Anyone who doesn’t think the government is up to weird stuff is living with their head buried in the sand. Things like MKULTRA have already been publicly acknowledged, and although the alphabet soups do their best to cover it up it seems like we’ll get UFO’s confirmed by the government any day now.

And don’t even get me started on ESP and other weird phenomena like that. While officially that remote viewing project was shut down, a recent dump of declassified documents included several that discussed the various issues regarding analyzing and disseminating the take from ESP sources without revealing them to those who have been read-in on the key words. Not that they discuss what those are in the document, naturally the caveats for those have been redacted in the released documents.

Hell, even the terminology used probably would make no sense to the layman when discussing things like this. Maybe that’s why no one is aware of the weirdness? Those who would be “in the know” would also be legally obligated to keep their mouths shut on the topic, unless they felt like enjoying an extended stay at Leavenworth.

Even the National Archives, of all places, has a side to it blocked to the public. It’s rather ironic, that an agency tasked with increasing transparency has a secret archive who’s very existence is downright verboten to be discussed. But someone decided that public knowledge of the existence of these documents was very real threat that would cause untold damage to the security of our nation, so they’ve been classified out the ass and locked up in a secure facility in Central Maryland. One more building of unknown ownership surrounded by a barbed wire fence really doesn’t stick out much with all the other beltway bandits and contractors working in the region, and the small amount of employees adding to the traffic in the region goes practically unnoticed.

Now, how did I end up with a part-time job in such a place? That’s a rather more complex question to answer, but looking back at it I would almost be tempted to call it fate.

I had always been rather open-minded about the supernatural. In elementary school I had taken the existence of ghosts for granted, and had even tried begging my mom for a deck of Tarot cards. I guess it wasn’t the most Catholic of interests, but my interest continued as I grew up, though I eventually kept it to fantasy novels and anime. That said, art and drama also caught my interest, and I even got into cosplay.

Of course, my parents had no idea how to deal with my interest in these less than scientific interests. Both were engineers, who met at work of all places, and they both had a thoroughly engineering mindset when it came to viewing the world. Everything has to be based on what’s logical and the most rational choice, and this was reflected in the direction they tried to push me for my career. Engineering.

I’ve been told I’m rather intelligent, and honestly I have a hard time denying it, so naturally my parents assumed I would go along with their plans. But I downright hated math, and the thought of being stuck in such a rigid setting would have been downright torture to me. But at the same time I did not have a clear idea of what kind of career I wanted out of life, at least not clear enough to convince my parents who, quite frankly, had final say over where my college savings would go and to which academic program I would go into.

So what options were there for a rebellious teen, who is young enough to be swayed by fantasy and the promise of adventure? Someone who is unsure of the direction they want to go in life, doesn’t want to be stuck studying for a degree they’re not sure they want, and wants to be able to pay for college without relying on her family or going into debt? A place to broaden your horizons, learn new skills that most people would never pick up and get paid for doing so? Surely, if such a convenient option existed it would be swamped wouldn’t it?

I filled out the “request more information” on the USMC’s website and in no time at all a Ssgt in a spiffy uniform was calling my home phone, forever pushing me down the path of being associated with eating crayons and glue. For all my supposed intelligence I was easily swayed, and one of my parents previously serving with them did nothing to help. It’s probably close to brainwashing, having a parent you look up to telling you “they’re the best of the best” while a heroic looking guy fights off a fire golem in some weird stadium on screen before saluting with his sword as Dress Blues appear on his body.

My parents opposed the decision, at first. Honestly I played it off more like the recruiter talked me into it at the time, rather than admitting that joining the military was what I really wanted. Even back then, I was shy, and it took me quite a bit of motivation to act truly assertive when it came to things I wanted. Really not the kind of person you’d expect to join the Marines. But my parents warmed up to the ideas after I took the military’s aptitude tests, and scored high enough to qualify for any job they had. Not that it’s that hard to do so.

The ASVAB measures and overall percentile score, as well as several other scores that show aptitudes in various subjects. My percentile score was 99, as high as it can go. While maxing out the percentile score on an intelligence test may sound impressive, keep in mind that it just means out of a group of 100 people, I’d most likely be in the top intelligence wise. Another way to break it down would be that there would be 10 other people at my level in a group of a thousand, and in a field that attracts intelligent people like the Signals Intelligence I ended up going into, being in the top percentile is down right ordinary.

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With the promise of a technical field and a top secret clearance my parents were more than happy to sign my enlistment papers, since being at the age of 17 when I joined I still needed their permission. The irony of going into a field heavily dependent on math with a rigid structure because I wanted to avoid being an engineer is not lost on me. But at the same time I gained a newfound freedom living away from home.

Boot camp sucked ass, I mean spending Christmas in the field and having snow in South Carolina is absurd, and combat training wasn’t much better. Upon completing my job training in sunny Florida and getting to my unit in the fleet, I took to my job behind a computer rather well at least as far as the technical skills go. To this day I still have a deep loathing of Powerpoint.

All that said, I still couldn’t get past an attraction to the paranormal, and it didn’t help that our units buildings were in a state that’s best described as “haunted as fuck.” It’s really funny, a unit consisting of literally the brightest minds in our branch and everyone believes in ghosts.

