Catalyst

In the late 1950s and ‘60s, at the height of the Space Race with the Soviet Union, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States conducted a series of missions known collectively as Project Mercury. As NASA’s first human spaceflight program, Project Mercury’s ultimate goal was to investigate man’s ability to survive in space by putting a man in orbit and bringing him back alive. Before sending a human astronaut into space, however, NASA experimented with primates, launching specimens from several different species of monkey into space between 1948 and 1961. Arguably, the most famous of these was Ham the chimpanzee, whose successful space voyage paved the way for Alan Sheppard to become the first American in space.

Though publicly acknowledged as the first chimp in space, Ham was, in actuality, not the first. Most civilians are unaware that in March 1960, ten months before Ham’s well-publicized space flight, NASA sent a chimpanzee named Sera into space on a secret mission known as Mercury-Jupiter 2 (MJ-2), whose objective was to study the primate’s performance in high altitude conditions. The public was told that the Mercury-Jupiter missions had been cancelled for budgetary reasons; however, the missions proceeded as planned, until a malfunction during MJ-2 caused the Mercury capsule containing the chimp to fall out of orbit. The capsule was lost in space and never recovered.

This formerly classified document, discovered in the mission archives of NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., provides a summary of the mission.

Mission: Mercury-Jupiter 2
Launch Pad: LC-14
Vehicle: Jupiter (2)
Crew: Sera the chimp

Milestones:
Not applicable

Payload:
Spacecraft number 10, Launch vehicle MJ-2

Mission Objective:
Maximum dynamic pressure test

Launch:
March 14, 1960

Landing:
Not applicable

Mission Highlights:
Mission was a failure.


Excerpt from the conspiracy blog “The Truth is Out There,” accessed 18 July 2013

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Eyewitnesses

Off camera, a voice sings. “Guess who’s back… back again! Nicky’s back… tell a friend! Guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back… na na na!”

Slowly, a face rises into view, grinning cheesily, the blue eyes wide. A thumb accompanies it, pointed up, while the other hand presumably holds the camera. Nick Carter holds this winning pose for a second, then announces, “That’s right, ladies! The Nick Cam is back!”

“Alright!” sings a high-pitched voice, off-camera. A rapid blur, as the camera abruptly turns, then zooms in to focus on Brian Littrell, who’s also sporting a toothy smile.

“Yeah!” cheers Nick, behind the camera now. “See, someone else is excited! Brian’s excited! Now it’s time for y’all to get excited!” The camera pans across the faces of Howard Dorough, AJ McLean, and Kevin Richardson, who are equally deadpan. “No? No? Y’all ain’t excited the Nick Cam is back? Well, screw you guys! You know who’s gonna be really excited the Nick Cam’s back?” A pause, another blur, as Nick turns the camera back onto himself. “You are,” he says, smirking at the camera. “The fans. Y’all been begging me for new episodes of Nick’s Corner for, like, three years, and finally, I’m ‘bout to deliver.”

He rotates the camera again, filming out the window of the bus. “So, as you probably can tell, I’m on tour, with my four bestest buddies in the whole wide world!” He turns the camera on each of them as he says their names. “Brian… Howie… AJ… and KEVIN!!!” Kevin Richardson cracks a smile as he comes into view. “OHMYGOD, it’s KEVIN RICHARDSON!!! KEVIN’S BACK!!!” Nick squeals in a wispy, high-pitched voice. Kevin rolls his eyes. “You’re so glad to be back on the bus with me, aren’t you, Kevy-Kev? Old buddy, old pal?”

Nick turns the camera back to himself again and grins mischievously, waggling his eyebrows. “Kevin won’t admit it, but he loves me. He loves being trapped on the tour bus with me. That’s why he came back – he couldn’t stand to be apart from me. He missed me too much. Me and the bus.”

“That’s exactly right, Nick,” drawls Kevin sarcastically in the background. “You’re onto me. It was all because of you.”

“It’s always because of Nick,” adds the voice of AJ McLean.

