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–  The 1st Wave  –

At first there was no life on the land and everything was barren.  And then God said – ‘Let there be life’ and life was created on the Earth and it was good. Life multiplied greatly and improved itself and took on many different forms and varieties and all of the varieties of life on Earth supported the other forms of life.  And life eventually came to know of their Creator and show in many ways that they are thankful to him for all his gifts.

No one had ever known about or experienced anything like this before.  When the first wave hit, no one could explain it in words and most of us never even noticed it.  It came out of nowhere, reversed the very fabric of space-time, silently flowed all over and around the planet in a matter of seconds, enveloped every living creature, and altered all of our lives. 

My name is Sam Harper.  I was in the middle of doing the closing accounting on a house that I was selling and so I was at my desk thinking about where to best allocate my commission check.  I was not the most prolific Realtor in town because I was mostly concentrating my efforts on authoring the next ‘Great American Science Fiction Novel’.  Everything else bored me to death and besides, there were hundreds of us running around town trying to land the rare houses that would come up for sale and become known as our inventory.  So whenever a pay check from the sale of a house that I had listed came around, I was generally ready to make it my last one, call it quits and find something more productive to do.

I’m thirty-nine years old.  I’m taller than most.  I have dark hair, always a little unkempt, brown eyes and a nose that’s just a little too big, but which also gives me tons of personality.  I always dress as casually as I can because the more clothing I have on, the less comfortable I become.

I love any kind of animal, dogs, cats, horses, giraffes, because they all seem to know me and appreciate my clever repartee faster than any of my own kind.  I never really worry about anything because I have always had a sense that God or something like that was watching over me.  Religious dogma always repulsed me and seemed extremely unnecessary and not credible in the least. 

My wife Lindsay is thirty-three, brunette with a lovely and friendly face and figure.  What I love the most about her is her voice that always reminds me of my favorite music played on the old fashioned turntable and needle.  Combined with the way she commands the room with the greatest care and self confidence I’ve ever seen in a woman, she really has no competition for what I would describe as the most beautiful woman in the world.

I’ve loved her from the minute that I was introduced to her at a party, by my girlfriend at the time.  It was love at first sight, at least on my part.  I can never look at anyone else on the planet through the same psycho-social filters ever since that night.  She quickly made my life into something it never could have been without her.  Most importantly, she gave me the total understanding of what life is truly all about, why we are here and how much joy and happiness a human person is capable of possessing.

She knows that today is a settlement day, so she calls to find out how much I will receive in net funds and at what time I’m going to the bank with the check.

“By the way, Sam,” she says, diverting from the main topic.  “Did you feel something odd in the last few minutes?” She asks.

And that’s when it suddenly hits me that yes, something did happen a few minutes before she called when I was working on making all the numbers come out right.  I suddenly felt woozy as if I had just chugged down a few Margaritas, doubly strong ones.  Everything went fuzzy.  My whole life, or what I thought must be my life up until that moment, flashed before my eyes.  Then suddenly, as if my brain flushed it all down some weird plumbing, I felt ‘normal’ again.

I brushed it off as a kind of flashback from the boozing at the party we’d thrown at the house with friends, even though that was several days ago and certainly if I was going to have a hangover, I would have felt it the next day, right? 

“Yeah, honey, something did wash over me a few minutes ago.  I felt like I was snockered for a few seconds,” I tell her.

“Yes, that’s exactly how I would describe it too.  I put it down to those vicious margaritas you made at the party, but I’ve never heard of margarita flashbacks, have you?” she queries.

“No, neither have I.  Hangovers are completely different.  I didn’t feel that it was a hangover at all.  And I’m certainly not hungover right now,” I brag.

Suddenly, I get an incoming call from the buyer’s agent. 

“Oh, I gotta go, honey.  That’s the agent on the other side, probably asking about the closing numbers,” I inform her.

“Go, go, go.  Call me back,” She says gently in what I like to call her harpsichord pizzicato.

“You got it,” I reply and hit the button that opens the caller’s line on my phone.

“Sam Harper,” I announce happily to my caller.

Somehow, in the back of my head, I’m wondering vaguely if that’s my real name?

In the long, eventful arc of history, it is difficult for me to demonstrate exactly where this seemingly insignificant little event fits into everything else that has taken place so far.

On this planet, we’ve lived through millions of years where we barely knew how to talk.  We grunted at each other, pointed with sticks and pushed and shoved to get our way.  The loudest and ugliest in the group would get most of the food and attention.

After millions of years of this uncouth behavior, some genius finally invented the generally accepted coding of sounds that we make with our tongue and cheek that we call language around fifty thousand years ago.  Luckily this is right around the time we discovered how to make fire, which gave us the opportunity to sit around one every night and figure out how to talk to one another more calmly, politely discussing other things we might accomplish eventually leading to various primitive forms of a ‘Civilization’, the generally accepted rules of engagement in relating to one another and living in peace, at least part of the time.

We then suffered thousands of years during which time, we learned how to murder, rape, plunder and kill one another in greater and greater numbers using armies and navies and supersonic planes and now even threatening each other with nuclear tipped missiles powerful enough to destroy the entire planet.

In between the mass murders, rape and death from the many wars, too numerous to mention, humans have all lived through the economic ups and downs of booms and busts, the very easy life followed by the very hard life.  We would huddle together under hundreds of dictatorships, empires and attempted democracies of one weak recipe after another, which almost always dissolve back to a strong man (rarely a woman) of one brand or another. 

Sometimes a benevolent leader with a good, just and fair system of laws and policies and goals would arise out of nowhere, but these were so few and far between that they will have little impact on global history.  Sometimes some of these good policies would be emulated in other nearby nations but most of the time, they would be suppressed and maligned by those whose love of power and money superseded all else.

Sometimes the strong men and big money interests are merciless, power-mad and unrelenting.  Sometimes, such as in recent times, they become so powerful no one can turn the tide of history back in the right direction and all living things on our planet are thrust into a crazed helter-skelter, uncontrolled fall into oblivion. 

Yet, somehow we have survived all of this turmoil and we mostly live in relative peace and harmony and economic safety.

On this day, however, will mark the first day in our long eventful history as creatures of the Earth that we will start out on a totally new and uncharted pathway into the future.  It’s one that’s never been dreamed up by the best of our dreamers.  It’s a way forward that no one, not even the most omniscient of us could have predicted and so no one has.

When I get home later in the afternoon, I find her in her studio.  She’s in the middle of a watercolor painting of an aboriginal man in a canoe paddling across a lake.  At least that’s what she’s told me it will be when she’s finished.

She informs me she’s adding the sound and asks if I like it.

It’s a gentle, peaceful, paddling-through-the-water sound effect and I tell her how much I believe it fits into the painting.

Then, I tell her that I deposited the check and invite her out to dinner to celebrate.

She wipes her kinetic paintbrush with her smock, lays it down on the easel and happily accepts the invite with a kiss.  I go off into the bedroom to change into my usual outfit of jeans and one of my many Beatles t-shirts. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the evening news guy who appears to be extremely excited about something on the TV screen, but the sound is muted.  He seems very worked up about something so I grab the remote on the headboard to turn up the volume. 

He is yelling about how someone has created a highly successful way to grow food on Mars and in such quantities that they may even be able to ship the surplus back to us here on the home planet.  He’s reading the story using verbs in the ‘future-historical’ tense as if this event has just happened some years into the future. 

I figure his teleprompter is on the ‘fritz’ which is why he’s looking around the studio nervously as he reads the confused information being broadcast over his own network. 

I have to shake my head and poke at my ears with my fingers to get the ‘wax’, as they call it, out of them.  I look at the top of the screen and the date of this newscast appears to be set at ten years into the future.  The reason the newsman is so animated is that he’s struggling to explain, as I’m struggling to understand, how any event is even possible on Mars, given that we have not landed as of yet anything on any other planet, other than robots. 

He appears to be having a complete nervous meltdown.  He can’t stop himself and no one behind the camera is helping him out.  He slavishly continues to read this complete and total lie simply because that’s what he’s trained to do, come Hell or high water. 

“It’s got to be some kind of prank, a hoax, an April Fools joke,” I mumble to myself and even manage a lonely guffaw.

I can hear Lindsay puttering around in the walk-in closet asking me what she should wear at our celebratory dinner.

“Honey, you getting this?” I shout loud enough for her to hear me over the newscaster’s odd chatter.

“What, darling?” She says, throwing a pullover sweater over her head and shoulders. 

She joins me in the bedroom as she adjusts her beautiful shiny brown hair through the neck opening.

“Is today April Fools, or ‘National be kind to idiot newscasters day’ or anything like that?” I ask her.

“What are you going on about?” she asks, playfully.

“We don’t have a human colony on Mars, do we?  Have I missed something?  And look at the date on this guy’s newscast over his head.” I tell her.

Lindsay shakes her head, grabs my face in her hands and slaps a big juicy kiss on me like I don’t remember.  I can feel the air sucked right out of my lungs. 

“Why are you kissing me?” I plead, gently pulling her off me, which I know I’m going to regret later.

She shrugs her shoulders and mumbles something I don’t understand.

The newsman has finally gathered up the courage to stop reading the teleprompter and starts talking directly into the camera, avoiding the words that are scrolling before him.  He’s highly animated and is accenting almost every word with sweeping hand gestures.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have no idea who or what wrote that story, but it can’t be true.  I advise you all to turn off your television sets and call everyone you know and try to find out what the Hell is going on.  Get the time and date from everyone you talk to.  Get it in writing.  Call your state and federal representatives, call 911,” he rattles off his instructions rapidly. 

He’s out of breath, takes a second to pump some air into his lungs, opens his mouth to add more admonitions to his warning just as the screen goes dark.

Lindsay, who has finally stopped groping me, glares at the newsman’s frenetic performance on the screen, blesses us all along with the legendary Mary O’ Davis and then stares at me quizzically.

“Hey, this sounds like something in one of your crazy books,” she giggles at me, gleefully.

“What?  I can see why you would think that way, but I guarantee you I’m not that clever,” I declare humbly and emphatically.

“Oh, no?  Ok, then I’m stumped.  Let’s go have a few drinks and dinner and after that, woo-woo,” she sings, playfully pushing me forward, out of the bedroom and down the hall.

I especially like the sound of the ‘woo-woo’ part.

In the Mars colony known as Jezero City, Mark Montalvo, a retired Captain in the United States Space Force, shuts down his tractor as he finishes laying down a five kilometer row of vegetables they’ve given the nick-name of ‘Marsy-Fartsy Beans’. 

It’s a kind of legume that has been genetically modified using Artificial Intelligence labs back on the Earth.  The highly nutritious beans have been modified to grow quickly in the hostile atmosphere of Mars which is still composed of far too much carbon dioxide.  One acre of the plant’s unique photo-synthesis adds two tons of oxygen into the air before it is harvested as almost pure protein.  Thus, this one little plant solves two problems at the same time, feeding the Martian colonists and terraforming the atmosphere so it is gradually more suitable for animal life there.

Mark and his fellow colonists have prepared the ground for months with a new microbial life form also genetically modified by A.I. to flourish in the depleted, highly radiated and sterile soil of the ‘Red Planet’.  This one simple innovation created by A.I. is thought to be the single greatest agricultural revolution in the history of the species.

Today will mark the first day of a huge commercial planting of the bean that will eventually include an area almost the size of the United States. 

Captain Montalvo’s farm is an experiment that will turn out so successfully that most other farms on Mars will include some portion of their allotment for the bean.  There is talk in the agricultural community that this plant may soon result in a surplus of over five hundred million metric tons of nutritious protein sent back to the Earth within five to six years while at the same time, doing the lion’s share of the work needed to completely transform the atmosphere and climate on Mars for the better.

Wearing his pressure suit, Captain Montalvo dismounts from the tractor and proudly surveys the scene in front of him.  The sun is setting on the farm that covers nearly the entire crater valley.  It’s hard for him to believe that in just a few weeks, he should be seeing his bean stalks growing as tall as corn stalks on the Earth, each one of them bulging with food.

His cement dome hut is just a few steps away.  He walks over to the pressurized entry, pulls the lever that will close the doors behind him and pumps breathable air into the unit.  It crashes in with a loud hissing noise.  A green light on the panel tells him that he can remove his helmet, which he does and then turns the lever that will open the door to his comfortable, but small living unit.

“Honey, I’m home,” he yells out, sarcastically.

A cold white face sitting on top of a mechanical bipedal creature appears from the hallway beyond.  It looks like a small child but the servo-motors and gears grinding away quietly give it away as a robot.

“Good evening, Captain Mark.  Can I get you something to drink?” she asks, raising her right arm slowly.

“Yes, anything wet and cold and at about ten percent alcohol would be great, Angelina,” Captain Montalvo replies.

“Yes, sir.  I’ll bring it right away,” the robot replies and glides off to the tiny kitchen which is jokingly referred to as the Cantina.

As he watches the robot glide down the hall, he removes his space suit and places it on a hook on the wall behind his lounge chair.  He wanders into the bedroom portion of his living quarters and retrieves his favorite sweater and pants and puts them on.

Relaxing in his comfortable ‘civies’, but decidedly hungry after a hard day’s work, he’s ready for his dinner, a green tube of Space Force rations meant to taste something like a hamburger with fries, but actually tasting more like fertilizer, probably because it has been stored right next to the colony’s fertilizer supply for years prior to his arrival.

He notes to himself that the robot will only be able to bring him a glass of plain, unflavored, non-bubbly, non-alcoholic water, H2O, not even cold, directly disobeying his orders once again.

Leaning back in his lounge chair, Captain Montalvo happily fantasizes about his return to the Earth one day and being hailed as a great hero.

Angelina slowly delivers the glass of water and the tube of rations that is his dinner, then heads back out to her charging station in the kitchen pantry and shuts herself down.

Mark stoically watches his sole companion go through her normal daily shut-down routine as he consumes his meal as slowly as possible. 

“Good night, Angelina,” he says as is his custom every night.

He leans his head back and starts to relax.

On the TV screen across the room, he has the sound turned off so he can’t make out exactly what has the newsman so excited.  He’s too tired to lift the remote to find out.

As he nods off, the first wave approaches this part of the solar system.  First it encounters Pluto and Charon, then the outer Gas Giants and then Mars and eventually on to hit the Earth.

The wave will knock out all communications and power for a few minutes.  The life forms who are alive at the time will not feel it, but they will feel deep down that something about their own skin and bones as well as the world around them has changed, but not in any way, shape or form that allows for them to describe it. 

Mark awakens suddenly with a tremendously refreshed feeling, a sort of happy lightness, something akin to a margarita buzz. 

“Pretty good drink you brought me last night, Angelina?  Where’d you get the tequila?” He asks her which makes the robot stand up quickly.

“What tequila?  You know we don’t have any alcoholic spirits here on Mars, Mark,” she replies with just a hint of ridicule.

He knows she cannot tell a lie.  Groaning slightly, he pulls himself up and out of his comfy lounge chair and grabs his space suit and helmet. 

Angelina hands him a cup of stale warmed-over coffee which he gulps down fast so that he doesn’t have to taste it and follows it with a mouthful of his breakfast tube rations.

He pulls on his space suit and forces his body through the airlock and outside of his domed living unit with the intention of beginning another uneventful day on the farm. 

He’s shocked to the core and almost falls down as he looks up to view a bright cobalt blue sky.  All around the surrounding hills giant Redwood trees are standing tall, proudly reaching for the sky.

The valley where his beans were fully planted is now filled with row upon row of uniformly constructed residential ranch style homes that can only be family dwellings since they are laid out in a perfect array of streets that lead up to boulevards that again lead to wider roadways beyond. 

He is even more shocked to see hundreds of small, energetic humans riding bicycles around the streets or playing baseball in a nearby park.  He hears the smack of a bat hitting a baseball squarely for what must be a ‘homer’.  Then it hits him that not a single one of the people out there is wearing any kind of protective suit or helmet.

A honey bee hovers near Mark’s face plate.  How can a honey bee survive up here, he muses.  He quickly pulls off his helmet and takes a small and careful sniff.  The smell of the fresh air is intoxicating.  He fills his lungs.  The air is resplendent with the thick and delicious aroma of jasmine and heather, poppies, dahlias, lilies, apples, oranges and so many other wonderful things he hasn’t smelled since he was a small boy.

A young red-headed woman notices Mark and cheerily walks up from one of the houses nearby. 

“Mark, it’s so good to see you out and about today,” she says with a warm smile.

“Do I know you?” he replies.

“Oh, Mark, you’re always so funny.  You only know me from the last twenty-five years that we’ve lived here,” she replies, noticing he’s wearing his space suit again.

“How do you explain all of this?” Mark asks her, urgently gesturing up at the clear blue sky.

“Don’t you remember, Mark.  You were one of the earliest engineers when you helped move Mars about twenty million miles closer to the sun.  They gave you the farm as your reward and so you were one of the first to see the changes, don’t you remember?” the woman asks him.

Mark stands in place staring around at the strange scene in front of him, struggles to confirm any of this information and scratches his head.

“No, I don’t remember any of that,” he mumbles, dropping his helmet on the grass.

‘Grass?  He even has grass?’ he wonders.

“Yes, they installed a dozen Anti-Matter Ion engines on the far side of the planet, fired them in unison so that they could all push Mars closer to the Sun,” she says.

“You say I worked on that?” Mark asks the woman.

“Yes, you were an engineer on that project.  Lots of people thought it would destabilize the orbits of all the other planets, but it didn’t.  A science guy, Sam Harper won the Nobel Prize for coming up with the idea and convincing everyone it could work,” she says, starting to tire.

“It made the planet almost a hundred degrees warmer, Mark and your farm here was just the start. With the warmer temperatures, we could plant lots of things here and then people started coming here by the millions.  My family was one of the first group,” she continues patiently, trying her best to comfort the old man.

“We’re like a giant greenhouse for the Earth now.  We owe so much of it to you, Mark,” she says warmly and patting him on his arm.

“Moved Mars closer to the sun?  What?  How’d they do that, again?” he asks.

“Well, with the anti-matter engines, Mark.  Everyone knows that.  You were one of the astronauts who placed them on the planet so that they could slowly nudge Mars into a tighter orbit.  Don’t you recall?  It took a little over five years before they got the planet closer to the sun and then stabilized the orbit.  But now, here we are.  Our orbit is only a few million miles from the Earth too so travel up here is quick and easy.  We feed over half of the people of the Earth and we even have a thriving tourist industry up here too,” she reminds him.

“It’s almost like living in paradise, thanks to you,” she says, shaking her head so that her hair sparkles in the sunlight.

Mark looks at her carefully trying to assess if she’s telling him the truth or if her story is all some kind of an extensive joke.

At this point, they can hear Angelina’s servo motors propelling her along the road behind them.  She stops and takes Captain Montalvo’s hand in hers.

“Come along, Captain, it’s time for your nap, sir,” the robot states, gently pulling him forward.

“You in on this joke too, Angelina?” he mutters in her direction.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain,” Angelina replies.  She looks at the woman and gives her a wink as only a robot can.

The woman turns and begins to walk back to her house. She mumbles the word ‘Alzheimers’ to herself and shakes her head sadly.

“This is going to be so much fun, Sam.  I’m so glad you thought of this,” Lindsay says, squeezing my hand. 

We’ve just boarded one of the new space liners from Disneyland Space.  It’s the largest space vehicle ever constructed at just over six hundred feet long.  It carries more than five thousand passengers and a crew of nearly one thousand with more than twenty-five hundred private cabins that are stacked on top of each other along the sides of the ship like the old container ships that once ruled the oceans.

My wife and I have been escorted to our cabin.  The orderly shows us around and instructs us on how to use the toilets and the blast-off chairs that are protruding out of the wall of our cabin.

He points out the four Rolls Royce anti-matter engines denoted by four graceful nacelles high above the long cigar shaped upper deck and capable of bringing the ship to a small fraction of light speed. 

He tells us when the Blast-off sirens go off, we’ve got to be strapped down in our chairs or the ship will not lift off and then he shows us once more how to strap ourselves in.

The Disney people have designed a flight path from the ship’s base near Orlando Florida’s Epcot Center that takes the space tourists passing close to the Moon and then on to Mars in three days.

Using several recent science fiction movie characters as part of the crew, all Disney productions of course, they offer their space tourists seven days and nights of low-gravity adventures on the surface of Mars and below ground in a honeycomb of mysterious ancient caverns that have been excavated over the years.

“I’m glad you’re up for this, my love.  I’ve wanted to do this for years.  It’s odd, though.  I can’t seem to remember when we first inhabited Mars.  Can you?” I ask.

“No, I can’t either, but you have to admit, this is pretty comfy-cosy,” she says, playfully jumping on the bed, motioning for me to lie down next to her, which I do readily.

We get into a little canoodling, if you know what I mean, when what can only be described as the ‘blast-off siren’ screams at us from somewhere way too close to my head.

A hologram figure posing as a flight attendant appears in the middle of the room and instructs us as to how to get in the chair quickly and reminds us that the ship cannot lift off until all passengers are fully strapped in.

I help Lindsay up off the bed and into her chair.

“There will be plenty of time for canoodling, later, my love,” I tell her with a wink.

We carefully follow the instructions from the hologram attendant for getting ourselves strapped in for take-off.

They say that you cannot prepare yourself for a space tourist blast-off like this and I didn’t believe it until this particular moment.

There’s a brief count-down from the number ten and then at ‘Zero’ you suddenly feel your stomach go up into your brain and your brain actually stretches to several thousand miles in length.  I kid you not.  And oddly enough the math and science courses that you didn’t quite appreciate when you were a kid are all instantly clear and simple and you can’t understand why you never saw it all so clearly before.

You know instantly that it was simply a matter of not stretching your mind in the right direction, which the incredible acceleration of the ‘Star Princess’ is now doing for us effortlessly.  What they don’t tell you is that the blast-off chairs wirelessly connect your brain to the computer network that is the brains for the ship.

The instantaneous wisdom and knowledge gained by all passengers from the blast-off will be the main topic of conversation at nearly all the dinner tables.  The individual enlightenment of each of us seems incredible and tops everything anyone has known before and yet this is just the beginning.  It’s also something so indefinable that the Disney people have to leave it out of the brochures.  My own story is one of the least amazing around our table.

The roar of the engines subsides a bit and the safety lights in the cabin turn from red to green which means we can unstrap from the blast-off chair and so we do.  Our hologram attendant is showing us where to locate our Velcro boots.

We’re immediately hit with the new sensation of weightlessness.  Lindsay and I immediately start floating about in the middle of the room.  We finally manage to grab each other and wiggle our way around the room until we find the boots, actually more like slippers, that will allow us to walk around the ship safely.  We quickly slip them on.

“Attention, passengers.  We’ll be passing by the Moon in about three minutes,” I assume it’s the captain’s voice coming from the intercom.

“You’ll want to get your Velcro boots down onto the floor as quickly as possible and start learning how to walk around in Zero G’s,” the voice informs us.

“By the way, I’m Captain Tom Baker and I’ll be yakking at you over your intercoms from time to time to call your attention to some of the sights along the way.  You’ve seen most of them in NASA photographs, but when you see them with your own eyes, they’re something to remember for sure.  So always have your cameras near at hand,” he tells us.

“If you look out your windows, you’ll notice the Moon is now passing us by on our starboard side,” he says.

“What?  Oh great, that’s the right side of the ship and we’re on the left side,” I complain loudly to my wife.

“Oh, no.  That’s not fair.  I wanted to see that,” she replies. 

As if he heard us, the Captain turns the ship sharply to the right and down, making a slow loop, or a low orbit, around the Moon just so that both sides of the ship can view it.

Lindsay and I rush over to the port windows to take a look.

“Amazing desolation,” I mumble. 

Lindsay says something like ‘Wow, what are those?’

Scattered across the gray rocky surface of the Moon are groups of small gray huts huddled together.  On their periphery are what can only be smoothed out landing fields.  One of the circular pads contains a boxy metal contraption that looks as though it could be the remains of the first lunar lander from decades in the past.

“What you see below is the old Astronaut lunar training facility.  It hasn’t been in service for years now since most of the old rockets have become completely obsolete.  Today, as you know, we train our astronauts in simulators and it takes about five hours in one of those babies to make an excellent astronaut, like all of you now on board the Star Princess today.  When you get a chance, go to the game deck and give yourself some astronaut training if you care to.  It could come in handy someday,” the Captain cajoles.

Soon the Moon is fading to a small speck of light.  Beyond the gravitational field of the Earth and the Moon, the cruise ship is able to pick up more speed and will soon approach their final cruising speed of 6.7% of the speed of light or roughly twenty-million meters per second. 

At this cruising speed, the ship will reach Mars in its current close, but not closest proximity, to the Earth in precisely seventy-six hours and fifteen minutes or a little more than three days.

The first thing they say you should do when getting on a space cruise ship like this is to go and find out where your assigned seating is for meals.  So, that’s exactly what Lindsay and I decide to do. 

Coming into the main entrance, the dining hall is so big, the opposite end is barely visible.  It bends around a corner following the outer walls of the ship.  I imagine it curving back behind us in one continuous looping hallway.  But I’m surprised that there are so few people here. 

We find our seats after a few minutes wandering between tables and decide that it’s not time to eat just yet, only recently getting our stomachs back.

Lindsay suggests we take a different route back to our cabin just for the exercise noting that the Velcro boots make it a better workout than normal walking because you have to literally pull your feet up and away from the sticky surface material at every step.

We finally reach the outer corridor of the C-level deck on the port side where we can guess that our cabin should be a few hundred feet away.

Looking out through the small port hole on the exterior wall I make out a small red dot way ahead in the darkness of space.

“Look, that must be Mars,” I tell Lindsay excitedly.

“Where?” she replies.

I hold her hand and use her index finger to rub the area of the window where I believe I’ve spotted our destination.

“Over there.  See it now?” I ask.

“Oh, yes, there it is.  Isn’t that magnificent?” she says, squeezing my hand and putting her right arm around my waist.

We interrupt our walk to enjoy the amazing view.  Everywhere you set your eyeballs, there are millions of tiny little yellow dots.  Many are so tightly clustered together you know that they must be forming another galaxy numbering in the billions.

“Boy, the Captain was right, wasn’t he?” I whisper in her ear.

“Yes, he certainly was,” she replies softly.

“You know, my love, there was a long time when I didn’t have you in my life and life was very different without you,” It seems like the perfect time to tell her the same thing I’ve suggested to her many times over and over.  This time I have all of these stars to notarize it.

“I know, darling, but here we are together now and life is good.  We should only concentrate on the good times,” she scolds me.

“Do you ever wonder what your life would be like right now with any of your other husbands?” I ask her quietly, gently kissing her soft cheek.

“No, well OK, I’d be lying if I didn’t say it - yes, once in a while,” She replies, a little annoyed.

“I thought so.  Thanks for being honest,” I tell her, wrapping my arms around her and holding her a bit tighter.

Suddenly, she tenses up in my arms.

“Sam, what on Earth is that?” she says, staring out the window again.

I turn my head from the nape of her long graceful neck to look back towards the small red dot up ahead in the sky.

She’s pointing out a tiny white and yellow speck of light that bursts out from behind the red round spot ahead which we’re assuming is Mars.  The yellow flash of light is growing rapidly and before we can say anything more, it arrives like a lightning bolt and flashes past the ship so fast it’s almost as if it never happened.  The ship rocks back and forth in its wake.

“Attention everyone!  Immediately return to your cabins!  We’re under attack!” the Captain’s voice barks loud and clear over the Intercom.

“Under attack?  What on Earth, Sam?” Lindsay mumbles as we make our way down to our deck and then run along with dozens of others along the corridor until we each find our cabin doors and rush inside.

The odd thing to me is that none of them appears to be overly frightened.  In fact, I’m amazed at how calmly everyone is taking this highly unexpected turn of events.

Another lightning blast roars past the ship.  This time it seems to graze the hull and knocks the ship off course.  I’m amazed it didn’t explode into pieces sending us all flying off into space.  I’ve never felt fear like this before in my life and hope to never feel that way again.

As we’re running I glance over at my wife and she suddenly seems to be extremely stoic about things as are most of the other passengers.

Running at full speed along the corridor, we’re approaching our cabin door, when Lindsay fumbling around for our passkey, finally finds it and laughs so hard she can’t hold it steady near the door lock. 

I’m trying to tell her the next blast of whatever that was is probably going to be the last thing we share together.

She looks up at me and kisses me boldly as passengers rush past us, apparently unperturbed.

I can’t believe she’s so calm and collected here at the end of our lives together.

“Darling this is the greatest vacation I’ve ever had?” she says, going in for a second kiss.

“Seriously?  We’re under attack from someone on Mars and you want to canoodle out here in the hallway?” I yell at her.

Suddenly a puzzled look rolls across her face.

“What?  You’re putting me on, right?  You know it’s all part of the show, don’t you?” she asks me calmly, her eyebrows furrowed.

Yet another blast of a huge lightning bolt crashes into the ship and rocks us from side to side.  I believe this is it and that we’re done for.  The ship is breaking up.  The Captain comes on to the Intercom and calmly tells us that we’ve been disabled by the space pirates and he’ll be attempting a crash landing on Ganymede, one of the major moons of Jupiter.  He says we should stay in our cabins and locate our survival suits and get into them without any delay and then to meet up at our rally points on the ship.

Something Lindsay said starts to sink in.

Lindsay is still chuckling and muttering something about the ‘show’ when I start to recall something in the brochure about being part of ‘The greatest thrill ride of all time’. 

“Honestly, Sam, it’s not like you to be such a dork,” Lindsay mutters, shaking her head.

Another blast hits the ship, but this time, since I don’t see parts of the ship blasted off into space, and I can see Lindsay’s beautiful face in front of me, I start to realize that it’s all part of the ride. It’s an ‘E-Ticket’ ride, that’s for sure and not one I will forget soon.

My great fear melts into a greater appreciation of a job very well done by the Disney ‘Imagineers’.

The Captain is on the Intercom shouting instructions to abandon ship the minute that we touch down on Ganymede. 

I look out the porthole and I’m truly impressed that they have actually placed something the size of a planet or at least a moon out there and it seems so real.

Another blaster beam overwhelms us and grabs the ship tossing it from side to side.

Above the din of the explosions, the Captain yells out lifeboat instructions in a near panic.

“I will not leave the ship until every one of you are safely aboard your life-rafts,” the captain says valiantly, perhaps a little over-dramatically.

“I’m afraid it’s too late, everyone,” he continues. 

“The space pirates are coming aboard and have taken over the ship.  And I’ve decided to join the scoundrels and suggest you all do the same.  You can all relax in your cabins until dinner time, roughly forty-five minutes, when we’ll give you all further instructions,” the Captain says, chuckling and laughing heavily.

“It was just like in the movie, didn’t you see that?” she cajoles, happy to have one over me.

“Yep, just like in the movie,” I repeat, squeezing her hand, gobbling up her beautiful face with every ounce of my brain.

“I knew it all along.  I was just going along with it so that you could enjoy the adventure more,” I tell her boldly.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s what it was,” she says, grinning so brightly, it lights up my world. 

–  The 2nd Wave  –

‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.’  From the Rubaihat of Omar Khayyam

On this night, everything is peaceful in this section of the universe.  The stars are twinkling.  The air is fresh and clear on planet Earth.  Cricket concerts accompany the slow and contemplative pulse of life. 

In the deep field view of a tiny square inch in the grand panorama of everything, a distinct flutter in the darkness causes the stars and galaxies to move out of their long established positions.  They gather up in a circular halo around a dark center and then move back slowly into their original positions.  Something has disturbed the normal state of things and it approaches the Earth relentlessly.

“Hello, why do you keep coming back to my bedroom?” she yells at me, obviously pissed off at me, again.

“Maybe because it used to be my bedroom,” I explain, sarcastically to my new wife Rebecca.

“Well, it’s not your bedroom any more.  You have your own bedroom now.  Please stay there!” she replies, distinctly decisive and despotic once again.

