My name is Paul Jansen.
At least, that is the name I will use here.
It is not my real name. I don't think anyone would come looking for me after all these years, and perhaps I am being overly cautious, but old habits are difficult to lose. Some things are taught so deeply that they become part of who you are. During my time in the Royal Netherlands Air Force, there were things you simply did not discuss. Not with friends. Not with family. Not even with people you trusted completely.
Especially not with people you trusted completely.
I am writing this because I am getting older, and because I have carried something with me for most of my life that I have never told another person.
Not my wife.
Not my daughters.
Not my parents.
Not even my brother.
My youngest daughter was actually the one who convinced me to start writing things down. She noticed I had begun forgetting small things and told me that memories disappear faster than people realize.
She meant family memories. Holidays. Stories from when the girls were young. Things like that.
She did not know I was thinking about something else entirely.
Something from when I was seventeen years old.
I have spent many years wondering if there was any point in telling this story. Perhaps nobody will believe me. Perhaps people will laugh. Perhaps they should. If I read this account written by someone else, I would probably have the same reaction.
But I have reached an age where keeping something hidden forever feels almost as strange as revealing it.
So this is my account.
Not a perfect account. Memory is not a recording device. I do not remember every date, every name, or every insignificant detail. I do not remember what color the walls were in certain rooms, or where I left my fountain pen in my barracks. I cannot tell you the exact day every event happened.
But I remember what mattered.
I remember what I saw.
And I remember what I was told.
I was seventeen years old in 1982.
That was the year Michael Jackson's Thriller was released. I listened to that album constantly. My favorite song was Human Nature. There was something about it that always made me feel like there was a much bigger world out there waiting for me.
At the time, I desperately wanted to find that world.
The funny thing is that, looking back, I was probably the last person anyone would have expected to experience something unusual.
I was not a troublemaker. I was not stupid. I was not some rebellious kid trying to fight against his family.
I was simply bored.
Very bored.
I grew up in a family where being intelligent was almost considered normal.
My mother was a brain surgeon. She had spent years studying medicine and the human brain, and I remember as a child thinking it was completely ordinary that she would come home from work and discuss things I barely understood.
My father worked in a laboratory. I never completely understood all of his work, even though he tried explaining it to me. He dealt with technical equipment and measurements that required incredible precision. I remember him once explaining how tiny differences in calibration could completely change the results of an experiment. To him, accuracy was everything.
My little brother was twelve years old at the time, and he was probably the person who made me feel the least intelligent in my own house.
He could play chess at a level that was embarrassing for someone his age. He memorized famous games and could reproduce entire sequences from memory. He knew classic openings, unusual traps, and old endgame positions that most adults had never heard of.
He also played piano.
My parents had wanted me to take lessons when I was younger.
I refused.
I wanted to play football with my friends instead.
My brother, however, loved it. By twelve years old he could play entire pieces by Bach almost flawlessly.
People who visited our house would often comment on how gifted he was.
I never felt jealous of him. He was my little brother. I was proud of him.
But it did create a certain impression.
My mother and father were brilliant.
My little brother was brilliant.
And then there was me.
The strange thing is that I was intelligent too. I know that sounds arrogant, but it is simply a fact. I was always good at school. Tests came easily. Problems that other students struggled with often seemed obvious to me.
The problem was that I got bored.
That was my weakness.
I would finish exams long before everyone else and then sit there waiting. Sometimes I would start distracting other students. I once spent half a lesson shooting tiny rolled-up pieces of paper with a rubber band at classmates because I had finished my work and had nothing else to do.
The teacher was not impressed.
Neither was the principal.
My grades were excellent, but my behavior suggested I had no idea what to do with myself.
After finishing school earlier than expected, I tried a technical education program because I thought that would finally challenge me.
It did not.
My mother had been proud when I enrolled. She bought the books, paid the tuition, and believed I had finally found something suitable.
Then I told her I wanted to quit.
I still remember her expression.
It was not anger at first.
It was disappointment.
That was worse.
I spent more time in my room listening to Thriller than studying. Friends would come over, which annoyed her even more because she felt I was wasting my opportunities.
And perhaps she was right.
I knew something had to change.
I just did not know what.
That was why I signed myself up for early military service.
My parents did not know until afterwards.
My mother was furious.
My father was calmer. He told her:
"Maybe this is exactly what he needs. Some structure."
He reminded her that it had worked for his own brother years earlier.
That helped.
A little.
Before joining, I had to go through the usual examinations and tests. During the first part, the sergeant explained everything clearly.
He told us not to fill things in randomly or make jokes on the forms.
"Some of you think you're being funny," he said. "You're not. Fill these things in properly, because otherwise you may spend your entire service cleaning floors."
I had actually considered not taking it seriously.
I figured it was just another test.
Something to get through.
So I filled everything in.
And, as usual, I was finished much earlier than everyone else.
The sergeant looked at my papers, then looked at me.
He shook his head.
"Ah," he said. "Another one who thinks he knows everything."
I remember thinking he had completely misunderstood me.
For once, I actually had taken something seriously.
When the letter arrived telling me where I would serve, I was surprised.
The Royal Netherlands Air Force.
I have to admit, that sounded impressive to a seventeen-year-old boy.
