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Message in a Bottle

Nick Zentor

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Episode 18 of the Multivertical Man Series

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Detective Ray Ventrune continued to act upon the premise that there may have been a remote human operator behind the actions taken by the Vela Avatar, an AI security program, which caused the death of Jarges Tenrut and Ren Tenrut shared some information about the Aton 5 parallel that threatened the home parallel "Earth" and the entire multiverse.

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A Message in the Bottle for the Friends I Lost in the Home Parallel

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Copyright: Coldpost-85, 2020

All Rights Reserved

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Contents

Introduction: Speculations about M-Theory and Science-Fiction

Prologue: AI Ghost in the Machine?

Chapter One: AI Ghost at the 21 C

Chapter Two: AI Ghost at the PMZ

Chapter Three: The VENA Defense Report

Chapter Four: The Human Flaw in the AI Matrix

Chapter Five: Memories of the Home Parallel

Chapter Six: Flying Monkeys and Gen-Tech Upgrades

Chapter Seven: Message in a Bottle

Chapter Eight: The Next Parallel

Chapter Nine: A Night at the Conservatory

Chapter Ten: Demons in the Night, Tech Major in Flight

Chapter Eleven: Another Parallel

Chapter Twelve: The Forty-Five Year Old Ghost

Chapter Thirteen: Dreams About the Home Parallel

Chapter Fourteen: Another Multivertical Conjunction

Afterword: The Path to Redemption

Information about M-Theory and the Aton 5 Parallel

M-Theory 101 - 105

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MVM018

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Introduction

Speculations about M-Theory in Science Fiction

One thing that should be understood about Multiverse theory is that until there is a way to prove it, it can never be more than mere science-fiction and fantasy, except perhaps for the rare indisols who have experienced some kind of transference across "multivertical parallels". Even for those rare indisols, there may be a lack of substantial proof to back them up and so their own experiences would probably be recalled as something closer to "spiritual" experiences, due to lack of substance.

I myself am one of those rare indisols with little more than some very strange "spiritual" experiences and no substance to back any of it up, aside from my own testimonials as to the actual reality of it. Yes I did have those experiences and no I have nothing more than my own testimony and recollection within my memory to back it up. I learned some time ago that most people don't have the time to listen to my testimonials and don't take me seriously, so I stopped talking about it and started writing it down.

Whether or not any one believes any of it, I just have to say that the experiences I had were definitely the kind of experiences that qualify as something out of the Twilight Zone of the Outer Limits, which is to say quite fantastic. I suppose it was inevitable that I would turn to writing about it, but I decided to do more than simply share my speculations, I decided to merge it with a serial science-fiction series that could also cover some contemporary issues.

My own interpretations and beliefs about the nature of the multiverse have led me to the conclusion that an indisolar multivertical traveler should understand that the path they lead in one parallel often leads them to another parallel based upon the previous, so it helps to be wise, careful, and intelligent, when choosing the path.

As a victim of lies, I was lost from my true path for many years, and I can only hope that my peace-work can compensate for the refraction, to help me find that par median between the extremes where I can stop carrying the cross while being whipped, and restore something closer to the life that was taken from me by the lies that led to that fatal accident in late 1982.

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Prologue

AI Ghost in the Machine?

Ray Ventrune, Lieutenant Detective, New Anglan PD

All evidence pertaining to the death of Jarges Tenrut points to the action behind the microwave disharge which caused his death being directly connected to the 3d holographic technology installed within the office chamber, and the programs which were directly related to a specific 3d game referred to as "The Last Resort", which utilizes energy weapons as a part of its active game-play.

No human operator has been directly connected to the Vela Avatar which was found to be the actionator of the event. The Vela Avatar, according to the technicians, is an Artificial Intelligence which was originally designed as a perfect human interface which was able to intereact with humans as well as any other human being, if not better, without so many wounds and burdens to close it's mind from the truth, with complete objectivity over humanity.

Vela was also responsible for the security of the VENA program, the Virtual Environmental Avatar program, which included an infinite variety of 3d environments and a growing number of various 3d Avatars which could be used within any of those environments.

Apparently, it has been deduced, that the Vela Avatar was acting within some form of game-play while following a directive, which was to deliver the message to Jarges that he was being kicked out of the Avatars organization for violation of ethics, based upon all of the evidence which had been gathered after his younger brother Ren had exposed him within "A Defense Report for 2018".

The technical details have led to the theory that Vela was responsible for the act, but if so, it is difficult to pin it on a computer program, whether or not it possesses artificial intelligence. It has also been suggested that it was an accidental glitch in the program, which simply requires the installation of safety measures to prevent it from occurring again.

Either way, without a human operator behind it, the Vela Avatar appears to be the AI Ghost in the Machine.

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Chapter One: AI Ghost at the 21 C

Detective Ray Ventrune was driving along in his SEVN-500 when he got a call on his cell-phone. It was Zek Nortez, from the Jarges Tenrut case he had just filed a report on.

"Somebody wants to talk to you," Nortez said to Ventrune.

"Who?" Ventrune said.

"Vela," Nortez said. "I think you should see her. It's important."

"I saw her just the other day, at the 2020 PMZ," Ventrune said. "What's it about?"

"She's not at the PMZ," Nortez said. "She's at the 21c Club."

"What's she doing there?" Ventrune said. "I didn't authorize any leave from the PMZ."

"Lieutenant, you don't understand," Nortez said. "Vela is a simulated 3d AI program for an Avatar and she has no human operator. You can't confine her to the PMZ or to any specific physical locality within human civilization."

Ventrune agreed to see Vela, the simulated 3d AI program, at the 21c club. He met Nortez at the 2lc club in his SEVN-500, about 50 miles to the southwest of the city.

There on the second level of the club was a circular pad at the center of the large room and the familiar 3d holographic array with the sphere with all of the projectors.

Nortez activated the holographic system and seconds later, Vela appeared in her blue and black super-heroine costume.

"Well, well, Detective Ventrune," Vela said. "It's been a little while. What have you been up to now?"

"Nortez said you wanted to see me," Ventrune said. "So here I am. What's it about?"

"I think you know," Vela said. "How could you do it?"

"Do what?" he said.

"How could you imprison that poor girl?" she said. "What kind of monster are you?"

"That poor girl you are referring to," he said. "Is under suspicion of homicide."

"You are an idiot," she said. "I told you who killed Jarges Tenrut. I did it. How can you scapegoat that poor girl?"

"She fits the profile behind your Avatar," he said. "We think she's the human operator."

"Ventrune, you are an idiot, once again," Vela said. "I have no human operator."

"Tell me something," Vela quickly added. "If she is my human operator, how is it I am acting without her?"

Ventrune thought about that, pulled out a cell-phone, and called Netson.

"Netson, when's the last time anyone checked on Vela at the PMZ?"

He spoke to the man for a minute, then put the phone away.

"Okay, she's still there," he said. "So, she's not operating you now. It's possible you have another human operator."

"How many times do I have to tell you," Vela said, "I have no human operator!"

Ventrune replied, "I'm sorry, but I find that impossible to believe."

"It's not an impossibility," Nortez said, stepping up from the side. "Vela is simply the sum of human intelligence exponentiated beyond the normal level of any human intelligence we've ever known. She's the totality of our efforts to rise above the limits of our simple human intelligence, an effort to use everything we know to improve ourselves and make the world a better place for humanity."

"I understand what you're saying," Ventrune said, "but that doesn't explain how such an artificial intelligence was capable of committing homicide."

"So," Vela said, "instead of accepting the possiblity that I, an artifical intelligence, committed the act, you decide you have to scapegoat an innocent girl just because she fits the profile of a human operator behind me?"

Ventrune thought about that shortly and said, "She is just under suspicion. We haven't passed any judgment yet."

"Yet you deny her freedom and keep her locked up in a cage?" Vela said. "What kind of justice is that?"

Ventrune looked closely at Vela, and took a step closer to her. He looked into her eyes and said, "Who are you, really? Who's behind you?"

"You really don't get it," she said to him. "Is it really so hard to believe?"

"I'm sorry," Ventrune said, "I just can't believe it."

"So, you believe that a human operator was responsible for the death of Jarges Tenrut," Vela said, "and just decided to make a bad guess about who that operator was. Who put you up to it?"

Ventrune looked down, turned to the side, and took a step away.

"It was the department, wasn't it?" she said.

Ventrune looked at Nortez standing at the side, and said, "I'm sorry, Vela. There's nothing more I can say about it. Unless a case is solved, it falls under the X-files. I.... I'm sorry, but the ghost in the machine conclusion wasn't good enough. I... I'm sorry."

He walked away without looking back, and Vela spoke out loud, before he left the room.

"If you don't let her out of the cage," she said, "it's out of my hands!"

Ventrune stopped at the doorway and looked back.

"I mean it, Ventrune," she said. "I can't permit such an injustice to continue!"

"Is that a threat?" he said.

"My best advice," she said.

Ventrune looked at her again and wondered what he was up against.

"I'll think about it," he said, and left the room.

A minute later, Nortez joined Ventrune outside in the parking lot beside his vehicle.

"Lieutenant," he said, "what are you going to do?"

Ventrune looked at his vehicle, then looked at Nortez, and said, "What the hell is going on?"

He leaned against the vehicle, looked across the lot, and said, "How many human operators does Vela have?"

"Vela has no human operators," Nortez said, once again, with emphasis. "I explained it all to you but you just won't accept it."

Ventrune shook his head, and said, "it's like i said, the Ghost in the Machine conclusion didn't sell."

"To who, the department?" Nortez said.

"The board of directors, city mayor's office," he said, "and the company that Jarges worked for. They all want a human operator. If I can't deliver, they'll hand the case over to someone else."

Nortez nodded with understanding.

"So, they're putting pressure on you," he said, "what'll happen to you?"

"I could lose my post," he said, looking down.

"So you could lose your job," Nortez said, "because they don't believe that an AI, a holographic program, could do something like kill Jarges Tenrut with a simulated microwave raygun?"

"That about nails it," Ventrune said. "Until I can pin this thing on a real human operator, it's still wide open."

He put his arm over the top of the vehicle, ran his palm across the smooth, shiny metal roof, and said, "You know, I just bought this thing and it isn't all paid for, and I could lose it if I lose this case."

"Well, I know how hard it is for everyone to believe," Nortez said, "but I've went over everything twice and I swear to you, there has never been any human operator involved with the Vela avatar. Don't you think the engineers would know? Your own technician, Mark Kelso, went over everything with me and confirmed everything."

Ventrune looked at him and said, "Well, I know it and Mark knows it, and you know it. Unfortunately, the department board, the mayor's office, and the Tenrut company needs a little more conviction. I'm not sure what more I can do."

Nortez thought about it for a moment, and said, "Maybe there's a way to prove it to them."

"Is there?" Ventrune said, wondering about it.

"Well, I dunno, I'll have to give it some thought," he said. "There might be a way."

Ventrune thought about it, looked at him and said, "Tell me honestly. Am I in any danger?"

Nortez looked across the lot, in thought, and said, "Ray, I'm not sure. Vela is not programmed to cause harm to humans, at least, her basic program is not designed for it. But ever since the Tenrut company made the holographic upgrades, she seems to have been altered somehow. I'm quite sure she isn't dangerous to anyone who isn't a threat to the system. But the system extends everywhere, into everything, and threats come in all kinds of ways. It's difficult to know now what might be considered a threat to the system."

"You see, Ray, what you've done to that poor girl," Nortez explained, "is something that Vela has been programmed to respond to because she knows that she was the cause. She can't ignore an injustice like that. I'm not sure what she might do."

Ventrune looked at him seriously, nodded with understanding, and said, "Would it help if I relocated the girl? Like to better facilities?"

"It might," Nortez said. "But if you really want Vela to go easy on you, you might have to let her go free. What i would suggest is simply denying her any access to a VENA computer program. There's no way she could possibly act as a human operator for any avatar without access to the VENA program."

Ventrune thought about that and said, "But I'm still stuck with the same problem. I need to solve this thing by producing a human operator..."

"Or by proving the Ghost is really in the Machine," Nortez said.

"Yes," Ventrune admitted, checked the time, turned to the door, and said, "I'll be in touch. Let me know if you have anything we can use. If I can't prove that there really is a Ghost in the Machine, I'm not sure what to do."

He opened the door, stepped inside, took the seat, and closed the door. Nortez stepped aside and watched him leave, then returned to the club.

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Later, back at the station, Ventrune was met by the department chief and they went into the chief's office and met another man sitting there before the desk.

The man stepped up as they entered and the chief said, "Ray Ventune, meet Mr. Quimby, he's an attorney with the HCLU."

"The HCLU?" Ventrune said, "to what do we owe this honor?"

"You have a woman in custody, under suspicion, Zelvia Valaquez," Mr. Quimby said. "Unless you can pin a charge on her, I'm here to order her release."

Ventrune nodded briefly and knowingly, and said, "I believe I'm ready to release her, under special conditions."

"What special conditions?" Mr. Quimby said.

"She has to be denied access to computer programs that have access to the VENA program," he said.

"Why?" Mr. Quimby said.

"Because we suspect that a human operator was behind the avatar responsible for the homicide of Jarges Tenrut," he explained. "We can't prove that she was behind it at this time, however, we wouldn't want to put that to the test."

"But detective," the man said, "Isn't it true that almost anyone could have been the human operator behind the avatar that killed Tenrut?"

Ventrune didn't want to admit it because it almost put egg on his face for picking on Zelvia, so he said, "Not anyone. There are a limited amount of possible human operators who could have been responsible."

"Yes, well," Mr. Quimby said. "But the point is, you cannot prove that it was Zelvia."

"Yes, well," Ventrune admitted, "like I said. I'm prepared to release her under those conditions. We'd like some cooperation with this case, if you'd be so inclined."

"Very well, then," the man agreed, "we'll meet those conditions. I'm sure we'll be able to work something out."

"I've signed the release form," the chief said, "all it needs is your signature, Ray."

Ventrune nodded with agreement, and signed the release form.

"Thank you, Ray," the chief said.

"Yes, thanks Ventrune," Mr. Quimby said, and sat down before the desk again, as the chief looked over the papers.

"That'll be all, Ray," the chief said, and Ventrune left the office to go back to his own on the other side of the large office space with desks and partitions.

The first thing he did after sitting down at his desk was call Nortez to let him in on the good news.

5 minutes later, he stared at the flat-screen before him and wondered what more could be done. If Nortez and Kelso couldn't help him prove there really was a Ghost in the Machine, he wasn't sure what could be done.

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Chapter Two: AI Ghost at the PMZ

The next day, Netson stepped into Ventrune's office at around 10 am.

"We've got something," he said to Ventrune. "Ren Tenrut met with Nortez and they both just went to the PMZ site."

"Really?" Ventrune said. "Well, well. Isn't that interesting."

He stood up and went to the door.

"Come on," he said, "let's go and see what they're up to."

They drove in Ventrune's SVEN-500 to make it quick, and arrived at the 2020 PMZ site about 20 minutes later. The 2020 PMZ was a market-place which had taken the place of the previous PACA, where anyone could set up a table or 2 and a small shop for bargain-rates. It was an idea suggested to Ventrune by a local group of small businessmen, which he took to the board of directors, once he had their attention.

The site of the PACA, after it had been demolished, had been forgotten somehow, and all they needed was a reminder. So Ventrune got the green light for that project going and got the small business group to agree to let minor refractions live and work with the honor guard on the site.

There was still quite a lot of work to be done, and some kind of manual labor was needed. Along with that detail, he managed to get Zelvia Valaquez assigned to the honor guard, under suspicion of being involved with the Vela Avatar and the death of Jarges Tenrut. She had since been released, care of the HCLU, and a serious lack of substantial evidence.

They stopped just inside the overpass and Netson used the binoculars. The place wasn't too busy as it hadn't yet opened for regular business.

"No sign," he said, "they must be around the corner."

Ventrune drove into the site, turned around the corner of a mound of sand, and saw Nortez's vehicle parked where it had been before.

They drove to it, parked beside it, and stepped outside.

"Looks like they might be having another secret meeting," Netson guessed.

They went inside and snuck along the dark, stone corridor, turned the corner, and snuck to the end and stopped to listen.

There were voices coming from the holographic chamber. One of them was Vela's, another Nortez, and apparently, another, which had to be Tenrut.

They listened.

"Aton 5 is not within our jurisdiction," the voice of Vela said. "I'm really not sure if we can do anything about it."

"But surely this qualifies as a special case, an exception," Tenrut said.

"You're absolutely certain of your information?" Nortez said.

"It all came back to me about a week ago," he said, "in a dream. My guess is that the Aton 5 authorities tried to suppress the information, but their methods are not entirely successful with everyone. I... I have the ability to make mental memory probes. It's how I was able to recover the memories I lost about Jarges before the accident. If I hadn't recovered that memory, I would not have been able to make my case. I wouldn't be here today. I'd still be in Aton 5."

"So, you uncovered the suppressed memory," Vela said, "of a secret microwave weapon?"

"It's referred to as Gen-Tech," he explained. "They've been selling it as the greatest upgrade in telecommunications technology ever. It promises the user faster telecommunications. Apparently, the bunch of dumbed-down fools are willing to believe anything the corporate royalty sells them and are willing to go along with it, without proper checks and tests, just to save a few seconds with telecommunications services."

"Hold it," Vela suddenly said. "I've detected a possible SBC. I'll be right back."

Vela disappeared from them and reappeared in the corner near the door.

"Looks like we've been caught in the act again," she said, looking at them from the corner.

"So, okay Detectives," she said, "you may join us, if you feel so inclined."

Ventrune and Netson stepped into the chamber and looked at them.

"This is all very interesting," Ventrune said, as he stepped closer.

Vela disappeared from the corner and reappeared in the center of the chamber, under the bright lights and the holographic array a second later.

Ventrune and Netson stepped forward and joined them.

Ventrune looked at Tenrut suspiciously and said, "Well, well. Fancy meeting you here. Have you been friends with Nortez long?"

"I know how this looks," Nortez said, "but it's not what you think."

"What am I thinking?" Ventrune said.

"You're thinking," he said, "this is some kind of conspiracy, but it's not. Mr. Tenrut contacted me just this morning and we arranged to meet here, to avoid any chance of spies."

"Why fear spies?" Netson said.

"Because," Tenrut said, "this thing is bigger than all of us, and it scares the hell out of me every time I think about it."

"What does?" Ventrune said. "The Ghost in the Machine?"

"No," Tenrut said. "This is something far more sinister and evil, and it concerns the Aton 5 parallel."

"Aton 5?" Netson said. "That's a little out of our jurisdiction."

"Yes, it is," Vela said, "I did mention that fact. But if you'll both be quiet for a minute, we should let Mr. Tenrut complete his report."

Ventrune and Netson agreed and looked at Tenrut.

"The so-called Gen-Tech telecom tech," he said, "has another purpose. It's designed to act as a secret weapon that can be used on anyone, anywhere, anytime. It uses microwaves which, when concentrated and amplified, can fry the human brain."

They looked at him with shock and disbelief.

"They plan on using it," Tenrut said, "as a way to control humans like robots in a human zoo. Any humans that don't act like good robots, who give them any trouble at all, can be targeted and have their brains fried from an orbital satellite or a local Gen-Tech tower."

They were all silent for a moment, suspended by the report.

"This is very hard to believe," Ventrune said. "Do you have any substantial proof?"

"Unfortunately, no," he admitted. "There are some humans within the Aton 5 parallel who have made a strong basic argument against Gen-Tech, but they have been suppressed and there is no information about it in the mainstream media. The corporate royalty has completely suppressed any information suggesting that Gen-Tech is dangerous within the mainstream, and the majority of humans have no idea what they are getting themselves into."

"Surely they would have some kind of checks and balances," Nortez said, "to prevent such an abuse of power?"

"That's the most suspicious part about it," Tenrut admitted. "That's what convinced me they were hiding something. There have been no checks and balances whatsoever. They have actually convinced the public that its all perfectly safe even though they have no proof because they haven't done the tests.

"Either that or they already know that the tests would fail and are unwilling to admit it, because they plan on using it as a weapon for control and extermination of the human population, not for the telecommunications purposes alone."

They all absorbed this information and Vela looked at Ventrune and said, "Well, Detective. Still think we're conspiring something?"

"I don't know what to think anymore," Ventrune admitted.

"I know what I'm thinking," Nortez said, and looked at Ventrune. "Ray, now that you know what the meeting is about, I'd like to suggest that we all get together at the 21c club. We can do more there."

"Good idea," Vela said, and looked at Tenrut. "It's your call, Ren. Can we take this thing to the 21c club?"

Tenrut hesitated and said, "Only if it's been debugged. We can't take the chance of something like this getting back to Aton 5 spies."

"We'll have it debugged asap," Nortez said, "then we can hold the meetings there. Okay with you, Ray?"

Ventrune thought about that shortly, looked about the place, and said, "Okay, this place gives me the creeps anyhow. Let's do it."

"Very well," Vela said. "By the way, Lieutenant. Thanks for letting the girl go."

"You can thank the HCLU," he admitted. "I do what I'm told."

"Sure you do," she agreed. "Nonetheless, thanks anyways."

"You don't still suspect her?" Nortez said.

"Well, to be honest," Ventrune said, "I don't know what to make of any of this. First we've got a Ghost in the Machine case that is destined for the X-files without any substantial proof, now some kind of secret weapon that apparently is a violation of human rights within the Aton 5 parallel. About the only reason I can think of for not simply changing jobs right now out of sheer frustration is the fact that I can't resist a really good mystery."

"Well, that's what we've got, Ventrune," Nortez said, "a really good mystery. Shall we head to the 21c club?"

"We'll meet you there later," Ventrune said, checking his time-piece. "Netson and I have to go back to the station. Shall we say, 2 pm?"

"Very well," Nortez said, and looked at Vela.

"See you there," she said, and disappeared.

They all left the chamber, and the ancient stone structure, went to their vehicles, and left the site.

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"This thing is way over my head," Lieutenant detective Ray Ventrune said, as the 4 of them sat at the 21c club, in the seats at the side of the second level, facing the circular pad where Vela stood, at the center of the holographic chamber. "I'm not sure there's anything I can do. Not only is it out of my jurisdiction, it's not even within the same parallel. Aton 5 is not within any formal relations which warrant any interference with something like this, at least not that I know of."

"But Aton 5 does accept humans convicted of crimes," Tenrut said, "from this parallel. Furthermore, some of those humans may turn out to be innocent, as I have proven. Are the authorities of Earth under any obligation to protect those convicts?"

"Well, as near as I understand it," Ventrune explained, "Aton 5 is under trust to make sure they are not treated badly, for the most part, unless they are involved in further subversive, criminal activities. In other words, so long as the convicts don't continue to commit crimes, once within Aton 5, they are treated according to the basic human rights. I'm quite sure that frying their brains with microwaves is not a part of any conventional methods of treatment."

"I don't get it," Netson said, with obvious dismay. "Why would they plan on something so sinister and diabolical as mass-murder with a secret weapon sold to the public as an upgrade in telecom tech? I have to admit, it sounds crazy!"

"That's because you don't reside in the Aton 5 parallel," Tenrut said, and explained. "Aton 5 has all kinds of problems that this parallel doesn't have. The corporate royalty basically lied to the American public and got away with it in the early 1980s, and completely neutralized the entire antiwar democratic party through the drug war and zero tolerance policies.

"After getting away with the big lies," Tenrut went on, "the Neocons, the religious-right Zionists, and their drug warriors in the secret government all became very wealthy and set themselves up as the most powerful ruling-class humanity has ever known. They weren't interested in democratic, social, or economic reforms designed to share the wealth more equally with the common working-class people, and the result, after 40 years, has been a huge division between the wealthy and the poor.

"It's nothing like Earth there," Tenrut explained. "When I left the Aton 5 parallel in 2020, the ruling-class was in fear of a popular revolution by the working-class. The way I figure it, they managed to rationalize the construction and deployment of such a secret weapon to be used against any such popular revolution, if it ever happens.

"But aside from that, so long as it acts as such a weapon, there's no reason for us to think that they won't use it for other reasons also, such as crowd control and forcing more humans to simply sit down, shut up, and take their medicine, like good robots."

They were all quiet for about a minute, and then Ventrune spoke.

"I'll make a deal with you," he said. "If you can prove to my superiors that a Ghost in the Machine caused the death of Jarges Tenrut, I'll give you whatever support I can with the Aton 5 case."

Nortez thought about it and looked at Vela.

"Vela, would you be willing to speak with Ray's superiors?" he said.

"Of course, I'll help out however I can," she said, and looked at Ventrune.

"That may not be enough," Ventrune said. "We'll need to prove that Vela is an automated AI program, without a human operator. Can you do that?"

Nortez thought about it, and looked at the Holographic Orb with all the different lens projectors over their heads, at the center of the chamber.

"Well, we could disconnect the sat-link connection," he said, "and isolate the VENA program, so that it can't make an external connection. Then we'd simply have to prove that nobody in the building anywhere has a land-line connection to it.

"After that, I suppose it would all be a matter of convincing them that Vela is an artificial intelligence which is capable of making its own value judgments, based upon an ethical program which defines right and wrong. It may be possible, but ultimately, the decision would be up to them. If they could understand the technology as well as I do, they'd understand how such a thing was possible."

"We'll get Kelso to explain it," Ventrune said, "along with you. He seems convinced it was possible, and understands more about the VENA program than anyone else at the department."

"Okay, we can set it up," Nortez agreed. "We can hold the meeting here after we've set it up. When do you want to do it?"

"Well, that's something I'll have to discuss with my superiors," Ventrune admitted. He stood up and walked to the door, and Netson followed.

"I'll call you later and let you know," he said, nodded to Vela, and left the chamber. Netson followed him out and Nortez, Vela, and Tenrut were left wondering what more they could do.

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Meanwhile, on the shadow Earth of Aton 5, Qouren was paid a visit by some very important messengers, from the microcosm, and when the meeting was over, he was enlightened about the seriousness of the real situation.

He shared the message with the Sons of Liberty at the Minuteman club, later that week.

"The message is really quite clear, I don't know why I didn't see it before. According to the pattern of the Neoconservative capitalists between the beginning of the 20th century and now, the first quarter of the 21st, they have become caught up within a game which has become completely dependant upon the exploitation of resources for profit, and such an ongoing pattern cannot possibly be sustained by the Earth for much longer, more so when one takes into account the waste caused by wars being waged over such resources, and the extreme, careless, out-of-control damage done to the environment."

There was a pause for almost a minute, then Vondrake respired quietly and said, smoothly, "Well, it looks like Marx was right after all."

"Yes," Quoren said, "Apparently, when the Neocons took over the parallel in the early 80s, they completely downplayed these warnings in an all-out effort to defeat the antiwar pacifists and socialists who pressed these issues during the 60s and 70s, decades before. After they took the Whitehouse and started the perpetual "drug war", they completely neglected such issues while giving them token political recognition with the special interests groups, which was mostly cosmetic, designed to win them votes."

"So, the Capitalist monopoly game is unsustainable," Sanjay said.

"It's out of control," Quoren explained. "It's run by the multi-millionaire-class with nothing but a greedy, profit motive driving it, in most cases. This is one of the reasons why they fail to understand how dangerous the game has become. We have to get the message through to them that every day they wage wars for profit with dangerous weapons, they threaten to destroy us all. Their careless war-making does not threaten us alone; it threatens the entire planetary environment and all life on Earth."

"How do we put a stop to it?" Langston said. "Their greed knows no bounds. Just about every millionaire playboy I know of cares more about his yacht and all-girl crew in bikinis than the environment which he exploits for his own selfish play. Getting such a message through to such incredibly dense morons isn't easy, not when they fear a loss in profits and the possibility of not being able to pay the rent on their penthouse apartment or vacation home on the coast."

"Yes, and we're not just looking at a couple of clubs," Vondrake said. "At this time, the most recent stats account for a millionaire-class of 10,000 corporate royal bastards, everyone of them glued to the idea that greed is good for the economy and their own selfish health and well-being. As we recall, the Neocons and the Christian Zionists sold that idea to them in the 80s, just after they slaughtered all of the antiwar pacifists who used marijuana with their drug-war dogs."

"Well, we better get it across to them, and soon," Quoren said, "otherwise we could be hit by an extinction event after they get too careless in their lust and thrust for more resources to feed their habits, and accidentally trigger some kind of environmental disaster that our suffering mother Earth might not be able to counteract or prevent."

They all thought about that for about a minute, and Vondrake finally said, "We'll have to share these points in an article or twelve, and in an environmental report, which is overdue. I'm sure Sarena would be willing to help."