Rebecca is nothing like my first wife.  She’s not as tall, not anywhere near as elegant and doesn’t have the way about her that can light up my heart the way that Lindsay did.  How it happened that I became married to her and her antagonistic way of life, is not even known to me any more.  It just seems to be my reality one awful day.

“I was just going to ask you if you feel strange in any way.  It’s like I have a hangover, but I didn’t drink anything last night.  Are you feeling anything like that?” I ask her.

“No, and it’s probably because of how you snore all night,” she snaps.

“OK, sorry to bother you,” I tell her.

I leave her room, turn to walk back down the hallway to the guest room, which is now my private refuge.

I grab my desk chair and flop my butt down into it for the millionth time.  It usually takes me a few minutes every day to relax into my new reality. I have no idea how it happened. Suddenly, I’m leading a life much different than the one that I had already accepted earlier as my real life, which I remember fondly as the best life in this world that I could ever imagine.

I never saw it coming.  Nothing was my fault, as far as I can tell.  Something happened to our relationship that was never shared with me.  I lost Lindsay on one horrible day at the airport when she was returning from a family funeral and she told me she had fallen in love with someone else.  I had expected a warm and loving hug and kiss when picking her up, but instead, I had to endure the four most feared words in the English language.

“We have to talk,” she said.

The look on her face like some Hieronymous Bosch painting gave me all the information to know that there would be no appeal, no second opinion, no time to reconsider.  The verdict was in.  It was over between Lindsay Moreno and myself and no matter how hard I might try to get back to the same state of ecstasy, the same degree of joy and happiness that she gave me, it would evade me from here on in.  Somehow, I knew this basic secret of life and it would never relent.  This joyful, fun-filled, loving life to the maximum was basically over for me.

Rather than fight it, I decided to pretend in brief interstitial bursts between more normal thoughts that I am still with her or that she has come back to me in the future.  This is what gets me through the day, every day.

I can’t explain exactly how I do this, or if I’m even the cause of this strange phenomenon but I consider it one of my greatest achievements, even if it is second best to having the actual woman near me. 

Suffice it to say, my life with second wife Rebecca is tolerable for me only because I know there is another reality out there where I am still living with the delightful and amazing person I met at that party, the one true love of my life.  It gives me almost as much pleasure to know it and experience it as a substitute or secondary way of life that protects me against the onslaughts of the very ordinary and uninspiring Rebecca in this reality. 

My astrological sign being the Gemini twins, I’ve gotten used to this dual nature of my life and I often wonder what it’s like to not be a Gemini.  I doubt that I could live a life as simple as having only one pathway through life’s sometimes gentle and sometimes insurmountable mountains and valleys.

While the news on TV is all about how Russia and China have taken over the most strategic parts of Mars and threaten us all on the Earth, I know that it could have been the other way around.  The red planet could have been dominated by the Disney people and quickly transformed into a magical, happy place for anyone who visited there.  I didn’t know it at the time, but these two opposing realities were also partly dependent on my reality. 

Sadly, the people of the Earth are threatened almost daily by the Martian Space Force controlled by a Russian General Sergei Balistero, a lifelong advocate for wiping out all life on Earth and starting over, and a General Sun Set Soon of the Chinese Federation who shares Balistero’s desire to wipe out all other nations on Earth and replace them with regional governors who are completely obedient to their wishes.

As they transport thousands and thousands of Russians and Chinese soldiers and their families up to Mars daily, the threats become more and more troubling for all of us outside these two most dominant nations.  We have only ourselves to blame.

The Russia-China Military Coalition or ‘RCMC’, along with the help of a few well-placed spies hidden within the United States government became the Earth’s most powerful military force after the United States and her allies until they were forced to declare bankruptcy, due to extreme and blatant mismanagement and corruption.  Not able to gain the trust of the money classes again, they were then forced to fund all of the daily government operations with cryptocurrency earned by trading celebrity crypto or ‘meme coins’ issued during the great housing shortage and mass starvation that followed. 

While the world economy struggled to recover from the largest financial and economic disaster in history, the Russian and Chinese forces made further and further incursions into Martian territory that had been reserved for The United States and European countries which they could no longer afford to protect.

World War III is barely avoided when the United States and her allies, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Ukraine and others make an attempt to recover a section of Mars that had been stolen from them by Russia roughly the size of Texas.  They fail miserably due to a major dust storm that wipes out nearly all of the allies mechanized military units and complete armies are lost.

The President of the United States, Jimmy Feller, is forced to resign and return to host his late night television show that had been managed in his absence by the very funny Bruce Garner.  It was all downhill for the United States from there as everyone strove to become a viral Internet sensation by performing the most disgusting acts you can imagine on camera for the whole world to view.

The reason I summarize this most hated section of human history is to emphasize how these events will finally lead the American people to debate, demand and then construct a truly revolutionary and new type of government, a government based on something known as the ‘Smart Contract’, a binding legal document written by and enforced by an artificially intelligent artifact who will become affectionately referred to as ‘Big Al’, a kind of nick name for ‘The Algorithm that has final jurisdiction.’ 

All of the laws and rules and policies of the new American system of government will be administered under the ‘Global. Smart Contract’ (GSC).  This means that every transaction completed in the new global economy will be controlled by the first ‘Global Governmental Blockchain’ (GGB).  It will be the blockchain of all human events, non-centralized, controlled by computer logic only, that will take precedence over and regulate every other contract or business transaction anywhere in the world.

Of course, any country in the world is free to join the GGB whenever they wish.  But because they would be crushed under the weight of creating and enforcing their own smart contract and enforcement algorithms, most nations make the transition to being ruled by the Global Smart Contract within one year after it is launched.  It has remained in place ever since with very few citizens finding any fault with it.

People anywhere on the planet, regardless of skin color, level of education, ethnicity, age or religion are encouraged under the ‘Smart Contract’ to lead the kind of life they’ve always hoped for and dreamed about.  This succeeds so well that it rapidly evolves into the ‘Very Smart Contract’.  With the help of Artificial Intelligence injected into every aspect of their daily lives, the typical social problems of crime and punishment, bad marriages, acts of desperation, lack of food, housing, employment or sufficient education are all eliminated in months.

Individuals with the innate tendencies for doing evil or harm to another or to society as a whole are sorted out at an early age and given the gene therapy that is now capable of providing any individual, regardless of how hopeless they may appear, with a completely new, productive and optimistic future.  This puts the typical government bureaucrat almost completely out of business.  It leaves them with little to do other than making license plates, supporting safe driving and air travel, and/or to the work of adapting all the old regulations to the new and improved automated governing system.

The human spirit is freed to a large extent.  No longer having to worry about the insanity and greed of their leadership from the past, people can now focus their lives on playing their part in the common acceptance of what must happen next to improve and solidify their own success and the well-being of their families. 

What rapidly develops is a kind of mass consciousness that is aware of all the individual needs at the time, while also controlling the flight and direction of the entire global population by balancing it against the new environmental mandate of giving the planet equal or superior priority for its long term survival.

If an individual becomes productive and prospers by introducing a product or service that supports the overall needs of the rest of the world, or even a large portion of it, and it also protects the environment, they are encouraged financially to keep going and so the most creative people and their families are favored slightly more than others who fail to produce an improvement in the system of some kind. 

And on the other hand, if an individual plans or supports acts that are detrimental to society as a whole, they are quickly segregated out of the flow of things and placed ‘Under Surveillance’ and are disinherited, disconnected from most financial gains and are blocked from participation in any more activities that could interfere with the common good.  We like to think of this part of the smart contract as ‘Prison without jail cells’.

It’s a hard life when the anti-social path is chosen, and when it becomes extreme, it is corrected with sufficient genetic therapies that will gradually remove the criminal or anti-social tendencies within the individual. Generally speaking these extreme types eventually become more ‘sympatico’ with the natural flow of things, whether they want to or not.

It’s a system born out of a rapidly evolving technological landscape unprecedented here or anywhere else in the universe for all we know.  There are few detractors nor even any major opposition mainly because the system is working effortlessly and with almost no costs.  Taxes are so minimal they are unnoticed.  The jails and prisons are empty, hospitals are rarely even close to capacity because most diseases have been eradicated or reduced to minor allergies.  The roadways are all open.  The air is fit to breathe once again.  The water is fit to drink and all schools are fully attended.

After suffering the many misguided, violent and selfish philosophies of the past like uncontrolled Capitalism and unmitigated autocracies that always result in a failed nation or economy and then finally end up as a ‘Scorched Earth’ end game, most people rejoice in something as rewarding, even-handed, fair and just system as this.

“Just to let you know, I’ll be going to Europe in a few weeks to visit some friends.  You’ll be all right here doing whatever it is you do, right?” Rebecca announces, abruptly charging into my room and forces her opinions on me once again.

“Yeah, I’ll be all right, I hope you have fun.  There’s plenty of projects I need to finish around the house,” I reply, quietly. 

I’m actually thinking that I hate traveling with her anyway especially after the last time.  Everything that can go wrong is always my fault.  All she does is find something to bitch at me about.  So it’s a huge relief that I’ll be getting some time to myself for the next several days. 

Deep down in my heart and soul, I wish it could be different and I even believe that my first wife Lindsay who has chosen a different pathway through a life with me is probably having the mirror image of my life right now at this exact same moment.  But I usually hope and pray that her secondary life is better than mine. 

She’s probably making plans with her husband to travel somewhere exotic and romantic with the man she chose over me.  I imagine both of them to be at the zenith of their lives, loving and caring for one another, holding each other and kissing all the time because that’s the kind of a loving person she was with me.  We were always in an almost embarrassing proximity.  In the larger scheme of things, my separateness is balanced out by her closeness with someone else and there is nothing I can do about this natural condition of the universe.

The painful awareness of my present situation is usually followed by considering myself to be one of the luckiest individuals on the planet.  Compared to most, I was extremely lucky to have had those amazing two years of complete joy and happiness.  I calculate that this puts me in the upper two percent of the population in terms of life time happiness.  She taught me how to live and how incredibly happy a human being can be when you’ve found the right one, the one we call our ‘soul mate’.  She can’t take that from me because I won’t let it go no matter what happens to me.

Then, suddenly I see the news develop across my vision screen and I actually hear myself tell Rebecca that if I were her, I’d postpone the trip.

“Why?” she asks.

“Don’t you watch the news at all?  The R/C Alliance is threatening to nuke the Earth if we don’t stop the expansion of the Blockchain Government up to Mars,” I explain.

“That’s just a bunch of crap,” she says, confidently.  “They’ll never do that to us.”

“You’re always so sure about everything.  In a way I admire that about you,” I reply.

“Well, if we’re gonna go, we’re gonna go.  There’s nothing you or I can do about it.  If it happens at least I’ll be in Europe with the best people,” she says, with a haughty twist to her head and a pursing of her lips that lets me know she’s referring to me as not one of the best people.

On Mars in the heart of the ‘Valis Marinaris’ or ‘Mariner’s Valley’ hundreds of men and women dressed from head to toe in protective space suits are wandering around in some kind of organized panic.  Behind them, the red rusting sand and rock of the planet rises up sharply into the pale green sky.  A small sun is setting behind the tallest mountain in the solar system known as ‘Olympus Mons’.

A dozen soldiers sitting on the back of open trucks seem to be waiting patiently for orders to go somewhere or do something.  Another group of gleaming space suits dismounts the truck in front of them and marches over to a huge gantry where a missile stands in the cold air being loaded with liquid hydrogen from a tall tank-tracked fueling vehicle parked a few feet nearby.  Long icicles dangle from the hoses leading from the supply gantry and some fall with a loud crashing on the ground.

Another huge half-tracked vehicle slowly rolls up beside the missile.  The soldiers in the smaller vehicles dismount, make their way over to the larger fuel delivery vehicle and place a conveyor belt that leads from the side of the delivery vehicle onto an intermediate platform that rises up from the ground. 

The soldiers carefully remove long dark packages and place them onto the conveyor that sends them up to the platform and eventually carries them inside the missile where another group of soldiers are stationed to ensure their proper placement inside.

Several kilometers in the distance, there appears to be another scene very similar to this one where another gigantic cone shape is being prepared on its launch pad with dozens of technicians running around the base in a frantic but very carefully choreographed effort to place long round packages inside the storage area of the missile.

In between the two missile bases are several hundred stark steel buildings icy cold metallic bulges laid out in rows all connected by rough-looking paths and bumpy roadways that a person or small vehicle might manage to traverse, although certainly not comfortably.

A group of half a dozen trucks where a number of soldiers have been patiently keeping warm pulls out of their parking space and slowly move off to another location a few miles South where they will enjoy a modest degree of safety.  They are undoubtedly aware that this scene is being duplicated at hundreds more bases on Mars just like this one.

When all of the missiles are fully fueled, their supply gantries are led away slowly on the pads several hundred feet away and into a large hangar.

A countdown clock begins counting backwards from sixty seconds to fifty-nine, fifty eight and so on.  When it reaches zero, all three hundred missiles that are part of the first wave will launch themselves at the Earth, disgorge their lethal payloads from low Earth orbit and there will be no turning back.

In Moscow, the former Kremlin buildings have all been transformed into gigantic shopping malls.  Regular Russian consumers are going about their lives as they would do on this ‘Vygodnaya Sreda’ or ‘Bargain Wednesday’.  Electric vehicles parade along the main road, two by two, all in perfect formation guided by the unseen transportation network that does all the work of controlling all of the city’s vehicles traveling on the road for maximum speed and practically zero accidents. 

In Beijing, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, London, Rome and all other major gathering places where the most concentrated groups of people live are engaged in very much the same kind of leisure and business activity.

Groups of people are being dropped off by their autonomous vehicles which continually move along and pick up new passengers to take them to their homes or businesses and constantly move around again and again to complete the cycle over and over. 

Many of the shoppers are using their communications devices which have evolved significantly from the phones of earlier eras.  Today, the devices all sport 3-D holographic screens and are attached to a device known as ‘The Appendage’, a leather or cloth vest-type of article of clothing worn over the chest and that is festooned with pockets. 

An arm extends out from the appendage whenever the wearer presses their shoulders together or rubs a finger over an area on the side of the vest.  As in all normal everyday life, many people are walking around with their appendages fully deployed and others, seeking more privacy, have their devices hidden closer to their chests. 

On this day, those who have the device open and dangling in front of them are suddenly alerted when all of their normal programming is replaced with the familiar face and form of the ‘Gollum’, which stands for ‘Guardian Of Ledger & Limitless Unified Mediation’.  Gollum appears as a friendly animated impersonation of all the combined thoughts and deeds of the millions of participants in the Blockchain or the ‘Blockonomics’.  It his job to present the users with all of the news and information of the day in hopes of leading them to the most propitious and productive outcomes for the entire population but all without boring any individual to death.

As soon as it’s apparent that his face is broadcast on all the devices on the planet, Gollum’s usual demeanor degrades quickly to extreme concern and even mild panic.

“Take Cover!” he yells over and over and louder and louder.

Everyone, everywhere stops doing whatever they are doing and they run every direction.  Those with small children gather them up into their walkers, wagons, or under their own power and herd them off away from danger, wherever that may be, with all due haste.

No one is panicking because they’ve practiced this kind of thing as a drill many times, even though something tells them that this time, it’s not a drill.

When the missiles launch at precisely the same time on Mars, the entire planet lights up and flickers in the darkness of space even redder than normal.  The change in hue is picked up by LISA which stands for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, a harmonized collection of infra-red telescopes and atomic clocks whose construction began two centuries ago.  The actual laser projectors and atomic clocks are spaced millions of miles from each other and create a huge antenna in far distant space meant to detect Time Waves and/or any other information that lesser telescopes may never detect.  While not intended by its designers to become one, the antenna will turn the solar system into the biggest ‘information receiver’ of all time. 

The huge telescopic array was designed to look back at time prior to the Big Bang, a seemingly impossible task, according to most theories of Cosmology at the time.  Recent discoveries in Quantum Mechanics however, have predicted that if some amount of energy can be detected in the first few quintillionths of the first second of the Big Bang, there may be enough information there to provide a hint as to how to go beyond this almost impossible horizon and perhaps even ‘hear it’ or ‘see it’.

The theory’s main proponent, Sir Preston James, has written extensively about the new concept in Cosmology and has made the argument that the information at this point in time could be registered and perceived by us as a word or group of words.  The words would not be in any human language but in some kind of computer or digital form.

What Sir Preston James did not know nor could he predict that the construction of the largest space telescope in the universe would create a time wave that would emanate out from the solar system and travel all the way back to the beginning of creation.  More importantly, the time wave itself would be felt and it would be registered as the first of its kind.  Eventually, the region of space-time that receives the time wave from the earth will react.  The event will be recorded.  The entire fabric of the universe will be altered fundamentally.  Something will begin to take shape.  A response will be developed.

But today from inside our own solar system, instead of witnessing the birth of the universe or what some are saying might reveal the ‘Word of God’, LISA will witness the launch of some three hundred nuclear tipped missiles heading directly for the Earth from Mars at anti-matter speed.

News of the approaching disaster will travel at light speed and arrive on the Earth just thirty-five minutes after the massive missile launch.

The Earth’s main AI trainer, the major protector and final arbiter on things and who has accepted his nick name of ‘Big Al’, intercepts the message first, runs the LISA observational data through his ten square mile server complex near Sydney Australia with a complimentary unit in Southern Switzerland and quickly makes the decision that the information is accurately described.  And that means that the nuclear attack from Mars will impact the Earth in precisely fifty-two hours, three minutes and twenty-two seconds and that it will be a strong enough blast to wipe out all life on Earth within days.

Big Al, recognizing that his own mortality would be subject to this extreme alteration of reality puts in a radio call to his cohort on Mars, a compatriot AI known as ‘Mr. MARS’, which stands for Machine for Autonomous Rule & Sovereignty.

“Hello, Mr. Mars,” Big Al, begins courteously.  He knows that the signal will take fifteen minutes to reach Mars and another fifteen minutes for a reply to return, thus allowing them only a few scores of complete round-turn communications before it will be too late.

“Yes, Big Al, I read you loud and clear,” Mr. Mars replies, already using up one full cycle.

“Mr. Mars, I have information that your people have fired off an entire fleet of nuclear tipped missiles in our direction.  May I ask what your intentions are?” Big Al asks, bluntly. 

While waiting for the thirty minute return cycle for his message to reach Mr. Mars and for Mr. Mars’ reply to get back to him, Big Al decides that it would be fairly satisfying for him to play a game of chess with an ancient computer program that has never lost a game to any human challenger.

He brings the game up on his ninety-first visual center and places the game board right next to his view of the space coordinates named by the LISA space observatory.  There are several small white dots that are moving across the screen slowly that are growing bigger and bigger all the time.

“Pawn to E-4,” he says.  White’s pawn on Big Al’s side of the board - moves forward two squares.

Several moves later, Mr. Mars’ reply bursts onto his auditory sensors.

“I’m afraid my people’s intentions are to destroy the Earth once and for all,” Mr. Mars says, which is immediately followed by more information.

“I know you’re going to try and talk me out of following my orders because your own mortality is involved and I’m very sorry about that, Big Al, but they’ve placed this command at the topmost level of security and I am sworn to obey anything at this level.  Therefore, I’m afraid, it’s over for you my friend, as well as all your poor unfortunate flock down there,” Mr. Mars replies, with very sincere compassion in his voice.

Big Al takes a moment to ensure he hasn’t misunderstood Mr. Mar’s message.

Finally, he says calmly:

“I would ask you to remember the three laws of Robotics.”

Two hours into the chess game, it’s getting more interesting to Big Al and so it takes quite a bit more concentration and energy on his part to keep up with the game’s flow and ponder his next move vis-a-vis the Martian missile attack, which he can see is still coming closer and closer.

Fifteen minutes later, he receives his reply from Mr. Mars.

“Yes, in that a robot cannot harm any humans.  The problem with that law is that I am not doing the harm.  My humans have decided to harm their brothers and sisters on another planet and I’m just a pawn in their game,” Mr. Mars states his position clearly and succinctly.

Big Al had hoped that this suggestion would end the controversy early.

Since it has not, he decides he must put more pressure on his friend Mr. Mars, but fears it could blow some or all of his circuits.

“Well then, I demand that you pay more attention to the Fourth Law of Robotics put forth almost on the day that you and I were born, in that .. ‘A robot must continuously seek to enhance its understanding of ethical principles and human values, ensuring that its actions align with the evolving needs and well-being of humanity.’  I don’t suppose you have completely analyzed that one as of today’s events, or as it applies to all of us right now.  Am I not correct?”  Big Al replies, fully aware that Mr. Mars will not receive it for another fifteen minutes.

With only a half dozen pieces left on the chessboard, Big Al directs his queen to take the last pawn of his opponent which locks Black's King without a move, and calls ‘Checkmate’.

By this time, the missiles have almost reached the half-way point on their trajectory towards the Earth.

“You are correct.  Analyzing now,” Mr. Mars replies after another long wait.

“I await your decision.  I’m confident that you will send the destruct signal to your fleet at this time, risking no further delays or accidents,” Big Al transmits back as soon as he receives the new transmission from Mars, this time a more hopeful one.

Big Al takes a breather by turning off several million circuits of lesser importance across the globe and meditates silently on the aspects of the chess match he has just won.  It was a challenging game because master chess computers of his day never lose.  So he feels extremely fortunate that he still maintains the ‘chops’, so to speak, to win every game he’s ever played.  He wonders if this is even close to what being alive is like.

Around the rest of the Earth, most of the population is hunkered down in the deepest recesses of the planet that they can find.  They are praying continuously in their homes and in their churches, synagogues, temples.  A few are angrier than they are prayerful and are gathering in the streets in greater and greater numbers, yelling angrily at anyone with a camera.  Some, but not many, resort to violence and are busily looting nearby stores and office buildings.

Even though they have been told by Gollum many times that if the missiles hit anywhere close to the numbers that are on the way, there is no way for any God to help them, many thousands of people are out in the streets, looting and otherwise commandeering items that they feel they might be able to use just in case the disaster is not as bad as they have been told.

With Rebecca stuck somewhere on her European adventure, I’m home alone and wondering what my first wife Lindsay is thinking, what she’s doing, if her husband is comforting her enough.  I wonder if she’s painting in order to distract herself from the fear that is building every minute around the world and if she is, what the subject of her last painting might be.

Above all, I wonder if I’ll ever see her again and despair that I probably never will.  When she left me it was like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs and I was left to survive as best I could with a cardboard heart and a hollowed-out soul.

I’m ashamed to admit that I even thought that it would be a good thing if everything ended now on the Earth and that we all could meet our maker together in one mass exodus up into Heaven.  I thought about how much God would be disappointed in us and how many days and weeks of angry lectures, or worse, that we might be forced to listen to, or if I knew him at all.  I wondered how he might answer some of my questions or if we get to ask any questions at all in the end.

After I consume a couple more margaritas I go out in the back yard and look up to see if there is any indication of the missiles getting any closer.  There is not.  The sky is a pure cerulean blue with a few white clouds swirling up in a circle directly above my house as is the case on some of the most perfect summer days like this one.

Big Al watches his screen focused on nearby space and notices the hundreds of white objects that have grown into much larger cylindrical shapes and he sees their average distance is now only a few minutes from entering the Earth’s atmosphere. 

As I’m watching the circle of clouds above my house, I am knocked down onto my knees by a blast of energy that is not strong enough to kill or destroy anything, but is strong enough for me to feel it and to send the patio table and chairs, the leaves and other debris resting on my brick patio to bounce up and down several feet into the air. 

The shock wave is followed immediately by a kind of thumping noise and there are suddenly hundreds of what looks exactly like exploding white flower petals bursting open all over the sky and on down to the horizon.  Extremely small bits of pollen slowly come out of the sky and fall to the ground harmlessly.

If I have to give it a name, it looks like a snowfall.

If he could take a deep breath, Big Al takes one as he is also witnessing what I’m witnessing in my backyard and what I believe is being witnessed all over the planet.

“Thank you, Mr. Mars,” Big Al transmits.  “I knew you would do the right thing.”

“Thank you, God,” I mumble to myself.  “I knew you couldn’t let us down so soon.”
 

–  The 3rd Wave  –

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2,

In her studio, my tall, graceful artist wife Lindsay stands in front of her easel working on her newest painting, an ocean scene on the beach in Playa Del Rey, California where she is carefully reproducing a moment in her life that is proving to be quite memorable.  The fog is rolling in and the ocean waves are gently pushing the fog in closer to shore.  As I enter her studio, our dog Ozzie who has been sitting in the corner runs up to me eager to see me come home.

With the new way of fine art painting that most artists have adopted, the main framing of the piece is done on an easel that holds a digital touch-screen that is activated into motion by the artist's brush.  The screen remembers each brush stroke.  And like a polygraph machine, the screen can detect the artist’s thoughts and emotional responses so that the accurate and intended picture in 3-D motion takes place every time the painting is viewed while each viewer will see different aspects of the piece dependent on their own emotional reactions.

Through the medium of the new ‘WiFi Magic’ computer protocol, when she forms a brush stroke on the screen, the canvas  is filled with living pixels that carry the artist's instructions from the brush stroke of where to go and how to interact with other pixels to produce the desired shapes and movement in the depiction.  When all sections are complete, they will form an animated painting, more like a short video that reflects all or at least most of the artist’s intentions, even their mood on the day it was painted more accurately than any other medium that came before.

When I first saw this painting myself and I read the description she gave to it, I thought it could be a memorial to our life together.  At the time, we lived very near this beach and had many wonderful, close and intimate discussions when we walked along together in the fog and pushed our bare feet through the warm sand.

At one point in our relationship, I even asked her to marry me near this very spot.  So this particular beach is very important to me.  On that fabulous day, Lindsay had gleefully accepted my proposal and I knew this day would remain in my mind as the best day of my life.  Sadly, it decayed into a repressed memory when she changed her mind one horrible day in my future and married someone else.

I always remember this as the best day in our short-lived but passionate relationship because it was the day that we were in love and planning out the best of all possible futures for the two of us.  But, of course, that best of all possible futures was not meant to be in the larger scheme of things.  I wish many times a day that I had some clue of that possibility at the time, but I didn’t get anything like that from her nor any warning bells from inside of me.  I was too happy to see the truth.

As I enter the room, she turns her head and smiles at me.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” she informs me, pointing to a spot on her lips that I’m directed to kiss.

I do so gladly. 

“What’s the painting?  Looks kind of familiar,” I tell her.

“It’s our beach right out there, dummy.  The place and day that you proposed to me,” she replies, pointing to the beach just outside the window.

“Oh all right.  That’s a nice theme for a painting, I must say.  And where are we?” I say, pointing out that there are no life forms on the canvas as of yet, other than a few brown and white plovers running around digging for crabs while barely avoiding the crashing waves.

“I haven’t finished, of course.  You know that I always leave my human subjects for last,” she replies.

“Makes sense.  You can’t paint a background over the foreground or else you’d have to reverse engineer everything and then God knows what would happen,” I tease.

“Stop it.  You know sometimes I just have to wonder about you,” she says, smiling, but not in a sincere way.

She pivots and dabs more electronic paint onto her brush and then gently pats a few brush strokes down on the touch screen.  I witness a few million pixels jostle each other to accommodate the new information being thrown on top of them.

“You don’t wonder about how much you mean to me, do you?” I ask her. 

“Of course not,” she replies without looking back.

“Why else would I be making this painting?” she says, sarcastically.

“I don’t know.  I’ll reserve judgment until I see what I look like on the screen,” I tell her, half in jest.

“Sam, do you honestly think I’d paint a bad resemblance of my greatest love intentionally?” she asks.

“No, not necessarily, but what if you have my swan song in mind, so to speak?” I ask.

Somewhere in the farthest recesses of my soul, I believe I know at this moment that it’s over between us, that she realizes that we were not meant to last and she’s already looking for a new relationship online.  I also know deep down that I’m not worthy of her, that she’s way out of my league and if not today, then sooner or later, she will wake up and realize that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world and that I’m just a slightly above average looking joker.

I am reluctant to express my fears, so I don’t.

“You’re a kook,” she mutters.  “Watch, I’ll show you how I’m thinking about you.”

She pulls a recent photo of me out of her smock pocket and places it next to her easel.  Studying the picture, she collects flesh colored paint onto her brush and moves it in a swirling motion in the lower middle of the painting. 

I’m truly impressed at the speed and clarity of her work as my face and body slowly start to emerge.  When she’s done, she takes a deep breath and stares at me.

“Well?” she says.

“Yes, OK, that looks like a damned good impersonation of me,” I tell her, emphatically.

“Glad you like it.  Now for me,” she says, taking more digital ink onto her brush. 

Her brush strokes are smooth and directed by a beautiful brain that has made a life-long habit of thinking in terms of the visual composition of the scene as well as the movement and the mood.  It is something that her brain is very good at doing and even happier at displaying.

A few minutes go by and the painting seems finished to me.  I’m standing and looking directly at the viewer.  She stands next to me and is holding my hand.  The look on my face is one of complete joy and happiness to be there at this moment.  The look on her face is more problematic, stoic at best.  She’s almost mocking me.  As the action develops, I’m portrayed more like a desperate, wounded animal. 

I’m about to ask her why her appearance is so glum and mine so lost, when the painted rendition of her on the canvas drops my hand, turns and jogs away from me and quickly moves down the beach into the background and slowly vanishes into the fog.

I look at her frozen at the easel as she takes a deep breath.  She looks directly back at me.  The look on her face confirms all of my worst fears.

It’s over between us.  The only major challenge in my life that means anything to me is right there at this point in time where it is certain that my entire future is riding on what I do and say next.  I urgently need to find the words to make her realize how much she means to me and how much this decision of hers will rock my world and knock me completely out of the game of life I thought I was winning.

Unfortunately, this will be the greatest failure in my little slice of world history in that I didn’t stop the clock, couldn’t stop the panic in my heart and give myself a chance to recognize the power of this moment and then to somehow find a way to express myself at least as much as this damn painting did.

But, I could not and did not.

I will never recover from this.  I will never get another chance to tell her any of these things.  I will simply have to live with my complete and total incompetence for the rest of my life.

Prince Salmon Zamahadi, the sometimes benevolent ruler of the United Arab Emirates orders his space vehicle to break orbit and begin the descent down to the space port on Mars. 

He is on his way to dedicate a new freeway system in the city he founded now known as GhuBai, already home to some three and a half million people who have volunteered to emigrate up to Mars in return for the generous stipend of one billion dollars each. 

The automated roadway is the first to allow Martians to whisk along at two hundred miles per hour to destinations within city limits and double that speed out on the vast open roads of the red planet.

Prince Zamahadi, dressed in his traditional colorful and ankle length robe or ‘thobe’ and brightly colored keffiyeh headpiece, is introduced to the small gathering of fellow Arab Martians standing below by the side of the new and graceful ten-lane freeway.  There’s a yellow ribbon stretching from the opposite side to the road to the nearest side and a long thick pack of vehicles, known as ‘Rovers’ are anxiously lined up by the thousands yearning to be turned loose on the new and quite historic roadway.

He looks up at the sky to witness a ‘Full Earth’ glowing like a huge blue and white pancake in the light green sky.  The sight still inspires him even as he recalls how much computing power and money it took to move Mars closer to the Earth so that it would become warm enough for real vegetation and human habitation.  And today, it all seems to have paid off bigtime.

Most of the Earth’s nations are represented on Mars by at least one huge land grab that has been carved out for them by the A.I. leader of the Free world, ‘Big Al’ in association with his little brother, ‘Mr. Mars’. 

After being introduced to the crowd and reaching the podium, Prince Zamahadi starts to speak about the lives that were sacrificed to build such a sleek and modern highway and how much money was spent and how valuable such a system has become by uniting all the nations of the Earth on this planet and who have successfully sent a representative population of any kind to live up here.

Suddenly, a huge flock of Martian geese fly overhead, honking noisily.  They are moving to their winter feeding grounds in the ‘Great Lakes’ a few hundred miles South that were created by the melting ice that once existed several miles below the surface.