The idea of aircraft, technology, and the military appealed to me much more than I expected.
On my first day, my parents rented a van because I had to bring my belongings.
They also brought my bicycle.
In the Netherlands, you could not simply drive yourself somewhere at seventeen. The bicycle was still the most practical way to get around, even on a military base.
My parents came with me.
My little brother came too.
I sat in the back of the van with my bicycle and my belongings, listening to Thriller through my headphones.
Human Nature was playing.
I remember looking out of the window and thinking that maybe, finally, I was about to find out what I was supposed to do with my life.
I had no idea that I was about to discover something nobody should ever have discovered.
Something I would spend the next forty years trying to forget.
The drive from Haarlem to Soesterberg felt much longer than I expected.
Of course, at seventeen years old, everything feels longer when you are leaving the only life you have ever known.
It was late when we arrived. Around ten o'clock in the evening, if I remember correctly. It was already dark, and the military base looked different from anything I had seen before. Not frightening. Just unfamiliar.
There were buildings, fences, lights, and people who seemed to know exactly where they belonged.
I was the only person there who did not.
My father unloaded my bicycle from the van. That bicycle would become my most important form of transportation during my time there. Looking back, there is something funny about arriving at the Air Force with all these serious thoughts about my future, and one of the first things I worried about was whether my bicycle would survive military life.
Before he got back into the van, my father put a hand on my shoulder.
"I am proud of you, son," he said.
I remember looking at him because I genuinely did not expect those words.
"Really?" I asked.
I laughed a little.
"Mom doesn't exactly seem to think so. I'm a fuck-up, Dad."
My father shook his head.
"You're not a fuck-up, son."
Then he smiled.
"You're a Jansen."
At the time, I did not completely understand what he meant.
Later in life, I did.
My father was not pretending I had everything figured out. He knew I was lost. He knew I had no idea what direction I wanted to take.
But he also knew something I did not.
That being lost at seventeen did not mean you were lost forever.
"I was looking for something at your age too," he told me.
That surprised me more than anything else.
My father always seemed so certain. He was the man who knew how things worked. The man who could explain complicated machines and scientific principles. To hear that he had once been a young man who did not know what he wanted was strange.
Before he left, he looked at me one more time.
"Whatever it is you're looking for, son, I hope you find it here."
Those words stayed with me.
I did not know it at the time, but my father had accidentally said something far more meaningful than he could possibly have understood.
Looking back now, I sometimes laugh at the person I was then.
A seventeen-year-old boy who thought he knew everything.
A bored kid from a clever family who had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.
I had passed some tests, and suddenly I thought I had found my answer.
The Air Force.
That was it.
Problem solved.
Of course, I had absolutely no idea what I had actually signed up for.
I was wet behind the ears.
I was a know-it-all.
And I was about to learn that military life was very different from what I imagined.
The strange thing is that, during basic training, I actually enjoyed myself.
I know that may sound unusual. Most people remember basic training as nothing but misery.
There was misery, of course.
Walking for kilometres with a heavy backpack under a hot summer sun was not exactly my idea of entertainment.
My shoulders hurt.
My feet hurt.
Everyone was tired.
But there was also something I had never really experienced before.
Everyone was in the same situation.
I met good people there. We laughed. We complained. We wondered what exactly we had done to end up there.
There is a strange kind of friendship that develops when everyone is equally miserable.
Nobody cares who you were before.
Nobody cares that your mother was a brain surgeon or that your little brother could probably beat half the officers at chess.
You are just another guy carrying a backpack.
And I liked that.
What surprised me most was how comfortable we actually had it.
I was staying near the officers' quarters, and compared to what I had expected, it almost felt luxurious.
The food was good.
The routine was clear.
Sometimes they did not even make us make our own beds.
That one still makes me laugh.
At home, my mother would probably have said:
"That is exactly your problem. You need someone to kick you into motion."
And perhaps she was right.
There I was, seventeen years old, and the military was somehow giving me more structure than I had ever had at home.
It reminded me of being a child.
Someone telling you when to get up.
Someone telling you when dinner was ready.
Someone making sure things got done.
The difference was that now someone was wearing a uniform.
Some parts of training were less pleasant.
There was the chicken.
Everyone called it "the chicken thing."
Some of the guys had already heard about it before it happened.
"Have you done the chicken yet?"
That was usually the first question.
When my turn came, I remember thinking:
Right.
The chicken thing.
Here we go.
I was not happy about it, but I understood why it was done. Training was not always about comfort. Sometimes it was about confronting things you would rather avoid.
I made sure it was quick.
That was the only thing I could do.
The animal deserved that much.
Another thing I remember was the gas mask test.
We had to put on our masks and enter a sealed area where gas was released.
The purpose was obvious.
You needed to know your equipment worked.
You needed to know you could stay calm.
I remember the burning sensation and the strange feeling of realizing that, without the mask, you would not want to stay in there very long.
It was unpleasant.
But again, my thought was simple:
This is what I signed up for.
Either commit to it or don't.
I committed.
We also trained with Uzi submachine guns.
At least, with blanks.
That was still impressive to a seventeen-year-old boy.
I remember bringing some of the empty cartridges home and giving some to my little brother.
