This one is from Jim Banholzer.
Reading about your experience with the suspicious man in front of you, who revealed Trish’s novel was the only item in his suitcase, reminded me of Jeff Well’s Author- Author blogpost. Here’s the gist of it:
“One afternoon in Los Angeles in the winter of 1976, the week he began compiling his notes on various branches of the UFO cult “the Order of Melchizedek” for what became Messengers of Deception, Jacques Vallee stood curbside at Sunset Boulveard and hailed a taxi. He looked downstream at the rush hour traffic, raised his hand towards several oncoming cabs, and one swerved into the curb lane and stopped for him. After a short ride, during which Vallee did not discuss his current research, he paid his fare and accepted a receipt. He stuffed it in his wallet and thought nothing more of it, until two days he noticed it was signed Melchizedek:
“I cannot afford to write this story, because I cannot expect anyone to believe it. At the same time I cannot sweep it under the rug. There is only one Melchizedek listed in the LA phone book, and I have the receipt signed by the driver right in front of me. [Reproduced in the book: “2-21-76 Receive $6.25 for taxi fare from Roosevelt Hotel to 3321 S La Cienega, Red & White Cab #98 M. Melchizedek.”] It was this incident that convinced me to put more energy into understanding the nature of such coincidences.”
Vallee, who is both a computer scientist and a UFOlogist, invested his energy in Information Theory, which led to his model of an Associative Universe.”
