pegs, instead of round, laid out perfectly side by side with only thin black strips of asphalt connecting them. From this vantage point Colby was a microscopic speck of brunette hair with a small white face looking up immediately behind one of those square pegs. Then a faint graying of the view of Colby’s house occurred within seconds as moisture congregated at rapid speeds from all directions within the valley and began to combine into a vortex of water vapor.


The graying grew over a period of two or three minutes into a darker gray, and the vortex began to form more visibly, more defined and it’s spirals, galaxy like, stretched out over approximately ten blocks. Colby kept staring, unable to avert his sight, unsure why. Still feeling the intense heat from his head, his blue eyes pierced the center of the vortex above him as if demanding obedience.


Las Vegas Tower was bustling with flights, and eight controllers, two mangers, and six direct supervisors were in full work mode. Density radar was being watched by Karen who doubled as a supervisor for one controller who was nearest to the radar screen. She sat on a well-oiled metal desk chair on Caster wheels, which she operated with her tennis-shoed feet to move rapidly from one station to the other, usually while handling a cup of coffee, a pen, a cigarette and a note pad simultaneously. Her position was the most boring assignment in the tower because weather is a rare event in Las Vegas, but FAA requirements say they have to monitor for anomalies and expected storms, twenty-four hours a day. But the radar was for moisture density, and the ashtrays in the lounge were more useful and more functional than this three-thousand-dollar terminal. Karen was resting her elbow on Mary’s work platform and watching her screen as she handled two taxing passenger jets. For no particular reason she glanced over at the radar screen, then back to Mary’s screen, then she rolled away quickly to double check what she thought she must have imagined on the radar screen. Karen’s mouth dropped open like she was in the dentist chair. It was what appeared to be a small hurricane, but it’s northern top was turning to the east and it was less than a half mile in radius. She waited for the radar dish to pass two more times, just to make sure. It was true. Karen stood and yelled for the tower manager.

“Kenny! Kenny! We have a weather anomaly on radar! Kenny get over here please!”

Silence befell the tower room after several controllers froze the runway, and put others in pattern. Every controller and supervisor turned toward Karen to hear the information.

“Did you let it pass a few times?” Kenny asked with urgency as he sprinted toward the radar panel and Karen.

“Yeah, it’s been six passes now. I think it’s for real. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Jesus H. Christ what the hell is that fucking thing. It’s like a hurricane!”

Kenny was incredulous. He looked at the wind reading on the gauges on the wall, the tower wind read due north at 20 kts., but the eastern end of the runway read north by north west at 17 kts..

“Holy shit it’s sucking up wind from all corners of the city!”

Kenny turned toward the tower windows and began to address everyone in the room.

“Be advised all controllers. Listen up! Ten miles from north of the runway is off limits! Divert all traffic to the south approach and takeoff pattern until further advised! We also got new winds people! Advise all pilots on new winds!”

Colby began to visibly shake, as if teetering, left and right and sweat now poured down his face as he continued to look up. The almost black spiral of violent winds heavy with rain water was so ominous and so strange, it must have frightened anyone who happened to be looking upward in Las Vegas that afternoon. But not many people were looking upward because it had been a typical blue sky and dry day in Las Vegas, and because of that common regional trait, no one would later believe the few who did tell of it.

At the rear of the controller’s tower, some seventy-feet in the air, on the steel fire escape walkway, stood twelve FAA employees contracted to Las Vegas Air Traffic Control, their neck ties flapping about in the wind like flags on mountain tops, and their mouths hanging open, mesmerized, their gaze transfixed on the air above northern Las Vegas, three of them with binoculars raised, as if untrusting of their own normal eyesight.

The spiral-shaped cloud slowed and then came to a stop as if a carnival worker in the sky had shut off the cloud carousel switch. A sound-muffling silence deadened the air as the strange cloud lingered over northern Las Vegas, creating an abrupt and weighty pressure change. But among the silence, the atmospheric pressure which pushed inward on the inner ear membranes of all mammals within it, the neighborhood dogs barked and every baby cried. Television stations 2, 5 and 7 turned to static throughout the neighborhood, and the homebound got up off their couches to adjust their rabbit ear antennas, or to whack the sides of their television sets, but no one came outside. Then the rain came, but it didn’t start out with a few drops like any other normal rain storm, it dumped like a waterfall, it’s droplets so large they were almost painful, the deluge killed outdoor plants, and loosened roof shingles, and chipped paint and pounded clean every door mat. In four minutes it was over. Colby still sat, but now with his arms outward and palms up to the sky, smiling and drinking the rest of the water that ran down his rain drop battered, and reddened face. He stood up and danced a mud-stomping dance, splashing the muddy water all around him, and he giggled with joy.