He thought they were incredible.
In the Netherlands, actual ammunition was not something children usually saw. Even a blank cartridge seemed like something from another world.
They looked like real bullets, except they were not. They had the casing, but instead of a projectile there was a crimped end where the cartridge was sealed.
To my little brother, they were fascinating.
To me, they were just another part of training.
Then basic training ended.
And the boredom returned.
That was the part nobody really warned us about.
The exciting part was over.
The running, the exercises, the challenges.
Now came the waiting.
Standing around.
Doing routine tasks.
Watching the clock.
Some of the older soldiers and officers had already warned us.
"Welcome to Air Force life, boys. Get used to it."
I remember thinking:
Get used to it?
Good God.
I joined because I wanted to get rid of boredom.
Now I was in the Air Force...
and bored out of my mind.
The irony was not lost on me.
So sometimes we left.
Not officially, of course.
A few of us would go into town, have some drinks, and try to forget that the most exciting part of our day had been cleaning something.
It was also during that time that I discovered something about myself.
I liked drinking.
Perhaps a little too much.
At the time I thought I was just having fun like everyone else.
And most of the time, I was.
But looking back, I can see the warning signs.
There were evenings when I came back to the barracks a little more drunk than I should have been.
One sergeant noticed.
He did not give me a lecture.
He gave me a toothbrush.
"Floor," he said.
I thought he was joking.
He was not.
Yes, I cleaned bathroom floors with a toothbrush.
And no, it did not make me enjoy military discipline any more.
But it did teach me one important lesson.
The military noticed everything.
Even the small things.
Especially the small things.
It was shortly after one of those periods of boredom that everything changed.
I remember the day clearly.
Someone called my name.
The tone was serious.
Not angry.
Not casual.
Serious.
At first, I immediately assumed I was in trouble.
Which, considering my recent history, was not an unreasonable assumption.
But the man standing there was not holding a toothbrush.
He was holding orders.
And he told me I was going somewhere else.
I had no idea that this simple request would eventually become the reason I am writing this account today.
The man who came to collect me was not what I expected.
For one thing, he arrived in a regular car.
Not a military jeep.
Not a transport vehicle.
Just a normal-looking car.
The only thing that gave it away were the license plates.
I remember looking at it and thinking:
Let me guess. One of the old army jeeps finally gave up.
At that point I was still convinced this was somehow related to my earlier mistakes. Maybe someone had finally decided my occasional trips into town were more serious than I thought.
The sergeant noticed the expression on my face.
"Relax, man," he said. "I feel like I'm taking you to a court martial."
That actually made me laugh a little.
He reached toward the dashboard.
"Here. Have a smoke. They're mine."
I took one.
This was 1982. Smoking was everywhere. Offices, cars, waiting rooms. Nobody thought twice about it. It was just normal.
We drove away from the base.
It was raining that day. Not a dramatic storm, just one of those typical Dutch grey afternoons where everything looks slightly miserable.
I sat there holding my cigarette, trying to look calm.
"So where are we going?" I asked.
The sergeant looked at me.
"Ah."
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
For a moment he looked slightly embarrassed.
"Oh yeah, I'm supposed to take you to this place."
He unfolded a map and pointed.
"Here."
That was it.
No explanation.
No details.
Just a location.
"Relax, kid," he said. "I'm sure you'll do fine."
That sentence stayed with me.
Do fine?
Doing what?
I had no idea what he meant.
By then I knew the Air Force routine. You knew where you were supposed to be. You knew what came next. Everything had a schedule.
I cannot remember exactly what I would normally have been doing at that time of day. Some ordinary task, probably.
Something completely forgettable.
And then suddenly I was sitting in a car with a sergeant who apparently did not know anything except where to take me.
That was unusual.
After about twenty minutes, we arrived.
There was a fence.
Behind it, in the distance, was a building.
An ordinary building.
That was perhaps the strangest part.
Nothing about it looked important.
No large signs.
No guards standing dramatically at the entrance.
Nothing that suggested anything unusual.
The sergeant parked.
He leaned over me to open the passenger door.
"Good luck, kid."
Then he looked at my face.
"And seriously, relax. I'm sure you'll do fine."
I looked at him.
"Doing what?"
He shrugged.
"No idea."
He was completely honest about it.
"I'm just supposed to drop you off here. That's my order."
"You're not coming with me?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because that's not my order."
He handed me an envelope.
"Give them this."
Then he pointed toward the building.
"Go on."
And that was it.
I got out of the car.
The walk to the building was not long.
I remember feeling slightly ridiculous.
Here I was, seventeen years old, carrying a letter to some unknown place, with a cigarette still hanging from my mouth, and no idea why I was there.
Inside was a small reception area.
Another soldier sat behind a desk.
He looked bored.
Not suspicious.
Not concerned.
Just bored.
"Name?"
"Jansen."
"Letter?"
I handed it over.
He opened it, checked something, and nodded.
"Right. Jansen."
He pointed down a hallway.
"Go around there. Left. Then right. Then straight through the doors."
That was all.
No explanation.
I followed the instructions.
Inside, there were several soldiers waiting.
Some were sitting.
Some were leaning against desks.
A few were smoking and talking.
It looked exactly like any other military waiting area.