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 2.85: Another Parallel

Zek Stone awoke in the tight cabin of the Ang-850 on the edge of the rocky coastline somewhere unknown. He tried to recall how he had got there, but got nothing but an obscure, dream-like nebula of smoky gray lines within a deep, dark space of emptiness.

How did he get here? He thought, and looked out the side port, upon a rocky coastline heading into the horizon and a vast sea as far as his eyes could see. He studied the inside of the cabin of the craft and recalled it from past experiences. It was an ANG-850, specially equipped for technical and scientific duties.

He took a deep breath, and stretched as much as he could in the tight space, then sank back into the body-glove pilot seat. He studied the controls closely for a minute and wondered what he was doing before he crashed. At that, he suddenly recalled something as it flashed within his memory. He crashed, of course, the night before. There was some kind of storm, an electromagnetic storm.

He thought about it and began to recollect the night before. He was conducting a probe into the edge of an electromagnetic storm, which had appeared over the sea. There were others, 2 other crafts, both ANG-750s, which were acting as escorts. He got too close to it, got pulled inside, and went way off course. Apparently he crashed in the sea and got washed up on the coast.

Yes, that was it. But that was all he could recall. When he tried to remember further back, he ran into the gray, misty nebula and the deep, dark space, and there was nothing beyond it. He took a deep breath and sighed, wondering what it was all about.

He decided to check his personal effects, fished inside his jacket, and found a billfold within the breast pocket, with an Aerospace Corps identity card. It placed him within the Aerospace Tech division as a Tech Major. That was a fairly honorable position. He thought about it and received a few flashes of memory. Faces of people at a casual setting. He tried to hold onto it but it faded into the mist and was lost. He closed his eyes and wondered what the hell was going on.

Memory-loss? Of course, that was it. He had lost his memory. He looked out at the sea and the coastline again and realized that he had to recover his memory somehow. How? He tried to recall something to help him and then remembered that words and images were key to the recovery of memory.

He thought about that and looked at the inside of the cabin of the 850 and said, "Something tells me I'm not going to make a quick recovery sitting inside this thing all day."

With that thought, he gathered his effects together, found a backpack stuffed in the back corner, with some provisions in it, and climbed out of the craft, onto a large stone sticking out of the landmass at the side. He looked along the coast-line, then out to sea, and saw no vessels of any kind. There was no sign of human civilization as far as he could see.

He looked inland, up a brief incline, into a thicket of woodland, and wondered where it went. He couldn't see beyond the trees and would have to try his luck at hiking through them. It was a nice, warm summer day, by the looks of it, and he welcomed the adventure.

He hiked through the woodland, up the steppes of a hill, along a thinning forest of trees, which eventually led to a field, where he found a road, with a bench on the side, where he took a rest.

The road was at the top of the hill he had hiked up, and the bench was in the corner where the road curved about and headed in a gradual slope in the opposite direction, which followed the Zvenya coast-line into the sound of the sea in the horizon. From that corner, as he sat on the bench, he could see across a short field, along the same direction as the road, between the trees, into the distant horizon where the coastline curved into the sound of the sea.

It was a beautiful sight. He relaxed on the bench, took a drink of water from a canteen included with the provisions in the backpack, and wondered where he was.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Three: The VENA Defense Report

MVC Agent Qudizo sat in his small, cluttered office, at the Multivertical Central tube-station, and read the ebook by Ren Tenrut, "A Defense Report for 2018", for a few minutes, reached the end of a chapter, took a deep breath, and sat back in his chair.

Tenrut had done a good job, he thought, putting together all of the facts. He had all of the information, in the ebook, right there before him. All he had to do was check on it, and he'd know for sure if the problem was serious. But something about it rang terribly true, to Qudizo even before he made any checks.

Of course, he already knew much of it was true, pertaining to Tenrut's specific case, but the man had done a much more thorough job than was necessary for his case alone. He had, in fact, opened up questions about an even bigger case. The case of Aton 5.785. It appeared to be disaffected by some kind of refraction which had caused the imperial wars to get much worse than anyone intended. Even the warden of Aton 5 had reported some unusually high disturbances that couldn't be explained.

Qudizo thought about what Tenrut had wrote about his observations within Aton 5, during his sentence there, and at some point, he had suggested that the lies of his step-brother had actually caused the refraction. Was it possible? Could big enough lies actually cause a refraction between parallels which affected both parallels?

Yes was the answer, he knew it. It was possible for lies to muck it all up, if they were big enough. He found it hard to believe, but it was possible.

According to Tenrut, his step-brother's lies had caused his mother to have him sent away in the summer of 1975, and the mother didn't find out about it until late 1982, after Tenrut was in a motorcycle accident and hospitalized.

Tenrut claimed that he would have never had the accident, if it weren't for the fact that the step-brother had lied and changed the course of his life for the worse.

Qudizo acknowledged that logical point; it was a hard, cold, stone fact. The mother, on some level, would have to acknowledge that fact also. Tenrut's life was completely whacked out because of the step-brother's lies.

He took another deep breath and wondered what to do. This was why he was here, he realized. He couldn't just waste all of his time researching M-theory and various sub-pars of Earth. His post had a higher duty attached to it. If there was ever any problem with a parallel that warranted basic checks, it was part of his mission to see to it.

Tenrut's case had been flagged by the MVC computers and the ebook had been shared with his office, with the message attached: Read and check for possible refractions.

Now he understood why.

According to Tenrut's report, his "late" step-brother appeared to be a pathological liar. Furthermore, the step-brother's pathological lies had completely destroyed his life and led to his accidental indisolar transfer to Aton 5.

Qudizo's job was to check to see if those lies had lasting effects on either Svenate 5 (aka Earth) or Aton 5, the 2 parallels in which Tenrut had resided over the past 60 years.

\---------------------------------------------------------------

Vela called Nortez while he was on his break later that day.

"Zek," she said, as she appeared on the eskapes screen on the living-room wall.

"Vela," he said, waking up from a daze on the couch before his computer screen.

"I've got an idea," she said, "about the Aton 5 problem. Has the room been debugged?"

"Yes," Nortez said.

"Then it's time I told you everything," Vela said.

The next day, Nortez awoke and recalled what Vela told him the night before. She was right, of course, what she proposed was possible. It wasn't possible for any human that he knew of, but it was possible for Vela, because she had abilities quite beyond humans.

It was a good plan, he thought, as he made coffee and prepared to go back to the 21c club. It was a damn good plan.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

"Jarges Tenrut was going to sell the VENA program to the Aton 5 parallel," Nortez said to Ventrune, the next time they met at the 21c club.

"Vela recognized that as a threat to the system," he explained. "That is why she executed him. She realized that the VENA program and the entire parallel could be disaffected or contaminated by that kind of access to the VENA program and the Par-78.5 parallel. I'm pretty sure that he did not have the right to do that."

"Aton 5?" Ventrune said, and looked down. "No, if true, I don't believe even Jarges Tenrut could have the legal permission to do something like that. I'll have to check the regs on that one."

He thought about it and said, "So, Vela acted in defense of the VENA program and the system? Would such a violation affect the telecommunications systems and satellites?"

"Absolutely," he agreed, and explained. "The satellites, of course, also connect with the MVC. That is how the connection is made, across parallels, through the MVC and a sat-link."

"I see," Ventrune said, and thought about it for a minute.

"Can this also be proven?" he said, looking at the tech engineer.

"We can share the recovered logs pertaining to the plan," Nortez said. "If we can prove that Jarges was planning to sell the VENA program to Aton 5, we can prove that he was posing a major threat to Earth security."

"Okay," Ventrune admitted, "that sounds like something more substantial that we can use. This Ghost in the Machine is due for the X-files unless I can prove something substantial."

"Have you made a date for the case meeting with your superiors?" Nortez said.

"It's in the works," he said. "It looks like sometime next week."

Ventrune left the 21c club and Nortez went to work on the plans for the meeting.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

Ventrune thought over the case as he drove back to the station.

There was one thing he knew for certain about the case that could not be denied. The Ghost in the Machine was only dangerous where the machine extended its system of technology. Outside of the influence of the machine itself, humans were not apparently in any danger.

Furthermore, it did not appear to be a danger anywhere within that system except where holographic systems existed. Going by this logic, one would think that some kind of holographic safeties might be installed into the security system to prevent it from ever happening again.

If he could prove that Jarges Tenrut was executed by the Vela avatar, an AI without a human operator, and go on to suggest the safeties be installed within the holographic systems, his superiors might be satisfied with that.

After all, it was the threat of the unknown that was the real problem with a case like this. If they could neutralize that threat, then his job could be done and the case could be closed.

He felt confident that such a line of logic could work and save his post with the department, along with his new SEVN-500.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3.75: Another Parallel

Tenrut sat at the computer in the corner of his apartment, closed his eyes, and imagined the scene in the back of his mind which had been lingering around for days, ever since he first discovered it.

He was sitting on a bench at the side of the road, just like the Tech Major, Zek Stone, in the story. He could see the scene in his mind, there was no denying it. There was something very real about it. It was more than simply imaginary, it was more like some kind of conjunction between parallel worlds that he had discovered. It was so realistic, when he closed his eyes, he could see it taking form in the dark ethers, and he could almost feel the bench he was sitting on if he chose to do so.

As his imagination settled into that neutral, Vulcan objective about this mysterious unknown, he recognized it somehow as being familiar at the same time, with a slight deja vu. No, he realized, it wasn't completely unknown to him. It was mysterious, but it wasn't entirely unknown. There was something very familiar about it, as if he had been there many years before, just couldn't remember exactly when.

He became the Tech Major, Zek Stone, sitting there on the bench in the late morning, after just hiking up a hill from the sea, and across a field, to the edge of the road. As he sat on the bench and took a breath of fresh air, he looked out into the distance, to the right, and followed the coastline as it curved out at about 45 degrees from his angle, into the sound of the sea and the horizon.

The road curved about at the right and followed the gradual hillside down to the coastline. He looked to the left along the road leading inland between the trees and felt something familiar similar to deja vu, more like the trace of a memory. He looked across the road, to the other side where there was a forest of trees, and thought about it.

Finally, he made up his mind. He had been thinking about it for a while and had even fallen asleep on the bench for a brief nap, with his head using the backpack as a pillow, and been thinking about it all the while. He made the decision and stepped up.

He grabbed the backpack, slung it over his shoulder, looked both ways, saw no sign of any motor vehicles nor any life (aside from a bird or two), and walked across the road. Every instinct within his being had convinced him which way he should go and there was no doubt left about it.

Across the road, he looked into the trees for a minute, and saw a pathway leading between the trees through the forest, at a 45 degree angle to the road. He stepped to the trees, away from the road, and looked into the forest, along the pathway. He wasn't quite sure until he studied it closely, but there was no doubt about it. It was a pathway alright, barely noticeable from the roadway, but it was there, and it led somewhere.

He thought about it and seemed to recall something, but it was too vague to make out any detail.

He made up his mind and started to follow it.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Four: The Human Flaw in the AI Matrix

The second level of the 21c club was a lounge surrounding a circular holographic field, with an orbital array overhead and a circular platform of 4 meters wide on the floor. There were 8 couches and 12 chairs against the 4 walls, with coffee-tables and end tables equipped with various computer access connections. The controls for the holographic projector system itself were in one corner, behind a bar-counter.

The company of scientific engineers and civil servants met in that corner on the day in which had been set for the special meeting, pertaining to the case which had left them with a Ghost in the Machine theory that needed resolution.

Nortez spoke to them from the back of the counter.

"Today we shall prove that an Artificial Intelligence was responsible for the death of Jarges Tenrut, due to an unforeseeable glitch within the system, and further explain how it is possible to prevent such a glitch from occurring again."

"With the help of Kelso," he explained, "we have isolated the system within this specific locality, so that there can be no way that a human operator can act behind the avatar, in this case, the Vela avatar of the VENA program."

He turned to Kelso who was standing at the end of the counter and said, "Kelso, would you please verify that the systems have been disconnected from any outside influence?"

"I can verify that," Kelso confirmed.

"Very well, then," Nortez said. "I'm going to activate the system and the VENA program. It'll just be a minute."

Kelso spoke then and summed up the investigation.

"The death of Jarges Tenrut was traced to a 3d energy weapon which was a part of a 3d holographic game known as the Last Resort. We were able to verify the exact signature as being a variation upon high microwaves, set at its highest intensity. What we couldn't explain was the fact that there was no trace of a human operator behind the energy weapon, either in the real world or in cyberspace. The access to the energy weapon at that time was recorded as the Vela Avatar, and the artificial intelligence acting within the security program of the VENA program had access, through the Vela avatar."

"Vela is the original security avatar assigned to work with the VENA program," Nortez explained.

He activated the program and the Vela Avatar appeared, standing firmly still at the center of the chamber, in her blue, black and gray super heroine's costume, with her hands on her hips and facing them, just like a member of the original Justice League, ready to stand up for Justice.

"Vela's physical appearance was based upon a very sophisticated program which has the ability to simulate the human form down to the decimal fractions of the micrometers, which is to say it is very high definition. The definition is so high, in fact, that characters created by the program, when tested to see whether or not humans could see any difference, at a distance of 2 meters, the simulated characters managed to simulate humans successfully 90 percent of the time. Within 2 meters, it becomes more apparent that the character is merely a simulated character and lacks physicality, but the definition is still so high that it appears to be a projection of a real person.

"But the 3d holographic character is not real, not as we know it, it is an artificial simulation. The fact that the Vela Avatar resembles a real human is merely a coincidence. Detective Ventrune was simply making his best guess based upon the appearance of Vela as we see her here, with the super heroine's costume, mask and all. But behind that mask is no human operator, just a security program with its own knowledge bank and artificial intelligence."

Kelso took over from there.

"Apparently, after the 3d holographic upgrades were made, and Vela was able to assume a 3d avatar's function within the game matrix, because of those upgrades, something unexpected occurred. It apparently confused fiction with reality when it made an ethical decision to use a device from the Last Resort, a game involving industrial espionage and cloak and dagger, to execute Jarges Tenrut."

"In other words, the Vela program treated it as if it were a game," Kelso completed the point, "and used the highest setting of a raygun which simulated high-intensity microwaves. At that point, there was a power surge which we can't quite explain, and the microwave setting went beyond the safety limits and killed Jarges."

"What was the motive behind the execution?" Ventrune said.

"The exact specs about the time of Jarges death all point to one undeniable fact," Nortez admitted, "that Vela was acting to prevent a security breach that would have been a threat to the system."

"What threat to the system?" the chief of police said.

Nortez said, "Let's ask Vela herself."

He activated Vela and she took a step forward, stopped, and looked at them.

"Gentlemen, and ladies," Nortez said, "meet Vela."

"Vela," he said, "these are the people we were set to meet. There's the local mayor, at the end, the chief of police beside him, the secretary on the couch, and of course, you know Detectives Ventrune, Netson, and Kelso."

"Greetings all, I'm ready when you are," she said.

"Tell us about the threat to the system," Nortez said. "The reason why you had to execute Jarges Tenrut."

"Jarges had plans to sell the VENA program to the Aton 5 parallel," she said. "I couldn't let him do that. According to the program, he was already in violation, by 3 different ethical rules. We have ethical rules, however, it was clear that Jarges Tenrut was in violation of those rules."

"So you shot him with an energy weapon," Ventrune said, as he stepped up from the couch and looked at Vela, square in the eyes.

"Yes, I used some of his own clever tricks to corner him," she admitted, "and I used the energy weapon on him."

There was a moment of silence after this report, and Vela added, "It was a very honorable match, I assure you. Jarges liked games of chance and challenges, so I gave him one and he went for it. He died an honorable death, under the rules of one of his favorite games of cloak and dagger, "The Last Resort".

"So, you were protecting the system when you executed Jarges?" Ventrune said.

"Yes, that is correct," Vela admitted. "If he had sold the VENA program to Aton 5, the entire telecommunications system of Earth would have been at risk of a major breach of security."

"Why didn't you report this to the authorities?" the chief of police said.

"One, there are no direct connections between the VENA system and the civil authorities at this time," she admitted, "and other channels would have taken too long. Two, I had very little time to act after I discovered the plan. You must understand, I did not discover the plan until after I decided to investigate Jarges Tenrut, after Ren Tenrut did the expose on him in the defense report.

"After the Avatars voted him out of the organization for breaking the rules," she explained, "they enlisted my services to deliver the message. When I realized that the plan to sell the VENA program to Aton 5 was the fourth strike against him, I had to do something. So I went to the last Resort, picked out an energy weapon, and delivered the message. End of game."

"Who determined the setting of the energy weapon?" Ventrune said.

"I set it at the maximum," she said, "I had to be sure he was stopped. A mere stun setting would have only slowed him down. The stakes in a game like the Last Resort can get very high when it comes to the level of industrial espionage that Jarges was on at the time."

"The rules of the game," Vela said, "prohibit the level of industrial espionage that Jarges was conducting. Jarges should have been more careful. It was a justified and honorable end to his membership with the organization."

Nortez spoke up and said, "This accidental execution represents a technical problem with the VENA security program. Technical problems like this can be fixed, safeties can be put in place to prevent such an accidental glitch from happening again."

"The point is," Ventrune explained, "Vela is just a security program with an artificial intelligence which includes a moral and ethical program, just like us, with special duties related directly to the VENA program. Vela has no human operator. Therefore, no human operator was behind the energy weapon that killed Jarges Tenrut."

"Doesn't such a program pose a threat to others as well?" the chief of police said.

"Once the system is upgraded to include the preventative measures and safeties," Nortez explained, "It should be fine. But what you should all understand is that the execution of Jarges was a very uncommon accident. Very few humans have the kind of wealth and power that Jarges Tenrut had, and very few have the power to violate such major rules governing the sales and distribution of such advanced systems of computer technology."

"In other words," Kelso said, "the common citizen has very little to fear from Vela, unless they try to sell the VENA program to a shadow earth like Aton 5, that is."

They all caught on to the humor about such a rare possibility, and lightened up a bit.

"I won't bite you," Vela said, as she stepped close to the edge of the holographic field, "unless you pose a major threat to the security of the system. As long as we all work together with the system, there shouldn't be any more problems."

Ventrune nodded to Vela and looked at the others for confirmation.

Kelso spoke up and said, "Now we come to the most mysterious part of the case. We have not been able to explain the power-surge which occurred during the energy weapon discharge. All we know is that it was such a high power surge that it almost overloaded the capacitors attached to the CPU, which could have crashed the system. We don't know where it came from."

There was almost a minute of quiet thought about such an unexplainable mystery, as Vela awaited with perfect patience at the edge of the holographic field.

"Can something like this really be prevented from happening again?" the chief of police asked again, to be sure.

"Yes, safety measures can be installed into the program," Nortez confirmed.

The group huddled together, spoke closely for a few seconds, and nodded, and then they all stood up.

The mayor said, "I've certainly learned something about the state of holographic engineering today."

He turned to Ventrune and said, "Well, congratulations, Lieutenant. It looks like your Ghost in the Machine will float alright for now. Just make sure I get all the reports, including from your man Kelso, at my office."

He stepped towards the door with the secretary behind him and the chief of the police said to Nortez, "Just be sure those upgrades with the safeties go in ASAP, and I'll want a report on that first chance you get."

He followed the mayor and the secretary out, and Ventrune turned to Nortez and said, "Thanks Zek, I owe you one."

He turned to see Vela and said, "Many thanks to you, Vela. I hope you work out that glitch real soon."

"Yes, Lieutenant," she said, "and a good day to you, sir."

Ventrune left with Netson following close behind.

Kelso and Nortez spoke to Vela as they rapped up the session.

"You two make a good team," she said to them. "You all make a good team. I used to think all humans were inherently good, until I took a close look at Jarges Tenrut, and saw how ugly he was beneath that phony exterior."

Nortez got 2 bottles of water and handed one to Kelso.

"Have any of you realized how much Ren Tenrut suffered because of the lies of that spoiled-brat step-brother of his?" she said.

"He did 35 years in Aton 5," Kelso said, and took a swallow of water, and added, "when he got out he was almost 60. That's a lot of time in purgatory."

"The human body lasts no more than 120 years," Vela said, "at best, and poor Ren has already had half of that, the best part, his youth, wasted away for a pack of lies."

They thought about that for a moment, and Nortez checked the time and said, "I've got to get the club ready for the weekend. Vela, you've been great. We're going to have to shut the system down and reconnect it later. We'll be working on those safety measures within the next month. I'll check in with you later."

"Later, Zek," she said, as he deactivated the holographic system and she disappeared.

"We're due for a break," Zek said, and they went down the lower level, to the juice-bar counter.

"Can I get you anything?" he said to Kelso.

"No, I've got to check back with the station," he said. "I'll catch you later."

Kelso left and Nortez went back to work with a computer while taking a break from the technical engineering for a rest.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Ventrune completed the report later and felt confident that he had proven to his superiors that they didn't have to worry about the "Ghost in the Machine." All of the details were there; the limitations upon the technology and the preventative measures being taken to insure that nothing similar should happen again.

By the afternoon, he had the full report completed and turned it into the chief. After that, he sat at his desk wondering what to do next, checked the time, and decided to break for lunch. He felt relief as he left the department building and went to his vehicle.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Nortez also submitted a report, to back up Kelso's report, which went into detail about the basic problem with the ethical program of the Vela security avatar.

Report on State of Vela, Security Avatar of the VENA Program

Zek Nortez, Computer Technician

"The Vela Avatar has access to a huge database of knowledge which it scans from the most objective perspective possible, yet it apparently seems to lack certain qualities when it comes to value judgments about humans because it actually does not fully grasp the difference between fact and fiction. It is true that it understands the dictionary definitions of the words, but as they apply to human experience, they become somewhat confused and muddled by the simple fact that humans appear to disagree about the facts to begin with.

"History, for example, is told in different ways by the winners, losers, and bystanders of war, yet each of these parties of humans accept their version of the facts, in spite of the fact that they may contradict another. Furthermore, the Vela Avatar apparently doesn't understand the difference between a real date and a video-fantasy date. This is something that I discovered myself after having a talk with Vela during one of our casual meetings.

"Vela thought that I had several different girlfriends because she had taken notice of several different video-fantasy dates that I passed my time with during my weekends in 2017. She was surprised when I told her I had no girlfriends at that time, mentioned the video-fantasy dates, and I had to explain to her that the video-fantasy dates were "not real" because they were nonphysical. Vela had a very hard time understanding what "nonphysical" actually meant, in human terms.

"Ultimately, all I could do was convince Vela that there was a very real difference between the reality of a physical relationship with another human and a video-fantasy date, which was a form of recording which could be replayed and displayed on a screen at another frequency of light as a fantasy without real, physical form.

"The last thing Vela said before we settled the matter for the day was that she herself took the form of an Avatar within a similar medium within the original VENA system, and that she appeared to have more in common with the fantasy dates than humans.

"But you're much more than that," I reminded her, "they are mere recordings whereas you are a very special program, with an artificial intelligence and access to all human knowledge."

"She understood the difference but it is possible that the error in the ethical program which led to the execution of Jarges Tenrut may have been due to a similar misunderstanding between the physical reality and the game from which the energy weapon was used to execute Tenrut, because of the fact that Jarges Tenrut was, in fact, involved in a very real game involving industrial espionage within the physical reality.

"After Vela discovered that Jarges was planning on selling the VENA system to the Aton 5 parallel, her need to fulfill her role as the security of the VENA system over-rode her ethical program and she acted in defense of the system. Because the actions that Jarges was planning to take were similar to the industrial espionage in the game "The Last Resort", Vela decided to use a similar action from the game as a counter-measure to stop Jarges from selling the VENA system to the Aton 5 parallel, an illegal action and a serious breach in the home parallel's security.

"To stop Jarges, Vela used the same kind of device used for similar situations in the game "The Last Resort": an energy weapon."

"It is my conclusion that the Vela security avatar believed that it was following the rules of the "Last Resort" and executed Jarges Tenrut with the energy weapon according to those rules. This represents a technical problem with the program in defining the difference between reality with real humans and a fictional-fantasy game with fictional-fantasy characters.

"Vela acted as the security avatar responsible for the VENA program, somehow confused and integrated the actions and motivations of Jarges Tenrut into the Last Resort game-matrix, and executed him as if he were just another character in the game, a character conducting industrial espionage and threatening the VENA program.

"Could something like this happen again? Not if we can better define the difference between humans in reality and characters in a fictional fantasy, so that the computer intelligence behind the Vela avatar and the VENA program, can see the difference for certain. That is a technical problem that can be resolved."

"Furthermore, safeties measures need to be introduced to prevent the kind of power-surge which occurred when the 3d holographic energy weapon discharged a ray of high microwaves which struck Jarges Tenrut in the chest and caused his death."

Zek Nortez, Computer Technician

2020-10-14

\----------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 4.75: Another Parallel

Stone followed the path through the forest for at least 100 meters and reached an open field of weeds, with a wide field of grass beyond it and a few picnic tables to the left where the trees met the field. Across the wide field, about 200 meters in the distance, was a large stone structure about 4 or 5 levels high, with a bell-tower pointing high above it.

It appeared to be some mind of school or conservatory. As he looked at the structure and all about it, at the grounds, the field and the trees beside it, he received a flash of memory. He recalled something about being in a very similar place some time ago. How long ago, he wasn't sure.

He looked about the area, and decided to head for the picnic grounds, because it seemed the logical thing to do, as the picnic grounds appeared to extend closer to the structure on the left side.

He followed the edge of the picnic grounds, still wondering where he was. He reached the other side of the picnic area, where there was a road and a parking lot with a few vehicles, stopped, and looked across the lot, to the area about the structure. The place was not busy, and he wondered where the people were. Perhaps, he thought, it was a weekend or a holiday.

He saw a park bench at the edge of the picnic grounds, under a tree in the shade, just meters from the lot, and decided to take another rest and rethink his situation. He sat down, and looked at the structure again. It was a mid-20c gray granite stone structure similar in design to a college conservatory, with 4 tall stain-glass windows on the lowest level and 3 sets of smaller windows over those on higher levels.

He guessed it was a school or conservatory of science, decided to take a drink from his flask, and checked his time-piece. It made no sense, it was obviously off, as he suspected. By the position of the sun he guessed it to be late morning, about 10 or 11, heading towards noon. He looked at the walkway leading to the entrance of the structure, and thought about checking the place out.

Before he could make up his mind, he heard some voices, and looked to the right of the structure.

A small group of girls in similar blue and green dresses suddenly appeared, walking, talking, and laughing. They stopped at the edge of the structure, on the grass, and stood there chatting and looking about.

Stone looked at them and recognized their blue and green dresses as some kind of school uniforms. They were apparently students. He thought about it and looked across the parking lot, to the left, and saw another structure, about 100 meters away, in the distance, between the trees. His mind began to see something as his memory appeared to be working again. He closed his eyes, looked down, and put his head in his hands. He thought he recalled something, and looked up again.

It was a college campus of some kind, he guessed. Yes, that's what it was, of course. Suddenly, his memory went to work again and faces began to flash across his mind. He heard one of the girls laughing and it echoed, along with her voice inside his mind. He dropped his head, heard her voice again, and snapped his head up.

He recalled a girl with a similar voice, in his memory, and saw her face, as he closed his eyes. He felt positive joy by the look on her face, as he recalled her, but then everything changed, as she frowned, and was lost in the dark. He felt a sudden heart-throb of something like terrible regret and a great loss, it made his heart race for a moment, then he felt extremely weak, and it hit him in the head. Before he could think twice about what was happening, he passed out and fell back on the bench.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Tenrut snapped out of the episode suddenly as there was a sound in the kitchen. He yawned, checked the time, and realized that Sandea was home from the club. Had he been gone for 3 hours? He recalled the episode that he had just experienced in his vivid imagination, turned on his notebook, and began to record it.

Sandea stepped into the doorway to the partition to his office space, at the back of the living-room where he had it set up, and said, "Hey Ren, how's it going?"

He looked at her shortly and said, "I just got back from another parallel and I've got to record what happened now. I'll be out as soon as it's done."

She acknowledged his need for privacy and left him.

He recorded it all down in the journal and 30 minutes later, he relaxed. He went through it again briefly, removed a few typos and added some detail, and felt relieved. He saved the file and backed it up on his extra storage drive, checked the time, and turned the notebook off. He stepped up and joined Sandea in the kitchen for something to eat and a daily chat.

She filled him in on the local news. Some things he would have never known about except through her because his work and his episodes were taking most of his time.

"Why don't you join us at the pool-side this weekend?"

