Lehal Library

The twin had apparently seen me hang up, and when I came out of the booth he nonchalantly walked by with a paper cup as if he was soliciting a hand-out, Attached to the cup was a small card: "Go directly to Lexington and grab a cab. We will guard your rear- Do not look back." Nervous as hell, but thinking it would appear proper, I boldly pulled out a quarter and plopped it into his cup, where it clanged with other coins. I went to Lexington Avenue and flagged down a cab as fast as possible, never once looking back. But I didn't take it directly to my address, but to the corner of Eighth Street and Third Avenue, where I loitered for some time, trying to see if I had been followed. I then went to my favorite bar nearby and overconsumed cheap beer. My imagination was going full steam ahead. The paranoid fears that followed this event occupied me for some time thereafter. I had the distinct feeling that everywhere must be extraterrestrials and/or Axel's henchmen or operatives. And? WHO WERE this Axelrod and his henchmen, anyway? I spent days, weeks, cycling through the possibilities. CIA, KGB, Mossad, M-5, some ultra-secret military goings-on? Worst of all was the speculation they, themselves, might be extraterrestrial. Perhaps there was a space opera going on in which two different sets of extraterrestrial troops were fighting some kind of war here on Earth - while both at the same time were somehow ensuring that HUMANS never realize that they, themselves, are psychic. What a scenario, huh? Talk about being on the outermost fringes! Fringes so outermost that one didn't even know where the fringes were in relationship to anything else. The worst thing was I could not talk, certainly did not dare to, about any of this to anyone. I was sure I had gotten into something quite over my head. I worried I might get killed or kidnapped - disappeared - and end up as slave labor in the mines on the Moon. Even as I now write, which I am sure many will find too incredible, for words, I have to wonder. . . About a year later, in June 1977, I placed the 65 per cent signal under the blotter on my desk at SRI in California, which is to say, in our allegedly secure, guarded premises there. Entrance to my office was code locked- Only I knew the code, and it only existed in my mind. I checked under the blotter every day and afternoon thereafter for about three months, Then one morning when I lifted the blotter the hair on my arms once again stood up. The signal was gone. In its place was some dust-like powder in which a finger had scrawled two words: "Expect contact."