by Jim Reilly
As he was giving thanks, he smelled something he had not smelled there at the church for a long time. It smelled like pecan pie, and when he looked up he noticed a little girl sitting next to him saying, “Good morning, Pastor. It is a wonderful day, don’t you think?”
As he pulled his hands from his face there were no tears this time, only a smile. He said to her, “Good morning to you, Sha’nay, and yes, it is a wonderful day.”
Sitting next to him in her best Sunday attire, she was holding two small plates with slices of pecan pie and said to him, “Grandma got up early to bake this pie. Would you like some?”
With his smile growing larger, he took what was offered to him and said, “I most certainly will take your offer. Pecan pie is my favorite, and I thank you.”
The two of them sat there eating the pie, and a few moments later she asked him, “Did you find what you were looking for? Last week you said you lost something.”
He then looked at her with appreciation and said, “I most certainly did, and I want to thank you for your insightful wisdom. I hope you come back here to visit us some more.”
After finishing the last of her pie she said, “You don’t have to worry. Grandma said I could come with her every Sunday for services. You are going to see a lot of me.” A teary-eyed and happy Pastor Charles looked down at his slice of pecan pie and thanked God, not for the pie, but for the little girl seated next to him.
The next week and every week after that he went back out among the community to talk and listen to the people.
Chapter 5
This time of the year, it was still pretty cold in Boston, Jennifer thought while she was sitting on a bench outside of the Harvard Science Center. It was late March. There was still snow on the ground, and the people walking by were bundled up. She was waiting for David and James to finally bring over her decaf coffee from Starbucks. Jennifer would have gone with them, but she was not as mobile as she used to be, being eight months pregnant. This was an important meeting, and she didn’t want to miss it no matter how much David protested. David thought that he would update Jennifer later, but she wanted to see for herself. Jennifer thought that because she was on the President’s Panel for the Study of Alien Influence that it would be important for her at least to make an appearance.
“Sorry for the wait. We stood in line for a while,” said David as James trailed him.
“It is hard to imagine with a Starbucks on every corner that we had to stand in line for most of our break,” complained James.
“Ah, this will warm me up,” said a relieved Jennifer. As she was drinking the coffee she considered that it would have been warmer inside, but the fresh air felt good since they had been locked up now for two days inside the science center. The meeting would be over in the evening, and then she could head back home to Long Island and begin analyzing the results of all the tests and scientific data put forth by the meeting members. Then she could make out her report for the panel.
“So when do you guys find the time to have kids? You spend most of your time on two different continents, for God’s sake. How many kids you have now, about a dozen?” asked a playful James to his married friends.
“When we are together, we make sure our time is quality time. And this will only be our second,” responded David.
“Well then, that wild little Andy just seems like a lot of kids,” joked James.
David said, “If you could stay married long enough, then you might see some of these things for yourself.” He was referring to James’ recent second marriage to Hollywood sci-fi vixen Janice Shaw. It was a marriage that had lasted about three weeks and was a great source of stories for the tabloid news sites as paparazzi traced their every move.
“We couldn’t do a thing without a picture being taken. If we had had a kid, the moment of conception would have been seen on every news site in the world! We did find ten minutes to be alone together, but that was when we realized our quickie marriage was going to be a quickie divorce. Only in Hollywood, right?”
A sympathetic Jennifer said, “You’ll find the right person someday when you finally decide to look beyond the surface.”
David’s screen on his headset popped on to remind him the meeting would start again in ten minutes and they needed to head back into the building. Jennifer then turned to James to say, “I hope this meeting was helpful to you for your new book.”
James knew that his two friends had to use their influence to get him access to this important meeting. Some in the scientific community looked upon his books and lectures with disdain for making statements without validating his theories with research. His conclusions as to the influence of the Ancient Visitors were also condemned by the religious establishments for undermining their traditional beliefs by using his vast popularity to promote his view of why people believed in God and how James believed people were really created.
“Yes, and I appreciate all you guys have done for me. I don’t get much access anymore. At least, not like I used to,” he said. “Whatever goodwill I had being Patrick Connor’s son has now dried up.”
David interjected, “Well, if you had just looked at the discovery a little more like a scientist and not made statements that were not well researched, and then you could have still been well received. Maybe in the end your ideas will be right, but to get acceptance of your conclusions, you’ll need to be published in science journals and have your ideas backed up with solid evidence. Today they look at you as someone who wants to sell books.”
James responded, “What are you talking about? We were all in the spacecraft, and you saw what they did to our ancestors.”
Then David replied, “I’m not saying you’re not right. I am saying you should do it the right way. You should have acted like the scientist you trained to be, by collecting data through observation and experimentation, and then formulated and tested your hypotheses.”
