Before carrying on his chat with the Red Lions’ manager, the old man thought it would be a good idea to show it to his wife.
“Hey Carol, take a look at this.”
She put on her reading glasses and read the brief conversation.
“Do you think he smells a rat regarding your choice of name? ” she asked.
“I don’t know. But a little voice tells me that the question about the Apollo 14/Kitty Hawk connection is not an innocent one. He’s fishing for something.”
“So, are you going to answer him?”
“Still thinking it over… You know, the fact that he made the association makes me wonder if he might be the person for my plan. What do you think?”
“Honey, you don’t even know what this man, or woman for that matter, does for a living. Much less whether he or she has the interest or the capabilities to come through with it. What you want done requires a very specific skill set.”
The old man pondered his wife’s statement and started typing on his computer.
“Wow, that’s a connection few people could make nowadays,” he wrote to the Red Lions’ manager. “What do you do for a living? Are you in any way related to the aerospace industry?”
The answer came fast.
“Hey, I thought I’d lost you there for a while. I’m in advertising. The Space Race is just a hobby,” wrote the Red Lions’ manager.
The old man kept pushing the envelope.
“Are you one of those conspiracy theorists that believe the whole thing was a hoax?”
“No those are just a bunch of lunatics with too much time on their hands and and even more free space in their brain cavities,” read the answer.
The old man liked what he was reading so far and decided to probe the other end of the spectrum.
“So you’re a NASA fan huh.”
“Not exactly. I’m a fan of the astronauts and the engineers that sacrificed everything to accomplish the seemingly impossible. With regards to NASA I think the bigwigs there in the Sixties were not as truthful as they should have been with the American public and the world audience.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that the Apollo program was successful in taking mankind to the Moon but the landings didn’t take place the way NASA wanted us to believe.”
“So… you are a conspiracy theorist?”
“I have a theory of what really transpired and it differs significantly from the ones professed by the garden variety of conspiracy theorists. Those are full of crap. If my theory is correct, it would imply that some people over at NASA coordinated efforts to bring forth a plan with the intention of making the public believe something that was not true. I guess that would be tantamount to a conspiracy at NASA. Still, to answer your question: I have a theory yes, and it involves some sort of conspiracy yes, but I refuse to describe myself as a conspiracy theorist ;-)”
“You remind me of Richard Gere tap dancing in the musical Chicago while trying to sell a tricky legal argument,” said the old man.
“Yeah, sorry about that. My daughter’s a lawyer,” said the Red Lions’ manager before adding something that caught the old man off-guard. “By the way, call me Lucas.”
Nope, not yet Mr. Lucas, thought the old man, no name from my end today. But I’ll keep asking questions for as long as you keep answering them.
“Very well, nice talking to you Lucas. Good luck in tonight’s game,” he wrote before signing off.
Lucas felt confident he was on the right track regarding the man’s identity, especially after he avoided giving his name.