Missing IA Guardsman Reappears 23 years later

Pottawattamie: In 1976, Pvt. Roger Gorman of the 116th Military Police of the Iowa National Guard was on sentry duty during a training weekend at the MOS Training Annex at Wheeler. He came on duty at 8 PM and walked 25 yard perimeter, armed with his M-16A1 rifle. At 11:00 AM, Pvt. Bertelson Frazier came to relieve Gorman. Gorman was nowhere to be found. Military Police promptly began a search. Finding no sign of Gorman on the Training Annex grounds or in nearby Wheeler, the missing private was then reported to civilian authorities as AWOL. After two months of investigations of the assumed AWOL private, the search was put onto the governmental back burner of many other missing military personnel. Until two days ago.

     On Tuesday May 12, at about 4:27 PM, in the midst of a rainstorm on Highway 88, which turns into Wheeler's Main Street, dairy worker Claude Longet picked up a weary hitchhiker meandering zombie-like down the highway. Longet, a Wheeler resident for almost thirty years, opened his pickup's door and looked in shock as he recognized the young soaked face of Gorman. Gorman's face, though weary and pallid, was still unchanged from the time of his disappearance.

     "He came out to the dairy several times that year before he disappeared. I remember him well. He looked just like he did 23 years ago. His uniform was the worse for wear-but he was still young." Longet drove to the police station while Gorman sat speechless and subdued.

     Unsure of where to go first, Longet drove directly to the police station to release Gorman into their custody. Police Chief Heddy Bates recognized Gorman also, and with blanket and a hot cup of coffee, ushered him into a private room with two other police officers. After approximately one hour, Major Wendell Cox arrived with four MP's and whisked the private out of the station house to what Bates suggests is "a nearby black box detention center."

     "We were running a basic sort of question and answer investigation that we usually do when a missing person shows up," Bates recalled. "Naturally we contacted everybody as soon as we could prove that it was Gorman and not a fake. It's in the Fed's hands now. I'm definitely convinced it's him-but damn if he's aged a hair-should be in his forties by now."

     No other information regarding Gorman was available, with the exception of an anonymous office worker who under the threat of job loss has offered the following "reconstructed" conversation he heard while sitting next to the door of the police interview room.

     CHIEF: Okay, once again. You say, you were abducted.

     GORMAN: Kidnapped...abducted...I was...you have soda still?

     CHIEF: Whitey, get him something.

     GORMAN: I don't understand. Where...I have to report to my CO...

     CHIEF: Your CO is coming. Who took you...

     GORMAN: Look...they were just there...they came in a...sphere.

     CHIEF: Sphere? What... you mean like a...

     GORMAN: It's...not a spaceship...some kind of transference device.

     CHIEF: Transference?

     GORMAN: They were from the future. They were us.

     CHIEF: Human?

     GORMAN: Yes...this tastes funny.

     CHIEF: It's diet. Sorry.

     GORMAN: I need to see my wife...

     CHIEF: Listen we're gonna get you squared away. We just need to clear up some things.

     GORMAN: Sorry, I'm really groggy. Anyway, the sphere just appeared. And they just came out. About five of them. Dressed in what I guess you'd call...metallic silvery uniforms. They took my blood. They took me into the.. sphere. I was where they were from. It was like crossing a powerline...

     CHIEF: They lured you in or...

     GORMAN: They touched me with their hands and I had to go. I needed to go. I couldn't stop. Then I was there. It was earth...they said I was 20,000 years into the future. Very arid looking. They needed my blood. For DNA. Their DNA is...

     CHIEF: Mutated?

     GORMAN: No. Incomplete. Their babies...they don't have many...often don't live past five years. They need our DNA...like a booster shot. The sun kills everything without protection. The suits protect them.

     CHIEF: Did they give you a suit for protection?

     GORMAN: No. They said it wasn't necessary. They said I wouldn't be there long enough to be endangered. They just needed my blood. That's all.

     CHIEF: What else did they tell you?

     GORMAN: They make these trips often.

     CHIEF: To collect DNA?

     GORMAN: And brain matter. They also alter things. They...this tastes like lead, what is this?

     CHIEF: Water. Sorry. Alter things like-?

     GORMAN: Elections. They are constantly trying to change the future.

     CHIEF: What happened eventually...did they take you back through the sphere?

     GORMAN: Yeah. I couldn't have been in there more than five minutes.

     Asked if the "nearby detention center" was in fact the secret installation outside of Wheeler known as P-21, Chief Bates declined comment.

     Currently, the United States Army officially denies any knowledge of Pvt. Gorman.