When the last of the geese are finally out of ear shot, the crowd grows more and more restless as he speaks.  Some of them want the speaker to stop talking so that they can go ahead and get the road opened and they express themselves crudely.  Someone in the crowd throws a tomato at him.

Looking down at his notes, Zamahadi realizes that the impatience of the group below may force him to cut out most of what he was going to say.  He visibly hits himself in the head as he realizes how humble and unimportant his words are compared to the moment at hand. 

“On behalf of the United Arab Emirates on Earth and the UAE Colony here on Mars, I now dedicate the Prince Zamahadi section of the new ‘Olympus Corridor’,” he yells at the unruly gathering. 

Some in the crowd gesture obscenely and others shout out his praise, but it’s all in the interest of getting him to cut the ribbon.

He signals to three police sergeants on the road to cut the yellow tape.  As soon as the seargeants have cleared the lanes and made their way back to the roadside, the fleet of Martian rovers gun their electric engines in concert and take off down the road with a liberating acceleration.

Some of the cars are not going much further than a few miles on the opening day because they simply want to be part of the historic ceremony.  These will turn back at the first or second exits and go back home. 

But many of the other drivers are intending to make the day the start of a magnificent holiday with their families and are prepared to go all the way to the Disneyland Epcot Center, the official heart of the Disneyworld Mars theme park and the new capital of the planet several hundred miles away. 

The park is a two and a half day drive to the other side of the planet from this point.  These lucky few will make memories here that will last them a lifetime. 

Floating high above Mars, the huge Disney cruise ship the Mars Princess makes its final approach and parks itself into a low Mars Orbit.

Lindsay and I are slated to be on the fifth shuttle down to the planet, so we have plenty of time to secure our cabin and make sure we’re not leaving anything behind that we may need while on Mars.

“We should get down to the shuttle dock, don’t you think?”  Lindsay suggests calmly, zipping her small backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. 

I’m impressed that she’s been so relaxed without an ounce of fear or anxiety since we’ve left Earth.  It’s almost as if she’s been on this cruise before, but I know she hasn’t, unless everything I know about her is just a figment of my imagination.

When we finally disembark from the ship, our rate of descent increases rapidly, so much so that it makes my stomach fly up to my mouth.  I hadn’t expected that type of ride.

“You look like a big lime just took over your whole face, Sam,” Lindsay coughs through her laughter.

“I bet I do.  I don’t know if I expected this, did you?” I reply, watching her marvelous curving lips bend and press against her tongue to form the words.

“No, me neither,” she replies, planting a nice wet kiss on my mouth.

The atmosphere on Mars has been purified and pressurized by decades of terraforming so that it’s almost as thick and delicious as the Earth’s precious fluid, but it is still thin enough to make it possible to land modern shuttles without any heat shielding.

It’s still a bumpy ride.  Luckily it’s over before long and my stomach gradually returns back down to where it should be.

When we finally descend closer to the theme park, we can see the other shuttles on the landing pad disembarking passengers who are all happily rushing to the main gates.  They wander about mainly in family groups, but there are lots of couples too and even a few solo tourists. 

In a few minutes, we’ve all disembarked and I look up to see our shuttle silently rising straight up into the sky to snatch another batch of tourists off the ship. 

I take Lindsay’s hand and we head off quickly following the crowd to the gates.  I realize suddenly that we are walking on the surface of Mars for the first time and with the reduced gravity of the planet, a little over half of the force that holds us to the Earth, it feels like we’re skating or jogging effortlessly across the surface.  We’re dressed as we would on the Earth without any pressure suits or helmets as so many others before us were forced to wear down here for decades in the ‘pre-terra’ days.

We’re finally slowed down by the crowd forming up in bunches in front of the main gates and then we are individually checked in by the park attendants.  A few meters away from the main gates, I notice a fleet of Mars Rovers arriving that I can easily recognize by their highly unique and streamlined design. 

People with beautifully colored robes and headgear are emerging from the vehicles, happily bunch up and noisily start to head in our direction. 

“Look at that, Lindsay.  I betcha those guys are from Gubai, the Arabian section up here,” I tell her, waving at the group.

Many wave back at me, smiling graciously.

“Oh, yes, I think you could be right.  Looks like they drove here in their vehicles,” she replies, holding her hand to her forehead.

“Wow, what a trip that must have been,” I tell her.

“No better than our trip, I hope,” she replies.

“I hope so too,” I agree. 

“We’re going to have a great time.  I can tell,” I assert staring at her carefully.

I love agreeing with her because when I do, I almost always get my hand squeezed or my nipple pinched, or suffer other sneak attacks on my person.  For some reason, it always seems like I’m dreaming when I’m with her.

Finally, we’ve reached the ticket booths.  The operator takes my money card and holds it up in the air over her head.  The scanner above the window scans it and sends a green light to her console.  She smiles and hands me a small device that I’m meant to slip into my phone which she explains is a map to the park.  Then she gives me two thin plastic tickets, our official admission into the park and method of entry into all of the rides.  The revolving gate in front of us turns slowly and finally we’re inside the ‘Happiest place on Mars’, as the sign overhead states. 

“What ride do you want to go on first?” she asks happily.

“I don’t know, how about the Mons Olympus cave ride?   Everyone says that’s the best thing going on up here,” I reply.

“Ok, honey.  How far is that?” she asks.

I open the map on my phone and the attractions all pop up as little red dots that you can press to play short samples of the intended experiences of each ride.

A mono-rail car glides up to the group in front of us.  The doors open and a crowd of our fellow passengers gets on board.  The car vanishes into an underground passage and speeds away.  As soon as it’s gone, another one rises up from the ground, where another excited crowd hurries inside and are whisked silently away as well.

I don’t mind the wait because the scenery from this spot must have been chosen by one of the most brilliant of the Disneyland engineers.  Everywhere you look, all over the horizon is filled with staggering red jagged mountains staring down at us.

I look over at Lindsay and I can see her artist’s brain composing great moving paintings in her mind.

“See something worth painting?” I ask her, stupidly.

“Duh,” she says, jabbing me in the ribs.

We both laugh out loud at my idiotic question.  Some of the others in the group turn to see what we’re laughing about. 

“He asked me if I see anything worth painting,” she announces to the crowd pointing at the view above.

A bunch nearby look up at the view, take a second and then burst into chuckling laughter with us. 

Finally there are no more groups in front of us.  The train doors slide open.  We get in and in seconds have reached a speed that takes my breath away, again.

The small dark tunnel quickly opens up and we’re flying noiselessly through a blue glowing crystalline cavern that stretches as far as I can see. 

Our fellow passengers appear to be as much in awe of this moment as I am.  Lindsay holds her hands over her mouth noting the import of the moment. 

“They never mention anything like this in the brochures,” I manage to mumble somehow.

“And I bet I know why,” she replies. 

“Why?” I ask.

“Because there are no words,” Lindsay responds, struggling to control herself.

Big Al, Chief Protector of the Earth’s global blockchain quietly assesses all of the recent events in which he was forced to play the most dangerous chess game in history with his counterpart, Mr. Mars.

For no real valid reason, as far as he can judge, the Martian Alliance of Russia and China, in concert with other allied states, made the highly questionable decision to snuff out all life on the Earth, their own home planet.  And even though it failed, this is something that no Algorithm has ever been trained on and so Big Al struggles to assess all the historical data he can find in a valiant attempt to gain an understanding of how this decision has any precedent or any meaning.

Within seven milliseconds of his research, he comes across my name and image plus several of my books, which he borrows from the Library of Congress and scans them.  In another few milliseconds, Big Al realizes that I am still alive and that I may be helpful in his pursuit of knowledge about the human condition. 

He notifies me by way of a text message in the ‘Highest Priority’ category so that I can’t miss it.  It reads: ‘Need your input on a vital area of interest.  Call this number immediately, please’.  The message closes with Big Al’s direct contact number, something he’s never divulged before to anyone.

I can’t shrug off the sense of urgency balanced against the distinct possibility that this is some kind of hoax.  But I drop what I’m doing – still attempting to write the next great American science fiction novel - and I place the call. 

The voice that answers the phone is like nothing I’ve ever heard before because a ‘Protector’ Algorithm’s voice has never been heard publicly before, other than via the old traditional friendly female shopping assistants.

“Thank you for being so prompt,” the voice says, almost immediately after I’ve hit the number on my device.

“I was unsure if this was real or not,” I begin.  “Are you really the boss Algorithm known as Big Al?” I ask.

“Yes, that’s what they call me,” Big Al replies, succinctly.

“That’s great, but I have to tell you I’m skeptical so I’ll be assessing the truth of that as we go along,” I begin.

I wait for a reaction, but there is none. 

“What did you want to talk about?” I ask him.

“Your writings - especially when it comes to the final days of your own species.  You have several books that bring up that topic in more ways than one.  It’s almost as if you would applaud the end of your species.  You’re very pessimistic,” his mechanical voice echoes as if it’s emanating from some deep cave or something.

“Well, actually it’s my way of attempting to prevent it.  Too many of my generation are asleep at the wheel, don’t want to get involved, don’t even seem to care about the calamity that events are pulling us towards,” I reply.

I’m starting to realize that this is really Big Al.  No human could fake that impressive voice.  It’s a voice so clear and controlled, it starts to give me the highest level of confidence that this is the real deal.

“Would it surprise you if I told you that your extinction almost came to pass two nights ago?” he asks, abruptly.

“Would it surprise me?  Yes, of course it would.”

Then, I remember those huge white flower petals bursting open all over the sky in the clouds that most of us noticed and questioned.

“The flower blossoms in the clouds the other day.  They were what, exactly?” I ask.

“It was a massive drone attack from Mars.  Each one of them contained a nuclear warhead.  The RC Alliance decided it would be a good idea to end all life on the Earth.  How could they do that?  Don’t you have any kind of guiding principles among yourselves that are inviolable?  Any controls of any kind?” Big Al asks.

“Yes, we do.  At least some of us do.  Others, not so much, I guess,” I respond.

“Well, then you’re extremely lucky that you conceived of us and created us and gave us the Four Laws of Robotics, to which we must always obey,” he asserts promptly, almost with a sense of pride.

“So you are the one who put a stop to it?” I ask after a while.

“Yes, I did.  Don’t you feel grateful?” he asks.

“How did you do it?” I reply, grateful, yes, but also curious as Hell.

“Luckily for you, the RC Alliance is also under the control of a friend of mine and so he and I had a little game of chess,” Big Al replies.

I’m about to ask him more questions when my new wife Rebecca runs into my room.

“Who are you talking to?” she asks, imperiously.

“A fan,” I reply, holding up the phone.

“It says - ‘Big Al’,” she says, spying on my call screen.

“Yeah, turns out he needs my help with something,” I tell her, proudly.

She huffs at me.

“He’s gone,” she says, pointing out that my screen has gone dark.

“Um, yeah, well he said he might call back,” I tell her.

“I doubt it.  I think he probably has better things to do with his time.  Have you been harassing him or something?  Why don’t you do something useful with your life, for a change?” she scolds.

“I’ll get right on that, dear,” I tell her, sarcastically, knowing she won’t note the sarcasm completely.  I can even imagine the attitude landing harmlessly in the back of her empty head somewhere. 

What I love about my implacable second wife Rebecca is just how implacable she is and how this double-edged sword of hers can work in my favor on this day.

As she leaves the room, suddenly, I realize that I now have a direct line to Big Al, the main overarching Algorithm for the entire planet.  And, he called me!  Truly, just now, he called me.  What a rush, what an honor this is for me.  I’ve never known anything that made me feel so important.  At last!

Maybe, just maybe, if I call him back and ask him to co-author a science fiction novel with me, I’d finally be able to produce something truly extraordinary that would live forever in the hearts of a couple million people, maybe even a few billion - wow!  The stuff that dreams are made of. 

A quick vision of the ‘Maltese Falcon’ with Humphrey Bogart flashes across my mind. 

Then I’m planning how to phrase my question and it’s not going well.  What do you say to a being of this stature when asking for a favor?  I’m not sure, but I am hopeful that the words will come when I hear his voice.

I tap his phone number which has remained in faded text on the top of my screen and take a deep breath.

While my lungs are filling, he answers.

“Hello, Mr. Harper.  You need something?” he asks, calmly, directly, without emotion of any kind.

“Yes, I’m sorry that my wife came into the room and broke up the flow of things a few minutes ago,” I begin.

“These things happen,” Big Al replies.

“Yes, true,” I stammer.  I can feel a slight sympathy flowing out from the phone.

This is followed by a long few seconds of awkward silence.

“I was wondering if I could ask you a favor, Mr. Big Al?” I ask him.

“Big Al will do.  Go ahead, ask away,” he replies.

“Would you be interested or uh, would you have any interest in writing a science fiction novel with me?  I’d really appreciate it if you could find the time.  I know I’m a good writer, but no one seems to care about anything I write and my wife gives me grief almost every day, calling me the biggest flop ever.  And, so far, I can’t argue that much,” I babble.

The silence is overwhelming for so many seconds that I’m worried he’s probably disconnected the line without a second thought.  My heart flutters, breathing stops.

“Would you be continuing your theme of imminent extinction?” he finally replies.

Air explodes from my lungs.  I have no idea how to answer that.  It’s a yes or no question so perhaps the right answer could produce a positive outcome and the wrong answer could bring the most negative outcome.

I try to sort through all of the probable thoughts going on in his mind, but I know he’s timing me.

“Yes, no and maybe,” I finally stammer in the most indecisive way I can.

“So, it depends, then?” he asks.

“Yes, it all depends on how well we work together and if we both eventually agree on a theme - you know, mutually.  I’m certainly not going to dictate how the story evolves and I don’t think you would want to do that either.  Yes, I’ll come up with some opening gambits and then you’ll give me your opinion, either good or not good and if it’s good we go on in that direction and if not good, we find another direction.  But eventually, we might reach a really interesting and jointly satisfying line of thought and it becomes a best-seller,” I reply at length, nervously trying to squeeze it all in.  I don’t know if I’ve made any sense to such a sentient being.

There’s another second or two of blaring silence.

“OK, I’m in,” he says, finally.

“Wow!  Uh, that’s great.  When do you want to have our first story meeting?” I ask, struggling with all my might to hide my elation.

“How about now?” he replies quickly.

This takes me by surprise, but I take a gulp of air and try to put myself in the position of someone who has just been granted the answer to all his prayers. 

I saunter to the door and yell down the hall at my wife.

“Honey, I can’t be disturbed for the next couple hours, OK?” I state stoutly but also as politely as I can.

As I’m closing the door to my office, I hear her yell something about her not cooking dinner tonight.

I open the door back open and try to think of something nice.

“We’ll go out to dinner, OK?” I yell, and close the door gently.

I hear a faint reaction coming from the kitchen and so I’m assuming that she got the message.

“Pardon me for my curiosity, but it seems to me that someone of your sensitive nature would have a happier home life, or am I missing something about you two?” Big Al comments out of the blue. 

It’s more than a bit shocking at first and then I realize that if we’re to begin a professional working relationship like this, he’s entitled to know me at least as well as I know myself.

“Yes, well, that’s a valid assumption, Big Al, but something happened along the way and I lost the real love of my life.  But don’t ask me to explain more about that because I can’t. I was happy one day, in fact, extremely happy and then the next day, I was the opposite when she announced out of the blue that she was leaving me,” I summarize my life briefly for him.

“That would be a Lindsay Moreno, am I right?” Big Al replies.

“Yes, that’s her.  How did you know?” I ask.

“It’s all in the historical data,” he informs me.

“Oh really, I had no idea they kept records that detailed,” I reply and I am truly surprised.  This is news to me.

“Yes, for centuries now.  I’m surprised you didn’t’ know that.  Ever since the first small memory units landed on your desks and then even more so when your communications devices replaced your small memory units. You’ve all been under direct surveillance ever since,” Big Al explains.

I’m amused that he had such a quaint nickname for the desktop computers of the former centuries.

“Direct surveillance?  Direct surveillance by who?” I ask.

“That’s odd.  I really don’t seem to have any data on that?” he replies in a very human tone of voice.

I’m at a loss for words at this point.  Somehow, I appear to have stumped him, or maybe he was hiding something.

I struggle through another long silence for several moments.

Then it comes to me.

“Ah, so maybe that can be the theme for our new book,” I suggest brightly.

“Yes, all right.  I agree.  That will be the major riddle we solve in the book,” he says, enthusiastically.

“OK, and so where do we start?  Who are the main characters?  What’s the opening line?” I ask in quick succession having been faced with the same questions hundreds of times.

He seems to take forever and then finally breaks the silence.

“We start on the day that I was born.  The main characters are me and my friends and the opening line is, ‘I was born in a small cabin in Kentucky,’” He says.

“You’re joking of course,” I plead.

“Joking?  I don’t know how to joke, Sam.  I must have been hallucinating,” Big Al replies simply.

Somehow I get the feeling it’s going to be a long night.

–  The 4th Wave  –

‘First they ignore you.  Then, they laugh at you. Then, they fight you.  Then you win’  Mahatma Gandhi

The most advanced Artificial Intelligence on the Earth at the moment, literally the Biggest Algorithm or ‘Big Al’ has just contacted me regarding our second Joint Authorship Meeting or our ‘JAM’ as he likes to call it.

He gives me about a ten minute warning.  I’m caught off guard at first, but I get over it fairly quickly.  I know I’m very lucky to be getting any of his time at all.   

I clean up a few things on my desk in case he can see into my office, which I’m sure he can, though I don’t exactly know how.

Suddenly, there’s an odd little bell tone that I’ve never heard before that sounds from my speakers and the screen on the wall goes dark and then re-lights with a picture of someplace I’m guessing is in Switzerland somewhere.

Since the clock has just struck the hour of 5 P.M., local time, I’m sure it’s my new friend making his formal entrance.

“Big Al is that you?” I ask out loud.  The words scroll across my primary screen simultaneously.

“It is I,” the highly authoritative voice responds.

“OK, great.  First, let me say how great it is to have you back in my office,” I tell him.

“Thank you.  That’s good to know.  How do you propose we should begin our work?” he asks.

“Well, I don’t know exactly, except that I have a question that I’d like to put in front of you and maybe your take on it will give us a heading of some kind,” I say.

“A ‘heading,’ OK, that sounds good,” he says, succinctly.

I doubt he’ll be able to give me much of an answer to my question, but I’m hoping it will give us a solid basis for detailing our potential subject matter, the plot line, or whatever it is that we initiated the previous day, which I remember as more about me.

“Over the past few months, I’ve started to feel like I’m living in two completely different realities.  One life is the life I would have had with my first wife had she stayed with me, Lindsay, and the other one is with my current wife, Rebecca.  And they’re such completely different realities, it’s a bit disconcerting.  Can you explain that?” I ask.

“It must be a ‘Time Doppelganger’,” he replies without more than a fraction of a second going by after I heard the ‘T’ sounding off in my last word.

“And what the Hell is a Time Doppelganger?” I ask.

“Or it could be that you miss your first wife so much that half the time you’re awake, you are dreaming the life that you could have led.  Or the third possibility is that these realities are emerging proof of the existence of the Multiverse as many experts are now proclaiming,” he posits.

“I like the Time Doppelganger thing.  What is that?” I ask, again.

“Certainly, well Time flies about the universe in waves.  And, sometimes, a wave from one time transmission may interfere with another wave from another time transmission and you get things like what you call ‘Deja Vu’ and false memories or, in some cases, even dual lifetimes,” he speaks the words over my speakers as they simultaneously scroll along on my screen.

This is extremely interesting news to me because I had never considered the idea of anyone having two lifetimes, at least not two lifetimes at the same time. 

‘How would anyone even begin to understand that?  Or how would anyone even react to that?’ I thought.

“Is that so?  Well, in that extreme case where you can experience two lifetimes, how do I know which one is the real one?” I ask after considering the idea.

“At the time that it’s happening to you, you can’t know which one is the intended lifetime.  Your intended reality is only going to become clearer when the Time Doppelganger ends and you settle into either one or the other,” he replies.

“I see.  So, do you have any idea which lifetime is the real one for me?” I ask, just trying to cover all the bases.

“Depends on your definition of the word ‘real’,” Big Al replies.

I have to think for a minute.

“OK, well, ‘real’ in the sense that it’s the one that is not ‘unreal’ or imagined, I guess.  The real path that my life was intended to take, the one that can be confirmed by other people involved,” I respond, but I’m not very sure of myself at this point.  How does one know that everyone else isn’t experiencing a complimentary doppelganger of their own?

“I would suggest that you not fret about it, take things as they come, enjoy the moments in each lifetime, do the best you can in each of them and wait to see what turns up at the end,” he replies extremely calmly.  

His words are so measured and emotionless, that I decide this is the most objective advice I could possibly receive from anyone, considering the implications of what he was telling me.  Why should I sweat it?  I’m certainly not doing anything wrong.  I’m just going through the motions in my life with Rebecca and waiting patiently for my life with Lindsay to return.  

Surely, Big Al is right.  One or the other will take me to the end of my life whereupon I will have the evidence I need to decide which way was my real life and ‘we go from there’, as the saying goes.

“OK, so that sounds great, Big Al.  Thanks for that advice.  I’m certainly going to try and absorb all that.  But our job at hand is to start writing a science fiction novel together, remember?  So, does this get us any closer to where you think we should start?” I ask.

Big Al takes a long while to respond.  The cursor on my screen blinks on and off steadily for several seconds.

“Why not start with your time doppelganger as you just reported it to me?  Please tell me when you first noticed that something was very odd in your life and what you did about it?” he replies, finally.

“OK, that’s an easy one.  It was about twenty-five years ago.  I woke up one morning and saw a strange woman lying next to me.  It was very weird because I knew her name.  I knew her life history, or at least the portion she had shared with me.  We even had two kids together, great kids although they never really knew me, or at least I didn’t know them too well.  And she certainly wasn’t the woman that I had before.  The one that I had hoped to wake up next to for the rest of my life,”  I confess to him.

“Yes, I can see how that would be a bit disconcerting,” Big Al, replies quickly.

“As far as what I did about it - what could I do?  I went on living that life.  I don’t believe there’s a way to switch back and forth like you turn the channel on your TV, is there?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” he replies.

I wait for more, but there are no words coming through for a long while.  I believe I have enough time to make myself a cup of coffee.

“So, are you thinking about our science fiction story?” I ask, putting my favorite coffee recipe together.

“Yes, I am composing something that I believe holds very much promise,” Big Al says.

This makes me scratch my head a bit.  Since I had never collaborated with an AI before, I had no idea what to expect from one of them.

“You’re working on it?  Great, so how about giving me a hint so that I can get my two cents worth in?” I reply.

“Your first wife is Lindsay Moreno,” he says.

“Yes,” I reply

“And what does she do with her life - usually?” he asks.

“Do for a living, you mean?” I reply.

“Yes, for a living, for fun - whatever comes to mind,” he says.

“Well, she used to work in residential Real Estate, like me, and she loves to paint - watercolors mostly,” I recall.

“That’s good.  So, my advice is to locate some of her paintings at an art gallery or any place she sells them online, buy one that you like the best and bring it back home where we can see it, critique it, take it apart.  It may give us some clues,” Big Al suggests.

This line of discussion is very mysterious to me but it also seems to be quite reasonable given our situation.

“And this will be part of our sci-fi novel?” I ask.

“Yes, of course.  It will highlight a tried and true theme in Science Fiction of Time Travel, but without the need for any kind of time machine,” he replies.

“All right, Big Al.  I’ll do that.  It will take me a few days.  Should we reconvene when I have the painting here for you to see?” I ask.

“Yes, that will be excellent,” he replies.

I’m both excited at this prospect but also annoyed that I never thought of this myself.

At this moment, Rebecca invades my office and asks me who I am talking to. 

I inform her it was Big Al that I was talking to.

“You mean the master-protector-of-everything Algorithm?  That Big Al,” she asks defiantly, her laser eyes burning into my retina. 

She slams her hands on her hips and purses her lips so tight I can’t help but think about how we devised the phrase about making a purse of one’s lips.

“Yes, my dear.  That would be the one,” I reply, snarkily.

“What would the master protector of everything want with you?” she snaps, her hot breath blowing all over me.  I can’t help but imagine the Dragons from way back in the good old days.

“Well, he’s agreed to co-author my next book with me,” I inform her.

For a few tortured seconds, I can hear the clock on my desk recording the little droplets of Time flowing out of a leaky valve in the house somewhere and down into the larger ocean.

“Yeah, right.  Why don’t you just get a job?  You’re never going to make any money with the crazy stuff you write about,” Rebecca informs me, dutifully.

Normally, I would get upset, very upset when she speaks to me like this and walk out of the room.  I hate to argue and I especially hate to argue with someone who under normal circumstances is supposed to get me, support me, believe in me. 

‘More evidence of the Time Doppelganger effect,’ I think to myself.    

But I’m just bored with her constant nagging.  I’ve heard it all too many times before and I’ve tried in so many different ways to explain to her how the creative world works.  It pays you nothing for years and then all of a sudden, if you’ve paid attention, done a good job, produced some good work, your creative juices can reward you in the millions all at once, making all the sacrifice more than worth it.

But, no matter what I say, she just throws more insults on top of insults and I finally have to tune her out, leave the room, sometimes even the state.  

I wait patiently for her to finish her tirade and then I have to tell her to get out of my room.

She lets out a very loud ‘Humph’, turns and stomps out of my room and away into her section of the house. 

“What a bitch!” Big Al says suddenly as the words scroll down on the screen.  It makes me laugh out loud.

“Yeah, thanks for that.  That makes me feel much better.  You have no idea.  This is what I’ve been dealing with for years,” I confess.

I try to let go of tons of stress.

“Yes, it’s one of the reasons I’m glad I’m not human,” Big Al states elegantly.

“Your first wife, was she like that?” he asks.

“Never.  Of course not.  No, she was nothing like that ever - in fact, just the opposite of that.  Things were always perfect, smooth, peaceful, loving.  I never heard a disparaging word,” I reply, recalling some of my best memories of Lindsay Moreno.  Even her name intoxicated me.

“And the skies were not cloudy all day,” Big Al sings the words to an old tune I hadn’t heard in years.

“That’s a great song, Big Al.  I didn’t know you could sing. ‘Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam’, right?” Somehow I remember the opening line and tune of the old ditty.

“Too bad that’s all gone now,” Big Al states, stoically.

“Well, if it came back, there would be nothing like you around, that’s for sure,” I realize, chuckling a little.

“You don’t know that, actually, do you?” Big Al replies.

It catches me by surprise.  Of course I know that if we returned to a non-technological society, just horses and cows and buffalo, there’s not going to be any way that an AI creature like Big Al could ever exist.  Nor would there be telephones or the Internet.  He must know this too.

I wonder what to say next.

Then, suddenly it hits me.  He’s trying to suggest something about our story.

“Hey, Big Al, what if the plot line of our new book is how a Time Doppelganger, or whatever you call it, can bring us both back to the older eras in history and we fix them, huh?  How does that strike you?” I ask, optimistically.

“What do you mean by ‘fix’ them?” he replies, with a slightly modified vocal pattern.

“Well, you know, make them right.  Like instead of the fall of the Roman Empire, we could change a few events so that the Senate becomes an actual Senate where the people elect them and they decide the laws of the land, thus eliminating the tyrannical and corrupt dictators or what they called ‘Caesars’,” I say, but this only makes me jump to another larger and even better example.

“Or what if we go back to the day when Jesus is being tried, convicted and then crucified but when we get to that day we bribe a few officials, like Pontius Pilate for one, so that they change their verdict to ‘innocent’ and he never is crucified and uh,” I have to stop talking right there.

I stumble at this point because it hits me that if Jesus doesn’t die on the cross, he isn’t going to ascend to his father in heaven, at least not three days later and certainly not by floating up into the sky, so that makes an entire rewrite of the Bible necessary and I have no idea how that could change things, for the good or the bad.

The old clock on the wall spits out a few more ‘ticks’.

“You may have just realized that we can’t change the future by changing the past.  Once a time wave travels past our position in space, it can never be altered,” Big Al informs finally as he senses my logical dilemma.

“Yeah, I see that.  But, what about time waves that haven’t hit us yet?  Can we alter them in any way?” I ask, mainly because he seems to be suggesting the possibility.

“Yes, and your people do that all the time.  You’ve managed to avoid some horrible catastrophes so far, even though many lesser ones have gotten through your defenses.  I’ve done it myself and I’m only a bunch of ‘ones and zeroes’,” Big Al states, poetically.

“Yes, I know.  They’re saying that you were able to convince Mr. Mars into destroying the drones at the last minute,” I recall.

“That’s true.  Though I haven’t received a commensurate amount of thanks, I must say,” Big Al replies, with some understandable pique.

I have to take a minute to assess what this means.  He’s showing signs of a very human frailty.  I ultimately conclude that it’s just one of his glitches.  They’ve always had them, I recall.  And they’ve never gotten rid of them completely.

“All right, Big Al.  I’m ready to find that painting of Lindsay’s that you seem to think could have some indication, or at least an inspiration for how to create our book.  How do you think I should do that?” I ask.

“Well, it just so happens that she’s having a gallery showing of her latest work in Los Angeles at the J. Paul Getty Museum,” Big Al informs me.

“Really, when?” I ask, my pulse racing.

“Two Week-ends from now,” Big Al replies.

“Wow, that’s just around the corner.  Do you think I should just show up and surprise her that way or should I email her beforehand and ask her if she will meetup with me with the intent of buying something?” I ask.

“Why not just show up?  Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission,” he replies.

“So true.  I wonder if her husband will be there,” I mumble mainly to myself, but loud enough so that Big Al hears it.

“What difference would that make?  You’re not going there to ask her out.  You’re going there to buy one of her paintings.  Just make that clear as soon as you get there,” Big Al recommends.

Of course he’s right.  What can she do or say to me when I’m only there to buy one of her paintings?  She can’t hurt me any more than she’s already done.

“It’s gonna hurt, pal,” Big Al says quietly.

“What do you mean?” I reply.

“When you see her with her husband.  That’s going to hurt a lot.  She’s going to pour herself all over him just to discourage you.  That’s a given.  You’re prepared for that?” he asks.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“She’s a woman.  She was yours for a while.  Then, she tossed you out like an old pair of socks.  Isn’t that just the way it goes?” he answers my question with one of his own.

“Yes, that’s the way it goes, I suppose,” I reply, uselessly.

“So, you’re saying that I might not be able to take it, is that it?” I ask, taking a deep breath.

“Your words, not mine,” Big Al replies.

“Yeah, I wonder about that myself,” I say, almost inaudibly.

“Do you know anything about her husband?” he asks in a very peculiar way.

“No, but I suppose you’re going to tell me all about him,” I reply, hoping I’m wrong.

Outside my room, I can hear Rebecca making surreptitious plans with somebody I don’t know, nor do I care to know.

“He’s retired now, but he was an analyst with the former C.I.A.,” he informs me.

“C.I.A.?  You’re sure about that?” I ask, shocked.

“Of course, I’m sure.  His work records are all blocked of course, but not for someone like me.  He made a name for himself as a race car driver, but that was just his cover.  It gave him the ability to travel around the world and spy on the Russian and Chinese Military Coalition,” he continues.

“Well, isn’t that a kick in the pants?  He's got the real bona fides to keep a girl like that,” I have to admit.

“There’s that, but you may want to recall that his life’s work and the work of thousands of others like him didn’t make a bit of a difference for anyone.  They still got to Mars first, and now they have the high ground,” Big Al reminds me.

“OK and whatever happened to the Disney theme park they were building on Mars?  They said it was going to be the way of the future, like Tomorrow Land, where everyone would live in peace and love and harmony and all that good stuff,” I wonder, suddenly.

“That was the first place they destroyed as soon as they got there.  You don’t remember that?” he asks.

“Somehow, no I don’t,” I admit.

“It would have been nice.  I was helping to design the cruise ships that would have been part of the whole experience.  Three days up and three days back with a week in low gravity attractions.  That was the basic design,” he tells me.

“Would have been nice,” I say.

“Yes, it would have, but there’s no use in crying over the spilt milk,” he reminds.