Jennifer then injected, “Remember when you found the fossilized finger and tooth? You carefully extracted them from the rock and recorded them. Then back at the camp we prepared them for study. What we are saying is to slow down and make sure your conclusions are right. Sometimes things are not as they first seem.”
At that moment an aide to one of the scientists summoned David on his headgear. They walked to the meeting hall that was usually filled with students having a class. Today, the hall was filled with scientists studying the research done on the Ancient Visitors’ influence on the human body and what it might mean going forward. Even though much had been debated in the news media on an almost daily basis and experts injected their opinions in a multitude of documentaries on the matter, the scientific community was still trying to understand all the data. They tried to schedule meetings in private so as to avoid the press. The meetings were filled with conjecture from all parts of the scientific community, but they had yet to come to a consensus.
“All right, please settle down so we can finish up and conclude the meeting. So, to recap the last few days --” said the lead scientist.
But James immediately interrupted him as an embarrassed David looked on: “Can I ask a question?”
“Sure,” said the reluctant scientist as he looked over at his peers.
James stood to address the room, “How come there is so little research done on alien involvement into our culture? We have thousands of examples of possible contact by these aliens that have touched almost every culture on earth. There are ancient writings describing incredible innovations by our primitive ancestors. They have done things that we today would have a hard time accomplishing or explaining. When will this get attention?”
David sunk down in his seat as the debate turned into a shouting match. While James was disrupting the meeting, David thought of some of the revelations that had come out. There was the revelation that the two remaining cylinders produced two ancient human beings very much alive. There was a female and a male. This new species was given the name Homo kibishensis, or Kibish Man.
&n
bsp; The whole thing was a dream come true for an anthropologist like David who had always wondered what he would say if he ever had a chance to meet an ancient individual such as one he hoped to find on a dig. He would now get that chance as he planned to forgo his research at the Kibish site and head to the UCLA Science Institute to begin research on the two subjects with a newly formed research team.
Another revelation came about because the abducted people had been marrying and producing children since their return. The early tests showed that two thirds of their offspring had retained the characteristics their parent had acquired from their enhancement by the Ancient Visitors. One third of them showed no influence.
So the Ancient Visitors had what seemed like a success rate of 66%. It was debated during the meeting that this could explain why there were so many different branches to the human family tree that did not evolve as far as other branches. Also argued was the idea that those branches would eventually die out and become obsolete, as the people enhanced by the aliens would come to dominate the landscape.
David thought about how he was now a member of that part of the family tree that would become obsolete with the emergence of these enhanced people. These people would now look at him like he was going to look at the two Homo Kibishensis individuals he would study at UCLA.
The revelation that sparked James to be so passionate at this meeting was a discovery in central Ethiopia near the Awash River that unearthed a small metallic instrument next to the fossilized remains of an Ardipithecus ramidus, or one of humanity’s possible earliest known ancestors. These beings lived four million years earlier than the fossilized individuals of the James’ Kibish find. The metallic instrument was made of compounds exactly like the metallic table found with the craft. This attracted James’ attention because it supported his opinion that that Ancient Visitors had repeatedly visited Earth and influenced human culture.
As the heated debate went on and James continued to prod the scientists, the lead scientist gave all the people in the room a break to cool down. Outside back at the bench, Jennifer tried to calm down a red-faced James.
“Listen, you are not going to just make them go along with your findings. If your findings do end up being proven correct, then they will of course have no choice but to listen, but there are too many things still unanswered before we in the scientific community can come to an agreement.”
“I agree,” said David. “More discoveries and more research are needed. The human family tree goes back for seven million years, and we have barely touched the tip of the iceberg. There are seven million years of secrets buried out there, and we have a long way to go to find them to unlock the mysteries of our existence.”
A disappointed James took a deep breath and said, “Hey, I know that I don’t have all the answers, but there are a lot of unanswered questions our discovery has uncovered. We were there, and I have to say that the experience has been an eye-opener for me. I see the world and the universe in a whole different light now, and I think I have to voice my opinion.”
Jennifer then said, “That is the point, James. It is your opinion, and you need to substantiate your thoughts, or you will not be taken seriously by the scientific community.”
Then David jumped in, “If you think James is frowned upon by the scientific community, you should see how well received he is by the religious community. He has tried to debunk every aspect of the foundation of almost every religion on Earth. Using the discovery of the spacecraft as proof that God doesn’t exist and man has only been manipulated by beings from other worlds, he has made simple folk question their faith. Your conclusions go against everything the religious community believes. It has caused chaos as people try to understand the meaning of God’s place in the universe or if there were ever a god in the first place. I think this is dangerous ground on which to pick a fight. There are many scientists who through their own reasoning reject the notion of a supreme being who is responsible for making everything, but they respect the beliefs of others and don’t attack their way of life. It is fine if you don’t believe, but to make an effort to disprove long-held beliefs can cause a lot of hurt to those strong in their faith.”
