Dames describes the machine as possessing a strange sentience, comparing its behavior to a loyal guard dog designed to escort or rescue vehicles belonging to an unknown intelligence. He warns that upcoming Mars missions face similar threats and suggests future probes should land outside what appears to be a defended zone. The conversation shifts to environmental predictions, with Dames forecasting dead freshwater ecosystems from rising ultraviolet radiation and toxic blue-green algae blooms that could devastate food supplies.
Art presses Dames on targets ranging from the origin of AIDS to the nature of the soul, the existence of Jesus at Calvary, and a mysterious future event beyond which human beings appear fundamentally changed. Dames maintains that remote viewing represents replicable science while acknowledging that no physical theory yet explains how it works.
Key Moments
Russians commission SciTech to investigate Phobos 2 loss: Dames reveals the Russians hired SciTech in 1989 as a 'tactic of desperation' to investigate the Phobos 2 spacecraft demise after their terminal telemetry could not produce a complete failure analysis. The probe's last photo showed an elongated bright object between the spacecraft and Mars.
Phobos 2 RV conclusion: decommissioned by an alien machine: Dames states SciTech's core finding: Phobos 2 was decommissioned by a robotic machine that rose from the Martian surface, made physical contact with the probe, electronically disabled it inadvertently, then later mechanically disabled it. The machine, he says, was not built by anyone on Earth.
Coup de grace: a simulated meteoroid was fired at Phobos 2: Dames describes a second event in the RV session: a projectile that simulated a meteorite was fired from another platform, punctured the spacecraft, and physically destroyed it - the coup de grace. He attributes the firing decision to a command-and-control element beneath the Martian surface.
The Mars machine described as a 'guard dog' for someone else: Dames characterizes the rising Martian machine as having St. Bernard or dolphin-like sentience - a friendly, loyal escort vehicle designed to meet someone else's conveyance, not NASA's. He says other intelligent biological life forms appear to be associated with the underground command element.
Predicts loss of upcoming 1996-97 Mars probes: Asked when further revelations will come, Dames predicts they'll arrive either when the three upcoming Mars missions (one Russian and two American spacecraft launching that year) are lost, or when their imagery reveals moving objects on the surface, particularly in the Cydonia region.