Area 51 – Not of this Earth

By Phil Guidry

The most time-honored techno-myth in human existence endures on a lonely stretch of highway in central Nevada. It seems an unlikely place for it to happen, this land of tumbleweeds, bullet-ridden road signs, and cattle that roam freely from asphalt to grassland and back again.

But it is here, insiders say, where the amazing truth behind mankind's decades-long involvement with aliens from outer space, will finally be revealed. This is the town of Rachel, population 100, a one-horse establishment that can hardly be described as a ghost town because there was never really anyone there in the first place.

In Rachel, however, there is more than meets the eye. This ramshackle collection of trailer parks and feed stands is groundzero for two highly-important and fundamentally-opposed movements: it is the site of Nellis Air Force Base, the top-secret training facility where the nation's (and the world's) frightening and sophisticated weapons of warfare and space travel are developed; and it is the home of Area 51, the even-more top-secret establishment where the preserved remains of two space aliens and their aircraft are stored in a mysterious bunker called Hangar 18.

At least, that's the rumor going around. And the people of Rachel have done nothing to challenge those lurid tales. The remote possibility that there are aliens and alien spacecraft in Area 51 have drawn literally thousands of visitors to this desert town that shouldn't exist at all, and kept its pulse alive as surely as many believe the government has kept alive the beating hearts of the aliens in the clandestine hangar.