“All I can say is that the truth will set us free,” said James.
“But what is the truth?” asked David.
“You saw it in the ground at Kibish,” argued James.
“But I doubt all the answers to our questions about our existence and our place in the universe will be found there,” countered David.
“I just got the call to go back inside,” said Jennifer, standing heavily on her legs. She continued sarcastically, “You guys can restart this fascinating and never-ending debate at dinner.”
“No dinner for me,” said James. “I have to catch a flight to make my way to Kibish to speak at a convention there. It will be my first time back at Kibish since the discovery, and I’m looking forward to it.”
“Oh, no,” said a disappointed Jennifer.
David told James, “You won’t recognize the place when you get there, but at least you won’t have to sleep in a tent or on an uncomfortable cot.”
James said goodbye to them and headed to the airport.
After hours of travel, his plane descended for a landing at the Kibish airport. As the plane got closer to the land, James glanced out the window to see a transformed and expanding city of Kibish. This once dusty and small Ethiopian village was now a bustling city built to cater to the swell of people coming to see the spacecraft and to venture into the hills to find their own discovery. Replacing the small huts were large hotels and casinos with names like Marriott, Hilton, Trump, and Wynn. Right before the landing, he noticed that there were large cranes on the outskirts of the city putting up additional building projects. During the ride to the hotel, he noticed many restaurants and retail stores that lined the paved streets while tourists with shopping bags walked along the sidewalks next to the convention center where he would be giving his speech at the World UFO Society’s annual convention.
James thought about how things had changed since he was there over sixteen years ago. Even though he was not interested at the time, he remembered Jennifer’s telling David about the strange local customs of the Surma people.
When he looked at the monitor in the auto-piloted electric limo, he saw that one of the hotels was advertising a dinner show of the Surma culture, but these were just actors with fake clay disks, not the actual Surma people. James surmised that the Suma who did not assimilate to the big city environment must have ventured further into the wilderness.
At the hotel, a large crowd of fans seeking autographs greeted James as he stepped out of the limo. It was not as though he could have walked through the lobby unnoticed; his likeness was all over the city, and his speech was widely anticipated. Fans were rushing up to him to have their 3D picture taken with him. He was starting to feel uncomfortable, and he had nowhere to move. Security pushed through the crowd to bring him to his secured suite where a finely dressed woman was waiting for him.
“Hello, Dr. Connor,” she said in greeting. “I’m Mackenzie Davis, the event coordinator for the World UFO Society. First off, I want to apologize for our late security detail, and I promise that that will not happen again. We were not prepared for this great a reaction to your first time back to the site of your discovery. The reaction was so intense that you would have thought Elvis or the Beatles had shown up. Anyway, we are glad, Dr. Connor, that you finally made an appearance to one of our conventions here in Kibish, or what we like to call the Las Vegas of Ethiopia.”
“I am glad to be here, and I appreciate the invite, but please excuse me. I’m tired from the trip,” he said.
She excused herself and left the room, leaving security to guard the door.
After she left, James just laughed to himself as he thought about the reason he had actually come here. It was the cash. The World UFO Society had finally come up with an acceptable speaking fee and made sure he was afforded the best room
in the best hotel. These days, James earned some of the largest speaking fees in the world. He had now out-earned celebrities, sports heroes, corporate CEOs, and even former Presidents in making a living speaking to crowds of people. His managers were busy filling in a schedule that was booked for the next four years. Every new revelation added to his discovery increased his fee. He was earning so much now that he had to take a sabbatical from his teaching position at the university because the speaking fees beat the salary he got from the school by a mile. The earnings from speaking circuit improved James’ life style to that of movie stars and the very wealthy. It kept him busy traveling to Europe, Russia, and to Asia for large engagements viewed in person and via 3D video conferencing for the smaller scale settings.
The fame and the wealth he received, he relished. Being a university professor was small by comparison to his much larger life as a well-paid celebrity. He stayed at all the best hotels and vacation spots. He partied with many of the elite, whether they were movies stars or government leaders. He had women at his beck and call if he so chose, and as a matter of fact, they sought him out. It was a good life, he thought as he took a glass of fine brandy over to the balcony.
He looked out in the distance across the Omo River at the rock formations of Omo National Park and the discovery that had changed his life. After his morning lecture, he was going to visit the site for the first time since he had been carried away due to his injuries. It was there that he arrived as the son of a noted anthropologist and left a worldwide celebrity in a changed world, a world he had a large hand in changing.