“Yeah… when in doubt, BLAME NICK!” yells Brian.

“It’s always Nick’s fault,” Howie Dorough chimes in.

Nick just grins, scrunching up his whole face. It’s clear he loves to be the center of attention. “So, yeah… like I was saying… we’re on tour. It’s like… two in the morning. I should be sleeping right now, but I’m not… ‘cause I can’t… ‘cause it’s freakin’ hard to sleep on a moving bus with four other guys! So, yeah… why the hell did we do this again??”

He turns the camera back to the other guys, who are grinning back at him. “You heard us!” says Kevin. “It was allllllll because of you!”

“And it’s all because of you we’re not sleeping right now either,” adds a disgruntled Howie.

“BLAME NICK!” Brian screams again.

Nick’s face finds its way back into the camera’s lens. “So, yeah… anyway… it’s two in the morning. We’re the only ones awake right now, by the looks of things.” He points the camera back out the dark window. “See that? Empty road. Zero traffic. Nada. We’re in the middle of freakin’ nowhere. Where are we, anyway? Kevin?”

“How do you expect me to know?”

“‘Cause you know everything. Where are we?”

“Are we there yet?” Brian mocks him childishly.

“I think we’re in Oregon now,” suggests Howie.

“Really? We crossed the state line already?” asks Kevin, sounding suddenly interested.

“Already? We’ve only been driving all freakin’ day!”

“Yeah, we crossed it awhile back,” says Howie, answering Kevin’s question and ignoring AJ.

“Well, thank you, Mr. Mapquest,” Nick teases Howie happily. “Glad someone knows. So, I guess we’re in Oregon… heading to Seattle. Hey guys, maybe we can all get up early and go bungee jump from the Space Needle or something!”

A chorus of groans resounds throughout the bus.

“Or not.” Nick twists the camera around again and makes a face at it. “You see what I gotta put up with? These old farts never wanna do anything fun. Kevin’s idea of sightseeing would be dragging our asses on some boring hike up a mountain or something, and Brian always wants to go to museums. Museums!”

“I heard the National Redwood Museum was riveting,” pipes up Brian immediately. “We can learn how to count tree rings and get our pictures taken standing on the stumps!”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Brian, you’ve turned into a lame, lame, little man.”

“I’m kidding!” Brian protests. “I don’t even know if there is a National Redwood Museum.”

“Oh, I’m sure there is. Just save it for when your wife and kid are with you, okay?”

“And make sure you all dress alike when you go there,” AJ adds, snickering. This comment cracks Nick up, and the camera shakes as he laughs hysterically.

“Y’all suck,” says Brian, but when the camera finally focuses on his face, it reveals a good-natured smile.

“Whatever. You know we’re-” Nick abruptly stops speaking, mid-sentence. “Dude – did you guys see that?” In a blur, the camera shifts to the bus window again.

“See what?”

“I dunno… something in the sky.” Nick’s hand appears in the frame, pointing out the window, but the glare obstructs anything on the other side of the glass. “There!” he shouts suddenly, his hand waving about wildly. “You see it? The light?”

“What the fuck is that?” AJ asks.

“Chill out, you guys. It’s probably just an airplane.”

“An airplane? You ever seen a plane that looks like that in the sky, Howie?”

“A helicopter then.”

“I think it’s a UFO!” Nick announces. Before anyone can argue, he shouts, “Stop the bus!” The camera shakes violently again as he jumps up and jogs to the front of the bus. “Stop the bus! We gotta go check this out!”

“Nick, come on,” Howie protests, but the screech of brakes suggests the bus is already slowing down. The camera wobbles as Nick apparently lurches sideways. When the bus pulls to a stop on the side of the road, he hurries out, carrying the camera haphazardly in his hand. Shaky shots of the bus steps are followed by a stretch of road, then gravel, and finally, grass. The image is blurry, the lens struggling to bring anything into focus.

At first, all that can be heard is Nick’s heavy breathing, accompanied by the rustling sound of his footsteps, but soon, the other Boys’ voices ring out. “Nick! What are you doing? Get back to the bus!”

