Starcraft Files: Arbiter Sighting
The world at large may know about the entertainment value offered by Starcraft, but they do not know the darker side of Blizzard's best-selling real-time strategy computer game. No, Blizzard would rather you not hear about the secret files that are kept by the FBI, all relating to the game of Starcraft in some strange way or another. This is just one such story taken from these files.

This is Starcraft File #1b-002.

"Starcraft? Uh, no Sir." Kevin's mind raced with questions, but he tried to keep himself calm. He could feel the sweat on his brow, and remembered an old trick he used to do back in his days of pitching for his high-school baseball team. He centered his thoughts onto an imaginary spot, and focused all his will into maintaining that focus, while at the same time still being consciously aware of his surroundings and able to react in an instant. He kept a cool stare on Lt. Commander Stewart, and tried to make himself comfortable in the stiff wooden chair.

He sat in a small office inside the headquarters of the US Air Force base that Captain Kevin Yates had been assigned to for the past two years of his second tour of duty. He was a fly-boy by heart, and wasn't about to give up his career as a professional test pilot for the USAF. Sitting in the cockpit of next-generation aircraft for the first time was a thrill like nothing he could replicate anywhere else. But in his most recent test-flight, he had experienced such a strange encounter that it had landed him in five days of lockdown. He had been poked and prodded, and every medical test known to air force doctors had been performed twice. Still, nobody could say what it was that Kevin had experienced.

"Its a computer game, Yates." Air Force shrink Allison Jones sat in a chair next to Kevin and looked at him, jotting notes on a notepad in her lap without even looking down. "A game about space ships and alien monsters fighting a big cosmic war." Dr. Jones stopped taking notes long enough to hand Kevin a CD case.

Kevin took the case and closely examined it. It was a computer game, and the picture on the cover was colorful enough, with the title "Starcraft" printed above the face of an alien. As he turned it over, Lt. Commander Stewart cleared his throat. "Pay special attention to the picture in the upper right hand corner and tell us what you see."

Kevin's face went white and his heart skipped a beat. As he examined the picture closer, he could indeed identify the spacecraft! It was the very same ship that he had seen five days ago during his test flight. It looked slightly different, in a more cartoonish way, than it did in real life, but Kevin knew for sure that the yellow spaceship pictured in the artwork was exactly what he had seen.

"Captain Yates, it is my opinion that you had some sort of delusional dream brought upon by lack of oxygen and the increased air pressure caused by piloting the experimental G-15 fighter jet at such an extreme altitude." The doctor said this matter-of-factly, still jotting down notes on her pad. "These conditions caused the hallucinations that you experienced by triggering your subconscious mind to construct a quasi-reality that existed only in your head. Your confessed feelings of motionlessness while in the test-plane is a classic case of your mind becoming detached from reality. It's also interesting to note that blah, blah, and blah-blah-blah." She droned on and on endlessly about Kevin's subconscious mind and his quasi-reality perceptions during stressful and dangerous conditions and all kinds of other meaningless psycho-babble that nobody without a PHD could understand, but regardless of the "psycho-babble facts," Kevin still was convinced otherwise. Even after his commanding officer dismissed him and released him back to his barracks, Kevin knew without a doubt that he had seen something. This was no dream, nor was it something brought on by the test-plane and the altitude which he was flying.

"The electrical field you experienced was due to a malfunction in the G-15's onboard computer system," Stewart had told him. "We're not sure of the specifics. We lost a lot of flight data, but we're double-checking what we have to make sure it doesn't happen again. You have our nation's highest thanks for bringing it back to base in the condition it was in, and because of the ordeal you went through, we are giving you two weeks of leave. To be taken immediately, starting now."

As he left the commander's office, he clutched the Starcraft game in his hand. He had to find out what was really going on here, and the only way he would be able to put his mind to rest was to return to the canyon where he had caught sight of the strange vessel. But first, he decided to find out about this Starcraft game. Rushing to the base library, he logged onto a computer and went online. Kevin had never been much of a computer user outside of what was necessary to perform his job. Truth be known, he was more comfortable with a baseball bat than a keyboard, and had never gotten the point of playing video games. What he did for real life was much more exciting than anything duplicated by sitting stationary at a desk and staring into a monitor.

He quickly found the information he was after with an easy Yahoo search. The spacecraft in question was called an Arbiter, and it was a ship made by the Protoss race. Upon more reading, he discovered that the Arbiter had several special abilities. The most notable was an ability called Stasis Field, a maneuver that Kevin himself had fallen victim to when his experimental fighter jet suddenly locked up, encased in an electrical force-field that kept him stranded in mid-air, unable to do anything.

One of the Arbiter's other special abilities made him take sudden and attentive notice to because of the grave dangers that this spacecraft offered towards the world. It could cloak other ships around it, rendering an entire fleet invisible. If this were true, and Kevin really HAD seen an Arbiter, then for all he or anyone else knew, a group of aliens could be waiting right now to be gated in from their far away home world!

Later that night, Kevin laid back in the seat of his old Jeep Wrangler, staring up at the dancing stars overhead. The slivered moon hung low over the horizon of the small desert canyon, and all was quiet except for the faint rustling of a light breeze. He inhaled deeply, letting the cool desert air fill his lungs. As he exhaled, he could feel his mind beginning to unravel, torn between what was logical, and what he only knew in his heart to have seen and experienced. How could something from a video game he had never played before manifest itself into his subconscious? The Stasis Field ability of the Arbiter was an accurate comparison of the sensation that Kevin had experienced, but yet the Air Force pilot remained conflicted. Could a cloaked Protoss Observer be watching him now?

FINAL ANALYISIS OF CAPTAIN KEVIN YATES
By Dr. Allison Jones

It is my opinion that Captain Yates succumbed to the stress of the situation forced upon him. Unable to explain the delusions his subconscious created, he stalwartly believed he had seen a spaceship taken from a video game.

I have on record my earlier recommendation to Lt. Commander Stewart that the Captain be placed under surveillance and his security clearance revoked. However, Lt. Stewart failed to understand the fragile state of the pilot's psyche. I believe we are all guilty of severely underestimating this man.

Two days after being released on leave, Captain Kevin Yates risked his Air Force career and stole the experimental G-15 fighter jet, flying low over the Nevada desert and towards the canyon where he had spotted the strange spacecraft several days ago. He risked his life as well. Neither he, nor the fighter jet, have ever been seen again. Numerous witnesses have filed many documented statements testifying to having seen strange UFOs in the general vicinity of the G-15's disappearance, but nothing has ever been confirmed.

In the last transmission that Captain Yates sent back to the Air Force base, just seconds before he disappeared off their radar, the message was distorted and full of static from some unknown interference, but one word was clearly understandable.

"...Ophelia…"