Jo-el

Chapter 13 MORE INSTRUCTIONS

I kept walking for a while, feeling that I needed to put some distance between myself and the café. There was a Chinese restaurant across the street. I enjoyed the Szechwan Chicken, taking my time. I watched a recording on the heads-up display of the manager being told not to waste police time. He looked embarrassed and when he tried to call the waitress over to substantiate the story the police officers had had enough and promptly left. Done and dusted.

I was home by three and back to being Dave Murphy. Shortly before four, Betty knocked on my door and asked if I’d like to come over for dinner. Crock-pot lamb shank, with all the trimmings. Sounded great and the idea of some normal company and an escape from the bizarre events of the day was truly welcome. I said I’d be over by six, which gave me time for a shower and a rewarding Black Label.

Saturday morning came bright and early. The sun shone in lines through the bedroom window, highlighting the dust dancing gracefully around the room. My cleaner came on Mondays, I needed to remember to clear up the family room. Maggie was coming over for dinner. She had texted that she wanted Thai food, so I needed to book a table at our local favorite Thai restaurant, just two stops down on the train toward the City. No drinking and driving with a police office for a daughter. I wondered briefly if she’d heard the story of the vanishing black man. Somehow I doubted it, those cops would have kept that incidence to themselves.

I was comfortably cocooned under my duvet, enjoying the peace, watching the lines of dust in the sun-light. I reflected on the whacky events since Wednesday. If it hadn’t happened to me I simply wouldn’t have believed it. I needed to know why? That was paramount. Sally had said there was more instructions, ‘the best for last.’ Then the answer I wanted. Just thinking of a computer as a person was nuts, yet we were all moving in that direction. Our smart phones had become extensions of ourselves. We talked to them and they answered back. Rudimentary and often wrong but they were improving almost daily. What was Sally but an ultimate smart phone with an unlimited database of information. If everybody had access to that database maybe crime and evil would end. If the police forces of today knew immediately who was responsible for every crime, then I guess crime would simply be futile and cease being such a problem in our society. Incredible to even imagine it. Sally had said there was no crime on Cirion, no racial problems. Everything solved by technology. We were heading in that direction. CCTV was everywhere in England, recording events. Catching criminals was much easier. You could listen to conversations through their smart phones, people posted where they were and what they were doing on Facebook. What was the difference to the ultimate situation the people of Cirion had achieved? It didn’t seem to me to be so far off on earth. Technology was moving exponentially. Just five hundred years ago, we couldn’t fly around the world in aircraft, there was no electricity, no engines, medical treatments were heathen.

If Cirion was truly four hundred and fifty million years ahead of us, shouldn’t there be something incredible they had discovered, that we hadn’t even thought of? Who had projected the internet prior to its invention. Little did I know that in a few short hours I was going to experience a quantum leap into the future.

Breakfast was grape-nuts, blueberries and bananas. Coffee was dark roast ground beans from Kenya. I was ready for my final instructions.

Ensconced in my usual place, with fresh, hot coffee close by, I called up Sally. She was dressed in a plaid, red, mini-dress. As usual, very distracting. Why didn’t I have teachers like that growing up? Not a chance of skipping school. I was starting the day in a great mood.

I spoke out loud. “Hit me with the final chapter, Sally and let’s get to your leader’s motive.” I was smiling and she recognized my mood.

She seemed delighted with my enthusiasm. “You remember when you found the container and picked it up,” she pointed at where I’d left it on the floor. “It appeared to be empty, very light. And when you placed the monitor tile in the air, it remained in place.”

I nodded, she was referring to the business-card thingy.

“That’s anti-gravity,” she continued. “you can do that; it’s programed into the belt around your waist.” Her expression invited surprise. I was.

“Say that again.” I said.

She started to repeat herself, but that wasn’t what I meant. I raised my hand and she stopped.

“Are you saying I can fly?”

“Yes,” she said.

I was suddenly hot under my arms. “But if you counteract gravity, you just float upwards, vertically,” I said, redundantly. For some silly reason, I indicated with my arms.

“Initially of course, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out how to gain horizontal motion. Different parts of the body are subjected to oscillating anti-gravity waves, they move very fast, so you can’t feel the changes. But the effect is you can move vertically as well as horizontally.”

“Oh,” I said, not understanding a word. “How?”

“Guess,” she said, grinning.

Guess! What’s she saying? I looked at her with my best hangdog expression. I recalled the same dumb feeling throughout my childhood education.

Sally continued. “You just think it.”

“I do?”

“Uh-huh! Stay where you are and use your thought to imagine upward motion.”

“Here!” I glanced up and wondered how hard I would hit the ceiling.

“Sure, just imagine how far you want to go up, the computer will take care of the rest. It knows there’s a limit in the room that you can reach.”