Colby had a sense of magical accomplishment that he had done it, only because he wanted it. But in Colby’s five-year-old magical world, some people can do this kind of thing, some can fly, some can grant wishes, and his ability to have made that rain was just an indication that he has not been left out of that world, as he felt he should not be. When his mother came home two hours later and she asked him the usual, “ . . so what did you do today Colby?” He had already forgotten about the strange cloud and he replied, “Oh nothing, Mom.”

Colby’s mother would answer Colby’s inquiries every so often with the same resonating and echoed words “He disappeared when you were very young.” These answers were non answers for Colby and usually only a few months would pass by before Colby would ask again about his father. “Disappeared,” was the concept Colby was left with, a magical event, like Barbara Eden as Jeannie from television had gotten angry with his father, like Bambi’s mother, like Bewitch’s mean mother had sent Darin to a dungeon somewhere. His father had went “poof,” into the ether, disappeared, vanished, melted perhaps. As Colby grew he would continue to ask Lois time and again, only to receive the same response covering up her anger with aloof affect so as not to upset Colby. Eventually Colby stopped asking, realizing that for him the “poof,” or “disappeared,” response from his ever stubborn mother became a satisfactory answer requiring no further asking.


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Dr. John Thomas had been employed as a climatologist at the National Climate Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, for three years. At thirty-one years old, he thought he had found his dream job, in Asheville, doing what he loved and on the forefront of technology, and the small city of Asheville was turning out to be the perfect place for his wife, Sarah, and he to raise their two twin daughters. Late in nineteen-seventy-five the government had launched the first infrared seeing satellite, and the NCDC had premium hours on the array, and he was still working out the imperfections, but he was loving every minute of it. Multi-tasking is a term that may have been invented by someone who had observed John Thomas’ life. He ran projects over the course of months to years, all related yet all contracted from different sources. He was on the verge of completing a study for the National Academy of Sciences on Chloral Floral Hydro Carbons and their effect on Ozone depletion. Along with the Air Force, he was monitoring heat plumes from Russian sea craft, Chinese missile testing, and any nuclear testing that could be detected. He supervised the programming of the NCDC’s fifteen vending machine sized computers, that hummed so loudly it was as if the room was a laundry-mat at peak time. His goal of feeding the infrared satellite a program which would direct it to automatically turn and capture image, on unusual heat plumes in it’s path, was still months from being perfected. At five o-clock he was gathering his coat and hat to head out the door when a new, and what would become the most challenging project of his life, signaled to him via telephone.

“John old pal! How are you? It’s Colonel Boot in Nevada.” A gruff and cheerful voice piped through the earpiece.

“Well Colonel, this is a surprise, how’s that spoiled son of yours?” John Smiled.

John Thomas’ mind momentarily drifted back to the two years he spent in Nevada working for the Army under Colonel Jack Boot. John was contracted to study the effects of Hydrogen bomb explosions on upper atmospheric currents. The Army had some crazy idea that they could make matters for worse for the enemy, by using less bombs, to do additional damage to previously stable weather systems, specifically altering upper level wind currents. It never worked. The size of the bomb needed to effect such drastic weather changes would have destroyed an entire hemisphere.

“He’s the same John. He still gets everything he wants. But they’ll be time for pleasantries later, because I’ve got a strong feeling we’ll be seeing each other real soon . .” Jack Boot replied.

“Oh no, I’ve got my hands full here Colonel.” John stated disappointedly

“I want you to look at the mid-western U.S. on infrared at fourteen-thirty-two hours Central Mountain time and tell me what you see. I’ll wait on the phone while you look, Ok?”

John set the receiver down and walked over to the data recorder terminal. He typed in commands to bring up the imagery, and he waited the three minutes for the computers to find it. Then he saw the loop run from fourteen-thirty-two to fourteen-thirty-eight. He ran it again to be sure it wasn’t an anomaly in the camera.

“What the fuck is that?” He said aloud to himself.

He returned to the phone.

“Colonel, it’s the craziest thing I ever saw. I’ve been watching weather long enough to know, this is not normal, it’s not even unusual. It’s downright bizarre. I’m a scientist, so I don’t use the term lightly, but as far as I can tell, supernatural by the very definition of supernatural. Unexplainable by known laws of nature.”

“I thought you might say that John. Just in case you’re wondering, we also have it on the NOAA topographical in black in white. Get this John; it’s no larger than a half mile in diameter and it occurred over a populated area, north Las Vegas.” Colonel Boot exclaimed.

“Are you thinking what I am, what has just occurred to me Colonel?” John danced around the question that both men were thinking.