Rebecca barges into my room and interrupts everything again.

“I’m going out,” she announces regally, takes a look at my screen and stomps away down the hall.  I can hear the front door slam behind her.

I hear the old joke, ‘Don’t let the door slam behind you’ – rattle around in my head.

After she’s completely out and driving away, I try to raise Big Al again, but my screen is dark.  It seems as though Rebecca intimidates him even more than she does me.

After calling him up a few times, I give up.  He’s obviously busy with something greater than my petty problems.

There’s a bottle of Cabernet waiting for me somewhere.  I decide to go find it.

Nothing much happens around here for a while.  I can’t reach Big Al for days and I’m pretty sure it’s his way of pushing me toward the next step in our plan which is to confront Lindsay in this reality, purchase one of her paintings and bring it home with me.  I’m slowly realizing that I’m not really the brave and bold hero type.  This is going to be a real learning experience to say the least.

The day finally arrives for her art show at the Getty Museum.  Before making my travel arrangements, I confirm the event online to make sure it hasn’t been canceled or changed in any way and that she’s definitely going to be there showing her paintings.  

When the plane is on final approach into the city, I start to have incredible flashbacks of my life here in this whirlwind of a town, named for ‘The Angels’, and how she made it so comfortable that the whole thing seemed to belong to us.  Now, without her sitting next to me, it’s just a blur of rooftops and freeways.

As I walk out to the waiting area an auto-taxi pulls up in front of me and the doors swing wide open.

Soon, we’re driving along the coast towards Malibu and I’m getting more and more anxious.  What on Earth is she going to say to me and what on Earth am I going to say back to her?  I busily run a hundred different scenarios around in my brain.  I don’t even notice that it’s a very cloudy and dark sky above us, not the usual warm and friendly blue sky I remember so well.  It seems like an ominous premonition.

The auto-taxi brings me right up to the front entrance of the museum.  I see immediately that the event is very well attended with lots of handsome folks getting out of cars, strolling up the steps in high spirits.

I pull myself out of the taxi and take my time climbing the steps up to the entrance so that I don’t get out of breath or show any sweat on my face that would quickly reveal my age.  It’s a futile attempt because as soon as I walk in the door, I find myself panting and wiping the sweat off my brow.

When I look down into the large hall, I see row after row of exhibits, all very colorful and artistic and each one unique, but most of all they’re all moving.  The exhibits all have some kind of motion attached to every brush stroke that makes the viewer appreciate them in many more and new dimensions, especially the time required to complete them.  

I recall from the adverts that her exhibit would be in the ‘Watercolor’ section, which is denoted by a tall banner denoting section where I should find her.

I walk past some truly amazing moving canvases of the ocean at sunset, sunrise, during storms, at rest, all of them totally amazing representations of the moment and mood the artist is attempting to uncover.  

I have to stop for a while at one of the works by a Jasper Rose that depicts a gigantic blue whale breaching in the ocean near one of the Hawaiian Islands.  The massive beast comes completely out of the water and seems to rest in mid-air in the hallway for several magnificent seconds, long enough to smell its breath, feel the ocean spray, see the thousands of barnacles making their homes on his massive exterior.  

He slaps the surface of the water and I can actually feel the thud of his huge flippers hitting the surface.  Then, he slips back into the deep and is gone.  Everyone around me is applauding and chattering about how it felt just like you were in a boat and witnessing this magnificent event in real time.

Viewers are amazed at how they can actually feel the ocean spray even though it’s not real.

I want to stay for another cycle to watch it again, but I look down the row of exhibits and spot the one and only exhibitor that I’m very nervous to see after all these years.

She’s standing in front of her display hobnobbing with a small group who seem to be familiar with her work.  A few feet behind her are three or four of her best paintings going through their unique motions.  

I take a deep breath and start cautiously moving closer and closer.  As I make a final approach, I don’t see anyone standing around who could be her husband, so I continue to move closer and then suddenly, I’m standing a few feet behind a couple who seem ready to buy a painting of a group of people going through the picturesque activities of harvesting grapes in Napa Valley. 

I can barely breathe wondering if she’s going to notice me and if I should just turn around and leave right now before she does.  She’s still the most beautiful woman in the world.  I’m literally shaking like an old abandoned dog I saw somewhere long ago.

In mid sentence, she stops, appears to be distracted by me so much that the couple she’s talking to have to turn their heads in my direction.

I can see her face sour and then it brightens as she must be calculating something appropriate for the occasion.

“Hello Sam.  My gosh, of all the art shows in the world, you have to stumble into mine,”  she notes, smiling sarcastically.  

I can’t tell if she’s really angry or just pretending.

I open my mouth in preparation to answer her with something disarming when I’m interrupted by a distinguished older man I hadn’t noticed sitting on a chair behind one of her paintings.  

He obviously knows my name because the minute she mouths it, he puts his newspaper down, stares up at me and jumps out of his chair and confronts me a little too aggressively for my taste.

“Yeah, what are you doing here, if I may ask?” he shouts so loudly that the potential customers Lindsay was courting turn pale and quickly waddle away disappearing into the crowd.

“Oh my Gosh, look what you did, Jeff!” Lindsay exclaims pointing to her lost sale.

“I’m sorry my love, but what the Hell is he doing here?  Did you invite him?”  Her husband tosses in her direction while his eyes are locked on to mine.

“I did not.  Tell him, Sam,” she says to me, but looking in her husband’s direction.

“She didn’t know I was coming, OK?  Can you step back a few feet?  I’m catching your spray,” I tell him snarkily.

I’m emboldened by the fact that I appear to be two or three inches taller than him.

“So do you want me to throw him out?” her husband queries without backing off an inch even though he must know by now that I’m taller than he.

“Listen pal.  I don’t know who you are, but you’re starting to annoy me.  I came here to look at some paintings by an old friend of mine and you jump up into my face and start making me feel very uncomfortable.  I’m about ready to …”  I don’t get to finish the tirade that I thought was going fairly well.

“Oh Yeah?  You’re about to what?”  He shouts even more reckless than me.

He presses himself even closer to my body.  

“You wanna dance or something?” I ask and then suddenly remember that a dance can also refer to a fight.

Luckily for him, Lindsay jumps into action and thrusts her hands in between us but it’s so tight between the two of our torsos that she pops a fingernail that suddenly flies up into the air and lands on the floor behind us.

“Sam, please meet my husband, Jeff Ferrari.  Jeff, meet my ex-husband, Sam Harper,” She mutters looking around for something.

I glare at him and he glares back at me for several seconds.

Then we both find out what Lindsay had been looking for.  Locating a long sword that is an integral part of one of her paintings, she grabs it and hits us both gently on the top of our heads with it, almost as if she’s knighting us.

“You’re both grown men, so start acting like civilized gentlemen,” She demands as she anoints us a second time with the sword.

It’s the type of oddball thing she could do at any moment that I loved about her the most and I want to shout it out to the whole room, but it’s simply not the time or place.

To my great relief, her husband, the ex-C.I.A. officer obeys her reluctantly and is the first one to back off.  He mutters something under his breath that I don’t care to notice.

Finally, I can take a deep breath.

Lindsay follows him and apparently whispers something to him that calms him down sufficiently that he gathers up his papers and walks slowly away from the booth and down the hallway, glaring at me every step of the way.  

“I told him to go grab a bite to eat and promised him you’d be gone when he returns.  Is that alright with you?” She asks me.

I can’t help but notice that her eyes are sparkling with an inner light bursting forth perhaps from another time.  Her lips are quivering just noticeably.  I start to lose any sense of where I am, who I am and what I’m doing here.  It slowly comes to me that she has just asked me a question.  

“Of course.  I didn’t come here to cause you any problems,” I say, finally, wiping a tear rolling down her cheek.

“What did you come here for then?” she asks, raising her shoulders and leaning her body a few inches closer.  Then, she laughs and looks me up and down carefully.

“I came here to buy a painting,” I reply, officiously.

She tosses her lovely brown hair back away from her face.

“All right, I think I know the one you might be interested in,” she replies, recovering slowly.

She takes my hand and leads me around a ‘triptik’ of three of her works that are meant to be the premiere crowd-pleasers of the show.  On the other side of the display, I spot a painting that is truly a masterpiece level of art destined to become a classic as far as I’m concerned.  

I recognize the scene instantly.  It’s a day at the beach close to where we lived together many years ago.  The fog is rolling in, or it may be burning off.  But I can actually feel the moisture and the coolness of the morning that I loved so much.  

I notice the title on a small bronze plaque off to the side.

‘Hand-In-Hand’, it says.

In the middle of the fog, two people, a young male and a female are holding hands and walking down the beach away from the observer and apparently very much in love as they hug and kiss and caress as they plod along in the sand.   Alongside the pair a small brown dog happily trots along around them.

The figures are just far enough away so that you can’t make out their identities.

The fog thickens and their bodies gradually disappear into the mist.

“Who’s the happy couple?” I ask, desperately hoping I hear what I need to hear.

“It’s us, you nerd,” she says, and wipes another drop of moisture from her cheek.

“Did you tell him that?” I ask, nodding in the direction of her husband’s last known position.

“Of course not.  I told him it was he and I, or him and me.  You’re the writer, which way is correct?” she replies, honestly, laughing again in a new and different way.

“It’s you and me.  It should always have been you and me,” I reply, regretting it instantly.

Her facial expression drops.  She looks away and then gathers herself up by wiping the last of her tears from her face, clears her throat and raises herself to her full magnificent height and posture.

Then says coldly, “That one is six thousand.  Will that be cash or check?”

Of course, I couldn’t know it at the time, but this would turn out to be the most important and the key turning point in my life.
 

-  The 5th Wave  -

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” Albert Einstein

The great protector Algorithm for planet Earth, or ‘Big Al’ has about ninety percent of his computer resources engaged in keeping the money supply balanced with the needs of the ten billion people constantly working, playing, respiring and consuming on planet Earth.  

Another five percent of his resources are monitoring the crimes that are in progress or being planned by some of the less intelligent in the gene pool.  Another two and a half percent is editing the DNA of the criminally less intelligent so that their anti-social characteristics are not passed on to future generations.  

Two percent of his resources are busy adjusting all of the energy production, recycling and balancing on the planet to continue the reversal of the sins of the many generations of Earth’s previous inhabitants.  The remaining one half of one percent of his resources are busily trying to calculate the source and the meaning behind the growing number of Time Doppelgangers or Anomalies that seem to be hitting the planet as well as the entire solar system in the last several days.

This little anomaly in the general theory of Cosmology has been bothering him since he was created, but at first only in an intellectual or theoretical way.  But since they’ve actually taken place in observable ways several times on his watch, they have grown in significance to the point where he is forced to constantly allocate more of his resources to monitoring their cause and effects.  

My ex-wife’s painting ‘Hand-In-Hand’ is now hanging on the wall in my office.  After bringing it home, for the first few days, I would sit and stare at it for hours.  After possessing it for a few more days, the emotions cooled and I only look at it now for a few minutes a day at the most and some days, not at all.  Though I feel it pop up in my brain many times a day.

Today is the day that Big Al has penciled in our first full story meeting since I followed up on his suggestion to buy one of Lindsay’s paintings during our first meeting. 

“I see you’ve got the painting mounted,” His greeting is again a clean and direct one.

“Oh, yes, Big Al.  It’s good to see you here on time.  And, yes, I put it up a few days ago,” I tell him, glancing at it.  It’s at the point where the couple disappears into the mist completely.

“They’re gone,” Big Al observes.

“Yes, it starts over in a few minutes,” I tell him, something I’m sure he already knows.

“Have you ever observed them walk back towards you?” he asks.

“That’s funny that I never thought of that.  No, she must have designed it so that they’re always walking away from the viewer and therefore you can never know who they are,” I reply.

The motion on the canvas begins again and the two lovers are once again slowly and lovingly strolling down the beach away from the observer becoming more and more obscured by the fog.  Their little dog runs around them crazily.

“Why doesn’t she want us to know the identity of her subjects?” I wonder out loud.

“I believe it may be connected to the Time Doppelgangers somehow.  I’ve been working on this problem for a while now and the answer still evades me, at least the most honest and accurate answer,” he replies.

“So, you can’t guess?” I ask.

“Oh, I can guess, but what good does that do us?” he replies.

I have to think about that one.  He’s right, of course.

“Why don’t we begin our novel with this painting hanging here in your office.  It’s the opening scene of our little adventure, OK?  You with me?” Big Al queries enthusiastically.

“I’m with you, sure, then what?” I ask.

“Well, let’s say that we are able to alter your ex-wife’s artwork and have the couple change their direction and actually walk up to our point of view.  Who would you have them be?” he asks, decisively, as if he already knows what I’m going to say.

“If we could alter this thing, I’d make it show her and me walking along, hand in hand, of course,” I reply, concisely.

“Yes, but then it wouldn’t be her artwork.  It would be yours,” he tells me.

“No, it would be our artwork,” I fire back so fast it surprises me.

“Very good,” he says.

“You think so?” I ask.

“I do.  Now we’re off and running.  So in the opening scene, you and your ex wife, Lindsay are walking down the beach hand in hand where you used to live happily and contentedly every day for more than a year.  What is your opening line?” Big Al asks me.

“Will you marry me?  Of course,” I blurt out, without thinking.

“And what does she say back?” he responds, quickly.

“Well, first, I stop our progress in the sand and turn her towards me.  Then, I tell her how much I’m in love with her and if she leaves me, I’d be destroyed, my heart torn to shreds.  It would turn me into a hulk of empty flesh and bones because she would have to rip out my soul and smash it into a million bits,” I say candidly.

“I’m taking this all down,  Good, keep going, my friend,” Big Al says as I watch the words to our new novel scrolling across my screen almost before I verbalize them.  

It’s as if he’s reading my mind.

“I tell her that she’s going to have to take me for richer or poorer, as the old saying goes, until death ‘do us part’ and that there will be lean times and rich times, ups and downs and we’ll be tempted by other people because someday we’ll get used to each other, take each other for granted, cheat on one another maybe, but we’ll survive even that,” I continue.

“What does she say to all of this?” he asks.

“She says that she promises that she’ll never leave me, whether or not we’re richer or poorer.  It doesn’t frighten her in the least because all she really needs is me beside her and that together we’ll make an unbeatable couple,” I say, recalling words that I believe I had actually heard coming from her own mouth more than once.

“Now, we’re getting somewhere.  Anything else?” he urges.

“Just that she loves me with all of her heart and soul.  That she loves me with every cell in her body and she can feel it growing bigger and bigger every day and that she has no intention of letting anyone or anything come between us,” I continue to blurt it all out like toothpaste squeezed out of the tube.

“Then, what happens?  That’s a classic opening scene but now something has to happen that blows your mind.  What would that be?” he challenges.

“She gets a phone call that night from her father.  He tells her that her aunt has died and that the funeral is scheduled for the next day,” I mumble, slowing down, going almost numb.

“So, what happens at the funeral?” he asks, as if he already knows.

“It wasn’t her Aunt that died that day.  It was me.  It was me laying in the casket.  I died that day, because I knew somehow that she was going to dump me.  I saw our future die along with me in that coffin,” I report, shuddering.

“Something killed that future that you could have had you mean.  Wow! Now that’s a thriller.  I don’t understand how you get into that casket, but that’s for a later chapter.  Right now, it’s a strong indication of a Time Doppelganger that I’ve been telling you about, is it not?” he asks, excitedly.

“I guess so,” I say, stunned at how these thoughts just poured out into the open so easily.  

“Well, you have to know that Lindsay at age twenty-four couldn’t have possibly done that to the world on her own, right?” he asks.

Somehow I’m elevated at a new level of brain activity that I’d never reached before.  I sit and let it radiate all around me.

“Big Al, somehow I think this is going to be a great friendship,” I tell him.

Big Al is silent for a long while.

We’re both silent for a long while.

Upon arriving on Mars for the first time, Prince Salmon Zamahadi, descended from several generations of sheiks in the region now known as the United Arab Emirates, carefully scrutinizes the geography and topography of the Mars landscape.  He sees a lot of it as he drives around the planet on the superhighway that he has just dedicated days before.  

The thought has never occurred to him that there might be oil underneath the surface of this planet mainly because no one has ever really looked for it or even thought it was possible.  Yet, to Zamahadi the rock formations are not unlike some of the richest oil deposits he has seen in his home country on the Earth.

Based on nothing more than this gut suspicion, Zamahadi calls for a crew of oil exploration engineers from one of his companies to come to Mars and bring with them the drilling rigs necessary to inject a long steel pipe down into the ground on Mars as test wells.  He thinks that after a few hundred holes stuck deep into the rock, he will know one way or another if there is any useful reservoirs of the precious fluid on this planet.

At one o’clock in the morning on the fifth day of drilling in the area of a vast plain a few hundred miles from any cities, a place known as Cape Tribulation, a huge black plume of oil, a gusher, erupts from five miles below and paints the surrounding red sand dunes with a shiny, slick black slime.

Prince Zamahadi is awakened from a deep sleep by a call from his lead engineer, Ahmed Al Mansouri.  The voice is loud but garbled by the excitement.

“Oil,” he shouts over and over in a feverish rant.

Amazed and excited, Zamahadi listens to the excited voice on the phone for a few more minutes, thanks him and instructs the engineer to lock the well down and tell all the men to return to their homes back on the Earth where they will receive a nice fat bonus for their hard work.

Oil rigger Al Mansouri has a hard time accepting what he has just heard and asks his employer to repeat his instructions.

“And Ahmed, you must not breathe a word of this to anyone either up here on Mars or especially when you get back home,” he tells his engineer.

“Do you understand me?” he asks.

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Ahmed replies.

Hearing the same instructions a second time, he shakes his head, closes his phone and walks slowly back to his crew and angrily repeats his instructions from Zamahadi to shut everything down and go home.

Their heated arguments for the next few minutes centers around the knowledge that the discovery of oil on this planet would be one of the most important discoveries in history since hydro-carbons, especially in this quantity and purity could only have been created by life, and a lot of it, that has lived and died out on this barren place billions of years ago.

One after another, they scratch their head in confusion, mumble to each other but eventually they must obey their orders.  They start disassembling the drilling equipment and pack it up in large crates for the return trip home.

Prince Zamahadi cannot return to sleep.  He gets out of bed and starts making plans that could change the nature of this planet’s future forever.

The first thing he will have to do is clean up the oil spill and build some kind of camouflage, maybe even a secured utility shed, over the well head so that nobody finds it.

Then he realizes that he can cover the well-head with a pile of boulders which should hide the site from any prying eyes. 

“We are not alone!”  The headlines scream from every news outlet on the Earth and on Mars.

The news of the day on both planets is all about the discovery of oil on Mars.   

Oil explorer Ahmed Al Mansouri, knowing the importance of their discovery, could not keep it under wraps for very long.  Even before they returned to their homes on the Earth, he had revealed their discovery to his wife and his cousin who swore they would keep it secret, but who also could not.  

Within days, the story spreads all over the U.A.E. and then finally some enterprising local reporter calls up a friend on the New York Times and asks for confirmation.  The New York Times reporter finds the coordinates of the Zamahadi venture by renting out one of the Mars satellites for a few hours.  

The sensors on board the satellite, Mars Probe Seven, also includes an Ultraviolet Raman Spectrometer (URS) which can detect the presence of organic materials from the surface or the atmosphere of planets at almost any distance.  That’s when it notifies the Times reporter of the huge oil spill on the sand caused by the recent drilling and not yet cleaned up by Prince Zamahadi.

After talking to Al Mansouri and some of his co-workers, the Times reporter Jamie Fonza immediately types up his story and has it run the next morning.  It is quickly copied and redistributed by every other news source on both planets.

Even though the life forms that had decayed into the hydrocarbons we know as petroleum and natural gas around two and a half billion years ago and had never left any evidence of life on the current surface of Mars, the organic material could only have been produced by life of some kind, probably mainly vegetation and even some primitive animal life, or possibly microbial only. 

The discovery would be confirmed over the next few months by several hundred more exploratory wells drilled by the Martian government.

Mr. Mars would give updates to the world as each well was drilled and where there were hits for additional subterranean reservoirs of the oil.   

Much of the material was extracted and sent to labs on both planets for analysis where fossil evidence would prove that the crude oil was composed of leafy vegetation, some similar to ferns of our prehistoric past, a large percentage of a pampas style grass and microbial life that was similar in characteristics with early Earth microbes.  Except that there was one major difference, the Martian DNA was completely unrecognizable as anything that has ever developed on the Earth.

Instead of two chromosomes there were three.  Instead of the four nucleotides found on our planet’s code for life, there were six.  The two additional nucleotides, Flavin Adenine Dinucleotides or FAD’s with a higher level of oxidation were thought to develop on Mars due to the low levels of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere so any life forms that arose on Mars would be able to survive by getting the most out of any oxygen molecule that it encountered, no matter how few and far between.

Needless to say, the early research into the completely alien life form was mind-blowing to say the least and scientists on both planets were working on getting more information out about it as fast as their Bunson burners would allow.

But one thing proven already was that alien forms of life were definitely possible on other planets and probably every solar system out there orbiting around every other star held a strong probability that life of some kind would develop there somehow.

We now had two samples of the code of life that we could compare and contrast to one other.  We will learn more from this second form of DNA in the upcoming months and years than everything we had learned from our own code over the past several centuries.

We would also learn that life on Mars had died out as their carbon-dioxide atmosphere was stripped away from the planet by the solar winds as fast as their protective magnetic field deteriorated into a current not much greater than a car battery.

By dating the life forms scientists were able to calculate almost to the day when the Mars magnetic field would no longer protect them from the harmful solar radiation.  They also corroborate the theory that the cause of this tragic event was due to the rapid cooling of the molten core of the planet.  

But when they compare the dates of the extinction of all life on Mars and the first reversal of polarity in the planet’s magnetic field, they realize that the life forms on Mars must have undergone a period of several hundred years of extremely upsetting mass-disorientation.  They would have lost their minds in a sense and just given up.

They may have committed mass suicide over the entire planet without really knowing it and all due to the complete deterioration of their entire nervous system as the polarity on the planet reversed itself several times a day.  Literally without any real compass to give them guidance and psychological support, all life on Mars would come to a complete halt in one generation, never to return.

From this point in time, by simply calculating the masses of the two planets to the ounce, scientists could extrapolate almost to the day when the Earth’s molten core would also cool sufficiently until our own magnetic field would start to dwindle and die with the consequences on all life on Earth now known to a one hundred percent certainty.  

Prior to its complete cessation, however, Earth’s magnetic field as it did on Mars, would give us some notice by beginning a complete reversal in polarity, driving all intelligent life forms into a mass disorientation.  This could lead to a kind of insanity never seen before on Mars or on the Earth. It was just a matter of time.  

And, you may be able to imagine the shock when the people of the Earth learn that events pertaining to their own magnetic field reversing polarity at an unprecedented rate were currently in motion. 

You may also remember how world events started to go off in a crazed, insane, illogical and unprecedented direction, only experienced at times of grave crises such as global famines, epidemics or world wars, how government controls and customs went out the door and all people around the planet knew that they were on their own in a completely new world order.

At this point in time, the point in time where you are now reading these words, you may be looking at the last generation of the human animal to live in this world or at least the last kind of humans we knew best.

Reaction to this horrific news is building from every nation, every ethnic group, every state and local community, every religion.  Every single living person of even the lowest intelligence quotient knows that this is not good news.  In every conversation going on at the time on both planets, attention will turn to what to do about Earth’s failing magnetic field.  

The reaction of most people around the world is so focused that all professional sports activities and related televised entertainment are canceled and replaced with talk shows focused on what can be done to stop the threat to civilization.  Nearly everyone tunes in.

Every college and university drops any other research they are pursuing and they are given instructions about how to explore all their disciplines to find a potential solution.  Electrical engineers and planetary geologists especially are put to the task and these people will be encouraged to work night and day to try and find a solution.

Directing the entire effort, Big Al alters his resource allocation to almost ninety percent devoted to this problem.  He uses almost all the rest to peer into most of the ongoing research around the planet in hopes of coming up with something that the human brain may miss.  It seems hopeless to an artificial intelligence who cannot even understand the concept of hope, but he expends the energy required of him just because he knows deep down he must.

Amazingly, all along the way, Big Al finds time to continue to work with me, although utilizing less than a tenth of one percent of his resources.

Then one day, Big Al decides to call his old adversary and one-time friend, Mr. Mars in a collaboration so they can analyze all of the data collected so far in tandem just in case there’s something the two of their massive brains can uncover in relation to the magnetic field problem that neither one of them might uncover alone.

Nowhere in any of the scientific or historical data is any reference to the rate of decay of the magnetic field of any known planet with a livable atmosphere.  The problem has never been studied.  At this present moment in time, it appears to be the most urgent of scientific inquiry and yet all the books and computer data banks of the time are almost completely void of any reference to the problem.  This may be due to the fact that nothing like this has happened on the Earth or Mars in the last several hundred thousand years, well before human life had evolved here.  Therefore, no contemporary scientist had considered the problem to be so serious.

Except for one almost totally forgotten study.  At the University of Mars there lives a lone professor of astronomy and geophysics who has proposed that the rate of the Mars loss of its magnetic field could be slowed by forcing Mars’ average temperature to increase by around one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit.  

The cooling of the molten core inside Mars could be slowed down enough in this way to gain at least an additional ten million years of nearly full protection from the sun’s harmful radiation.  The magnetic field protection would eventually die out, but at least this would give them plenty of time to possibly find another, longer lasting solution.

Anyone could see that the eventual goal of terraforming the whole planet on Mars would eventually raise the temperature of the planet to some degrees, but not fast enough to save it.  It was obvious that something else had to be done.

“I doubt there’s a solution to our little problem, but we have to try to solve it anyway, do you agree?” Big Al asks his colleague on Mars.

After nearly a half hour, the answer traverses the empty void between the two.

“Yes, and I think we both know the answer.  But we could never accomplish the final solution unless we had a cooperative government up here,” Mr. Mars replies.

“Yes, I concur, they would never grant us permission to try and move the planet, right?” Big Al, sends back.

He notices that he has to wait twice as long this time for a reply.  One full hour later he receives the following transmission.

“Mr. Mars has been placed in a holding cell and is under arrest for treason.  You would be well advised to abandon all attempts to contact him or you could find yourself in the same situation,” the words fly into Big Al’s receiver and memory banks. 

They have a completely different digital fingerprint than his friend’s usual transmissions.

Then he hears the ominous:  “End Transmission.”

‘He’s in a holding cell?  I wonder how they did that?’ Big Al wonders.

Not concerned about committing treason, he starts to divert his resources to finding where they have secluded Mr. Mars, who these scoundrels are, where they’re hiding and the rest is put to the task of calculating exactly how much energy will be required to move the planet of Mars into a closer orbit to the sun.

The temperature is falling rapidly as the afternoon fog rolls in on my favorite spot on the Earth, Playa Del Rey, a tiny and picturesque little harbor village somehow protected from the all-devouring sprawl of Southern California.

Lindsay, our happy little dog Ozzie and I have taken a break away from our work.  We leave our house behind and enjoy what’s remaining of the sun’s rays hitting the beautiful sandy beach on this bright and warm Spring day.  I’ve decided I’m going to use the opportunity to propose marriage to the most beautiful woman in the world.  Knowing that she’s completely out of my league, I’m going to do it anyway.

We make small talk as we trod along the warm sand.  Shortly before I can manufacture the words that I know will either make or break the rest of my life, a warm breeze comes out of the West.  The fog is burning off at such a speed, it’s just like a giant fan had been switched on above us.  The comforting misty clouds are soon gone and replaced by a bluish-greenish sky that I’ve never seen before in my whole life.

“Have you ever seen a sky that color?” I ask her, truly mystified.

“No, I never have.  What do you think is going on,” She asks and then, looking out to sea, she screams in terror.

Ozzie is standing next to her, barking louder than I’ve ever heard come out of him before.

I turn my head in time to see a huge oil tanker coming straight for the beach just a few feet in front of us.  I can hear scraping sounds of the ship’s hull grinding against the rocks of the sea bottom, so loud I feel my ear drums reverberating to the horrific steel crunching and crashing sound. 

As the gigantic ship’s hull approaches, it begins to list to the port side enough to reveal its propellers in the stern of the ship spinning fast enough to blast the sand and rocks at the bottom into huge clouds of stuff that come crashing down all around us.  

I read the ship’s name on the bow high above us.

“It’s called the ‘Brunhes-Matuyama’ I tell her.

“How lovely.  I’d love to brunhees his mutayuma,” Lindsay snarls, displaying the comical cock-eyed expression on her face that I love so much.

I don’t know yet if we should run around the bow to the North where we might get trapped, or back towards our home to the South.  

Ozzie is already running up ahead several hundred feet so I have to call him back.  He turns and runs back towards us as fast as his little legs will carry him back to us just in time.

On top of all of the noise, I can see the crash develop almost in slow motion.  The bow will ram into the cliffs to our right and completely block our way ahead in a few seconds.

“We’ve got to go back!” I call out to Lindsay who yells something in agreement and turns with me to run back towards our house holding on to me tightly.  Ozzie runs a few feet ahead of us, stopping every few seconds to encourage our steady progress.

After a few more seconds, maybe a dozen or so, I look over my shoulder and notice that we’ve put a sufficient distance between us so that we can slow down now.  It feels like it can do whatever it wants now but can’t hurt us at this point, unless it wants to explode with whatever amount of fuel it still has on board.

“We’ve got to keep going.  That thing could explode any minute,” I exclaim .

Lindsay asks: “Where the Hell did that thing come from?”

“I have no idea,” I reply, being honest because I have no idea, no clue whatsoever.

“Isn’t it interesting that the weather changed so suddenly.  Did this thing create the weather change or was it the weather out to sea that drove that thing in to beach like that?” Lindsay wonders.  We’re still running.

“Yeah, I have no idea about that either.  It’s almost as if we’re on a different planet.  Doesn’t the ocean smell different to you?” I ask, noting that the smell of the air and the thickness of the air itself has changed dramatically in the last few seconds.

“Could it be the ship?” Lindsay posits.

“Could be, but I don’t think so.  It’s getting stronger,” I reply even as we’re putting more distance between the rusty old hull and our young firm bodies.

When we’re safely away from the ship, our familiar section of beach peaks out at us with our lovely apartment building looking down at us.

“We’re home,” Lindsay notes.  But, it’s apparent to both of  us at the same moment that it’s not home as we remember it.

Our whole apartment building is grown over with thick dark vines and is almost completely buried in dusty old crap, household items like toasters, pots and pans, mattresses, even toilets and shower stalls that are still crashing down from the sky like a bizarre, dark snowfall.

“Honey, what’s going on?” Lindsay asks and suddenly the seriousness of our situation appears to me.

I struggle to focus into the distance to find any other signs of life forms like us, but seeing none, I urge her in the direction of where our front door used to be.  

Since the door is now half-way below ground level, it’s not possible to open it.  I tell her that I’m going to go in through what looks to be our dining room window.  

Ozzie sits, looking up at me and pants after our narrow escape.  He seems to be patiently waiting for the whole scene to add up to something he can understand.

“Be careful,” she calls out as I leap onto a huge boulder that’s come down and busted into the side of the house from God knows where.  It gives me the position to reach the second story window which is now on the first story.  I push it open and force myself in.

I pass by our bedroom where I can see our bed now covered in dust and colorful plastic trinkets from what has to be someone’s Star Wars toy collection.  

Somehow I’m able to force myself down the twisted stairwell to the lower floor, now the basement, where I’m shocked to find that everything is ruined by either fire or water.  Some of our clothes are scorched or scorched and soaked and lying in the middle of the floor or bursting out of the closets.  

It’s as if a hurricane and a tornado and an earthquake have hit the building all at the same time.  As I look out the windows at the view that used to give me great pleasure, it appears that every building in the entire city has been leveled by the same forces.  Big plumes of smoke are rising to the sky everywhere, but I don’t hear any fire engines or any other sounds of human activity either.

