Chapter 6
M was put in charge of the Ralph Hinkley project, as it was listed. He was assigned a room and locked in each day and night until M could come and get him out. C didn't trust him to walk around the facility alone and didn't like letting him out of his room. M had convinced her that he was harmless and that she would oversee him while he was there.
Ralph understood and busied himself in his room by exercising and meditating. While meditating, Ralph would try to speak with Suit. Each day, the vibrations given off from Suit were stronger. Ralph was hoping that Suit would wake up soon and help him. Ralph also tried to contact Bill Maxwell while meditating, but he couldn't get any sign that Bill was here in this timeline. The television in the room was disconnected, so he couldn't even see what the outside world looked like. When M would come and get him, they would go to the cafeteria to eat. There were many familiar foods, many unfamiliar ones, and some totally alien. After the meal, they would go to a debriefing room.
The facility was quite large; the main lobby was the size of a football field with a 50 feet high ceiling. One wall was all windows looking outside to a cityscape. A glass elevator was attached to the wall on one end of the lobby. Five floors of halls and rooms could be seen, all with glass walls looking into the main lobby. The design was what Ralph considered futuristic—glass, chrome, curved tables and chairs, and white walls.
While in the debriefing room, they mostly talked about the Hero world. Ralph was open with M. He didn't feel there was anything to hide. He would ask M about all the aliens there and got a few answers, but not as many as he hoped. He discovered that the organization was called the Men in Black or MIB. He chuckled when he heard this.
M asked, "Why do you find MIB funny?"
Ralph said, "Men in Black in my world is a myth, a conspiracy theory. A super-secret organization that knows all about aliens on the planet and prevents the world from finding out about them."
M said, "Yes, that is what we are and do."
Ralph said, "Well, in my world, the only aliens on Earth are the little green guys and the large green guys, and the only ones who know about them are us, the Hero League. We do try to keep this information out of popular media. There are some people around the world that we work with who know about the Hero League, but very few who know about the green guys."
M asked, "If you don't mind, how did you get the scars on your face and hands?"
Ralph chuckled and said, "Those are my dueling scars."
M looked at him with a questioning expression. Ralph said, "I'm joking. I got them during the alien invasion. I was sent on a mission to destroy the power source for the Ultimate Weapon and the wormhole through which the alien armada was entering. I broke the power conduit and cable. When they blew, all the power came through the one hole and threw me and Suit back down the tunnel. Suit kept me from being vaporized, but everything outside of Suit got burned so bad that there was no skin left, and, in some areas, I was burned right to the bone. Those are where I have the scars. The little green guys could repair almost anything in their stasis chambers, but not everything. It took weeks outside the chambers before I was completely healed, but I don't look the same, and now my hair is straight instead of curly. It took me a while to get used to the new face."
M listened to Ralph's stories and explanations about the Hero League, fascinated at how two parallel worlds could be so different.