Anomalous Echoes is a web novella and part of the Echoes Series that includes the web novella “Divergent Echoes” and the short story “Resurgent Echoes,” both available to Free Subscribers here on Substack.
Lieutenant Commander Peter Sears brought the US Navy F-4 Phantom in for a textbook landing on the runway at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station minutes after sunrise. The date: August 4, 1961. The time: 0515 Eastern Daylight Time. Winds were from the north at 7 knots. The temperature was 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
His plane wasn’t really an F-4, and he wasn’t really a Navy Lieutenant Commander. For his mission, it was deemed necessary for it and him to appear so since the couple he was delivering the package to were meeting him on a Naval Air Station.
Peter Sears was the senior agent of the Air Force Temporal Investigations Agency. He was second in command to whoever was in charge of the Agency. The person in charge on August 4, 1961, was Lieutenant General Harvey Sprinker, United States Air Force. The head of the agency was always a three-star from either the Air Force or the Space Force.
Sears’s rank was always what it needed to be to best accomplish the mission. His transport always matched the best available for the mission and the time the mission took place in. The nanobots making up his transport could morph themselves into anything from the original Wright Flier to the most advanced trans-atmospheric craft in the inventory.
On August 4, 1961, his mission brought him to the South Weymouth Naval Air Station to deliver a package to Navy Lieutenant Rodrigo Delagarza and his wife. Lieutenant Delagarza, as well as being assigned to the secretive Naval Air Development Unit, was a member of the TIA, as was wife.
The package in question had spent the flight from TIA’s base of operations somewhere in the American southwest to Naval Air Station South Weymouth securely strapped into the back seat of the F-4 where the Radar Intercept Officer usually sat.
A “Follow Me” truck met Sears’s plane at the end of the runway and escorted him to the surviving blimp hangar for which the South Weymouth base was famous.
Once his plane was inside the hangar, the “Follow Me” truck left and the doors were closed. Inside the hangar stood Lieutenant Delagarza and his wife. Delagarza pushed a ladder up to the cockpit as Sears raised the canopy.
“Good flight?” Delagarza asked when Sears took his flight helmet off.
“No problems. Nice tail wind most of the way.”
Delagarza nodded. “Did the package make it okay?”
Sears nodded. He climbed down the ladder. Delagarza moved it to the rear seat.
“Is it okay if I get the package out of the aircraft?”
Sears nodded again and gestured for Delagarza to go up the ladder. A few minutes later the Lieutenant came down with an ovoid container 36 inches long and 24 inches around at its widest point.
“The pod is new,” Sears said. “It’s supposed to have a null field generator built in. I tried not to pull any Gs on the way here just in case.”
Delagarza opened a panel on the side of the container. “All the signs look good. The package is stable.”
Mrs. Delagarza moved up to stand beside the two men.
“Now that he’s here, can we quit calling him the package? And can we get him out of that thing? We brought a baby carriage.”
©2025 DW Davis All Rights Reserved
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Nice - I scrolled down and saw that magnificent plane first - the Phantom. The RAF had some for a while they launched off a Carrier. Amazing planes. Great story excited to read the next chapter.