If
I wasn’t such a nice fellow, I’d blame John Vincent Atanasoff for the mess I’m
in. In case you didn’t know, he created the first electronic digital computer.
And we all know what happened next.
Remember
that aura I said surrounded me? It was basically an electronic digital
computer, only so advanced, it was close to a living being itself. It was the
only device I was equipped with but what a device! It made me cool in the
summer and warm in the winter. It kept wild beasts and predators of all kinds
at bay. It deflected anything from a BB to a high-powered bullet to a grenade.
It kept me from starving and dying of thirst. And so on. But one thing it
didn’t do. It didn’t think. That was all up to me.
That’s
why I was worried. Celestial beings didn’t need artificial devices to protect
them. Their power came from the same place a star’s power comes from: the
fusion of hydrogen and helium.
But
they weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. If spoken to correctly, they
could be convinced that visiting Alpha Centauri or Sirius would be nice this
time of year.
I
was on the outskirts of Baltimore near the Chesapeake Bay when I felt the urge
to try some crab cakes. The waitress was named Sally and the owner of the
restaurant went by Captain Bob. It was lunch time and the place was buzzing. I
asked Captain Bob if business was always this good.
He
replied, “Even since I hired Ahab, the folks can’t get enough of Captain Bob’s
Crab Cakes.”
“Ahab?
That’s an interesting name.”
“He
was named for his great-great-grandfather. Captain of a whaling ship, I
believe, back in the 19th century. He died somewhere in the South
Pacific. But they said he died happy.”
“Why
was that?”
“He
always wanted to become one with the sea. He got his wish.”
We
incorporate our failings into the complexity of our being. The failings don’t
go away, but they are sublimated to the whole concept of who we are.
All
through the ages, a simple belief in God has been disruptive by an uninhibited
growth of weeds.
The
most disturbing about life is being alive and knowing it. How do we get back to
the source? And if we do, will the source welcome us with open arms?
My
next stop is Kitty Hawk where man discovered he could fly like the birds. A
modern jet plane is fast, but it can’t even begin to compare to the speed of a
celestial being.
In
one sense, a celestial being is nothing more than a beam of light. But in
another sense, it is more than a beam of light because it has intelligence, but
it’s not an intelligence enriched by human experience. It has never known and
never will know what it is to suffer because of hunger, thirst or pain
(physical, mental and emotional). Human intelligence is what it is because of
suffering. It rises to the occasion, whatever the occasion is.
Even
though the celestial beings are beams of light, they travel much faster than light
itself travels. This sounds oxymoronic, and it is. The only explanation is
because they can focus their intelligence without distractions of any kind,
they are able to accelerate their natural rate of motion (which is the speed of
light) and travel anywhere in the "near" universe almost instantaneously. For us to
see them in the atmosphere, it has to be a very dark night, and they have to
slow their speeds precipitately.
They
are coruscations. But you’ve probably already figured that out.
From
Kitty Hawk, I go inland about fifty miles where tobacco is being harvested and
put in heated barns for curing. Work is work so I spend a few days helping a
small farmer named Menelaus harvest his three acres of tobacco. Menelaus lives
in a three-room house (I’m being polite not to call it a shack) with his wife
and three kids. Menelaus doesn’t have much but what he does he have he takes
good care of. Menelaus says he can’t pay me anything, but I say I’m all looking
for is a little food and water. I sleep in the barn with the two cows and the
mule. Neither the cows nor the mule can talk so I my only conversation is with
myself during the wee hours of the night.
We
start the day off with chicory coffee, fatback and grits. The kids are 15, 12
and 10. Everyone goes to work in the field picking tobacco. It’s already hot by
9 AM. Around 10 we take some long gulps of cool water at the well. Everybody
seems to be holding up pretty well. At noon, we go back to the house for lunch.
Menelaus
says after lunch, “We’re going to take it easy until mid-afternoon. You want to
nap in here?
I
reply, “No thanks, I saw a big oak tree at the head of your driveway. I think
I’ll rest there. Just holler when you’re ready to start back working,”
The
tree was a good one. The limbs were packed with green leaves offering a
luxuriant shade to wallow in. This was natural air conditioner at its finest.
As
I look upward I see tiny shafts of light of streaming downward through equally
tiny openings in the leaves. For the rest of my journey, I’ll be wondering if
light is only light.
Around
3 PM Menelaus shouts, “We’re starting back!” I get up and stroll leisurely back
to the tobacco field.
Menelaus
says, “I think we have enough tobacco picked for the day. Now we need to string
it up and put it in the barn.”