Although I’m going out of my way to avoid mentioning my unit, for propriety’s sake, anyone who was there would immediately recognize the unit I’m talking about. Footsteps in the hallway of the battalion headquarters at night, a phenomena experienced by multiple people when stuck as duty driver. Furniture rearranging itself, in a locked room, in the most secure building on base. Said building also had pockmarks in one of the walls from an overeager guard shooting at what turned out to be an apparition with a shotgun.

Not that this activity was limited to our unit. At one point there was a major incident that occurred from some people in another section of the base playing around with a Ouiji Board. This led to paranormal shit happening all over base. Several units outright banned Ouiji Boards as a response, and you can find a few paranormal channels on Y**tube discussing the event.

One of my coworkers, LCpl Snyder, seemed to be especially sensitive to these incidents, about as sensitive as I was. There was a weird sort of kinship I felt with her, like there was a shared energy we had. It was kind of odd, thought at the time I partially though it might just be that she clearly was a closeted lesbian.

It’s practically a stereotype about female Marines. You hear guys all the time claim the most competent of them are gay. And since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed while I was in bootcamp it’s not like there’s any need to tread lightly on the topic anymore. Don’t know why she tries to hide it; maybe she’s just one of those absent-minded types who isn’t even aware of it themselves.

Oh well. Anyways, I was content to finish up my enlistment making as little waves as possible. I had opportunities to get deeper into my career field, and the secret-squirrely world that it implied, but it all seemed to imply a level of social interaction that just didn’t appeal to me. I already managed to build up a work history that would get me a job at any number of contractors or 3-letters once I left the base. And I had taken hard to the common Marine Corps saying of “never volunteer for anything.”

It didn’t help that some of the people making these offers were sketchy as fuck. One in particular. He gave off a weird vibe, like The Smoking Man from the X-files. And he kept on talking in weird innuendo’s, like “people of your aptitude would be perfect for our endeavor.” I mean, I’m no stranger to the typical doublespeak when talking officially and getting your message across while not outright confirming anything. It was literally part of the public speaking training they had us do. But this just put shivers down my spine, like I’d end up in some weird laboratory being fed LSD on a drip.

This guy was looked at warily by our command, and approached several other people, including the aforementioned LCpl Snyder. That airhead didn’t go along with the guy’s sales pitch, probably more out of ignorance than an outright caution, but one of the guys with a different specialty, a hard-charging Cpl who had gotten a blackbelt in MCMAP and secondary MOS as an LAV driver, did. We never saw him again, and our command was out a skilled Marine which really pissed them off.

It’s far better to avoid sticking out too much. Getting too deep into the world of sketchy alphabet soup agencies just seemed like a bad idea, although arguably I was already in that world. But when you’re in it just seems to gather an air of being downright mundane. You look at the tier deeper than you, and think “wow, they’re really up to something spooky” when to the average grunt, you’re the spook.

The spooky stuff, in this case used in the intel manner, not the paranormal manner, just seem to become mundane and the next thing you know it becomes a day to day reality. Eventually you can’t even remember what you can or can’t talk about with regular people. All in all it’s frustrating in a way.

Despite my efforts though, I ended up dealing with trouble anyways. Not through anything cloak and dagger, but through the regular fuck-fuck games of a careerist officer. This guy thought, as Marines, we should be doing more “tip of the spear” stuff. And so he had us go through a massive fitness screening. He thought our unit needed more people to be prepared to go through the kind of training required to work with the type of special forces guys people always tend to idolize.

This was not a popular idea among the enlisted, but “ours not to reason why” I suppose. It became the massive clusterfuck you’d expect it to be. This screening was held on the hottest, most humid day of summer, and turned us into the laughingstock of the base. Despite a universal agreement to sandbag the fuck out of it in the LCpl underground we still had enough cases of heat stroke to use up every ambulance on base. Our new battalion commander got chewed out by both the chief in charge of our battalion aid station, a chief petty officer chewing out a field grade officer, he later got his ass reamed by the base commander.

Unfortunately despite my best efforts I passed the screening and was voluntold to do more training. Even bringing up how women aren’t allowed in combat arms didn’t get me out of it, since FETs have been a thing for a while now. And so, during a stupid field exercise, I accidentally slipped up rappelling out of a helo and ended up with a medical retirement. Despite living up to the stereotype of an unmotivated E-3 on the surface, I was devastated by this. A lifetime of back problems, admittedly the norm for the Marine Corps, already sucked but not being able to finish my enlistment irked me on a deeper level. I still have my pride.

Back in the civilian world it honestly took me a bit to get back on my feet. I attended a community college for a while in my hometown, living with my parents, but jumped from interest to interest never really settling on a career. I ate through a fair amount of my college savings from my parents since I couldn’t be bothered to start using my GI Bill when I wasn’t sure what I was going to do yet. My parents, understanding at first, eventually grew frustrated as they felt I was wasting my potential, and a decent enough work history to get a decent enough job at any contractor.

Finally, they signed me up for a job fair, got me dressed in presentable clothing, and dropped me off. While being my usual shy self, I can’t imagine I stuck out too much to the contractors and guvvies working there, but one agency seemed to have taken notice of me. Actually, I was rather confused. Why would the national archives want to hire me?