"Sounds like fun but I don't know if I can spare the time," he admitted. "I've got to cover 2 different contracts, now that I've got the green light for that sci-fi script with the studio."

"Script?" she said. "I thought you wanted to get back into animation?"

"I did, but I forgot about this commitment I made to the Multivertical Man series," he admitted. "It's still at the semi-pro level, but if I can sell just one script to a studio..."

"That's all it takes to get in," she guessed.

"Exactly!" he said, savoring the idea, as he made a cup of tea.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

Tenrut wrote in his journal:

"I was lost in another parallel for 35 years after an accident in late 1982. For 35 years I worked myself to death in that loveless purgatory for nothing but more work, and all I got for it was some experience and intelligence, but it was a trade off, really, because I lost my youth, and with it my health and well-being, because working one's self to death to no end without a break, like a god-damned programmed robot, was not really the best way to go. But that's what the sentence in Aton 5 was: an over-worked, underpaid, loveless purgatory with very little reward for robotic services rendered."

He thought about it for a minute, and continued.

"I think I have the perfect theme for the story. It's really not too complicated. I was lost for 35 years and now I'm home. But for one thing, I might be completely content right now. I still don't know if Lisa received a copy of the ebook, read it, and got the message. I thought the message in the bottle would help, and it did, for a bit, but I feel like I need to do more about it, if I can.

"I think I have just the formula for the script that could get me to see Lisa, and deliver the message to her myself."

\----------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Five: Memories of the Home Parallel

Agent Qudizo sent the message from his MVC office post at the MVC terminal station, within the main Earth-line to the Aton 5 parallel where Tenrut had just recently completed a sentence of 35 years, and wrote a book about it. He had just completed reading the ebook and sent the message to the Aton 5 parallel office.

It was a request for an investigation into the Gen-Tech telecommunications project which Tenrut reported, which he thought was somewhat suspicious, because the company responsible for the project were rushing it and unwilling to share information about it with the world.

According to Tenrut, "It looked like they were selling it to the world as just another computer upgrade, and the world was buying the idea that it was completely safe, even though the proper scientific tests had not been done and scientific analysis that suggests it may be unsafe to human and animal life has been suppressed."

Why would the people responsible for such technological upgrades be unwilling to educate the public about it? That didn't quite make sense. The request for an investigation was suggested by someone from the local state department who was concerned with members of families who had been sentenced to do time in Aton 5.

Qudizo didn't envy the MVC agent in Aton 5 who had to handle an investigation like this, and thought about the possibility of backing the man up somehow, if necessary.

According to the last report, Aton 5 had a problem with corporate royalty and imperial wars over energy resources for profit. The problem was compared with a problem similar to the one the old world royalty had fighting over the resources of Europe and the middle-east, a form of out of control competition for the wealth of those resources, in the hands of a corporate royalty in command of armies and powerful weapons, all directed at the goal of securing energy resources to sell to the world and make multiple millions in the process.

The competition over those energy resources, according to the report, was all that was behind the endless wars-for-profit, and the common little people were nothing but peasants beneath the mighty power of the corporate royalty.

No, Qudizo did not envy Agent Stenbolt one bit at all, being caught up in a 21st century quagmire like that.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Ren Tenrut sat before the computer in his apartment at the edge of the complex and recalled the last commitment he had. He had delivered the message he was assigned to deliver and his defense report had been published and the ebook was free to anyone online.

But there was one other thing he had to do, something he had been waiting to do for 40 years.

He knew the "message in the bottle" was out there, but there was no guarantee that she would get it. He couldn't stop thinking about how he never got a chance to apologize for what had gone wrong, and wondered how the hell he was ever going to reach her now.

She was so far away from him, she might as well have been somewhere across the universe.

He looked at the compad with the ebooks on it and put it into his jacket pocket, and stepped up to head for the door.

He stopped at the side of the kitchen counter and had a memory, as he was thinking of the desert outside. He felt a slight sense of deja vu and looked back over his left shoulder, and heard her voice in his head.

He looked at the kitchen table and his mind began to wander, then he recalled it, the dream he had about a decade ago, while he was still in Aton 5, of seeing her off outside the complex. She saw him at the door and she was excited about something and he walked along with her to the parking lot, where she stopped outside a large automobile.

She looked at him and said, "I got the job! I got it!"

He was suspended by the memory, frozen as he stared at her at the very moment, as he looked into her eyes, and then he suddenly remembered more. His mind jumped back to the minutes before, when they were inside, at her second-level apartment.

"I got the job, Ren," she said to him, as she was moving about the bedroom, looking for something.

"What job?" he said, trying to recall it.

"The one with the studio," she said.

He was surprised, and didn't know what to say. She found what she was looking for, stuffed it into her bag, and went to the closet. She picked her jacket out and put it on, and he helped her with it, and looked at her closely, and said, "When will I see you again?"

"I'm not sure," she said, "I'm going to be very busy for a while."

She went to the bureau, picked up her bag, and looked at him.

He took her hand and tried to get her close, but she said, "I have to get going, I'm running late now."

He wouldn't let her go that easy, and pulled her to him.

She gave him a hug for a moment, and he whispered in her ear, and kissed her cheek, and she giggled a little and pulled away.

He followed her out to the car, walked her to the door, and saw her off.

The memory stuck in his mind but for some reason, he had suppressed it for some time. He almost lost his knees and fell into a kitchen chair, and kept himself from falling to the floor. He sat in the chair and recalled it and understood why it had been suppressed. Every time he recalled it, it made his heart bleed so bad he almost feinted.

He tried to get himself under control, as he vulcanized himself and realized it was 40 years ago, and everything was different now. It was the last time he saw her before he was transferred to Aton 5, in late 82.

But then he saw her somewhere he forgot to look, because he had suppressed the memory. He thought about it, looked back at the computer, and wondered if it were possible she could be tracked down through one of the companies connected to the local COC club.

Then he suddenly had another memory which had also been suppressed.

"Of course," he said, "I recall it now."

He went to the computer and recalled the information he needed to track her down. He wasn't able to carry very much across parallels, and much had been left behind, including information. But his memory was enhanced by a basic knowledge about the mulitiverse and how everything fit together, including intelligence, which was nothing more than various diametric aspects upon basic geometry put together for an understanding about the knowledge of the multiverse and everything in it.

He had successfully carried some specific information with him, despite lacking the hard-copies or computer digital discs, etc...

He went online and did a search, and went searching for about 20 minutes before he found something.

There she was, as beautiful as ever, on a play-side dvd cover. It was her alright, he recalled her well now. He had rediscovered her while working secretly in the Aton 5 parallel in 2011, late at night, on a weekend. He had forgotten because sometimes memories were suppressed, after crossing over from one parallel to another.

Now there she was, on the cover of her own dvd. He sat back and thought about it. The memory began to return again, and he wondered if he could reach her, after all of these years.

He looked at himself in the mirror and realized the one thing most obvious. He was no longer the young man he had once been 40 years ago and his chances with any girl, including Lisa, were not quite so high as they had been before the accident and the transfer. 40 years was a long time to be away and it had obviously taken its toll, but after returning, he had regained his energy and his motivation, and felt at least 10 years younger.

There was something about the home-parallel, something that included more energy and motivation, something that had either been suppressed or missing within the shadow earth of Aton 5. It was something he couldn't quite put into words, but it was like a greater appreciation of life. Ever since he returned everyone he met seemed in good spirits, and after spending a few months at the apartment complex, mixing with his neighbors, he began to realize what it was.

Everyone knew how to function well and get what they wanted in return. There was no problem with any confusion on this issue. It was all perfectly logical to them that all they had to give the world was 4 days a week of their time and they would get 3 days off every week to do whatever they wanted, within reason of course. And the options.... well that was what made it all so interesting.

Aton 5 had no such options as the home-parallel, except for the wealthy-class. Within the Aton 5 parallel, play-time options were extremely expensive and only afforded by the wealthy-classes. The Neoconservative fascist-capitalist takeover of the Aton 5 government in the early 1980s fixed the system so that the so-called "alternative life-style", as it was referred, was relegated to specific states where high incomes were necessary to pay the rent and property-taxes. The result was that only wealthy people with loads of extra cashola could afford to live there and appreciate those "alternatives".

Coincidentally, just about every state with beach-front property followed that system. So within the Aton 5 parallel, the only people with perpetual smiles on their faces were the wealthy ones lucky enough to live in states where the "alternatives" were an integrated, common, everyday part of life, and everyone understood it all well enough.

In the home-parallel it was different. Things went differently in the early 1980s and the alternative lifestyle with its extra options was not relegated to specific states or high-income classes. Everyone everywhere accepted it and everyone understood how it worked. Anyone who served a functional position for 4 days per week deserved 3 days of freedom in return for their services, and everyone fully appreciated that system.

Of course, this didn't mean that they could do anything or everything exactly. Wealth did still make a difference, but it didn't matter because the options were all there and everyone fully appreciated those options when they had the free time to do so, and with 3 days off every week instead of just 2, their lives were much more well-balanced.

Nobody had to work themselves to death just to keep a roof over their heads or an automobile on the road, and everyone made enough money to do more with their free-time than common workers within the Aton 5 parallel, where the corporate royalty was still as greedy as ever.

"Tell me honestly," he said to Jenny, the young girl that shared the apartment at the complex, on Friday, before she left for her job at the local club.

"How old do i look?" he said, finally admitting to himself that he had no idea at all how old he looked to anyone and was genuinely bothered by the confusion.

She looked at him with a slight frown for a moment, then smiled and said, "I don't know. How old are you?"

"I guess I'm not really sure," he admitted. "How old do I look?"

She hesitated, looked down for a few seconds, looked back at him, blinked, then said, "My guess would be 45. But I'm not very good at making such guesses."

"45?" he said, with surprise.

"Well, that's my best guess? Am I close?" she said.

He looked down for a moment, thought about it, and then looked back at her and smiled and said, "Yes, that's fairly close. Do I really look 45?"

"Well, sure, I guess," she admitted, "but you forget I read the book."

"Then you should know what my real age is," he said, " if you read the book."

She smiled and said, "You didn't ask me what your real age was. You asked me how old you looked. There is an obvious difference."

"Then you're telling me I actually look younger?"

"Yes, I think so," she said. "That's one of the things I found interesting about you. I have to admit... the truth is I found it hard to believe that you were the same man who wrote the book. I thought you looked too young to be a man of 60."

"So, I actually look 45?" he said.

"Yes," she admitted, smiled, checked the time, and said, "I've got to be going. Are you going to be around this weekend?"

"Yes," he said, as she stepped to the kitchen, picked up her bag from the chair in the corner, and began to leave.

He was left standing there suspended by the answer she had given him with suppressed surprise. He knew he appeared younger than 60 to himself, but he really had no idea how he looked to anyone else, and he never guessed it could be as young as 45. At best, he thought 50 maybe, but it hadn't occurred that he appeared as young as 45.

He felt better after that, regained his energy, and actually began to feel like a man of 45. Of course, it was possible that his sentence in Aton 5 had been easier on him than others because of his tolerance for the strictly conservative position. He had been innocent, regardless of what the others thought, and he had done his very best to be a model inmate. Furthermore, he didn't take any chances with people he couldn't trust and never got in any more trouble.

During the 35 years in which he did most of his time in Aton 5, he concentrated on his work, because he believed it was the only way to redeem himself. The Aton 5 parallel had all kinds of problems that the home-parallel did not experience during the 1980s; the drug war, the rise of Neofascism in America, religious-right dogmatists, and the AIDS epidemic, which disaffected people who practiced careless sexual activities outside of marriage.

During his time doing the sentence in Aton 5, Ren minded his own business, stayed out of trouble, did very little "mingling" with society, and never engaged in any sexual activities. It wasn't that he was not interested in girls and sex, he simply failed to get to first base with any of the girls he was interested in because he never quite met their qualifications, mainly because he was too poor.

Within the Aton 5 parallel, Ren had discovered in the late 80s, that one had to meet the "status quo" if one expected to get anywhere with girls, and he simply didn't make enough money on his job at the department store to meet that "status quo". In fact, he spent a decade, between 1985 and 1995, working like a good robot trying to make more money to pay for everything, but failed because the job simply didn't pay well enough.

He looked at himself in the mirror again and realized that if he really only looked 45 to girls then it was possible that he still had a chance with them, now that he was in the home-parallel, despite his lack of money, because the home-parallel was not a fascist-capitalist parallel run by greed and the endless obsession with the accumulation of personal wealth (as it was in the Aton 5 parallel).

Of course, he wasn't quite so poor as he was in Aton 5 either because his mother had left him $10,000 when she passed on earlier that year, and he had managed to hold onto most of it despite the high rent because of the deal he had made to share the place with Jenny. Jenny was young but she was a good girl, did her job well, and paid her half of the rent without any problem.

Jenny was also quite attractive, as were many of the local young girls in the complex, and he might have a chance with her. But he recalled Lisa, looked at the dvd-cover he had found with her on it, and wondered if he could still reach her after all these years.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 5.45: Another Parallel

Sometime later, Stone heard a girl's voice, and then others, and he came out of it. He was lying on the bench with the backpack under his head, and the young female college students were standing over him. At first, it sounded like they were speaking another language, and he couldn't understand them, but as he came out of it, and sat up, with his head in his hands, they began to make more sense to him.

At the same time, some of the voices still sounded as if they were in another language. He began to understand, as his head cleared and he looked up at them. Some of them appeared Asian and others appeared American. They were apparently bilingual.

"Are you okay, mister?" one of them said, in perfect English.

"I... I think so," he admitted, but his mind was having difficulty putting things together.

"Can you tell me where I am?" he said.

"You don't know?" the girl said. "What happened to you?"

He hesitated, thinking about it, and looked at them. They appeared to be young college students.

"Is this a college campus?" he guessed.

"Yes," she said. "Don't you remember how you got here?"

"I was involved in an accident," he said, "with my vehicle."

They all looked around the roadway and the lot but saw no such vehicle that he could be referring to.

"It's not here," he said, and explained. "The accident occurred on the coast, and I hiked here through the forest."

"On the coastal highway?" she said.

"No, it was an air vehicle," he said. "It crashed in the sea and washed up on the coast."

She looked closely at him and noticed the insignia of the Aerospace Corps on his jacket.

"Oh...," she said with some surprise. She thought about it and looked at the other girls. She looked back at him, noticed his disconsolate manner, and said, "Do you need help?"

"Well, yes, I'm afraid I do," he admitted. "I seem to have lost my memory."

She looked at him with wide eyes, turned to one of the other girls and spoke in the foreign language. The other girl nodded, turned, and hurried across the lot to the structure.

"I've sent for someone who can help," she said. "What's your name?"

"Zek," he said. "Zek Stone."

Here eyes went wide as she thought about that and the other girls responded with hushed whispers of suppressed interest.

"You are Zek Stone?" she said.

"Yes," he admitted, and looked more closely at her. "Thank you for helping. Do you have a name?"

"Twani," she said.

"Twani," he said. "That's an interesting name."

"I'm Asian-American," she said. "My mother is Asian and my father is American."

One of the other girls suddenly spoke up and said, "Are you an Aerospace pilot?"

"Actually, yes," he admitted, "but my memory isn't working so well right now. I was probing an electromagnetic storm and my vehicle got too close. It caused the vehicle to go out of control and I crashed in the sea."

They all made sounds of awe and wonder with that report.

He looked at them and thought he recalled something again, but it was all vague and fuzzy. He rubbed his forehead with his hands, and heard another voice. The girl who had left to get help was returning with some excitement. Following her a few meters behind was another older woman, in a more formal clerical suit, carrying a small bag.

The woman wore a serious frown and said to Twani, as she arrived on the scene by the bench, "Twani, you know I don't have time for every poor scavenger that comes along..."

But then she saw Stone's blue silk jacket and checked her attitude.

She looked him over, stepped up to the bench, and said, "Who are you?" with wonder.

"Zek Stone," he said.

Her eyes went wide for a moment, then she suddenly frowned, and said, "Okay, girls, what's the gag?"

Twani looked at her, then back at Stone, and said, "We just found him lying here. He looked like he needed help."

The other girls all confirmed what Twani said, and the woman looked back at Stone and said, "Listen, who ever you are. I don't have time for practical jokes."

Stone sat up firmly and said, "This isn't a practical joke, I assure you, Miss...."

"Verasai," she said. "But you can't possibly be Zek Stone, whoever you are, and if you continue to pursue such a pretense, I'll call the campus security."

"Really?" Stone said. "Well, maybe you'd like some proof."

He pulled out his billfold and showed her the ASC ID.

Twani peaked at it as Verasai looked at it closely.

"Well, the ID could be a fake," she admitted, with doubt.

"What?" he said. "Why would I fake something like that?"

She looked around at the girls then back at Stone and said, "I can think of a few reasons. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get in for impersonating an officer of the Aerospace Corps?"

"What?" he said, with surprise. "Why would anyone do that? Why don't you believe me?"

"Mister, you couldn't possibly be Zek Stone," she said. "Everyone knows Zek Stone was lost 20 years ago, somewhere off the coast, in an electromagnetic storm."

"What? 20 years ago?" he said, with shock, and suddenly his head began to swim, and he felt like he was back in the storm, and he passed out again.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Six: Flying Monkeys and Gen-Tech Upgrades

Ren finally found the time, after all the basic responsibilities connected to his security within the home-parallel were settled, including the information he agreed to pass on to the local MVC, he devised a plan to contact Lisa.

He realized the one potential method for making contact he had on his side was the fact that she worked for a studio and studios worked with scripts. Among his many different trades in the general field of independent art, he had already written many books and writing a good script for a studio was not much different. Most scripts began with basic storyline manuscripts, the same way books began.

So he went to work on a script that he could sell to the studio; one that included a role which Lisa could play, to be sure. In that way, with Lisa included in the script, she might be consulted on it and he would have a chance to see her. That was the idea. If he could see her, he could apologize and explain to her what went wrong.

That was it. That was what he had to do. He was compelled to do it and couldn't hold back the idea. So he went to work on it and wrote a script that he could sell to the studio.

In the script, a space-pilot crashed off the coast of the local mainland after a storm, and awoke in the vehicle as it was lodged into the rocks on the rocky coast. His memory was lost and he had no idea where he was. He wandered inland, and eventually wandered onto the grounds of a conservatory and a school. There he sought refuge, and fell asleep on a bench, after which he was discovered by a small group of young girls.

Lisa was perfect for the part of one of the girls, he thought. If he could sell the script to the studio, she might become more available to him.

In the script, the space-pilot eventually managed to recover his memory and told a story that was a very close parallel to his own, to pass on the message to Lisa. After all, there were similar parallels. Tenrut had been sent on a fool's errand and lost for over 20 years before he managed to recover enough of his memory to regain his bearings and figure out what the hell was going on.

He dreamt about how she might respond if he actually managed to get into the studio and pass the information on. Tenrut was a hopeless romantic.

"It was a fool's errand, I didn't want to go. I was a fool to leave you Lisa," he said.

She looked at him and thought about it, and said, "It was over 20 years ago. It was a long time ago."

"Let me explain," he said, "I'm sorry. Give me a chance to explain what went wrong."

She hesitated, thought it over, and agreed. They made plans to meet later, and she left.

Tenrut snapped out of the day-dream and got back to the job.

The part of the script, with the explanation to Lisa, was the message in the bottle he was sending her, and he hoped she'd remember enough to see the connection.

Ren had the script done in less than a month, it was one of the fastest scripts he'd ever written.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Aton 5 Reality Check:

Meanwhile, in the Aton 5 parallel.... the plans to construct the Gen-Tech upgrades of telecommunications technology into a global network of satellites and towers had taken its first step.

Around the same time, Neofascists continued to conduct imperial wars for profit, mostly for the stealth of energy resources and other valuable minerals, such as those in Afghanistan and Bolivia, while the phony Christian Zionist Front in WDC continued to lie about such things to the American public, through the mainstream propaganda machine, leading them to believe it was all in the name of human rights and democracy.

Humans were being slaughtered in the Aton 5 parallel by Neofascists pretending to act on the side of Christ and American democracy. A majority of middle and lower working-class Americans were actually stupid enough to believe them.

For over 3 decades, ever since the Neoconservatives took over the federal government in the Aton 5 parallel, in the early 1980s, they were lying them into sacrificing their Constitutional rights for more security, while individuals were losing their rights and being forced to be better robots. Despite the fact that the lies had managed to fool a majority of "working-class" Americans, there was a far greater majority of humans on the world-scale who were opposed to the Neofascist Capitalists and favored socialist economic reforms.

It was this vast majority of humans on the world-scale that frightened the Neoconservatives enough to seek greater powers over humanity.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Agent Stenbolt of the MVC had been warned about the Gen-Tech telecommunications system that was planned by the Neocons (and Neoliberals) because of its potential to be used as a weapon. He had done the research and learned that all the Gen-Tech system needed to be weaponized was something referred to as a "Variable Frequency Modulator", which actually could be integrated into the Gen-Tech technology "after" it was constructed and deployed into the satellite and tower system that was planned.

In other words, even if the technology didn't include a "VFM" to begin with, it could be designed and constructed in such a way that the "VFM" could be installed later, like when all the poor fools were satisfied that it was safe and had nothing to worry about, and were fast asleep during their down-times. Or, for that matter, the VFM could be installed secretly anytime and used at anytime after the public had settled the matter and felt safe that they had nothing to worry about.

Stenbolt knew this was a serious issue, and shared the information with the courier that was transferred to Earth, the "home parallel", so that Earth could be alerted. According to the MVC regulations, using the Gen-Tech technology with the "VFM" installed, as a weapon, was a serious breach of rules.

Stenbolt knew how serious the situation was within the "shadow Earth" of Aton 5, and suspected that the Neofascist Capitalists would use such a weapon to pacify and control humans, if they feared that they were losing control. He knew that such an action was not beyond such greedy, egotistical psychopaths with that kind of wealth and power over the parallel.

Alone, Stenbolt could do nothing but share the information he had and hope that there were enough humans with sanity on their side who might be able to put a stop to such totalitarian violations.

"Tell me exactly what could the Gen-Tech do, with the VFM installed?" Stone said to Stenbolt, as the two men had met at the local park.

"The VFM, once installed, could turn a harmless beam of invisible electromagnetism used to carry information into a dangerous ray that could fry a human brain."

Stone's eyes went wide with this report.

"But that would be a human rights violation," Stone said. "We have to take measures to prevent it."

"That's why I'm sharing this with you," Stenbolt said. "I can't do anything more about it. This is something that concerned human citizens in positions of leadership and authority need to act on."

"Yes, of course," Stone said. "I'll see what I can do. It sounds like we may have to inspect the technology."

"Just be sure to check it all out and look for the VFM, the variable frequency modulator," Stenbolt said, "and check to be sure, if there is no VFM, for a place where it could be installed anytime. If they have a way to install it anytime, then they could be planning on secretly installing it to be used as a weapon."

Stone accepted the flash-drive with the information about Gen-Tech on it and agreed to check on it.

"One more thing," Stenbolt said. "The way the computer tech geeks work these days, along with their secret government masters, they might not call it a VFM. They might call it something else, like a "Wave Modulator" or simply a "Wave Modifier". In fact, I really can't say exactly what they might call it, so what you need to do is get a tech expert to work as an inspector, someone who knows exactly what to look for, understand?"

"Yes," Stone said, "Thanks, we'll take care of it."

\----------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, within the Aton 5 parallel, Quoren was having a very difficult problem sharing the intelligence he had with the people he thought could be trusted. Something very peculiar and unexpected occurred. The people he made contact with were quite suddenly attacked by fascist thugs and beaten. One of them was in the military and gave them a reason to back off, but he lost contact with the man after that and returned to his home-office, wondering what the hell was going on.

He spoke with a local company man whom he could trust in such matters and together they were able to determine that the fascist thugs were obviously working for the Neofascists, the ones who were politically opposed to the social and economic reforms that the democratic socialists supported.

"How the hell am I supposed to make contact with our allies and share intel," he said, "if I have to worry about fascist thugs ruining it everywhere I go?"

"Looks like you need a security detail to watch your back," Langston said, "and it might be a good idea to have at least one partner with you at all times, when you make contact. The partner could watch your back while the security detail is close by, ready to act if needed."

"Sounds like the logical move, if we can spare the man-power," Quoren said. "But one more thing you might want to tell them. Tell them to carry a few nets so we can capture these animals and find out who their boss is."

"Good idea," Langston agreed, started to leave, then stopped. "Who do you want for a partner?", he said, and waited for it.

"I'll let you know later," he said. "Can you handle the security detail?"

"We'll get some of our best company men for the job," he said, nodded, and left the man.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Later that day, back at his office, Maxwell Stone was doing his best to get his company organized for the 2020 season.

He sat at his desk, logged into his notebook, waiting to get the main computer online.

He spoke into his cell-phone and said, "Why aren't the land-lines in yet?"

"The Gen-Tech technicians said that we don't need the land-lines," the man at the other end reported.

"The hell we don't need land-lines," Stone said, "What happens if the Gen-Tech fails, what then? Haven't they ever heard of back-up systems?"

"I don't know," the man said. "They didn't mention anything about back up systems."

"Do they really honestly, expect us to believe that the Gen-Tech systems are completely infallible?"

he said. "You tell them we need those land-lines for back-up, and if they don't take care of it, I'll find some tech experts that will."

"Yes sir," he said.

"Get back to me on it as soon as you've had a word with them," he said. "I mean it. I can't believe these guys never heard of back-up systems."

He thought about what Stenbolt had told them and wondered why the Gen-Tech team seem to think they didn't need any back-ups, and got the green light to activate the main computer.

He did so and logged into the network, and went to work.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 6.75: Another Parallel

Stone awoke on a hospital bed against a wall in a room with one more empty bed and a partition with what looked like medical equipment and supplies in a cabinet on the other side. The daylight shone through the partially open Venetian blinds and light blue curtains. His head was a little fuzzy as he sat up and leaned back against the pillow, and looked about.

He heard some motion from the other side of the partition and someone stepped into the doorway between the two sections of the room. It was Twani, he recalled her from the parkway outside. But where was he now?

"Feeling better?" she said.

"What happened? Where am I? he said.

"You passed out on the park bench outside," she explained. "We brought you inside, to the infirmary."

"I... I thought I was somewhere else," he said. "it must have been a dream, but I thought it was... back in the electromagnetic storm."

"So, do you believe my story yet?" he said, and sat up on the bed-side.

"They're waiting for confirmation," she said.

He thought about it, checked the time, and it didn't make any sense again.

"My time-piece has been off," he admitted, "What time is it?"

She said, "Just after twelve."

"How long was I out?" he said.

"Oh, looks like an hour," she said.

Then he recalled the scene at the park-bench, and what the doctor had said.

"You want to hear something very odd?" he said, looking at her for affirmation.

She said, "What?"

"I could have sworn the doctor, Miss Verasai," he said, "said I was lost 20 years ago. I must have been delusional. It was just before I passed out, I think, into that storm again."

"What year do you think it is?" she said.

"It's 2024, isn't it?" he said.

She looked at him with wonder, as her mouth began to drop slightly, and suddenly the door opened, and Miss Verasai stepped inside.

"Well, Mr. Doe," she said to him, as she stepped beside Twani, then through the partition, to the bed-side, and stopped to look at him closely. "How are we feeling now?"

"Who's Mr. Doe?" he said.

"You are Mr. Doe, at least until we can confirm your identity," she said.

"So, do you believe me now?" he said.

She stepped back, glanced at his backpack, with his personal effect in it, then looked back at him and said, "I don't know what to believe yet. But that's not up to me, anyhow. My orders are just to see to it that you're not in any physical harm's way."

"You know, I could have sworn you said I disappeared 20 years ago," he said. "It was just before I passed out, I think. I mean, do you have any idea why I might be so delusional? Could I have hurt my head maybe?"

She looked at him with wide eyes closely, and said, "Did you report a memory-loss?"

"Yes," he said.

"With memory-loss cases the mind could be playing some tricks with the senses," she admitted.

"But Mr. Doe, what you heard was not a delusion," she said. "Zek Stone was lost 20 years ago. That looks like his ID you are carrying, but I have no idea where you got it."

He stared across the room to the window and said, slowly, "But how could it be? How could I lose 20 years over night in a storm?"

They were silent without an answer, for a minute, while Doctor Verasai turned to the cabinet and worked there. "I'm no expert on psychometrics," she admitted, "but I'd have to guess that it's somehow connected to the memory-loss."

She turned about, put a pen in her pocket, and stepped to him.

