THE NORAD EVENT

THE NORAD EVENT………………………………………..
It’s quiet very quiet,, even for a room in the ICU... It always is at
2:00 in the morning... Just the sound of the heart monitor and the
constant hum of the breathing machine are the only noises filling
the room… The only source of light is the fluorescent lamp above
the bed,, flickering every now and then just to show it's working…
Retired Lt. Colonel John Abrahams lies quietly in his bed,,
these are his last days,, perhaps hours,, he knows it,, as do the
doctors and his family… It’s been a good long life of 83 years,,
nothing to complain about,, nothing he wishes he had done different,,
a good long life,, coming to an end now,, just as everyone’s does...
Just waiting now,, that’s all anyone can do... In the room with him
waiting,, is his grandson Simon Abrahams,, half awake,,
seating in the chair by the window,, his head nodding up and down,,
trying to stay alert... Colonel Abrahams son was killed in an auto
accident years ago,, so now Simon will carry on the
name of Abrahams...
Just waiting,, Simons wife and family went home hours before,,
nothing to do there,, Simon would stay and watch and then let
them know if anything changed... Just waiting…

(Cough, cough)…..”Simon”….”Simon…are you”….
Colonel Abraham’s voice is barely audible….”Simon”……….
“Yeah, granddad”…I’m here”…
“Good, good, is anyone else here?” “what time is it?”…
“Just me granddad, it’s about 2:00”…
“Good, I have something I must tell you” the colonels voice
seems a little stronger now, his words are easier to understand…
“Yes”…..
“It’s a secret that you can never tell anyone, not even Julie,
do you understand?”
“Sure, granddad, what is it?
“Promise me?”
“Sure, sure, I promise”
“They made me swear an oath, never to tell anyone what I’m about
to tell you, they said I could be shot if I told anyone…(cough) ..
water please…what are they going to do now? Kill me?” ha-ha…
“Who’s they?”
“The government”…”it was a long time ago, almost 45 years now…
I worked for a secret government agency called the “Watchers”…
You can’t tell anyone, do you understand? They could find out”
“Yeah, granddad, I understand”…

“I was a hot shot up an coming Captain then, I’d flown a couple of
secret missions over Vietnam and Laos, before that war became a
real mess... And I guess some brass hat thought I did pretty good…
well, soon after my tour there was over, I receive classified orders
to report to the Cheyenne Mountain complex...
It’s called NORAD now… I was assigned to the 721st Mission
Support Group, which was part of the 21st Space Wing,
at Peterson Air Force Base… I knew the government had built a
huge bunker complex in Colorado, but I didn’t know much about it,
and I certainly never expected to serve there”…
“It was fairly new back then, it was thought it would be safe from
the Soviets nuclear missiles”…(cough)…
“Want some more water granddad?
“Yeah”...(cough)….”I didn’t know what the hell I was doing there,
I didn’t know anything about missile defenses or rocket ships,
I was just a jock pilot, a hot shot showing off…well, anyway,
I was assigned to a group of 62 recruits for this new unit the
government was putting together”…
“The “Watchers”?…
“Yeah, that’s right… we were under the command of
Brigadier General Parsons, a real spit and polish type of officer...
He’d sooner bust you down to private than to look at you…
The cream of the Air Force, they said we were, the smartest ones
they could find… (cough) I guess the family genes had something
to do with that… that’s when they had us all sign those papers
stating we’d never talk about anything we did there…
it was real too, it said right there on the form, that we could be shot,
without trial if we ever talked about this… scared the crap out of me,,
this was real top secret stuff I was getting into”…

“After about eight weeks of intensive training in electronics,
radar systems and missile warnings systems, and who knows what…
we were down to just 28 men… that was all that was left out of
the original 62, where they went I don’t know, I suppose they
were shipped off to Alaska or the North Pole maybe… after all that
training and testing we went thru, we were assigned to the
newly formed “Watchers”, our mission statement said we were to
watch for incoming ballistic missiles, but that’s not what we
really did…(cough)..
You can’t tell anybody about this now, you understand?”...
“Yeah, I understand”…
“We worked in groups of three men each, around the clock,
every day of the year, around the clock…our real mission was
to watch into outer space for possible invasion by alien creatures”…
“Space ships?, you got to..” …..
“It was real, I tell you…it was July 65, Captain Ross,
Captain Hillman and myself were in the bunker that night,
watching the radar screens as usual, very boring stuff, and then
Captain Hillman saw them on his radar screen, hundreds of them,
from what we could tell they were as big as a football stadium…
scared the crap out of us… they then started to surround the earth
in a spiraling pattern and then just stopped… I immediately called
General Parsons, who came down to look for himself…
I think it scared him too…He quickly left and I suppose he told
the President and the Joint Chiefs…we all stared at the radar
screens wondering if this was it… and then after about 2 hours
the space ships suddenly left orbit and we never saw them again”…
"What happened? Why did they leave?"...

“I didn’t find out why they left until about 10 years later…
the military had intercepted a transmission that was sent to each
of the space ships from the command ship, it took the best
cryptographers we had 10 years to decode that message...
It commanded the other space ships to leave orbit and search for
a new home somewhere else… the reason, as best anyone could
figure out, that the leader had decided not to destroy us, was that
he had found intelligent life on this planet and he wasn’t going to
destroy it”…
“Well, of course he found intelligent life here, us”…
(cough, cough)…”That’s the funny part, it wasn’t us he was talking
about…he thought mankind should have been wiped out, because
he found us to be selfish, arrogant, hateful beings”…
“I don’t understand”…
(a half smile appears on Colonel Abrahams face)…”Simon,
the intelligent life they wanted to save, was not us, but our dogs…
the leader found them to be the most caring, loving, forgiving,
kind creatures on this planet, and lucky for us he did”…
“Dogs?”…
That’s right dogs, (cough), you know something Simon?”
“What’s that?”
“I’m glad that he didn’t judge this planet by the
house cats we have…………………….