“Between you and me John, yes I am thinking that. This could be man made. That’s why an Air Force C-130 is waiting for you at Bragg, and I need you on that plane within two hours. There will be a Huey on the rooftop at the NCDC in about an hour to take you to Fort Bragg. I’m sorry John, really I am. But you are our man on this weather stuff. Please try to sleep on the plane and I’ll see you at the Vegas airport.”

“Oh shit. Sarah and the girls are going to hate me.” John commented.

“I know John. I know. But I’ll try to have you back ASAP.” Colonel Jack Boot was genuinely empathetic of his friend’s plight.

As the landing wheels slammed onto the asphalt at Las Vegas field, John was jarred awake from his swinging slumber in a hanging cargo net, three feet above the gangway, between the bench seating just behind the cockpit and the navigator’s station. He wished for a sink, soap and a towel, but instinctively he rubbed his face up and down and shook his head as if to shake-off the sleep. By the time the loud four propeller engine plane taxied to the single military hanger on the edge of the airport property, John felt wide awake. When the side door opened, the Colonel was standing stiff, like a freshly planted tombstone, and in jest he saluted John with a smile.

“Mr. Thomas, welcome to Vegas. Thanks for coming John. I need you on this one.” Jack Boot greeted John.

“Oh you mean I had a choice? Oh, well I’ll just get back on the plane.”

John kept a straight face, and turned about face and headed for the steps of the plane. The Colonel smiled and grabbed his shoulder as though he was restraining a child from running into the street.

“It’s the Army John Thomas. You know the game. We’re friendly with our civilian contractors. But this job is a classified one and I’ll tie you to a luggage dolly if I have to, and wheel you around.”

Jack Boot would have laughed if his years of self restraint in the military would let him.

“Now that reminds me, I have to tell you the following as a matter of formality. Mr. Thomas this is a classified mission. Your services are being hired upon condition and upon terms that you maintain as top secret, all information you may retain from this moment on. Do you understand these terms Dr. John Thomas?”

“I do Colonel.” John answered with an air of indoctrination.

“We’ve located the exact center of the event. So I thought I’d drive you past the location first. Then we’ll go get some dinner.”


The Colonel and Dr. Thomas had decided they wanted to go house-to-house personally, in the neighborhood that had been pinpointed as being directly underneath the event of that day. The next day the two men went back to the house they had only seen at night, some nine hours prior. The house was small and modest and in slight disrepair. The lawn needed mowing, and a rotary blade push mower sat in overgrown grass, rusting, waiting to be used. A Big Wheel sat at the street curb in front. The lettering on the mailbox spelled out Catchpole, the mailbox tilted and near ready to fall over. In the driveway a Country Squire, Ford, station wagon, it’s rear panels rusted almost completely away. As Colonel Jack Boot and Dr. John Thomas approached the small front porch and clanging noise occurred from the side of the house. Little hyperactive Colby Catchpole came crashing through the fence gate and round the corner to the front of the house. He stopped fast in his tracks and looked up at the Colonel. He stood straight, he brought his heels together, and he promptly saluted the Colonel with his right hand, perfectly.

“Wow! You a General Mr.?” Colby asked honestly.

Colonel Boot returned the boy’s salute, with all reverence, invoking a wide smile from the three-foot-tall Colby.

“Well, I hope to be one day. How about you son, are you going to be an army man one day?” Colonel Boot leaned over to talk to the five-year-old.

“Nahh. I don’t want to come home in a body bag for no good reason.” Colby thought this is how everyone felt about the army.

Both men instantly expressed surprise and looked at each other to verify what they had heard from a pre-school aged boy. Dr. John Thomas leaned over to talk to Colby.

“What’s your name son?” He smiled pleasantly.

“I’m Colby Catchpole. What’s your name?” Colby replied and asked.

“Why, I’m Dr. Thomas, and this is Colonel Boot. We would like to talk to your mother or your father. Are they at home?”

“Nope. My mom is at work and I don’t have a Dad. But my babysitter is here! You can talk to her.”

“Thank you very much Colby.” The Colonel offered.

The babysitter’s account of the rain storm of yesterday was typical of the eight other homes they had visited in the following two hours of walking the neighborhood. She remembered the rain, she complained about the television reception, but she had not looked up at the sky. As the men left the Catchpole house Colby was in he grass of the front yard, on his knees and pushing a plastic car through the tall grass. Colonel Jack Boot returned the car and John Thomas stopped to talk to Colby, kneeling in the grass in front of him, trying to be an equal.

“Wow, that’s a nifty car you have there. It’s a Corvette, right?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.” Colby replied not looking up at John.

“Colby, do you remember the rain storm yesterday?”

“Yep. I made mud pies in the backyard with the water because I couldn’t use the hose, cause my mom got mad at me.” Colby quickly glanced upward and into John’s eyes.

