Conspiracy in Emmetsburg?

Palo Alto: Rumors are circulating amongst Emmetsburg residents about the construction on the corner of Dues and Mackintosh Streets. There, next to the O'Leary Building, named after the notable astronomer and physicist, John O'Leary, the University of Emmetsburg has erected a large, enclosed tower. According to the University, the tower is needed for the construction of an underground passageway to cross Dues Street, allowing sensitive materials (and, joke some locals, sensitive grad students) to be transported without threat of risk from the elements.

     But folks are not so sure. Why does the tower need to be ninety feet tall? Why not just a short wall? Is there something there that we are not allowed to see? One local, whom we will call "Bill," has been monitoring the construction and recently noted certain work is done only at night. The mysterious tower has no top so that a crane can hoist large tarp-shrouded machinery out from the earth and deposit it onto large flatbed trailers that are then speedily hauled away.

     One evening, while reporter Charles Lucas was enjoying a beer at a nearby tavern, Bill asked him to go see what construction workers had pulled out of the ground that evening. At the construction site, Lucas immediately saw what had gotten Bill so excited. A metallic cylinder perhaps thirty-five feet tall and fifteen feet in diameter swayed from the crane's cable over a flatbed trailer, its torn tarp hanging in disarray. There were many sealed-off circular vents along the side and an attached ladder and walkway, the latter of which ran all the way around the cylinder, about eight feet from the top. Bill explained it was a SCRAM device, a unit for holding what he called "nuclear piles," or radioactive materials commonly used in the 1950's. In addition, he said he had spoken to some of the workers doing the excavation, and one of them mentioned the word "Brenstraalungh," although neither knew to what that word referred. Bill noted on November 7 that another worker warned that over the next few weeks, materiel resembling "something out of Buck Rogers" will be smuggled out. Evidently, the University wants to continue keeping certain technologies hidden a buried secret.

     Conspiracy theorist, Carl Logan, suggests that these mysterious objects being secretly unearthed may be alien in origin, or at least extraterrestrial in design. He claims that these "Buck Rogers" technologies come from designs and mechanisms recovered in the famous Roswell, New Mexico crash of 1947, or perhaps a similar crash in this very county on July 3 of that year.

     "Not all the research on the alien saucer was conducted by the military," he claims. "Do you think the government had all the best minds? No, they turned to the universities for help, too, as they've done in the past on other matters. Pieces came here to Emmetsburg for analysis. That's what they're pulling up now: alien technology and alien-inspired technology. That's what that nuclear equipment is for, too. That new Cassini probe---runs on plutonium. Bet the aliens use nuclear power, it only makes sense."

     Carl has more: "I think they've also got some extraterrestrial sensory equipment too. John O'Leary was a smart guy, but I doubt he found the O'Leary Sphere (a globe of still unexplained and somehow harmless positrons surrounding the earth in the outer atmosphere) just like that in 1958. I'm guessing he had the help---from the Aliens!"

     As if Carl's theories are not shocking enough, he claims that the Cassini space probe that NASA launched is a craft specifically designed to explore the radio waves emitted from or near Saturn. He notes that the University of Emmetsburg and Aerodyne Propulsion Labs have had a hand in building the probe. This, he says, is the posthumous culmination of O'Leary's work, and that the Roswell event has gone full circle to where we will find the mysterious aliens that have for been watching us for so long.

     Charles Lucas spoke to several people connected with the construction project but, none offered comment and referred him to the University Public Affairs Office.

     Luckily, Lucas found an Astronomy graduate student willing to talk anonymously. "I've heard all the crazy rumors here on campus; I thought it was just a simple, run-of-the-mill construction project. But the rumors coming from within the astronomy, physics, and even engineering circles here on campus are even weirder. No one will answer any questions on the project. Then I overheard a conversation in the O'Leary Building---a conversation between two respected faculty members who said something about moving machines before somebody comes to claim them. They mentioned something about limbo, and then one of them asked the other, 'Have they or their car been seen yet?' I tell you they seemed pretty uptight."

     Whatever secrets are being unearthed at the corner of Dues and Mackintosh, the University won't explain the whole truth regarding the construction of a simple skyway. And, even if Carl and Bill's stories are not completely true, Emmetsburg nevertheless holds on to some mysterious, and possibly shocking, secrets.