Are We In Danger?

     Third Eye Over Iowa Meeting Place Burns!

Johnson: The Mill Restaurant became an inferno on Saturday, May 24, just moments before the regularly scheduled meeting of Third Eye Over Iowa Staff. Three fire engines and several emergency support vehicles were on hand to put out the fire which reportedly started in the kitchen and spread through ductwork to the roof. The extent of the fire damage is great; estimates are that the eatery will be closed for over a month.

     The singular coincidence of this fire and our regularly scheduled meetings has made the Third Eye Staff realize that certain FORCES have had enough of us and may only now be trying to prevent our further delving into things hidden and forbidden! We may have gotten too close to something and it is very likely that these FORCES have finally shaken off their lethargy to deal with this threat. We are currently examining these (as well as other) possible leads:

     It is not a secret that this office routinely monitors certain secure communications traffic. Recently decrypted hi-speed shortwave messages now indicates that a former Soviet KGB operation to kidnap American tourists and business people and replace them with surgically altered doubles has been taken over by Neo-Tzarists elements and the Russian Mafia. This project has been receiving laundered funds from a secret German Hydrology Engineering Organization based in Baden as well the Russian Orthodox fraternal organization, "The Golden Fist of Wonders" in Sevastopol, Polk County. The new operational objectives are not yet fully known, but might involve a clandestine effort to force the families of Russian aristocrats to return to Mother Russia. One member of the Golden Fist was recently compelled to volunteer information on the most current project: finding an American Heir to the Crown of the Romanovs. There is a rumor they are utilizing a former Red Army Captain with pyro-psychokinetic skills (a "firestarter"). Perhaps their revenge was a dish best served flaming hot. It is known that a powerful infrared laser telemetry device was being tested at Tesla Labs on May 24th. This laser was designed to provide real-time speed and distance measurements of comets and asteroids. According to information from the Chief Researcher of the project, Dr. Thaddeus Walling, the asteroid Toutatis was to be the test site. However, someone---as yet unknown---changed the targeting coordinates. The laser instead fired the beam at a Canadian communications satellite. While the beam caused only minor damage, the satellite's orbital attitude had been tampered with so that most of the beam---up to 14,000 kilojoules of infrared radiation---focused for one-onehundreth of a second on an area the size of a dime somewhere in Iowa City. This was probably the roof of The Mill since the fire broke out at the exact time the laser was fired. Speculation as to who changed the targeting coordinates at Tesla has revolved around a ring of internationally reknown computer programers, philatelists, cosmologists, hair dressers, and geophysicists who gravitated together just over a year ago in the wilds of Dallas County. The group, known cryptically as "Foucault's Pyramid" is reputed to be consumed by millennia hysteria and seeks to precipitate the end of the world as per the visions of the Undine Prophet, Domenico Scandella, in The Cheese and The Worms.

     We have known since the appearance of Black 11 that a classified domestic counterintelligence agency has been closely monitoring our staff. It is highly probable as well that their sleeper has infiltrated our midsts and been recently activated (see: Black 11: Has the Government Consulted Aliens?, November,1996, vol. 3, Issue #11). We don't yet know who it is or for which agency they work. Painfully clear in this light are several glaring coincidences. One staff member officially withdrew from the magazine only weeks before the fire. Still another lives out of town; which may provoke us to lay our suspicions on him all too quickly (therein lies the ingenious part of the deception by putting him "in plain sight" as it were). Also, one of the Senior Editors was perhaps all too conveniently at home celebrating his wedding anniversary when the fire broke out.

     We have also theorized that a certain affable junior staff member was probably forced into the role of assassin inorder to conceal some deep, dark personal secret. Maybe he found himself unable to go through with his assignment. That, or more likely he was too incompetent to properly set the timer on the incendiary device for 5 PM.

     A certain would-be femmé fatalé associated with a member of the editorial staff is being watched. She is cunning enough to allay a man's suspicions about the packages of SEMTEX she placed in his own refrigerator. She is devious enough to plant packets of cocaine in his apartment. And she is treacherous enough so that when she sets off the plastique, it looks like he was free-basing in his kitchen. She could have used her feminine wiles to place an ampule of fuel-air explosive in the fan duct at The Mill.

     One Senior Editor's wife is a probable agent. She has access to everything and would go unnoticed as she collected information for her superiors. She has a basic working knowledge of electronics, physiology, and neuroanatomy and probably completed antiterrorism training at the FBI Academy in Quantico and covert ops training with the US Navy SEALS at Fort Eustace, Virginia. If she was caught planting the device, she could have said she did it "because the magazine was taking her husband away from her". She pleads temporary insanity and gets out in two years.

     By far, the most fiendishly clever possibility is that one of the founding Senior Editors has been a government plant all along who employed an old Bolshevik trick. By assembling a group of citizens perhaps too inquisitive about certain government activities, he planned to liquidate them all in one place, leaving no loose ends and thus ensure his agency's covert activities which threaten the people of this country.

     There are other areas under investigation much more sensitive and dangerous in nature that we naturally cannot explore here. Rest assured, we shall keep our readers informed about the results of these investigations---no matter what the cost! Readers are also encouraged to conduct their own inquiries. Third Eye Over Iowa and its publisher assumes no liability for any danger, harm, mental or physical injury, or incarceration resulting from a reader's own investigations.