The Archangel Project by C.S. Graham Page B

Henry had done dozens of sessions—perhaps as many as a hundred or more, many of them with buildings as targets. How was she supposed to remember the details of one seemingly insignificant session?
    She shoved away from the edge of the bed to stand beside the open window and draw the warm air deep into her lungs. Calm down, she told herself. Think.
    Henry had designed a special soundproofed room in the Annex, with heavy curtains at the windows, thick carpet on the floor, and a comfortable reclining chair. In the beginning, when he first introduced her to the phenomenon he called remote viewing, he used to have her listen to a series of tapes—soothing tones that were fed to her through earphones and were designed to help her sink down into what he called “the zone.” But it hadn’ttaken her long to learn to reach the zone herself, once she understood what was required. She simply needed to put herself in a state of pure relaxation. When she was ready, Henry would start the remote viewing session.
    At first they used live targets. Henry would have another student or associate drive to an unknown location at a preappointed time. He’d say to Tobie, “Elizabeth is at the target,” and she would close her eyes and focus on that person. Gently at first, like a feather brushing across the mind, the images and impressions of the target’s location would come to her.
    The first time Tobie tried it, she didn’t expect it to work. She’d drawn pictures of a stone-walled, castlelike structure and the sun gleaming off huge sheets of looming glass. She was a good enough artist that her sketches were easily recognizable. When she finished, Henry called in the student and Tobie learned the target location: the tiny, castlelike Confederate Museum, now virtually engulfed by the modern Ogden Art Museum.
    As she gained experience, the targets had grown more sophisticated. Sometimes the target was a photograph, double-wrapped in an opaque envelope that Henry laid on the table before him. Often the target was described simply by its geographical coordinates. And still the images would come to her, like a memory of something glimpsed in a dream.
    She couldn’t be sure but she thought the demonstration session had used geographical coordinates.
    Closing her eyes, she let the humid breeze from the open window bathe her cheeks and lift the drying hair from her forehead as she fought to remember that one session.
    It had begun like all the others. As always, the first impressions of the target had come in quick, fragmented flashes. A tall building outlined against a blue, cloudless sky. Sunlight glinting on a glass and steel facade. A small patch of grass. The splash of a fountain. A pile of sand with orange cones. She tried to recapture those images now, but they were too generic, too over-laid with memories of hundreds of such buildings seen over the years. It could have been any modern office building or hotel in any city.
    At the time, Henry hadn’t seemed particularly interested in the building itself. “That’s good, Tobie,” he’d said. “Now go into the building.”
    And so her focus had narrowed, honing in quickly on one particular office. A large office richly furnished with an Oriental carpet and oxblood leather sofas. An American flag in a brass stand strategically placed behind a broad mahogany desk . She remembered a file on the desk, a burgundy-colored file labeled THE ARCHANGEL PROJECT . For some reason she couldn’t explain, the file had drawn her, so that she’d described it in great detail, lingering even when Henry tried to get her to move on.
    He had told her that happened sometimes with remote viewing: the viewer would become obsessed with an object that was more interesting or seemed somehow more powerful, often to the point of veering away from the actual intended target to something more remarkable or fascinating nearby. However much Henry tried