I, Human

by John Nelson

“Let me put you on hold for a minute.” I assumed he was consulting with somebody else. “Look, there’s an army advance training center in Yuma, used to be for desert warfare during the 2020s, but across the board now. We’ll arrange a pickup; I want a specialist there to download this session from your neural processor.”

  This threw me into dismay. “Sorry, in my panic, I flushed it afterward.” There was silence on the other end. “And I’ve got this pounding headache, which would distort the readings anyway.”

  There was another long pause at the other end. Finally Musgrave recovered. “That was a real breach of protocol, and I’ll have put this on record.” He paused. “So, no need to bring you in. Just head back to Jerome, and pick up where you left off.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that. But, you got the gist of it.”

  “Well, Alan, that would’ve been for us to decide, not you. Keep us updated.” He now broke the connection. He was pissed, and rightly so from his operational point of view, but I just didn’t trust him or the mission objectives anymore. I was very curious as how this would play out with Fria, and so I would hang in there with her.

  There was a knock on the door. “Lewis, you’re not taking a shower without me, are you?” I wondered if she was listening in on the conversation.

  I opened the door to find a totally naked Brenda, who pushed me into the shower stall, turned on the water, and got our early-morning riser off to a bang, as the retro expression goes.

  Chapter Nine

  25.

  On the drive back, I talked with Brenda about writing the next Lewis Hargrove novel in Jerome as part of our cover. Musgrave had suggested as much when we first talked about my new identity. Brenda liked the idea and agreed to act as my assistant and spend time at the library researching various subjects to keep her engaged in the project. Since I couldn’t just sit down day after day and type something bogus, I decided to actually write a novel. I had studied Hargrove’s work and figured we could come up with a plausible concept, based in Arizona and set in Jerome as the starting point. One of my minors in college was English, and at one time I had thought about becoming a writer, so this wasn’t a great stretch for me. Since I didn’t need to share the story with anyone, and nobody could hack my portable, who would know better. And given its pseudo spiritual premise, I might even interview people at the Center, or Maria Fria herself. What it did was give us an excuse to hang around town and see how this relationship with her would develop and allow me to complete my mission.

  To actually engage me at various levels, we hashed out a story on our drive back, with not only a spiritual premise but spy novel of sorts, since this was the world we were both familiar with. So, Lewis Hargrove’s next novel would be a cultural-political spy novel. Brenda really entered into the spirit of the project, given her drama studies, and said I should really write it and maybe it would even get published sometime in the future. Like most good cover stories, especially extended ones, it needed to be a mixture of fact and fiction and one that engaged the agents and utilized their own talents and predispositions. Well, needless to say, Brenda was really fascinated by this scenario and when we pulled into town, we headed for the café to further flesh out the story and our strategy.

  We sat down and ordered nacho appetizers, deciding we’d take our time before ordering dinner. I thought the story should be set sometime in the past, maybe twenty years ago, so as not to draw on the current spiritual landscape of the city, but more of its dubious past. This would keep us clear of Maria and her followers.

  “Well, we’ll need to do some research, but I think back then there were a lot of competing groups here, artistic and spiritual, and so my archetypal Hargrove antagonist gets drawn into the rivalries and maybe gets caught between these factions.”

  “Okay, but what’s the spy angle, if that’s the subgenre?” Brenda asked.

  Our waitress brought our vegetarian nachos, and we waited until she left before turning back to the subject. “Well, Jerome may be the battleground, but it’s too claustrophobic a setting for the whole novel, so the story needs to be spread out across the territory.”

  “Well, don’t you usually write about a fight between good and evil?”

  “Okay. Well, what if the battle is between the forces of commerce and spirituality. After the economic turndown, the territorial government wants to promote the state’s artistic appeal, to brand it and update that image, and to downplay all the spiritual borny activities.”

  “And Jerome becomes the focus point of that battle, since it was an artist colony at one time,” Brenda added.

  “And our hero has a dubious spiritual background, growing up in a family with religious fanatics, and so he’s working for the territorial government to undermine the spiritual side of the battle.”

  Brenda looked around and then turned back to me. “Well, that’s pretty similar to our mission,” she said without elaborating.

  “Nobody’s going to see it, and it may even give my subconscious a way to objectify these issues.”

  Brenda laughed. “You really do like to cut it close, don’t you Lewis?”

  “The Razor’s Edge,” I said, but Brenda didn’t get the literary reference.

  So, for the next few weeks, we really jumped into the routine of me writing and Brenda researching and taking notes, and us conferring at the library or at the Iguana Café that I had staked out for my writing site. The idea was to make a public display of my activity, so it didn’t make sense to write in our room at the Sliding Sands. What we did notice was that when I was alone at the cafe, June would sometimes show up and talk with me, and when Brenda was alone at the library, Claude, the masseur showed up once or twice. It was obvious that they were trying to keep an eye on us, or maybe they were attracted to us. Neither of us readily engaged them nor did we run our cover story by them. But, one day, we did drive down to Prescott and I called Musgrave to ask if we should be more forthcoming.

  “Great spy craft,” Musgrave said about me writing a novel, without mentioning his earlier suggestion to do as much.

