by Aimee Norin
“Will you get people on it?” Adrien asked. “The team in South Carolina. Right away?”
Salvador nodded. “Sure. But I think the Hong Kong office is better equipped—”
Adrien gave Salvador a slight smile.
Salvador turned to the office area and said with a smile. “Karrie! Veronica! Best speed.”
“Hey bro,” Karrie responded, turning to give instructions to others hear her.
Sal leaned on Adrien a little, staring out the window. He put his arm around Adrien’s waist. “Are you not well? Is there something you should tell me?”
“You’re just like a woman,” Adrien said.
“No! Oh, I am! You want me to be?” Salvador looked around nervously and spoke softly to Adrien. “You don’t like my—”
Adrien broke a smile at that one and shook his head. “Not for me, hon. It’s up to you.”
CHAPTER
8
Estella and Cory Peck’s house was in a nice, residential neighborhood across the street to the east from Westech.
The living room was full: Estella, Cory, their two boys, Gadin, Frank—and Lori.
Everyone sat on the two couches, except Estella who was serving snacks to visitors, no matter what planet they were from, and Lori, who sat in a chair opposite them.
Five sets of eyes stared at Lori without blinking, mouths hanging part way open.
“Wow, way cool!” Matias said, the ten-year-old.
“Just like Star Trek,” Samuel said.
“What do you know about it?” Matias said. “You’re just a kid.”
“I can watch the movies, can’t I?”
Estella held a tray of food in front of the kids. “Take a sopapilla and be quiet! Lori told us a big secret! Lets help her.”
The kids each took one.
Estella offered sopapillas to everyone else, but they didn’t move.
Estella took one and sat down on the couch by the boys, looked at the men looking at Lori.
Estella rolled her eyes. “Oh Dios mio, son estupidos hombres!”
Cory held out his hand toward Lori, as if to show Estella.
Estella turned to Lori. “Where you come from, then?”
“You mean the other planet?”
Estella nodded.
“Ahleth. It’s a planet on the other side of the galaxy. No where near here.”
Estella looked to Lori, “Did you have a nice family?”
Lori nodded. “Yes, as far as that goes. Ahleth are isolative, not into grouping, any more, so—”
“Ahleth?” Frank asked. He pointed up. “Bad ass? Aliens from outer space?”
Lori chuckled at him. “No tentacles.”
“You look human,” Cory said.
“Do you have teeth that come out of your stomach?” Samuel asked.
“Like, do you eat people?” Matias asked.
“I am human,” Lori said to them all.
“How—”
There was a knock at the front door. Cory jumped up to see. “News crews,” he said. Thousands of them!”
Everyone else ran to the windows to see.
There were two vans in the street with dishes on them, a camera crew knocking at the door, other press filling into the yard.
“We’re lousy secret agents,” Gadin said.
“The Jason Bourne stuff works in the movies,” Frank said.
“Yeah, but we don’t have a script!” Gadin said.
Cory cracked the window and yelled out. “You all need to wait off the property. You’re trespassing. Please move back to the sidewalk!”
Instead of moving back, they came to the window from where he was shouting.
Cory closed the window and the drapes, stepped back.
The eight-year-old, Samuel, turned on the T.V. The news blared, “…who has shocked the world with her revelation of—”
Matias changed the channel. “…and our science editor says it might work: Rejuvination! The old can grow young again—”
Estella turned it off and shushed the kids.
The knocking at the door increased.
Lori’s cell phone rang in her pocket, an iPhone 6.
She looked at everyone present and then to the phone. She did not recognize the number, so she didn’t answer it.
“They’re gonna hound you,” Cory said.
“You’ve been on T.V.,” Lori said.
“Some, but it was by choice.”
“I think it’s going to be part of this, too,” Lori told him.
Her cell phone rang again. She looked at it, then turned it to face everyone else. Wording was creeping across the phone for her to read.
“You’re kidding me?” Gadin said. They can do that? Even I can’t do that.”
“I think I better answer it.” Lori placed the phone to her ear, then promptly removed it, holding it out in front of her, pressing speaker phone for all to hear.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Faraday?”
“Holy iPhone, it’s her,” Cory said.
“Yes?” Lori answered.
Cadence sat behind her desk in the Oval Office, talking into the phone. “This is President Helmsley, in D.C. I think something big is up, and I thought maybe I could smooth it out a little for you.”
Lori nodded and said in front of everyone. “I knew this was coming.”
The President spoke on her phone. “Mrs. Faraday—”
“’Lori,’ please?” Lori asked.
“Okay. Fine. Lori. And you can call me Cadence—”
“Okay,” Lori said, but then contradicted herself. “I— I thank you, Madam President. I like you and I voted for you. But I think there is value in using your title. There’s a purpose for it.”
“It reminds me of my role,” Cadence said.
“Yes,” Lori said. “And everyone else, too, including me.”
“Okay.” Cadence paused for a second. “Lori, you anticipated all this, didn’t you.”
“Yes.”
“She’s twenty thousand years old,” Gadin said.
“Who all is there?” Cadence asked.