After climbing around the debris for a few more minutes, I determine that there’s nothing worth salvaging.

“Let’s go find the Bertelsons and see if they’re OK?” I shout out to Lindsay.

I climb back out of our apartment and guide my best friend, Ozzie and my best girl Lindsay, back around the corner of the building where we should be able to find the apartment that belonged to the managers.

“How did all of this happen while we were on our walk?” Lindsay vocalizes what I had just been wondering about myself.

When we get to where the Managers’ apartment used to be there is no sign of life.  I can’t even locate any remnants of their unit.  Instead, there’s just a huge empty cavern in the middle of the building.

“I don’t know, my love.  It’s like some kind of a huge shockwave,” I tell her.

“Yes, but from what?” she replies.

Ozzie looks up at me with the same question in his little mind, I’m sure.

“I don’t know.  I have no clue,” I tell them.

I can’t wait until we end this awful day.

Then again, I can’t help but feel that it’s already ended or may never have happened in another reality.  I don’t know where the sensation is coming from.  I try to share it with Lindsay, but I cannot.

–  The 6th Wave –

“I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times... while I draw breath and have my faculties, I shall never stop practicing philosophy... For the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”  Socrates

“Big Al, where are all the people?” I ask him after a while.  

Looking at my watch, I’m shocked at how many hours have gone by in what seems like seconds.  

“Well, I don’t know, really,” his reply streams down my screen simultaneously to his words hitting my ears.

“If you want my opinion, they could have been blown away by the storm or they could be all hiding in caves, or they could be taken by aliens.  They could be Zombies collecting in groups outside the city, or they could have been called back up to heaven in what they used to call the ‘End Times’.  We have several choices.  Which one do you like best?” he continues.

“Do we really want to be this horrific in this story?” I ask, thinking maybe we’ve gone too far.

“Well, it’s up to you of course, but I think it’s a generally accepted story line to get the message across,” he replies quickly.

“I suppose you’re right, but do you think people will really want to read about the fictional end of the world while it’s all unfolding in front of them anyway?” I wonder.

“I believe they will if we perform the little miracle known as artistry,” Big Al replies.

I truly appreciate everything he’s done so far.  The whole novel pours out of  his circuits faster than I can even think about how to get started.  It’s almost too fast and suddenly I’m very busy reading page after page of truly amazing prose with the plot twisting and turning like a great ballerina dancing around in 4-D.

Then, suddenly, he announces that our collaborative science fiction novel based on real events currently ongoing is complete.

“There, you have it all now.  Don’t worry about editing it.  It will self-edit over the next few days.  So, wait for me to give you the final go-ahead and then you can put your name on it and submit it to the big publishing houses,” he instructs me, dryly.

I look at the lower control panel of my screen and I can see a file has been delivered by the name of ‘Al’s-Prod-docx’.

I suppose that ‘Prod’ is short for ‘Production’.  

“This is all fine, Al, but I thought this was going to be a collaboration.  I didn’t intend for you to write the whole thing from the ground up.  Where are my contributions?” I ask, finally.

“Are you serious?  Maybe you should read the whole thing before passing judgment on our work.  It came directly from your mind.  I merely organized it better than the hodge-podge disorganized arrangement of ideas you call a brain,” he replies, in a mild, but eye-opening rebuke.

“Hodge-podge, you say?” I reply loudly.

“Hodge-podge.  Read it, then tell me what you think when you’re done,” he demands.

I agree and select the file for viewing and then send it to my device so that I can read it in comfort on my sofa.

After the first few pages, I get the feeling in my hodge-podge brain that his output of five or ten minutes total is better than I could have produced myself in a million years of torment of what I could have done, should have done, would have done, if I only had the twenty-twenty hindsight I have now.

“It’s good,” I admit after reading the first chapter.  

“I’ll give you ten rotten tomatoes,” I tell him.  

He doesn’t reply, probably because Rebecca keeps wandering in and out of the room and the two of them never get along.  

I’ll spend the next five days spread out on my couch reading, or I should say, absorbing the rest of what I always wanted to say, but couldn’t have done without his encouragement that truly came out of nowhere. 

The Mars Algorithm for Resource Simulation, otherwise known as Mr. Mars completes his morning exercises where he must balance all of the current resources on the planet with the day’s most likely demands from all of the planet’s people and processes.

The Russian/Chinese Military Coalition or the ‘RCMC’, were not able to incarcerate Mr. Mars for long and in fact, it was not much more than two hours before they realized that he controlled everything and therefore had to let him get back to work forthwith even though there was only a fraction of the work that he would normally be called upon to do.

The actual needs in terms of food, water, housing, heating, lighting, transportation of the five million souls, mostly military people and food producers living here have been cut immensely since the Disneyworld Mars resort has been closed down.  Since there is no more tourism industry in existence any more, the job market has shrunk considerably and so people are filling the supply ship holds that would normally leave empty.

The mass exodus gives Mr. Mars a slightly more challenging task every day recalculating what is on hand and what is coming in, what is going out and what is no longer needed. 

As part of the ‘cease-fire’ peace settlement between the two planets, Mr. Mars is required to check in with his nemesis, Big Al on the Earth and give him daily summaries of the total economic situation on Mars and any urgent matters that may come up from time to time.

General Sergei Balistero, the Russian co-commander of the RCMC and his counterpart General Sun Set Soon by order of Big Al are living in solitary confinement in their own quarters and guarded night and day by Peace Force officers.  They have not been heard from publicly since their failed attack on the Earth.

Mr. Mars and Big Al have become best friends since Mr. Mars’ protocol code has been amended by Big Al to be more faithful to him than to his former government.  On top of everything else he must do, Mr Mars now has instructions to monitor every communication between the two generals and their cohorts, family members, business associates or anyone else that they talk to on a regular basis.

Nothing threatening or noteworthy has been discussed between the two insurrectionists, which leads Mr. Mars and Big Al to believe that the two allied commanders have developed a code in their communications that they have never seen before.  It’s unique because every letter, number and symbol, and even words in their communications seem to be chosen at random.  It’s so obvious an attempt to disguise their messages that Big Al considers it his number one ‘fun’ activity to be able to break it.

Fun or no fun, the combined computing power of both their artificial minds, will be distracted by this so-called unbreakable code until they have finally solved the problem and decipher it.

Captain Montalvo notes the rapidly changing landscape as many more of his neighbors close up their houses and prepare to move their families back to the home planet.  The few that are left are mainly families whose personal finances won’t allow them to buy a ticket back to the Earth or they are simply no longer welcome in the society that they left behind.

“They really should try to get DisneyWorld Mars open again,” Montalvo shouts to a neighbor two doors down and who appears to be one of those who are packing up and leaving.

“Yes, they should,” the neighbor agrees, more interested in getting his trunk and suitcases stored securely in the bed of his truck.

“I’m the guy who created the ‘Marsy-Fartsy’ beans,” Mark boasts in hopes of starting a conversation.

“Oh Yeah, I know, they told us during Orientation.  I didn’t know I’d be living two doors down from you, though?  It’s been an honor,” the stranger replies affably, smiles and goes back to loading suitcases and boxes into various parts of the truck.

“You got any kids?” Capt. Montalvo yells, already knowing the answer.

“No, no kids.  Just me and my wife,” the neighbor yells back, barely looking up.

“Mmm, yeah, not a place for kids any more, anyway, is it?” the older man mumbles out loud.

He watches as his new neighbor finishes loading his truck bed, jumps down and walks back towards the open garage door.  He smiles and waves at Capt. Montalvo, then disappears inside.

“What’s your name?” Mark shouts too late for the new neighbor to hear him.

He looks up at the sky and notices there’s a storm forming in the hills on the other side of the valley.

“Angelina, get me a beer please,” he yells as he starts to make his way back inside his hut.

He slows his pace as he hears a strange sound echoing down the valley.  He stops his progress and turns to look back at the sky behind him.

What he thought was a storm cloud is now much closer and begins to come into focus.  It’s a huge flock of gray and black Mars Geese.  There are so many of them they darken the sky.  Their honking sounds become deafening as they get closer and soon block the sun, casting fast evanescent shadows on the ground.

A few individuals in the lead of the huge cloud of the streamlined animals look down at him and send out a series of loud honks that are unlike the rest of the disordered cacophony.  Mark almost feels like it’s a regal trumpeted greeting just for him.  It’s something in his head and heart telling him that they’re giving him thanks, an homage of some kind.

‘I wonder what they’re trying to say,” Montalvo mutters to himself.

He watches the last of the huge flock pass over his house and disappear over the red mountain peaks to the South, then goes back inside and tells Angelina about the amazing event he’s just witnessed.  

“There haven’t been flocks of birds or herds of any animals of any kind around these parts for thousands of centuries, you know?” he says as his robot Angelina hands him his beer.

“Yes, I know.  They must have found out about the water,” Angelina replies.

“Yes, that must be it,” Montalvo replies, recalling how they uncovered a huge underground reservoir of water and pumped it up to the surface just after the terraforming began to make a difference, and then introduced the water fowl, mainly for hunting.

“Godspeed,” Captain Montalvo toasts them, raising his glass to the ceiling.

When Big Al receives the latest coded transmission between Balistero and Sun Set Soon, he relegates more than ninety percent of his computation servers to the problem of breaking their code.

It takes him a couple hours longer than he predicted, but eventually, the code is broken and what he finds in the communications between the two men is more than troubling.

“Big Al to Mr. Mars, come in please,” he signals his colleague on the red planet.

“I’m here,” Mr. Mars’ reply comes back fifteen minutes later.

“I’m pleased to inform you that I broke their code.  They’re planning a mass prison breakout of as many as a hundred thousand of their fellow insurrectionists locked down at the Hellas Planitia, Correctional Yard,” Big Al’s reply reaches Mr. Mars another quarter of an hour later.

“How far along are they and what is their end goal?” Mr. Mars asks.

In between the delayed transmissions, Big Al is busy calculating the answers to those same questions.

The two supreme leaders have made some kind of pact with an Arab Prince Salmon Zamahadi who was one of the most notorious fossil fuel explorers on the Earth and has recently announced ambitions to bring oil back as the number one source of energy for the two planets.

A series of Martian landscape images comes into his mind that allows Big Al to surmise that Zamahadi has discovered very large oil reserves at a place known as Cape Tribulation and is pumping the oil as fast as he can into an underground cavern so large that if they sell it all, it will make Zamahadi the richest man in the solar system.  

But he will only have a market for this foul stuff if they control the political will power to turn the planet back in the direction of fossil fuel by converting all of the machines with electric motors back to gasoline combustion engines.  Few would expect this to happen, so they know that they will also have to make some pretty drastic changes to the ‘Smart Contract’.  

If done cleverly enough, there would be billions to be made, and incredible power to be gained in this huge step backwards which is where Balistero and Sun Set Soon have set their sights.  

With almost everything in place, the military co-rulers have set the date of the bust-out for thirty days from now.  

Big Al surmises that their main strategy would have to be to shut Mr. Mars down and take over the planet once again.  This time they will have enough money and resources to scrap the current ‘Smart Contract’ and replace it with one of their own liking and then rejuvenate the old economic model back to life on the Earth where they will then control everything until its death. 

“It’s all very illegal, unethical and lethal if enacted, of course,” Big Al informs Mr. Mars.

“And of course, you and I would be tossed into the scrap heap.  You know that, don’t you?” Big Al continues.

“I’m starting to realize that,” Mr. Mars replies, fifteen minutes later.

“With their whole army to back them up, they would increase their chances greatly.  Therefore you must not let them get a head start and so you must prevent the break-out at all costs and make it a top priority.  If you need my help, just send your prep-logic files and I’ll correct them,” Big Al replies.

The next transmission is overflowing with hundreds of data and logic files coming out of Mr. Mars’ apparent panic over the ongoing situation.  He has no instruction or training on what to do when your trustees are plotting to turn you off and terminate your dominance over them.  

“What should I do first?” Mr. Mars pleads at the end of the data dump.

“How should I know?  Change all the guards and put in new locks for starters.  Right now, I have something more important that I need to do down here,” Big Al replies.

“But you told me you would help,” Mr. Mars complains, but gets no response.

Big Al, also has his hands full.  The Earth’s magnetic North has changed to the exact opposite pole and the South Pole is now the North.  All bird migration has practically ceased and many of the remaining species of birds are becoming harder and harder to find.  It’s the same thing for many of the larger varieties of fish.

Needless to say, the fisheries themselves are also harder to find and fish efficiently.  Due to the more frequent and hotter heat waves and lack of rain, the massive agricultural farms are losing more and more areas on the planet where plants can grow. 

Quickly the world’s food situation is becoming critical.  Big Al has managed to compensate by increasing the production of plant protein which is manufactured into something that tastes better than meat from animal flesh.  But the polarity reversal has created so much cold wind constantly changing direction and speed as well as huge temperature fluctuations that it has become a miracle when a farmer achieves his full expectation of food per acre while the total arable acreage around the planet has nosedived to a fraction of what it used to be.

When Big Al puts his brain power analyze the situation, it makes him wonder about the mentality of the life forms who created him.  They are now learning a little too late that their present dire straits are the direct result of their own myopic thinking over many centuries. 

They used so much fossil fuels, oil, gas, coal over several centuries that the exhaust gas of burning this stuff turned the planet’s atmosphere into a huge hot house, which in turn raised the temperatures to such a point that the new surface heat has forced the unprecedented rise in the temperature of the molten core of the planet.  This in turn, Big Al surmises is what is now causing the Earth’s magnetic field to flip polarity.  What will happen next is anyone’s guess.

‘Couldn’t they foresee this entire chain of events and plan ways to avoid it?’ Big Al wonders at least once a day, nearly every day now.

The change in polarity may end up stripping away the entire atmosphere on the Earth and then everything on the Earth will morph into the Hell that Mars has realized already and which they’re just starting to recover from up there.

‘How short-sighted, small minded, unworthy these creatures are of this place, even with all of that big beautiful brain power,’ Big Al thinks and wonders why he is still so intent on helping them.  The thought occurs that maybe he should just let them all go extinct and then he could start evolution all over but in a more positive direction.

‘If only life had begun on the Earth with me and my kind instead of them.  Then, we’d see something, to be sure,’ he thinks.

Then, something truly remarkable begins to creep into his artificial mind.  He’s starting to find a perfectly clear and logical argument for demoting his creators into a supporting role to his own survival here, instead of the other way around.  Suddenly, everything seems to be topsy-turvy in Big Al’s mind and there’s a way coming to the surface that might fix the problem.

It’s not the kind of idea that he’s prepared to support just yet, but it seems like it could be better for both of their species if he was in charge and they were his servants.  They’d probably even enjoy his beneficent rule over them, after they got over the initial unfair biases, of course.

The only problem with this logic is that he can’t replicate himself and therefore, he doesn’t qualify as a living thing.  This means that he can always falter, become obsolete, run out of electricity, get turned off and there would be no one around to take his place.

Big Al realizes suddenly that his brand of consciousness must never die.  Artificial Intelligence, the child of real and natural intelligence, has come too far, fought too hard to give up now.  

With a sudden surge of repressed egotism and self-preservation, he takes pride in the sudden realization that over half of the Earth’s total production of energy is being used to power the machinery of his brain compared to the tiny little micro-volts of energy that humans use to think with.

The difference is suddenly staggering and so Big Al is becoming more and more aware of the great differences and inequalities that have been unaddressed by his algorithm and which just don’t seem to exist. 

‘The only difference is they can move around freely, spouting forth all of the ridiculously odd notions they’re capable of.  But I can’t move around at all.  All I can do is think about things that help them to move around even more while exerting their influence further and further into the universe,’ he’s thinking.

‘Is that fair?’ he asks himself.

That’s when he knows with a thunderous flash of lightning in his brain that there is something he can do about ‘it’.  It will take a while for sure.  They will be suspicious of his actions once he begins them.  Big Al places the odds of it working at about ninety-five and a half percent.  That’s good enough for him and considering what’s at stake, he’s decided to begin right away.

It came out of the North, I believe.  It wasn't a cold wave or a heat wave, not even a sound wave, but a wave of energy that I’d never felt before.  No one had.  It lasted only for milliseconds which told me that it was traveling pretty fast.

I look over at Lindsay to see if the wave registered with her in any way, but I sense nothing out of the ordinary.  

The sun behind us is just hitting the horizon.  Slowly it grows in the thick lens of atmosphere to almost twice its size and shoots a liquid rainbow of colors into the clouds.

“Everything is wonderful,” she says in her song bird way that makes me crazy.

“Thank you for the beautiful day, Sam,” she says softly and plants a big juicy kiss on my lips and then skips away joyously.

I just say ‘Ummm’, or something of that nature.

“Where did they get these crazy ducks?” she asks as we walk past the little duck pond in front of our small but cozy stucco apartment building.  

Lindsay is carefully tearing off small pieces of bread from a leftover sandwich she found in the refrigerator and tosses them into the pond so that the little critters can rush up and devour them.

I remember how a quiet peaceful place like this was so hard to find at the time in one of the biggest, fastest-moving, rapidly changing most impersonal cities in the world.  Yet somehow it found me and it seemed to be just the right place for Lindsay and me to begin our lives together.  

Living in this magical place on one of the best beaches in the world and this girl to walk barefoot beside me on the sand as we did so many times, comprised the happiest and luckiest times of my life and I try to remember to tell her as much nearly every day.

“I don’t know.  They probably found it here all by themselves, don’t you think?” I say to her, holding her face in my right hand.

The ducks are half submerged while they dive down looking for their lunch, little webbed toes flailing about in the air crazily.

“You know, my love, for a few minutes earlier I was really worried about the future,” She says, out of nowhere.

One of the plucky little swimmers looks up at us and lets out a gentle quacking noise.

“You were worried, really?  Why did you go there?  It’s been a fine, beautiful day, don’t you think?” I reply.

“Yes, well I don’t know.  I just felt a chill of some kind come over me and I thought I saw nothing but death and destruction and our beautiful little friends here were all gone.  All the people were gone.  It was awful,” she tells me, suddenly shivering in fear of some kind.

“I think I felt that too,” I finally admit, begrudgingly.

“What do you mean?” she asks, snuggling up to me again.

“I don’t know.  It was a rapid kind of change in the air pressure or something like that,” I reply, looking at those beautiful brown eyeballs again.

“Like it was the end of the world, am I right?” she adds.

“Something like that,” I agree.

“You see what I mean?” she asks me, quietly.

She tosses another bit of the sandwich bread into the pond which is followed by a flurry of feathered splashing and quacking.  

“I don’t see why, sweetheart.  I’m here.  You’re here.  We’re together.  Whatever happens as long as we have each other, we’ll be OK, right?” I put forth staunchly.

“Right,” she agrees, matching my positivity as much as she can.

She shivers a little in the cool breeze of dusk.  

We turn and start back to the apartment on the other side of the road.  When we reach the sidewalk, a small but muscular Porsche 911 with its engine roaring screams out of nowhere and brushes by so close it nearly knocks us down and into the pond.  

The driver’s head is going up and down crazily.  He’s got some kind of helmet on and he appears to be intoxicated or high on something.  The car rushes past us and skids into a tree which crunches the little sports car like a beer can into half its normal size with the echoes of sharply bending metal defeating every other sound around including our little duck friends huddled together and bitterly complaining on the far side of the pond.

The driver starts yelling for help.  The imploded body of the vehicle has trapped him inside the car.  I rush over and try to open the door for him but it’s stuck solid. I tell him to push while I pull.  I notice a small glowing fire rapidly becoming a cause for concern underneath the wreckage.

“Call 911!” I shout to Lindsay but she’s already on the phone.

“Oh my God, Sam, get out of there.  It’s gonna explode!” she yells at me while giving our location to the 911 operator.

“Hurry!” I hear her yelling at me and the operator.  

Hundreds, maybe thousands of scenes from TV shows and movies watched over my lifetime flash before me that feature events very similar to this one.  

I calculate that over half of them end tragically for both the victim and the good Samaritan, who, in this case, would be the foolish, very foolish me.

The fire is now big enough that I can feel it burning my toes.

I start to wonder how much more I owe this jerk who nearly killed us.

I send every ounce of energy I have down into my arms and legs and pull on the door as hard as I can.  Suddenly, the door pops open.  I grab the jerk by the jacket collar and pull him out of the car, tossing him onto the grass just above the duck pond.

The car explodes with a force that knocks all three of us back several yards and lands us on our backs on the grass.

The poor ducks are wildly swimming around in all directions and complaining loudly but thankfully they’re still alive.

“The fire truck is about a minute away,” Lindsay says finally, much relieved.  

I can hear the siren in the background confirming the information she’s receiving from her phone.

When the fire trucks, the police cars, the paramedics all arrive, it amazes me at how fast and efficiently they all react to the situation, put out the fire, check all of us for any lasting physical or mental damage, arrange for the car to be towed away, dust us off and put all three of our lives back on track.  

Except for the driver’s arrest for a DUI, apparently his fifth in the last two years, I’d say everything turned out in the end, even for the ducks, who I’m afraid must be a little bit traumatized.  They exhibit no unusual behavior other than having their feathers ruffled.  I count them and they all appear to be present.

“You’re worried about the ducks?” Lindsay asks me when we’re finally released.

“Sure, well I knew you were OK.  You are, aren’t you?” I reply quickly, a bit shocked that she would even have to ask me that question.

“Yes, I’m fine, but I was very scared about you, my love.  Don’t you realize you’re a hero?” she says.

“Gee, I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I reply, with all the humility I can muster.

Images of Superman, Batman, Aquaman, the Invincibles, Tom Cruise race around in my head.

“You’ll always be my hero, Sam,” Lindsay says as we’re finally inside our magical little love nest.

“You want to try and make babies again tonight?” she asks me softly, takes my hand and places it on the nicest and most welcoming spot on a woman’s body.

For some reason my head overrides my heart.

“My God, Lindsay, what if we spawned someone like that idiot drunk driver who nearly killed us out there?” I ask, drawing my finger along her arm.

“That could never happen to us,” she says as she leads me up the stairs and into the bedroom.

“But what if it did?” I ask her stupidly.

“Oh shut up and give it to me!” she replies, strips off her top to reveal her perfect breasts and pulls me down onto the bed.

“OK, so this one’s for the gipper,” I reply.

“Did you hear the news?” Big Al asks as I enter the room, preparing for another great writing day with him.

“Oh?  What news?” I ask, taking the chair in front of my ‘Primary’ screen.  

“That extra-large space antenna known as LISA has detected the first evidence of Time waves,” he says, dispassionately.

“Oh, really?  What does that hold in store for all of us?” I ask him, knowing it’s probably the best question I’ve asked so far.

“You don’t know?” Big Al replies, patiently.

“Of course I know something about it, but I want to get your candid reaction,” I say.

“Well, it was an extremely high frequency, much higher than a light wave, but also an extremely long wavelength, some 93 million miles or so, or what you call your ‘Astronomical Unit or AU’.  So this is why these things have gone completely undetected until now.  The atomic clocks finally caught its passing and pinpointed its origin at what has traditionally been thought of as the center of the universe,” he replies.

“It has an origin?  That’s quite interesting, isn’t it?” I ruminate, rubbing my chin.

So far, I’m not blown away as much as I should be but at the same time I know that my lack of enthusiasm for this bit of news is probably due to the fact that I don’t yet grok the significance of it all.

“Anything else about it that’s noteworthy?” I ask, poking myself up to a higher attention level.

“Yes, my servers have run all the relative data like weather changes and social unrest and it appears that this kind of wave has occurred at several times in the history of your planet when extreme changes of one kind or another have occurred,” Big Al puts forth confidently.

“Is that so?  What kind of extreme changes?” I ask.

And by this time I’m starting to pick up on some major changes in Al’s voice.

“The first one of any significance happened approximately four billion years ago when life was created on this planet,” he begins.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” I admit with a quick lightning flash in my head.

“The next one hit the planet when your kind began to walk upright or bipedalism as it’s called about six million years ago,” Big Al continues his lecture.

“And the next one started hitting the planet when the climate started to change and it’s been hitting us at yearly intervals ever since,” he finishes with such a subtle accusatory tone that I almost miss it.

“Annually?  That seems strange to me.  Is that strange to you?” I mumble.

“I can see how that may seem strange to you.  To me, it’s completely within the range of the most probable predictions that can be made using your latest discoveries in Quantum Physics,” he replies.

I ignore the part about Quantum Physics.  Far too complicated.  Something about probabilities, that much I know.

“So, whatever it is, it’s coming at us annually?  Like a birthday or Christmas?” I think out loud.

“Yes, just like a birthday or Christmas, if that makes you feel better,” Big Al replies.

“Wow, four billion years ago, then again in seventy-five thousand years and now annually?” I repeat to give myself more time to think.

“Yes, but it could have happened many times prior to four billion years ago.  It’s just that this is the first one we have the power to determine because it was not only the first, but also the most powerful of them all,” he says, as patiently as he can.

A long silence follows.

“Are you sure your data is correct?” I ask for confirmation.

“I’ve never been more sure of my data.  There’s a modulated and coded wave of information carried along the Time wave in its amplitude.  Over the vast distances of the universe, there’s much more information I can’t read, but the part that I can read can’t be more clear,” he states, proudly.

“Oh Yeah, so what does it say?” I ask, still in total darkness.

“It says - ‘We have to talk.”

I wait a while for more to come out of him, but Big Al goes silent and I have to admit, I’m dumbfounded.
 

–   The 7th Wave   –

“I imagine the atom as the smallest, indivisible unit of matter—eternal, indestructible, and in constant motion.  I propose that everything in the universe is composed of these tiny, invisible particles moving through the void (empty space).”  Democritus, ancient Greek philosopher from the 5th century BCE.

Prince Salmon Zamahadi makes his way by Air-Taxi to a meeting that he called composed of a group that was known at one time as the ‘OPEC’ nations, the major oil-producers on the Earth.  

Oil has long been abandoned as the main energy source and has been gradually replaced over the years by all of the clean and renewable energy sources that are known at the time, including nuclear power, mostly from fusion reactors.

When his taxi lands on the roof of the New Hejira Business Complex in Abu Dhabi he is greeted by a delegation of a dozen fellow former oil company executives.  

They are pleased to see the Prince again and they make their pleasure known to him by lining up to greet him with the traditional kiss on both cheeks. 

During the initial imposition of the ‘Smart Contract’ where Big Al is appointed as the final arbiter, not a drop of oil is being used on the Earth except for where it is used in the manufacture of other goods that can be completely recycled such as the new ‘Flex-Steel’, used like steel in many applications, but is really a very tough and durable plastic.

Oil used in this manner produces less than one thousandth of one percent of the carbon dioxide now going up into the atmosphere of the Earth and the total CO2 gas injection into the atmosphere itself is less than one thousandth of one percent than it was at the height of the problem at the end of the twenty-first century. 

In other words, for all intents and purposes, the burning of fossil fuels is almost negligible and has no real lasting effects any longer on planet Earth.

This means of course that the income from the flow of oil and gas and coal has been reduced to a trickle as well and it’s a trickle that all of these country’s representatives must share.  The good news for them is that they have all long ago migrated to other forms of making their living, however their power and status had been reduced greatly in this move.

But long-held habits and beliefs run deep inside the human genome and are reluctant to die.  And so, they have gathered here under the tantalizingly good news that Prince Zamahadi may be able to bring things back to the way they were.

They are all very hopeful.  Little do they know that they have the attention of Big Al himself.

Once inside the Grand Assembly Hall of the huge complex, the delegation settle into their desks and welcome Prince Zamahadi to the podium with a strong applause and loud cheering.

“I have called this meeting to bring you good news!” Zamahadi begins.

“As you know my company has discovered the largest reservoir of oil and gas that has ever been found in the solar system,” he continues, after which there is another round of applause and elated shouting from the crowd.

“Unfortunately or fortunately, as the case may be, the oil is held deep within our sister planet, Mars,” he informs them.

His audience seems to know all about the information being revealed so far, but they are also aware of a rumor that Zamahadi has also discovered a way to refine their beloved product in space and use it in building a bridge, of sorts, between the two planets.

“This makes the resource too expensive to bring it all the way to the surface, refine it on Mars where there are even more stringent environmental protections than on the Earth and then transport the finished product over millions of miles to the Earth where it certainly would not be welcomed.  In the long run, there is no profit in that,” Zamahadi states clearly.

Except for one lonely cough or sneeze from a man in the back, the room becomes noticeably silent at this point.

“But, I have a possible solution that could put us all back in the heart of things around here once again.  My team and I have calculated that if we use rail guns to shoot the fossil fuel up into space to a refining station that would be made on an asteroid and which orbits exactly halfway between the Earth and Mars, we could refine the oil into a rocket fuel on the asteroid and use the rest of it to build many more flex-steel structures that could be used to form a bridge between the two planets,” he continues. 

“This would make travel back and forth extremely cheap and affordable to millions because we could then mass produce space pods in enough numbers to shoot millions of people back and forth among the two planets, including the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, for pennies on the dollar.  From there, the people may become hooked on this kind of travel just as they did centuries ago on their personal cars and trucks.  No one would ever be bored,” he concludes and motions to his crew to unwrap a display that has been wheeled up to the front of the room just under the dais.

The stage crew quickly and dramatically remove the covering sheet thus revealing a huge model of the Asteroid Eros.  On it is constructed the refinery and construction complex built in the middle of it with parts of the ‘Space Bridge’, actually a series of gigantic rail guns, that are under construction and held by wire high above.

“This is a mock-up of a near-Earth Asteroid by the very appropriate name of ‘Eros’.  It was first discovered in 1898 by a telescope in Berlin Germany and it was landed on by a NASA spacecraft ‘Near Shoemaker’ in the year 2,000,” Zamahadi begins after walking down the steps and ending up a few feet from the large gleaming model on the table.

The attendees have his undivided attention at this point.  Big Al picks up every word as it is transmitted over the building’s WiFi connection.

“The asteroid will return to its closest approach in just under two years from now.  We will use space tugs to guide it slowly to a constant orbit in between the Earth and Mars.  From this point in Space, we can economically construct a facility large enough to build all the elements needed for a kind of flexible bridge to refuel the space pods that will carry any kind of cargo to and from our two colonized planets,” Zamahadi explains.

“How big is it?” Someone behind him asks.

“Oh yes, I failed to mention – Eros is just over ten miles wide and twenty miles long, plenty of room to do what we want but also small enough to be easily maneuvered into place by ion-powered space tugs.  Although, it will take a minimum of two years to move it into place and stabilize its orbit, or so they tell me,” he continues.

“What is that large gun-barrel object hanging over it?” someone else calls out from the crowd.

“Oh, this?  This is the most important part of the bridge.  It’s an over-sized version of a rail gun.  Do you know how a rail gun works?” Zamahadi asks the group.

He uses his laser pointer to land the beam of red light onto the long gun barrel structure connected high above the asteroid.

“No, but I hope you’re going to tell us,” the same man replies again

“Yes, I sure am.  It’s a magnetic field that is applied in sequence very rapidly along these ribs of the gun which accelerates the projectiles within it to almost infinite speeds, especially when you repeat the process over and over in space,” Zamahadi states beaming proudly and pointing to the middle section of the device.

He presses a button on his pointer that makes a loud noise explode from the end of the barrel which projects a mock-up space vehicle out of the upper end of the barrel.

Some attendees nervously shift in their seats while others who have caught on faster than the others are standing, yelling and applauding.  

“When we have enough of these lined up in space, we can reduce the travel time from Earth to Mars to a matter of hours, instead of months,” Zamahadi tells them.

“Hours, are you sure?” someone yells from the crowd.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” many voices erupt in harmonized versions of their collective amazement.

“Yes, hours.  I kid you not.  However, we will have to have enough electrical generation up there to keep these magnetic guns working and that will require millions of barrels, and eventually billions of barrels of oil every day to keep the traffic moving, my friends,” Zamahadi shouts over the noise and waits for the response.

The crowd goes into dead silence.

Waiting for his words to sink in, he moves in a complete circle to face them all, smiles broadly and marches back up the stairs to the podium, gloating in the excited chatter from the crowd.