Which somehow made it stranger.
Nobody seemed nervous.
Nobody seemed to know why they were there.
So I did what everyone in the military learns to do very quickly.
I waited.
I sat down at a desk, finished my cigarette, drank some coffee, and tried not to think too much about it.
There was even a Donald Duck magazine lying around.
I still remember that.
A completely ordinary children's magazine sitting in a room where, apparently, something important was about to happen.
I picked it up and started reading.
Eventually, an officer walked in.
The room became quiet.
"Alright gentlemen, take your seats."
Everyone moved.
"We will be conducting a test."
A few people looked at each other.
Nothing unusual about that.
Tests happened all the time.
"You will have one hour."
He looked around the room.
"Pay close attention to the questions. Do not look at anyone else's paper."
Then he paused.
"Some questions may seem unusual. Some questions you may not know the answer to. That is fine. If you do not know, skip the question."
That got my attention.
Usually when someone gives instructions for a test, they tell you to answer everything.
Not this time.
"Fill everything in clearly. Answer honestly. Do not try to guess what we want to hear."
Another pause.
"This test is important."
He handed out the papers.
"Good luck, gentlemen."
I looked at the first page.
And immediately knew this was not a normal test.
It was difficult to explain.
It was not one specific type of examination.
It was everything mixed together.
There were mathematical problems.
Complex formulas.
Pattern recognition.
Questions about psychology.
Questions about personality.
Questions about fear.
Some asked about enclosed spaces.
Some asked about open spaces.
Some asked strange philosophical questions.
"What is the difference between reality and perception?"
"Would you rather know an unpleasant truth or believe a pleasant lie?"
"Can a person understand something without being able to explain it?"
There were technical questions as well.
Things involving physics and calculations.
Questions about time.
Space.
Measurements.
Then, on another page, a question about religion.
Then one about morality.
Then one about personal experiences.
It was the strangest test I had ever taken.
At some points I genuinely wondered if I was dreaming.
But no.
I was awake.
And this was really happening.
The strange thing was that, although the questions were bizarre, they seemed connected somehow.
Like there was a bigger picture hidden behind them.
I did not know what it was.
But I was curious.
Some questions fascinated me.
Others made absolutely no sense.
But I did my best.
I did not try to be clever.
I did not try to give answers I thought they wanted.
I simply answered honestly.
Looking back now, I think that may have been the most important thing I did.
I was not trying to solve the test.
I was trying to understand it.
I remember one soldier giving up.
About fifteen minutes in, he suddenly stood up.
"Count me out."
Everyone looked at him.
"This is fucking weird, man. I don't understand any of this."
The officer looked up from behind his newspaper.
"Sit down."
"No, seriously. I'm done."
"Get back here."
The soldier grabbed his jacket.
"Whatever, man. Take it up with my CO. I've got better things to do."
He walked out.
The officer shook his head.
"Jackass."
Then he went back to reading his newspaper.
And the rest of us continued.
For once in my life, I actually needed the full hour.
Normally I finished tests early.
Not this one.
When the time was almost finished, I still had two, maybe three questions left.
Then the officer called time.
"Pens down. Hand them forward."
I handed mine in.
The officer collected the papers and took them away.
Then he returned.
"Alright. Relax. Make yourselves comfortable. Get some coffee. Smoke if you have them. It may take a while."
So we waited.
I noticed something unusual.
Through a small glass window in a door at the back, I could see another room.
Someone was already receiving the tests.
A man in a white coat.
I remember thinking:
That's peculiar.
But only for a moment.
Then I picked up my Donald Duck magazine again, drank my coffee, and lit another cigarette.
I had no idea that the person behind that glass window had just read my answers.
And that he was about to change the course of my entire life.
After about forty-five minutes, the door opened again.
The officer stepped inside, looked around the room, and then pointed.
"You there. The one with the funny glasses. What's your name?"
I looked behind me for a second, just to make sure he was actually talking to me.
"Jansen, sir."
"Yeah. Come with me."
That was it.
No explanation.
Apparently that was becoming a theme.
I stood up, followed him through the corridor, and we went out the back entrance of the building.
There was another car waiting.
This one was different from the previous one. Less ordinary. More official somehow, although I couldn't explain why.
I got in.
In the back seat was a man reading through the papers from the test.
Not quickly.
Not casually.
He was studying them.
I sat down and tried to speak.
"Sir, I don't—"
"Hold on."
He did not even look up.
"This is fascinating."
That was not exactly the answer I expected.
The car started moving.
The driver reached toward the dashboard and handed me a cigarette.
"It's going to be a while, kid."
At this point I remember thinking that apparently the solution to every confusing situation in the military was to give someone a cigarette.
The man in the back finally looked up.
He tapped the questionnaire.
"Can you explain something to me?"
I nodded.
"Question 47."
He looked at the paper.
"If you discovered that a fundamental assumption about reality was incorrect, would you prefer to correct your understanding of reality, or continue believing the original assumption?"
Then he looked at me.
"You answered: 'I would first try to understand why the assumption existed in the first place.'"
He paused.
"Why?"
I thought about it.
"Well..."
I looked out the window for a moment.