“Some of us from Westech,” Lori said. “Here in Cory Peck’s home with his family.”
“It’s okay to talk in front of them?” Cadence asked.
“I think it should be so,” Lori said.
“Okay,” Cadence said. “Let me offer you some help. I see on satellite imagery—”
“Cool!” Matias said.
“—that your house is surrounded by press, and I take you seriously per your talk with Ella Gomez that you need protection, so I’m sending you so me. This is all above board. If you look outside, you will see in a few seconds the Army moving people off your property and setting up barricades down the block.”
Cory went to the curtains to see it happening. Soldiers were herding press backward down the street. “They are,” he said.
“We going to be hauled away to a secret bunker with the aliens?” Frank asked the President in his extremely informal way.
Cadence chuckled a little at him. “I watched the same movies you did— Who was that?”
“Frank James, Biology,” Frank said. “
“Cool!” Matias said again.
“Okay. Hi Frank. “No, Lori and all. I made it very clear. This is not skullduggery. This is us helping. If you want the Army to leave, just say so. If you want something else, just say so. Ella says your invention is sound, and that lends credence to other areas of your story.”
“You mean that I’m an alien from outer space?” Lori asked.
“Yes,” Cadence said. “Is that true also?”
“Maybe it would be best if I hold a press conference, Madam President.”
“You and me both.”
“Maybe we could hold one together? We’re on different sides of the country, but we can work it out electronically.”
Lori looked at Gadin who nodded. “Yes, no problem.”
“Madam President, we need to get out ahead of this. We
need to talk to people, let them see me, get used to me. And I need to fill them in on the transmuter. It’s a big adjustment.”
Thirty minutes later, Lori got herself situated on a couch with everyone else in the house.
A video crew from Channel 5 News were all set up to view them as a group, with another camera as a close-up on Lori.
Twenty other reporters were crowded on the other side of the small living room with a dozen cameras going and microphones in hand.
A Major Wood stood inbetween them with two armed soldiers at the ready. He had no sense of humor about peace in this interview.
There was a large T.V. monitor beside the group on the couch, displaying the President and Ella, both framing a fireplace.
In the Oval Office, Cadence and Ella sat by the fireplace with a large monitor where they could see Lori et al in California.
A camera crew indicated ready.
“You’re all comfortable with this?” the reporter asked.
Everybody nodded.
“This is so cool!” Matias said.
“Would you shut up?” Samuel asked.
“Shhhh!” Estella ordered.
Lori took their comments as relief from the seriousness of the situation, smiled at them.
“It’s okay,” the reporter said. “This is just us talking with people.”
“A billion people,” Gadin said.
“More than that,” Frank said.
Cory shook is head no to get them to relax. “The way to make it work is just be here, guys. Just be us, sitting on the couch, explaining to the reporter. Relax.”
“Easy for you,” Gadin said.
“Madam President, are you ready on your end?”
Doreen Washington, Press Secretary, stepped into view and nodded to her.
“Alright.” The reporter looked at her cameraman who nodded at her. She listened to the speaker in her ear. “We’re ready.”
“Most of us,” Gadin said quietly to Lori.
Her cameraman pointed his camera at her, and gave her a 5 count, the last two with his fingers. His little red light came on.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “This is Janet Mays, Channel 5 news, Los Angeles, with a special news broadcast with both the President of the United States of America and Lori Faraday, who have asked to speak with people about Lori’s new invention.”
Cadence looked very presidential on the monitor beside the couch, as she spoke. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the United States of America and around the world. This morning, at Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, Dr. John Michael Faraday, professor at Western Polytechnic University, Los Angeles, and Nobel Laureate in Physics, passed away after a long oreal in the hospital in the loving presence of his wife, Lorelai Faraday. Lori has shared with me how much she loved him and how much the passing of loved ones has meant to her over the years, and she’s also shared with the entire world, this afternoon, over the internet, plans for a machine that may be able to do something to help people live longer. It’s not certain, yet, but we are working on this at very high speed to see if we can get it working, and with that, there would be many changes we would need to consider as we adjust to it.
“Along with Lori’s revelations to the world she has also shared with us, here—Ella Gomez, my science advisor, and me—how she came into possession of this remarkable machine. She says it is in use in her former land, that it’s natural for her former people to use, and that she, herself has been using it for a very long time. We have not verified any of that yet, but she insists it come out, so since she has captivated the public’s attention, perhaps it would be best if we discuss this with her. Lori?”
“Yes, Madam President,” Lori said.
The camera continued to capture the president on her monitor and the group on the couch.
Cadence suggested, “Perhaps you could share with us who you’re with.”
“Okay, Sure. Thank you Madam President. This is,” Lori indicated from the far right of the couch, “Frank James, Professor of Biology, Westech.” Frank waved and smiled. “Gadin Malhotra, professor visiting from Stanford.” Gadin smiled. “Cornelius Peckington, whom you all know as Cory Peck.” Cory smiled at her, “And to my left, you have Estella, his lovely wife—who is a good cook, by the way.”
“Stop it,” Estella said.