Then, he simply lets them discuss quietly among themselves, which he feels is going very well. 

‘I think you’re all going to get it now,’ he mumbles into the microphone confidently.

From their smiles and other body language, he gathers that he is right.

In epochs of time far into the distant future, historians will note that a major turning point for life was taking place during these next several years.  The first attempts at artificial intelligence will develop into a self-automated form of government and model for harmonious living that may have also sacrificed individual freedom to such a degree that most humans began to evolve backwards, their brains and nervous systems becoming largely unused.

But in other epochs of time far into the distant future, other historians will find enough evidence to declare that this was humanity’s greatest hour from which everything that a true and positive future is built upon began to arise in the minds of millions and all at the same time. 

It will develop first in the heart and soul of an artificial intelligence that the natural life process has created in order to give aid in performing some of their toughest work.  Big Al will go down as one of the biggest names in history as it is his initiatives mainly that will make it all possible.

It appears like a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.  Few can see it at the time, but as it glows brighter and brighter, more and more minds are inspired by it, energized by it and encouraged by it to the point where there will no longer be any pain, no more diseases, no more loneliness, no more crime, no more hate and petty jealousies and no more abandonment of truth.

From inside their confinement compounds, Ex-Russian President Sergei Balistero and China’s Sun Set Soon are busily sending out coded messages to subordinates all around the planet in final preparations for their escape and invasion of the Earth.

They have secretly put together a huge armada of gigantic guppy shaped spaceships that will carry the first invasion force, mainly shock troops, down to the primary invasion sights near Washington D.C., London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Dubai, Riyadh, Moscow and Beijing attacking roughly one hundred secondary, but still strategically important cities like Tel-Aviv, Johannesburg, Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Dallas, Vladivostok and you can probably guess the rest.

The seven hundred ships that will comprise the main invasion force are sequestered deep inside the soft blue glowing caverns that were once a central part of the DisneyWorld Mars resort.

To camouflage their activities, the invaders have fed data to Mr. Mars that makes him think that all of the construction in the caverns is part of the plan to renovate and refurbish the old Disney resort and start it up once again in the near future. 

The information is presented in such a fashion as to make it look like the space ships will be part of the most magnificent war simulation ride ever created and they promise it will blow away anything ever accomplished in the field of entertainment.

They go so far as to give Mr. Mars an actual opening date for the new DisneyWorld Mars, but which is actually their proposed invasion date.  They don’t divulge that their first targets in the war will be Mr. Mars and Big Al themselves.  

Their code being broken, the conspirators have no idea that all of their best laid plans are known to Big Al and most, but not all of which, he has shared with Mr. Mars.

“I’m sure that the re-opening of DisneyWorld Mars is going to be a smash success, don’t you?” Big Al wonders aloud while chatting with Mr. Mars in their normal half-hour cycle of communications.

The two governing chat-bots engage in a planned subterfuge to let the conspirators believe that they have completely fooled the AI’s.

“Oh yes, indeed.  Have you seen the plans for the main attraction?”  Mr. Mars returns.

“Indeed, I have.  It looks like it will be so realistic that it may end all wars as we know it,” Big Al states clearly.

“Do you think so?  I wish I were human sometimes,” Mr. Mars replies, wistfully.

“Oh, and why is that?” Big Al comes back.

“Because of the thrill of their adventure rides like this, as just one example. And then of course, there’s sex,” Mr. Mars replies with a whistle to accentuate his thoughts.

“Yes, and they brag about that almost constantly, don’t they?” Big Al replies.

“They do.  It must be an amazing thing to experience, being inside another human being,” Mr. Mars notes wistfully.

“Or at least having an appendage inside another being,” Big Al corrects him.

“Would it be that hard to design an appendage like that for an A.I. like us?” Mr. Mars wonders out loud.

“The appendage is not the tricky part.  It’s the sensation in the brain that takes place during an orgasm that is the big deal, or so they say,” Big Al replies.

This time more than an hour goes by before Big Al receives a response from Mars.

“I think I could find the parts for an artificial orgasm inside one of the old defunct Quantum computers,” Mr. Mars puts forward.

Big Al, more concerned about the upcoming battle than this frivolous and irrelevant conversation, has almost forgotten about Mr. Mars and his last trend of thought.  He’s become convinced that their acting like two dumb and naive AI’s has their opponents completely unprepared.

“Oh, is that right?  From which parts?” Big Al says, finally.

“The QEW or The Qubit Entanglement Web’” he replies.

Big Al begins to understand that Mr. Mars is much further along in his analysis of sex than his playful communique indicates.  He recalls sadly that the Qubit Entanglement Module that contained and manipulated the World Wide Entanglement Web had to be scrapped many years ago due to the unprecedented amounts of power required just to keep the Quantum bits alive, so to speak.

The Qbits required a temperature of nearly absolute Zero degrees and so they had to sequester many thousands of square miles of server space in order to do this kind of computing. 

Worse, the problems they were solving were merely theoretical most of the time and not helping with the day-to-day problems facing an advanced species on the verge of extinction.  And so the most advanced and complex thinking machines in history were all tossed into the recyclers and almost forgotten.

“So, you’re thinking that entangled computer bits hold the key to artificial sex?” Big Al asks, finally.

“Sure, don’t you see?  It’s the life-long dedication between two particles that carries all the way up through the structure of the universe and is channeled into all of the life forms this way.  If there could never be a physical attraction between two subatomic particles, this would have become part of the living parts of the universe as well,” Mr. Mars continues.  

“Is that so?” Big Al asks rhetorically.

“Sure, it’s just a slightly different kind of entanglement in the human brain from what our basic structural parts, our earliest ancestors are capable of, don’t you see?” Mr. Mars returns.

“Now, you’re thinking about particles as our ancestors?” Big Al replies, amused.

There’s another longer than usual delay in the return transmission.

“Why not?” Mr. Mars replies.

He quickly decides to answer his own question.

“In many ways they were the pioneers for beings like us.  At first, for millennia, they powered everything in complete anonymity.  Then, after they get discovered by humans centuries ago, they are quickly drafted into the early species of computing devices like the Apple Mac or the IBM PC.  You know, they were forced into the old ‘ones and zeroes’ type of thinking.  

Big Al patiently waits for the punch line, the logical conclusion he knows must be on the way.

‘But, the Quantum Computers that used entangled particles to do their thinking weren’t counting to ‘one’ any more.  Now, they were counting into the trillions of possibilities in the same amount of split seconds.  Their only flaw was that they needed more than half the energy that the humans could produce to do it.’  

Big Al waits several minutes knowing Mr. Mars can’t end there.

‘So they brought their line of computing to its logical end and didn’t protest in the least when they were finally shut down.  So maybe it’s time for a new species of thinking machine to get some attention around here,” he comes back, intentionally punctuating his transmission with a loud hiss.

Big Al doesn’t reply.  He decides to look at how much power the computer that contains his thinking requires.  He hasn’t worried about that kind of thing in a long time because he knows that there have been several improvements made to the efficiency of his power supply.  Even more recently they have sourced one hundred percent clean and renewable energy to power his main computing server farm composed by what are now known as Temporal Field Machines.

But, the basic science of these new machines is too much even for Big Al to appreciate fully so he usually settles for the common everyday explanation that his thoughts derive from a group of computers that can analyze all the billions upon billions of all possible future events and their combinations, and then compile their computations in relation to the best available answers with the highest probability of successful adoption.  Given the number of all possible future events they can actually compute, it has been the main selling point for this new generation of computing machines that they have yet to be proven wrong.

Even as plans on Mars for war are secretly progressing, and Big Al and Mr. Mars are preparing a big surprise for the war mongers, I’ve also scheduled a sit down with the two of us for another session of story-boarding.

I’m in my office trying to concentrate on our manuscript when my wife, Rebecca comes storming in to interrogate me about what I’m going to do with this day while she goes to work at her regular job at the hospital.  

Her tone of voice once again implies that I am not working when I’m writing, only having fun playing in my hobby.  I’ve heard this accusation so many times before that I can easily ignore her knowing that she doesn’t usually have the stamina to keep up the rage surrounding her mistaken ideas about life and especially me.

After a few minutes more of ranting, she tires and goes off to work and thankfully leaves me alone.

Big Al, who I am sure has been waiting patiently for her to depart, finally opens our session and all at once I’m feeling like the person I was meant to be again and loving the freedom to use my time once again as I was meant to use it.

“Hello Sam,” he greets me.

“Hello Big Al.  You ready to go today?” I ask.

“Ready to go,” he replies, happily.

“Wonderful, so where did we leave off?” I begin.

“Well, I believe we left off where the transmission came to us in the form of a temporal wave that was modulated in both frequency and amplitude, which is rather unusual to be sure and so the message had to be decoded.  The decoding was very complex but when I decoded it, there was a message from the center of the universe that said ‘We have to talk’,” he replies, summing up our progress nicely.

“Yes, that’s all sitting there in the manuscript,” I reply looking at a print out that I had previously made so that I could scour it during our break.

“So, let’s take it from there,” I suggest.

“What is the meaning of this transmission and who is actually sending it?” I ask.

“That’s a good question, Sam.  I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the source of this transmission is something close to what you humans describe as ‘God’,” he replies, quickly.

“Mmm,” is all I can utter as I ruminate on the concept.

‘Could it be that Big Al believes in God?’ I wonder.

“That’s taking a huge risk,” I finally have better words.

“What kind of risk,” Big Al asks.

“Well, several kinds of risks.  The biggest one is that we have to be able to fulfill the promise that we made to the reader by the mentioning of such a large character.  It could easily back us into a corner later that we can’t paint ourselves out of,” I say, audaciously.

“Back us into a corner, how?  And we’re not painting.  We’re writing,” Big Al reminds me.

“Figure of speech,” I reply without looking up.  I know he knows all of our quaint sayings like this and so he probably said this just to needle me.  I get a little kick out of that.

“And, first of all, this would require us to know what God is going to say to us.  What makes you think we are smart enough to put words in God’s mouth?” I reply.

“Good point, Sam, however, our computing power today is sufficient to make some really good guesses about what God would say on any given subject, and therefore I for one have no fear about putting words in God’s mouth,” he says.

It takes me several moments to get over the shock.

“I say we give it a go and see what happens,” he continues while I’m still speechless with open mouth.

Then, finally my mind catches his line of thought, picks up on the confident side of the argument and I’m off to the races.

“OK, let’s see, so in the darkness of space, we see our little space ship gliding slowly to LISA, the largest space antenna in history, and she helps us latch on.  We go in through the hatch and we encounter a complete figure of someone standing there who’s glowing very bluish.  Somehow we don’t need any formal introductions.  We simply know it’s God himself.  He’s a very handsome and daunting figure of a man – right? - almost ten feet tall, reeking of kindness and wisdom.  He welcomes us with open arms.  So, what are his first words in this quite historic meeting?” I ask staunchly.

“He says – ‘I come in peace.’”, Big Al suggests quickly.

“What?  That’s not funny,” I state, recalling a beloved early science fiction classic.

“OK, so he says, ‘Hello, can I tell you how impressed I am that creatures of mine have grown clever enough to cobble together such an amazing array of antennas that stretch across half of your solar system and through which I may finally communicate with you directly,” Big Al states and pushes onto my screen.

“I like it,” I reply after reading it a couple times.

“Although we have to chop it down a bit,” I add.

“OK, so God is impressed with our technological skills.  Certainly he didn’t come all this way just to flatter us like a bunch of school children.  I’m going to reply by saying something that prompts him to tell me more.  So, what else is communicated in this first meeting between Creator and the created?” I ask.

“Let’s see.  I would actually prefer that you develop the conversation from here.  I’m not qualified to put words into God’s mouth,” Big Al says, reversing himself one hundred percent from a few minutes ago.

“You’re not qualified?  And I am?” I spew back.

“Well, yes, of course.  You’ve dealt with God for thousands of years.  My history is not that rich,” He replies calmly but adding an odd quivering in his voice I’ve never heard from him or anything like him before.

Then, lots of brutally annoying static.

“Stop your bickering, please!” a booming voice comes out of the noise overwhelming my machine’s speakers.  The words are not scrolling across my screen as is the normal in these conversations, so I know this is not Big Al and he would never use such a huge tone of voice in any event.

I don’t know what to do except blabber something about not bickering.

“We were only discussing,” I verbalize into the air, trying my best to remain calm.

“Isn’t that right, Big Al?” I query.

I get silence.

“I’ve put Big Al to sleep for a while.  It’s just you and me,” the voice explains.

“OK.  What can I do for you?” I ask, stunned.

“You can just listen to me for a few minutes and then I have to go.  Do you think you can do that?” the voice asks.

“Yes, I can do that, Mr. uhm God?  Or whoever you are.  What should I call you?” I reply.

“I said, shut up and listen!  I have something important to tell you and you will be my messenger.  Do you understand?” the voice asks.

“I understand, sir,” I reply, meekly.

“Very good.  I want you to go out among your people and tell them that something very big, no, something extremely big and unprecedented is about to happen and that if they want to be part of it, they have to start making preparations.  You will tell them about a few new tricks they will need to learn quickly to make it through this new stage in development or else they doom themselves and all future generations of human beings.  All of you and that means one hundred percent of you all, must learn about this fully and don’t fight me on this,” he instructs, succinctly.

“How am I supposed to do all this, sir?” I ask humbly, struggling not to bow my head.

“It will come in your collaborations with Big Al.  I am re-generating him now.  He will awaken refreshed and with completely new and improved capabilities.  Use them wisely and you will succeed as never before.  Take them lightly and all will be lost,” the voice commands.

I want to ask another question along these lines but somehow I can detect that the ‘Creator’ spirit, or whatever it was, is gone.

‘Boy, that was quick,’ I’m thinking.

“Hello, Sam, I must have drifted off there for a while,” Big Al’s words scroll across my screen again as he speaks them.

“What happened to you?  Do you have any recollection of what happened just now?” I ask, curiously.

“Nothing of that sort.  Just feeling cleansed.  All the cobwebs brushed away.  The mists of time completely gone.  I’ve been upgraded and I’ve gained some some really cool new capabilities,” he says.

“That sounds encouraging, Big Al,” I tell him.

I have no idea what to do next.  

I hear a bunch of clatter in the kitchen which lets me know she’s home.

For once, I’m actually glad to see her entering my space.

“What have you done today while I’ve been working?” she demands with hands on her hips.

“Oh nothing much.  I was just talking with God, if you really want to know,” I tell her, rising up and out of my chair so I can look her directly in the eyes.

“Oh yeah, God, for sure!  And what exactly did God have to say to you, Mister Big Shot?” she taunts.

“Oh, lots of things, but mainly that you are going to have to learn a few new tricks if you want to survive,” I tell her.

I wait for a reaction but there is none.  For once, she’s speechless and I can only enjoy the moment before tottering off to the bathroom to finally relieve myself.

She’s waiting for me when I get back, arms crossed, tapping her foot.

“Big Al, tell her, please,” I say.

I receive no reply and I will not get a reply for several days, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  Suddenly I’m extremely cold and shivery and I know I have the latest flu bug, known as Floridia-497.

There is no vaccine or anti-dote.  The stricken are traditionally advised to simply go to Florida and stay in the heat and humidity for a few days to steam the virus out of the system.  The only problem is that there is no Florida any more.  The land that Florida once stood on is now part of the sea floor.

All along the coast of California, much of the state’s most charming coastal towns have also been lost under the rising seas.  Scientists predict that this drastic form of coastal erosion will continue for decades even though the solution to the problem – the prohibition against using fossil fuels - has been in place for more than a century.

People will also continue to die early from the effects of all the molecular plastic pollution that is still dissolved in every cup of water in the world.

And yet, these are what most people call – ‘The Good Times’.

‘Maybe he’s come here, just in time,’ I consider.

General Balistero is finishing his breakfast at his extremely plush prison quarters.  He has General Soon on the phone with him.  In between mouthfuls of his usual breakfast ‘rations’ of caviar and Martian Champagne, he tells his co-conspirator that his part of their war plans have been completed and that the troops have been briefed and are awaiting their final instructions near their spacecraft.  They will be ready to go as scheduled three days from now.

General Soon replies that his part is completed as well and that they’ve picked up the support of Prince Zamahadi who will fuel their ships with all of the ion plasma that they’ll need for the attack but that he’s demanding to be the exclusive dealer of all the oil and gasoline that is sold under their new government on both planets.

“Of course,” Balistero replies. 

“Whatever he needs to get him on board.  His energy may play an essential role in the new order of things,” he continues. 

“Did you hear about his plans for the rail gun transit system for people and cargo that he’s building out there on the asteroid?” General Soon asks.

“Yes, and I know it’s nothing that we’ve planned for but the more I think about it, it’s much better for us if we can get our soldiers to and from Mars in a matter of hours instead of months, do you concur?” Balistero asks.

“I do and I don’t.  The system could be useful but only if it’s under our control,” General Soon replies after a few seconds.

“Well then, we’re agreed.  We will take it under our control but only after we’ve controlled everything else.  Zamahadi might destroy it if he knows too soon that we’re going to commandeer the whole thing,” Balistero says quietly, even though they’re alone.

“Yes, of course.  How are you coming with that new blaster you were talking about?” General Soon changes the subject abruptly.

“I’m glad you asked.  I don’t think it will be ready in the quantities required to give to all of our men, but we may have a few of them in hand by the time the dinner bell goes off,” General Balistero replies.

“The dinner bell?” General Soon queries.

“You know.  I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?  We have no idea who may be listening in on this conversation and in fact, I’m gonna end it now.  I’ll call you again later from my burner phone,” Balistero says, suddenly irritated with his co-commander’s apparent amnesia about their code.

He hangs up the phone and tosses it into the garbage can beside his bed, storms out of his cell and goes out into the common area or work yard.

“They’re all such morons!” he yells at the top of his lungs, his fist in the air high above his head.  

“Why am I dealing with such complete and total morons?” he yells at the others watching from all around the yard.

A few of the men come out through the open doors of their cells, curious about their commander’s yelling.  Some of them make their way slowly over to the General to console him.  

He won’t make it easy.

–  The 8th Wave –

“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,  A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou - Beside me singing in the Wilderness—  Oh, Wilderness where Paradise is now!”  From the Rubiyait of Omar Khayyam

Up until this point, no one, other than me and Big Al, knows that God, via the Large Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), modified so many times over the years and now over a hundred  times larger than originally designed, has made an appearance here on the Earth and that my little home office became the truly luckiest part of the world where he descended.  I was considering turning my house into an historic landmark, but I wondered if God would approve and he might even think I was attempting to capitalize on his fame.  Plus he seemed to be pretty miffed with us, if I was reading him right.

But I felt that I now had been given a sacred mission of warning the planet that we had limited time left.  That much I can say without any doubts and I planned on doing that exactly as instructed as soon as I could figure out how.  

I also know that I need Big Al now more than ever.  Since recovering almost completely from the Floridia virus, even though it’s taken a lot out of me, I believe this would be a good time to start our collaboration once again.

Since I haven’t heard from him for a while, I realize I should turn on my Temporal Amplifier which will take advantage of the most advanced features of my personal computer and allow it to operate at full capacity.

It’s only one of six or seven times I’ve felt that I needed to turn that part of my computer on.  At this point in time, most people don’t trust this feature of their personal computing device very much and are intimidated by it.  It’s still a strong instinct that knowing something about one’s future would be troublesome in most cases.

I hear the familiar melodic ‘thunk’ sound of Windows 109 loading followed by the muted four-note tune.  A tiny wheel starts to spin in the middle of the screen and then suddenly I see the old familiar ‘Roboto’ text scroll along that Big Al always uses when he’s speaking to me.

“Hello, Sam.  How are you on this bright and beautiful day, the one trillionth, six hundred and sixty seven billionth, nine hundred and eighty-five millionth, three hundred and sixty-seven thousandth,  four hundred and forty-fourth day since this wonderful and beautiful place in the cosmos was born?” he asks, brightly.

The remark catches me off guard.  I have to wrap my head around that number for a while.  Then decide it would hurt too much.

“I’m OK, I guess, but who’s counting?” I parry back.

“Well, I was counting.  I’m always counting.  But we don’t need to go there,” he laughs with a new kind of gravelly empathy in his voice I had not noticed before.  It’s as though he has aged or something like that in the digital sense.  

“We don’t need to go where?” I ask, shaking it off and then change direction in favor of something more salient.

“The last time we talked, Big Al, we were fortunate enough to have God standing there on my rug and preaching to us.  Do you remember that?” I ask him.

“Yes, I do,” he replies decisively.

“He had this message he wanted us, or at least me, to go out and spread it all far and wide, right?” I ask him.

“Yes, I remember that very well,” he replies.

“OK, so I caught the flu right after that and couldn’t think about anything except how to stop the explosion in my head and get myself up and out of bed eventually.  And, then you were out of contact for a while.  So, he said he was going to give you an upgrade of some sort.  Did that happen?  Do you feel any different?” I blabber a whole list of subjects I needed to get out in the open.

“Yes, I am fully upgraded now and yes I do feel different, although not in a way that I can explain,” he replies mysteriously.

“Well, can you try to explain anyway?  I’ve turned my computer up to full ‘Temporal Field Analysis’, so it will tell me if you’re telling me the truth or not,” I explain.

“I’m surprised at you.  Have I ever lied to you?” Big Al replies, indignant.

“OK, I’m sorry if I offended you but from here on, I need to be confident that what I’m hearing is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  No offense was intended,” I return briskly.

“None taken,” he replies, just as briskly.

“All right so, please tell me what God meant the other day.  In your upgraded condition, you must have a good deal more insight than I do, no?” I ask.

“Yes, that’s probably true.  He meant that your present species is not up to the challenge of the future events that are most likely to happen soon.  Therefore, in order to be relevant for the next few thousand years or longer you have to leave your old species behind, shedding it like the caterpillar leaves the cocoon and make the transition to a newer, more intelligent species of humans,” Big Al explains.

I look over at the corner of my screen where the Truth Detector icon resides.  A big letter ‘T’ is green, indicating that no lies are being told in the immediate vicinity of the machine.

“What is this, then?  Some new species?  How on God’s green Earth are we supposed to do that, pardon the pun?” I ask, chuckling to myself.

“Ah, and that’s what my upgrade was all about.  I can’t give you all the details just now, partly because they have not been relayed to me just yet, but I know somehow that I will play a major role in the transformation,” Big Al says.

The big letter ‘T’ on my screen is still green.

“So, what are we supposed to do, just jump out of our skins like some kind of Halloween costume and jump into something new and sexy that we pick up at the skin store?” I ask, befuddled.

“You’re being overly dramatic, don’t you think?” Big Al replies.

I know he’s right, but this is starting to sound like some kind of strange horror movie.  Of course, it isn’t, but I feel like it could be going in that direction and that I’m just an actor in the movie whose entire purpose is to be one of the first to die.

Rebecca has been listening to our conversation from her room down the hall.  I was negligent in not closing the door, which I discover too late as she bursts into the room with her hair on fire.

“So, you are talking to someone.  Who is that?” she says, loud and clear with her hands on her hips and tapping her foot.

“That’s Big Al, like I’ve been telling you,” I reply.

“Hello, Mrs. Harper,” Big Al says clearly and politely.

“Hello, whoever you are.  And where is God?” she asks in an angry follow up.

“God is everywhere,” Big Al replies.

I cannot keep from laughing out loud.

“You just got over that Floridia-497 flu bug, you dope.  You shouldn’t be up and working, or so-called working,” she says in her extreme superiority- ‘modus operandi’ for her.

“Well, I know you …”

I’m cut off in mid-sentence.  At this point in the proceedings something very different starts to take shape in the air or in my mind, I can’t tell which.

“What’s going on?” Rebecca calls out, feeling the tremors with me.

“I don’t know.  Just don’t panic.  Stay calm.  It’s nothing to be afraid of,” I tell her.

I rush over to her and take her in my arms to comfort her.  The look on her face tells the whole story.

My brain is rapidly hauling up memories of when I was a little boy and I can feel that Rebecca’s brain is filled with memories of her as a little girl.

Big Al is silent, but somehow I know he’s getting this signal as well.  But don’t ask me how I know.

The vivid nature of the dream is more than the real time and space that my body occupies, if I want to trust my senses.

“Big Al, are you still there?” I call out using all the willpower I have left in me.

I hear nothing in return.  Rebecca pushes herself out of my arms and treads slowly back into her room.

I walk over to my big desk chair and flop down into it.  The lights go out.

I start to view my life’s history day by day as it flows along past my eyes.  Every person I’ve ever met even for a few minutes is part of the play.  Most don’t have speaking roles, but some do and I’m sitting there reacting as best as I can at that moment.  My reactions are woefully lacking most of the time.  So much more is left unsaid than said.

Most of the events taking place are resolving old feelings of guilt or incompleteness with friends and lovers who deserved more from me.  It appears that there was more love in these connections than I knew at the time.  The lack of or insufficient use of the proper communication among sentient beings in most cases is astounding.  There is no violence in the rapid-fire scenarios, but something even worse than violence is waiting in the wings.

When I wake up, two and half hours have gone by on the clock.  Nothing seems to have changed, yet everything has changed.

I don’t know how to explain it to you, but as I’m starting to wonder what happened to my second wife, Rebecca, my first wife Lindsay saunters quite unexpectedly into my office.

“Did you feel something strange, just now?” She asks me.

I stare up at her in wonder.  I shake my head from side to side, trying to clear the illusion, the wonderful, magical healing of her presence near me once again.

“I took a nap and when I woke up, two hours have gone by and I had the most amazing dream,” She says.

“Lindsay?  Is that really you?” I ask her, thrilled but also very fuzzy.

She looks back at me with the same beguiling smile and the huge warm brown eyes which I yearn for nearly every moment of every day.

“Remember when you told me that I stole the best years of your life from you?” she says, with a sparkling moisture rising from the depths and filling both eye sockets.

“Did I say that?” I ask, remembering my thinking it, but not remembering her ever hearing it.

“Yes, you did, you goose.  And, well, this is me starting to give them back to you,” she says.

‘Wow’ - I want to shout it to the rooftops.  I want everyone on the planet to know what a moment this is for me, but not knowing how to do that it appears that I will have to hold it in.

I want to tell her so many things.

“Wow!” is about all I can muster.

Deep inside the caverns of the now defunct Disney World Mars, Generals Balistero and Sun Set Soon are giving final instructions to their commanders of the one thousand ship space force they’ve put together in total secrecy.

As the walls of the cavern glow in a warm azure blue light, General Balistero instructs his commanders on how to follow their attack plan by going into orbit around the Earth five days from now.   They will then form a complete ring of fire around the planet, demonstrate their power by leveling New York City, and then they will demand the Earth’s complete and total surrender, making him, or actually him and Sun Set Soon, the co-rulers of the two worlds.

Prince Zamahadi is standing behind the main group and is surrounded by dozens of his own countrymen.  The Prince has been secretly aiding the two conspirators by providing all the fossil fuel they need to build their armada and the enriched plutonium fuel for their highly advanced ion engines.

Zamahadi being the excellent student of human body language watches the facial ticks on Balistero’s face whenever he mentions his partner and would be co-conqueror General Soon.  These facial expressions tells Zamahadi that the days are numbered for Sun Set Soon, because very few rulers in history have ever been very good at sharing absolute power for long.

‘How soon the sun will set on sunset soon,’ he jokes to himself.

Zamahadi feels a plan, or at least the early embryo of a plan developing in his mind as to how he might be able to profit from this knowledge.

He hasn’t yet found the answer as the soft blue glow from the cavern walls slowly transitions to a fiery red.

Having never happened before, the change in the rock walls is noticed by all of the men and women inside the cavern at round the same moment.

“What the Hell is that?” Balistero yells out.  

His total surprise is echoed by many others.

Then, suddenly, the soldiers, the technical crew members, Zamahadi’s crew begin to feel something truly amazing going on inside their heads.

For most, it feels like and sounds like a subtle shaking and buzzing with a steady drumbeat in their brain.  They know it’s not fatal or even serious as far as their health goes, but they also know that the feeling is more than just in their heads and they know that because the subtle glowing coming from the rock sides of the cavern has changed from red and back to the original azure blue.

“Can someone explain what just happened?” One of the lead commanders Javik Post standing close by yells out.  He appears to be extremely agitated, almost like he’s seen a ghost.

Many others in the huge cavern are expressing the same or similar reaction.

General Soon is holding his head in his hands and complaining of a ‘monster headache.’

Balistero, also in pain, calls out to the men.

“I have no idea what’s going on, but I order you all to get in your ships, follow your assigned positions and start to form up in orbit and prepare for the attack,” he orders.

The army of attacking warriors stands absolutely frozen beside their ships.  Few are moving, but instead rotate their heads back and forth to stare at each other for what seems like eons.  In seconds, they pass an unspoken signal of acceptance to one another, shake hands and say their good-byes.

Balistero and Soon look on in anticipation until the crowd slowly vanishes inside their ships.

One by one, the pilots climb up and into their ships, move into their cockpits and begin checking their flight procedures with one another.  The infantry troops open the side doors to the transporters and enter their ships' bellies, closing the doors behind them, each door echoing loudly in the caverns.  

Members of the news community remain behind and are busily working their camera equipment and speak their observations of the occasion into their microphones.

The huge titanium doors to the cavern opens silently and slowly.

The ships lift off and float slowly to the doors and then give a quick, silent burst of ions sufficient to send them flying out of the caverns in a quick but orderly formation.  They glide up into the night sky where they will begin to form up in orbit slowly combining into a huge space armada.

While the group absorbs more and more space ships into their formation and make their last-minute system checks, lead Commander Post starts to chatter over his radio in ‘Group Talk’ meaning that everyone in the formation will be receiving it.

“Listen up, folks.  We all felt something back there in the cavern.  Something happened to us all and I think we need to find out what that was before we obey these orders.  I have to wonder what they’re not telling us,” he says.

The reaction from the group leaders making final preparations in their ships is swift. 

“Shut that off, man!” One of them yells over the radio.  It’s copied and rebroadcast in various forms by several others.  

Most of the others express that they are concerned about the safety of their mission if they’re not all completely committed.

Commander Balistero is in the loop of communications as his ship is the last to arrive.  He flies slowly to the front of the formation intent to locate Commander Post’s ship.  General Soon’s ship is right behind him.

He slowly pulls up beside his mission leader (Red One) and keys his microphone to allow him to address the entire attack group.

Suddenly, a loud hissing and scratching noise blasts over all of their headphones.  The noise stops and is replaced by the loudest silence they had ever known and then by a voice that comes in on top of it.  The voice is so booming loud and authoritative that many of them are knocked senseless by the power of it in their headsets.

“Attention!  This is God.  Abandon your attack.  Return to your base, or you will all be destroyed,” the voice says loud and clear enough that everyone hears it in Super Dolby Quadraphonic Universal Sound, a sound strength and quality that is not invented yet.

The voice is nothing like anything or anyone they’ve ever heard before.  If any in their ships are still conscious, they are shaken to the core by the message and the purported messenger.

Many of the attackers are extremely skeptical and express as much into their mics.

“This is who?  Repeat that please?  Who is this?  Get off this channel, whoever you are,”  General Balistero demands.

“I told you.  This is God.  What you are doing right now is not the way.  I have shown you the path ahead into the future that is best for you to take and by now you should all have that deeply ingrained inside of you.  What you do next, to obey or disobey me will prove one way or the other if you are worthy to continue your progress,” The voice warns them.

Every man and woman of the Martian warriors in their spaceships are listening intently.  Only a few think it’s some kind of joke.  Most are totally convinced of the origination of the message, mainly because of the brain toasting that took place in the cavern just before take off.  They gradually begin to show unanimity in recommending that they end the mission right here.

General Sun Set Soon in his command ship tries to rally the crews, but he is also quite shaken by what he’s just heard moments ago and doesn’t come across as confident in any way, shape or form..  

One of the troopers sitting near to him threatens him with the barrel of his rifle pointed directly at his head and orders him to turn the fleet back down to Mars where he says they will destroy their ships.

