The Neighbor's Secret

Good evening. I'm calling from Germany, so excuse my English if it's not perfect. This happened last summer, July I think. Maybe early August. I had just finished dealing with my landlord about the broken washing machine, so I wasn't in the best mood, you understand? My neighbor, Friedrich, he invited me to his garden party. Small gathering, maybe eight or nine people. Friedrich is a nice man, very quiet usually. He's some kind of engineer, works with plasma technology. That's all I knew about his job. He never talked much about it. We're drinking beer in his garden, it's a warm evening, very pleasant. The sun is going down. Friedrich, he's had maybe three or four beers, and he starts talking more than usual. He's relaxed, you understand? And he leans over to me and he says, 'Klaus, can I tell you something? Something about my work?'

I say sure, of course. I'm thinking he's going to tell me about some boring technical problem at his laboratory. But then he gets this serious look on his face and he says, 'I don't make ordinary plasma devices. I make weapons.' I laugh a little because I think he's joking, you understand? But he's not laughing. He's completely serious. He tells me he works for what he calls the German Paranormal Defense Agency. This is a real government organization, he says. Very classified. Very secret. Nobody outside the agency knows about this. I'm looking at him and I don't know what to say. He continues talking. He tells me they make plasma weapons, special kinds. High frequency, he called it. These weapons, they're designed to fight against underground threats. He says 'underground' and he points down at the ground, like he means literally underground.

Then Friedrich, he tells me the reason for these weapons. He says there are aliens living beneath Germany. Under the Black Forest region, under some of the mountains. They've been there for a very long time, he says. Hundreds of years, maybe thousands. These are not friendly aliens, you understand? They're territorial. His job, his team's job, is to develop weapons that can work underground. Regular weapons don't work well down there, he explains. Something about the rock composition, the depth, I don't remember exactly. But plasma weapons, these work better. They can penetrate the tunnels, create barriers, things like that. He tells me they test these weapons at a facility near Stuttgart. He's been working there for six years now. The whole operation is classified. secret government operations are so fascinating - Nicole' Then he mentions there was even a newspaper article about the facility last year, some local reporter wrote about the strange lights people kept seeing at night. Friedrich says the agency had to come up with a cover story about atmospheric research.