“I wanna get a better look!” Nick insists stubbornly, his voice much louder than the others.

Their volume increases as they catch up. “I swear, Carter, you are such a freaking idiot,” AJ pants.

Nick has stopped. He aims the camera at the sky, and finally, the image focuses some. A strange light shines above the trees. The clouds seem to diffuse it, or perhaps it is simply too bright for the camera to capture clearly. In any case, it appears oddly blurry, with gradually fading rings surrounding it in a halo effect, like a stoplight gleaming through a windshield on a rainy night. The haze makes it impossible to identify the light’s source. Whatever it is, it’s moving. The light flickers in and out of the clouds as it floats slowly across the sky.

“You gonna tell me that ain’t a UFO?” says Nick, after a few seconds of silence. The camera, still shooting the sky, doesn’t capture his or any of the other boys’ expressions, but his tone is smug.

“I still think it’s a helicopter,” Howie insists stubbornly, but he’s the only one. Closer inspection of the strange light in the sky seems to have made believers out of the other boys. Their silence suggests they have sided with Nick.

“Whatever it is, it’s coming closer,” Kevin says quietly, a minute later.

He’s right. The light is growing bigger and brighter. The object appears to be descending. On camera, it’s impossible to tell how far away it is, especially with the cloud cover, but it must be closer than it appears because, all of a sudden, a breeze picks up, rustling audibly through the trees.

“Holy shit,” Nick curses, and the camera wobbles. “It’s gonna land.”

Shaky shots of trembling tree branches and fast-moving feet follow, as the boys retreat out of the clearing in which they’ve been standing. Once they have taken their new position amid the trees, the camera refocuses, shooting into the clearing. Through the trees, it tracks the progress of the light as it sinks lower and lower in the sky, turning to shadow as it’s blocked by the base of the massive object that plunges through the clouds.

“Holy shit!” Nick swears again, the camera quivering in his shaking hands. “Are you guys seeing this?”

“This is fucking unreal,” murmurs AJ.

The wind whips through the treetops, wobbling the camera, as the towering UFO descends into the clearing. At first, it appears oblong, a tall and narrow cylinder, but as it nears the ground, the base widens with four curved “legs” that project outward, poised to touch down first. The spaceship, it seems, comes equipped with its own form of landing gear.

The roar of its engine renders the boys’ reactions indecipherable on camera, but while the audio is reduced to deafening static, the video captures everything that happens next. With a gust of steam, a panel slides into the curved side of the ship, revealing a door-like opening. A shadowy figure appears on the threshold.

Even on a screenshot that captures this split second in time, it’s impossible to gauge the size of the creature, not knowing the relative size of the UFO or distance from which it was filmed. However, the figure appears hulking, with a large head and broad shoulders that taper down to narrow hips and disproportionately short legs. At first sight, it seems bipedal, for it stands on two feet in the doorway. As it moves out onto one of the arched landing attachments, however, it is found to walk hunched over, its long arms dragging to the ground. This is knuckle-walking characteristic of earthborn primates, but although the creature bears a resemblance to a chimpanzee, closer examination of the footage reveals notable differences. Among them are the bulbous cranium; large, luminous eyes; and reduced body hair, a shade darker than the green skin showing underneath it.

Of course, these physical features are only observable when the footage is slowed, zoomed, brightened, and clarified. In the dark, and in their shock, it is doubtful the eyewitnesses would have had much of a chance to note them. In real time, the events that follow unfold quickly.

The chimp-like creature slides down the curved leg to the ground, where it stands for a few seconds, its head tilted back, two slits in the center of its face widening as it sniffs the air. It turns its head this way and that, then freezes, its eyes locked on the camera.

“Shit…” Nick Carter’s voice can barely be made out in the background. He is still filming, but the video gets shakier by the second.

