Behind the Facade

Chapter 11

admin — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:32:54 +0000

Melissa leaves the brief but explosive meeting fuming and cursing the colonel. She’s got a fiery temper and not much of a filter. No sooner does she get into her room — which is heavily secured — than she is immobolized face down on her bed by a mystery assailant. Neither she nor the reader have any idea of his identity — a secret revealed only at the end of the team’s “service” at the as yet unknown location. The assailant knows quite a bit about Melissa — in disturbing detail. The reader learns several disparate pieces of information in the brief exchange between Melissa and her captor when he allows her to speak. She never sees his face.

He claims to be a member of the “Group” – the faceless assemblage that is the real authority behind whatever it is that’s going on.

Colonel Ferguson wasn’t enthusiastic about external involvement on the as yet unrevealed project.

The assailant claims to be interested in Melissa’s welfare. His crytpic explanation: “it’s about debts.” He tells Melissa the only person she can trust is Brian, but she’s in no mood to believe him.

He leaves a “token of affection” for her — an access card that will override the security protocols and grant her access into any room in the facility that doesn’t require a palm or retina scan. For emergencies only, he cautions. He nevertheless threatens to kill her if she moves from her position on the bed and leaves the room in the next three minutes.

Melissa obviously has issues and a history with someone very dangerous and unpredictable. Is she at all trustworthy or completely selfish?

Chapter 10

admin — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:32:26 +0000

The main focus of this chapter is Colonel Ferguson. The bewildered and irritated team, still unsure of why their services have been commandeered by the government, get an up-close-and-personal lesson in how a pecking order is established. After being challenged by Deidre Harper, the colonel explodes like a drill sergeant (“The room fell completely silent, the team members transfixed upright in their chairs like a bunch of scared marine recruits on the first day of boot camp”). There’s no question about who’s in charge.

Chapter 9

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:59:39 +0000

Another critical character is introduced in this chapter: Father Andrew Benedict. We get the distinct feeling that Father Benedict has a special interest in Brian, though we aren’t sure why. He’s a good-natured priest who is aged by spry. Father Benedict was modeled in some respects after Father Malachi Martin. The best and most telling line in the chapter is when Father Benedict tells Brian, who is incredulous that anyone would care about his scholarly work, “Someone is always paying attention, Brian … You would do well to remember that.” Indeed.

Chapter 8

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:59:07 +0000

Brian meets two important characters in this chapter: the talkative, effusive, unflappable and unfiltered Malcolm Bradley and the sassy, opinionated Deidre Harper. They are both African Americans and both very smart. They will both turn out to be important alliances for Brian in addition to team members on the as-yet-undisclosed secret project they find themselves handed. They’ll also play crucial roles in the sequel (Deidre’s domestic circumstances may factor in there, and you never know what Malcolm will be up to).

Malcolm is my favorite character in The Facade. You may have noticed that he always gets the best lines. He’s my sarcastic side. It was a lot of fun thinking about what Malcolm would say in a given situation. It was nice having someone say things I normally wouldn’t.

We get a hint that our beautiful redhead, Dr. Melissa Kelley, is also at the base through a side comment from Malcolm. Brian of course has no clue as to the referent, but readers do. Readers also know she isn’t there of her own free will.

The chapter ends with a bit of tension-heightening as we find out about the existence — and oversight — of “The Group.” As Malcolm opines, “Nobody knows who they are. Like
cockroaches—they’d rather stay out of the light.” You get the feeling that they aren’t in Brian’s corner, or that of anyone else.

Chapter 7

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:58:25 +0000

Chapter 7 is designed to give the reader a bit of an ominous feel for Brian’s situation, as yet unrevealed to him and the reader. We learn he is at a location that is oppressively secured. The Bill of Rights doesn’t exactly apply. The chapter ends with the reader’s curiosity piqued (as is Brian’s) at how someone in his field could have anything in common with a bovine biochemist. The odd juxtaposition of those fields is so random that it can’t be coincidental!

Chapter 6

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:26:33 +0000

This is a chapter that was not in the first edition of The Facade. I added it because of subsequent ideas about the sequel.

In Chapter 6 we witness the murder of Father Mantello in the library of Castel Gandolfo, the Vatican Observatory — by the same sort of being who killed the linguist at the beginning of the book. We learn Mantello is a friend of Father Benedict (whom readers have not met yet) and has some expertise in astronomy. Mantello sees and knows something of terrible importance–so significant that he can’t quite bring himself to believe it (“this cannot be true”). What that thing is the reader never learns in The Facade. This was quite deliberate. I do this a few times, deliberately disclosing a thread that will be taken up in the sequel. We also never learn if his cryptic message was ever received by Father Benedict — or even if Benedict was its target.

This chapter begins with the verse in Matthew 24 that appears to connect the return of Christ with “the days of Noah.” Readers of my UFO Religions blog know that I don’t much credence in that connection … at least in terms of how it is articulated. Assume nothing with respect to the sequel.