“And their two children, Matias and Samuel. It’s a good group. John and I have known known Cory, Estella and their family for years. The others are new to me, but they seem great, and I’m glad to have met them.”
“Thanks,” Gadin said.
“Good,” Frank said.
“So,” Lori continued, “Janet, how would you like to do this?”
“Why don’t I ask you some prepared questions, and then we can ask the assembled group of reporters if they have any questions for you.”
Lori nodded.
The president nodded as well.
“Lori,” Janet said. “You prefer to be called Lori, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Lori. What is the machine? How does it work?”
Lori answered without hesitation. “It’s a transmuter. It has its own artificial intelligence—a rather business-like personality, not given to frivolity—and what it does it take matter, effectively reduces it to energy, and uses a template to provide a new form to the energy such that a younger, healthier body can be formed.”
“Like a transporter on Star Trek?” Matias asked.
“Shhhhh! Matias!” Estella said.
Cadence chuckled, as did Lori.
“Actually,” Lori said to him, “as I guess it’s represented, not quite. As I guess it, if you’re in a machine that dematerializes your entire body, brain and all, and rematerializes you somewhere else—trans-port—then you’d be dead, and the new you would be a copy. It’d be just like you, in a new place, but a different person.”
“Cool!” Matias said.
“It’s his word. Sorry,” Estella said.
“No problem,” Lori said. “But the way the transmuter works—”
“That’s what you call it?” Frank asked.
Lori told him, “Yes, in English. But let me go here before I go there?”
Frank smiled. Lori continued to Matias and everyone. “But the way the transmuter works, it’s a chamber, not larger than a CAT Scanner—kinda looks like it. You lie in it nude. It samples you, reads every quantum bit of you, and then in the space of a few seconds dematerializes your body but not your brain and materializes a new body for you.”
“What does it feel like?” Cory asked her.
“I’d say—like going to sleep and waking back up with a new body. You work from a template.”
“A what?” Estella asked.
“A template. I talk with Lwaxana about what I want—”
“From Star Trek, again?” Cory asked.
Lori smiled. “Yes. John and I both liked it, and John named her.”
“John knew about all this?” Cory asked.
“Yes, but he was against using it, not even to save his own life.”
“What the hell?” Frank said.
Lori confirmed with a nod. “He was a religious man who felt there was a life beyond this, and he didn’t want me to interfere.”
“Uh-oh. There goes the ballgame,” Gadine said.
“But I think it should be okay.” Lori began to tear. “When John died in my arms, I—” Lori’s face turned to stone, went a little white. A tear fell down her cheek while she regained herself. “When John died, I couldn’t take it any more. I’ve been watching loved ones die for thousands of years. My former species has the belief that you do not mess with other cultures. Let them develop all this on their own. But I’ve always hated that. I’ve wanted to give this to people ever since Einstein, but knew I had to wait. I begged John,” another tear fell, “to let me do something—” Lori took a second to compose. “And I couldn’t take it any more, so I— Even if other Ahleths have a problem with it, I think—I believe, f
rom watching how societies have grown since the integration of the planet—cell phones, satellites, movies, T.V., airline travel—you can stand in the Sahara and talk to your mother in Idaho on the phone—that people don’t need to be the immature set that policy was fashioned around. I believe people won’t do the ‘Aliens are going to eat us’ thing we’ve seen in movies and are at a place where they can use their minds, embrace people from elsewhere, and learn to live longer lives.
“Not immortality, mind you, because you’re still human. Just longer lives, without the aging.”
“What about neurological diseases?” Frank asked. “Parkinson’s, Altzheimer’s, etc. You don’t remake the brain.”
“True, that the system doesn’t reform the entire brain, but it samples the whole thing, find its healthy form, and while it’s doing the body, it can go in and ‘clean up’ the brain, removing such as amyloid plaque, restoring little things that make it healthy again. It’s to Apple computers what they are to petroglyphs, to the N.S.A.s computers as they are to counting on your fingers. It’s pretty advanced.”
“How long will it be before you can get one working for other people?” Cory asked.
“Mine works,” Lori said. “But I’ve already given her instructions to begin plans to self-replicate en masse, the number will grow exponentially as they do so, and in a matter of weeks, we will be able to begin using them with the most needy people.”
“Why not right away? It already works.” Frank asked.
“Because she is more complicated than we are, actually. The human body is not that complicated. She is immense, inside. And because this is the fastest way to start saving millions. If we begin using the machines too early in the process of replication, then those machines can’t make other machines. I’m trying to save as many lives as fast as I can, and her systems are too delicate to rush. I’ve been at this a long time.
“Lori,” Cadence asked.
“Yes, Madam President?”
“Here is where we can touch on that other issue you bring to us. We are thankful for your efforts to help us, ever so. I pledge we will rise to the challenge and learn to be a better people as we adjust to the opportunities you present to us. But I also need to ask: You said you’ve been using this for thousands of years. How did that occur?”
Lori looked at her friends and to the press in attendance. “Is it okay to say?”
Lori knew it was, but the question itself helped to prepare people for a bombshell.