Whether it’s able to see the glow of the electronic device through the trees or not, the creature has caught the earthlings’ scent. Immediately, it throws its head back again and issues a series of short, barking screeches. Almost instantly, more of the ape-like aliens appear in the opening of their spacecraft. For a moment, they just stand there, upright on their hind legs, like a mob of meerkats.

Then, all at once, they attack.

Chaos erupts on camera, as the creatures charge. Before the boys know what hit them, the apes are on top of them. The camera captures one slamming AJ to the ground, sinking its teeth into his jugular, before Nick drops it and rushes to his aid. The camera lands face-up on the ground and continues to record the attack taking place just above it. Howie twists and flails, shrieking as he tries to pry off the creature that has attached itself to his face, its limbs wrapped around the back of his head like a piggyback ride in reverse. Kevin appears, armed with a fallen tree branch, which he swings like a baseball bat, beating the creature off of him. At one point, Brian appears at the edge of the frame, also wielding a branch, and together, they manage to fend off the pack of creatures, who appear to retreat back into the clearing.

“Are they gone?” Nick’s voice sounds weak.

“For now. Let’s get back to the bus, before they come back. Howie’s hurt, bad.”

“Can you walk, D?” Brian can be heard asking, off camera. If Howie replies, it’s inaudible. “Lemme see,” Brian adds gently, but seconds later, his voice erupts with alarm. “Nick, where’s your phone? We need to call 911, now.”

“I think I dropped it… somewhere… over there,” Nick answers vaguely.

Kevin’s face appears on camera again, as he bends over to pick up Nick’s phone, which is still recording. “I got it. Let’s just get back to the bus first; then we’ll call.”

“We can’t go-” Nick starts to say, but is interrupted by Brian’s frantic shout.

“Kev, I don’t know what to do; there’s too much blood!”

“Give him your shirt!” Kevin barks. “Tie it around his face if you have to!”

The world spins as he turns to Brian and Howie, the phone clutched in his hand. The camera bounces, filming his footsteps as he strides toward them. Then it’s suddenly flung upwards, as his hands go to his mouth in shock. At an angle, the camera manages to capture the horrifying sight that has caused this reaction. His shirt in his hand, Brian stands next to Howie, whose blood-soaked hands are covering what’s left of his face. Brian gently pries them away to reveal a mess of mangled flesh that better resembles raw ground beef than a human face. Howie’s eyes are gone; tears of blood and jellied vitreous humor weep from their empty sockets. His nose has been bitten off, leaving a gaping hole through which the bones of his nasal cavity are visible. Shredded skin hangs in sheets from his mutilated cheeks. The camera sways in Kevin’s unsteady hand, finally turning upside down again, as Kevin doubles over to vomit. When he rights himself again, Brian has swaddled Howie’s ruined face in his t-shirt, which is already starting to sop up the blood.

“Put your arms around our shoulders, D,” Brian tells Howie, frantically motioning for Kevin to position himself on Howie’s other side. “We’ll guide you back to the bus.”

“Guys…” Nick, who has been quietly off camera for some time, speaks up again. “How are we gonna get AJ back to the bus?”

“What do you mean?” Kevin asks sharply, and the phone is raised until its camera captures Nick slumped on the ground, a few yards away. His back is to the camera, but the glow of the spaceship in the clearing behind them provides just enough light to make out the shape of the motionless body lying in front of him.

Nick’s voice answers hollowly. “AJ’s dead.”

“No… no!” Kevin rushes over, the camera bouncing around his hand again, and skids to a stop at Nick’s side. AJ’s face appears on camera, ghostly pale in the artificial light. His eyes are closed; his mouth hangs open. All the blood has drained through a gaping wound in his neck, where one of the creatures tore out his throat. The sight is enough confirmation for Kevin, who sighs, sounding defeated as he says, “C’mon… we’ll just have to leave him, for now.”

“We can’t leave him!” Nick protests indignantly, childlike in his insistence. “What if they take his body? What if they… what if they eat him?”

“There’s nothing we can do for him now.” Kevin’s voice seems to get calmer as Nick’s grows more frantic. “We have to help Howie. We have get out of here before they come back.”