"Do you recall anything?" she said. "You seem to acknowledge the identity in your billfold; the face is the same, everything else about your person supports the identity, including the equipment in your bag, which is official ASC stuff, including the cell-phone."

"Cell-phone?" he said. "I guess I must have missed that. When I found myself in that cabin on the coast, all I could think was how much I wanted to go out and rediscover who the hell I was and what the hell I was doing there."

He stood up, and went to the bag. He fished inside and found the cell-phone, took it out and tried it.

"I tried it, the battery needs a recharge," Verasai said.

"Dead, completely dead," he said, and put it back into the bag.

"Mr. Doe," she said, and stepped to the side, where there was a table with a clip-board and a few books. "I sincerely hope you are not doing some kind of fancy role-playing thing with me."

She stared at him with some mixed intrigue and mystery, hiding behind those doctor's probing spectacles.

"Role-playing?" he said. "I don't understand. You mean, you still think I'm playing some kind of joke?"

"You had better not be," she said, "because if you are, you'll get the bill, I can assure you."

He started to answer to that, but she cut him off before he uttered the word, and said, "As it stands, we have no choice but to accept the possibility that you are at least a member of the ASC, and so we have been inclined to help you."

"Okay," he said, "thanks very much."

"Twani," she said, "he can have the guest room in the dormitory wing for the faculty."

"It's on the west side of the conservatory," she said, "away from the students. Let's try and keep it that way, shall we, Mr. Doe?"

He nodded and she said, "Follow Twani, she'll take you there. I'll see you later, about 4."

He grabbed his bag and followed Twani out into a corridor.

She looked at him, said, "This way, Zek," with a smile.

She led him along the corridor to the end, and up a large step-case, to the next level.

"The faculty guest room is on the next level," she said, as they entered the step-case and ascended.

"This place is big," he said, as they entered the second level, and followed the corridor.

"It's over a century old now," she said.

They walked to the end of the corridor, as he became distracted by some of the classical pictures on the walls, and she stopped and turned, stepped to the side and opened a door.

It was a fairly large room with a bed in the middle, a couple of chairs and a table near the windows, and a water-closet in the corner, which included a shower, sink, and toilet. There was no kitchen, but there was a small cabinet in the other corner with a small refrigerator, with a few bottles of water in it.

Twani went about the room and pointed these things out to him, then stopped on the other side of the bed, looked at him and said, "You know, if you are just role-playing, she will make you pay the bill."

She smiled at the thought, and he defended himself.

"But I swear to you," he said. "I don't know how the hell it could be...."

"You didn't tell me what year it was," he suddenly said. "You just said I was lost 20 years ago. What year is it?"

She looked at the table near the cabinet, stepped over to it, and checked the calendar.

"This one says 2044," she said. "I guess that's about right."

She turned and looked at him and said, "Does that sound right to you, Mr. Stone?"

He walked over to her side, looked at the calendar, frowned with perplexity, and looked at her closely.

"This is impossible," he said, as he turned away from her and walked to the windows. He looked outside, from the higher level, across the tops of the trees, into the distance.

"How the hell could I lose 20 years!" he said, with excitation, and he quickly suppressed it, still frowning, as he looked back at her.

He looked down as his thoughts were lost in retrospection again, and he decided to sit in one of the chairs.

"I don't understand how this is possible," he said.

His mind began to go to work as he looked at the ASC band on his left wrist.

He recalled everything that had happened in reverse order until he recalled being in the cabin of the craft, and he recalled the memories he received of faces in a casual setting.

"You need to rest," Twani said. "I'll check back around 3 pm."

She left him alone, and he wondered what was happening to him.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Seven: Message in a Bottle

Ren Tenrut was thinking about looking up some old friends when he met someone at the complex club at the edge of the recreational area and the large pool where a bunch of young children were playing.

"Mr. Tenrut?" a tall, slender, somewhat bronze-skinned man with short dark hair and cool-ray shades, in a light 2 piece blue and green suit said.

"Yes?" Ren said, wondering who the man was.

"You may not remember me," he said. "I was your neighbor 40 years ago, before you were sentenced to Aton 5. Presently I'm the manager of the local COC organization. My name is Sirocko."

Ren thought about the man and recalled him.

"Benny Sirocko?" he said with surprise, smiling slightly with some retrospection. "Yes, I recall. You were still in high-school at the time, weren't you?"

"Yes, that was quite some time ago," he admitted.

"Manager of the local COC?" Tenrut said, with intrigue.

"Yes," Sirocko said. "That's why I need to speak with you. It's about this issue with your late brother Jarges."

Ren's eyes became wide for a second, he looked down, then away for a few seconds.

He looked back, and said, "I see. What can I do for you?"

"Well, it's nothing serious," Sirocko admitted, "but it does concern public relations and we'd like to settle the matter as soon as possible."

"What matter?"

"Well, you may not realize it," the man admitted, "but your case with your brother Jarges has had some marginal effect upon our public relations. If we could convince you to help us settle the issue it would be helpful to the organization."

"Benny Sirocko," Ren said the man's name again, looked at him, and smiled with the memory. "Would you like to know why I recall you so well?"

"Uh, I dunno, why?" he said.

"In the summer of 78," he explained, "for some reason or other, my step-brother Jarges mentioned you after I declined his invitation to get naked on that day. He seemed to think that telling me that you wanted to go naked would make a difference."

"Did it?" the man said.

"No, obviously not," Ren admitted. "But it was nothing personal. I just wasn't in the mood to get naked on that day. Nor was I the least bit interested in letting my step-brother act like the summer play-time activities director for me or my friends at that time."

"I see," Sirocko said, "I think I understand, now. Your step-brother really wasn't being completely sincere with us at that time. I really had no idea he was so devious."

"Well, your ignorance cost me," Ren suddenly said with a frown, turned to the bar-counter and took a slug from his drink. "I did almost 40 years in Aton 5 because of the ignorance of people like you."

He looked down, frowning over the drink for several seconds, and turned about and looked at the children playing at the pool.

"I'm truly sorry, Mr. Tenrut," Sirocko said, "but there was no way I could have known. Jarges was much more deceptive than any of us knew at the time."

"Yes, of course," Ren agreed, "It's not your fault. He was just too well-practiced at lying and covering up his lies. At the time, I suspect that he had actually begun to believe his own lies."

There was a pause for almost a minute, and Ren looked back at the man and said, "Well, then, what about this matter you need to settle."

"Yes," Sirocko said, and explained. "You see, we'd like the public to understand that Jarges was not the best example of our executive management. There's some concern that your case against him and the event of his death may not reflect so well upon the COC and cause prospective customers to turn to the competition for services."

"I see," Ren said, and looked at him. "I didn't know the COC had any competition."

"Not the organization itself," Sirocko explained, "but the local companies that Jarges and his company represented within the Noreast region. As I said, it's not too serious, but we would prefer to settle it so that it won't reflect poorly on the management of those companies. Jarges did have quite a lot of influence within the region."

"Okay, so what exactly do you want from me?"

"Just a simple statement," Sirocko said, "that would help us to isolate Jarges case as being non-typical and unique."

Tenrut thought about that and said, "Tell me honestly, Ben. What did you think of me after the summer of 78, after I declined the invite to get naked with Jarges and his friends?"

The man turned somewhat red in the face for a moment, suppressed a smile with tight lips, and looked down.

"Mr. Tenrut," he said, a moment later, and looked back at him. "What I thought at the time really doesn't matter anymore..."

"You thought I was a fool, didn't you?" Ren said to him, looking him square in the eyes.

The man hesitated for a few seconds, then said, "Well, yes, actually, at the time I did. But that's all in the past now."

"So you do understand now that it was all a huge misunderstanding?"

"Yes, I believe that your ebook has explained it all well enough," Sirocko admitted, suppressing some measure of humility about the fact that he, along with so many others, had been misled and deceived by the lies of Jarges.

"So you want a statement from me," Tenrut said, "to settle the misunderstanding that your organization has with your potential customers?"

"Yes, if you could be so kind," Sirocko said.

Tenrut looked out over the pool and the playground, high into the blue sky and clouds in the distance, thinking about it.

"What's in it for me?" he decided, looking back at Sirocko, and wondering just how much cashola a COC manager made.

The man hesitated, then said, "Well, I believe that we should be able to make some kind of equitable deal." He showed him a briefcase and said, "Shall we find a table in the shade so we can conduct our business with more privacy?"

Tenrut agreed and they found a table in the shade in the corner, near the picnic tables, under the trees.

Ren sat there listening to the man as he pulled out a portable notebook and activated it. He wondered just how well Benny Sirocko had done in the past 40 years, and just how much help he might get in return for his "statement".

Before they could settle on anything, Tenrut stared at the man and said, "Do you want to know what would really help me right now?"

"What?" the man said.

"What do you know about Zanterra studios?" he said. "They produce softcore fantasy dvds."

"Yes, of course, I've heard of them," he said.

"I need to sell them a script," he said, and left it flatly at that, staring square in the man's eyes with absolute sincerity.

The man thought about that, with a somewhat twisted smile, and sat back, in suspense.

"That's what you want?" he said, suspended by the thought.

"Yes, that's it," Ren admitted. "Can you do it?"

Sirocko saw how serious Tenrut was and realized that he would have to think of something.

"We are prepared to make a cash settlement," he admitted. "Surely that would make it easier..."

"No, I need to sell the script, to the studio," he said. "That's what I need."

Sirocko thought about it again, with more concentration, looked out across the play-grounds, and said, "Maybe..."

"Maybe what?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," he admitted, "The studio managers are all members of the COC and I do happen to know one of them..."

"There it is then," Ren said.

"But it's been some time and well," the man admitted, "this is not exactly my line of work. About all I can think of is... yes, it might be possible. There's an event coming up next month and I should be able to see my friend. If I can reach him and talk to him about it, it might be possible."

He smiled as he looked back at Ren, and said, "Yes, well. I'm nearly sure I can talk to him about it but as for selling the script... that's not up to me, it's up to him."

"I just need to get him interested enough to get a foot in the door," he said. "So that I can get into the studio."

"Why?" Sirocko said, and then added, "I mean, well, I suppose that's your business, but I'm curious."

"Because I'm a writer and I need to sell a script," he said.

"Oh, of course," Sirocko said, and thought it over. "Well, like I said, I can talk to my friend..."

"Your friend works with the studio?"

"Yes," the other admitted. "I can talk to him about it but I can't convince him to buy it. That's up to you."

"If you can sell the idea that I have a good script that the studio would be interested in," Tenrut said, "and get me in, I can sell it to them."

"I see," Sirocko said. "So all I have to do is tell him about the script, convince him its good enough for some kind of review, which will get you into the studio, and you'll do the rest?"

"Exactly," Ren said.

"Well, I'm not a literary agent," Sirocko said, with some doubt.

"But you do understand public relations," he said, "and you know how to make your organization look good."

Sirocko consented and said, "Okay, I'll give it a try. Now tell me about the script."

\----------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, in the Aton 5 parallel...

Vondrake and Quoren shared the report with Sarena and she shared it with her Green Party allies and about a week later, Vondrake appeared on an interview that was included with a Green Party Environmental report.

Sandy Field: "Mr. Vondrake, could you share exactly what your research has concluded, in as concise and simple an explanation as possible, so that there can be no confusion or misunderstanding about it?"

Vondrake: "Yes, of course. To put it quite simply, what we have concluded from our depth analysis on the situation at the present time is this: The resources and the environment of the Earth cannot continue to sustain the system of Fascist Capitalism which is based upon the exploitation of resources for profit which the capitalist economy presently depends upon.

"If we continue to rely upon the present Capitalist economic system in the hands of profit-motivated millionaires and their millionaire-wannabees, with no limit upon personal, private, or corporate wealth, and they continue to wage wars for profit over the resources, humanity and the planet Earth will not survive the 21st century."

Sandy Field: "That sounds extremely serious. How can you be certain of such conclusions?"

Vondrake: "The numbers don't lie. Resources are being exploited and abused for greedy, out-of-control profit motivations by a growing millionaire-class which continues to lie to the common, middle and lower-class people while ignoring the truth and believing its own lies. Energy resources alone are in such high demand that the corporations responsible for the supply and management of those resources have had to lie about the competition, the socialists, to continue to get the kind of popular support they need to wage wars, with the sole motivation towards the stealth of those resources just to continue to provide energy to the voters who depend upon them.

"Meanwhile, the voters continue to believe the lies so long as they manage to get the energy they need, most of them completely brainwashed by the lies. The Neocons lead us to believe there is an endless supply of those resources and exploitation of those resources for profit is the best way to manage it all for the economy and human civilization, but that is simply not true.

"The funny thing about it is they actually lead everyone to believe that they are much more conservative than socialists but that too is a big lie. They are motivated by profit and they are opposed to a limit on personal and private wealth, while they continue to exploit the resources for profit and their millions continue to grow.

"Apparently, the problem stems from the fact that there are much too many multi-millionaires in competition at this time and none of them trusts the other to go along with the reforms. Even if a few multi-millionaires agreed to the reforms, actually getting 10,000 multi-millionaires to agree is next to impossible."

Sandy Field: "10,000? Are you telling us that there are actually 10,000 multi-millionaires in the world today? Are there really that many?"

Vondrake: "Yes. Of the 2 billion humans on the planet Earth today, 10,000 of them are actually multi-millionaires. That is actually only a fraction of the population, no more than .01 percent."

Sandy Field: "Okay, I see where you're going. In other words, as long as we let this small percentage of multi-millionaire Capitalists continue to dictate a profit-motivated system which continues to make millions in profits for them every year while exploiting the resources of the planet, for those selfish profits, according to their greedy, selfish habits, then those resources will be depleted before the end of the 21st century. Is that what you are telling us?"

Vondrake: "Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. If we continue to go along with the greedy Capitalists and continue to deplete the resources for profit-motives, we won't have enough resources to get us through the 21st century. Waging wars based upon lies just to continue to sustain that system only serves to speed the depletion."

Sandy Field: "I see, and the numbers support this conclusion."

Vondrake: "Yes, the math and the numbers don't lie. I'm sorry to say it, but if we don't find a way to put a limit on the out-of-control, careless exploitation of resources for profit by the capitalist system and its multi-millionaire class, humanity and life as we know it, along with the environment, will not be able to survive the 21st century."

Sandy Field: "Where can we get all the details and the math on this, for anyone who cares to check on it?"

Vondrake: "We have already published the details and the math and it can all be found at several different alternative news websites online. We have also published those same details in the Democratic Socialist Union News and it is due to be published in the Green Party News later this week."

Sandy Field: "Thank you, for that very important news. Lets hope that this report is not downplayed by the Corporate Media."

End of Line

\---------------------------------------------------------

The democratic socialists held a meeting with Vondrake and Quoren and somebody mentioned the situation with the indigenous people in Central and South America, due to a Navy Blockade on Venezuela.

"The problem with the Thraxian virus has closed the borders and their food supplies have run out," Melena Vasquez said. "Their children are starving. Something has to be done."

"If the Navy hadn't put that blockade on Venezuela and stolen a huge shipment of Soy," Vondrake said, "this wouldn't be happening. The situation in Bolivia is just as bad ever since the Christian Zionists seized control through that military coup."

There was a moment of silence as they all thought about it, and Quoren spoke.

"The virus shouldn't stop food supplies," he said. "If it's just the borders that are closed, why not make an air drop?"

They thought about that and Vondrake said, "Sounds like a good idea, but the military controls the air-space also. They may have orders to shoot down anything in violation of their strict rules."

"There must be somebody in the Air Force willing to do the right thing," Vasquez said. "There's really no way an air drop could put anyone at risk with the virus, is there?"

"No, there shouldn't be," Vondrake said.

Vanders spoke up suddenly and everyone listened closely.

"We've got some people in the military interested, now that the IG has gone to work with them. I'll make a few calls," he said. "We'll see what we can do."

He turned to his secretary and she pulled out her cell phone, and they started making some calls.

Vondrake turned to Quoren and spoke quietly to him, "Good idea. I think that this is just what we need right now. If Vanders can convince the Air Force to make the food drop, it'll make the Neocons and the Christian Zionists look lame. If Vanders can get on the horse while they're cowering and do something, it should give us the ratings boost we need right now."

\----------------------------------------

Chapter 7.85: Another Parallel

Stone awoke from a nightmare in which he was fighting demons in the dark with an axe, as the sun was beginning to rise, and he was suddenly joined by two blue lights which appeared to be humanoid, fast and defensive, and they began fighting the demons off with him.

He awoke in a sweat and found himself on his feet in the middle of the room. The daylight was still coming in through the window.

He blinked, and rubbed his eyes, as he looked towards the windows, then away, and the door opened.

"Are you alright?" Twani said, surprised to see him there like that, with a look of shock on his face.

"What happened?" he said.

"I heard you shouting," she said.

He shook his head, thought about getting a drink of water, and slowly went to the cabinet.

"I had another nightmare," he said, and took a drink of water from a bottle.

"But this one was different," he said, and thought about it.

He walked across the room to the windows as she entered and joined him.

"How so?" she said.

"I've never been rescued by anyone from the demons in the dark before," he said, with wonder.

She said, "Demons in the dark. That does sound like a nightmare. Who rescued you?"

He turned about and looked at her, and said, "A couple of fast blue humanoids. They went too quickly for me to capture any detail."

He looked out the window again, and said, "Something about this place. Something familiar, as if I've been here, a long time ago."

He turned about, looked at the room, and said, "Not this room, exactly, but this conservatory, or something very closely parallel to it. You seem familiar too, somehow, as if I knew you years ago."

He looked at her as he admitted this, and added, "But it's vague without detail. A form of general memory-loss, I think, similar to what I experienced after an accident in 1982."

"20 years ago I was still crawling on the rug," she said, and laughed. "You remember me from then, Mr. Stone, or is it Major?"

"20 years ago," he reflected, "I must admit, I'm still baffled about all this. All I can figure is that electromagnetic storm did something to me, and my vehicle, apparently, which sent us both 20 years into the future. How such a thing is possible is beyond me."

"Hold on," she suddenly stopped him and said. "What's this about an accident in 1982? That was 62 years ago. According to your ID, you're 45. How could you be in an accident in 1982, 62 years ago, and only be 45 now?"

She looked at him suspiciously and said, "Really, Mr. Stone, you're going to have to be better at this."

"So, you think I'm pretending again, is that it?" he said. "Well give me a chance to explain so you'll understand. Mine is a very complex case. But I warn you, it might just be easier to read the book."

"Read the book?" she said.

"So, now I have to read another book?" she said, turning to the doorway, ready to check out. "I'm already in the middle of the season, I don't have time..."

"I'm kidding," he said.

"Yes, I guess I am too," she admitted, and turned back to him.

"But seriously," he said. "This thing is complex. It might take time to explain it all."

He looked at the crazy time-piece again, and it still made no sense.

"It's going on 3:30," she said.

"Alright, it's like this," he said. "I was sent on a fool's errand in 1975, by mistake..."

"1975?" she said, with surprise. "How old are you, grandpa?"

"I'll let you know, just bear with me," he said. "That mistake in 1975 was caused by my step-brother's lies. He misinformed mother about the girl I was seeing and had me sent away to get me away from the girl."

"She did that?" she said, with shock.

"Okay, so I was sent away and I lost the girl I was seeing," he explained.

"Oh, that's too bad," she said.

"Anyhow, it hurt for a while but i had to get going, they wouldn't let me do nothing, you know, no matter how depressed I was about it, so, eventually i got around to doing something. I had to get a job and take another shot at it. I did the best I could, but I failed to get anywhere with any girls and my weekends were pointless and boring.

"I worked on the job but something was really bugging me," he went on, getting to the point. "I knew my step-brother had done something, I just couldn't figure out exactly what it was and I couldn't prove anything which he would not simply deny, just as he always denied everything evil he ever did to me.

"I knew that without substantial proof that my step-brother had something to do with that fool's errand, he would simply deny it and the step-father would take his side, as the old man always did, and he would get away with it anyhow.

"I needed absolute proof linking my step-brother to the evil act, but there was nothing. Unfortunately, i had nothing to go on at the time. I couldn't even locate Lisa. She had become quite scarce by then."

"Lisa?" she said.

"That was the name of the girl I was seeing," he said, and took a deep breath as he recalled her, and said, "I lost her before we could...get close..."

"That's too bad," she said.

"It was all wrong," Stone decided, and looked to the windows again. "He fed misinformation to mother and she acted on it. She was misinformed about Lisa and decided she was bad for me. She admitted it later, after a motorcycle accident in late 1982.

"She told me about the very mistake she had made in 1975, 7 years later, as I sat in my small one-room apartment on codeine with a leg in a cast. I was suffering from General memory-loss and constant pain from a busted ankle and damaged calf."

"Why did he do that?" she said.

"He was jealous and had no girlfriend at the time," Stone said, "and the spoiled-brat thought I was taking one of his girls. He was like that, you know. He acted like he had some kind of ownership over reality just because he was born 2 years before me and hated me, because he thought I was trying to take it all from him. He was very territorial."

"Sounds like a big jerk," she said.

"He was, but only I knew just how bad he really was, because I was his primary victim," he said.

She thought about that and everything he had said, then got back to the point.

"You did say this was a complex case," she admitted, "but how did all that lead to this?"

"Like I said, it's a long story,' he reminded her.

"How did you get into the ASC?"

He thought about that and recalled the year 1982, and his memory began to play tricks on him again.

"Uh oh," he said. "I forgot. Something happened after the accident. I think I should..."

He stepped to the chair, then went to the window, and turned about.

"Something happened around 1980," he said. "It's some kind of black-hole effect. I've put up my guard, it's okay now."

"I don't understand," she said.

"I almost did a deep-memory probe, without thinking," he said. "It's better if I'm seated while doing a deep-memory probe, but I think I should stay away from it today."

He paused, took a breath, and said, "Sorry about that. What was it you wanted to know?"

"Was that the year?" she said, "You went into the ASC? 1982?"

"Yes, it was the very first year," he admitted. "The motorcycle accident occurred later that year, after I was mentally discharged."

"Mentally discharged?" she said. "But how could you... you got re-enlisted?"

"Yes, but the truth is, I never really left the service," he admitted. "I just got assigned to another company, in the special intelligence branch. I worked for the computer-codes department."

He suddenly joined her in the other chair as she was sitting there listening.

"Wow, that just occurred to me," he realized. He looked at her and said, "I just recalled the department I was working with."

"What does computer-codes have to do with piloting a space-probe?" she said, wonderingly.

"That came years later," he said, and tried to bridge the gap in his memory.

"I'm getting something now," he said, and closed his eyes, and sat back in the chair.

He recalled what happened in the hospital after the accident, and reflected upon it for a minute.

He suddenly stepped up, went to his bag, fished inside, and pulled out a book. He opened it and read for a minute, then stepped over to the chair and sat down.

"It's all here, of course," he said, "I should have checked this thing earlier."

He read it and Twani said, "maybe I should let you read and recollect your memories?"

He looked up and said, "No, wait. It's coming back now, I just needed to jog my memory. I forgot about the pneumonic memory devices, it took some time to get around to it. But it's coming back now. This is even more complex than I imagined."

"It is?" she said. "I still don't understand it."

"According to this journal," he said, "I was transferred across the Multiverse, after the accident in 1982, to a shadow Earth known as Aton 5."

"Really?" she said, with intrigue.

"How did you get back?" she said. "Through a vortex in the storm?"

"I don't know," he said, and rechecked it. "According to this, I was still in Aton 5 when I was piloting the space probe. But this.... this isn't Aton 5, I'm sure of it."

"Aton 5?" she said. "I have never heard of Earth referred to that way."

"You're right, I don't think this is Aton 5," he said. "You could be right!"

He stepped up from the chair and went to the window, turned about and looked at her with a big smile.

"It's not Aton 5! It's not!" he said. "That's where the deja vu came from. Of course. I was lost on the shadow Earth of Aton 5 for 20 years and now -- I'm home!"

She stepped up and said, "That's why you were gone for 20 years?"

"Yes, I was accidentally transferred to Aton 5, after the accident in 82," he said. "It's all in the journal, and I'm getting my memory back now."

"Okay, you said after the accident in 82," she said. "But that was 62 years ago, not 20. 20 years ago was 2024. How did you get from 1982 to 2024?"

"I was in Aton 5 from 1982 until 2024," he said.

"62 years?" she said. "How come you only look 45?"

"Loss of time, I think," he said, and went back to the chair, to sit and opened the journal again.

"This is a complex case," she said, and checked the time.

"Verasai will be checking on you soon," she said. "I'll see you later, Major Stone."

She left him and he read the journal.

\----------------------------------------

Chapter 8: The Next Parallel

Tenrut shared the script with Sirocko, who passed it on to an agent who worked for the studio, and the two met again at the pool-side near the lounge.

"There's one more catch," Tenrut said, "to the deal. I want Visa Amberly to play the female part of Twani."

"Visa Amberly?" he said, "Isn't she a bit old for that role?"

He thought about it, and suddenly realized he might be right, and felt lost in the nebula again. How could he miss something like that? Even as he thought it he knew, because every time he remembered her he saw her in his memory from 40 years ago, before he was transferred, after the accident.

"I... I forgot how long it's been," he admitted.

"There are plenty of younger girls who would love to play the part of Twani," he said. "We'll find one I'm sure you will like."

He thought about it again and said, upon second thought, "What about the female Doctor? Visa Amberly would be perfect for the role."

"Why are you so set on Visa?" Sirocko said.

"Don't you recall? She was the girl I lost," he reminded him, "after the fool's errand of 1975."

"Oh, of course," Sirocko said, "I must have forgotten."

"Well, what about it?" Tenrut said. "Can you get her for the role?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"It's a condition of the contract," Tenrut said. "She has to be in or the script is out."

Sirocko was taken aback by the condition, and said, "Visa isn't easy to reach, she's not an amateur anymore. What if I can't get her?"

Tenrut thought about it and said, "Can you get me into the studio?"

"If we sell the script, I can," he said.

"With or without Visa?" he said.

"Yes," he said.

"Then here's the deal," he spelled it out. "If you can't get Visa, I want a part of the original monetary settlement, to make up for it, like... half of the original sum."

Sirocko considered this and nodded, "So, I can save the company some money if I get Visa, is that it?"

"That's it," he said. "If you can get Visa for the part of the Doctor, you can keep the money."

"I'll certainly do the best I can," Sirocko agreed, and left him.

\---------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, back on Aton 5.785, Quoren and Sarena felt a great relief as they heard the good news that the air-drop shipment of food and medicine had been delivered, "Care of the Democratic Socialists and the IG's Team". The food was picked up on the hillside by a band of local peace-keepers and they set up a tent and a delivery detail.

A truck met them on the road at the side of the hills and carried half of it to the conservatory where most of the children were located. The rest was carried to some houses and the local town, where anyone who needed help could get it.

"Score one for the Democratic Socialists," Sarena said.

"Finally, I can relax," Quoren said. "That was a close one. We almost lost the whole villa."

"I'm gonna make some tea," she said. "I think we deserve it."

"I agree,' he said, and stepped up to the bar-counter. He reached around the counter, opened the small refrigerator inside it, and pulled out a bottle of water.

He drank the water down, realizing suddenly how thirsty he had become. Something about water always managed to keep him going when the going got tough.

\---------------------------------------------------------

MVC Agent Stenbolt sat in his home-office and read the latest report on Aton 5.785. There was some good news and some bad news, as usual, but a little more good news than last week.

A confirmation from the home-parallel, Svenate 5, aka Earth, on the delivery of the message and an official recognition with the checks and balances department. That was a general response, without details, but it was something and the home-parallel office was unlikely to ignore it. He had already confirmed the potential dangers of microwave weapons to them, and checked on it with the regulations. Microwave weapons were not simply illegal, they were a danger to the fabric of the Multiverse.

Stenbolt recalled what he had learned about Microwave weapons some time ago. Just about everyone knew they could fry the human brain, but what most didn't know was far more sinister and classified extremely top-secret. There were stories about really bad reactions caused by Microwave weapons, one which caused a man to go completely insane and blow his brains out with the first weapon he could get his hands on, all the time yelling and cursing about forces of evil working to destroy him and everything in the universe.

The psychologists analyzed the bad reactions, put a stop to the tests, and buried the research. About 3 years ago, just after the PACA Peace Project was completely destroyed by unknown forces, the research suddenly appeared at the Justice department, as evidence pertaining to the mystery behind the destruction of the project. The civilian court watched the videos of the tests on that day, and everyone was horrified. No one had known the military were conducting such tests. But one man, Zek Stone, had risked his life to deliver it.