  “Should either of us tell them the cover story or readily engage them? I asked.

  Musgrave thought this over for a moment. “No. They’re trying to get information from you, but if you hold out, then Fria will be forced to engage you.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “Oh. Klaus wants to know about any changes or intuitive leaps.”

  This was Klaus’s way of reminding me to keep up with the log, which I had been doing, but nothing substantial had shown up and I was slacking off. “Nothing big to report, outside of the so-called astral projection I mentioned. Let’s see what happens, but after I meet with her next, I should get a spike.”

  “Brenda,” Musgrave said. “Don’t forget that we’ll be needing you to get a healing for comparative numbers.”

  “Probably best to wait until after Alan’s next contact. It might affect … the treatment.”

  “Yes. Good thinking.” Musgrave paused. “But, afterward, we’ll want to draw you both in for more testing.”

  Neither of us responded.

  “Okay, see you then.”

  Brenda turned to me as we drove into the parking lot of a new restaurant. “I was hoping he’d forget.”

  “No chance. I mean, with Musgrave staying in Phoenix this long, it tells you how much they’ve got invested in this operation.”

  We decided, given the need for Brenda’s future healing, to attend the next service. We sat in the back and neither of us came forward for a healing, but we certainly seemed to draw a lot of attention. At one point, during the preamble, Maria stared at me for a moment and smiled. It wasn’t catty, as one might suppose, but sweet and soulful. Maybe she was as genuine as she appeared, and the only agendas here—as I’ve suggested—were Musgrave’s and his people.

  Well, several nights later, I was sitting alone at the café drinking a mild grain blend of coffee and writing on my portable, when June walked in and came over t
o my table. She sat down across from me wearing fairly alluring clothing.

  “Hate to interrupt you, Lewis.” I glanced up and tried to look annoyed. “But Maria asked me to … see if you’d like to stop by and talk with her.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. There’s a full moon, and the view from her living room is quite spectacular.” The way June added this last incentive, blinking her eyes seductively and smiling, definitely indicated that the next level of contact was upon me.

  I decided to go along with them and debated on whether to take a bathroom break to contact Brenda, but knew that would be countered by the urgency of the request. Maybe the moon was getting ready to set.

  “Sure. Let’s go.” I closed down my portable, stood up, put on my jacket, and followed her out.

  26.

  June and I entered Fria’s house through a back entrance and she escorted me to the living room. Maria was there, standing by the window and gazing out over the desert. She heard us and turned our way. “Oh, Lewis, you decided to come.”

  “I’m a sucker for moonlight views.”

  She laughed. “June, thanks for … fetching Lewis. I’ll show him out.”

  June bowed and left and I stepped over to the window, captivated by the view even from across the room. Maria turned and stared out again at the desert landscape. I stood next to her and viewed the scenery. It was surprising how clear the desert was in the moonlight, and one could see the faint silhouette of the distant mountain chain as a backdrop. I was going to say something when Maria spoke.

  “It’s the high altitude and the dry air that make the moonlight so bright.”

  “Well, it’s certainly spectacular. It’s a shame it blocks out the night sky.”

  “Yes, nature doesn’t often give us a two for one, unlike the lures of our world.”

  She turned and offered me a seat. I discovered that two padded chairs had been pulled up to the window and set catty-cornered, so we could face each other and view the landscape as well. I also noticed that there were glasses of water set out on the end tables. So much for my surprised acceptance of her invitation.

  “So, Lewis, any more dreams?”

  “You mean astral projections?” I asked.

  “Some say dreams are a form of astral projection, or causal plane encounters, but I was referring to the normal symbolic variety.”

  “No. But, I started writing another novel, and that’s probably drawing off all my juice.”

  Maria smiled. “Interesting phrase.” She paused. “Yes, June told me she’s seen you and … Brenda, I believe it is, doing research at the library and you writing at the Iguana Café.”

  I took a sip of water. “It’s my next novel, and I’m setting it here, in Jerome and Arizona.” She raised her eyebrows. “It’s set twenty or thirty years in the past, and it’s totally fictional, so nothing of you and your group is referenced.”

  “Maybe not directly, but I’m sure your experience here is working itself out in your creative efforts.”

  I nodded my head and looked across at her, neither of us seemed inclined to talk for a while. My mind had stopped its rambling and I was just in the moment with her, sharing whatever was occurring between us at whatever levels. Finally, she said, “Just being here, without the need to talk, is a trait not many from your world can tolerate.”

  “My world?”

  Maria smiled again. “The East Coast intellectual artistic world.” She peered at me. “Your accent speaks of the eastern region, or sector, as they now call it.”

  “And those of us with neural processors,” I added.

  “Yes. Whatever the level of one’s integration, there is a kind of separation between those with and those without them.” I nodded my head but couldn’t help but wonder about this summons.

  “I was thinking, if you were open to it, of sharing an … expansive exercise with you, that might speed up your integration and hone your intuitive abilities and … connections.”

  I just stared at her and tried not to be too suspicious. Before she could note that, I said, “Sure. Let’s do it.” Her kind smile drew a further response. “And thank you for sharing this with me in advance.”