The best for last, she said, I guess she was right. Okay, here goes nothing, Superman in born. I thought ‘up’ and suddenly I was sitting in midair. My heart jumped a beat and I flailed around with my arms. It was damn scary. I looked down at my family room and for a second wondered how the hell I was going to get down. So, I thought, ‘down’, without being prompted, oh yea, I’m a fast learner. And down I drifted, very gently, back to the sofa. Holy crap! I can fly.

I was grinning broadly. I wanted to rush outside and give it a real go. Sally stood quietly reading my thoughts. “Try horizontal,” she said.

I looked at her and then glanced around the room. Not a lot of space to play with. The drapes were drawn, my usual precaution. I could imagine the fright I’d cause to a nosy neighbor.

I thought, ‘up’ and drifted off the sofa, already more confident. I thought ‘pause’ and hung there in mid-air, disconcerting but quite honestly amazing. I looked at the door and thought ‘towards door’ and immediately drifted in that direction. I was still in the ridiculous sitting positing, which didn’t feel right at all. Almost instinctively I began to straighten into an upright, the thought process was not definitive but worked just the same. Incredible. I looked down and began to float down to the carpet, where I came to rest in a standing position.

“Oh my God, that is so cool. How fast can I fly?” I was beaming at Sally who was standing nonchalantly against the wall next to my television, opposite the sofa.

“Your speed through the air is dependent on several things. Mostly it’s a problem of safety. The smart-suit will cover your head as you gain speed, like a crash helmet. The computer will be able to recognize objects to avoid, but you don’t want to veer off to the side at such a speed that it wrenches your limbs. In theory, you could reach almost the speed of sound, but that would be very dangerous. If you hit a bird or even a small insect it could kill you. Effectively up to a hundred miles an hour is about all you should even attempt. There are suits on Cirion that allow faster speeds but we don’t have one here and anyway they’ve died out except for thrill seekers. But don’t fret I’m now going to tell you of how you can move around the planet safely at a little less that the speed of light.”

The thing that hit me the most following that statement was that there was little to no emotion in her outward appearance. It was as if she had just explained that two plus two equals four. She just told me that I could travel at almost the speed of light, that’s a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second. That is about as crazy as this whole myriad of craziness put together. I was dumbfounded, speechless and agape all at the same time. The concept was so out in left field that my belief was stretched to breaking point.

I walked back to the sofa and sat down. I didn’t say a word. Not sure if I wanted to know. My imagination was buzzing, unable to fix itself on any firm concept of light-speed travel. I guess I’d thought earlier that such an advanced civilization should have come up with something incredible. I waited, expectantly.

“It’s called ‘the bounce’, or that’s how it translates from the Cirion language. It was called ‘bounce’ because that’s what happens to the molecules of your body. Each atom that makes up your body, plus what you are wearing and holding is set into a very fast oscillating motion only a fraction of a centimeter apart. Sort of bouncing back and forth. Then those atoms are sent through the air, not unlike the digital packets sent through the internet on earth and reformed into the original, wherever you have designated. It all happens so fast, that you hardly skip a heartbeat.”

I listened but felt inside that I didn’t want to hear this, because I knew the next words out of her mouth was, ‘let’s try it’. I didn’t like the ‘hardly skip a beat’ it seemed a bit too close to missing a beat.

I said, “so I’m sent through the internet?”

“Sort of, yes. But using the network we set up here on earth many years ago.”

That made me think. “So, it’s old, this technology. I mean, your computers were send here two hundred and forty-eight million years ago.” I think my sphincter muscle had tightened, a lot.

“It’s been updated,” she added.

“When?”

“About thirty million years ago.”

Oh, well, that’s alright then. I’ve got myself a software update. No problemo. Only thirty million years out of date. What could go wrong?

“Want to give it a try?” Sally said, grinning.

There it was. What was I supposed to say? The concept was lunatic, but everything had worked so far. Why should I assume this would be any different? I had a few more questions.

“So how do I decide where to land?” Not that landing in the aircraft sense was how I imagined this worked.

“You search out a location site using the heads-up display and basically activate the bounce system just like anti-gravity. You do have to be a little firmer with the instructions, wouldn’t be good to be imagining a visit to the Eifel Tower and suddenly be standing there.” She laughed.

No I guess not, I thought.

“Also,” Sally continued. “You need to be aware of your current situation.”

I think I understood what she was implying but I said. “meaning?”

“You would scare people just appearing suddenly.”

“Certainly would.” I said, mostly to myself. “So it’s sort of like Star Trek? ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’”

“Similar, but this is instant. You don’t materialize like the TV show. Effectively you bounce immediately, or so it will seem to you and anybody who happens to see you appear.”

Yeah, that would be a little disconcerting, I thought.

“Oh, another point is, you can bounce to a location inside a building. As long as it isn’t air-tight, you have a window in as it were.”