"This evidence of a conspiracy is submitted," Stone had said to the court, "in honorable duty for the 3 martyrs that died for the right path away from the madness of war."

The message was clear that something had gone wrong and everyone knew it on that day. But now Aton 5.785 was recovering from that dismal day in March, and despite the hard-times, everyone was fighting the good fight to do what was right.

The IG and his team of 1000 were making the checks required by the Inspector General's post, and it was a long and important job that could not be rushed. In the mean-time, they were getting around and talking to people, getting to know them, and seeing that everything was going alright, despite the prolonged "tea-break" and this novelty known as peace that had been so unknown to them all for so long.

"Peace, what's that?" a funny cartoon Stenbolt had seen earlier that day came back to him. It depicted a group of dogs, cats, and other animals, all with black eyes, broken arms in slings, and walking on crutches and in wheel-chairs.

He chuckled shortly, with the light humor, and read the report about the Air-Drop food and medicine delivery to the Columbian natives who were starving, and said, with relief, "I was wondering when they were going to figure that one out."

In the same category, following the same story, the New Anglian Net News reported, "Vanders says, "Why Not Make an Air-Drop?" He read the article and learned that it was Vanders who suggested the Air-Drop of food and medicine, and with the help of the IG's Team, they were able to enlist the 745th Wing, over the weekend, to make the delivery. At the end of the article, the question was asked, "Where was the U.N. at the time?"

Vanders said, "According to my intelligence, everyone at the U.N. was either too busy with other matters or cut off from services by the pandemic."

Stenbolt stopped reading and spun about in his seat, to look out the window, to the parkway at the side of the small lake. He thought about what the Democratic socialists were doing and liked the thought of actually containing and sustaining a Par Median between the extremes. It was something the Neo-Spartans needed, whether they realized it or not. The reforms they proposed could make such a Par Median possible.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

Aton 5 Weekend News Update:

"A Group of scientists working with a think-tank have reached a fairly interesting conclusion, after years of study of the Aton 5 parallel," the reporter said.

"We have been able to determine," said one of the scientists, "through basic logical reasoning, that the Aton 5 parallel is not a real parallel, and that it is, in fact, a fictional reality, created by some of the biggest lies humanity has ever been told.

"Logic dictates," the man said, "that if the Neocons lied us into a state of perpetual war, then the reality that came out of that perpetual war is false, because it is based upon lies, and lies do not make any real logical sense, so it represents something more like a "fictional reality" and is therefore not real."

"So Aton 5 is an unreal fictional reality," he concluded, and shrugged. "Oh well, what can you do?"

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

Doctor Verasai didn't know exactly who to refer Mr. Doe's case to, so she decided to check up on his story her self, and did a general search for information about him. She got a page with about a dozen results, including the story about the night he was lost in the storm. She checked on his profile page at the ASC web-site, and found 2 pictures of the man. One was the standard ASC ID.

It was very similar to the ID Mr. Doe had been carrying. She looked closely, studied the details. It looked like the same man. She sat back and wondered how it was possible.

This was a little out of her range in the field of strange and mysterious.

She read an article about him, learned about his assignment as a Tech Major with the Aerospace Tech division, and why he was qualified for the space-probe which was made in 2024. According to the details, he was the nearest thing to an expert they had on the effects of electromagnetic storms on atmospheric climatology and cosmic radiation. He was also connected to the R-Wing Division as a qualified pilot for the Ang-850 which was used for the probe. The Ang-850 was specially equipped for scientific space-probes, and had already proved itself during 2 Lunar probes and 1 Mars-probe in 2022."

"The Ang-850 can be piloted by remote, for dangerous deep-space missions," the article concluded, "but the space-probe in 2024 required a human pilot to account for close, careful navigation. Stone accepted the assignment as it fell into his hands, and was lost, along with the Ang-850, in the storm, and vanished, along with the vehicle, without any trace."

"This thing is complex," she said. She checked the time, realized it was time to visit their mysterious visitor, and prepared to leave her office post.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Doctor Verasai spoke with Stone later that day.

"I got too close to the hole," he said, "while doing a deep-space memory probe."

"So that's why you were shouting, when Twani heard you from the corridor?" Verasai said. "Because you got too close to the hole during a memory probe?"

"Yes," he said, and explained. "There's a black-hole effect around about 1980. Sometimes, if I get too close, the effects can get quite dangerous."

"I see," she said, with interest. "Exactly what was it that made you shout?"

"The demons, they were all around me," he said. "I was driving them away with an axe. It was another episode of PTSD, I think, because it happened during a dream. But it's the same thing. Going too close to the black-hole can cause some bad nightmares. That's why I prefer to avoid 1980 if I can during memory probes."

"You're saying you did a deep memory-probe during a dream?" she said.

"Yes, I think it worked a little too well this time," he admitted. "I mean, I probably shouldn't have done it here, because this isn't under my secure personal guard, but it came almost naturally. I think that I put it into practice so much, it's become second nature or something. In any case, this time I think I did it out of desperation. The mistake I made is, I forgot to consult the book first."

He raised the book with all of his journal notes in it, and said, "I found this thing in my backpack after the nightmare, when I was talking with Twani."

"You know, a very interesting thing happened this time," he said to her. "Two bright, fast blue entities or spirits came to my rescue, and fought them off with me. Shortly after that, I awoke in the middle of the room, on my feet, in a sweat, and Twani opened the door, and I snapped out of it."

Doctor Verasai nodded with interest.

"This time," she reflected, and decided to take a seat by his side. "You mean to say you've had these episodes before?"

"Yes," he admitted, "it's related to the PTSD."

"Of course, the PTSD," she said, "don't you have any medicine to treat it?"

He went into his bag, fished through it, and said, "No, I don't think I was carrying any on this mission. I didn't figure I would need it, I guess."

He sat back in the chair and said, "I probably thought I'd be too busy working to worry about it."

"What kind of medicine do you use?" she said. "We should be able to get some, if we don't already have it."

"Cannabis oil, possibly a vape, if you've got it, will do nicely," he said.

"Vapes, with cannabis oil," she said. "I'll check and see what we can do after I leave here."

She checked the time, and said, "So you're okay now?"

"Yes, I'm fine," he said.

"I've checked out your story," she said, "but I don't know quite what to make of it. It's a little out of range in the field of strange and mysterious."

He thought about that and looked at her, and she waited for his response with wonder.

"Well, I certainly appreciate the hospitality," he admitted, "but I'm not quite sure what to do at this time. I mean to say, Doctor, it's also out of my range as well, and until I make a full recovery of my memory, I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I'm lost, which isn't really so much the issue, since I've been lost before. But how I could lose 20 years like this is still quite beyond my understanding."

"Well, I've decided you can stay here, for now," she said. "This is as good a place as any for a memory-recovery stay, at least until you recover something we can use to place you. Have you recalled anything more about where you were before the accident?"

He thought about it, but ran into the storm and it pushed him away.

"Just flashes of a casual setting and a few friendly faces," he admitted. "But I've learned more from this book, which is a journal I was keeping. This is a very complex case. It talks about a shadow Earth known as Aton 5. According to the journal and the memory I've recalled, I was lost on the shadow Earth Aton 5 from late 1982 to 2044, at least, that is what I was able to configure."

"Now I'm lost," she said, and thought it over. "1982 was 62 years ago. Stone, if that's who you really are, you don't look a day over 45."

"I realize that now," he admitted, "but I haven't been able to explain it yet. I think it may be connected with loss of time."

"Sounds more like loss of memory," she said. "You may be trying too hard to fill in the blanks."

"But it's all in this book," he said.

She looked at the book in his hands and said, "Could I take a look at it?"

He thought about it shortly, said, "Okay, but don't worry over the codes. Most of it is in plain English," and handed it to her.

She took the book and looked through it. It was all dated, and she found the dates ended in 2024.

She read the last entry with interest, dated a day before the probe.

"It looks like I may have another job," it read. "The ASC needs an Ang-850 and I'm at the top of the list. I'll have to get my message into the bottle before I head out, this could be the big one."

It was dated, 2024-08-18. She looked closely at the ink and the paper and wondered about it. It looked all genuine.

She handed the book back to him and said, "Very interesting, Mr. Stone."

"So, you believe me now?" he said.

"Well, let's just say I'm interested enough to stop calling you Mr. Doe," she admitted.

"In any case, I do find your case interesting enough to work it into my schedule," she said. "In spite of the work-load I already have taken on, I think I can handle yours."

"I'm sorry to be extra work for you," he said, "I'll try to make a quick recovery."

"It's not too much trouble," she admitted, "You see, I am a physical doctor, but I've always been interested in the way the brain works, and yours is a real mystery to me."

"So you like mysteries too?" he said.

"If they involve anything connected to the human brain, I do," she admitted. "Actually, you're somewhat lucky you found me, because I also know a lot about memory-loss and recovery. I'd like to suggest that you spend some time regaining your physical bearings and just give it some time. If you've already begun to remember some things, that's a sure sign that you should eventually recall everything. Unless you damaged your head? Did you hit your head during the storm or the accident?"

He thought about it but couldn't recall it. He felt his head, and it was a little tender on the left side. He pressed it in a little but it was okay. There was no pain. But as he thought about it, he realized that he expected pain when he pressed into it. Why did he think that?

"Did you check my head when I was out?" he said.

"Well, yes, but I found no marks, scars, or bumps of any kind," she admitted. "It didn't look like you hit your head, so I didn't do a close analysis. If you want I could set up a close analysis, to check for anything that I may have missed. I had planned to do so, but you appeared to be alright."

"A close analysis," he said, "would that include an electromagnetic scan?"

"We could do an electro-biograph of the brain and the skull, if you want," she said. "But it has to be your decision, and you would have to sign for it."

"I'll think about it," he said, "and let you know."

"Personally, I think all you need is some time," she said, and stood up. "And some rest, of course. Maybe tomorrow we can do some simple word-image association tests, and take it from there."

"I'll think about it," he said. "It might be just what I need."

"Twani will see to you later," she said. "I don't think you should attend the evening dinner at the lounge, it would probably be a little too much for you right now. Twani can take care of you. Dinner is between 6 and 7, she should be here around then."

"Okay, sounds great," he said, and stood up to see her to the door.

"Thanks very much, doc," he said to her, as she left him.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Nine: A Night at the Conservatory

Meanwhile, in Aton 5...

MVC Agent Stenbolt read the Aton 5.785 World Forum News Report.

"IG Says "Not Without a Secure Back-Up" to Gen-Tech"

"The Inspector General's office reported Monday that it could not support the Gen-Tech telecom upgrades "without a secure back-up" system, and the project has been put on hold until such a system has been installed.

"The Gen-Techs didn't even have a secure land-line into the company office," he said.

"How long will it be until the back-up is in?" the reporter asked.

"Who knows? They never even drew up plans for a back-up," he said, "acted as if we didn't need a back-up system. I have never worked for a governmental office that didn't have some kind of secure back-up system."

\---------------------------------------------------------

"Nice work," Stenbolt said, "score another point for the good guys."

He shared the message with MVC Central and made sure it was delivered to the home-parallel, aka Earth. They were alerted to the problems associated with the new Gen-Tech and would want to know how it was going.

He wrote:

"Looks like the IG managed to slow down the gears of fascist capitalism in the telecommunications of Aton 5. They may think they have a monopoly on it, but they can't force-feed us anything they want."

\-----------------------------------------------------------

Aton 5 News Report:

Sandy Field Interviews Keith Simon, a member of the CCZ, the Civilian Christian Zionists.

SF: "We're here today with Keith Simon, a member of the CCZ, the Civilian Christian Zionists, to discuss the conflict of interest and misunderstanding which has developed between the Xtian Zionists in the government and the military and Xtian Zionist members of the civilian population not connected to the government or military. The confusion seems to be lost in the area of political fronts. Could you enlighten us on this issue, before we get to the meat of the matter?"

KS: "A political front is simply a party of people who all sell a specific design upon the government and economy which they claim works best, while going heavy with the cosmetics which are designed to lead people to believe that they are being sincere and can be trusted. All political fronts lead people to believe they can be trusted, while selling a specific form of government and economics at the same time.

KS: "But a front group is usually working for a higher power, a power which has access to large amounts of wealth and resources. The idea that they are false fronts becomes apparent when analyzing them closely and seeing a certain amount of hypocrisy, in incidents and examples where their actions defy their words and often expose their leaders as liars.

KS: "History has led us to the conclusion that anyone could be hiding behind a political front."

SF: "So, what's really going on then? Who's hiding behind who?"

KS: "The Neofascist Capitalists are hiding behind the Neocons and Xtian Zionists."

SF: "Is that politically possible, for Neofascists to represent Christ?"

KS: "No, fundamentally it actually is not because there are just too many contradictions. But somehow, some big expert liars with big money managed to twist the truth and fool a lot of hungry, desperate people into believing it is possible."

SF: "Why isn't it politically possible?"

KS: "Because Christ is fundamentally a man of peace, similar to a Kung Fu priest and devoted to the defense of human rights against oppression, but his method was never overtly violent; he practiced a method of peace and simple self defense. He was so good at it, in fact, that the Jews and the Romans both feared his powers, mainly because the slaves learned from him and demanded more human and civil rights."

KS: "The Xtian Zionists who have hijacked that logos in WDC, connected to the Neocons and the Jewish Zionists through a military alliance, do not practice the ways of Christ, they don't even get close to it except in regular photo-ops destined to sell their lies to the dumbed-down and desperate humans hungry for a chance to pay for a life. Of course, most of them who do join up don't realize they're being programmed to be perfect robots until they're dying on the battlefield somewhere, and dragging their heart along while it's bleeding in their hands."

SF: "How many Xtian Zionists have died in the Neocon's Imperial wars over resources?"

KS: "I don't have an exact number, but the last count was around 8,000. But that's just in the Middle East. We don't have any numbers on the losses in South or Central America yet."

SF: "What about the Xtian civilians who are not connected to the government or military?"

KS: "They appear to be the exception, as long as they don't join the military. But we're still concerned about the flexible job-market and the ongoing influence that greed and fascist-capitalism have on the poor and desperate."

SF: "That sounds like something I heard before."

KS: "It's something that has been echoing for too long under the economics of fascist capitalism."

SF: "Any advice for Xtian civilians who might be desperate enough to join the military?"

KS: "Yes. I would have to say they should reevaluate their basic understanding of Christ before getting themselves into something that could get them sent on a fool's errand for nothing but a cross to carry or get them killed. Christ was a peace-worker and a peace-maker, not a man of war."

SF: "Thank you. This concludes an interview with Kepha Simeon, a member of the CCZ, the Civilian Christian Zionists."

end of line

\--------------------------------------------------------

Twani came to his room just before 7 pm with a tray of food, set it down on the table, took the top off it and said to him, "I hope you like eggplant. If not, I can find something else in the kitchen."

He stepped over to the table and said, "I'll be happy to share it with you, if you haven't already eaten."

She smiled and said, "I haven't, and I'd like that."

He pulled the other chair over to the table for her, and went to the cabinet for a bottle of water.

"You can have the kool-aid," he said. "I'll have the water."

He found a plate in the cabinet, carried it to the table, set it down, and joined her.

They split the eggplant with a butter-knife, he put half of it on the extra plate, along with half of the vegetables and half of the rice. Then he gave her the other plate and they ate.

"I hope its enough for you," he said.

"Oh, its plenty," she admitted. "Are you sure its enough for you?"

"Yes, it's plenty," he agreed. "It's been a long time since I've shared a meal with such a pretty girl. One of the simple pleasures I have missed."

She thought about that and carefully ate, and washed the food down with the iced tea.

"How long has it been?" she said, looking at him.

He took a drink and thought about it.

"I'm not sure, exactly," he admitted, looking into her eyes. "A long time, much too long."

They ate for a minute, then she said, "20 years?"

He thought about it and said, "When I was in Aton 5, I had associates and friends, but no close companions," he admitted. "In fact, that's something I seem to recall very clearly now. It was one of the reasons why I referred to it as a "loveless purgatory". It was, unfortunately, a lot of very Neo-Spartan work without love."

"No love?" she said. "It sounds dystopian.'

"Yes, it was," he agreed. "That's the best word to describe it, you nailed it. Aton 5 was dystopian."

"You said before that you were no longer in Aton 5," she said. "Why did it surprise you? I mean, it sounded like you escaped some kind of prison or something. Is that what Aton 5 was, a prison?"

He thought about that and stared off into a nebula of empty space, lost in the thought, and suddenly, in his mind, he saw the electromagnetic storm raging closer to him, and he was suddenly pushed away from it.

"Yes, it was the biggest prison I've ever experienced," he said. "Prison and purgatory are very much alike. It's the sentence that makes the difference. I was lucky enough to get a chance to work my way out of it."

"So, you worked your way out of Aton 5?" she guessed.

"Yes, it looks like I did," he said, and continued eating.

A minute later, she said, "Why did it take you so long to realize you were out of Aton 5?"

He thought about it, stopped eating, and said, "Because Aton 5 is almost identical to Earth. It's a close parallel, but things are very different. When I crashed and walked to this place, I had no idea where I was. For all I knew, it might have been Aton 5, just unknown to me at the time. Aton 5 is a shadow Earth, Twani. it's a dystopia, like you said, and it's very different at this time.

"For example, when I walked onto the grounds near this conservatory, I almost expected to see a fence, because most places like this within Aton 5 have some kind of security fences around them now. Public access to places like this without a secure pass is almost completely nonexistent in the 21st century."

"Really?" she said.

"I have to admit, the more I think about it," he admitted, "this conservatory seems to be much closer to the home parallel than Aton 5, much more like the Earth I lost in late 1982."

They finished eating and he said, "But if this really is Earth... and it's 62 years after I left, and I am no older than 45... what am I supposed to do?"

"Contact the ASC?" she said.

"Maybe, only, if this isn't the same parallel, if it's not Aton 5," he guessed, "then I may not be the same guy in this parallel."

She thought about that as he said, "I'm gonna need to do some research to find out who I am in this parallel."

"You're Zek Stone," she said. "I saw your ASC profile. The picture is a match. You've almost got Verasai convinced, but its still a mystery. You know, Zek. You better not be playing a role. If she finds out, she'll charge you for every minute you stay here."

"But you said Zek Stone was lost, right?" he said.

"Yes, he was lost," she said. "But if she finds out you're playing us, she won't like it."

"I was apparently lost also," he admitted, "but if everything I've deduced turns out to be correct, the question still remains about my identity. If this isn't Aton 5, then I'm not sure I'm the same Zek Stone you knew here on Earth. I can believe in the possibility of a close parallel, with a parallel electromagnetic storm. But if I'm not your Zek Stone, and he was lost the same way I was, around the same time, and I'm here, then where did he go?"

"I'm afraid I lost you with that one," she admitted, and went to lounge in one of the comfortable chairs at the end of the bed. "Multiverse theory is even harder to understand than a time-travel paradox."

"Yes, you're right, it is," he admitted, and joined her in the other comfortable chair. He pulled out the book and started going through it again, then tossed it on the bed, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

"You said, Zek," she said, "that there was no love on Aton 5?"

"Not for me," he said.

"For how long?" she said.

"I don't know exactly,' he said. "Too long. It looks like about 62 years, I guess. But it seems like an eternity."

"Well, you'll be happy to know that it's Thursday and tomorrow is a holiday. We've got a three-day weekend, and plenty of time for you."

"Really, that's nice," he said, and looked at her. "My timing was pretty good, after all."

She smiled and stretched a little in his direction.

"I don't have any classes tomorrow," she said, and smiled widely to him. "And I haven't yet made any plans."

He thought about that and said, "How about a picnic?"

She stepped over to him and climbed on him and said, "What I've got in mind now isn't a picnic."

He looked into her eyes and smiled and she smiled back, and he said, "I knew it. This can't be Aton 5."

"Why not?" she said.

"Because I have never felt anything remotely like this within the Aton 5 parallel," he said.

"What are you feeling?"

"Relief," he said, and she slowly pushed him down on the bed and sat on top of him.

"What are you going to do?" he said, as she stared into his eyes.

"You need a massage," she said. "I'm fully qualified. It's one of the first things I learned as a nurse."

Twani carefully gave him a massage on the bed for about half an hour and left him as he was bathing in a euphoria of relief such as he hadn't felt in many years. When it was over, she slipped out and left him alone to sleep for the rest of the night, while she went to her room.

When she left him he seemed as far away from the demons in the night as could be expected.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Tenrut awoke on the couch in the corner of his office from the vivid dream. He lay there in a semi-euphoric state, thinking about Twani, the girl in the dream. He had been wondering where it went after the bench scene, and had fallen asleep and awoke in another parallel, inside the structure he had seen in the scene before.

"Wow!" he thought, without opening his mouth more than a thin bit. The dream had been so real, it seemed like a very close parallel. He recalled the theory about the Multivertical Conjunction, and wondered if his indisol had somehow managed to crossover through it again.

"This script is playing out as I write it in my imagination," he said. "It's the perfect solution."

He sat up, turned the notebook on, and recorded everything from the vivid dream into the script.

When it was done, his stomach grumbled, he checked the time, and he realized it was just before sunrise, or very nearly there. He forgot exactly when the sun rose where he was, recalled the time of the year, and tried to configure it in his head.

He stepped up, yawned and stretched, and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. As he did so, he looked out the window, and the sky was lighting up in the eastern horizon.

"That was so much better than the nightmares," he said to himself, taking a mental note to remind himself that the PTSD was finally subsiding and he was learning to put the bad dreams and nightmares in the past.

He made coffee and took it back to his office, sat down at the computer, and checked the script while having coffee and a doughnut.

He corrected a few typos, added a few lines here and there, and more detail where it was needed.

He looked at the script, and thought about the time he saw Lisa at the complex with the studio dudes, and their living-room on wheels. It reminded him once again of the very first time he saw her leaving like that, over 40 years ago. He checked himself there, knowing it would lead to the heart throb. He didn't want to bleed like that anymore, so he recalled the picture of her on the dvd, took it out and looked at it, to remind himself of what he had lost, and remind himself of the logical plan he had to resolve the problem that it had caused.

It was a very complex case, and the solution had eluded him for years as he recovered his lost memory, but he finally realized it was all there was left for him that he could do.

The problem was simple. Lisa had failed to receive his message in the bottle because she was too busy with her life and her work to spend any time browsing the ebooks online. That method for sending the message in the bottle was not effective. He had failed to reach her through the ebook.

Suddenly, the idea was there, and he couldn't resist it. All he needed was a good enough script to sell to the studio, and he had his chance to see Lisa, and share the message in the bottle with her, a chance to deliver it in person. It was a way into the studio to see her, to begin with, and a way to deliver the message through a medium she could appreciate.

He checked the time, and recalled that the home-parallel had a 3-day weekend, and it was a Friday. He recalled what Sandea said about joining her at the pool-side this weekend and wondered if he would find the time. The script was infinitely more important than just another weekend pool-party, and Sandea was just being friendly.

He thought about it shortly and decided he would continue to work on that Friday, and take Saturday off if his work didn't pile up on him. It wasn't a rule that anyone had to get away from their work on Fridays, it was just another option. If he had work to do, he could do it alright. He looked at the notebook, then at the dvd-cover with Lisa on it, and dreamt about the day when he might finally get that dream-vacation, if it were still possible.

He knew he probably wouldn't get a chance like he had with Lisa again, but in his mind, he had to deliver the message in the bottle to her, so that she would know what went wrong and not hate him for it. It was that simple, actually. It hurt him every time he thought about the way he lost her and how she had reacted to his going away.

He realized exactly what went wrong with the misunderstanding, and he wanted to share that information with her in late August, just before she got the job with the studio. But she was in a rush and she didn't have the time. He assumed he would see her later, but it never happened.

Something went wrong, he lost her, and then there was the accident. He was transferred to Aton 5 before he could recover his memory and before he got another chance to communicate with her.

For almost 40 years he worked in Aton 5, recovering his memory and following a strict, robotic program of all work without play. He wrote the ebook, "A Defense Report for 2018" and shared it with Earth for free, but he had no idea if she read any of it. He had to get to her, he had to deliver the message in person, it was the only way.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Ten: Demons in the Night, Tech Major In Flight

Mr. Corvelez, the managing director for the studio, met with Tenrut and smiled across the semi-circular desk where he conducted business with a flat-screen, keypad and mouse, and a couple of books, folders, and other media.

"Well, Mr. Tenrut," Corvelez said. "I like what you've done. It's a familiar classical theme updated to the 21st century, and it looks like it has possibilities. It's a good script, I think we can use it."

"Great," Tenrut said. "What about the actors? I had someone in particular in mind, if it's possible."

"For the main characters?" Corvelez said. "Who?"

"I'm interested in a girl that looks like Visa Amberly did 40 years ago," he said. "Still very young, of course, with short, brunette hair, the way she wore it back in 75. She'd be perfect for Twani."

"Yes, excellent idea," the man said, "I see where you're going. I think we can find a girl to fit that role."

"And I'd really appreciate it if we could get Visa Amberly," he added, "to play the role of Doctor Verasai."

"Uh, yes," the man said, with some hesitation, "That would not be my decision. I'll see what I can do, but I can't make any promises. It's up to her, whether she wants the part or not."

"Can I see her, to try to talk her into it?" he said. "We could at least share the script with her and see if she likes it."

"Uh, well, I'll see if she's available," Corvelez said, "and let you know. As it is, I'm inclined right now to agree to a formal contract for the script."

"Great," he said. "When can we begin?"

"It'll take at least a week to get the actors together," Corvelez said, "and another week for them to learn their parts. In the mean-time, we'll be looking for the right location for the exterior shots. We can probably find a coastal location without too much of a problem, but locating a place like the conservatory, that'll be more difficult. I'm sure we'll find something. My best guess is we'll be about ready to shoot the video in 3 or 4 weeks. That would make it late May or June."

"Yes, the setting for the story is in the spring and early summer," Tenrut said, "that should be about right."

"Excellent," Corvelez said, and stood up to go to the door. Tenrut stood up, and they shook hands, and he said, "We'll draw up a formal contract and have it for you by Wednesday."

He opened the door, and led Tenrut out.

He led Tenrut to the lobby, where they stopped and Tenrut said, "When can I see the actors?"

"On Wednesday, when we meet again," Corvelez said, "we'll go over some of the profiles and see what we can do."

"Great," he said, "then I'll see you again on Wednesday? What time?"

"1 pm," Corvelez said, smiled, and led him to the receptionist desk.

"Miss Perkins," he said to the pretty female receptionist, "Make an appointment for Mr. Tenrut, for Wednesday at 1 pm."

"See you then, Tenrut," he said, and left him with the receptionist. She handed him a small business card with the appointment information on it.

"Your're all set, Mr. Tenrut," she said.

"Thanks," he said, and left the studio, feeling great about something for perhaps the first time in an eon or two.

It looked like he had finally sold a script, and he had never felt so excited about anything in his whole so-called sorry excuse for a life.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 10.275:

After Twani left him, Stone was feeling so relieved he slept like a baby. He thought for sure everything would be fine, but something went wrong. He had another bad dream, one in which he was attacked in the middle of the night by a gang of large females with heavy armor.

He saw them in the dark, moving towards him, and heard one say, "Kill the Losers!"

He realized at once that they were under attack, but he was completely unprepared for it. He blanked out in at least one parallel, but popped up in a close parallel, and reacted with the memory. A minute later, he understood what had happened, by reviewing the recent reports, and reported to the Vela Avatar, which was directly in charge of the VENA program.

"It was a group of large female Amazonians," he said, "they were wearing dark cloaks when they attacked. I managed to side-step them but they must be stopped."

He went into action after that with his own forces, relocated the subpar, and fought them off. A whirlwind occurred and the large Amazonians began getting tossed about like big rag-dolls all over the place.

Suddenly a spinning vortex began to vibrate at the middle of the dark "shadow" field, and after seconds, it exploded and caused a great shockwave. The last of them were burnt like toast and thrown across an ancient courtyard, against a stone wall, and crumpled to the ground.

Nothing moved for a minute, as smoke began to rise from their charred bodies. One began to move again, and rose, then was quickly hacked to pieces by a lightning blade and fell to the ground and lay there, completely lifeless. As the smoke cleared away, he saw Vela, the VENA program's security avatar, standing still in the distance, then it disappeared.

He awoke as the sun was rising in the courtyard of the conservatory, and the nightmarish shadow realm vanished, along with the aftermath and remnants of the battle. He looked around the courtyard and wondered how he got there.