Finally, Nick agrees, but snatches the phone from Kevin’s hand as he gets up, saying, “Fine, but at least let me call 911 on the way.”

With that, the footage ends on a black screen.

The next video begins with the boys trekking through the woods. Nick is apparently leading, the phone in his hand, while the others can be heard crunching through the brush behind him. “Are you filming again?” Brian asks.

“Yeah,” says Nick sullenly.

“Why?”

“Because. If there’s no damn cell phone service out here, I might as well use this piece of shit phone for something!” The camera convulses wildly as he flails his hand for emphasis. “Someone’s gotta document what we saw back there.”

“You’re just gonna drain the battery.”

“So what? When we get back to the bus, we’ll use one of yours. If we get back to the bus,” Nick adds, muttering the last part under his breath.

“Don’t say that. We’re almost there.”

“Yeah, and we’re also out in the middle of nowhere with no fucking cell service, AJ’s dead, Howie’s hurt, and there could be killer monkeys from outer space sneaking up behind us as we speak!”

“So stop talking.”

“Shh! Both of you!” Kevin hisses suddenly, cutting off both Nick and Brian. “Did you hear that?”

“Stop trying to scare us, Kev; we’re freaking scared enough already.”

“No… I heard something in the trees. Listen.”

Nick stops, turns. He holds up the camera. Brian and Kevin stand on either side of Howie, supporting most of his weight as he sags between them, seeming on the verge of collapse. Their faces are scared, their eyes darting around, ears pricked, all senses on high alert for signs of danger. No one speaks. The camera picks up the faint rustle of leaves, the creak of a branch.

Then, with an earsplitting scream, all hell breaks loose.

One of the alien apes springs out of a nearby tree and lands on top of Brian, who brings Howie down with him as he falls to the ground, fighting with his attacker. But the creature is not alone. The surprise attack turns into a full-out ambush, as the rest of the pack crashes through the trees.

“RUN!” Kevin bellows at Nick, rushing to defend Brian and Howie as the apes close in on them.

“No!” Nick shouts back, though he already appears to be backing up.

“You’re faster than the rest of us, GO!” Kevin orders. “Get back to the bus; get help!”

Nick hesitates another second. In his frozen hand, the camera catches a shot of the ape that attacked Brian sitting on his chest, its face buried in his belly. It raises its head and looks directly into the camera, flashing teeth that are stained with Brian’s blood. It has ripped Brian’s abdomen wide open with those teeth, and now it feasts on his entrails. A length of intestine hangs from its mouth like sausage. The creature gives it a tug, trying to tear it free from Brian’s insides. Still conscious, Brian screams in agony.

This scream, it seems, is what finally triggers Nick’s fight or flight response. While Kevin stays back to fight, Nick flees, the phone bouncing around in his hand as he tears through the woods. It’s impossible to tell if the sounds of cracking twigs and rustling leaves are all from his own pounding footsteps, or if he’s being pursued. Suddenly, the world seems to turn upside down, as Nick apparently trips, sending the phone flying. “Oh no… oh God, no,” his voice can be heard whimpering in the background. When he finally picks up the phone again, he uses it to silently film his grim discovery: the lifeless body of a man, later identified as the tour bus driver, lying in a pool of blood on the ground.

Nick turns in a slow circle, panning across the endless trees that surround him. Then he turns the camera onto himself. For a few seconds, he just looks into it. He tries to blink back the tears that fill his blue eyes, but they just keep refilling. He takes a few shaky breaths, but the air keeps hitching in his throat. He clears it, then whispers, “I’m Nick Carter. I’ve just been attacked by…” He shakes his head, closing his eyes briefly before he continues, “…God knows what. My friend AJ is dead. Brian and Howie are probably dead. Kevin might be dead too. Our driver’s dead. I’m gonna try to get out of here and find some help, but if I die too-”

“NICK!”

Nick’s head jerks upward, his eyes alighting with hope. The distant shout sounds like Kevin’s voice.