  The instruction was for me to close my eyes and visualize a web of millions of micro-fine strings of light passing through me, both vertically and horizontally, like something out of the multidimensional string theory that was scientifically verified in the mid-21st century. This made the whole exercise much more palatable and less esoteric. I was to “grab hold” of these colorful vertical strings passing through my head and body, and to pull them out sideways until the opening encompassed the entire room, then the city, the western region, this half of the globe, then the whole globe, and the whole solar system, and then the Milky Way galaxy, and step-by-step to expand my astral body, I guess you could call it, to include the entire universe.

  At its furthermost point, it felt like every atom of my body was the size of a basketball. Finally, after this feeling settled for a period of time and I experienced an immense joy and connectivity, we gradually reversed the process from the universal expansion, step-by-step, back to me sitting in Maria’s living room atop this plateau. The experience must’ve lasted an hour or so, and I sat there for another ten minutes before I opened my eyes.

  Maria was patiently sitting across from me with her eyes closed, but opened them at that moment. “So you’re back with us.”

  I took a large gulp of water. “Yes. Wow. Talk about expansive.”

  “You did well for your first time.”

  I closed my eyes and could still see the billions of galaxies and their stars that I had just expanded across. It didn’t feel like a visualized experience but real and visceral.

  “Yes, Lewis. It wasn’t in your imagination, as some would claim.”

  “What? Do you read minds?” I asked a little peevishly.

  Maria laughed. “No. I’ve just instructed so many people in these techniques that I’ve catalogued typical responses or rationalizations.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to question you or this wonderful exercise.”

  Maria stared at me for a long moment. “Seems like you need to integrate this experience, so let’s not dilute it with more talk.”

  I stood up. “I think you’re right. I’m feeling quite sleepy.”

  Maria stood and walked me to the rear entrance of her house. “If you like, I can call June and have her walk you back.”

  I shook my head. “I’m all right,” I said.

  Maria smiled. “Okay, but I do suggest you take your shower alone tonight.”

  “No kidding.” Maria stepped over and gave me a hug. Hesitant at first, I allowed my arms to wrap around her and the energy of this contact was nearly as powerful as her healing of me. We held it for at least thirty seconds before I stepped back. “Whoa. That’s some hug.”

  “Be well, Lewis.”

  I opened the door and walked outside; June was waiting for me. “I figured you might need some … assistance.”

  “I thought not, until Maria … hugged me.”

  “Maybe a cup of tea at the café?”

  “Yeah. Sounds good.”

  When we got to the café, Brenda was sitting there, no doubt waiting for me.

  June turned to me and smiled. “Well, looks like you have your guide home.” With that she turned and walked back toward the Center.

  I stepped inside and sat down across from Brenda. She gave me a questioning look, but not at all jealous or even personal. I took out and turned on a portable bug/video suppressor, which was part of our last tech upgrade. “She came to fetch me for a get-together with Maria.”

  “How did that go?”

  I told her about Maria’s expansive exercise, and I could sense her inwardly cringing at the prospect. I mean, if Brenda didn’t like viewing the expansive Southwest landscape as we drove through it, she certainly wouldn’t want to expand across the universe. And I did elaborate more than needed to further provoke he
r, for whatever reason.

  “Well, the exercise seems fairly neutral, and I doubt if the ‘hug’ qualifies as substantial contact,” she said.

  I stared at her. “So you don’t think we need to contact Musgrave?” Brenda cringed further. “You’re afraid he’ll think otherwise and want you to get a healing at their next service, and then bring us in?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s why I’m reacting this way.”

  “Like I said, Brenda. It’ll be fairly benign, just adjusting your processor to integrate some of your repressed feelings.”

  Brenda closed her eyes. “Easy for you to say, since you’re way head of me in that regard.”

  This left me with a possible opening. “So, we just dismiss it, and go on as if this new contact never happened, given it was minimal as you said?”

  Jean/Brenda actually considered the prospect for a moment. “No. We have to call it in at some point.” It seemed that sticking with operational protocol was at least some solace or provided structure for her.

  “I see,” I said with a questioning look.

  “Don’t worry, Lewis. I won’t bring up your suggestion.”

  Or, at least until it services a purpose, I thought. We headed back to the Sliding Sands, and while I slept well, Brenda tossed and turned all night long, waking me up on one occasion.

  27.

  The rest of the week went pretty much as it had been going with our new focus: I would write at the café in the morning or afternoon, and we’d spent time at the library each day, either together or alone. After dinner one night, we walked past the center to check their schedule of upcoming services, which were usually every two weeks and due this week. But there was a notice that Maria would be out of town, and so the service was postponed until the next Thursday.

  As we were walking back to the Sliding Sands, Brenda asked, “Should we notify Musgrave that she’s out and about?”

  They apparently didn’t have the community staked out, since we were able to get all the way to Yuma without detection. It was late but we drove into Prescott for dessert, not that we had to explain our movements to anybody, but it was always good to have a cover story for all of our excursions outside the community. There was an old-fashioned bakery with booths on the outskirts of town, so we pulled in there and since it was fairly deserted at this time of night, I called Musgrave while we ate slivers of pumpkin pie.