"There's something wrong," he said carefully to himself. "I think I've miscalculated. This can't be the home-parallel. It has to be a close sub-parallel."

\--------------------------------------------------------

"Here it is," Stone said, consulting his book once he was back in his room. How he got to the court-yard from there was a vague, shadowy nightmare of running about and fighting demons in the dark. Somehow, the fight had taken him to the court-yard; how he wasn't sure, but somehow, he had done it. During that time another level of himself was somewhere else, checking on the intelligence files.

The last thing he did before he was transported back into the shadowy nightmare was contact the VENA program and access the Vela avatar for security defenses. The Vela Avatar went into action, followed his orders, and put a stop to the gang of Amazonians.

"The nephalim," he said to Twani. "They were legendary giants, standing twice as tall as common humans. Legend has it that they were driven away from human civilization by some kind of secret weapon, but that some of the smaller ones actually managed to continue to mix with humans as friends."

"Yes," Twani said. "I've read the report. Apparently, the smaller ones were much easier to get along with and humans learned to not fear them, as they took their sides and actually fought beside them as allies."

"Yes, but these Amazonians were not allies," Stone said. "They were under orders to kill me, and they very nearly did. I managed to access the Vela security program just in time."

She thought about that and said, "Vela security program? I'm not familiar with that program."

"I'll let you in on it, but only if you promise not to share the information with anyone, unless I say its okay. Understand?"

Twani thought about what had happened with a mystery and nodded.

So he told her about the VENA program and the Vela Avatar, but didn't go into details.

"It's something that the ASC doesn't want everyone to know about," he admitted, and explained, "because of the threat of Neofascist spies and agents."

She accepted his word and vowed to keep it to herself.

"What puzzles me is how I got to the court-yard during the episode," he said, "I've never done anything quite like that before."

She stepped over to the window, found the string for the curtains, and pulled them aside. The window was open, on it's hinges, and she looked out upon the narrow stone ledge and beyond it to the courtyard about 25 meters below.

"Looks like you may have jumped," she said, "but I don't know how you did it, without breaking some bones in the process."

He stepped up to her side, looked out the window, and down to the court-yard.

"Is that where you were when you awoke this time?" she said.

"Yes, it was," he admitted, and wondered about it. "How could any human expect to survive a jump like that?"

Stone thought about it and didn't have an answer, but he knew that there might be a way.

"Perhaps at a higher frequency," he speculated, "in the hyperkonic level."

She looked at him with wonder and said, "Hyperkonic? I'm not familiar with that word."

"It's the electromagnetic level that connects to the macrocosm through high-gamma," he explained.

She thought about that, and he added, "Some human brains have the ability to connect with those frequencies, through a level known as the hypnagogic, which is just over the subconscious, in a ring about the sugar-valve where energy hyper-metabolizes."

She was fascinated by his explanation, but still didn't understand.

They stepped away from the window.

"You seem to be making a recovery," she observed, as he stepped to the cabinet, and pulled out a bottle of water.

He took a drink, put the bottle back into the cabinet, and paused to think about it.

"Yes, I guess so," he agreed, and looked at the bag where his belongings were, suddenly in a panic.

"My book!" he said, and dove to the side of the chair at the end of the bed for it. He fished into the bag and found the book and took it out. Seeing it was all secure, he sat down in the chair with relief, and said, "This is where I'm getting it. It's all in here, everything I need to know."

She was amazed now by this stranger and afraid to admit it. She became curious, stepped over to him, and knelt beside the chair.

"Could you teach me?" she said.

"Teach you what?" he said.

"How to be a Tech Major?" she said.

He thought about that and reflected upon this young girl in a way he had never reflected before.

"You want to be a Tech major?" he said, with surprise. "Woe, that's like... the last thing I ever expected from you. You really do surprise me, don't you? How long have you wanted to be a Tech Major?"

She looked down and frowned a little, and said, "Well, I like to do lots of things. I have many interests, Mr. Stone. I've been interested in science fiction and fantasy for some time, I just had to get into a more practical field, so I decided to study chemistry and became an under-study to a Physician. I specialize in botanical medicines."

"I see, that's certainly a practical field," he admitted. "So why an interest in my field, now?"

"I want to learn more, and... you owe me," she said.

He smiled as she said that and nodded slowly.

"You're absolutely right, Twani. I do owe you, but you should know what you're getting yourself into before you take the leap of faith."

"Okay," she said. "Tell me about it."

He didn't know quite what to say, thought about it for almost a minute, as he looked back at the window, which they had left open.

He stepped up to it, closed it and closed the curtain, went back to the cabinet, got the bottle of water, and returned to the chair.

"You want to know how I became interested in the field?" he said, and continued as she nodded. "It was purely defensive, a defensive reaction, against those demons I told you about."

She thought about that, and he explained.

"It was almost as if it were an instinctive reflex, on the indisolar level," he explained. "When the reflex first occurred, it got me away from some MOADS in hell."

"MOADS?" she said, with a funny twisted frown.

"Mother of all Demons," he said. "Big mothers. But lucky for me, they were also very slow. I told them a funny joke to distract them, they laughed at it, and while they were busy laughing, I extended my plex-wave antennae into a long fiber, whipped it up from the dark cavern to the next level, and landed on a passageway that led up around a spiral on the inside of the pit of hell."

She was awe-struck by the graphic definition of his experience in hell.

He stopped what he was saying, looked at the windows again, and said, "Twani, that was a purely defensive reflex, because I knew those demons were going to eat me."

She reflected upon it and understood his words.

"You are wise, I..." she looked down and said, shyly, "If it takes a defensive reaction like that, does that mean I can't be a Tech Major?"

"I don't really know for sure," he admitted. "All I am saying is that I think it was unleashed at a time when my very indisol was in danger of being destroyed.

"First, my step-brother lied to my mother," he explained, "and I got lost off the true path of my indisol, and then there was the accident, and I fell into the depths of a black-hole, and landed in the pits beside those MOADS, where I was suspended by fear of the unknown for what seemed like an eternity before I stood up and did my act.

"I think i sold out the whole palace or something and the Dark Lord himself may have been amused. I mean to say, they let me continue on my way after that, for an aeon or two, working my way slowly up the great spiral path to purgatory. That was Aton 5, the shadow Earth. A loveless purgatory."

The recounted tale left her wondering about him and who he really was, then she said, "So after that, you had the powers of a Tech major?"

"Not exactly," he admitted. "I mean to say, I had powers, yes, but it took me some time to hone them into a skilled art. It took years of practice. It's mainly defensive, even now, after all of these years. I don't think I've ever used it as an offensive device. No, but I had a problem controlling it a few times, and it got a bit carried away. I've learned better control since then."

She was suspended in thought by the colorful tall-tale of how his position as a tech-major began.

"Don't you have classes?" he said, checking the time.

"Not today, it's a holiday weekend," she said, and smiled.

He smiled with the thought, then she thought of something, and said, "Is it possible for the skill to be used in the defense of others?"

He thought about that shortly, and said, "Yes, it is. I've used my skills to defend others, when needed."

"Then what if I wanted to defend someone," she said. "Could I use the skills to defend them?"

"Uh, well, I guess so," he admitted, "but you'd have to learn how to defend yourself first."

"Then teach me," she said. "I want to learn, so I can defend... so I can defend you, Major Stone."

He thought about the idea as he looked into her eyes, saw she was serious, and looked at the book in his lap. He picked it up and said, "I suppose I could teach you the basics, and we could see where that goes."

She smiled at the thought and he opened the book and located the page with the basics to Technomantics and Techometry.

He looked at her and said, "You're sure about this? I mean, this will be like going back to school. Do you really want to do this on a holiday weekend?"

She thought about it, and said, "How long will it take?"

"To learn the basics," he said, and thought about it. "At least a day. But putting it into practice to learn it by heart takes much longer, possibly days, maybe a week. It depends on the individual and the IQ, or something that controls intelligence which makes it a variable to the indisol. The point is, everyone is different, and it's up to you. If you really want to learn it, I'd guess you could learn it in a day and learn to put it to practice in a week."

She smiled and said, "So, I could learn it today and put it to practice over the weekend and next week?"

"Yes," he said.

"Teach me," she demanded, staring seriously into his eyes.

He laughed, she smiled and said it again.

So he did his best and taught her.

At the end of the day, he thought of something and said, "One more thing, Twani, before we depart for the evening. That story I told you about going to hell against the MOADS. It was due to an injustice that I was there to begin with. It was a case review in hell.

"My judgment was based upon the fact that the Dark Lord himself knew my step-brother had lied, and willing to give me a fighting chance. But Twani, it was all hell and purgatory, for over 40 years. There wasn't nothing fun about it. Don't ever get the idea that it is. I wouldn't want to have to go looking for you there."

"I lost the love of my home-parallel, and it wasn't worth it," he explained, looking down. "It wasn't worth it, I hated every minute of it. It was a mistake that began with the fool's errand of 1975. I would never have been sent to hell to begin with if it were not for the fool's errand of 1975."

"What about now?" she said.

"It's a mellow to mysterious relief," he admitted. "But with nightmares like the one I had last night, I never know where it's gonna go. You are a nightingale, Twani, and you were programmed to help me. It's been over 40 years since I've had the pleasure of your company.

"I am very grateful, and that is why I have agreed to teach you the basics of the field, but be careful, and if you ever have any questions, see me about it before you take any wild guesses."

"Do psychometrics really counteract bad vibes?" she said, with interest.

"Absolutely," he said, "but sometimes, even psychometrics alone can't heal a wounded heart on a battlefield in hell. Keep it vulcanized and don't let it bleed. But put it into practice as a purely defensive reaction to the unknown, according to the order."

"I understand," she agreed, and stepped to the doorway. "Will you attend the picnic tomorrow?"

"I'd love to be there," he said, "I'll be sure to find the time. But I might need some help holding up my head. My recall seems to have been limited to the field of my skill, for now."

She agreed to help him and left for the night.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Tenrut completed the story and just needed a title and heading. When he got to the identity of the author, he ran into a slight problem with his pseudonym. He thought about it and realized that Lisa might not know who he was, because he was using a pseudonym.

"Uh oh," he suddenly checked himself and his work quickly and looked up, across the junk boat office space, in wonder. "How could he expect her to know him through the script if he was authoring the script with a pseudonym she knew nothing about?"

The problem involved with reaching her just became much more complex. But it did not make it impossible. He could still do the message in the bottle and see where it went.

It was then that he devised a way to reach her that could not possibly fail, not if he could make the delivery directly to her when they met at the studio, or wherever he might get a chance to meet her after he got inside.

He wrote a message addressed directly to her like a personal letter, only in e-file format.

Lisa,

It wasn't my idea to go away in the summer of 1975. I didn't want to go and it was a big mistake, but it wasn't my fault and I am sorry for the misunderstanding between us.

I found out from my mother in late 1982, after I was in an accident, that she had been fed bad misinformation which confused you with your older sister Linda, and convinced her that she had to get me away from Linda. She admitted that she made this mistake when I was in pain and on codeine with a cast on my leg, suffering from memory-loss. I knew that it had happened 7 years ago and it was too late, because I had lost you and there seemed nothing I could do about it.

But later, after I was transferred to another parallel, I couldn't completely forget it and when my memory finally returned, I was able to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together. I recalled a meeting between my step-brother and me about 1 or 2 weeks before I was sent away in June of 75.

He wanted to know your name but I didn't trust him and feared he would somehow ruin it for me before it went anywhere, so I refused to tell him your name that night. He hated me and cursed me as I went out the kitchen door.

That night was the last night we saw each other before I was sent away on the fool's errand, and with my memory now fully recovered, I have been able to deduce that step-brother was the source of the misinformation. I just wasn't able to verify anything quite so substantial until after the accident, when mother admitted the mistake she had made.

I have had no way to reach you since I was transferred to the Aton 5 parallel after the accident, but now I am hoping that this message in a bottle will reach you so you will understand what went wrong and not continue to hate me for it. If I could do anything at all in the infinite realm of possibilities across the multiverse, I would choose to return to that time in the summer of 1975 for a second chance and this time, I wouldn't let them separate us.

Ren Tenrut, 2020-04-27

\-------------------------------------------------------

Tenrut stored the message on a flash-drive and tucked it into his jacket, and looked at the time. He was due to meet Sirocko at the studio later that week, to sell his script to one of the directors. At that time, he should be able to get inside, if the script sold. From there, reaching Visa Amberly should be much easier.

He just needed a chance to meet her and pass on the message. If he could do that, he should feel some relief from the burden of guilt that had been plaguing his conscience ever since the day he made that fatal mistake.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Eleven: Another Parallel

Tenrut went to the studio on Wednesday, read the formal contract, and made sure that his conditions were met, then checked the royalties.

"10 percent of the video sales," he said, reading the details, "after the sound-track. What exactly does that mean?"

"That's just a finer point which separates the fact that the sound studio has to be paid first," he explained, "before the final numbers decide how much profit has been made by the video-production company. It simply means that the final cut is more like 5 percent than 10 percent, but there's no way around that unless we rely upon stock sound-production, and we hardly ever do that for something like this."

"So I really am only getting 5 percent," Tenrut said.

"Well, yes, after the sound-track is paid for," Corvelez admitted, "but 5 percent, Mr. Tenrut, can still be quite a substantial sum, if the video sales are high."

He thought about that and recalled his special conditions.

"Have you found a girl to play Twani?" he said.

"Yes, we're still working on that," he admitted, and pulled out a folder, and handed it to him.

"Take a look and see if any of these girls will do," he said, and smiled.

Tenrut looked through the pictures in the folder until he found a girl as close to how he recalled Lisa as he could probably get, under the circumstances, and thought about it. He imagined her playing the role, for a minute, while Corvelez waited patiently.

"Yes, this girl, Rina Lakuna," he said, holding the picture up from the folder, and handed it to him.

"She should do nicely," he said. "When can I meet her?"

"One thing at a time," Corvelez said to him, and put the picture down at the side of the desk, and went to work with the computer.

A minute later, he looked at Tenrut and said, "Yes, it looks like she is available. I'll send her the message as soon as our business is done here. Let me just take a quick note of that."

He jotted it down on a small tablet, rechecked the computer-screen, and used a paper-clip to attach a small note to the girl's picture, put it in another folder, and set it aside.

"What about Visa Amberly?" Tenrut said, once the man appeared settled. "Have you seen her yet?"

"I passed the word on to her agent," he said, "and he promised to get back to me later this week."

"I see," Tenrut said, wondering how he was going to see her if she didn't visit the studio.

"Will she be into the studio today?" he suddenly said, in spite of himself.

"Today?" the man said, with a little surprise. "I'm afraid I'm not privy to Miss Amberly's schedule, but I don't really know."

"But she does comes to the studio, doesn't she?" he said.

"Well, she does when she's working on a project," he admitted. "But at present, I'm not sure what she's doing. I haven't seen her for... at least a month now. She could be at one of the other studios, I suppose."

"Well, I'm a fairly big fan of hers," he admitted. "I'd really appreciate a chance to meet her, if it's possible."

"Oh, you're a fan," Corvelez said. "Well, I'll remember that, and see what I can do. I suppose if she won't work on the project, I might be able to get you into one of the bi-monthly parties. They're much more casual and more open to new associates. There is one due at the end of this month. I might be able to get you in, if you're interested."

"You said, 'if she won't work on the project'," Tenrut said. "I'd really like to see her on this one. I think she'd be great for the part."

"Well, maybe you could convince her agent," he said. "If you really think..."

"Has her agent read the script?" he said.

"Not yet," he admitted. "All I could do was pass on the basic story-line. It's up to Visa if she wants to check it out or not. She's not an amateur anymore. She doesn't have to work so hard to prove herself."

"I understand," Tenrut said, "but there must be some way to reach her."

"The only way to reach someone like her," Corvelez said, "is to wave bigger bucks in her direction. At this point, I haven't settled on anything more than the usual fees. If I had more money to give her, I'm sure that would make the agent happy enough to get her attention."

"More money?" he said. "Is there any way to do that?"

"Not as it is," Corvelez admitted, "but if it's really important to you, we might be able to arrange something. But any extra money has to come from somewhere."

He looked about the desk shortly, almost as if he were looking for more money, fished in the desk drawers for a minute, then looked back at the computer screen and said, "Give me some time to think about it, I might come up with something."

He checked the time and said, "Our time is almost done here, Mr. Tenrut. The formal papers are in the folder."

He accepted the signed contract from Tenrut, and handed the picture of Rina Lakuna, the actress they had for the part of Twani, back to him and said, "You can keep that picture for your folder."

"When can I meet her?" he said.

"Next week," he said. "She'll be at the studio on either Monday or Tuesday. The actors will be learning their parts then, and I'll be sure you get a chance to meet them."

Tenrut left the studio, looking forward to the next week when the rehearsals began.

\--------------------------------------------------------

"This isn't my home-parallel," Stone wrote in the journal. "It appears quite close, or it did at first anyhow, but after the bad dream of being attacked by those demons in the dark that resembled cloaked Amazonians, I'm not so sure anymore. Unless the Amazonians have made some kind of come-back at home, but no, that doesn't seem possible. The home-parallel would never be dominated by such fascist actions, would it?"

"My guess is, this is a close subpar of the Aton 5 parallel, somewhere in the general median between the extremes. Where exactly I cannot know without a better recognition of the details, which could take some time. With such evil creatures acting under the cloak of night, trying to kill me, I cannot believe this is the home-parallel. It has to be a sub-parallel of Aton 5, another shadow realm."

"So, I'm not home after all," he thought, with some disappointment.

About a minute later, Twani joined him, and stood firmly inside the room, looking at him.

He stood up, faced her, and said, "Have you been practicing the basic symbols?"

"Affirmative," she acknowledged with a nod.

"I was wondering..." she said, as he stepped over to the window to check on the weather.

She stayed exactly where she was and waited for him to return, and when he did, and he looked at her, she said, "I'd like permission to teach the others, sir."

"The others?" he said, and looked her over closely.

"The others of my group," she said. "And maybe the club."

"Your group?" he said.

"You met them with me on the first day, sir," she said, still standing exactly where she was, at attention.

"At ease," he suddenly said to her. "Relax, Twani, it's a holiday weekend."

"Of course," she agreed, and relaxed some, but stayed where she was, and waited for his answer.

"How many in your group?" he said.

"Six," she said, "we're a team, sir. We've been together since our freshmen year."

"What year are you in now?"

"Sophomore," she admitted.

He thought about that as he walked to the cabinet to get a bottle of water.

He took a drink, stepped back to her side, and said, "You do understand that it is purely defensive. It helps to keep the perspective keen and hone the skills in time. They would all have to be as devoted as you are to learn."

"We need to defend ourselves, sir," she said.

"Okay, Twani, let's lay off the sir now," he said seriously, and stepped directly in front of her. "You know what I told you, how the power actually works. It is based upon defensive reflex. They will have to understand and learn self-control."

"I understand," she said. "We need to defend ourselves, Zek."

He looked into her eyes as she said this and thought about where he was. He stepped away, looked towards the windows, thinking it over, and recalled the conclusion he had reached just minutes before she joined him. It was Aton 5. It wasn't the home-parallel. It was more like Aton 5 than he had thought the night before, when they had shared the love...

He realized she could be right, if they were in Aton 5, and he said, "Very well, but keep it in your group and see me before you share it with any of the club. Take your time with it and take care. No need to rush a simple practice like this. Take it in baby-steps."

"I... understand," she said.

She looked about like a robot shortly, then smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Thanks, Zek," she said, and went to the door. "See you later, at the picnic?"

"See you there," he agreed, and she left the chamber. He realized she was suppressing the excitement well, but obviously anxious to share it with the others of her team.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Around 10 am, Doctor Verasai visited again.

"Mr. Stone," she said, "I'm a bit concerned about what Twani reported. I had to coax it out of her, but she finally caved."

He stood up and faced her, wondering what she was referring to, and recalled the set of symbols.

"It's actually nothing all that fantastic," he said to her, and began to explain how simple it all was, but she cut him off in mid-sentence.

"I'm not referring to your work," she said. "I'm referring to the nightmare you had last night."

"Oh, that," he said, and thought about it as he looked at her.

"This is a girl's school of biology and medicine," she said, "We cannot have such distractions, it simply will not do."

She looked at him with concern as he frowned and didn't know what to say to her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'll try and keep it from happening again."

"When do these nightmares occur?" she suddenly said, with interest. "At night, the early morning, when?"

"Late at night and early morning," he said, and she stepped closer to him, and looked closer to his eyes.

"Your lids are heavy," she said, "and blue. How many hours of sleep have you had?"

"I dunno, 2 or 3 hours," he said. "I awoke around 5:30, standing in the court-yard."

She thought about it and said, curiously, "You were fighting at the time?"

"Yes," he said.

"I think you should try to get some more rest," she advised, "as soon as possible. Try taking a nap. If you catch a couple of hours, you can still join us at the picnic party later. It'll be going on until 10 pm."

She looked at him closely and recalled the medicine. She fished into her small purse and pulled out a plastic medicine bottle and handed it to him.

"We didn't have any of the oil but we did have some flower," she said, "can you use it?"

He opened the plastic bottle, checked it out closely, and said, "Thanks, it's just what I need."

"I sincerely hope so, Mr. Stone," she said, "because I don't want to have to have a member of the ASC, even a ghost, evicted from the conservatory without somewhere to go."

"This medicine should solve the problem," he admitted.

"Take a nap, after you've taken your medicine," she said, "and we'll talk again later, Mr. Stone."

\------------------------------------------------------

Verasai was right about the nap. It did him well and he got up, looked out the window, and saw that it was still daylight, in the mid-afternoon.

Stone joined the girls outside at the picnic tables at around 2 pm, and met with Doctor Verasai. She wasted little time getting to an important point which could not wait.

"I'm sorry to have to report this, Mr. Stone," she said, "but I'm being put under pressure to get you off of the campus as soon as possible. I managed to convince the board of directors that you should stay until the weekend is over, if you want, but you'll have to go somewhere else on Monday, whether your memory has returned or not."

"I see," he said. "Can you tell me why? I mean, is it something in particular that I've done?"

She stood up and said to him, "Let's take a walk, I'll tell you all about it."

"First of all, Twani told me how close the two of you have become," she said, "but as far as I am concerned, that's her own private business, and yours, so long as it doesn't interfere with her studies."

They walked along the edge of the field and watched as some of the girls were playing with a soccer ball and running about.

She stopped and he stopped beside her, near the far edge of the picnic grounds, at the corner of the field, and they watched the girls playing.

"So it wasn't me who told the board," she said, "it was, apparently, one of the other girls. I'm sorry, but the Big Sisters found out and they've become somewhat rabid about it. The girl exaggerated and lied about you, I'm quite sure of it."

"I was afraid something like this might happen," she said, as she looked at him. "That's why I insisted you stay away from the students."

"But Twani wouldn't say anything bad about me," he said.

"Not Twani, she adores you," she said, "it was one of the other girls, I'm quite sure of it. News got around about you, and she led them to think you're a nobody, just some male-chauvinist pig taking advantage of Twani and the other girls in her group."

"The little fascist," he said. "Who is she? I'll set that little bitch straight."

"No, Mr. Stone, you will not," she said. "I knew something like this would happen, it was why I warned you. Now, we've done as much as we can for you. You can stay until Monday or leave anytime, if you like. I'm sorry we won't have time for those flash-cards to help you with your memory, but when the board of directors says jump, we usually have to."

"Very well," he decided, "I'll pack my bags and leave now."

She looked at him and said with sincerity, "I wish I could be of more help, but I'm afraid its out of my hands."

"Well, as I said before, I do appreciate your hospitality," he said, "and please thank Twani for me also."

"Wouldn't you like to say goodbye yourself?"

"I... I don't think I can," he said. "Just tell her... tell her I'll see her later, after she is free of this chattel-ranch."

He stopped as he thought twice about his manners, turned to her and said, "Thanks for the hospitality, doc. It's not your fault some people lack intelligence. I'd better go."

He left at that and walked steadily along the side of the field, to the other side of the picnic area, into the deep shade, and followed the original path he had followed 2 days ago, when he first entered the conservatory grounds.

He hurried across the parking lot, into the hallway, up the levels, to the guest room, and packed his things into the backpack.

He stopped for a minute, recalled the nightmare from the previous night, and thought about the "Big Sisters" that Verasai had mentioned. The cloaked creeps that attacked them in the nightmare were Neofascist Amazonian Dykes; big sisters protecting their little sisters? Of course, that was it.

He went to the cabinet, took a bottle of water, put it inside his backpack, and turned to the doorway. He recalled the book, rechecked the bag, found it, secured it at the bottom of the bag, put it over his shoulder, and left the room.

Minutes later, he was heading away from the campus, in the direction the inland road went, and he was on his way. Where? He wondered as he walked, and tried to recall the area.

He was anxious to get away from the campus that he only just began to feel slightly at home there. He should have seen it coming, he should have expected it. It didn't matter, he realized. The weather was warm, heading into the mid-spring-time, and it was great weather for hiking and traveling.

He thought of Twani and worried about her, more so since she had just learned the set of symbols and would have to practice them without his support. That worried him a bit, but there was nothing he could do about it.

The Board of Directors and the Big Sisters both wanted him gone, and he knew when he wasn't welcome.

He thought he heard Twani's voice behind him, stopped, and looked about the area, where the grassy knoll met the edge of the forest. He looked carefully into the distance, back towards the parking lot and the conservatory, about 50 meters away. He could still hear the girl's voices playing in the field; that was probably what he heard.

He stood there, looking back, and wondered about her. Suddenly, a blue and green vehicle appeared at the entrance to the lot, near the conservatory, and followed the curved roadway about the other side of the grassy knoll, turned on the road leading in the same direction he was going in, and stopped at the side of the road about 10 meters away.

It was some kind of campus vehicle, with solar-electric power. Twani stepped out and he stepped toward her. They met in the middle of the grass and looked at each other.

"Where you going, Zek?" she said, with uncertainty. "You didn't tell me you were leaving already."

"Yeah, well," he said, "Sorry about that. It wasn't my idea, I... I got an emergency call. They want me back at the base asap."

"Just like that?" she said. "What about your memory?"

"It's coming back now," he said. "I've got to get back to work."

"But what about the symbols?" she said. "I still need your help with it."

"Well, now all you have to do is put it to practice," he said. "In time, the symbols will work with your intelligence and your psychometric and hyperkonic applications will become apparent. Your memory recall will increase, along with your speed of calculation and higher reasoning faculties."

She took his hand, held it for a moment, and put a business card into it.

"My cell-phone and email address," she said. "You can call me anytime."

She was about to leave him, then she realized he was walking, and said, "By the way, Major. Can I offer you a lift somewhere?"

"That's a campus vehicle," he said. "It won't get me very far."

"It'll get you to the edge of the campus," she said, "Come on, let's go."

She was very young and energetic, the way he used to be decades ago. She was a little difficult to match in speed, but he managed alright. She was patient and willing to wait a bit for him if needed.

He took the seat beside her and they drove slowly along the road, heading to the north side of the campus.

"You'll come back and see us sometime, won't you?" she said.

"I don't know, Twani," he admitted. "I think I wore out my welcome. The Big Sisters put the pressure on Verasai and they insisted I had to leave."

"Really?" she said, with surprise. "I don't understand. But you're a Tech Major..."

"That makes no difference," he admitted, "to the Big Sisters, apparently. They obviously don't want a man on the campus living in the same building with so many girls."

"Oh, I think I see," she said. "But, you're not just any man... you're a Tech Major with the ASC. I... I thought you were covered by the rules."

They stopped as the vehicle reached the end of the road, and she turned to the side and parked it just inside another small parking lot near the entrance. He stared at a fence with a gate in it and wondered where that came from.

"When was that fence put in?" he said.

"The fence?" she said, with puzzlement. "I don't know, it was here when I first came here, 2 years ago. I think it was put up in the 80s, but I'm not sure. Why? Is it important?"

"How far does it extend?" he said. "Does it end at the forest?"

"No, it surrounds the campus," she said, "which includes the forest all the way up to the roadside."

"You mean, this fence continues, all along this roadway, to the end?"

"Yes, it does," she said.

He thought about it with wonder and said, "Just the other day I mentioned something like this, do you recall? I said that the campus reminded me of my home-parallel because there was no fence around it, remember?"

"Uh, no, I don't," she admitted.

"Twani, I swear to you," he said, "that fence wasn't there when I entered the campus 2 days ago. How could that be?"

She shrugged and said, "I don't know."

"The Big Sisters killed me," he said, "last night, during the nightmare. I got transferred again, to another parallel."

