MANTICORE CIRCA 5,000 BCE?
Dear Reader
For the past year, New World Weekly has been a primary source of reliable information in regards to Transgenics, the escapees from the government-sponsored Manticore, a super-soldier program based in Gillette, Wyoming. Only one other reporter has been as forthcoming with the public in regards to what the United States government didn't want you to know; the enigmatic cable-hacker, Eyes Only.
In the past, Eyes Only has always worked seemingly alone. He (she?) has never collaborated with any other media, and has never provided information to another source to distribute.
Until now.
New World Weekly's newest reporter, Calvin Simon Theodore, was recently contacted through the Eyes Only Informant Net, and provided with the initial details for what follows. Our own researchers have confirmed as much of this information as possible, and were as shocked as I'm sure you will be by what was discovered.
With new information arriving even as I type this, New World Weekly promises to keep the public abreast of any developments. I would also like to take this moment to thank Eyes Only for his assistance in this matter.
Deborah Litvack
Editor-in-Chief, Publisher
Calvin 'Sketchy' Theodore reporting
On January 19th of last year, an apparent VA hospital in the Gillette Mountains, Wyoming suffered a fiery explosion. Government news networks all reported on this 'bombing', blaming the activist group S1W for the attack. In the wake of that night, however, it became clear that what we were being told by 'official' sources was a complete fabrication.
As you all now know, it was not a hospital, but a Top Secret genetics lab and military base that burned that night. The cause of the fire is reported by Eyes Only to have been an attempt by those running the base to destroy all evidence of its existence, in order to prevent their impending public exposure. This plan failed, and instead of the hundreds of experimental super-soldiers within being destroyed, many escaped. The majority of those escapees made for the nearest accessible city, Seattle, and have since then taken up residence in Terminal City, Seattle's toxic biohazard zone in Sector Seven.
It seemed until recently that Transgenics may very well be the most bizarre chapter in human history to date. This reporter, however, has seen evidence of things far stranger and more sinister; evidence which points to an ancient precursor to Manticore; a secret society dating back to before the time of the pharaohs; a global movement bent on world domination through the creation of a superhuman army.
The earliest evidence of this shadow society, who refer to themselves as 'Familiars', dates from ancient Mesopotamia circa 5000 BCE, and legends of people who were more than human, and had 'great powers bestowed upon them by the gods'. The only pictorial reference remaining of these legends is a carving of what seems to be a mythical creature, the Manticore, with the body of a red lion, a human head with three rows of sharp teeth, and the tail of a serpent or scorpion. Oddly, the first reference to this creature in legend stems from Persia, and is not heard of until roughly 3000 BCE.
Similar stories appear all over the world, the age and location of these references ruling out simple spread of a story via word of mouth, unless America was actually discovered before 2000 BCE, where the same symbol, accompanied by similar stories of a shadowy superhuman elite, are found in Chile, in an Andean tomb.
The story repeats in all corners of the globe, and though the details are often scarce, one tale of Celtic origin claims that the Familiars await a global disaster designed to wipe out the human race, and hand the earth over to the, her 'rightful inheritors'. No mention of this disaster appears in any of the other legends, and, as always, the Celtic myth leaves out the finer points.
The most telling story about these Familiars, and the only one that comes with more evidence than just the symbol, comes from the Kiloma Indians in the early 1800s, where a group of white fur-traders are said to have kidnapped a young tribeswoman and forced her to bear a child for one of their number; a boy of only fourteen and yet described as being almost monstrous in size.
When the child – a boy - emerged from the womb it was already dead, and according to the tale, hideously deformed. The traders forced the girl to bear another child, another boy, and this one they murdered themselves the instant it was born. Then came the third, and this third boy they took with them, but not before the hulking father murdered the girl, apparently breaking her neck with a single punch from behind.
As testament to this macabre tale is a site which, until recently, hid the burial ground in which the remains of the victims laid. As always, the symbol of the Manticore was found with the remains, painted on the wall (pictured, right). The bones of the mother and two children (pictured, below), the children's skulls disfigured, one of them apparently killed by a massive skull fracture, and the mother's neck shattered, were until recently to be found underneath a condemned building in Sector Two, apparently the site of an environmental cleanup effort.
