Stuart Slade - Armageddon

“Indeed so sir. Mr. Clinton was very lucky that the baldrick in question was a new type, one that apparently has some unnerving capabilities. In accordance with your instructions, we’ve started naming the baldrick types we encounter. For example, the we’ve designated the flying baldricks as harpies, the aquatic ones as leviathans and the land-based one as behemoths. The one killed by Mr. Clinton was human sized and gave every appearance of being a human female, a very seductive one. It changed appearance into what we assume was its real form only when blasted with several dozen rounds of double-ought buckshot and automatic pistol fire.”

“Wait a minute, this thing was able to simulate people’s appearance? It’s a shape shifter? That means it could be anybody, you, me, anybody could be killed and replaced by one of those things.”

“Yes Sir, although things may not be quite that bad. The other thing is that this baldrick, we’re going to call this type a succubus, just materialized by the former President’s table and started to speak to him. The Secret Service men thought they’d fouled up badly but nobody saw that thing before it was standing next to the former President and speaking. It’s as if it simply materialized there.”

“That’s appalling. It means nobody is safe, one could materialize here and now.”

“Well, that all depends Mister President. There are pretty much two possibilities. The first is that the succubus really is a shape-shifter and can teleport around. If that is the case, then we can take the entire science section of the Library of Congress and toss it on to the landfill. Everything we thought we knew about the physical world is wrong. However, the other possibility is much more probable and something we can handle.” Doctor Surlethe paused for a second. This was going to be the tricky bit. “This option is that the succubus doesn’t change shape or teleport, it simply makes us think it looks the way it does.”

“How can it do that?” Here comes the long words Bush thought to himself.

“Mister President, are you familiar with the concept of quantum entanglement.”

Knew it Bush thought. Four syllables at least. “I’ve heard the term.”

That means no. Doctor Surlethe said ruefully to himself. Oh well, here we go. “Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more objects influence each other at a quantum level even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This leads to correlations between observable physical properties of the systems. For example, measurements performed on one system seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it.”

Surlethe looked at the President, he wasn’t sure but Bush’s eyes seemed to be rotating in different directions. “What this means is that one quantum state can duplicate itself, transit information on itself if you like, to another without a direct contact. This has been experimentally demonstrated within a laboratory and we are just beginning to appreciate the implications of the phenomena. Now, the workings of the brain and nerves all use various kinds of energy fields, you’ve heard of brainwave measurement and things like that. We’ve been doing that for years. Now, theoretically, its possible that the succubus can entangle its energy field with those around it so that it transmits information to them, in effect it duplicates itself in them. So, the succubus holds a mental image of itself in its mind and uses this ability to entangle the sense transmissions in those around it so it duplicates that image in them. In short, all those around the succubus see it the way the succubus wants them to see it. It doesn’t change shape, it simply changes the way people see its shape.”

“And the teleport thing.”

“Easy, the succubus simply transmits an image of itself that isn’t there. It isn’t invisible, it simply tells the senses in its victim that it isn’t present. Now, if this is correct, we should be able to detect that energy field, there isn’t a part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can’t detect and measure, and work out a way to stop it. Only, we’ll need a live succubus for that and we haven’t got one. Until we get one, we won’t know which explanation is correct.”

“We don’t need a succubus Doctor, we’ve got the evidence we need.” Bush grinned to himself, just because he didn’t like using four-syllable words and usually mispronounced them when he did, didn’t mean he couldn’t understand them.

“We have Mister President?”

“This is Washington Doctor. The city with one of the highest crime rates in America. Knocking off fast-food restaurants and shooting the staff is a daily event. Or was, until the places started installing video surveillance cameras. Now, if I follow your explanation properly, the entanglement thing you talk about works on the energy fields in the brain. Surveillance cameras don’t have brains. The film should show us what is really there, not what it wants us to think is there. So, lets get that film.”

It took just under an hour. The manager of the 19th Street McDonalds had the interesting experience of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III arriving to collect his video surveillance tapes personally. Director Mueller carried the tapes went back to the White House where they were set up in the projection office just off the Conference Room. By the striking of the hour, the audience had assembled and the tapes were run.

“Right, here we are, we can see the former President and his two Secret Service men entering the restaurant… will you look at that!” Mueller’s voice was incredulous. A jet black figure, human-sized but with a set of rounded stub horns and a long pointed tail entered through the open doors of the restaurant, only a foot or so behind the rear Secret Service man. By the time the doors had closed, it was inside. “He’s getting his food, going to the table.” The succubus had walked less than a couple of feet in front of the Secret Service agents, both had looked directly at it, but neither of them had seen it. The succubus spoke with Clinton while he ate, then the two left together. A few seconds after they left, there were the brilliant flashes of gunfire outside.

“There we are, Doctor Surlethe, it doesn’t teleport and it doesn’t shift shape. It just makes us think it does, so you can start to look for your energy field, right?”

“Yes Sir.” Bush relaxed in his seat, running the implications of the scene in his mind. “Doctor Surlethe, your Quantum Entanglement theory was very interesting and, as far as I can make out, plausible. Don’t concentrate on it to the exclusion of other theories though. I’ve seen that happen all too often.

“Gentlemen, we’ve proved something else today. We can rely on our optical sensors even if we can’t rely on our own eyes and ears. That’s worth spreading to the troops, to everybody in fact. I doubt that this succubus thing that Bill killed so emphatically will be the only one that we run into, there will be more and we need to be on our guard against them. Closed-circuit television surveillance, remote surveillance so that the operator isn’t within the zone of control of these things, is essential. By Executive Order, I’m making the installation of such equipment a tax-deductible expense as from now. See that gets out as fast as possible.”

James Randi Educational Foundation, Florida, USA

James Randi rubbed his eyes. The last few days had been tiresome in the extreme, ever since the announcement that all mediums were being tested so that their abilities, if any, could be used in the war effort went out, the Foundation had been besieged by applicants. The big names, of course, had refused to show their faces. They were scared spitless of The Amazing Randi and with good reason. He knew the tricks they used and how to expose them, submitting to tests by him would destroy their livelihood. That reasoning hadn’t helped them, they had found themselves being picked up by the FBI, bundled into the back of a Chevvy Suburban and brought down to the Foundation. A few hours later, they had been on their way back, their fraudulent claims exposed and discredited.