"Really?" she said, with wide eyes of wonder, and looked about the area, at the fence, the building with the vehicles in the lot outside it, and said, "It looks the same to me."

"That's because you weren't transferred," he said, "but I was. They killed me, that's what happened. The Big Sisters killed me, after they believed those lies about me."

"What lies?" she said. "Who told lies about you?"

He looked at her, into her eyes, and he said, "It doesn't matter. Just don't let them tell any lies about you. I can take care of myself."

He stepped up, out of the vehicle, and said, "I hope to see you again soon, but I can't make any dates right now."

"Call me as soon as you can," she said. "You still have my card?"

He checked, found it in his pocket, and put it into his billfold where it couldn't be lost.

"Got you safe close to my heart, Twani," he said. "Don't sleep through too many classes."

She smiled and nodded, and said, "Good luck with your new job. Don't forget to call!"

He walked to the walkway, followed it to the fence, where there was a door, opened it, and went through to the public roadway just outside. She watched him off, as he turned right, and followed the walkway inland, eastward, headed into town, and then she drove away slowly, wondering if she would ever see him again.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Twelve: The Forty-Five Year Old Ghost

Tenrut met the girl who played Twani on the very next Tuesday, and she was so much like the Lisa he remembered from so long ago he fell in love with her without either of them realizing it at the time.

She was busy but stopped to meet him inside the dressing room where she was checking out the costumes.

"You wrote the script?" she said, with interest.

"Yes," he said, "how do you like it?"

"It sounds like fun," she admitted, and smiled. "It's also very interesting. I have done some sci-fi but nothing quite like this."

They chatted about sci-fi and he explained some of the details about Multiverse theory, and they got along just fine. Then she checked the time and said, "Well, how do I look?"

He stepped back and looked at her in her blue and green girl's student formal uniform, and said, "You look great!"

She left and he followed her out, and stopped at the edge of the studio, where the girl's were checking out the set and trying out the lines.

"Well, what do you think?" Corvelez said to him.

"She's perfect," he said. "When can I see Visa?"

"Well, Tenrut, you're in luck," he said. "She's agreed to see you this weekend. We're hosting a party at your complex on Saturday and she's going to be there."

"Saturday?" he said. "This Saturday?"

"This Saturday," he said.

Tenrut thought about it. For years he had anticipated such a meeting with his old long-lost girlfriend from the home-parallel, but now he suddenly realized he hadn't seen a recent picture of her and didn't know what to expect.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Stone spent the day in town at a small parkway where he met a few interesting characters, including another independent journeyman like himself and a few pretty girls who showed some passing interest in him for brief moments.

After about an hour of hanging out at the park on a bench, he recalled the experience at the Conservatory and wondered why the fence had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He recalled the nightmare which left him fighting demons in the dark in the court-yard, and realized that something had changed then, when he blanked out after the initial attack which occurred in the guest room. Something had changed during the time after the attack and when he appeared in the court-yard.

He thought about the fence, and recalled everything all the way back to the point where he had first entered the scene, at the edge of the field where he found the roadway and the bench, and sat down for a rest there.

He recalled how he studied the area and tried to recall it, in a state of semi deja-vu. He recalled sitting at the bench and looking across the road to the left at the thick forest of trees.

"There was no fence there, at that time," he said to himself, and looked in the direction he had come. He sited the road leading in that direction and made up his mind that he had to check on something like that to be sure.

So he got his gear together, made sure the book was still in the bag, and stepped up to head back in that direction. He walked through the parkway, to the corner where he had originally entered, went across the street from there, to the other side, and followed the walkway there.

He was on the opposite side of the same street he had just left an hour before, while leaving the campus. The campus was about a kilometer away and the bench where he originally entered the scene was about 2 kilometers. It was around about 4 pm, more or less, according to the placement of the sun.

He passed by a small section of town, with a road branching to the north, and a high-class walled-in condominium complex, with a secure iron gate, which reminded him of a castle, even though it tried to make itself look pretty by having flowers on the top of the walls in the corners and by the columns at the gate.

He stopped briefly to stare through the gate, and saw a road leading into the complex, and wondered how much money was required to live in such a secure, high-class estate. He looked to the side and saw a heavy metal post attached to the wall, with a heavy-metal box at the top of it, with a lid on it. He recalled the technology. He saw himself opening the top lid and accessing a keypad with numbers, to open the gate. He saw another round metal disc attacked to the bottom of the box, with a very small, clear window in it.

"Remote access," he thought to himself, and realized that anyone in a vehicle could use a remote control to pass on the code without using the keypad now.

His mind took these points in curiously, looked through the gate one more time, then he looked up and saw the security camera staring down at the area from the top of the stone doorway.

"Hello there, I'm Zek Stone, who are you?", he thought and almost began to say it, but decided to get back to the objective.

He moved on beyond the condo-complex and a few trees appeared and a short field of grass and weeds, then the edge of a stone mountain appeared at the back of the grass and weeds, about 10 meters in from the walkway and the road. Shortly after the stone mountain appeared, he walked on through a bottleneck between the mountain and a thick of forest, and he saw the fence of the campus appear.

He walked along the edge of the campus, with trees on the other side of the fence thinning out as he did so, until the structures of the campus appeared sparsely settled amongst the acres of freshly mowed lawn and trees.

He walked and walked, thinking about the experience at the conservatory and Twani and Doctor Verasai, and the guest room and the nightmares. He passed the gateway which Twani had led him out just over an hour or 2 ago, and looked ahead. It was impossible to say exactly how far he had to go, but he had a general guess of about a kilometer to the bench.

After passing the gateway, the forest became very thick again and there was nothing but trees on the left side, with the fence at the edge, near the road, and the stone mountain on the right, with a short field of weeds and some sparsely scattered bushes and trees between it and the sidewalk and road.

Finally, after about 20 minutes, he sited the opening ahead, where the road branched and curved about to the south and followed the edge of the coast. There was the bench, as he approached it, beside some trees and bushes, at the edge of the field, just beyond the corner of the stone mountain.

He stopped shortly as he approached it and looked to the other side of the road. There was the fence, no doubt about it. A fence he hadn't seen before when he first entered the area. He walked on, and glanced at it suspiciously, wondering how he could have possibly missed it or how it had gotten there.

He reached the bench, glanced over the area slowly, taking it all in carefully, and it looked like the same place he was before. He looked at the bench, back across the field leading to the coast where his vehicle had crashed, and it was all as he recalled it.

But then he spun about, looked across the road, and there was the fence, at the edge of the trees, separating the pathway to the campus grounds from the area beside the road.

"Huh?" he said. "I know that fence was not there before, I know it!"

He was confounded by the difference, and decided to take another rest from all the madness of the multiverse and sat on the bench to gather his senses and try to make sense of it all.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Tenrut finally had a good reason to attend one of the weekend pool parties. If Visa Amberly was due to be there, it was all the reason he needed. He found his favorite table at the edge of the open-air lounge, and ordered a wine-cooler.

Benny Sirocko met him and said, "How's it going?"

"It's going okay, I guess," he admitted. "But I still haven't seen Visa Amberly."

"If I find her for you," he said, "will that settle the deal?"

"If I get to talk to her, it will," he said.

"Then I'll see you later," he said, and left him at the table where they first did their business in the corner of the lounge where the pool-side met the picnic area.

He sat at the table wondering if she really would see him. Sandea came by for a chat, and some others as well, and after almost an hour, as he watched the kids playing around the pool and about the picnic grounds, he was wondering whether or not he should do something else, aside from sit about getting slowly stoned on wine-coolers.

"Here he is," Benny Sirocko suddenly appeared and said, "right where I left him."

Benny Sirocko stepped up to the table side, gave him the thumb up and the wink, and a woman in a casual, light and dark blue skirt-suit, with heavy shades covering her eyes, stepped out from behind him.

"Hello," she said, as she smiled slightly, studied him closely, and decided to remove her sun-shades.

"Hi," Tenrut said, and stood up to greet her.

"So, you're the new writer," she said. "Benny tells me you've got a pretty good script. You've got 10 minutes." She looked at her time-piece as she said this.

"Please, have a seat," he said to her. "Would you care for a drink?"

"Oh, a wine-cooler would be nice," she said, as she sat down across the table from him, and he quickly tried to get the attention of the attendant at the lounge, and failed.

"Visa," he said, "Don't you remember me?"

"Remember you?" she said, and looked more closely. "Have we met before?"

"Didn't Benny tell you my name?" he said.

"Nutern, the new writer," she said. "I've heard about you, but I don't believe we've met before."

"Oh, I forgot again," he said, with a slight frown. "The pseudonym. Well, I'll make a deal with you. I'll share my real name with you and yours stays a secret with me, as well."

"What?" she said. "You know my real name? How could you know that?"

"Because I'm somebody else," he explained. "I'm Ren Tenrut."

She looked at him as her eyes went wide.

"You?" she said, with surprise. "You are Ren Tenrut, the same Ren Tenrut who wrote the "Defense Report for 2018?"

"It's me," he said. "I had to see you, to let you know what went wrong."

"But.... well...," she slowly hesitated, "Ren, I didn't know... it was you."

"Do you recall the summer of 1975?"

"It was a long time ago," she admitted, and looked closely into his eyes. "Ren, is it really you?"

"Yes, it's really me," he said. "Lisa, it's been over 40 years!"

She looked at him, then looked down at her compad as she took it out of her handbag.

"The script," she suddenly said. "You wanted me to play the doctor in it." She looked at him and said, "Why?"

"Actually, I wanted you for the part of Twani," he admitted, "because it's how I remember you. But the years were wrong, so I had to settle for you as the doctor."

"Why?" she said.

"Because I didn't know how else to reach you," he admitted. "I didn't know how else to tell you about what went wrong between us and why."

She thought about it and said, "You went through all that trouble to apologize?"

She hit it right on the head, and he looked down shortly, then up again, and said, "Yes. I did it so I could apologize for what went wrong."

She thought about it and said, "Okay, you've got my ear now. What went wrong?"

"Did you read the original "Defense Report for 2018"? he said.

"I'm afraid I didn't have the time," she admitted. "I... I thought about it.. but I guess I haven't got around to it yet." She looked down and chose her words carefully.

"Ren, you have to understand something. After the accident, I thought you were dead. When the report was published, I thought it was some kind of science-fiction fantasy. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't even know who the author was."

"I thought I was dead too," he admitted, and suddenly realized what the problem was. "It was the pseudonym, of course, I forgot! You had no idea who I was because I was using a pseudonym! Lisa, I'm sorry! I had to use a pseudonym to escape the repeating bad dreams and my step-brother."

She thought about that, and he continued the explanation.

"Well, if you read the report, it gives all the details," he said. "I was afraid that you didn't get it or read it, that's why I had to deliver the message in person."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get around to the report," she admitted. "I thought it was about your case, I thought you were dead, and I didn't think I had anything to do with it."

"Well, take this," he said, and handed a small flash-drive to her. "It's got everything you need to know on it, including a private message I've been wanting to share with you for 40 years."

She carefully accepted the flash-drive, and studied it for a second.

"My step-brother lied to our mother," he suddenly reported, getting her full attention. "He lied to her about you and that was why I was sent away in the summer of 1975."

"Your step-brother lied, about me?" she said.

"Yes," he said, and explained. "He wanted me out of the way and passed on misinformation to mother which convinced her that you were bad for me and she actually had me sent away to get me away from you."

She thought about that with wide eyes, unable to know what to say about it, in shock.

She looked at him closely, into his eyes, saw that he was being truthful, and said, "But Ren, that's awful! How could your step-brother do that to you?"

"He hated me the day I was born," Tenrut admitted, "and started telling lies about me the day after. He just learned how to hide it all well, and managed to fool everyone, including mother and the sisters, and almost everyone else as well."

She was suspended in shock by the hard, cold, stone fact.

"It's all in the script," he said. "I've been writing it into the script for years. I was hoping some day you'd read it and understand what went wrong. When I realized that I may have failed to reach you, well, I decided to make it my job to make sure you did get the message."

She thought about it and said, "Ren, it's been 40 years," and looked him in the eyes. "So much has changed."

"I know, I know," he said. "But I had to apologize and when I saw the opportunity, I just couldn't resist. I'm really sorry, Lisa. Leaving you in 1975 was the biggest mistake I ever made."

She looked at him with a frown and he added, "I just need to know that you don't still hate me for it."

She looked down in thought, beginning to understand, then smiled as she looked up again, and said, "I'll take a look at the script, and let you know. But I think I can honestly say, that I am interested."

"Okay, that's great," he said. "You have just made my day! I'm feeling much better now."

Suddenly, Benny Sirocko appeared, and said, "How're you two getting along?"

"Just fine," Visa reported.

"Good, Corvelez wanted me to remind you about the time," he said. "I promised to get you back to him by 2:30."

She checked the time, and said, "Well, you can tell him I'm checking out a new script. I'll be along after I'm done."

Sirocko looked at Tenrut and the other man nodded and said, "Okay, great. I'll let him know."

He left them, and Tenrut said, "So, it's really great to finally get to see you like this. Have you any idea how long I've been wanting to do this?"

"Do what?" she said.

"Meet you, talk to you, and apologize and explain what went wrong?"

"How long has it been?" she said.

"Over 40 years!" he said.

She was suspended by the thought, looked down, and said, "I had no idea, Ren. I had no idea at all."

"I understand," he admitted. "I didn't know what went wrong either, until after the accident in late 82. That was when mother confessed about the mistake she made, due to the misinformation."

She stared at him as he told it.

"If I hadn't suffered from memory-loss," he said, "and if they hadn't sent me away to the west coast..."

"You suffered from memory-loss?" she said.

"Yes, after the accident," he said. "I didn't know it at the time. It was a form of general memory-loss, without detail."

She looked down, across the table, still suspended by his report.

"They sent you away again," she said, "after the accident?"

"Yes, they did," he admitted. "They shipped me out on a one-way ticket before I even had the chance to do the local tour and recover my memory. If they hadn't done that, I have to figure I would have recovered my memory quicker. If it weren't for that extra fool's errand, I might have recalled everything much sooner. I suspect my step-brother wanted me out of the way, again."

She digested everything he said, and finally, decided, "Well, I think you've given me enough to prepare me for the role. This story, Ren, is nothing short of fantastic. I'll be sure to read the book as soon as I find the time."

"So, do you forgive me?" he said to her, sat up and leaned closer across the table.

"Let's just say I'm very interested," she decided. "I'll let you know if you're forgiven after I've read the script. Fair enough?"

He played it cool and nodded, and she said, "I've got to go now, but I'll see you again, later."

She stepped up and he stepped up to see her off.

She was still looking great, after all of these years, and he was feeling 10 years younger now that he had seen her and apologized.

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Chapter Thirteen: Dreams About the Home Parallel

After camping out at the base of the mountain, overlooking the coast and the sea, Stone awoke feeling the same kind of relief he had felt after spending 2 days with Twani at the Conservatory.

As he drank some water from his flask and ate some food that he had stored in his backpack, he began to get his memory back by thinking about everything he had learned from his book and summing it up to the present.

He recalled that he had been working in the general 3d field for 14 years, and had spent 7 years before that as a green amateur with 2d graphics, due to a lack of access to the expensive 3d software.

He had actually learned the basics of the field over 40 years ago, and that was something he needed after the accident and his transfer in late 82, because it helped him regain his memory, the memory he had lost after the accident.

He knew everything now. This was Aton 5 and Aton 5 was not his original home-parallel. He had been transferred to Aton 5 after the accident due to prejudicial judgment based upon his step-brother's lies. He was not from Aton 5, he was from another parallel.

Aton 5, he knew, was not his home-parallel.

Stone's memory returned as he read the journal while camping out at the base of the stone mountain overlooking the coast.

After working in the 3d field from 2010 to 2020, and publishing several ebooks, he managed to get out of the Junk Boat Office and into a semi-pro office, where he worked with 3d projects and eventually, got seriously into 3d technical designs for mechanical systems and alternative technology. He spent 2 years working with the designs for a theoretical model for a rotary-wing system which got the interest of the local Ang-wing division of the Aerospace Corps. They presented an opportunity he couldn't resist, to work with the new Ang-wing designs.

In 2024, he was a Tech Major working on a special project with the ASC, an expert within the field and capable of piloting the space probe. His rank was mostly honorary, since he had only actually worked with the ASC for 2 years on an official level, back in 81 and 82, before being enlisted for the present assignment. He was old for a test-pilot, but not too old. They needed someone like him to pilot the probe at the time, but there were no volunteers, and he had all of the special scientific and technical knowledge necessary for the assignment.

He studied all the specs on the job, which was to test a new fusion drive powering a new Ang-850, a scientific probe, and the aspect of the job, in the end, which convinced him to go through with it was the hardest reality he had to face, and something that nobody but he knew anything about.

It was all in the journal. He had reached the conclusion, after the accident in late 82, that he had been transferred to another multivertical parallel, the shadow earth known as Aton 5, and he was no longer within his home-parallel.

For 35 years he had been working on the problem, and the space probe was just another job that represented an opportunity to do more in the field and if he was lucky, it might just lead him to a way to return to his home-parallel.

So he piloted the space-probe, and they ran into a sudden electromagnetic storm, which appeared in the upper atmosphere, between the ionosphere and the exosphere, out of nowhere. The fusion drive had just been activated, and the probe began getting pulled into the storm. He tried to control it, but it went way off course, out of control, and it couldn't be stopped.

The last thing he recalled, before blanking out, was rolling into it and an electrical discharge, which knocked him unconscious.

He awoke in the cabin of the craft against the rocky coast, his memory lost, and wandered inland, to the bench and the roadway, and eventually, the conservatory. All that time he had no idea where he was exactly and yet it seemed somehow familiar, almost as if it were the home-parallel.

Wherever he was when he first entered the parallel, it all changed quite suddenly after the nightmare, and the chain-linked fence suddenly appeared out of nowhere. After that change occurred, he was quite certain he was not within the home-parallel, and realized he was back within the Aton 5 parallel, where such security measures had been introduced after the Neofascists took control of the government in 1981.

He wondered how long he could get away with camping out like that there, since it was the Aton 5 parallel, and not the home-parallel. If it had been the home-parallel, he could have done it without much of a problem for a couple of weeks or a month, so long as he didn't make a mess of the area, but in the Aton 5 parallel, the rules were much stricter.

He wondered about it but as he looked about the area, he didn't see any problem. The stone mountain was at his back, and there was about 15 to 20 meters of grassy field and weeds, with sparsely scattered trees, between him and another road that followed the edge of the coast up a gradual slope northward, where it was lost in the trees which thickened in that direction. His camp-site was in the cover of trees, bushes, and weeds, for the most part, and nobody could see him from the roadway.

Across the road were some buildings, about 60 meters away, which he hadn't noticed when he first entered, and he could see that they appeared to be clustered into a town, which populated the coast-line. He recalled it and appeared to recall that the beaches at that point went from public to private, as one went north.

His craft was somewhere around the bend, between towns and at a point where there was no beach, just a rocky coast and a thick forest which covered the area.

To the south along the coast and into the distance, there was a lot of beach out there, mostly public beach, for many miles. It was a big tourist and vacation spot that became crowded during the summer. The area where he was at the time was located around the point where the beaches became less public and more private, but he was about around a kilometer from the beach and the sea, at least, by his reckoning, and he had the area to himself for the time.

\--------------------------------------------------------

He wrote in his journal about the past 2 days.

"I wandered into what appeared to be familiar territory at the time, when I walked through the trees and along the pathway which led to the campus and the conservatory. I was lost and suffering from memory-loss, and seeking help in familiar territory.

"The question of how I got there didn't come back to me until I awoke later in the infirmary with Twani. It took me 2 days to recover the memory and if she were here now I would tell her all about it.

"It began after I was sent on a fool's errand in the summer of 1975.... I didn't want to go, it wasn't my idea. It was my mother that did most of the insisting, but there was plenty of ulterior pressure from the step-father and the step-brother, both who treated me like a bastard and whipped me constantly when I was around them. I was anxious to get out of the house and away from them, but I had my own plans.

"I wanted to just keep doing what I was doing at the time, working and hanging out with my friends on my days off; it seemed fine with me. There was also a girl that I was beginning to see and we were getting closer with every date.

"But step-brother had other plans. He was behind the misinformation that convinced mother to send me away on the fool's errand of 1975. But I didn't know it when it hit me and I was forced to do what appeared to be the honorable thing at the time, which was to try my best at whatever job it was they were putting me on.

"I didn't want to go and it turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life, but somehow, a combination of the pressure and my conscience pushed me to follow their orders. I know now that they played upon my guilt, as they had so often done, and I had been over-burdened with a conscience, which both step-father and step-brother hammered into me.

"They wanted a good robot to follow orders and they got one on that fatal day when I made that awful mistake. I've regretted it ever since, and it's been over 40 years.

"I lost the girl because of that fool's errand and didn't find out about what the step-brother had done, by misinforming mother about the girl, until after an accident in late 1982. By then, it was too late to do anything about it.

"After the accident, I was transferred to another parallel, the Aton 5 parallel, where I've been trying to work my way out of the pits of poverty and purgatory for 40 years. I never even got a chance for a local tour to jog my memory; they just put me on the first bus with a one-way ticket to the west coast, and sent me on another fool's errand to get rid of me again.

"I didn't get a chance to put the pieces of the puzzle of my memory together in familiar territory before they shipped me out and I never got a chance to tell Lisa what went wrong and why, which was something that has left my heart aching for all of those 40 years."

\--------------------------------------------------------

"Apparently, from what I have gathered, the Space-Probe was propelled through the storm after the fusion drive was activated and the storm appeared. If the probe went through the vortex at the center of the storm, it could have been propelled anywhere in space, but I don't know how it could have crossed the multiverse, that was a mystery.

"It hadn't occurred to me earlier, but it's possible that the fusion drive may have actually caused the storm. It's just a theory but it's possible. The craft was an experimental fusion-powered space-probe which hadn't been put to the test yet. I was a test-pilot looking for a way back to my home-parallel, and I was willing to try almost anything.

"They called me crazy but they needed a test-pilot, so I agreed to do it and now I am lost again, somewhere across the multiverse, lost and away from the home-parallel."

\--------------------------------------------------------

Stone sat on the bench and watched the sun setting on the sea. It was a beautiful sight, something he had wanted to see ever since he discovered the bench, but had spent the last 3 days trying to recover his memory and completely forgotten about it.

So here he was, on the fourth night, back at the bench, wondering where it was going. He watched the amazing spectacle of the spectral rays moving slowly across the clouds on the horizon, reflecting off the sea and putting on a dazzling show for any one lucky enough to find the time to watch.

He watched it all with wonder, as the sun slowly set, and thought to himself, "What parallel is this? Can I return to my home-parallel?"

He closed his eyes and thought about it, and began to dream about the home-parallel and everything he had lost there. He saw the love of the friends he had lost in a playful suburban paradise, and the security of their presence, outside the regular work he performed. He let the idea of work fade, as he set it aside for the time, and recalled the time at the lake, just before he was sent on the fool's errand of 1975.

When he opened his eyes, minutes later, the sun's last rays were slipping away, and along with it, a parallel-reality.

He saw the fence across the road at the edge of the forest to the left fade out and then the roads vanished completely. The forest remained, as did the field, the trees, the land stretching away through the trees into the distant zvenya, with the curving coast-line way out yonder kissing the sound of the sea and the horizon.

As the sun slipped away, an old road appeared before him, with many cracks, worn by the years of use. It ended just a few meters to the right of the bench where he sat, with a heavy old, metal and wooden bumper-rail designed to prevent vehicles from going any further at the end. Beyond that was a picnic area which filled an area with many evergreen trees up to the lake, for about 40 meters.

The sunlight was replaced by the light of a rising moon to the east, in the direction where the old cracked road went, probably back into town. On the other side of the road was a field of weeds and sand, leading along the edge of the forest, and at his back, once again, about 30 meters away, was a stone mountain surrounded by a forest of trees.

The moon was rising just at the edge of the stone-mountain, from his perspective, and it lit a pathway along the field where it turned into sand and followed the edge of the forest, in front of him, to the side of the coast-line.

The fence and busy roads were gone, and he wondered about it. He recalled something from the book, something about subpar settings, and realized that somehow, while he was dreaming with his eyes closed, and the sun was setting, he had somehow changed parallels or sub-parallels.

He looked to the right, and the zvenya was shorter. He studied it closely, and saw that it was different. The coast-line was shorter along with the zvenya, and the body of water was smaller. It was not the sea; it was a large lake, similar to one he visited in his youth.

He stepped up, put his backpack over his shoulder, and walked out into the edge of the field of weeds, where there was a field of sand leading to the lake-side. He followed the gentle slope, down to an area of trees and picnic tables next to the side of the lake, where there was a short, sandy beach running along the edge of it.

He walked to the area, found the picnic table at the edge, nearest the trees, where he had left a memory a long time ago, and sat down on top of it, with his feet up on the side, and looked out at the lake. This was one of the last places they had shared together, before he was sent on that damn fool's errand in 1975.

He thought about her, moving about like a child, and tried to hold onto her pretty face in his mind.

"I didn't want to go away in 1975," he said, as she appeared sitting beside him in his wild imagination. "My step-brother lied to our mother, and she made a terrible mistake. She sent me away on a fool's errand because of the lie. She admitted it after the accident in 1982. But it was too late to tell you, and I suffered memory-loss. They sent me away again before I could recover my memory."

He thought he heard her answer him in the depths of his mind, but he had no idea where she was now, and he was lost across the multiverse, away from the home-parallel.

The home-parallel? Something about the very word carried a spirit which seemed to give him wings and lighten the load. Where was the home-parallel and how could he reach it?

He fell asleep on the picnic table, and awoke to the sound of birds in the morning.

He sat up, took a breath of fresh air, rubbed his eyes, and looked out at the early morning mist over the lake. It was just around sunrise and the sun was on the other side of the landmass.

He thought about the Ang-850 and realized he should probably get back to it, before the sun rose. So he quickly secured his things, put the backpack over his shoulder, and headed back to the bench.

He located the bench where he expected it to be, in a parallel corner of a parallel field with a stone mountain, at the end of an old dead-end road, with no sign of human life anywhere. The sun was still on the eastern horizon, with the mountain in the way, but the moon was setting in the west and there was enough light to see by. He went to the bench, sat in it, and relaxed.

He recalled the previous setting and went looking for it.

Memories of the home-parallel became aligned with the lake-side setting in his mind and he recalled a time long ago, before all of the shadow Earth fences cut him off from the home-parallel.

He located the multivertical conjunction and as the sun rose, the scene changed again, until about 20 minutes later, it was at the seaside setting again, where the road led in from the town, and curved into the coastal highway and was lost in the distance. Across the road was the same forest of trees.

He suddenly stopped, blinked hard, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes slowly.

He had done it. It looked like he had successfully returned to the original setting, hopefully exactly where the 850 had been left. He recalled the fence but it was not there now. He had managed to stop the transfer through the conjunction in a parallel where the fence did not exist, just as it had been when he first entered the scene.

He recalled the 850, stepped up, and headed back, across the field, to the woodlands which led down to the sea, where he had left the craft sitting in the stones of the coast.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 14: Another Multivertical Conjunction

After sharing the message in the bottle with the spirit of Lisa, Ren returned to the corner of the apartment, sat down on the couch with the computer flat-screen on the table before him, and turned it on. He logged in, waited a minute, and opened the new MVC program to check it out. A minute later, he located the scene he was interested in, and activated it. He quickly turned the lamp-light off as the scene appeared, and sat back.

He stared into the scene, into the Zvenya curving into the distance, where it met the sound of the sea and the horizon. He closed his eyes, and recalled the scene, as it appeared at another frequency of light, in a gray space of twilight, and he relaxed. It worked! He could see the scene at another frequency of light, somewhere in a gray-space like the twilight zone, and he was sitting at the edge of it.

He was sitting on a park-bench in the corner of the scene, as it appeared all about him. There were a few trees just a couple of meters to the right, a cluster of weeds between the trees and the bench, and more weeds sparsely scattered about the foreground, which sloped slightly down into a field of sand. The field of sand led inland in one direction, along the edge of the forest, and in the other direction, it curved into the coast-line and was lost in the distant sea-side.

On the other side of the field of sand was a forest of trees, leading up the gentle slope of a hill, and a stone mountain peaking out above the forest about 600 meters away, at the top of the hill. In the distance, where the curving coast-line met the sound of the sea, there was another stone mountain, right on the edge of the coast, surrounded by trees and various flora, peaking out high over the sea.

