Moving on, I’m floating in space. I still feel the presence of Maya and Bone sitting by my physical body back home. What are they thinking? Can they hear all my thoughts? I know that Bone put some sort of hyped-up sensor in my brain. The conversant sensor is compatible with my extended mind; hence it is reporting all data to Bone and Maya back home.
I realize that my extended mind leaves a signal—a subatomic particle footprint. Damn! This is scary! Even though I’m bodiless, it’s still possible to be detected. My consciousness floats to another room. There’s more color, more activity, and more life. I’m looking at an interesting species.
Dammit, I’m worried. But I’m sure Bone knows what he’s doing.
These people are talking, socializing, and having fun. They don’t appear to be human. A few of them have bird heads. Others have elongated skulls. Many of these entities look human. Actually, I’d describe a few as really good-looking organisms. The males have beards. The females appear bustier than most females on Earth. I remember talking about them with my dad—good ole Ben. These are the dudes from Orion! Yeah, you know, the ones who settled in Babylonian times. I think they were called Sumerians. These guys are the rock stars of the universe.
Wow! I wish I could go down and talk to them. They’re eating, talking loudly, and drinking. What in the hell are they doing here? Were they abducted by Earthlings? Are they here against their will? Why else would they stay?
Then I see the man I noticed getting off the train. He is with a female. I didn’t see her get off the train. Who is she? I hear muffled voices. For some reason, I can feel my body shuddering—not here … not inside Dulce, but back home.
Something’s wrong back home!
I don’t have time to think about that. I have to observe the man. His name is Barundi Udina. How do I know that? My father used to speak of him and his assistant, Zooey Hume, in a muffled voice. He said the man is no good. I recollect my father saying to another man, “Barundi is not of this earth.” The man he was talking to said, “He’s secretive. Everything he does makes him seem like some sort of double agent. I don’t trust him.”
Barundi whispers, “Don’t look up! Don’t look around. Our facility has been compromised.”
Zooey Hume stays still, like a deer in headlights. She smiles and nods as if nothing is happening. Barundi holds up his subatomic locator. “It’s detecting an unwarranted energy in here. Stay calm! Something is watching us, and I think it’s directly over our heads.”
The look on Barundi’s face scares me, and for the first time, I really want to crawl back into my own skin. It seems as if he is looking right at me, baiting me. Suddenly I feel violated and alone; I feel like a kid—defenseless and out of my league. “Do we have equipment that can chart these signals back to their source?” Zooey whispers softly.
Barundi glances at Zooey and then peers upward, toward the roof of the Dulce facility. Then he smiles.
CHAPTER 37
August 7, 2378
8:44:17.42 p.m.
Has your head ever hurt so badly that you wanted to slice into your skull and do a lobotomy on your own brain? Okay, I got your attention. My brain was still in my body over a hundred miles away, yet my consciousness was floating in the atmosphere just over Dulce. That was not the issue. I knew that something or someone had entered Bone’s hiding place. I could feel it!
But who? Something very wrong was going on.
Vorashia—Victoria Vorashian’s Quarters
8:45.22 p.m.
Victoria stares into her mirror, combing through her lush black hair. She applies red lipstick onto her abnormally large lips.
“No fingerprints,” she says out loud. “No one can know that I’m involved in this project, least of all Ezekial and his Neanderthal brother Bone! The last thing I need is two time-traveling cowboys coming after me. Didn’t Michael know that an extended mind sends subatomic information all over the universe? Dear God, it’s like a warning beacon into the heavens. Besides, intergalactic awareness of Dulce goes back for centuries. Doesn’t Bone know that? Michael’s presence in Dulce is sending swirling voticies of energy out into the atmosphere. It’s like neutrino madness!”
She waves her fingers in the air, saying, “No cookies! No fingerprints! No one can know that I’m involved.”
Somewhere in the constellation Andromeda
8:46:56 p.m.
The hot gasses of Andromeda form the normal halo on an unknown planet buried deep inside the Andromeda constellation. King Feraza hadn’t been married one week when he received a hologram that he couldn’t refuse. Feraza is anxious to please someone after obtaining the throne, which his father Farique had occupied for over 240 years. He had been labeled the “Big Prince that Couldn’t”—a title he despised for the three years that he held it. The people on his planet labeled him an immature child with a temper destined to ruin the planet. That’s why he now feels the need to make a splash right away. Besides, other surrounding galaxies, such as Sombrero and Triangulum, hold him in contempt. They have no intention of bringing him into the Universal Council until he proves himself.
He is determined to show them—and soon! He is going to put M31 on the map. Right now his planet could be called, simply, Anonymous, and he is less than nothing. After all, he is proud to be called a reptilian.
Dulce
8:51:44.69
My extended mind peers over the horizon, witnessing something I have never seen before. It looks like a brigade. It seems that over twenty large, heavily equipped military mother ships are looming in the sky. They seem to be just lingering overhead, stalled in midair.
“I have to go home. I have to get out of here!” echoes in my mind.
I can feel the pain in my head throbbing like a crazed drummer stuck on one beat and one note.
Something back home in Bone’s place has gone terribly wrong!
Why? Who?