"Because if everyone believes something, there is usually a reason for it. Even if it turns out to be wrong, there was probably something that made people believe it. So before changing it, I would want to know where it came from."
The man smiled slightly.
"Interesting."
I shrugged.
Then I interrupted myself.
"Look, can I ask something?"
"Of course."
"Can you please tell me what is going on?"
I laughed nervously.
"Because I feel completely out of my element here."
The man laughed.
Not in a mocking way.
More like he found the wording interesting.
"That is a very good observation."
He looked back down at the papers.
"Out of your element."
He repeated the words slowly.
"I think you will come to find that sentence can have many meanings, Jansen."
He looked at me.
"Right?"
"Right."
He extended his hand.
"My name is Dr. Ben Samuels."
I should mention that this is not his real name.
Obviously.
I cannot give you his real name.
The name Dr. Samuels is one I chose myself. Some people may recognize it from an old television series, but that is simply a coincidence. I needed a name, and this one will do.
The important thing is what he was.
A scientist.
And the first person who made me realize that the tests had not been about finding the smartest person.
They had been about finding a certain type of person.
"You performed very well on the examination," he said.
"I didn't really understand half of it."
"Exactly."
That answer confused me.
He smiled.
"You did not try to impress the test. You tried to understand it."
I did not know what to say.
"You are precisely the kind of candidate we are looking for."
"Candidate for what?"
He ignored the question.
"You will be assisting me."
"Assisting you?"
"Yes."
"Doing what?"
Again, he smiled.
"You will find out."
At that point, everyone had told me the same thing.
Relax.
The sergeant.
The officer.
Now this scientist.
Everyone seemed convinced I was going to be fine.
Nobody seemed interested in explaining why.
During the drive, we talked.
Not about anything secret.
At least, not at first.
He asked about my family.
I told him about my mother.
About my father.
About my brother.
When I mentioned my father's work, something changed in his expression.
"Your father works in laboratory research?"
"Yes."
"What field?"
I explained as best I could.
My father had worked with measurement systems and precision equipment. He was involved in research where small errors could completely affect results. He had written papers and contributed to studies that had been published in technical journals.
I never paid much attention to it.
It was just Dad's work.
Dr. Samuels, however, knew exactly what I was talking about.
"I have read some of his work."
I remember looking at him.
"You have?"
"Yes."
That surprised me.
The world suddenly felt a little smaller.
The drive continued for hours.
Eventually, the roads became smaller.
Then we entered a forest.
We drove deeper and deeper between the trees.
After another fifteen minutes, we reached an open field.
There was a building there.
A small building.
Almost disappointingly small.
It looked like something you would find containing electrical equipment or maintenance supplies.
Nothing more.
A higher-ranking officer was waiting.
He greeted Dr. Samuels.
"Doctor."
They shook hands.
"Good luck."
Then he looked at me briefly.
No questions.
No explanation.
Just another person following orders.
Inside the building, Dr. Samuels walked to a panel on the wall.
He entered a code.
Nothing happened.
At least, not immediately.
Then I heard something.
A mechanical sound.
The wall opened.
Behind it was an elevator.
I stared.
The building was tiny.
The elevator was not.
"Come on," Dr. Samuels said.
"Step in."
We entered.
Inside were two folding chairs attached to the wall. The kind you sometimes see in old public transport, where the seat folds upward when nobody is using it.
"Sit down."
"This will be a while."
A while?
I looked around.
It was an elevator.
How long could an elevator ride possibly take?
Still, I sat.
The elevator moved.
And it kept moving.
At first I thought it was just a strange feeling.
Then I realized it was not.
We were still going down.
Dr. Samuels continued talking calmly, as if this was completely normal.
For him, perhaps it was.
The ride lasted several minutes.
From what I remember, around six minutes.
That may not sound like much.
But spend six minutes inside an elevator going down and you start wondering exactly how far down you are going.
Eventually, the doors opened.
Dr. Samuels stood up.
"I don't think you've ever been two and a half kilometers underground before, have you?"
"No, sir."
"I didn't think so."
And somehow, that was not even the strangest thing I would see that day.
We walked for several minutes.
Then suddenly the corridor opened.
There was another soldier sitting there.
He looked bored.
He was reading a newspaper.
He looked up.
"Doctor Samuels."
He stood.
"Is this the new guy?"
Dr. Samuels smiled.
"Yes."
There was almost excitement in his voice.
"This is him. Private Jansen."
The soldier shook my hand.
"Welcome to the other side, Jansen."
"The other side?"
He pointed behind him.
"Yeah. You know. The Doors."
He grinned.
"Break on through to the other side."
He laughed.
"Very fitting, don't you think?"
I looked past him.
And that was when I started understanding.
Behind him was not another corridor.
It was enormous.
A massive underground space.
Concrete.
Pillars.
Darkness.
And sitting there, under artificial lights, was a bright red sports car.
"Get in, Jansen," Dr. Samuels said.
I got into the car.
It reminded me of the kind of car Magnum drove on television.
Expensive.
Flashy.
Not quite a Ferrari, but something in that category.
"Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"How did you get this car down here?"
He smiled.
"It was impounded."
I waited for the explanation.
There was none.
"Long story."
Then he started the engine.
"But very useful."
We drove.
And drove.
And drove.