He
meant we would take several leaves and tie them together with a string at the
top, then hang them over a five-foot stick. We would then fill the stick up
with leaves leaving a few inches empty at each end of the stick (so the stick
could hang on boards that traversed the width of the barn; there would be
several vertical layers of the boards spaced in a way that permitted the barn
to be filled as tightly as possible, leaving just enough space for the tobacco
to “breathe”). The stick would then be placed in the barn. We repeated the process until the barn was
full. A series of gas burners (3 each in 4 rows; 12 in all) sat on the ground
beneath the tobacco leaves that were attached to the sticks. The heat from the
gas burners would gradually “cure” the tobacco over several days. Then the
tobacco would be ready to take to market.
Tobacco
was a cash crop. Menelaus used it to pay the bills. He didn’t smoke himself.
The
next day I helped him fix a couple of fences. After lunch, I departed.
For
all practical purposes I was going to be back in 1962 for the foreseeable
future This moment in time was thick with the celestial beings. My problem was
finding them. Once the beam of light hit earth they changed into humanoids.
There’s only one way of identifying a celestial but I’ll have to tell you that
later (that is, if I figure out how to do so).
(All
of) time is a conceptualization. We conceive the past and future the same as we
conceive the present. Conception not perception. Perception is nothing more
than a way of making a list. But the list maker is not part of the list. We
stand outside the reality we perceive. Without conceptualization, we would have
no idea of where we truly are in the great scheme of things. But
conceptualization is only one of several tools for deciphering reality.
For
convenience sake, I’m going to start calling the celestial beings FTLs. I don’t
know if they’re really beings at all. They could be artificial in both
substance and intelligence. But I’ve been told with good authority that they have
the ability to travel Faster Than Light, hence FTL.
The
FTLs are neither good nor evil, though they are certainly susceptible to being
used and manipulated by those who are evil.
They are examples not of mind over matter, but of matter over mind.
Their physical attributes are so great that they rarely ever need to utilize
their minds.
According
to my sponsors (the man and woman in Chapter 1) the FTLs quit visiting earth
sometime in the late 20th century.
And
that’s the crux of the problem. My sponsors, and the people they represent,
need the help of the FTLs to accomplish something that would only serve to
elevate humanity. My small part in this endeavor is to see if the FTLs would
consent to a meeting with the man and woman. In fairness though, I must tell
you, it’s still a long way to go before I can come even close to making that
happen.
The
idea of equality in human beings is a chimera. The FTLs are all equal but at
what cost? Great power but no direction; they flit through galaxies without purpose. Only by luck or circumstance does anything good come out of
their breathtaking celestial perambulations. There’s just as much chance bad will occur
instead of good. There’s your equality.
If
everyone is equal (I’m referring to humans now), then no progress will be made.
Talent needs to rise to the top, and should be rewarded. Then as a result,
everyone will be rewarded.
As
Shakespeare said, the quality of mercy is not strained, it falls like the
gentle rain from heaven. In my case, the quality of mercy was strained because
the FTLs did not fall gently to earth. They came out of the sky, from the east
to the west, like bolts of lightning. I was at their mercy, which depended on
their whims. An almost impossible situation was facing me.
But
now I can tell you how to identify an FTL: you ask the right questions (or is
that “light” questions?).
Have
you ever met an exiled thinker? Me neither. If you had lived in the
Mediterranean area of the world anywhere from say, the 6th Century
BC to around the 2nd Century AD, there’s a good chance, if you were
living on or visiting a small, rocky island, you might have run into such a personage.
Somewhere near the border of North and South Carolina, it happened to me.
He
was living in a treehouse; one of his own making. Ala Tarzan, he had a rope
that would swing him from the treehouse into the pond that was adjacent to his
aerial home. Standing a few feet from him, I realized he should consider using
that option more often. He also had a long gray beard underneath blue eyes and
a bald pate. He was short and skinny. A little on the bony side. But that was
more than likely because of his diet, which subsisted of whatever he rustled up
in the immediate vicinity of where he lived. His name was Aris. His first name
anyway. His last name was hard to pronounce and even harder to spell.
As
I usually did when possible, I was walking through the woods. He spotted me
from on high and invited me up into his abode. The way into his home was via a
rope ladder, better suited for a much lighter man, and I found the going
awkward, but I did make it to the top.
I
couldn’t resist the urgings of my natural curiosity, “What in the world are you
doing up here?”
Aris
replied, “I am in exile.”
Had
I gone back in time 2000 years? “Who exiled you?”
“It’s
self-imposed.”
“Ah,
I see.” I didn’t.
He
continued, “Thanks for being nice but I’m sure you don’t. I went into
self-exile to solve all the world’s problems.”
“Have
you done so yet?”
“No,
but I never really thought I could. I just thought it was important that
someone give it a shot.” He glanced over at a pile of notebooks beside his
handmade desk.
I
asked, “Those notebooks full of ideas?”
“Yes,
those are my legacy. My hope is when I die out here, someone will eventually run
across this place and discover the notebooks.”
I
didn’t want to discourage him, “It might just happen.”
We
spent the afternoon talking and eating walnuts.