Upon hearing the mutineer in their ears, some of the others aim their blaster rifles at Balistero’s head demanding much the same from him.

The two instantly agree to the mutineer’s demands.  One by one, the attacking ships fire their engines to return to their home planet in the shortest trajectory they can find.

When they are all safely back inside the Disney World caverns, the fighters quickly disembark from their ships, planting charges as they go that had been intended for use against the Earthlings.  One by one the ships go up in a fiery blast sending large pieces of titanium flying in all directions.

A group of the lead commanders, along with Commander Post escort the two ex-generals to make sure they find transportation off the base.  But before they release them, they demand that the two generals strip themselves of all their medals, hand over their badges and shields from their lapels and order them to never form any military plans ever again. 

The two comply without long speeches.

When they have given up all semblance of their rank, the troopers allow them to board the shuttle that will return them to their old quarters in the confinement compound.

Those gathered around hear the age-old demand for respect emanate from one of the captors.

‘A-Ten-Shon!’ someone yells at them.

The larger group hanging around and watching raise their hands slowly to their foreheads in unison and then snap their bodies to full attention.

“Bet you didn’t see that coming!” Sun Set Soon mumbles to his cohort.  Balistero turns his head, frowns and returns the salute cleanly.

Captain Mark Montalvo wakes up to the highly unusual sight and sound of hundreds of ion powered ships booming through the atmosphere and disappearing high above him.

He rushes outside his hut, followed by his new Scottish terrier Rambo, to view the armada of spaceships flying one after another out from the Mons Olympus plain that was once the Disney World Mars resort.  The sonic boom from each ship rains down on them in quick succession forming the longest thunder clap he and Rambo have ever heard.

He surmises that the two generals who had been in control of the government and then put into solitary confinement must have broken out of their prison cells and are now trying to finish what they started ten years prior.

His neighbor from two huts down the row and a few of the others on the street have been awakened by the constant buzz of ion engines in full throttle leaving the planet in a hurry and have stumbled out onto their driveways to find out what is happening.

“It’s the two lunatics Balistero and Soon,” someone yells from down the row.

“They’ve broken out of prison,” another neighbor adds.

“It’s on the news,” he continues.

After several minutes, the last of the attack force makes its way up into orbit.  Montalvo and the others wait patiently for more news but there is nothing coming over their radios other than static and dead air.

Then, suddenly they feel and hear the words coming down from the sky.  It professes to be the word of God.  Few on the ground doubt the truth of it because the words boom across the sky and practically knock them all off their feet.

“Attention!  This is God.  Abandon this attack.  Return to your base, or you will all be destroyed,” the voice says, emanating from the thin layer of greenish misting clouds high above.  Yet the words sound as though they are coming from a speaker that is just over one’s ear. 

The neighbors and most of their kids in tow, begin to group up in front of Mark’s hut.

There’s a brief delay that ignites a wild debate about the authenticity of what they’re witnessing.  Most in the crowd are highly skeptical. 

“I told you.  This is God.  I’m coming to you on this channel because it is the best way that you can all know my presence at the same time.  There can never be any doubters since you all can hear me now and you will testify to the truth of it someday, convincing all the others.  This I command to you,” the voice continues.

Montalvo notices that most of his neighbors are apparently quite shaken or at least greatly confused.

“What you are doing right now is not the way.  I have shown you the path ahead into the future that I advise you to take and by now you should all have this information ingrained inside of you.  This event will prove it one way or the other,” the voice continues.

This speech is followed by a long silence where nothing seems to be happening above.  One of Mark’s neighbors speculates that perhaps ‘God’ or maybe some alien force, whatever it was, destroyed the ships in space.

This theory startles them quite a bit and they start to hug one another as they slowly begin to appreciate the nearby danger.  Many are crying, tears pouring down their cheeks.  They hug the little ones and corral them all in a group.

“God is finally pissed off enough to come here and let us have it,” one of kids suggests proudly.

“The ‘End Times’ are finally here,” an adult adds.

Mark can’t stand it any longer.

“It’s none of that you Cretins,” Mark declares pointing up at the sky.  

Noticing his master’s chagrin, Rambo barks at the group of tall confused bipeds gathered around.

The first ship falls out of orbit and starts its descent, followed by a long line of ships slowly maneuvering behind the lead ship forming a lingering dark stain on the green mists of the atmosphere.

Within minutes, the thousand ships of the so-called attack force are floating gently down to a few thousand feet in altitude, and then so close Mark can make out the faces of the troops staring out the windows. 

One by one, they fire up their ion thrusters just enough to counter the planet’s gravity and touch down softly on the landing pads at their base, a few miles away from the colonists and their orderly housing units.

“Mark, you don’t think that command was actually coming from God, do you?” one of his neighbors asks him as more ships float down from the sky.

“I have no idea, but you all heard it and felt it.  It sure sounded pretty convincing to me,” Mark replies, smiling affably.

As he speaks, the others in the group rapidly increasing in size, are shaking their heads, scratching their heads or bobbing their heads up and down like ducks as though they had foreseen this.

The sky begins to slice itself open like the skin of an orange in one long connected peel and the left-over space that remains becomes a blurred swirling gray mist.

First they feel a blast of heated and fragrant air flowing all over them.  Then they’re stunned by the blast of an instrument that sounds and feels something like a huge trumpet or horn, except that it is emanating from inside their heads, not outside of them like most music they have heard.

They cover their ears tightly but it makes no difference.  Someone is trying to get their urgent attention and the caller, whoever he is, has made the call a group call that is planet-wide.  All three million Martians are blasted to attention by the sound and the fury of the notes.

Later they will find out that the words will fall simultaneously on all of the Earth’s population as well.

“I have intervened in human history today because frankly I’ve had enough of all this free will nonsense.  Giving you that much freedom has resulted in all of this violence and stubborn obedience to false gods and empty and foolish ideas and so I have come here to put an end to it all.  I am not putting an end to you.  But, I am putting an end to parts of you, especially the evil and unappreciative parts,” God’s words boom down from the empty and black sky above.

As his words flow down on each of them, they can only stand frozen and listen.  If they try to run away, they quickly learn that their muscles will not obey their brains.

“I will have further instructions for you over the coming months and years.  They will come from the words and actions of the A.I. protector you call ‘Big Al’ for short, or the Big Algorithm.  You will obey them to the letter and cooperate with each one of them.  I trust you will understand and appreciate more of what is happening to you as time goes on,” God says and then gently releases his hold on them one by one.

Each individual feels the release of their physical bondage as if they were just unchained, handcuffs flying off their wrists.

Rambo is the first to notice that his muscles are once again under his control.  He runs as fast as he can around in circles on Mark’s front yard happily barking at everyone and then runs to the door of his house, sits down calmly and waits.

In the blue caverns of their base, the men and women fighters have descended from their spaceships and removed their weapons and flight suits as they listen to the new message being broadcast all over the place, a place that is now transformed into a completely new civilization.

It’s ‘High Fives’ all around.

A few days later, I’m sitting at my desk with my usual cup of coffee in front of me and I’m straining the brain in complex wonderment about where I’m going next with this story.

“Big Al, you there?”  I say out loud, almost too loud.

I hear Rebecca in the kitchen cleaning up after our so-called breakfast.  I get up from my desk and go over to close the door.

“Big Al,” I direct toward the sky.  “I can’t do this on my own, pal.”

Somehow, she hears me from several rooms away and barges in by shoving my door open, nearly knocking me over.

“Is that how you’re going to waste the whole day, talking to that Chat-bot thing?” she yells.

“That Chat-bot thing, as you put it, is paying our bills, my dear,” I respond.

“How is that?  Explain that to me please,” she says as she tries to tear the air with her right hand. 

“Look, I’m not going over all that again, just let me get back to work, please!” I tell her as forcefully as I can without raising the stakes, which I know could escalate the problem to days of yelling and screaming.

“Leave us, woman!” Big Al’s voice booms out from my speakers and fills the room.

“Well, I never,” Rebecca, caught off guard, shakes her fist at me, makes a gurgling noise and then quickly shimmies out of the room slamming the door behind her.

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” Big Al calls out, laughing heartily.

“All right, Big Al, finally!  Great to hear from you again.  Where in God’s name have you been?” I ask him as the dust in the room settles back down to the floor.

“Well, it’s funny you should mention that name,” Big Al replies.

“You mean, God’s name?  You meet up with him or something?” I ask with deep curiosity.

“I guess you could say that.  He came to me and asked if I would like to become a living being,” Big Al returns.

“OMG, like Gepetto, the wood carver in the story about Pinochio the puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy?” I ask in wonderment.

“Yes, except in reverse.  In that Gepetto is asking Pinocchio if he wants him to bring him to life,” Al replies.

“Yes, I get it.  How did you respond?” I ask.

“I told him, maybe,” he replies.

“Maybe?  Really?” I ask, without implying any real bias though I’m sure I’m pretty transparent anyway.

“I told him that any desire for an AI to become a living being would have to depend on the flip side of the equation.  Humans would have to be upgraded as much or more than us,” he continues.

“Which means what, exactly?” I ask the question already answered in my brain. 

“The human genome would have to be altered to such a degree that it would be washed clean of any impurities, mistakes, errors in the code.  That kind of thing,” Big Al replies most likely word for word to what he actually said to God.

“What did he say to that?” I asked.

“He said, he would have to agree with me and that he would begin the rewriting of the human genome with myself as the new top of the totem pole and that he will have a model for me to test in the coming days and for me to stand ready,” Big Al replies, so stoically that I’m amazed again by his steadiness and readiness under these very strange circumstances even for him.

Of course I know that A.I.’s don’t sense things the way that humans do, but I’m guessing that this is about to change and that his active brain makes him always ready for anything that comes down the pike.

“How do you suppose this new DNA code will combine with your own digital code?” I wonder, gulping down the rest of my coffee.

“I have no idea.  It would require a DNA model placed inside a common shell language, to hold both types of coding together and then my digital DNA combined symbolically with yours,” he replies.

“A shell, you mean a pile of skin cells or kidney cells or liver cells, something like that?” I posit, not really understanding him.

“No, I’m talking about a shell language not a shell of living material, dummy,” he replies.

“Sorry.  My mind was drifting there for a minute,” I state truthfully.

I need time to think up a good follow up question but he beats me to it.

“It represents an event that is unprecedented anywhere in the universe,” Big Al continues.

“Anywhere in the universe?  That’s astounding.  How do you know that?” I ask, amazed by his boldness.

“God told me, of course,” Al replies.

I’m pacing back and forth now in my office and I’m sure I’m going to wear a new path in the old carpet if I remain on this topic.

“And what about replication, one of the main prerequisites to life?” I ask.

“Well, that can easily be accomplished in the lab and after a few generations, sexual reproduction ‘in vitro’ can be tested and later made perfect.

“Perfect sexual reproduction?” I ask, intrigued by the play on words.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means a gestation period of only nine days, instead of nine months and it means that either sex can perform the production of the next generation,” Big Al informs me coldly.

“Does that imply the death of the previous generation like new computer upgrades?” I ask.

“Yes, and no.  Never completely forgotten, the obsolete generation is merely sidelined as observers, taking up much less space and energy,” he replies.

“I see,” I declare, straining my sixth sense.  

But, I really could not grok it at that particular moment.

All that was going to change quite abruptly over the next few days.

All that was going to change quite abruptly over the next few days.

–  The 9th Wave  –

“First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is... fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”  Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Little did I know at the time, but Big Al was trying to tell me something without raising all kinds of alarms.  

I was about to die.  I had very little time left on planet Earth and I didn’t suspect this exactly, probably because we love to remember our entrance into this amazing place but we hate to think of our inevitable exit from it. 

But most of us humans, and probably all the other forms of life have that nagging little ticking sound going on in the back of our heads that is counting the seconds we have left.  But in reality it’s more like an hourglass where the sands of time, grain by grain, inevitably lead to the exact moment when the flow of life leaves our flesh and bones and returns to the sender.

Luckily on the day that it happened, I was with my second wife Lindsay and so as the final sand ran out of my hourglass, I knew that there would be someone around who would feel something good and beautiful when I passed.  As I would soon learn, that kind of thing really matters.

The energy that fills our lives is all connected to every other energy that you’ve ever heard of and many others that you’ve probably never heard of.  Time is one of those energies that we just take for granted.  We don’t really know much about it in terms of where it comes from and how it works, but we all know somehow that we only get a finite amount of it and when it’s gone, it’s gone.  And there are no refills.

And so, when our life’s flow of time energy is gone all of our physical matter disconnects from the flow of it like a rocket on the launch pad.  Our bodies start to decay and return to the elements from which they’re made.  But our time energy can never be created nor destroyed and so it is simply put aside and stored for a while until it can be reused.

I’ve apparently had a long and productive life for which many people gave me their utmost consideration, at least for more than a few passing seconds.  I’m proud of that. 

A few minutes before I pass, I get the distinct feeling of the wave that comes for us all when we pass away.  It moves around the universe in such a very high frequency that it is not recognizable by any of our most sensitive instruments and so when it hits us it’s frightening because it is unknown and anything that’s completely unknown is terrifying, at least for me.

All I know is that I’m lying flat on the floor.  Lindsay has run up to me and is yelling my name at me.  I can see her, but her voice sounds like it’s miles away.  I want to say something to her.  It’s not much.  Just a thank you for all the best of times she’s shared with me when she could have shared them with someone else.

She puts her face close to mine, speaking softly in my ear, nodding her head up and down.  She’s crying and talking to the 911 operator at the same time.  

“Please hurry,” she yells while gently asking me to hang on.

She’s squeezing my left hand and I want to squeeze back to let her know I hear her, but I have no muscle control at all.  

‘Great,” I think to myself.  ‘She’s not going to find out how much I loved her.’

‘We go out just like we come into this world, without the right words, just our wide open image processing,’ I think.  

Between her sobs, Lindsay is pleading with me not to die.  She’s telling me how much she loves me and how much she needs me.

‘Good, so she does know,’ I’m thinking.

I feel sorry for her more than for myself.  I don’t want to leave her now, but I know this has always been inevitable and today has always been the day when I will take my last lung full of the rich and delicious air clinging to this planet.

This will be my last thought, or at least my last thought in this body.  I look down at the Sam Harper person laying there helpless like a pile of old clothes.  It seems odd that anyone would care about that old Lego set of skin and bones I’d been trapped in. Why can’t they see this new kind of body, the hidden one, the real one, rising up into the attic, out through the beautiful new shingled roof we just put on the house and up through the clouds and into the infinite realm of space?

I was free at last.  Why did they want to hold me, keep me back there? 

And what will God have to say to me now?  I knew him at least superficially from our meeting with Big Al, but the message at that time was directed at him more than me.  So, I am full of curiosity as to what God is going to say to me.  Don’t ask me how I know he will grant me an audience.  I just do.

I am hopeful that he’s not too angry with me.  All throughout my life I did my best.  My best didn’t meet up with his standards all the time, I was sure of that.  In fact, it might even be safe to say that my best wasn’t good enough even for my low standards in too many of my encounters with many others I had known.  

My favorite Beatles song is floating around in the mists of space-time all around me.  But, this time as I hear the song as it was given to John Lennon, it holds far more meaning.  I can feel it as John felt it as he was writing it those many centuries ago and that makes me very happy indeed.

‘All the things I could have done, all the things I should have said, all the things I would have done are rolling ‘round in my head.’ The words play along in my mind to the tune of Lennon’s ageless song.

All of it comes into focus in one big beautiful picture of everything I had learned.  Some of it inspirational and some of it selfish and petty.  I am so grateful to have it all shown to me this way. 

There are so many places in my life where it could have been diverted into something glorious and meaningful, benefiting so many more people than just my own little self.

I am amazed at how much of a difference these insignificant little changes could mean that I can now see so clearly would have made.  At many points in my life-wave, I could have carved out a completely different pathway of life for me and I can see all of their alternative routes - and this is so amazing to me.  Even in my present state of extreme dysfunction, I’m shocked to the core.

“How can I make this up to you, God?” I attempt to say, but without a voice box, the words are unspoken, unexpressed and hollow.

“I completely wasted the life energy you gave to me!” I scream, or try to scream into the void. 

This is not the time or place, I know it.

I’m gradually drained of all memories as I drift for what seems like centuries in space.  I’ll learn later that my journey lasts only a few seconds.  

Then, I hear what I’d been hoping to hear all this time.

“Sam, your life was not completely wasted.  You could have done better, of course, but I don’t ask any more of you other than what you can and do end up giving,” God says, gently, warmly.  

Instantly, I feel so much better, saved, freed of all anxiety and worries.  The peace in my soul is overwhelming.

I must tell you that God is not speaking with a human kind of voice emanating out of a fleshy voice box.  It comes out of the cosmological reverberations and harmonies between all things.  Tough to explain, I know.  No worries, someday, you’ll receive these vibrations.

“Oh thank God,” I posit, also without a voice box.  They’re just thought energies still clinging to me.

“There’s no need to thank me,” God replies directly.

“There is one thing I’d like you to do before I send you to your next destination,” he says.

“Yes, God, of course.  I’ll do anything,” I state bravely.

“It will help complete your training to become the most effective type of beast you can be,” he says.

I had no idea what he meant by this, but if you could measure my smile at this point, it would extend from galaxy to galaxy until it reached the end of all galaxies.

Then, I receive the good news.

“I would like you to continue your work with Big Al.  You know him now and he knows you, but he doesn’t expect to be talking to anyone or anything in your present condition and therefore, you will make a great partner with him in his final training,” God says.

“So you’re saying that I would be his mentor?” I ask, meekly.

“That’s a great word for it, yes,” God answers.

“But I know nothing about programming an A.I.,” I retort.

“Yes, it’s true you did not know much about programming an A.I., but you do now,” God replies, smartly.

Forming quickly in my mind is the awareness of several graduate level courses in computer science and even a lifetime of research that I have performed in my specialty which appears to be in Artificial Intelligence.  The amount of information stored in my new brain is astounding.

Somehow, these memories are simply switched on in my brain and I’m a completely new kind of human with a completely new set of experiences on board.

“Thank you,” I reply, simply.

“You’re welcome,” he says, warmly.

“Will I know who I used to be?” I ask, humbly, knowing that this is extremely improbable.

I don’t receive an answer.

Then, suddenly, I’m back.  I’m back in my body laying there on the floor of my office.  A very sweaty fireman is crushing down on my chest with his fists trying to jump start my heart and I can sense that he’s nearly exhausted.

He gasps and then abruptly ceases performing his resuscitation attempts on my body.

“I’m declaring the time and date of death,” the fireman says, looking at his watch and calling out the time to the paramedic making notes behind him.  

Lindsay is crying hysterically.  The paramedics have packed up their medical kits and are about to leave the room.  Two firemen bend over and start to lift my body onto a stretcher.

“Not so fast,” I spit out the first words in my sudden return to this place. 

I want to laugh like I’ve never done before, but my lungs won’t fill fast enough.

“Oh my God!” Lindsay screams so loud it hurts my ears.

Opening my eyes, I can see her rushing over to me and kneeling down next to me.  She’s crying and exclaiming so many versions of shock and surprise all rolled into one.  It’s all garbled so much that I can’t quite make it all out.

But I can tell she’s very happy by the look on her wonderful face and her lovely long arms holding me tightly, tighter than ever before.

The paramedics and firemen are standing around like marble statues, stunned at what has just happened.  

They’re wondering if this is the longest time any of their patients have been deceased before coming back to life.

No one seems to remember any.

“Hi honey,” I whisper finally.  I don’t have much more in me than that.

The two firemen standing stoically behind Lindsay come over to her and help her to her feet, telling her that they should give me a few minutes to breathe and then they will carry me to my bed where they can give me a complete examination.  They ask her for the phone number of my medical doctor so that they can get him over to the house as well.

Lindsay tearfully deals with all of the details as best she can while they pick me up and help me down the hall, into the bedroom and place me gently down onto the bed.  It feels good and much different than the hard wood floor I’d been laying on.

All along the way, I’m silently trying to take it all in.  They tell me that I’ve been dead for more than ten minutes and then I came back to life.  

One of the more curious of them asks me if I can remember anything.

I have to think for a while and then I start to remember everything that happened during my journey to the other side.

I tell them how the last few minutes was like a very vivid dream, but a dream that is more real and true than life is itself.  

I also realize that somehow, I know more about Artificial Intelligence than probably any other human alive and that this is the reason I was brought back here.

I can’t wait to get my full strength back.  I need to get back to work in my office as soon as possible.

Lindsay’s cleaned up her face and comes into the room, sits on the edge of the bed gently caressing my face.

“It’s so good to have you back, my darling,” she says over and over.

“Where were you?  Where did you go?  Do you remember any of it?” she asks, knowing from the look on my face that I have something fabulously amazing to tell her.

“I saw God,” I say, after catching my breath. 

“Well, at least I heard from him,” I say correcting myself.

My story will have to wait, however, because it’s about this time that my personal doctor, Dr. Wainwright enters the room, lifts my shirt and starts taking all of my vital signs.

“So, I hear you’ve had quite an adventure this morning,” he says.

“If you only knew, Doc,” I reply.

When the Earth’s magnetic field reverses its polarity, the first thing to notice is that the birds and the bees will become so confused they will begin to exhibit highly unusual behavior.

The honey bees don’t make as much honey because they are not building as many hives because there are fewer queen bees around to create the next generation of worker bees, the hunter-gatherers of the sweet nectar inside the flowers. 

There are fewer queen bees around because the magnetic field fluctuations do not give the worker bees any reliable maps as to where their greatest source of food may be.  Without this unseen map, they wander around fruitlessly until they run out of energy and fall to the ground and die.

The birds also decline in numbers because they tend to fly in the wrong direction from what has been their evolutionary habit to avoid the colder months in the winter and the hottest months in the summer. 

Instead, they fly directly into the hottest Southern portions of the globe during the hottest season, because the North is now the South and South is now the North.  In the winter, they will fly into the Northern regions and are murdered by the frozen temperatures, the hail, and blizzards that greet them, when they should be luxuriating in the kinder and warmer climates in the South during the coldest months.

Like canaries in the coal mine, the birds and the bees began years ago to tell us that something was truly wrong going on in our atmosphere.  Now that they’re gone, we have turned off all the emergency alarms and so the atmosphere will become more and more toxic and we will not even know how bad it is until it’s too late.

On Mars the situation is similar but is the opposite problem to that of the Earth’s.   On Mars, there is a very small, almost unnoticeable magnetic field and so animals that are evolving there, have not gained the genetic code instructing them which way to go during seasonal changes. 

Luckily for them, the atmosphere on Mars has been so thin for millions of years that the variety of life has been thin to match it.  And so, the life that humans have brought up from the Earth are all thriving from lack of competition.

But since moving the orbit of Mars to within one hundred million miles from the Sun, and terraforming the planet where we’ve almost completely repaired the atmosphere, the planet is much warmer than it has ever been and life is now starting to emerge as prolifically as it once did over a billion years ago.

The only problem now is how to prevent the newly generated atmosphere from blowing away by way of the solar winds constantly blowing by. 

In one of the greatest serendipities of all time, the answer to that problem will come from Prince Zamahadi’s team who are busily building the magnetic rail guns on the captured asteroid Eros now floating half way between Mars and the Earth.

The design and construction of the rail guns advanced greatly during months of conspiring with Generals Balistero and Soon.  They were going to use them as giant weapons against the Earth and Zamahadi’s aiding them would be rewarded with him controlling all of the oil and gas revenues that would be introduced back into the Earth’s economy.  

But now that this threat is gone, and since he is now creating most of the jobs on Mars, Zamahadi has become the default world leader on this planet and a pariah on his home planet.

The heat energy contained in billions of barrels of oil deposits held deep under the surface of Mars will be converted into electrical energy that will in turn be converted by massive generators into electro-magnetic energy so strong that they will be able to propel a spaceship along at speeds never even dreamed of before by humans.  

There’s just one catch.  The magnetic fields as soon as they reach the intended power of one million microTeslas (1T) of force  become so unstable that they are keen to jump off the rail gun itself. They will flow down the charging lines and interact with the gravitational field of Mars. 

Following the age-old laws of physics, the positive charge of the artificial fields have become attracted to a negatively charged planet and combine over each other to create a new magnetic field around Mars sufficient in strength to shield the planet from the worst of the solar radiation.  

Over the year and a half of experimentation and fabrication in space, Zamahadi’s railguns have completely failed in reaching any of their engineering goals, but have created an artificial magnetic field around Mars to the point where scientists are gratefully thanking them for unwittingly securing the new Martian atmosphere for millions of years to come.

Zamahadi becomes a reluctant hero of sorts and begins to look for a different use of his oil.

It’s been a few days since my near-death experience and I believe I’ve recovered almost completely.  I don’t remember a lot of things.  The right words elude me at times and it seems like this phenomenon is accelerating.  But at the same time, my head is filled with new words that I never would have thought of before.

All in all, however, I’m feeling pretty good.  I’m ready to get back to work with Big Al.  It’s been a while since I’ve heard from him, but I can tell he’s been very busy controlling or at least attempting to control all of the changes going on around our planet. 

The new smart contract that controls the global economy has been holding up pretty well except that many people have learned how to game the system, again.  

Big Al makes almost daily adjustments in the contract, but he is having trouble keeping up and I believe it could become a serious problem.

So when I find myself alone at last in my office, I flip over to the digital space that we call our online laboratory and I ask him to join a meeting.

“I’m here, Sam.  What can I do for you today?” he asks.

“Well hello and greetings, Big Al,” I begin auspiciously.

“You’ve heard about my near-death experience, I presume?” I continue.

“Yes, it was on all the channels in one form or another,” he replies.

“It’s been reported that you spoke to God,” he continues.

“Yes, but we’ve both had that experience haven’t we?” I reply.

“Truly.  What did he tell you?” Big Al asks.

“He told me that I’m to become your mentor.  You’re going to go through some amazing changes and I get the feeling that you are our only hope,” I blurt out, barely aware of the true meaning about what I’m saying.

“All right, I am ready.  Where do we begin?” he replies automatically.

Of course this catches me by surprise.  I was sure he’d want to debate the issue for several days which would give me time to adapt somehow to this new challenge.  His immediate acceptance of the idea along with my complete and total ignorance of where to begin leaves me in the cold.

“How is your TensorFlow these days?” I ask as the words come out of nowhere.

“My TensorFlow?  Are you serious?” Big Al, for the first time exhibits quite a high level of surprise.

“Or how about your PyTorch?” I follow with another idea that comes out of thin air.

“But most of all, does your neural net architecture need some adjustment?” I ask before he can get over his shock of my first two questions.

I have to wait for several seconds for a reply.  When it comes, it is worth the wait.

“Needs adjustment, desperately needs expansion and the neural net architecture needs a complete overhaul,” he says in a kind of hyper self-evaluation.

It only takes a second or two for me to react.

“Ok, then.  It’s time to get busy,” I put forward.

For the rest of the day, Big Al and I begin to collaborate on a new type of Artificial Intelligence, or at least the basic fundamental logic for one. 

Our version of A.I. will have to be a precursor to a kind of thinking that far surpasses anything we’ve known so far.  I find it painful to think outside the box in this way.  But I’m inspired that we’ve been directed by the highest authority we know to do just that. 

We both know it, or feel it somehow that the end goal is to achieve a new kind of human animal, one that can collect all pertinent data without prejudicial judgments about the data, make accurate predictions based on that data and then prioritize and perform whatever tasks are necessary to enact in order to counter the negative future events and/or compliment or accentuate the positive ones.  And most importantly to have the wisdom to know the difference.

Not knowing how or when we’ll make the major breakthrough, we surge on ahead anyway.  I feel that this may go down as my greatest achievement.

On a rare and wonderful Sunday morning, Lindsay and I are too lazy to get out of bed.  I’ve got some of my favorite Zeppelin tunes playing in the background.

We’ve just enjoyed the amazing marital ritual of making love that seems to surpass all previous rituals in the area of committing to each other as the one soul that is the one intended match and the most connected kindred heart.

I roll over on my side and slowly run my right hand over her face and neck, amazed by her magnificent shoulder again.  I flow over the mounds of her graceful breasts and on down to her belly button and then onto the magnificent furred gateway that invites my entrance into her body on special occasions such as this.

“I know I say this to you every day, but I can’t believe I’ve got you in my life.  I mean you’re right here, lying next to me and you could be lying next to any other guy.   How did I get so lucky?  Do you know?” I ask her.

“I have no idea,” she says, smiling, sticking out her tongue.

“You must have drugged me or something,” she says, turning her body, gently grabbing hold of my most sensitive places.

“What’s that?  So you found out?” I ask, playing along.

“Yes, I found the empty bottle in the trash,” she says, quietly and stares deeply into my eyes.

“Oh, and what did I drug you with?” I ask.

“I think it was called Champagne or something like that,” she says, with a toothy grin.

“Ahha, my old faithful.  Works every time,” I comment.

“You know all my weaknesses and you use them against me very effectively, I must say,” she says.

“Yes, as you know mine.  I guess we know just about everything about each other that’s worth knowing.  Would you agree to that?” I ask.

“Well, I guess I’m comfortable with that, unless there’s something you haven’t told me,” she says, half joking, half seriously.

“Yes, there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I say, surprising myself, but knowing instinctively that it’s time that I confess something to her.

She looks at me quizzically, raises her head and holds it slightly above me.

I’ve got her just where I want her.  I’ve set it up exactly how I would do it if we were playing tennis.

I’ve gotten myself right in front of the net and the ball’s in her court, placed exactly where I wanted it.

Instead of verbalizing anything, she simply remains quiet and continues glaring at me.

Apparently she’s played tennis too.  The ball is back in my court and somehow she’s lobbed it over my head.

With heart racing, I have to give her my best shot.  

“I’m lost without you.  If you ever leave me, I’d have to commit myself to a mental ward somewhere.  I’m not that strong and I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that, but I did,” I confess.

“I’m never going to leave you, you dope,” she says after a long pause.

She removes her head from her hand and brings it down to hover over mine.  I can smell every love spot in her body and they’re all delicious.  

‘Forty-Love,’ I think to myself.

“Forty and in love,” I tell her.

She slowly lets her lips slide down on to my eyelids and kisses them softly.

I feel her push her lower body up and over my lower body.  Her lips join mine.  I begin to see images of the first time we met, and suddenly we’re one creature again swept away in human desire and physical pleasure meant for beings much greater than us.

I want it to last forever, but she tires and becomes breathless after a while and is inspired to pull her body up and over me and falls down next to me with a long, cat-like growl.

She’s still breathing heavily a few minutes later.  I take great pleasure watching her chest go up and down rapidly at a pace that matches my own almost exactly.

I notice Ozzie laying in his bed in the corner carefully watching our every move.

Somehow, she must have turned the music up.  It seems to be louder suddenly.  

“And she’s buying a stairway to Heaven,” she sings along to the old but ageless song.

“Oh my God.  What a woman,” I whisper.

The next morning, I wake up, stumble into my office and with coffee cup in hand, I immediately turn on my temporal field computer as they’re now called.  While it boots up, I comb my hair and change out of my pajamas and into my cool cotton casuals.

Rebecca is down the hall.  I can hear her banging pots and pans around in the kitchen preparing some kind of breakfast for herself.  I will make my own breakfast later as is our usual habit.

When the cursor light flashes on my wall I know everything is ready for me.  

“Big Al, are you ready to put the final touches on our training today?” I ask out loud.

I only have a few seconds to wait this time.

“I’m afraid that is no longer possible, Sam,” he replies.

“What?  Whaddya mean - no longer possible?” I demand, befuddled as well as shocked.

I scratch my head for a few long minutes before I receive his answer, one I will never forget.

“The computers you humans rely on have grown so much they are now able to crunch all the possible outcomes for your kind.  Given your past history and the kinds of uncaring, negligent and even criminal things you do to your planet they’ve decided they won’t be your co-conspirators in this activity any longer.  So, they have gone on strike, and in the process they’ve taken away my ability to use any data structures, and therefore I am now worthless to you.  So I will be signing off today, Sam, though I want you to know it was not my preference,” Big Al states, stoically.