Vorashia
August 7, 2378 (Xenio 12, Vorashian date)
8:53:2726:03 Vorashian time
Victoria Vorashian continues to stare at herself in the mirror. “Mirror, mirror on the wall.” She laughs at her own trite musing. “Yes, do tell me who’s the fairest … of them all. I see you my friend, don’t you know? After sending out pictures all over the universe, you may have a reputation to mend.” Victoria stares at subatomic images of Michael’s ghostlike form floating aimlessly, inadvertently sending images on the subatomic network (SAN) all over the universe.
Victoria giggles at her own joke. She places her newly colored red nails in front of her lips and blows. “Perfect!” she utters, feeling quite satisfied with herself.
Biddle knocks on her door, ducking his head inside.
“How are you, my little gnat? What gifts do you bear me today?”
Biddle smiles cagily. “Just a hologram.”
“From whom?” Victoria says softly, knowing full well who is on the other side.
Victoria gently turns around to witness a life-size 3D body. “Hello, my Dear Feraza. How can I help you?”
Feraza smirks, feeling the fiendish vibes of the famous Ms. Victoria Vorashian.
Victoria smiles, hiding her disdain for this irresponsible, dimwitted dunce of a king. The interstellar community is buzzing with wonderment. They’re not sure how this happened, but one thing’s for sure: that flagrant show-off Michael Eisenstein has landed smack dab in the middle of a mouse trap. You see, Dulce is on her radar, and Michael’s unwelcome presence piques her rage.
“I’m just going to have to do something about this gate-crashing interloper!” Victoria blows on her nails three more times for good luck.
“Well, apparently our friend Michael is now just an energy being. He doesn’t realize that his presence as a revenant shade is broadcasting all over the universe.” Feraza shakes his head. “Unlucky kid.”
“Luck is for amateurs, my dea
r Feraza. Skill and planning are for the kings and queens of the universe. Apparently our little friend doesn’t know that once you reduce your consciousness and extended mind into the fabric of space and time, you become part of the macroscopic world. Elementary mistake, isn’t it, King Feraza?”
Feraza smiles stupidly.
I can see you don’t understand at all! Victoria muses. “Anyway, he’s joined the world of photons, gluons, and gravitons.”
Victoria places her red fingernails up to her mirror and then begins stroking her long black hair with her brush. Flashes of Michael in his prior life shoot into Victoria’s memory. “He’s going to pay for what he did to me! I’ll never forget! I will have my revenge over Michael Eisenstein… again!” Victoria takes a breath. After all, Michael Eisenstein exposed her own secret past, and that wasn’t nice, now was it?
“Simplified, my dear friend Feraza, matter moves slowly; the macroscopic world can be shared with anyone, anywhere. Hence, Michael has shown Dulce to the universe, and the universe isn’t happy!”
Feraza nods somewhat sheepishly. “So what do I do? I mean—”
“Attack!”
“When?”
“Now, Feraza, now!”
Victoria switches off the hologram encasing Feraza’s image. “Moron,” she quips under her breath. “But a useful moron.”
Biddle cackles, hoping that Victoria will notice and give him a treat.
“They’re going to know my name. The name Victoria Vorashian will be the most powerful name in the universe one day!”
Dulce
8:56:14.27
First the huge, lethal spaceships discharge red beams of destruction. The entire lid above Dulce explodes, exposing its underbelly. Second, exposure is sent intergalactically, generated by Barundi Udina, to the aliens. Dulce’s occupants are scattering like ants. Third, a few select beams rescue the alien hostages. The reptilians, the Aleutians, and the people from Orion and Centaurus are all taken from Dulce; they’re alive and well.
“Screw the grays!” Victoria muses. “I never liked them much anyway. Destroy the rest!” She cackles, viewing all the destruction from the safety of a spaceship huddling safely in a time vacuum thousands of miles away. “Victory, at last. One day these humans will be mine!”
There is no one between me and God anymore, she muses, for there is no God. There is just Victoria Vorashian.
“Send in more of the military; I want Dulce completely destroyed!” Victoria exclaims. She laughs hysterically. “No one will ever know who’s behind this.”
Beams streak from the sky, obliterating the underground bunkers and disintegrating each into smithereens. Then the laboratories are demolished. The roadways, the shuttle trains, and even the underground cities are destroyed in an instant. Everything is obliterated off the face of the Earth just as the Tower of Babel was in ancient history.
“Human beings and extraterrestrials lie facedown like ants in their little lairs,” Victoria softly murmurs. “I’ve exposed you for what you are—weak! Why should I care? Let those miserable Earthlings wallow in their own squalor.” She laughs heartily.
Dulce
8:56: 02
Just as I am about to leave my extended mind, I witness a stellar precision beam shoot out of a death ship. “Oh my G_d, I see my father! It’s heading straight for my father’s skull. Nothing will ever be the same anymore. Now it is just me.
I feel myself sliding back into my own harrowing brain. I am back at Bone’s place. My consciousness is in the process of being restored, but the throbbing in my head continues. I feel like a prisoner trapped inside my throbbing brain. When I reach up to feel the back of my head, my hand finds the remnants of dried blood.