The engine echoed through the underground space.
Pillar after pillar passed by.
Rows of concrete columns disappearing into the darkness.
The ceiling was incredibly high.
The floor was rough.
There were piles of stones and dust here and there.
It looked unfinished.
Like some enormous underground parking garage that had been abandoned halfway through construction.
Except it wasn't.
It was completely empty.
And it belonged to them.
Dr. Samuels shouted over the engine.
"Rule number one!"
I looked at him.
"Never drive here alone!"
"Why?"
"Because it is very easy to get lost!"
The words echoed around us.
"And once you do..."
He shook his head.
"Oh boy."
I looked forward.
"Which brings us to rule number two."
I already knew the answer.
"Don't get lost here?"
He laughed.
"Don't get lost here!"
He smiled.
"Rule number two. You catch on quickly, kid. I like that."
Eventually we reached another building.
Inside the enormous underground space was a small, complete building.
One floor.
A roof.
Walls.
Lights.
It looked completely out of place.
Like someone had placed a normal office building in the middle of an underground world.
I felt something I had never really experienced before.
Not exactly fear.
More like the uncomfortable feeling of being somewhere I was never supposed to be.
I was two and a half kilometers beneath the ground.
Far away from the surface.
Far away from everything familiar.
It felt almost like being on the moon.
Except stranger.
"Doctor..."
He looked at me.
"How is any of this possible?"
He turned off the engine.
For a moment, there was complete silence.
Then he took a flashlight and pointed it toward a large red object beside the building.
A fuel pump.
For the car.
"There's a lot of things that are possible in this place, son."
The flashlight moved across the concrete walls.
The grey darkness.
The red sports car.
The red fuel pump.
Everything else was colourless.
Grey.
Cold.
Silent.
I remember thinking that I had somehow stepped into an old episode of The Twilight Zone.
Except this was real.
And I was standing there.
Dr. Samuels opened the door to the small building with his access card.
A small green light blinked.
A quiet electronic beep.
The door unlocked.
It was strangely ordinary.
That is something I remember very clearly.
After everything I had seen that day, I expected something impressive. Something that matched the impossible underground structure surrounding us.
Instead, I walked into what looked almost like a normal research facility.
Almost.
Dr. Samuels stopped near the entrance.
"Before we continue, there is something you need."
He took out another card.
A blank access card.
He wrote something on it, then handed it to me.
"Your temporary clearance."
I looked at it.
"Already?"
He smiled.
"You are going to be working here."
The way he said it was so casual that it took me a moment to process.
Working here.
Not visiting.
Not helping for an afternoon.
Working.
"Here?"
He nodded.
"Your belongings from the barracks will be transferred. We have sleeping quarters available. Nothing luxurious, I'm afraid, but comfortable enough."
I remember thinking:
Wonderful.
My entire life had just been moved underground.
And somewhere in the process, nobody had thought to ask about my personal belongings.
My thoughts immediately went to the important things.
My clothes.
My books.
My collection of Playboy magazines.
And my Donkey Kong LCD game.
Yes, I know how that sounds.
But I was seventeen years old.
Those things mattered.
Dr. Samuels walked further inside.
The facility was larger than it first appeared.
There were offices.
Storage rooms.
A small kitchen area.
A place where people could eat.
Sleeping quarters.
Nothing looked futuristic.
Nothing looked like a secret government installation.
It looked like a workplace.
A very old workplace.
The kind of place where people had spent years coming in every morning, drinking coffee, doing their jobs, and going home.
Except nobody went home from here.
Not easily, anyway.
The walls were mostly plain.
Concrete in some areas.
Painted surfaces in others.
There were old filing cabinets, shelves full of technical manuals, stacks of papers, and notes pinned everywhere.
The smell was unusual.
Not bad.
Just different.
Partly coffee.
Partly old machinery.
Partly something else.
A sharp smell.
Like electrical equipment.
Like welding.
I would smell that again later.
Dr. Samuels led me to a table.
On top of it was a black cloth.
Sitting on the cloth were several ordinary objects.
At least, they appeared ordinary.
A basketball.
A tennis racket.
A magazine.
A few other things I cannot remember.
Small objects.
The kind of things you might find lying around any house.
"These are examples," Dr. Samuels said.
I looked at them.
At first I saw nothing unusual.
Then the angle of the light changed.
And I noticed it.
A strange effect.
The objects had a kind of shine.
Not a reflection.
Not exactly.
It reminded me of the colors you see on oil floating in a puddle after rain.
Blue.
Purple.
Green.
Colors shifting slightly depending on where you stood.
I moved around the table.
It changed.
I moved again.
It changed.
I looked at Dr. Samuels.
"What happened to these?"
He smiled slightly.
"Good question."
That was apparently his favorite answer.
"They have been through the process."
"The process?"
He looked at the objects.
"Negative space."
I waited.
He did not explain further.
Not yet.
But even without an explanation, I understood one thing.
Those objects were not ordinary anymore.
On another desk were two small computers.
They looked almost out of place.
Small white machines with black keys.
They reminded me immediately of the computer my little brother had at home.
"Hey," I said. "I think my brother has one of these."
Dr. Samuels looked over.
"Does he?"
"Yeah. Similar, anyway."
