Wait a minute. This wasn't supposed to happen. I got into this movement because I wanted money and fame, not truth or justice. This whole thing was supposed to be just a shtick - a fantasy that was so ludicrous as to be incredible, but so mysterious as to be unfalsifiable. It used to be a brilliant idea. So brilliant, it often pained me that I could never let anybody in on the joke.

But there it was, flittering away, right before my eyes. Suddenly, the joke wouldn't be funny - not because I'd told it too many times, but because I hadn't told it at all.

Had I gone mad? Was I seeing things? After all, I was the one that lead all these people here; I was the one that scraped and pitched this project just to have something to do. I was the one who pleaded with well-heeled benefactors to give us just one more chance. But though every shred of credibility I could possibly have received depended on that thing showing up at just that moment, when it happened, all I could do was wince and deny it, stunned, like anybody would. Anybody, that is, except my brother Ted. You see, it took Ted to actually point it out and get everyone one else to give it a thorough photographing before it turned, like a coy fashion model, and shrank away into the sunset.

"There it was!" Ted gasped, later. He was pacing the length of the hotel room, still charged by the evidence we'd seen. And photographed. And - Oh God - video? Why did there have to be video? Why couldn't the thing have just bounced around for a few seconds, done a passable impression of a lens artifact, and vanish, like a good UFO?

If I had anybody to brag to, I might try to convince them that my silence at that moment was purposeful, that I was just mentally nimble enough to realize how bad the implications of it were, and that I was just stalling until the thing went away, so I could go back to being an ordinary work-a-day conspiracy theorist and cult leader. But, no. There was no way Ted was going to let that happen, anyway. Letting it get away, that is.

"You know, Doug, I ... I have a confession to make." Ted had stopped pacing, indicating that he was thinking about people again, finally. Time to put on my game face. "There have been times when..." He stammered to a stop, worried. He chanced a sidelong glance at me, now that he'd gotten my attention. I had spent most of the last fifteen minutes speechless, my head in my hands, silently trying push apart the jaws of the trap that had just sprung on my brain.

It was refreshing to consider someone else's problem, for a moment. "It's alright, man. What is it?"

Ted sat down on the second bed. "You know, sometimes, over the last few years, through all that shit with the organization, watching you pitch donors, and sifting through all that declassified data at night, I would just sit there and... it would be really hard for me to believe you."

Ted looked deep into my face - my frozen, bewildered, blind-sided expression, hoping to glimpse a glimmer of forgiveness in me, when the rollercoaster behind my eyes had just set sail on a long trip to lala land. And there was Ted, holding the mooring line, smiling, and waving goodbye, utterly oblivious. I'd been lying to own brother all this time, but suddenly, I was the poor bastard.

I managed not to crack - not that Ted would suspect if I had. "It's alright, Ted," I assured him. I grinned, more slyly than he knew, as I added, "You know, there have been times where I wasn't sure I believed myself, either." I got up and turned away to enjoy the joke in pitiable solitude.

And that began my long journey into the theretofore-unknown land of understatement.

Comments –Nato