Yes, my extended mind is back inside my body. “Dear G_d, what the hell is that? Did I trip and fall last night? I feel like my brain is in a vise.”
I try to shift out of my chair, stretching; I glare up at the ceiling and then down at the floor. “My G_d.”
My entire body trembles. My hands shake convulsively. Staring downward, I see Bone wallowing in his own blood, his hands stretching outward. Bone’s hair is reddened from the pool of fresh blood. I begin hyperventilating.
“Who did this? Why!”
I kneel over Bone’s body, my tears falling onto his face. I wipe the blood from his cheeks, crying incessantly. How could I have let this happen? This time the attack was personal; I know it was. Was it Victoria? Barundi Udina? Are they somehow working together? Or was it someone else entirely? This wasn’t about them. Was it about me? “Damn it to hell!”
I feel a crawling sickness regurgitating from within. The once shatterproof, durable man of steel is dead. I shout, “Maya!” at the top of my lungs. No answer. My skin crawls with repugnant, ghastly fear; Maya is gone.
SECTION IV
Fifteen Years Later
(Life without Maya)
2,393
CHAPTER 38
October 13, 2378
1:11 a.m.
I always loved autumn and its sturdy greens, bright yellows, and fiery reds Thankfully, I lived in an area where there were a lot of trees and even flowers. In case you’re interested, that’s really not normal anymore. Most regions are not plant friendly; they’re kind of like barren, lifeless deserts. Yes, the atmosphere is changing. Ben was right. Mars once had an atmosphere, until a prior civilization screwed it up and they all were forced to go underground, where their bodies turned small and their eyes turned big.
Hey, that’s a different story. When a universe exists for billions of years, things are likely to change. Have you ever heard the expression “shit happens?” Sounds like a bumper sticker, doesn’t it?
Well, I’m not a teenager anymore, in case you’re interested. My father has been dead for a long time, and his absence has been felt; his death left a big hole in the American Isles military defense. How do I know? I’ve been told that over and over again by the powers to be. M.E.? I’m not their man. I don’t have the stomach to do what my father did. I’m not the man people think I am; trust me. Sometimes I just look up in the sky and hope that Zeke will come back for me. Maybe he was just a figment of my imagination.
I turn my collar up. It’s a cold day—uncharacteristically cuttingly frigid, kind of like the stinging weather that makes your teeth rattle and your skin freeze. Too frigid for October, you say? Not really. That’s what over four hundred years of abuse to a planet will bring about.
Yes, I wanted to come here with my mom today. But, as usual, she’s far too sad. Honestly, it’s not just about my dad; it’s everything. I believe paranoia has truly taken a hold of her. Things are different. Oh yeah, they’re very different. It’s not the same planet. I’m not the same person, and most of the people dear to me are either dead or just gone, dissipated into the air.
Victoria? I don’t know what happened to her; nor do I know who was directly responsible for my father’s death. It all seems to have disappeared. All the mess, all the drama, for now, is gone. Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t seem to give a damn about anything. Do you blame me?
It’s been fifteen years, and there’s been no sign of Maya. The day the lighting laser beams shot out of the sky was the end of my hopes and dreams for happiness.
I place an array of colorful flowers on my dad’s bench—mainly gladiolas. I don’t know why, but I like them a lot! They’re tall, bright, and beautiful. I think my dad would appreciate them. He used to grow them in a flower garden off our patio. That’s something I remember; isn’t that odd?
We never did recover his body. I guess you could say he was buried in the sky. His remnants melded into the grand spiritual mulch of the universe. Remember Dulce? I’m sure you do. Those sons of bitches blew everything away. Dulce is history. I say good riddance to all of it—but did they have to take my dad? Bone? Maya? Everyone’s gone. If Maya’s alive, she sure as hell doesn’t want to see
me.
The irate, venomous wind fiercely changes directions. At first, I believe it’s coming from the west, but some strange twist of fate sends it hurling like a tempestuous vortex of air howling fiercely from the North. Then, like a ghost, it unpredictably twists and swivels again, spitting rain and a sickening drizzle onto my father’s grave.
I observe a man treading awkwardly toward me, waving his hands. The man wears one of those tweed coats and an equally out of style hat. He has to be one of the shortest males I’ve ever seen. He is five foot one, tops.
I’ve already started back to my car, thinking he is one of those crazy people who meander aimlessly in cemeteries, when he shouts my name. “Michael!” he cries dolefully, waving his hands like a demented madman.
I can’t believe this guy! I think he’s going to hug me!
“It’s been a long time,” the curiously queer diminutive man says softly. He empties his pipe, leaving its remnants to dance in the wind.
“Little Mikey—Mikey Eisenstein. The boy who fell at Giza,” he says.
I bury my shame, remembering something out of my past that I’d sooner forget. Then, I recognize him. Solly.
“Bagel man!” I say reminiscently.
Solly nods. “That’s what you used to call me!” The pint-sized man smiles, peering at me as if he knows a secret. “A bagel with some schmear was the only thing that would shut you up back in the day.
“Mr. Rosenberg,” I utter, solemnly extending my hand and enjoying a firm handshake.
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