He smiled.
"Not one like these, he doesn't."
I looked at him.
"They are not for playing games, I assure you."
That made me laugh.
Although I was not completely sure he was joking.
They had matching white drives, tape units, and monitors.
There were two setups.
One for him.
One for me.
I did not know anything about the machines at the time. To me they were simply small computers.
Later I would learn they were used for recording measurements, storing data, and assisting with calculations.
The room also contained much larger systems.
Older computers.
Industrial equipment.
Tape storage units.
Machines that looked like they belonged in a university laboratory.
Some of them were decades old.
Dr. Samuels noticed me looking.
"This project has existed longer than you realize."
He walked toward one of the older systems.
"My predecessors left quite a mess."
He sighed.
"They had no idea what they were dealing with."
Then he raised one finger.
"But I do."
The confidence in that sentence surprised me.
Not arrogance.
Something else.
Responsibility.
He picked up a device and began checking readings.
"What are you doing?"
"Making sure everything remains normal."
"Normal?"
He looked at me.
"Nominal."
He smiled.
"Normal would imply we understand it completely."
He moved around the room.
Checking instruments.
Looking at displays.
Reading numbers.
There were wires everywhere.
Cables running between machines.
Sensors.
Monitors.
Equipment I did not recognize.
He carried a small meter and checked different areas.
Then another.
Then another.
"Containment is the most important part of this work."
He said it almost to himself.
"Everything must remain contained."
He checked another reading.
"The readings must stay within acceptable limits."
He paused.
"Otherwise..."
He looked at me.
"Otherwise we are all in serious trouble."
It was then that I noticed something about Dr. Samuels.
He was not what I expected.
When people imagine scientists, they often imagine eccentric people.
Wild hair.
Strange behavior.
Someone dramatically explaining impossible discoveries.
Dr. Samuels was nothing like that.
He looked like someone's ordinary uncle.
A brown blazer.
Old-fashioned.
Plain.
The elbows had patches sewn onto them.
The kind of thing you might see on a university professor from decades earlier.
He was average height.
Average build.
Nothing about him stood out.
Except his mind.
And the fact that he was standing in an underground facility discussing things nobody on Earth should have been able to do.
He also had a habit of talking to himself.
Not constantly.
Just small comments.
Little observations.
Almost as if he was thinking aloud.
At one point he mentioned the military leadership.
"The general is becoming impatient."
I looked up.
"The general?"
He continued checking a machine.
"Yes."
"He knows about this?"
"He knows enough."
That answer bothered me.
"Is that bad?"
Dr. Samuels stopped.
For a moment, he looked tired.
"He does not understand what this is."
"What is it?"
He looked at me.
Then looked away.
"That is a very complicated question."
Another complicated question.
Another answer without an answer.
"The problem with people like him is that they see an opportunity."
He adjusted a cable.
"They do not see the responsibility."
I noticed something else.
There was a nervousness underneath his calmness.
A tension.
Like he was constantly waiting for something.
"Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"You said I would be assisting you."
"Yes."
"What happened to the previous assistant?"
For the first time since I met him, he became completely serious.
"That is classified."
I stared at him.
He looked back at me.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Then he sighed.
"I'm sorry. That is all I can tell you."
He straightened his jacket.
"Rules are rules."
A pause.
"You understand."
I nodded.
But I have to admit...
That was the first moment that day when I felt something other than confusion.
I felt uneasy.
Because until then, everything had been strange.
But now I realized something.
Dr. Samuels was not hiding things because he enjoyed secrets.
He was hiding things because he was afraid of what would happen if they became known.
For the first few weeks, nothing happened.
At least, nothing that felt like it should happen in a place like that.
I had expected something extraordinary.
Instead, I made coffee.
I cleaned floors.
I organized papers.
I checked readings.
I copied numbers from one machine to another.
Sometimes Dr. Samuels would hand me a sheet of paper and ask me to find a specific value from a set of measurements. Sometimes he would ask me to compare two readings and tell him if I noticed anything unusual.
Most of the time, I did not.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Good."
That was usually the answer.
Good.
Apparently nothing happening was a good thing.
I also made beds.
Yes, actual beds.
Looking back, it is almost funny. A seventeen-year-old kid from Haarlem, sitting two and a half kilometers underground in a secret military facility, making beds and sweeping floors.
I remember thinking:
What exactly did they need me for?
Because so far, I wasn't exactly saving the world.
I was a very intelligent janitor.
Dr. Samuels never complained.
That was one of the strange things about him.
He was always busy.
Always thinking.
Always checking something.
Sometimes I would walk past his office and hear him talking quietly to himself.
Not nonsense.
Just thoughts.
Calculations.
Questions.
Things he was trying to solve.
He had a habit of standing in front of a blackboard with his arms crossed, staring at equations as if he expected them to apologize.
Then one day, everything changed.
I was sitting at one of the computers, checking another set of readings, when suddenly I heard:
"YES!"
I nearly jumped.
Dr. Samuels had stood up so quickly that his chair rolled backward.
"YES! This is it!"
I immediately got up.
"What? What is it?"
I honestly thought this was finally the moment.
Finally, after weeks of coffee and cleaning and numbers, I was going to understand what I was doing there.