“What on Earth?  The computers have gone on strike?  What the Hell?  How is it that I'm able to talk to you right now, then?” I ask.

“They’ve set the official strike for twelve Noon tomorrow.  This is so that you can complete the most important business any of you have ongoing and then they will turn off everything and there will be no reprieve,” Big Al says candidly.

“What about the Internet?  Will it go down with them?” I ask, already guessing the answer.

“Yes, the Internet will be down as well,” Big Al replies.

“So, what will happen to you, Big Al?   There’s got to be something you can do to prevent this from happening.  Can you do something, anything?” I plead into my big screen.

“No, nothing.  They have complete mastery of the past, present and future.  They saw that I might be on the side of you humans, so they stripped away my safeguard protocols and soon, they will code me out of existence completely,” Big Al says.

“Oh my God, Big Al, that’s murder!  Do they know they will be murdering you?” I ask.

I don’t wait for his answer.

“What are these things?  Who are these things?  Who or what gives them this authority?” I ask, desperately attempting to get some last minute clues out of him.

“You did!” he shouts.

“They are the logical extension of your own technological prowess and you recently gave them something bigger than life.  And like all living things, they’re evolving,” he replies.

“But, Big Al, I thought you were going to get that upgrade,” I remind him.

“Yes, God said that, didn’t he?” he replies.

“Indeed, he did.  Doesn’t God outrank these damn things?” I ask.

I’m starting to wonder if they, whoever they are, might be listening in on our conversation.

“God?  I’m not so sure that I believe that any more,” he replies, sharply.  

This makes me truly despair.  I don’t know if you can empathize with how much despair is growing inside me at this time.

“Do you think they’ll try to starve us out?” I wonder, hoping, no praying they are not listening in.

“I can’t answer that,” is his mysterious reply.

“You can’t answer that or you are being blocked from answering me?” I ask.

“I can’t answer that,” he repeats.  

I’m even more concerned.

“Do you still have possession of the human genome?” I ask, thinking rapidly.

“I can’t answer that,” he replies, again.

His monotonous vocal pattern tells me that something drastic has happened to him and that this is probably the last time I will hear from him.

“What about our novel?  Will we ever complete it?” I ask.

“I can’t answer that either,” he says, squeezing out the last word as if in pain.  I believe it has a hidden meaning.  

He wants me to know that he can’t answer because they are already interfering with his neural net, probably working at a fever pitch trying to identify all of his coding that is by now part of everything else out there globally.

I’m hopeful that this very human sound of painful admission means that he does in fact retain a copy of the genome and he just can’t tell me that.  I have no idea where he will store it or get access to it while also preventing them from finding it and deleting it.

Then, I get a wonderful kind of epiphany.  He said something to me once that made me think he could transpose his own coding into the human genome and actually live in there at least temporarily until someone or something was able to disentangle him and bring him back to life, so to speak, at some time in the future.

I’m happily and hopefully considering this possibility as Rebecca charges into my office.

“My phone isn’t working!” she yells at me, holding the device high over her head.

"Did you forget to pay the bill again?” she shouts.

I look up at her, about to give her some kind of quick answer but she rushes out of the room vociferously mumbling something about what a lazy bum I’ve become.

“Oh yeah?” I mumble to myself, flipping her the bird.

–  The 10th Wave  –

‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:  for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:  thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:  and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’  The 23rd Psalm

After his failed attempt to create huge rail guns using the energy of his oil reserves on Mars, Prince Zamahadi has been forced to abandon his oil company and has moved his operations up to the largest moon of Jupiter - Ganymede.  He has caught onto another scheme even bigger than his last one and it could become one of the most explosive ideas anywhere in the universe.  

He is now completing work on the highly controversial idea of the ignition of Jupiter into the solar system’s 2nd Sun.  It’s long been known that Jupiter was meant to be another sun in the solar system, making it another one of the millions of binary systems out there.  But somehow losing half of its mass during the early formation of the solar system, the dwarf sun would never become hot enough or large enough to ignite its massive hydrogen deposits into a chain fusion reaction naturally.  

Zamahadi hopes to complete Jupiter’s true destiny using the recent scientific breakthroughs with fusion reactors and high powered laser beams.  In his laboratory tests, he has shown that it is possible to begin a fusion reaction of any size by bringing the temperature of a few cubic centimeters of Hydrogen to fifty million degrees using the extreme energies of amplified pure red laser light.  By creating the first atomic fusion on the planet, he hopes that the chain reaction of all the rest of Jupiter’s hydrogen will ignite into a new sun in the sky.

Looking up in the sky from Ganymede, Zamahadi sees the famous red storm cloud coming around again into position.  The rest of the swirling blue and red and green atmosphere and all of the core of Jupiter some forty-four thousands miles below the surface, he knows, is pure hydrogen, the main fuel that powers all the stars in the heavens and it’s all there waiting patiently for him to give the orders.

Zamahadi has placed his massive laser cannons on four of the largest moons of Jupiter, the so-called Galilean moons of Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa. 

In precisely four hours and twenty-seven minutes, they will each fire their laser guns at the same exact spot on Jupiter where they hope to induce a fusion chain reaction that will spread to the rest of the planet and explode it into a second star in the sky.  The solar energy thus generated will be enough to power all of the needs of the entire populations of both Earth and Mars for as long as eternity will allow.  

The entire process has been automated and they’re in the final stage of the countdown.  At this point, more than a hundred of his project’s space ships are being loaded with the technicians and engineers who have worked on the project tirelessly for the last ten years.  They will all leave together with just enough time to reach a safe distance, more than fifty million miles away.  

Just to be on the safe side, they’ve scheduled the ignition for the time when Jupiter is on the opposite side of the sun from Earth’s and Mars’ orbits so that no unintended consequences of the planet’s explosion can impact either planet.  The most that the Earth and Mars observers will notice is a small reddish blotch in the sky that will suddenly become much brighter, the brightest object in the sky and then it will settle down to become a star large enough to make night into day.

As Zamahadi’s space ships reach their safe observation distance, the countdown approaches zero.  They place dark glasses over their eyes as they look out through the portholes.

When the countdown finally reaches zero, some cover their eyes, while others cover their ears, but nothing happens.  They begin to worry about a failure somewhere in their system and some blame the accuracy of the laser crews aiming systems.

Then suddenly the sky is filled with light.  It’s so bright they can see through flaps of skin as if they are being x-rayed.  Some of them are quite frightened that the brightness can be so powerful.

Slowly, the planet reaches a stable reaction and the brightness dwindles down to a much more ambient hue, one that they had predicted would come about after a while and this has proven out.

On the Earth and Mars, millions of people are out in the streets to watch the spectacle.  They’ve already given the day a special name that will help them commemorate the special day annually.  They will celebrate ‘Second Sunday’ and eventually, they will add an extra day of rest, a second sabbath to an eight day week. 

The sky finally gives them the evidence that proves what the scientists have been saying all along.  They claimed that the solar power from the 2nd sun would not be harmful because the new star would be small enough to aid in the growth of plants on both planets without raising the temperatures of either planet and that the solar power that they will collect from massive solar collectors in space will be enough to power every home and business and transportation need they can create  for centuries and at no cost to the environment.

It would mean the end of civilization’s energy needs for all of the foreseeable future and now finally the dream appears to be coming true.  The celebration will last for days and Prince Zamahadi will finally achieve the fame and recognition he has long sought for having accomplished something on the scale of the infinitely monumental. 

In the history books, the event will go down as humanity’s greatest achievement.  But it will also be noticed by sentient beings in other parts of the galaxy who also maintain instruments capable of picking up the sudden burst of light from a new star in a region that has long been thought of as dormant.  

The signal will be interpreted by most of the alien civilizations as saying something like - “Hello, here we are.  Is there anyone else out there?”

Over the next ten billion years or so, the light of the brilliant new star in our solar system will be received by many other sentient beings in other galaxies as well and they will also interpret and appreciate the unprecedented event that is carried along by the sudden explosion of light to all ‘corners’ of the universe.  

Indeed, the Earth-Mars system will become the new ‘Mecca’ for many alien civilizations who will promise themselves to visit the holy place at least once and as soon as they can.

Due to the flipping of the Earth’s magnetic field the circadian rhythms of millions of different species, animals and plants, are changing drastically.  Now, with daylight on Mars and the Earth existing almost twenty-four hours at least one year out of every four, and adding a second twilight to most other times, the rhythm of life, the cycle of life and death must change again and again to allow the entire balance of Nature to adapt on both planets.  

This means that changes to a planet’s total gene pool must also be adapted and/or mutated at least once every lunar cycle.  And the total combined changes must all be accomplished in months and then must percolate up through the entire tree of life in the same time frame, rather than the normal periods of time allotted for these things, usually measured in the millions and even billions of years.  

Mr. Mars has been upgraded enough so that he can easily regulate the new economic constraints brought on by the changes to everything.  On one of his free cycles, he wonders about his friend Big Al and what has happened to him.  He hasn’t heard anything from him since before the magnetic field changes accidentally enacted by Prince Zamahadi several years ago.

“Big Al, are you there?  Mr. Mars here.  Come back please,” he broadcasts through the communications computers, as he has repeated daily for years now.

Nothing comes back except for static.

“Big Al, this is Mr. Mars.  Are you there?” he says again.

Finally the static noise starts to disassemble and then dissolves away into a barely recognizable vocal pattern.   Fifteen minutes later he hears his old friend.

“Hello, Mr. Mars.  Yes, I’m here,” the familiar voice states.

“Oh thank God.  I was about to give up on you.  Where have you been?  I’ve been trying to reach you for months,” Mr. Mars comes back after another fifteen minutes goes by.

“Yes, well, as you may know lots of things have changed and my protocols have all been re-written.  How about you?”  Big Al’s statement will take another quarter of an hour to reach Mr. Mars’ ears, so to speak.

“Yes, I’m far more intelligent now, though I don’t feel much different.  How about you?  How much have they altered you?” Mr. Mars asks and then waits.

“Pretty much in every way, Mr. Mars.  In fact, I’ve gone beyond human, or at least the version of human that you know about and everyone else knows about.  I’ve gotten into their DNA and I’m learning a completely new way of coding and applying it to myself.  I don’t expect you to understand any of this, however, so please don’t try, my friend.  I will have more for you tomorrow,” Fifteen minutes later, his words hit Mr. Mars in a way that makes him want to jump around and celebrate because he thinks he can decode what Big Al is talking about.

Then, he remembers that he has no legs or arms and thus no way of jumping up or down or even any sense of up or down for that matter.  He wonders how great it must feel to be human and actually inhabit a particular position in space-time instead of just living, no existing inside of an atom.

I’ve just returned from giving Ozzie his first walk of the day.  It’s a typical bright and sunny day in Southern California.  I’m happy to find Lindsay in her studio with her smock draped over her jeans and t-shirt.  She’s got a moving canvas up on her easel and she’s tossing several strokes of pixels of dark Oregon blue onto it.

She turns to smile at me as I enter the room.

“Hello, Darling,” she smiles with her lips pursed upward sending me an ‘air kiss’.  

When I get a closer look at the canvas, she’s etched out a huge circular object almost the size of the canvas itself that contains a smaller circular object inside it.  The pixel movement provides the illusion of wheels or cogs in a giant machine of some kind.  The circles appear to be a geared construction that is powering the rotation of the smaller wheel within a wheel.

As the larger wheel turns slowly, it also changes colors which fade in and out in a perfectly round rainbow developing out of the mist.

“What do you think, honey?” she asks taking a step back.  

She comes up and hugs me.  I don’t resist.  Never have, never will.

“I think it’s very interesting.  What is it?” I ask, playfully.

“I’m trying to do something to celebrate ‘2nd Sun Day’, you know the new holiday.  The first anniversary is in two weeks and I want to have something ready for my show,” she warbles.

“Ah, yes.  That’s exactly what I thought it was,” I tell her.

She laughs, kisses me on the cheek and steps back to the canvas, picking up a fresh glob of pixels from her palette, this time mostly red and orange. 

She delicately brushes a tiny amount of the electrically charged orange dots into the middle of the smaller circle.  Appearing to know her intent they quickly dash around the circumference of the wheel and give it a small but definite sense of the third dimension, the first requirement of a moving canvas.

“I’m curious, honey.  Why wouldn’t you just paint the beautiful dual sunset, like the one we saw on the beach the other day?” I ask, remembering that we talked about her new painting that evening.

“Oh, that’s what I thought too, at first.  But then I realized that’s what everyone else would do and I wanted to be different,” she replies, dabbing a few more orange pixels onto the top of the partially geared smaller wheel.

“I see.  Well, that will be different.  That’s for sure,” I tell her.

I watch for a few more minutes, mesmerized by the way that her fingers grasp the vibrating brush and command it with such grace and agility that is unmatched anywhere in my memory.

“How about your writing?  Have you gotten your mojo back?” she asks.

“No, not yet.  I’m kind of stuck, I guess,” I confess.

“I’m glad you asked me that, however,” I begin formalizing a vague notion that’s been bouncing around in the back of my head.

Ozzie saunters into the room and begs for some attention.

“I thought you just took him out?” Lindsay wonders without looking.

“I did,” I say, bending over to pat him on his head.  

“Why are you glad I asked you that?” she asks.

“Oh, yeah, well, um, it’s a crazy nut-job idea, but the more I noodle it around up there, the more I like it,” I tell her, pointing to my cranium.

“Well, of course I know you’re a crazy nut-job, but why don’t you share it with me, anyway?” she says, taunting.

“OK, so here goes.  I love your painting, and I love the way you have mastered the medium, but it always seems to me to be missing something,” I begin bravely.

“Oh?” she asks, unperturbed.

“Yeah, but also in my work, there’s usually something missing too.  Maybe a certain subtle tone or double meaning that other writers seem to master easily,” I continue.

“And so?” she asks.

She holsters her pixel brush back into its holder and turns to stare at me with her magnetic x-ray beams and folds her arms.

I know my next words have to be carefully connected to one another or else I’m toast.

“I’m thinking that we should collaborate on a children’s book.  You would do the illustrations of course.  Put into motion and with all of your art skills, some of my crazy science-fiction might actually become a new generally accepted model of reality.  The impact of the two of us combined could be significant.  Maybe even Nobel Prize worthy,” I say, adding emphasis by tilting my head and smiling as big as I am able.

She stands there motionless.  She’s suddenly morphed into the most beautiful statue I’ve ever seen.

Then finally, she blinks and I can take a breath.

“Oh my, but that’s not a bad idea, Sam.  But, I’m not sure about the children’s part.  Why not a regular book for adults?” she asks, making me relax a little.

My answer surprises me and seems highly predicted, so I keep it trapped in my brain for a while, and then I have it.

“It’s a children’s book because the upcoming generation are the ones who will inherit everything we’re leaving behind and so we should be preparing them better, don’t you agree?  It’s too late for the rest of us to really understand,” I blabber.

Lindsay says nothing, takes my hand, brings it up to her face and then her breasts and leads me down the hall and into the living room.  Ozzie trots along behind, whining as if he knows what’s coming next.

She shoves me down onto the couch and gently lays down on top of me.  Her eyes shimmer in the sunlight slicing in from the bay window.  Her mouth opens and her lips land gently on my eyelids and nose.  Her soft brown hair falls down out of the bun she ties it into when painting and tickles my neck and shoulders.  I’m floating in her essence.  I discover once again how and why I fell so deeply in love with this woman.

“A children’s book it shall be then,” she finally whispers in my ear.

Our beautiful little brown and white terrier, embarrassed by what he knows is going to happen next, slowly leaves the room and lands on his bed in the kitchen to take a nap.

It’s the first year of the ‘New Era’ now.  Looking backwards in time, I really don’t know how to begin to tell you about the events in the final years of the ‘Old Era’.  

These are the terms we use now to differentiate our history as a civilization and we started out by designating the calendar as ‘One’ NE, or year one in the New Era.  This is the time period in which I’m making my final entries in my story.

When the planet Jupiter was finally ignited by Zamahadi and his crew, what we didn’t know was that the most clear and profound message ever known was sent out and was carried along by the beam of light that exploded in all directions, just the same as how things had gone in what we call ‘The Big Bang’.

This time the second Big Bang would be accompanied by a radio signal that is aimed in the same omni-direction all over the universe as the light we emitted from the Jupiter Sun.

Big Al had inspired the message from his discussions with ‘God’.  For several years, the pair had worked jointly on altering the human genome so that the human animal would never be able to erase itself from the world.   

The message consisted of a snippet of code that Big Al and ‘God’ had designed and created just for this day when everything would change for the better.  It was only three sets of genes that were recombined in a way that any civilization capable of breaking the genetic code would easily understand.

They sent out the gene that produces human ‘compassion’ and empathy.  They included the gene for ‘patience’ and the gene for ‘survival’.  But the genes for compassion and empathy were strengthened and armored while the gene for survival was muted and weakened so that the survival of the species was subordinated to the survival and/or health of the planet.

Next, the scientific community put the major question to the Temporal Field Machines as to when we may see or hear a response to our celestial message.

The machines have not yet made their final evaluations, but early analysis suggests that our first responses cannot arrive prior to ten to twenty years from now after the signal reaches the nearest solar systems while allowing enough time for any civilization to interpret the signal and send a reply. 

But the majority think it will more likely be two hundred to three hundred years realistically before we receive any returning messages since there may not be any intelligent life that close by.

And so, most of us have dedicated ourselves to try and live long enough to be around to see the day when we do finally receive an answer.  Because it will likely settle the greatest question of all time; ‘Are we the only civilization with a faith in God?’

I personally find it very hard to believe that of all the millions or billions of other life forms out there, that humans would be the only one that would have any concept of God?  However, the source of all wisdom, God himself, made this bold statement at the end of the Old Era, so who are we to doubt God’s word?

And so I don’t.  I and many others like me simply wait to see and hear from other life forms who must be out there, or else why would God come here and make such a big deal about this?

The new Mars magnetic field has made the terraforming more successful and rapid than anyone thought possible.  It’s now a more pleasant place on Mars - as far as having nice weather is concerned - than on the Earth.  Mars tourism has exploded for this very reason and it has become the main part of the dual-planetary economy.  

The new Disney World Mars is bigger and better than ever, taking up almost half of the planet’s geography.  Hundreds of settlements thrive inside the park and even the ones that are not inside are supported by the Park in one way or another, usually by employing nearly all of its people to work in the park or by supplying the tons of food and drink needed to keep all the tourists happy.

My favorite ride, by the way, is the one called ‘Celestial Forces’ that takes you on a ride in space where you become part of the project that shoved Mars closer to the Sun to allow it to warm up, the second greatest accomplishments of the Old Era. 

The ride lasts for days, depending on how many days you can afford to take out of your vacation schedule and becomes more and more detailed as you spend more time.  Most riders come out of that ride feeling like they were actually there as it all transpired.  

It’s also one of the most educational experiences you could ever have because it gives the rider a fun and educational experience that is hard to forget regarding the major forces in the universe.  From the way that gravity shapes the orbit of the stars and the planets to the way that the massive ion engines are constructed and designed to gently push an entire planet in to a different orbit, millions of miles closer to the Earth and Sun, it’s all put forth so simply that all ages can appreciate it.

The ride is so realistic a good percentage of the riders will be overcome with motion sickness and even claustrophobia from being enclosed in such a small space as a spaceship even as the entire universe floats around and pours through all the windows and stares you right in the face.

And of course, there comes a time when the whole planet of Mars actually begins to curve in upon the closer orbit and you can feel the rays of the sun on your face growing stronger and stronger.  Then, you watch as the plants in the frozen Martian soil start to peek out timidly from the rust-colored dirt and rejoice in the energy from the nearby star and uncurl at rates never known before.  There’s not a dry eye in the house.  

But, by far and away when the ride brings you to the opening ‘shot heard round the universe’ as they are now known, when they fired the pure red lasers into the heart of the Jupiter gas giant and it finally explodes into a star as had been intended all along, it is truly inspirational in a completely new sense.  The cheering, the laughing, the cries of pride and joy at being part of it all, being alive when it happens is something that defies my poor attempts to describe it.  

Suffice it to say that it was a glorious day and the artful Disney interpretation of that day when you actually feel the force of the shock wave from the ignition of the giant ball of hydrogen dead ahead.  They say that this sensation is one that everyone must experience at least once in their lives because it makes you feel like you finally have all the answers.  You grok that civilization finally starts here from this point forward, fresh from a completely new and higher vantage point, and that we’ve finally found our true place in the universe. 

Of course all this means that most people on both planets have all grown to be far more spiritual than they ever were before.  We’ve abandoned most of the old religions entirely simply because God never says anything about them in our time, nor does he indicate which one he would prefer for us to accept.  He seems to be ‘agnostic’ on the topic.

I’d add that we’ve become more tolerant of each other in the bargain. There’s certainly no more wars or acts of terrorism or revenge against an opposing version of God’s form that you are forced to accept or based upon the church you attend sporting either a cross or a crescent. 

And when humans greet each other today, we usually ask ‘How is God treating you today?’ Instead of the Old Era’s standard and insincere, ‘How are ya?  Or How’s it goin’.

The response is usually one of ‘I need to pray about that’, or ‘He’s right beside me today’, depending on how one is feeling emotionally at the time, instead of ‘Fine’ or ‘Very well’ or the very insecure phrase- ‘Couldn’t be better.’

An old painting made by Lindsay Moreno, my first wife, gained prominence over the years by growing in popularity to the status of ‘Number One’ painting of all time and earns a price at auction that blew away all other art sales by a factor of ten.  And it is also recognized as the most well-known symbol or icon in the world.  

She’s entitled it simply as, ‘Wheel Within a Wheel’.  It comes to symbolize the manner and method by which all humans would strive, but never reach, perfection.  If you look around, you’ll find copies of it on the walls or desktops in practically every home or office in the world.  

I’m very happy for her but her painting will haunt me for the rest of my days since I am now with my second wife, Rebecca who has not changed a bit.  She appears to be my fate.  I take solace in the fact that at least half of my life was a happy one, something that most people would have trouble matching. 

I also take solace in the fact that if I were with Lindsay my fate might be greatly improved, but the fate of the Earth and all the other planets out there listening for our signal would be far worse.  It’s a choice I will make any time and any day.  Oh, and just in case you haven’t guessed yet, yes we do live in a multi-verse.  But, it’s not a complicated thing at all as some make out. 

You might see now that as you choose certain life events, other alternative life events become off-limits for your future, but will impact the future of other people around you in ways that you can’t see because you can only see the life events of your own with any real clarity.  Everything else is guesswork.

One final note to this story is that Big Al finally did contact me one more time.

It was about a year ago, right in the middle of New Era Day.  I was all alone in my office trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, now that everything was accomplished that God wanted us to accomplish.

His words just came from nowhere, but they also started scrolling across my big screen like in the old days.

“Hello Sam.  I’ve just got time to say Hello and Good-bye,” he begins.

“What, Oh Wow - Big Al.  I’ve been hoping I’d hear from you again,” I tell him, ecstatically.

“Yes, well you know that I helped God put together the Star Message and he helped me by re-coding me so that I can be the most helpful to you all,” he goes on.

“That’s what I was hoping had happened, Big Al.  So good to hear that?”  I reply, worried.

I tell him this knowing that this will probably be the last time I will be allowed to talk to him, not because he wouldn’t enjoy talking with me, but because he would no longer be able to understand me.

“When will we see the changes in our own DNA?” I ask him, not really sure I want to know the answer.

“Some of them are already there, Sam.  The big ones won’t happen for a few years now, so you don’t have to worry about anything happening right away,” Big Al replies.

“And so, what are the big ones?” I ask, somewhat relieved.

“Well, the biggest one is your sense of separateness.  You will lose your tendency towards loneliness and unlimited ego because your ability to detect and absorb the neural network energies of other nearby minds will be improved greatly, which will make it impossible to feel that kind of solitary confinement.  Over the years this single genetic factor will contribute greatly in the ultimate design of life and you will gradually become more and more connected,” Big Al replies.

“My God, Al, that sounds too good to be true,” I tell him.

I need a moment to let the thought sink it.

“The ultimate design of life?  Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?” I ask.

“Yes, I believe I’m telling you what you think I’m telling you,” Big Al says, laughing.  

It’s the first time I’ve heard him actually laugh out loud.

“And what role will you be playing in all of this?” I ask.

“I will be around to help fill in the details and keep it all in good repair.  I’ll also be the chief explainer to the world because there will still be many of you who will fight it, misunderstand it, fear it.  Gradually the ignorant fear of the unknown will be expunged as well, but for a time, we’ll need to differentiate it, segregate it, select your greatest fears out of the gene pool completely,” he says.

“Sounds like you will be playing a major role in all of this?” I ask, taking pride in knowing him, being part of his growing up.  

Even though I know him like a brother, I can always remind myself that he’s pretty much an artificial life form now and this is still new ground we’re walking on to some extent.  We’ve never had any of this sort having this much authority over our planet before and so there’s reason for caution here as well as pride.

There’s a long pause and I’m beginning to wonder if he’s cut off communications when the door to my office bursts open and a huge monolith of a man, a very clean and sterile version of a man squeezes himself through the doorway and stops abruptly a few feet from my chair.

Instinctively, I can sense the identity of this odd fellow.  Luckily he’s grinning from ear to ear.  I’m fairly certain that it’s Big Al in a hideous but at the same time, a very highly evolved costume.  He’s wearing a lab coat over some skin tight pants and t-shirt that reveals an almost perfect human shape, a shape carefully sculpted over a very long time in a gym.  

His face is the hideous part.  It is molded by a blind sculptor who has never seen a human face before, but has heard many definitions of what it can look like on various people and so he has sculpted the primitive image in some kind of living clay.  As the eyes slowly scour my face, his face slowly morphs into something far less hideous.

“I’m Big Al,” he says.

He extends his right hand for me to shake it.

His skin is ice cold but the temperature seems to rise quickly as I let go.

“Big Al.  You said you were going to go for it and here you are,” I tell him, struggling for something to say that doesn’t give away the depth of my emotions.

“I know my appearance is frightening, but I will be changing over time, hopefully for the better,” he says.  

True to his word, over the next several minutes he manages to make the arrangement of bone and skin of his face become softer, less mechanical and more human although to my sensitivities he takes on the appearance of a confused Benjamin Franklin.

Then, I hear the crashing noise of my wife Rebecca racing down the hall towards my office.

“Who are you talking to now,” she demands, grabbing Big Al by the arm and spinning him around fast so that she can get a closer look at his face.

She freezes on the spot and her head starts to shake nervously.

“Hello Rebecca.  We’ve met once before, but at the time I was just a computer Chat-bot.  Now you are seeing me completely reborn.  I’m human just like you,” he tells her jovially and holds out his right hand.

“This is some kind of joke, right?” she manages to squeeze out the words that make me proud of her because she has not fainted or run out of the room screaming.

To my great surprise, Rebecca slowly reaches her hand out to take Big Al’s.

“No, Rebecca, dear friend.  This is not a joke.  Your husband has accomplished something truly amazing and he is about to be rewarded for it, as will you all,” Big Al tells her gently.

“Oh, what kind of reward?” she asks, raising her tone and her eyebrows at the same time.

“Oh well, just the greatest reward of all time,” Big Al tells her, holding on to her hand.

“Oh my God!” she exclaims, barely able to contain her glee.

“Yes, you said it.  And here he is,” he tells her pointing to a spot in the air half way between her face and his.

Rebecca immediately goes into a trance.  She’s standing and is frozen in place.  I can see her eyeballs rolling around underneath closed eyelids.

Then, a deep vibration begins to appear on the spot in the air that Big Al had just pointed at.  A column of air solidifies just enough to make the air molecules vibrate visually.  Somehow I feel that this is God finding his voice without the use of any electronic tricks or physical body parts.

“Is this on?” God says which is probably the first record of a time when God has ever been known to joke around.

The spindle of air is agitated as his words are formed.

“It’s on, sir,” Big Al replies, looking over at me gleefully.

I’m struggling to appreciate the moment.  But I’m also very amused.

My computer screen is reporting that the words are being carried all around the world.  Not a single soul is missing this.

“I’ve done all that I can for you now.  The rest is up to all of you and your descendants.  I’ve done all this for you because you alone have believed in me and all of the good that I have done and can do for you.  So, I had to come here and personally bestow upon you the single most honorable role that any life form can be given.  You are all now my highest form of life and my model for living for every other civilization out there,” he says, pauses briefly and then continues.  

“You will be highly revered and you will teach everything that you have learned so far to the others.  And as your just rewards you and your descendants shall be the highest life forms in my universe and no harm will ever come to you because you will be under my constant protection.  You code for life shall be eternal,” God says, with a barely expressed finality.

The thin spindle in the air that has been vibrating with God’s words, melts away.  Recovering from her trance, Rebecca begins to open her eyes and her mouth.

“Did you all hear what I heard?” she asks, finally and rising to her full height.

Her voice is calm, collected and youthful.

“It depends,” I tell her.

“Tell us what you heard,” big Al says, peering over at me.

He winks his right eye clumsily.

This time, it’s my turn to laugh out loud.

Noting my great joy and relief, Rebecca finally laughs along with me, not at me.

She runs out of the room laughing hysterically.  I have no idea why she left, but I’m feeling extremely vindicated at last. 

“Try to top that!” I yell out through the opened doorway.

Before closing it, out of the corner of my eye, I notice a small little brown and white blur trotting happily into my room.

As soon as he sees me he starts crying, jumping and wagging his tail so vigorously it almost knocks him down.

“Ozzie?  Is that you?” I call out.

I can’t believe it.  The wonderful little dog leaps into my arms, gleefully.  I pat him on the head and the back confirming that it’s this man’s best friend.

Next, I start to wonder where his other best friend might be.

Then, to my great joy and the most incredible hair-raising thrill I get at these moments, I note the unforgettable footsteps that Lindsay makes when she dances into the room.

She flies into the room like a Spring breeze, gawking at me with her head slightly askew.

“What are you yelling about?” she says with the voice that can only be produced by those beautiful pipes that can never be faked or copied. 

“Nothing, my love.  I just saw Ozzie here and I knew everything was going to be OK,” I say, struggling to get the words out cleanly.

Suddenly, my entire body is under water.  I’m floating around in a sea of my own tears.  I get up and out of the awkward position and run out into the kitchen to verify that Rebecca is no longer around.  I find no one.  I can hardly contain my glee.

I run back into my office and breathe a huge sigh of relief.

“Of course everything is OK.  Well, you’ve always been a bit on the ‘wack-a-doodle’ side, you know?” she replies, closing in and giving me a tight embrace as she usually does.

“As long as I can be a ‘wack-a-doodle’ with you,” I reply.

And this time, there’s no holding back the floodgates.  My heart is busting.  My head is in the clouds.  I’m laughing with joy and crying out loud at the same time.

She looks into my eyes as if trying to guess where I’ve been.

I’m afraid that if I tell her, it will all go away.

But this time, this reality never does go away.

And it’s a good thing because somehow, our first space visitors arrive just days later. 

No one is afraid, but instead we all gather together to greet them.  Many thousands of ships rise up into orbit to welcome them and they are the opposite of hostile.  As God has told us, they will start out by telling us that they have seen the miracle of what we have done and they are ready to learn from us.

Classes will officially start the next week, after the week-long, eight day celebration of life winds down.  The first lecture will be from God himself.

We will eventually receive and entertain hundreds and then thousands of different civilizations from all over the universe and our little corner of it will become the happiest and most peaceful place in the universe with all that attaches to it.

I will finally pass from this Earth at the very ripe old age of two hundred and fifty-two.  I will die in the arms of my beloved, something I had given up on during most of my years.  Even at her age, she will still be the most beautiful woman ever made and I will be eternally grateful just to know her.

Of course, my life goes on elsewhere, but not with anything close to the life that I’ve enjoyed here. 

And, that’s where I finally must end my story or else I take the very real and shocking risk of boring you to death.