“Mud pies! Wow, I’ll bet that was a dirty affair wasn’t it?”

“Ehh. I guess so. I’m allowed to get dirty when I’m in the back yard but I have to take my clothes off in the kitchen before going on the carpet.”

“Take care of yourself Colby. You’re a good kid buddy.” John rubbed Colby’s head briskly in affection and walked away.

Colby turned to watch the dull green government car pull away, and as the men passed his house he saluted the Colonel one last time, and the Colonel honked the horn and saluted back to the smiling boy. Dr. John Thomas turned to Colonel Boot and began discussing the morning.

“The Catchpole house was directly underneath the event. What do you think Colonel?”

“I think we’ve gotten nowhere fast. That house was about as common and poor as an Appalachian cabin. I half expected a retarded guy with a banjo to step out of the front door.”

“Oh now, it wasn’t that bad Jack!” John smirked in the Colonel’s direction.

“Everyone worthy of questioning has been interviewed. I need a new direction. Got any ideas John?”

“Yeah. It’s a long shot. I think you need a geologist at the Catchpole property. Do some drilling. Find out what is in the ground under that house. Magnetite, quartz concentration, asteroid, meteorite, alien minerals or something like that.”

Four days of investigation and the Colonel’s team had gotten nowhere. Geologists had discovered nothing unusual. Several Army Intelligence officers had the neighborhood staked out, parked cars with cameras, an ice-cream truck, agents in disguise as mothers with baby strollers. No unusual electrical usage was recorded anywhere in Las Vegas on the day in question. No explosions reported by neighbors, not even natural gas usage could have been a factor in that neighborhood. All witnesses remembered the rain, but none had looked upward that afternoon.

The testimony, of the air traffic controllers and other tower employees, would never be heard by anyone without a security clearance. On the morning after the storm they were all contacted and ordered to stay home and to expect a visit by investigators. New controllers were brought in from the Air Force to operate their vacant shift at the tower. Their testimonies were consistent and left all questions unanswered for Dr. John Thomas and the Colonel.

Dr. John Thomas should have known. He should have realized that Colonel Boot’s motivation had not changed since the days he had spent working with him on the Bomb Weather Manipulation project. Colonel Jack Boot still wanted the hypothetical “weather weapon.” The pursuit had become an obsessive and almost sinister quest for ultimate control and power unparalleled on Earth. Sinister because the Colonel didn’t care how he developed the weapon, didn’t care who got hurt, didn’t care how dangerous it might be once discovered and once developed. Colonel Boot kept secret from Dr. John Thomas, the abduction and forced evacuation of the airport tower employees and their families.

Almost forty hours after the event, between the hours of four and seven a.m, each one of the day shift tower workers and any persons living in their households with them, were abruptly awoken by front doors broken in, and men with flashlights and automatic rifles bursting into their bedrooms. They were rounded up like criminals and placed onto three Army buses and driven north through the desert. The men who fought with the guards were shot with tranquilizers, the children kicked and screamed and some were tied and gagged before being placed on a bus, and others were ordered at gun point to calm down. Over thirty men, women, and children never returned to Las Vegas, or to anywhere else that is known.

Lois Catchpole found it to be increasingly tough to make ends meet. Just renting a small house in Las Vegas was becoming a burden that consumed more than half of her income. One winter, Lois was feeling her stress at levels that seemed it could not get worse, and when the temperatures in Las Vegas had reached a record low for five days straight, Colby caught a fever that would not break, requiring him to be hospitalized for three days at a cost of over two-thousand-dollars, which she could not pay. She decided they had to leave. She closed her small passbook savings account and bought a used Ford van, modified with accessories, a bed and a bar, chrome and mag wheels, and a wild flames and flowers pain job. She contacted a best friend who used to waitress with her, who had gotten married and now lived in Monterey, California, and she was told elatedly that she and Colby were welcome to stay for as long as she liked.

Sophia was excited to have her old best friend and her son living with her in the house on Foam Street. In the few years since getting married and moving to the coastal city she had been bored, hadn’t met new friends, and was still adapting to the seemingly laid back quasi-hippie atmosphere in the State. When Lois’ van pulled up out front, and backfired before shutting off completely, she had arrived with a bang, and the Ford van that Colby had dubbed The Mystery Machine, seemed to be asking for a ritual suicide.

Lois looked for work doing the only job she had known, waiting tables. She was hired at the military base, Fort Ord, to work in the dining room of the Officers Club, adjacent to the recreation club and the golf course. The tips were fantastic as it seemed more than half the patrons were single, career Army men searching for wives, and they all seemed to think Lois was a candidate. They tipped large to get her attention, and she played along happily, teasing just enough to keep the green stuff rolling in.