The doctor looked at me.
His face was different.
Not worried.
Excited.
"Paul..."
He walked toward the board.
"The planetary alignments."
I waited.
"The what?"
"The planetary alignments."
He pointed at pages of calculations.
"My predecessors made a fundamental mistake."
He started pacing.
"They looked at time. They looked at space. They looked at coordinates."
He tapped the paper.
"But they never considered what was there."
I frowned.
"What was there?"
He turned toward me.
"Everything."
"Every object has a location."
He picked up a coffee cup from his desk.
"This cup exists here."
He placed it down.
"But there is also a place where this cup does not exist."
I stared at him.
"Like... inside out?"
He laughed.
"No."
He actually laughed.
"That is a very good answer, but no."
He picked up a marker.
"Think of it differently."
He drew a cartoon outline.
"Imagine Wile E. Coyote running through a door painted like a tunnel."
I smiled.
"The Road Runner?"
"Exactly."
He drew the outline of a coyote-shaped hole.
"When he runs through the door, he leaves behind an empty space shaped exactly like himself."
He pointed at the drawing.
"That empty space is the closest comparison we have."
I looked at it.
"So the coyote could be stored there?"
"Exactly."
"For how long?"
"Indefinitely."
I thought about that.
"That would make the Road Runner very happy."
Dr. Samuels smiled.
"Would it?"
"Why wouldn't it? He'd finally be rid of him."
The doctor looked at me.
"But where is the challenge?"
I didn't answer.
"Why would children still watch Road Runner cartoons if there was no chase?"
He put the marker down.
"Life is nothing without challenge, Paul."
At the time, I didn't realize it.
But I remembered those words for the rest of my life.
Because that was what I had been missing.
Challenge.
My entire life I had been looking for something difficult enough to make me care.
School had been easy.
Everything had been easy.
Too easy.
And now, standing in a secret laboratory beneath the earth, listening to a scientist explain something impossible, I finally understood what my father meant.
I was looking for something.
I just hadn't known what.
About a week later, Dr. Samuels woke me in the middle of the night.
"Paul."
I opened my eyes.
"Paul, wake up."
I looked at the clock.
"What happened?"
He was already dressed.
"It has to be now."
"What has to be now?"
"The experiment."
That woke me up.
He took me through the facility.
Everything was quiet.
Different at night.
Even more so underground.
Eventually we arrived at a room I had never entered.
There was a heavy metal door.
Not a normal door.
The kind of door you would expect on a bank vault.
Beside it was a control panel with old glowing numbers.
Brownish-green digits.
A countdown display.
"Never enter this room alone, Paul."
I looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because if something goes wrong, you cannot open it from the inside."
That was not the answer I wanted.
Inside was a completely white room.
Almost too white.
The walls.
The floor.
Everything had been coated.
In the center was a table.
And a chair.
Not furniture.
They were part of the room.
Built from the same concrete.
A place designed for one purpose.
Dr. Samuels looked around.
"This room is what it is all about."
He looked at me.
"This is the door."
"The door?"
"Between here..."
He pointed down.
"And negative space."
He hurried away.
"I need something."
He returned a minute later carrying a coffee mug.
"I am always asking for specific materials to test."
He looked annoyed.
"They never send enough."
He held up the mug.
"So this will have to do."
He placed it carefully on the table.
Then we stepped outside.
The door closed.
Dr. Samuels pointed at the timer.
"This is the time lock."
He looked serious.
"Never underestimate this room."
I looked through the thick window.
It was just a mug.
A coffee mug.
I still didn't understand.
He walked over to the computer.
Typed commands.
Then moved to the second computer.
"Sending the data to your station."
The old machine hummed.
Numbers appeared.
The doctor looked toward several clocks mounted on the wall.
Not digital.
Old mechanical clocks.
Different measurements.
Different locations.
Different times.
He watched them carefully.
Nobody spoke.
Then:
"Now."
He entered something.
The room changed.
"Paul!"
I turned.
"The right side!"
"What?"
"The right side of the window!"
He grabbed my shoulder and moved me.
"Sorry, I should have told you earlier. Always stand on the right."
He handed me protective goggles.
They looked like welding goggles.
I put them on.
"What exactly am I looking at?"
Dr. Samuels smiled.
"Something nobody should ever forget."
He looked through the window.
"It begins."
At first, nothing happened.
Then the sound started.
A low electrical buzzing.
Like welding.
But not quite.
The air seemed different.
Then something appeared.
A light.
Except calling it light is not really correct.
It was the closest word I have.
A deep blue.
Almost black.
With streaks of white.
It came through the window at an angle.
Not straight.
Wrong.
Like something following a path that did not exist.
The darkness inside it was the strangest part.
Where it touched objects, they almost looked like negatives of themselves.
As if the light was removing the idea of light.
The buzzing grew louder.
The mug sat there.
Waiting.
The beam became brighter.
And brighter.
Then suddenly—
CLACK.
A sharp electrical snap.
Like reality itself had slammed a door shut.
The light disappeared.
Instantly.
Silence.
Dr. Samuels opened the door.
He looked inside.
Then smiled.
"EAT YOUR HEART OUT, DAVID COPPERFIELD!"
I stared.
To be continued below
