Carl Barry had just hung up the phone after one of his leads in the Dell missing persons case had informed him of some lab results on some shoes. He typed the notes of the conversation on his computer at his desk in the reporters pool at the weekly news magazine WorldWeek, and then looked at the file containing a pair of photo's. The first one was of a very handsome dark haired man with green eyes and a flashing smile. His good looks matched those of any popular hunk on the cover of People magazine, but he had chosen to make his name in Hollywood as a screenwriter. The picture was taken at the Chandler Pavilion after co-winning an Oscar for best screenplay for the movie "Cushines" about Mafia life in South Brooklyn. The second picture opposite was of a stunningly beautiful woman with long dark hair and green eyes and a feminine version of that same flashing smile on the screenwriter. She was dressed only in a string bikini top and a g-string, and had posed seductively in an arched back stance with one hand in her hair and another on her hip. This picture was taken from a promotion shot for a popular "Gentleman's Club" in Santa Monica. The man and woman looked to a casual observer like they were brother and sister, probably twins. Carl had played around with some morphing sofware and had found that all the pics between the two had morphed seamlessly. He only wished that the book he was writing about these images in the two pictures would meld together as easily. He was almost finished with the research and interviews, and a movie deal was being negotiated even before the book went into print. It was a huge risk that would most likely ruin his credibility as a journalist if it failed, but would make him a media superstar if the book was believable enough to overcome the sansationalism. A friend in the Los Angeles FBI office had tipped him off about an explanation that would be offered in a press conference in the case when and if the book became a best-seller, but Carl had figured that with the prevalant attitude of the American public toward the government and their skeptasism of explanations offered by the authorities, that his agent could use that in his favor with well publicized claims of a government cover-up. He had the testimony of a California Highway Patrol officer and an LAPD homicide detective, along with interviews with everyone he could find who knew both of the people in these pictures. He knew that mysterious stories like this could sell big if it was well researched, written, and convincing in its content. He looked over at the TV screen in the room imagining himself in the chair opposite Larry King, and was close to convinced himself that something had happened during an alien abduction which had transformed the handsome writer on the left of his screen into the beautiful dancer on the right. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- FREE AT LAST!!! Alex had almost gotten to the point where she didnt think they were ever going to let her off that damn base, and now she was enjoying the ride in the empty desert from Nellis Air Force Base into Las Vegas. She was so overjoyed at her freedom that she had gotten over the anger she had felt when Dr Julie Levin had told her that she couldnt see the transcripts of the hypnosis sessions. Alex had accused Dr Levin of using her as a guinea pig and fucking around with her mind. How was she ever going to know how all this had happened to Her? She needed to know for herself that she wasnt just some crazy woman who had finally flipped and imagined herself to be a reincarnation of a missing writer? Alex had noticed Dr Levin's eyes starting to get moist and teary and then Julie whispering that as Dr Levin her therapist she couldnt tell her anything, but as her friend and confidant Julie Levin she could manage to recall the important details of the abduction, they just had to do it away from the base, and Julie had promised her that she would get the opportunity to tell her when they got to Vegas, and that she had planned a big weekend for the both of them. She opened her purse and looked again at the driver license which had been issued to her with the last name lengthened to Delahanty, which she remembered was her grandfather's last name in Ireland, who had shortened it to Dell when he came to America to throw off any British investigators who might follow him to America to arrest him for IRA activities. She laughed at the irony of a changed identity which had come full circle, and breathed deeply the night desert air coming in the window, and unfastened a few buttons on her blouse enough to show her cleavage and the top of her bra and felt the air cool her off. She looked at Julie and saw her starting to shift a little in the drivers seat and run her fingernails along the steering wheel lightly, and noticed that her breasts heaved slightly. Julie found her excitement growing as they approached the outskirts of Las Vegas, and recalled to herself that the last time she had felt this way was when she had fallen head over heels in love in college with an Italian guy she was convinced she would marry, but her mother had constantly found fault with him and the relationship eventually fell apart. Ever since then it seemed that her mother was trying to fix her up with every Jewish professional from Boston to Miami, but with none of them had excited her and she had made excuses to her mother about concentrating on her career. Julie knew that she wasnt a lesbian and would hopefully find a man to excite her, but Alex's beauty, intelligence,humor, and magnetism were so overwhelming her that she felt like she was falling deeply in love with Alex. Her psychology studies had taught her that women could feel a deep love for each other and even experiment sexually and still be heterosexual. But for this weekend at least, she would treat herself to 3 days of joy and ecstacy and companionship she had missed for so long with the beautiful result of experiments those alien medical scientists had done to the person in the passenger seat of her car. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------