Chapter 5

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:25:47 +0000

This chapter provides a hint of the spiritual conflict in The Facade, when Neil Bandstra says to Brian, “You’ll hear things … learn of things that will make you wonder about God’s interest in our world … and about whether God is really who we thought He was.” This will ultimately refer to the “extraterrestrial exposure” Brian will be hit with later, but for the reader — who always knows more than Brian does, even at the end — it refers to the broader question of intelligent evil and how (and whether) God is actively restraining it.

We also learn more about Brian. I love the Abraham Lincoln quotation that heads the chapter (“I will prepare, and some day, my chance will come”). It speaks to a dogged character in the face of futility. In Brian’s case, he’s experienced plenty of the latter and isn’t making any conscious effort to prepare for anything. Rather, he’s being and been prepared for what he will face by the unseen hand. In fact, the unseen hand — rather than “direct” divine intervention — is one theme I will use in the sequel quite a bit. It’s the way life is for the most part, by design.

Chapter Four

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:28:45 +0000

In this chapter we are introduced to Neil Bandstra, Brian’s only real friend from his college days and now a high level DC bureaucrat, and Colonel Vernon Ferguson, a career Air Force officer. The purpose of this chapter was not only to introduce these two important characters, but also to telegraph their participation in a governing structure behind even the President — the military-industrial complex that people who follow current events know exists, but that’s about all.

The existence of this shadowy black-hole for R & D in who knows what, has been hinted at in mainstream news sources. Consider the following:

Donald Rumsfeld admits the Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 trillion dollars — spent, but on things no one can trace:

WIRED Magazine article: Exposing the Black Budget

Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget

This book by Tim Weiner is based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Weiner probes the way the Pentagon has used secret budgets to fund huge military programs. This has grown to the point that there are now more than 100 multimillion- and multibillion-dollar weapons systems, many of them nuclear weapons designed to fight and win World Wars III and IV, built without the awareness of the public or even the Congress.

Wall Street Journal article on the 2011 U.S. Defense Budget

This article lets us know that in President Obama’s 2011 budget, the “black” portion of the $712 billion Department of Defense request totals some $57.8 billion.

Chapter 3 Bibliography

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:47:31 +0000

Chapter Three of course is our introduction to Melissa Kelley. Her specialties are were American Studies with a focus on right-wing religious-political cults and militia groups. I thought I’d give you some bibliographic notes on how those fields relate to The Facade and (potentially) the sequel.

Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism

This is a Duke University Press title. The abstract on Amazon reads in part: “Nazi skinheads and other groups proclaiming white supremacy represent a disturbing and frightening challenge to those advocating toleration and equality for all races. Historian of religion Gardell (In the Name of Elijah Muhammad) draws on interviews with white supremacist leaders to provide a startling and revealing view of many of these groups and their religious motivations.” It interests me because of the way it connects Nazi mythology, paganism, and modern political movements.

Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity

This is the third scholarly book in a trilogy by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (the first one was a revision of his doctoral dissertation entitled The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology). Black Sun brings his research up to date. It includes a chapter on UFOs — a rare academic treatment of that subject in the context of Nazi occultism. I have a fairly extensive library on Nazi Occultism, and Goodrick-Clarke’s books are among the best.

Himmler’s Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race

Not as scholarly as Black Sun, but also focused specifically on Nazi pseudo-scientific efforts to trace their heritage back to the Aryan Myth. Given my notes on Chapter 1, it could make for an interesting trajectory to move from Nazism to the gods of Sumer. Not sure how much of that I’ll care about when it’s all said and done, but it’s a good example of how ideas can be strung together and backed by peer-reviewed research. Conclusions drawn from that concatenation, of course, may or may not be sound — but such is the stuff of “what if?” fiction.

The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust

One of the awful bi-products of the Nazi attempt to prove their own mythology was the holocaust. A good bit of the mythology Himmler bought into was also part of theosophical teaching (“root races”), and anyone who has read my UFO Religions blog knows that there is a definite overlap between “contactee messaging” and theosophy. I don’t believe that’s coincidence.

Look for Melissa to be the go-to source for all this sort of thing in the sequel. She’ll see thought patterns that no one else will and it will matter for the alternative mythology being erected in the sequel — and for real today.

Chapter 3

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:12:04 +0000

The introduction of Melissa Kelley. She had all the features I find most attractive, in a albeit superficial sort of way (green eyes, the red hair (in the “Scully cut” bob), but complemented by a real attitude problem. You can tell right away she’s filled with rage at something and doesn’t make much of an effort to filter her contempt for whatever it is that sets her off. Melissa is composite of three women: my wife, Dana Scully, and a woman I really didn’t like at the time (and probably still wouldn’t) who will remain nameless. The last of those is the contemptuous, miserable Melissa. I draw favorite features from the other two. I wanted a female character that Brian simultaneously couldn’t resist but wouldn’t want to be around.

Melissa’s field of expertise — American Studies with a specialization in right-wing religious-political cults and militia groups — will come in quite handy in the sequel. I picked it not only for that reason, but also if gave her another stereo-typical reason to tar and feather Brian since he was an unapologetic Christian. They were bound to get into it.