Wanna Bet?

A perfect example of things the Government has to cover up

The Capital Beltway was a sluggish river of brake lights as Corey and I crawled home from our cubicle grind at the Department of Transportation. The sky hung low, gray clouds smudging the horizon like a bad watercolor. Corey, slouched in the passenger seat of my beat-up Corolla, was mid-rant about government overreach.


“They’ve got to suppress stuff, man,” he said, gesturing with a half-eaten granola bar. “You think the public can handle knowing about secret drone programs or bioweapons labs? People would lose their minds.”


I snorted, keeping my eyes on the taillights ahead. “Half the time, it’s not even about national security. It’s just bureaucrats covering their asses. Like, what’s the harm in admitting UFO sightings? Oh, wait, ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ now. Gotta keep it classy.”


Corey laughed, but it was cut short. His granola bar froze halfway to his mouth. “Uh… what is that?”


I followed his gaze upward through the windshield. My foot eased off the gas, and the car behind me honked. Hovering above the Beltway, just below the low-hanging clouds at maybe 2,000 feet, was a thing. A massive, three-sided ship—each side at least 500 feet long, a perfect equilateral triangle. It was black as midnight, swallowing the dim evening light, but its underside blinked with ordinary red and white navigation lights, like something you’d see on a Cessna, not… whatever this was. The clouds framed it like a stage curtain, making it look both alien and absurdly mundane.


“What is that?” Corey repeated, his voice pitching up.


I squinted, my brain scrambling for an explanation that didn’t sound like a sci-fi flick. “No way that’s commercial. Too big, too weird. Military, maybe? DARPA’s been cooking up some wild stuff.”


Corey fumbled for his phone, hands shaking as he tried to snap a picture. “Military? That’s not a drone, man. That’s a freaking spaceship.”


“Spaceship,” I scoffed, though my pulse was hammering. “Bet you anything this was some Pentagon joyride. Obama’s probably up there right now, getting a tour of their latest toy. Someone flipped the cloaking tech off by accident.” I was half-joking, but the words felt heavier than I meant them to.


Traffic had stopped entirely now. People were leaning out of car windows, pointing, gasping. The ship just hung there, silent, its lights blinking in a slow, almost lazy rhythm. No sound, no movement, just an impossible triangle blotting out the sky.


“This’ll be all over the news tomorrow,” Corey said, still filming. “No way they can hide this.”


I shook my head, a grim certainty settling in. “Wanna bet? This won’t make a single headline. Not the Post, not CNN, nothing. They’ll bury it. You know how this works—NDAs, classified briefings, ‘nothing to see here.’”


Corey kept muttering, “What is that?” like a broken record as the ship lingered for another minute. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, it vanished. No whoosh, no fade—just gone. The clouds swirled where it had been, and traffic started moving again like nothing happened.


The next morning, I sat at my kitchen table, the Washington Post spread out in front of me. Nothing. Not a single word about a giant triangular ship over the Beltway. I flipped through every section—local, national, even the op-eds. Zilch. The TV was on, tuned to MSNBC, then Fox, then CNN. Same old stories: budget talks, a senator’s scandal, some overseas skirmish. Not even a whisper of what we’d all seen.


Corey texted me at 7:12 a.m.: Told u it’d be huge. Where’s the news?


I replied: Told YOU. Buried. Obama’s probably laughing in a bunker somewhere.


At work, Corey cornered me by the coffee machine, his eyes bloodshot like he hadn’t slept. “Nothing, man. Not a peep. Hundreds of people saw that thing. How do you make that disappear?”


“Easy,” I said, stirring my coffee. “Classify it. Threaten a few leakers. Wipe the X posts before they spread. You think the government can’t control a narrative?”


Corey shook his head, still clutching his phone like it might suddenly show him last night’s footage. “But why? If it’s just a military ship, why hide it?”


I shrugged, my half-baked theory from last night feeling less like a joke now. “Maybe it’s not just a ship. Maybe it’s something they don’t want China or Russia knowing about. Or maybe it’s exactly what I said—someone turned off the cloaking tech, and now they’re scrambling to cover it up.”


Corey stared at me. “You’re way too calm about this.”


I sipped my coffee, tasting the bitter office brew. “Not calm. Just not surprised. Government’s been suppressing stuff forever. Why stop now?”


As we walked back to our desks, I couldn’t shake the image of those blinking lights against the clouds. Part of me wanted to believe it was just a prototype, some next-gen military toy. But deep down, I knew I’d be checking the sky every night, waiting for that triangle to show up again. And wondering what else they weren’t telling us.