The presentation started once everyone was present  Notable participants included the head of Boeing’s Aviation Incidents and Investigation team, Smithsonian Paleontology experts on human evolution, Yellowstone’s Park Ranger Services Fire Prevention team, NASAs expert on interstellar clouds, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s expert on Geomagnetic and Space Weather, and Harvard’s Physics department chair. The presentation was brief and concise, led by a small Italian woman with a hand barely large enough to hold the teleprompter controller and a voice soft enough that she was repeatedly asked by the participants to ‘speak up.’ Once the presentation concluded, a legal agreement was distributed to all of the participants requiring signatures. By participating and helping construct the final narrative, all of the participants guaranteed they were offering the President of the United States the most accurate picture of the event, while legally prohibiting themselves responsible for any decisions or repercussions made as a result. When the time came to return the pens to the secretary at the door, not a warm hand remained among them.

The secretary, Justine Potts, had been present for numerous meetings exactly like this one. During her distinguished career in Naval Intelligence, she earned the nation’s highest security clearance in various compartmentalized government agencies, including access to any or all files labeled ‘Top Secret,’ by the Department of Energy, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the House Finance Committee on Banking Regulations. All of which had potential implications for geopolitics and wartime strategy. Although not directly the result of the U.S. Navy’s preference for a reputable genealogy, Justine’s father held a similar position from 1950 until his retirement in 1994. The Potts name, too, can be traced all the way back to the colonial era, where documentation of the family name originates at a slave auction in the state of Georgia in 1797 where they took the family name of the purchaser, one Henry Potts, who was in need of labor for his small print shop and bakery in Atlanta.

For Justine Potts, these meetings no longer came as a shock or surprise. Now late in her own career, the thinly veiled wall covering the mountain of the United States darkest secrets had long ago been torn down. As an African American, she felt that the deepest secrets held less scientific implications than social and political ones that, if made public, would broadly reshape historical racial narratives. For example, she once erupted into uncontrollable laughter during one scientist’s presentation while he continued to vehemently defend a Darwinian explanation for the ‘natural selection’ of Caucasian skin color. 10,000 years it seems was not simply enough time freezing North of the 30 Latitude Line. These undercurrents even reshaped her perspective of the Civil Rights Movement. Looking back on the past she sensed even Martin Luther King Jr. had tried but failed to forge a different path than the tracks of history we were sitting on. After having read the “I Have A Dream” speech verbatim fifty times she felt only hollow and empty. That a bigger opportunity had somehow been missed.

Some surprising things too, ironically began to carry more weight. Like the Klu Klux Klan’s penchant for setting crosses on fire in the yards of African Americans resulted in a creeping accumulation of doubt whether vampires, witches, and werewolves could truly be dispelled by a silver bullet or a clove of garlic. There was after all a rational connection in the irrational. But ultimately being a believer and follower of Christ, this was literally not her cross to bear. She contemplated these mysteries quietly, and alone. Exactly as she was expected. Though she was not without comfort. She enjoyed reading scientific literature about the migratory behavior of birds, Franz Anton Mesmer’s theories of animal magnetism, and Victorian spiritualists like Emma Hardings Britten who attempted to make direct contact with the dead. 

Several years ago there was a presentation by a group of scientists attempting to simulate conditions for astronauts in preparation for the first manned expedition to Mars. One of the most difficult questions was the psychological effects of a low gravity, low magnetic environment. Although these conditions are not unlike what exists on the moon, the moon does pass through and is shielded by the magnetosphere of Earth, especially for seven days during the full moon phase. It was noted that all the Apollo landings occurred during the first two quarter moon phases to prevent any returning craft from experiencing bow shock from stellar wind when the moon passes again through the magnetosphere boundary upon exiting the full moon. Any attempt to reach Mars will require the craft and personnel to temporarily sever their connection to Earth’s magnetosphere. The debate results were inconclusive, however, as numerous experts maintained their positions on both sides. Anything from negligible health risks to unimaginable psychological horrors were tabled. The most severe detractors believed that humans could experience schizophrenic delusions, depression, anxiety, and cardiac arrhythmias. To paraphrase the presentation’s conclusion: ‘pushing the limits of human torment beyond the experience that inspired Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night.’  

This information colored her perspective in a way that led to disappointment in many areas of life where the general public found hope and inspiration. Adventurous campaign promises that might thrill or excite the public, such as tax cuts, government budget reallocations, or discovering new spending efficiencies in medicaid, social security, and progressive era politics that shadowed New Deal visions fell flat. Curing cancer was tantamount to extinction. It was as old as the origins of mammals and a fundamental bedrock of civilization. One presentation given by an elite group of Soviet era Russia scientists showed that cancer was influenced by bacterial quorum sensing. Harkening back to our days as primitive creatures that lived in burrows, we created a micro-environment where socialized crowding enhanced the spread of diseases through defecation. Yet, somehow covered in muck and mud we evolved and thrived. How? “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) Citing not the Bible but Ilya Ilych Mechnikov’s 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, immunology was influenced by the presence of opsonins; proteins also critical to vision. By living in darkness, our primitive ancestors’ immune system was handcuffed. Unable to react, we adapted and cancer became a social contract created as a compromise. In comparison, evolutionary competitors like alligators, who swam and bathed in abundant fresh water and sunlight never evolved and rarely are documented with modern afflictions such as cancer. 

Last month, Justine Potts’ neighborhood received a boil water notice from her public utility company. She was concerned, but knew anything reaching levels of paranoia were irrational. Another accidental whoopsie that may have beneficial consequences, she laughed. Sometimes the general public’s reaction to environmental disasters was so alarmist, it bordered on suicidal. Perhaps we needed to see the opposite extreme before we could let the puritan laws go. Perhaps we should ship someone off to Mars to live in isolation in a plastic bubble, lathered in clorox and alcohol wipes, surrounded by a thin metal wall shielding them from the infinite black void of space. Thoughts like these came and went while she performed simple tasks like looking over tomatoes at a grocery store, knowing full well that they were green and had been artificially ripened by ethylene gas. When these streams of thought were interrupted by a nearby Mother scolding a child for teething on the shopping cart handle, she paused only for a second before returning back to the quiet place in her mind, left alone to contemplate the things her security clearance had privileged her access to. Though it was not her responsibility to muse on these ideas she couldn’t help but feel it had given her life a freedom few would ever experience. And though she no longer can guess the number of pens she has collected, she knows that tomorrow there will be another cold hand, and she will greet them with another warm smile.

Excerpt from FBI psychological profile of Justine Potts.

Signed and dated with encryption, April 13, 2013