“NICK, BEHIND YOU!”

Nick doesn’t have time to react before a dark shadow springs out of the trees and lands on his shoulders. The camera captures a close-up of the creature, so apelike and yet alien, as it bares its blood-stained teeth. Then it sinks them into the side of Nick’s neck, quickly stifling his single scream.

For a split second, the world seems to spin, as the phone freefalls from his hand. Then, with a dull thud, the camera cuts to black.


Video footage recovered from an iPhone discovered in the forest, less than a mile from Interstate 5 in Douglas County, Oregon, 11 July 2013

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Aftermath

BACKSTREET BOYS PRESUMED DEAD
Fans of the missing boyband cling to hope, as searchers shift efforts from rescue to recovery

ROSEBURG, O.R. – The search for the missing members of the pop music group The Backstreet Boys is no longer being considered a rescue mission. “At this point, we’re just hoping to recover any remains,” said Douglas County Sheriff John Hanson.

In a statement released Monday morning, Hanson added that evidence recovered from the area near Interstate 5, where the Backstreet Boys’ tour bus was found abandoned last week, suggests foul play. Although Hanson would not elaborate on what that evidence was, an unnamed source reports that a cell phone belonging to one of the Boys was found by a volunteer in the search party. The iPhone, capable of taking pictures and recording video, may contain clues as to the fate of its owner and his companions.

The Backstreet Boys were reported missing last Tuesday, after failing to show up for a concert in Seattle. The group had last performed the previous night in Sacramento, one of fifty shows scheduled for a summer tour that celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the group’s formation and reunited its five members: Nick Carter, 33, AJ McLean, 35, Brian Littrell, 38, Howie Dorough, 39, and Kevin Richardson, 42, who left the group in 2006.

Fans around the world were shocked and devastated to learn of the group’s sudden disappearance. Prayer chains swept across social media sites, with users from hundreds of different countries logging on to share their concerns in a variety of languages. Supporters closer to home showed up in droves to help with the search efforts, which continued over the weekend. Despite the grim prospects for finding all five men alive after six days in the wilderness, the fans refuse to give up hope. “We’re just going to keep praying,” said Laura Fisher, a longtime fan who came from Canada to join the search party. “We won’t stop looking until our Boys are found.”


Article published in the Los Angeles Times, 16 July 2013



STRANGE SIGHTING
Woman reports seeing ape-like creature along rural roadside

CANYONVILLE, O.R. – Cheryl Winters, 62, says she was just enjoying a Sunday drive through the country, when an animal ran out in front of her car. Winters slammed on her brakes to avoid hitting the animal, which she says escaped the encounter unharmed and quickly disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road. Close encounters and near misses (as well as the occasional hit) with wild animals are a common occurrence among motorists living in rural areas, but what makes this one remarkable is the type of animal involved. This was no ordinary raccoon, opossum, or deer; according to Winters, it was an ape. “I didn’t get a good look at it, but from what I could tell, it looked like a chimpanzee or maybe an orangutan, only its coat had more of a greenish tint than a reddish color,” Winters described, when reporting the strange animal she nearly struck with her car this past Sunday, while driving eastbound on County Highway 1 outside Canyonville.

Canyonville lies just north of Canyon Creek Forest State Park, which is home to a wide variety of wildlife. However, there are no species of ape or monkey native to Oregon. Jeff Tiller, a park ranger at Canyon Creek Forest State Park, believes Winters must have simply misidentified the animal she saw. “What she saw was probably a dog or possibly a bear. We certainly don’t have any apes in the park, and no zoos in the area have reported any of their animals missing. Then again,” Tiller joked, “this is Sasquatch territory, so stranger things have been sighted.”

Could a cousin of Bigfoot really be monkeying around in Douglas County, or is this just a case of mistaken identity? No matter what the experts have to say, Winters stands by her story. “It may have only been for a second, but I know what I saw. And it wasn’t a dog or a bear.”


Article published in the Douglas County News Review, 17 July 2013

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