That threw me for a loop. Whambo! instant Dave in your bedroom. I was imagining the implications. I laughed. Sally was watching me and I could see the question on her face.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

There was a pause in the conversation. My mind was racing around in circles. On one hand, it scared me to death, but on the other Holy Moly, completely absurd.

“Do you want to give it a try?” Sally again, who else.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” I muttered.

“What?” she enquired.

“Nothing,” I said. “Sure, let’s do it. Where shall I go?”

“I think the first run should be somewhere well away from civilization. That way you’re not worrying about somebody suddenly appearing out of nowhere. It’s eleven a.m. here, so two p.m. on the east coast.”

“You can’t change the time zone?”

Sally burst out a laugh. “Nope, we haven’t figured out time-travel, yet.”

Good to know, I guess.

“How about somewhere on a remote island in the Bahamas. Nice weather down there.” She was pensive.

“Whao! Does the weather affect the… you know bounce?”

“We don’t think so.”

“What’d you mean. You don’t think so?” My nervousness was building.

“We haven’t actually tried this out on earth,” she said, “but it should work just the same.”

My heart was getting a bit of a workout now. My eyes widened. I mean, tried and tested in another atmosphere, should be okay, I told myself. Thirty-million-year-old technology was going to mash me into electrons and spit me out three thousand miles away at the speed of light. Who wouldn’t sign up for that ride?

“The Abacos Islands, east of Florida. They are four hours ahead. How about Great Guana Cay, on the beach by the Atlantic. There’s a nice bar there, Nippers, you could get an early lunch. They take US dollars. There’s a few people on the beach, so we’ll go a little north, no one there right now.” My heads-up display was showing the location, it looked beautiful. “First, you need to change, go with thirty-something American, tanned, you know the beach-bum surfer look. Swimming shorts, t-shirt.”

I was staring at Sally. It was all moving too fast, if you know what I mean. I was feeling manipulated.

“Well?” She said.

I nearly said, are you coming? but quickly realized she was with me always. I couldn’t get rid of her. That felt unkind. I think it was all so ridiculous, here I was Dave Murphy, fifty-seven years old, widower, average guy, discussing beaming over to the Bahamas from San Francisco for lunch on the beach, looking like a beach-bum. Nuts! I needed time to get my mind around it. If you thought just two seconds it was simply mind-blowing and here I was, going along with it.

“You okay, Jo-el?” She asked.

Jo-el again. Forgot about him for a moment. “Just trying to accept this thing. It’s somewhat odd in my world. I have to let it sink in, get my mind around it.”

“Oh, okay, I guess.” I’m not sure she understood, really. Not one bit.

I stood up slowly and pictured this thirty-something hunk in my mind. Then told myself, to change and there I was standing in my family room, swim shorts and a t-shirt. I looked down, nothing on my feet and thought of flip-flops and they instantly appear, which gave me a start. Got to get used to this.

“Money,” I said, suddenly. Didn’t want to leave without being prepared, made a screw-up on that front already. I ran upstairs and picked up a hundred bucks, leaving my wallet where it was. I checked the full-length mirror on the closet door. I appeared bigger, it was the shoulders and chest area. I guess the hologram I was wearing had limitations. It had to fit over my body, so to achieve the right proportions it had to fill out more across my upper-body. Dave wasn’t overweight but middle-age spread was beginning to show. My Dave face was a smidgen round, but the hologram was perfect. I looked thirty and a lot better looking. Instant plastic surgery, that’s another industry going down the toilet. I laughed.

Back in the family-room, letting my mind roll. I was nervous, it just didn’t seem feasible.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” I said.

“Damn,” Sally suddenly blurted out. My heart hit my throat, I thought maybe that the booster rockets had failed and I was going up in smoke. I glared at Sally. “Betty’s coming to the door,” she explained.

“Crap!” Change to Dave. Whoosh I was Dave. The doorbell rang. I dealt with Betty quickly, telling her I was going out for lunch.

“Anywhere nice?” she asked.

My mouth quivered, oh how I wanted to tell her, but I lied. “Just into the City,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. Well you wouldn’t believe the truth, Betty, that’s for sure.

When I heard the front door of her house close I returned to Sally, waiting patiently against the wall. She is patient, I thought, but then again so is my laptop when I turn in off and leave it on the table. Hard to see Sally as a computer I could just turn off. I wonder how she felt about it? Did she have emotions. Don’t go there, Dave. Your brain will overheat.

I changed back to the hunk and waited for Sally to light the blue touch paper.

Nothing happened.

“You have to do it, Jo-el,” she said.

“Oh, right!” Made sense, I guess. I fired up the heads-up display and pictured the beach on Grand Guana Cay. I picked a place behind a sand dune and asked if I was in sight of anyone. Sally said no.

I shut my eyes, tightly. Not sure if I was supposed to or not but it seemed logical. Didn’t want to see all those miles rushing by even if I did have a window seat. I thought ‘bounce’ and pictured the place I wanted to be.