Here is a sample previewing the opening paragraphs to a 3,600-word short story titled Operation Bigfoot. This tale set in the early 1980s exists inside The Powers That Be Multiverse and introduces a brilliant and ageless scientist named Dr. Richard King, or Doc.
Synopsis:
Frank and Armando, a prankster duo underachieving through their youthful years in the small town of Forks, Washington, blunders into a mythical creature’s deadly domain. In a harrowing blink of an eye, they find themselves under arrest for murdering the town sheriff. While they profess their innocence, if the mischievous pair cry Bigfoot, will anyone listen to or believe their story?
Meanwhile, Doc, the chief scientist at a research facility hidden in the southwestern hinterlands and funded by a mysterious global entity known as The Powers That Be, happens across their unfortunate tale while watching an episode of In Search Of. On an uncharacteristic whim, he travels to the Pacific Northwest on his own quest to obtain the hairy beast’s DNA. The evidence could lead to exonerating the loquacious pair already a year into life sentences without parole for the murderous crime they did not commit.
Operation Bigfoot
Oct 31, 1983
Dr. Richard King needed a break from the reality of his unreal world. The administrator and chief scientific officer at Lost Cactus National Laboratory since its off-the-grid groundbreaking in 1947, the ageless wonder known as Doc squared scientific circles in league with a cadre of off-world scientists and engineers. From its secret location in the far reaches of the American Southwestern desert, the clandestine idea factory produces paradigm-smashing breakthroughs meted out through public and private entities under the auspices of Richard’s employer, The Powers That Be.
A self-avowed workaholic, Doc spent his days immersed in scientific discovery. The vagaries of the outside world never entered his lab. He did not care who was president or which team did what. However, all work and no play make Richard a dull boy. His personal passion project involved frequenting message boards to glean firsthand information on a menagerie of pseudo biological enigmas roaming the planet beyond the purview of his alien colleagues. Through the years, everything from Mothman to the Loch Ness monster fell under his scrutinizing intellect. Call it a hobby.
On a rare quiet Thursday afternoon, Doc passed through a breakroom and paused to turn off a TV. The prototype flatscreen droned on with nobody watching, a real pet peeve. He knew who paid to keep the lights on, and if they could see the waste, there would be hell to pay. Before he could find the off-switch on the wonky set, the broadcast transitioned from a Bob Uecker Lite Beer commercial back to a rerun of an In Search Of episode starring Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy.
Doc smirked and sat back on a crumb-covered couch, “This ought to be good for a laugh.”
The long-running show pioneered the concept of airing urban myths, legends, and conspiracy theories to a mass audience weaned on Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Doc also knew the groundbreaking TV show stumbled across truths on occasion. However, the show’s pseudo-intellectual expert interviews tended to glom outlandish spin atop most narratives and inevitably chalked everything up to, you guessed it, aliens. The little green men trope came in handy when logic and reason failed to conjure a viable answer. If Nimoy ever decided to retire, Doc knew he could host a show that would blow their minds.
Tonight’s episode dealt with a violent and tragic Bigfoot encounter. Leveraging his extraordinary security clearance, Doc had poured over countless terrified eyewitness encounters starring a hodgepodge of the hairy incarnations from around the globe. However, this episode highlighted a story he had missed. The scientist sat engrossed for the next twenty minutes watching the tragic tale of two hapless fellows from a small town on the Olympic Peninsula who took the fall for one of the rogue creature’s more violent encounters.
“How did I miss this? Perhaps I am due for a field trip.”
With years of unused vacation time under his belt, Doc decided an expedition to the Pacific Northwest was just the change in scenery he needed to recharge his battery.
“I can scout the location from this show and look for Bigfoot DNA samples.” With a devious raised eyebrow, “Perhaps even genetically replicate my own version of the mythical beast. Wouldn’t that be something?”
Planning the well-earned itinerary in his head, he vows to leak exonerating evidence to one of his secret media sources. “Maybe I can help the two losers featured on the show have their case reopened. It sure beats languishing in a Washington state penitentiary for a murder they did not commit.”
* * * * *
The omnipresent drizzle morphed into a steady rain pelting the unkempt emerald blanket of the Pacific Northwest rainforest. Epiphytes and ferns thrive on spruce, fir, hemlock, maple, and alder, while cat-tail moss drapes from branches like decorations. A red-breasted sapsucker fluttered from its camouflaged nest in a spray of water droplets. On the forest floor, rivulets of rainwater seeped through roots and undergrowth, forming tributaries around massive trees and mossy boulders, gushing through stands of salmonberry and huckleberry, ferns, and saplings, before cascading over rocky outcroppings into the swollen stream slicing through a dark and misty gulch.
An ominous howl broke the primeval quietude of this remote parcel of Olympic National Forest, sending high-strung, furry forest dwellers scurrying for their dens.
Standing ramrod still on a rock and pebble-strewn spit of sand in the middle of the fast-moving stream, Richard King stopped and listened, waiting for the howls to fade before resuming his exploration. Wading knee-deep through the fast current across the slippery, rounded rocks, the scientist steadied himself against an ancient decayed Douglas Fir bridging the torrent of icy water. Peering through his fogged glasses, a tuft of cinnamon-brown fur fluttering off a broken branch comes into view. With an arched eyebrow at the bright-hued clump of hair, he tugs the soaked backpack off his shoulder and removes a glass tube from a side pocket. Steadying tweezers in a clammy fingertip grasp, he pulled off a sample and shoved it inside the cylinder. After a wary over-the-shoulder glance, he capped the vial and added it to his pack.
Drying his glasses for the umpteenth time, the ageless scientist slid his left arm through the strap on his soaked pack, pulled it onto his back, and proceeded upstream in the general direction of the howls.
Two Years Earlier
Armando Rodriguez and Frank Dalrymple were local deadbeats from the village of Forks on the Olympic Peninsula. Neither one of them ever held a job. In the view of those that knew them, neither would amount to anything. Their lone talent—if you could call it that—was pranking locals …
Discover the harrowing chain of unlikely events that cascade out of control by downloading Operation Bigfoot on Apple or Kindle. We are working on Kobo and Nook editions and will announce when those become available for this short story and the other short stories in the growing PTB Multiverse catalog.