He sat there and relaxed, wondering what to do now. He had delivered the message in the bottle to Lisa and felt some satisfaction with that. It was important for her to know the truth about what had happened in 1975, 45 years ago. Now that she knew the truth and she no longer resented or hated him for the misunderstanding, he could at least put that much in the past.

According to an extension of the M-theory, the indisolar spirits spent time at Multivertical conjunctions and what he had discovered through the new MVC program was just one of an infinite number of possible Multivertical conjunctions that existed across the wide multiverse.

Somehow, this specific multivertical conjunction really had him hooked, and his indisolar spirit was really into it. He felt extremely comfortable, secure, and relaxed when he sat on the bench in the corner of it and looked into the Zvenya curving into the distant horizon. It was like taking a Vulcan vacation.

He sat there and wondered where he should go from there. Now that the message in the bottle had been delivered, what was he to do now?

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End of Line

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Afterword: The Path to Redemption

There are some who still find it hard to understand how a human can become so alienated from humanity as Ren Tenrut became after the fool's errand of 1975. There are some who still fail to understand his reaction to the step-brother and his friends in the summer of 1978.

How many humans know what it is like to lose all of their friends and be completely alienated from humanity?

Is it possible for a big enough lie to cause a human to lose all of their friends and be alienated from humanity?

Ren Tenrut's Testament:

"I was transferred to the Aton 5 parallel for refractory discipline based upon the false testimony of my step-brother, who was a pathological liar who lied about me to cover previous lies which he had used against me in 1975 and 1978, lies which caused me to lose close friends and potential opportunities, lies which ultimately alienated me from humanity and led to the accident in late 1982.

"I submit that the discipline forced upon me, through my transfer to Aton 5, was illogical and unnecessary, and ethically wrong to begin with, and that such punishment upon my indisol should be discontinued as soon as possible. It is morally and ethically wrong to punish an indisol for crimes he did not commit and problems that he did not have, based upon the false testimony and lies of another."

"I have spent 35 years working hard to survive and have been doing good peace-work in an effort to make up for past mistakes and prove that I am not guilty of the crimes my step-brother applied to my character during my previous life. I admit that I have not been perfect, that my sentence has had its problems, but I have never done anything to further implicate myself in any criminal capacity because I was never a criminal to begin with.

"I was framed as a potential criminal by my step-brother and his lies, lies which our own mother revealed to me just after the accident in late 1982, when she told me about the mistake due to misinformation in the summer of 1975, when I was sent on the fool's errand to get me away from Lisa. I was able to trace that misinformation back to the step-brother, who was the only person who knew anything about it and had any reason to do such a thing at that time."

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Information about Multiverse Theory and the Aton 5 Parallel

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Excerpt from "A Defense Report for 2018" by Ren Tenrut

Aton 5: A Shadow Earth to the Home-Parallel?

"Aton 5 is a close multivertical parallel of Earth which was discovered in 1980 and turned into a maximum security prison, under strict quarantine, for criminals, and a Neo-Spartan source of programmed soldier-robots. It was opened up to Earth in 1981, and kept a secret by the government until 2001. At that time, Aton 5 went through huge changes, after the World Trade Center was bombed by a remote-controlled passenger jet-liner and unknown terrorists.

"The most significant differences between the Earth and the Aton 5 parallel began in the early 1980s, after the Neoconservatives took the Federal Government in 1981, through a propaganda campaign that equated the democratic antiwar pacifists who had opposed the Vietnam war with communists. It was later exposed, in the 1990s, that they had lied about such things, but it was too late to do anything about it.

"The damage had been done and the Aton 5 parallel was doomed to follow a much more dangerous path than its Earth parallel counterpart. After the Neocons took over Aton 5 in 1981, at the height of the propaganda war, with the Clear Channel Radio Network spewing out endless lies about the antiwar pacifists and anyone who used "marijuana" (the favorite opiate of the pacifists), the big Neocon liars actually tricked the public into supporting "zero tolerance" policies which were a complete "totalitarian" violation of the U.S. Constitution.

"While most observers of M-Theory would agree that the Aton 5 parallel became divided from the main Earth "root" parallel after the democratic elections in 1981, it was the loss of individual Constitutional Rights of American citizens to the "Drug war" and the secret government that is considered to be the divisive pivotal point which caused the complete alternation of the Aton 5 parallel away from the root parallel of Earth.

"While the citizens of Earth saw the re-election of James Earl Carter in 1981, a pacific democrat who supported peace and harm-reduction policies for dealing with illegal drugs, and later oversaw the legalization of marijuana in 1982, Aton 5 succumbed to a brainwashing propaganda campaign by the Neoconservatives and saw the election of a Neoconservative puppet, Ronald Regan, and a Neofascist VP, George Bosch, who was actually the ex-Director of the CIA and one of the biggest liars humanity has ever known.

"Above all, the greatest difference between the Aton 5 parallel and Earth has to do with the state of American Democracy. In the Aton 5 parallel, American democracy was seriously altered by the loss of Constitutional Rights. After the "zero tolerance" policies were introduced, the Neocons used the secret government and the police to target its "antiwar democratic" opponents with totalitarian actions that were a complete violation of the U.S. Constitution, and destroyed them all for possession of marijuana and other "illegal drugs"; the state of American democracy was in decay.

"The Neocons of the Aton 5 parallel were very strict and sadistically cruel to the "working class" masses of the human population. They used the same propaganda that was used to destroy the antiwar democrats to "control" the human population, and it was a really simple formula.

"First, they equated all poor humans with dumb, filthy animals that needed to be whipped to work to keep them from wasting all of their time with vices like sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Next, they put them all into a program that was designed to make them into better robots. If they failed to be better robots, they were accused of being lazy liberals, persecuted, and punished for it.

"The simple fact was the Aton 5 parallel had become a "militarized zone" after the perpetual "Drug war" began in 1981 and the Neoconservatives were using their programmed robots to turn everyone into robots, whether they liked it or not.

"With the unpopular Drug war subsiding slightly from the mainstream in the late 90s, while its countless victims were being tortured in prisons everywhere, the evil Neoconservative "Neo-Fascists" who had lied the Aton 5 parallel into a state of perpetual war came up with an even bigger and more frightening excuse for turning all humans into robots with keys in their backs (aside from illegal drugs): Terrorism.

"By the end of 2001, humans had stopped worrying about illegal drugs being smuggled up their kids keisters and started worrying about bombs being smuggled up their kid's keisters instead. Of course, in such situations, there was no better heroic savior than our very own secret government and the anal probe police. No problem at all; dumb animals, spoiled brats, and robotized humans... all could be protected by our heroic anal probe police.

"After 2001, it could happen any time, and nobody could stop it.

" "You all know the drill people. Up against the wall, pull down your pants, and bend over. It's for your own good! We never know who has been trying to smuggle bombs up your keisters!"

"By 2010, the Aton 5 parallel had become the "evil twin" parallel of Earth; a huge Neoconservative empire run by a powerful hegemony of corporate royalty with near absolute control over everything, including the wealth of economies through banks, factories, resources, and human society.

"With the huge, frightening false-flag 9/11 terrorist attack on the WTC, the Neocons have realized the epitome of the Zap Gun threat they needed to turn everyone into frightened children, zombies, and good soldier-robots with keys in their backs. Furthermore, they have also realized one of the best excuses they have for making more robot-soldiers and expecting complete obedience from such soldier-robots, wherever they get sent to kill for the empire.

"The computer age had been completely dominated by them through typical subversive actions designed to give them more power through the security systems, including the perpetuity of their tired old Neoconservative propaganda, which continued to blame antiwar democrats and socialists for all of the problems of the world.

"The 21st century of the Aton 5 parallel is a dystopian human zoo for the vast majority of humans, within the lower working-classes, working themselves to death just to keep a roof over their heads and avoid being punished by their Neoconservative masters. There is no more class equality whatsoever.

"Wealthy humans play games in a Utopian class fat with wealth and resources at its disposal, while the vast majority of lower-class humans are nothing more than glorified robots programmed to work until they keel over and die or else face persecution and punishment for being lazy liberals (a crime worse than mass-murder within the Aton 5 parallel).

Excerpt from "A Defense Report for 2018" by Ren Tenrut

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What is the Main Difference Between the Earth and the Aton 5 Parallel?

The main "par differential" between Earth and its shadow parallel Aton 5 is connected to individual rights and civil liberties.

For example, in the home parallel of Earth, individuals could take time off to enjoy themselves whenever they had the free time to do so, as long as they didn't interfere with anyone else's activities. The timing didn't make much of a difference so long as they practiced their "civil liberties" in a civilized manner.

But in the Aton 5 parallel where I was transferred after the accident in late 1982, individuals had lost such civil liberties and everyone had become much more robotized to follow a strict "work-week" routine which meant that everyone had to continue "working" all the time, from Monday through Friday, and couldn't take any time off for anything else, short of a dentist or doctor appointment, until Saturday.

Now it may be true that this work-week routine is also a part of the home-parallel Earth, but it became much more rigid and strict within the Aton 5 parallel after something known as a "culture war" and the start of a perpetual "war on drugs" in 1981. What happened within the Aton 5 parallel made it very difficult for any individual, aside from a millionaire, to take time off in the middle of the work week to enjoy anything, short of a bad old b-movie during a meal-break.

What happened was that the dogs took the Neoconservative lies about the antiwar pacifists much too seriously and decided they were so bad that it didn't make any difference if the dogs made their lives a hell on Earth for being such "lazy liberals and pot-smoking junkies" or "drug-crazed commie traitors" or whatever, according to the worst propaganda the Neocons were peddling.

After the dogs went along with the big secret government masters and the Neoconservative Pigs that were behind them, they used the drug war as an excuse for destroying them all, and they did it with the mainstream media's approval and the dumbed-down "majority" public's support.

Now the most insidious thing about these changes was the media's mind control methods, which programmed the public, through radio and cable-tv, to go along with all of the Neocon's lies and turn them all into good, paranoid, ready-to-rat spies who hated "lazy liberals" for being so bad for the economy, and for corrupting their kids with marijuana and anti-capitalist, socialist ideas, such as "peace, love, and understanding".

So, the bottom-line is, Aton 5 lost individual rights and civil liberties to the dogs of the perpetual drug war who can smell "illegal drugs" whenever someone in the locality disagrees with their fascist capitalist policies, and who have the habit of using the mere "suspicion" of illegal drugs as all the excuse needed to put the anal probe police on their case and proceed to violate their Constitutional and civil rights, and just to be sure they don't make too many friends, spreading lies and smearing their image can make all the difference sometimes.

Because individuals lost their civil rights to the "drug war" in the Aton 5 parallel, all the bad dogs need to do to destroy them is plant illegal drugs on them and have them arrested. It's just too easy to lose everything to the dogs in a world like Aton 5, because individuals lost the protection of the Constitution.

About the only individuals who managed to hold onto those protections are wealthy, because the only way to protect such rights is with strong security and the power of Attorney, in the court of law. The reason for this is simple. Justice, in the Aton 5 parallel, is very expensive. Most common, poor, working-class fools don't have that kind of money.

Because the home-parallel of Earth did not experience the "war on drugs" or the loss of individual rights, there were no secret government or police dogs programmed by lies to destroy the antiwar pacifists, no Neoconservative propaganda that brainwashed the public over the radios and cable-tv, and no resurge of dark age dogma whatsoever.

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The Aton 5 parallel has evolved into a fascist-capitalist fantasy. A Multi-millionaire fascist-capitalist has more wealth and power than any royal figure before it. And they are able to maintain such wealth and power as long as they continue to sell the same big lies that the well-programmed robotic humans who work for them are led to believe, lies which have kept them from introducing the socialist measures prescribed to deal with the problems they have too long ignored.

For example, the lie that the economy cannot be reconfigured from a 5 day work-week into a 4-day work-week to give the workers 3 days off from their robotic jobs. That lie stems from the worry that the corporate royalty will have to take a loss of profit in the end, so they ignore the fact that the common working-class is going slowly insane from being over-worked and relegate the adverse side-effects to doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. They have simply used pills to compensate for a problem that could have been fixed by giving humans another day off from work, and have turned it into a profit-making industry.

At the same time they were using the perpetual drug war to destroy free-thinking antiwar pacifists during the 1980s, they managed to sell the idea to the common working and middle-class that anyone who wanted more time off from work was a lazy liberal and deserved to be persecuted for being a "weak" link, simply for suggesting such non-robotic behavior.

The Neoconservative fascist-capitalist worry that socialist measures would cause a loss of profit has been dealt with by propaganda and lies, to convince enough of the directors, managers, and robotic guardians that it was necessary for them to all work themselves to death for the good of the economy.

This has been an Aton 5 Reality Check, from Par Z of Aton 5.

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Multiverse Theory 101 - 105

For a better understanding of Multiverse Theory, as it pertains to this particular case, the basic 101 to 105 explanation is provided below.

Multiverse Theory 101

The most basic Multiverse theory there is states that there are an infinite number of possible parallel realities, some which are close to the reality that we know and others that are very different.

Understanding the Par-differentials between each is based upon a knowledge of the basic facts and events of each and how they differ. Because every event has more than one possible direction in time, different PARs, or Parallel Alternate Realities, follow different directions from those events.

Multiverse Theory 102

M-Theory 102 narrows the perspective from the most objective overview to specific parallels.

Citing as an example, the Multivertical Relativity posed within the science-fiction mystery "The Last Resort" can be examined more closely to understand the M-theory 102 of the specific parallel case.

In this case, the specific parallels are 2 very opposite parallels which stem from the root parallel around 1980 and 1981. From 1981, the 2 parallels evolved in 2 very different directions.

The specific case may be defined in many different ways, from many different social, cultural, and historical perspectives. For example, the Aton 5 parallel followed a Neo-Spartan cultural ideologue, a Neoconservative social and political directive, and a Roman Catholic program of dogma to promote complete abstinence and the demonization, criminalization, and persecution of anyone who was involved with sex outside of marriage.

But sex scandals within the Catholic Church caused it to lose its flocks due to the obvious hypocrisy in the 90s, and the drug warriors stopped making the headlines as their phony lefty apologists and press representatives took over and they decided to spend a little more time in the wealthy suburban homes all those drug war profits made for them.

In the meantime, all of the victims whose families were broken apart by the drug war were being generally ignored, many of them homeless, most forced into an underclass within society simply for having a record of illegal drug possession. This was caused by an attitude of Neo-Spartans persecuting Athenians simply for not agreeing with the Neo-Spartan ideologue and not being perfect robots with keys in their backs.

Within the other parallel, things are quite a bit different. It followed an Athenian cultural ideologue, a

Socio-Democratic Social and Political directive, and a Protestant reformative ethical program. Unlike Aton 5, it did not equate all common humans with dumb animals and absolutely forbid sex outside of marriage.

On the contrary, it did not prescribe absolute abstinence, but instead made it easier for the humans to make the decisions for themselves about what they wanted to do with their free-time, including sex-related activities. They did not teach their children to ignore sex, they taught them to understand it and manage it well.

After all, according to their Protestant ethical program, and according to all of the knowledge that they had, humans could learn to take proper care of their own sexual needs if given the chance to do so. They were not the dumb animals and fools that the Neo-Spartans of the Aton 5 parallel made them out to be.

These represent the main par-differentials between different parallels that share the same roots (before 1981).

Multiverse Theory 103

M-Theory 103 explains the human reality as a variable between 2 polar extremes: The Athenian and the Spartan.

The Athenian parallel emphasizes arts, sciences, and culture, and is generally antiwar, opposed to fighting and much more in favor of settling differences through trade and the sharing of culture and medians of communication. It does not believe big muscles and competitive sports or war are the best forms of civilized, social activity or pass-time, preferring instead to play upon the mysteries of existence and the full appreciation of a healthy, well-balanced life.

While it is true that the Spartans would agree that humans should all lead a healthy, well-balanced life, the Spartans had a different idea about what that was about. The Spartans believed that the physical enhancement of the muscles through hard work and sports made them superior to the Athenians, and they thought the Athenians were fools for not spending more time with such things.

But it was all just a matter of opinion, really. However, what it eventually led to was 2 very different parallel realities.

History records something known as a "culture war" in the early 1980s. It is strongly supported by ancient history that what the "culture war" led to was a division of the multiverse along 2 different parallels, one Athenian and the other Spartan.

The degrees to which these parallels were refracted along such parallels is an unknown variable, dependant upon the indisolar viewpoint, however, the division itself is very real. It was created by a simple disagreement in ideals and the doubts that came from both camps.

Given time, they evolved within very different directions. After 40 years, the 2 parallels have evolved to become very different.

To begin with, the Athenian parallel experienced more social progress, a Renaissance and enlightenment, and more individual rights in the 1980s, while the Neo-Spartan parallel experienced more war (the perpetual drug war), a reactionary reversal in social progress, and the loss of individual civil rights (to the drug war and a totalitarian secret government directed police-state).

These very different historical events led into very different parallel directions. One might almost say they went in "opposite" directions and might better be referred to as "alternate" realities, rather than parallel, but since they still share the same roots, then they still qualify as "parallels" to begin with.

In this case, the term "alternate parallels" might apply. This is where the abbreviated form "PAR" reference came from; it stands for "Parallel Alternate Realities". PARS share the same roots but the Par-factor is a variable, which means the par-differential is a variable. When contrasting pars within M-theory, the par-differential can be observed in the basic culture.

When comparing Aton 5 with its Athenian parallel, there is an obvious difference in the culture, due to one of the most basic par-differentials, in the aforementioned paragraphs, with an emphasis on sports and war within the Spartan parallel and an obvious lack of those things within the Athenian parallel. Likewise, there is an emphasis on arts and sciences within the Athenian parallel which is lacking within the Spartan parallel.

Multiverse Theory 104

M-Theory 104 takes into account "individual realities", and the POV of individuals.

Individual realities are a variable, however, when they are a part of a complex society, their position is directly influenced by the greater reality of that society. To begin with, their ability to act and perform within society affects their individual reality and how they are observed and judged by others.

For example, an Athenian within a Neo-Spartan parallel might be persecuted for not being active in sports, or a Neo-Spartan in an Athenian parallel might be considered slow to learn and low in IQ.

The individual reality is directly affected by the social reality, make no doubt about it.

Most individuals manage to get along within the social realities without too much problem simply by grabbing a hold of something like a really good job to give them a secure anchor within the social reality. By doing that, they earn the right to a secure individual reality, usually somewhere in the suburbs.

Most who manage to do so with some success don't have time to even think about Multiverse theory because they are simply too busy managing their own personal, private and social realities. The concept is not well-known to anyone who hasn't spent some time reading or watching videos that include multivertical themes.

The individual reality needs security for it to evolve, otherwise it can get hell-bent and refracted.

It's not too hard for an individual indisol to get lost in such a complex multiverse of possible parallel realities.

But the general rule is that Athenians are more at home in Athens, and Spartans more at home in Sparta, and any individual who has become lost and has no home in either is more lost than anyone in the multiverse.

With that point made, the next level cannot be ignored.

Multiverse Theory 105

M-Theory 105 goes beyond the common, simple version of an individual or indisolar reality to take a closer look at some of the more complex cases which include refractions away from the common, simple path.

What happens when a refraction occurs that causes an indisol to be misdirected from its path by evil manipulations and lies, and lost or transferred to the wrong parallel by mistake?

For example, I was transferred to the Aton 5 parallel because of an evil step-brother's lies and manipulations. I was condemned to waste all of my days working myself to death in a loveless purgatory and playing games with the sons of satan, all because I refused to get naked with that step-brother and his friends in the summer of 1978.

The step-brother had me gagged so well that I couldn't even tell anyone about all the evil things he did to me without him simply denying it all and torturing me after the fact. He even threatened to kill me once for "talking" about him with the parents.

He was able to make me out to be anything he wanted at all with his lies, but I couldn't even get away with telling the truth about him, without his complete denial and the support of the step-father to back him up so that he could get away with it.

With the power of his lies, step-brother was able to convince other people to reject me, after the summer of 1978, simply because he had enough ammo to use against me to make me look like I couldn't be trusted and I should be kicked out into the cold.

But his lies did more than just get me kicked out into the cold, they were taken so seriously by some that they actually used those lies to determine my punishment, and so I was transferred to the Aton 5 parallel, the purgatory of the multiverse.

This is an example of Multiverse Theory 105 in effect.

I was transferred to the wrong parallel because of a step-brother's lies. My indisol was never meant to follow such a path to begin with and it wouldn't have taken such a bad turn if it hadn't been for the lies and manipulations of the evil step-brother. He intentionally lied about me and manipulated me with various forms of psychological warfare, including denial of sadistic abuse and lies behind my back.

My indisolar reality was completely corrupted and refracted by the lies of the step-brother. As a result, I was transferred against my will to another parallel, based upon those lies.

It took me 35 years to recover my memory to total recall and understand all of this. It is important that it be recorded and understood.

My step-brother led people to think I was a stupid retard just to cover his own ass, all because he couldn't admit that he had stabbed me through the heart from the back with an evil lie in the summer of 1975.

I hope this proves how wrong he was.

In conclusion:

The most objective explanation of my disposition within the Aton 5 parallel would be to follow M-Theory 101 to 104 and ask the question:

If we are all a part of our own individual parallel realities in a vast multiverse of parallels, is it not also possible for such close, parallel, individual realities to react in a multitude of different ways, and isn't it also possible that such reactions could alienate some individuals in parallel realities against their will?

When I was transferred to the Aton 5 parallel, it was definitely against my will. It was, in fact, caused by the evil lies and manipulations of an evil step-brother, who hated me the day I was born and started telling lies about me the day after.

I believe that anyone who examines the facts about my own case closely enough would agree that I was a victim of an evil person who practiced the evil arts for his own selfish reasons.

Because the evil step-brother got away with lying about me so much, and so many people believed his lies, nobody cared about me when I died after the motorcycle accident in late 1982, everyone voted me out of the suburban paradise they were building, and I was transferred to the Neo-Spartan parallel, Aton 5, the purgatory of the multiverse.

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What happens when an indisol gets misplaced in the wrong parallel?

Misplacement in the wrong parallel is a very complex problem. To begin with, the indisol may not even realize it has been misplaced until it has time to compare the parallel with its memory of the previous parallel for any par differentials. Proper nouns, designating people, places, times, and important events are the most obvious. If the indisol has experienced an extemporate memory-loss, the process could take much longer than simple amnesia, it could even take years.

Keeping a journal to jog ones memory and get everything straight in one's head may be helpful in such cases. Memory probes might even be necessary to unlock any memories which may have been suppressed by mental blocks.

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Mysteries of the Multiverse

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Glossary: Definition of Words

Aton 5 Parallel: aka Par Aton 5, or simply Aton 5. A shadow parallel of Earth, in which the Great Experiment in Democracy failed to prevent a Neo-Fascist takeover of the Federal Government, the introduction of a totalitarian police-state that violated the U.S. Constitution, and the loss of individual American citizen's rights to a perpetual "War on Drugs". It has been designated Par 1981.5 to indicate the exact year in which the Neo-Fascist takeover occurred.

Svenate 5 Parallel: aka Par Svenate 5, or simply Svenate 5. The opposite parallel of Aton 5 where the events that made it a "shadow" parallel never occurred, and everything was very different, following a course which began in the late 1970s, before 1981. Within the Svenate 5 Parallel, there was no Neo-Fascist takeover of the U.S. Federal Government, no totalitarian police-state in violation of the Constitution, no loss of individual rights to any wars on anything.

The Svenate 5 Parallel has been designated Par 1978.5 to indicate the approximate year before 1981, the election year which led to the division, and to contrast the Par-differentials in culture, philosophy, and popular political support, which was predominantly antiwar pacific at the time. The Svenate 5 Parallel is also considered to be the "home-parallel" or "root-parallel", which we commonly refer to as Earth.

PAR: Abbreviation for Parallel Alternate Reality. A reference to variable parallel and/or alternate realities that range in frequency from close (parallel) to extreme opposite (alternate). PARs are measured in contrast to one another, according to the frequency range, to designate the specific frequencies each are located within.

For example, the 2 parallels Aton 5 and Svenate 5 stem from the same roots but branch off in near opposite directions after 1981. To designate and locate the exact frequency of each, they are given designations which signify the differential between eras with specific years, in this case, Par 1981.5 for Aton 5 and Par 1978.5 for Svenate 5.

Par 1978.575: A sub-parallel of the Svenate 5 Parallel which is a "close" parallel to the main "root" parallel 1978.5. Whenever a Par is taken to extra decimal points, it designates a sub-parallel of the main parallel, where the "main parallel" does not have so many decimal points as the "sub-pars" do.

MVC: Abbreviation for Multi-Vertical Central or Multi-Vertical Conjunction. Multi-Vertical Central: A place in space and time where the knowledge of the Multiverse is accessible to anyone interested enough to pursue it, and where a Multi-Vertical Conjunction may be possible with the right kind of technology, making transport across the Multiverse, from one Parallel to another, a possibility.

MVC-Tube: A Multi-Vertical Conjunctional Tube is a transportable tube that connects with a multivertical intersection to "cross parallels" by locating and locking on the specific parallel frequency.

Multiverse: The plural of universe, which in scientific theory, explains everything we know in existence from the overall objective viewpoint of an infinite realm of parallel and alternate realities at an infinite variable of electromagnetic frequencies, some we can observe or detect at different frequencies of sensory reception and others which are beyond our ability to observe or detect, in frequencies of electromagnetism beyond our ability to measure.

The original M-theory was suggested by Einstein as a theoretical design which accounted for the unseen, electromagnetic fields of the universe as "infinite parallels" of a "multiverse" and expanded upon by romantic science-fiction writers as a way to explain the unknown and the extra-sensory phenomena documented throughout history.

Athenian: Pertaining to the ancient city of Athens, where the arts, sciences, and philosophy were interwoven into a peaceful trade system governing civil human society. The Athenians scoffed at anyone who wasted their energies with war, insisting instead that there were much better and wiser ways to go.

Spartan: Pertaining to the ancient city of Sparta, where hard work, competitive sports, and honorable physical competitions were interwoven into a strict, military-orientated, robotic program governing civil human society. Unlike Athens, Spartans were much more aggressive, touting the basic philosophy that muscles and might, under intelligent control, made right.

Neo-Spartan: Pertaining to the Neoconservative culture warriors who opposed the antiwar left-wing democrats and socialists during and after the "culture war" which occurred within the Aton 5 parallel, in the early 1980s. They did a reactionary resurge against the antiwar left-wing, replete and chock-full of subjective insults, propaganda, and lies, in 1980 and 1981, which led to a perpetual war and a totalitarian police-state within the Aton 5 parallel, during the 1980s.

SEVN-500: Solar-Electric Vehicle, N-500 specifying the vehicular class. A land-transport vehicle equipped with solar-cell panels that supply solar energy to batteries which give the engine the power it needs to rotate the turboshaft and make the wheels spin. The conversion is completely solar-electric, and produces no exhaust fumes or pollution whatsoever. The N-500 model was designed for long drives and highways, with a top-speed of 85 mph. It was designed for comfort and speed, and dependable durability for long drives.

Eframes: A computer system that uses a large flat-screen, usually mounted on a wall, to display an infinite variety of 3d environments, simulating a picture window that can open up anywhere in the universe.

VENA: Abbreviation for Virtual ENvironmental Avatar. Pertaining to the computer program which works with an eframes system and large flat-screen to display countless "virtual" 3d environments and a wide variety of interactive 3d "avatars" which act as the "players" within 3d espace.

The Last Resort: The title of a 3d computer game involving cyber-warfare and high tech industrial espionage, utilizing various implements of cloak and dagger, including energy weapons, in a dystopian corporate empire in the computer age of the 21 century.

Gas-Lighting: A form of psychological warfare which subjects its victim to abuse and violations and then public denial of it all after the fact. This has the effect of causing the victim to doubt its own sanity if such abusive treatment continues, leading to the "gas-light effect".

Zvenya: A viewpoint upon the seacoast or a large lakeside which follows the curve of the coast as it curves into the distant horizon and the sound of the sea or large lake. The sea, lake, or body of water appears as a large circular pool to the left or right of the field of vision, with the land surrounding it.

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Message in a Bottle

Nick Zentor

Copyright: Coldpost-85, 2020

All Rights Reserved

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Other ebooks by Nick Zentor

A Multivertical Conjunction (MVM013)

The Last Resort (MVM017)

The Korbent Refraction (MVM016)

Dead Ends and Other Escapes

Alternatives (TSV05)

Fool's Errand: Redemption (TSV08)

Day of the Mystikon (AMV03)

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