Acting on this information supplied by Eyes Only through his informant net, I went to the site detailed. Expecting round-the-clock guard, the first thing that stood out was that the site seemed to have been abandoned, and quite recently. Finding a dirt pit underneath the site, I climbed down, and was disappointed to find no remains whatsoever. On the ground at the edge of the pit, however, small fragments of a smashed pillar (pictured, left) were to be found. The destruction of the symbol and the removal of the remains was apparently done in quite a hurry given that the cleanup was incomplete. Also, sickeningly, no tools seem to have been used to smash the symbol on the pillar, and still-drying blood could be seen on the wrecked stone. Whoever smashed the pillar did so with their bare hands.
Despite these revelations, I imagine that some sceptics out there might doubt the authenticity of this report… as I'm sure a great many people were somewhat disbelieving when stories about Manticore began circulating. And if this was all we had to share, not believing could easily be understood. However, in collaboration with the Eyes Only Informant Net, this reporter was able to investigate the shadowy depths of Manticore's past, and what we found was nothing short of jaw-dropping.
The origins of Manticore are, officially, as non-existent as Manticore itself. Despite the public revelation of the Department of Defence's illegal genetics program in the courts, it still doesn't exist on government documentation before last year. What did exist however was an SAC (Strategic Air Command) base, which in time was replaced by the VA hospital government officials initially insisted the SW1 destroyed.
In May of 2009, the SAC base was suddenly shut down, and all staff transferred away to various other projects. For an air base, the facility was somewhat lacking, with only four qualified pilots on the entire staff – but quite a few nurses and obstetricians, and teaching specialists - only one of whom, according to her service record, had actually flown anything recently. Captain Maria Hill appears to have been the base commanders' personal chauffeur, frequently flying him to or from meetings in Washington D.C.
Captain Hill, along with many other members of staff from the SAC base, was mysteriously unreachable when called upon to comment.
The base commander at the time of the shutdown was one Donald Lydecker, a highly decorated Army veteran whose career had suddenly ended in dishonourable discharge when he assaulted a senior officer, following a breakdown as a result of his wife's brutal, unsolved murder. His sudden reinstatement and assignment to the Wyoming air base came in late 1996. Having been a Captain at the time of his dismissal, he was immediately promoted to Major following his reinstatement, and by the time of the shutdown in '09, had attained the rank of Colonel.
Officially, the Army's SAC base in the Gillette Mountains was now closed. In fact, the Manticore site this fictional base had been invented to cover up had undergone relocation deeper inside the mountain range. When it reappeared again, official documentation claimed it was a VA hospital. New World Weekly now knows the reason for the overhaul.
In February of that year, three months before the relocation of the Manticore site, a squad of X-series Transgenics made an escape attempt which proved largely successful. Of the sixteen escapees, twelve made it outside the Manticore perimeter and disappeared. New World Weekly can also confirm that one of the escapees was none other than Max Guevara, Manticore designation X5-452, and a good friend of this reporter until her tragic death in a bomb attack two weeks ago.
In the newly formed Manticore base, Colonel Lydecker was pulled from his leadership role and demoted to second in command under Dr. Elizabeth Renfro. No other information could be uncovered about this woman. At this point, it seems that her name itself is merely an alias.
The Colonel's new assignment became the recapture of the X-5 escapees, a mission he pursued ruthlessly for over ten years, until, suddenly, he allied himself with several escapees, and helped co-ordinate an assault on Manticore.
The purpose of the assault was to cripple Manticore's ability to create more soldiers by destroying their DNA lab, but although they were successful in their purpose, Max and another X-5 were recaptured. It was Max's second escape two months later, followed by the public exposure of the Manticore base by Eyes Only, which led to its destruction.
Since then, Colonel Lydecker has disappeared, apparently killed when his car sped out of control and crashed into a river. His body has not been recovered. However, the photographs of the remains from the Kiloma burial site, and the Manticore symbol on the pillar, were found in his car. Colonel Lydecker had begun an investigation into the Familiars when he was killed.
The strangest part of this tale, however, is the man behind Manticore. Colonel Lydecker and his predecessors, for all their intelligence and ability as soldiers, were military personnel with little or no knowledge of what would be required to manufacture a super-soldier. They were jailers, nothing more.
The 'success story' behind Manticore is the man who first devised the method that allowed the first living, breathing supersoldier to be created.
Éric Sandeman was born in Marseilles in 1943. Little could be uncovered about his early life, but recent digging into his past by Eyes Only and New World Weekly discovered that by the mid-1960s, Mr Sandeman was living in Quebec, and giving science lectures in various local colleges, despite his only formal educational qualifications being in the Arts.
By 1983, Sandeman was proving something of a late bloomer in all aspects of his life. Having finally decided to professionalize his scientific work, he was close to a double-doctorate in Biology and Phsyics in MIT. He was also by this time a husband and father, having married a local woman named Emily Rocha two years earlier. His first son, Alain, was born in January of that year.
