The room was empty except for a table and two chairs. The Colonel sat on one and on the other the man who had solved the mystery of UFOs. The Colonel knew the single surveillance camera captured no sound.
"No," answered the man. "I don't know what UFOs - excuse me, UAPs - are. Nobody ever told me."
"Did they all kill themselves?"
"Or went through a breakdown so profound it amounts to the same thing. I was with one when you kidnapped me, a journalist. Did she tell you anything?"
The Colonel raised his hands in unfeigned frustration. "Stroke. Could it be a coincidence?"
The man shrugged. "What do you think?" His hands were chained to the table.
"The current thinking is that you have developed a way to kill people by hypnotic suggestion. The Department is naturally interested."
"Listen..." The Colonel had given the man neither name nor rank. "I'm not a crazy person who enjoys killing people. I'm trying to figure out the answer to what UFOs are."
"Which according to your posts we already know."
"Yes, in a way. As far as we know every human culture has seen strange things in the sky. We come up with an explanation based on what's on our minds at the time — religion, space, government conspiracies — and then we don't pay much attention. Some people look, some data is gathered, but it's by reflex. Society pretends not to know or want to know — really try to know — what's on those photos and videos. Do you know what it means, when somebody does that? It means they know and wish they didn't."
The Colonel nodded. "Repressed memory?"
"Of a sort." The man shrugged again. "I don't have false modesty. To unveil a repressed memory in a few minutes of hypnosis is no small accomplishment. And it has military applications I guess. But don't you see that your refusal to try to know is another symptom of that repression? You have so many ways of killing people, this is a way to do something else. To find the truth. I would hypnotize myself to remember if I could."
The Colonel rose from his chair and went around the table, standing between the man and the camera, bending his face closer to the man's."I've studied your notes. I can do it, if the subject is familiar with the method and cooperates. If you are willing to take the risk."
The man studied the Colonel's eyes and nodded.
The Colonel whispered for five minutes while the man's eyes moved spasmodically behind his closed eyelids. Afterward there was a few seconds of silence before the man opened his eyes. His expression carried the utter surprise of the always-known. He said five words.
The Colonel nodded. "Yes, you're right," he said, and then snapped the man's neck.