Richard Authier Lee

I probably should have expected this, but this still caught me a bit off-balance. When you spend part of your day doing research for novels like “High Ground”, which have unusual backstories (I can’t help it) you sometimes run into strange things. Take this, for example:

According to Britain’s Daily Mail, Curtis Waltman, a journalist working for Boston nonprofit MuckRock, made Freedom of Information Act request for documents on far-left activists Antifa and the white supremacist groups it opposes, when he claims to have made a bizarre discovery.  The documents he actually received,  accidentally released by the Washington State Fusion Center, detailed governmental research on the use of “electromagnetic forces” to create “psycho-electronic” weaponry designed to induce intense pain, forced movement of the jaw and clacking of teeth, violent itching of the inside of the eyelids, forced waking visions and “microwave hearing.”

 The list of effects also includes memory blanking, forced externally controlled speech, wild heart rates and—wait for it—forced orgasms. Then again, they could also describe a failed proposed sequel to Woody Allen’s 70’s classic comedy “Sleeper.”

Potential applications for these weird effects were said to include counter terrorism, detection of criminal activity, cyber-security and disaster planning.

Safe to say, my novel detailing the development of airborne laser anti-satellite weapons and their effects on the residents of a small Maine seacoast village, is most assuredly not a comedy, but no longer beyond the pale, either. “High Ground” is available on Amazon.com for Kindle, iPad or Android tablets and in a trade paperback edition. An audio-book edition is in production now.

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