Following the death of his wife in a car accident that summer, Sandeman suddenly pulled out of his college programs just short of obtaining his doctorates. It seems that having distinguished himself in all his studies – particularly Genetics, and his preliminary work in what would soon evolve into the concept of biotechnology - he had drawn the attention of the U.S government, who were quite eager to hire him. Upon accepting a position with the Department of Defence, The elder Sandeman and his infant son relocated once again. Their new home: Campbell County, Wyoming, near Sandeman's workplace at an SAC base in the Gillette Mountains.
Exactly how Sandeman managed to devise the method that would provide Manticore with its superhuman population remains a mystery, but it seems that by the late 1980s they had succeeded in creating a number of experimental Transgenics. The first among these were part-canine 'brothers'. Isaac, the youngest of the pair, was born less than a year after Joshua. Joshua, known to many from his tragic misadventure in the sewers of Seattle a few months ago, which ended with the horrific death of local girl Annie Fisher at the hands of corrupt government agent Ames White, and also now making quite a name for himself on the art scene, called Sandeman his father, as did his brother Isaac (now deceased).
Over the next couple of years, many more Transgenics were born; some experimental, some designed for specific military purposes such as desert, arctic or even aquatic combat. Not long after last year's mass exodus, fisherman caught what they believed to be a mermaid in their net. Their catch was in fact a Transgenic with quite a lot of fish and dolphin DNA, which, after being captured by a team led by Ames White, escaped and disappeared with a little help from other Transgenics.
In the beginning of the early 90s, Sandeman and company began creating the X-series Transgenics, which, unlike their predecessors, where designed to look human, making them far more useful for conventional warfare and espionage. The first generation of such soldiers were dubbed 'X-2s', and were considered a disaster. What exactly went wrong is unknown, but according to the few residents of Terminal City old enough to remember, the X-2s went insane and had to be destroyed, save four who they kept alive for research purposes.
By 2006, accounts by Joshua and other Transgenics say that Sandeman was running the Manticore facility; and odd situation given his civilian status. He also had another son, Christopher Jean, who had been born in 1989 to his second wife, Marissa Welsh; a DOD Agent who worked with Sandeman at the Wyoming facility. Then suddenly, in autumn of that year, Sandeman abruptly left Manticore, disappearing without trace along with his wife and younger son until a year later, when a new company called Advanced Recombinant Genetics appeared in the centre of what is now Terminal City, with Sandeman at the top of the ladder.
It was after this sudden split from Manticore that Colonel Lydecker was placed in charge of the facility, and so it remained until the breakout in '09. Oddly enough, it was at only a week after the breakout that Sandeman also disappeared. Even though the lease on his Seattle home was maintained – he was even still listed in the phone book – Sandeman and his family were nowhere to be found, except for the elder son, Alain, attending Harvard, where he was studying Political Science and Journalism. Sandeman's company soon crumbled without him, and finally shut down in the aftermath of the Pulse.
Upon escaping from the fire at Manticore last year, Joshua immediately began searching for his 'father'. He found the old Seattle property, but no trace of the former occupant, except the broken top of what he remembered as a cane his father had carried. The top of the cane itself (pictured, below) raises yet more questions about the purposes of Manticore.
Was/Is Éric Sandeman a Familiar? Almost certainly. If it's not enough that the Manticore symbol, the symbol of the Familiars, also seemed to be a sort of personal coat of arms for the creator of the first Transgenics, then consider his children. His first son, Alain, was the third child conceived by his first wife, though the only one to come to full term. His second, Christopher, was the third child conceived by his second wife. Their first child miscarried, while the second, a girl, died the day she was born, expiring in the Neonatal ICU in a Wyoming hospital having been born with anencephaly.
Did Sandeman mean for Transgenics to be the 'superhuman army' mentioned in the legends of the Familiars? Perhaps. But if so, how does one explain the identity of the man who, until recently, was leading the governments efforts to round up and destroy the Manticore escapees? In June of 2009, one month after the shutdown of Manticore's original front, and four months after the flight of a dozen X-5 Transgenics followed immediately by their creator dropping off the face of the earth, Alain Sandeman legally changed his name to Ames White. Neither his father, half-brother, or stepmother, have been seen in over ten years.
IN THE SECOND PART OF OUR SPECIAL FEATURE:
Why did Sandeman go into hiding?
Why do the Familiars despise Transgenics?
Who is 'The One'??