This Changes Everything

CHAPTER EIGHT

  Second Public Contact between the MWC and Clara Ackerman Branon, Ph.D., or,

  This Is Not a Dream

  January 3, 2013

  I sit in my home office in Kirov, California, making notes on my computer about the Media Contact I research in February, 2012, since that is Instruction #1 from the MWC when they first visit me, December 21, 2012. Keep up, now.

  Today is January 3, 2013. This time, I'm glad for the sunny weather, since she is coming here. Clear skies are always better for travel; rain means flooding, around here.

  I am finalizing my notes so that I can “call” the MWC members and ask them to come back for my next Instructions. I email my Media Contact and she agrees to visit that day.

  She doesn’t know the MWC are really going to be here. She still believes I’m writing a novel and that I'm asking her to help me envision how something like this would play out. She's bringing her equipment and everything, going to set it up, to "show me." She's in for a surprise.

  After I email and then talk on the phone to Esperanza Enlaces, in mid-February, 2012, telling her about the novel I am writing, I know she is the right person for this job. Her background, responses and interest level are ideal. She’s a scientist, journalist, artist and activist. A Latina woman in her early-thirties, Esperanza lives about twenty minutes from where I live. She’s got her own media network because she is trilingual and freelancing for the local alternative weekly newspaper as well as other 'zines and papers. Plus, I read a few of her features. I like her writing style and I believe I am going to like her.

  Our second conversation, in mid-March, confirms my assessment. However, prior to actual MWC contact for her, I have to be careful to maintain the idea of this book as fiction or she might bolt.

  I finish the drafts of the chapters related to media usage and send them to Espe in mid-March, 2012, for her corrections. Then, we arrange to meet in the nearby county seat where she lives and works, so she can give the corrected pages back to me.

  We have coffee and talk. We get along quite well.

  Since I know I am selecting her, I am increasingly pleased with my choice. I hope (and pray) that she is, also, since once she meets the MWC, there is no going back for her. I mean, she could quit, but she’ll never be able to un-know what she comes to know. Can’t unring a bell and all that. All my timults show her doing great, so I'm not really worried.

  I finish the last notes and turn around to get up from my computer.

  Startled to see them, I almost fall over and I’m sure I give a little shriek (I startle easily): Led, Ringo, Janis—Diana and Mick’s holograms are in my office already.

  “Do I even call you, yet?” I protest. I hastily amend my unwelcoming greeting, saying “Okay. Glad you're here. Welcome!”

  “Hello, ClaraBranon,” they chant to me. I laugh since they say it the way they do the first time, as if my two names were all one word. Even if they say my name as two words, no one calls me that, except sometimes MFH (My Future Husband), as a joke. I mean, most people call me “Clara,” or “Ms. Branon,” or, if they are aware of my doctorate, “Dr. Branon.” I start to explain this to them, but, clearly, they don’t need me to talk.

  “Oh, we are sorry, ‘Clara.’ We will call you that. Or, do you prefer ‘Dr. Branon?” Led asks.

  “’Clara’ is fine. Thanks,” I tell them.

  “I have my Media Contact choice,” I tell them.

  “Yes. We know. Esperanza Enlaces. She is very good for you and for Earth,” Ringo says, approvingly.

  Led, Mick, and the “girls” wiggle or sway, perhaps in agreement.

  “Good,” I say, “because she’ll be here in about one hour.”

  “Yes,” Led says, “That is a necessary and good plan,” he agrees.

  I am relieved since I haven’t had a chance to clear it with them, officially. This simultaneous time thing, timultaneity, as my son, Zephyr, terms it, can really help smooth things out, once we get the hang of it.

  “She’s going to need to videotape you all and hear you talk. She will also want hear about The Transition plan and my role as liaison. All right?” I turn to Led, since he is the leader.

  Led wiggles. Now I’m sure that means he agrees. We have several non-publicized visits between my first and this one, so I am getting to know their signals and the meanings of their motions and non-English vocalizations quite well.

  I continue, “Could we do some more of the Instructions stuff, first? And, then, maybe some more when Espe is here, or do it again, or something? That would be a great thing to be able to show.”

  Diana offers, “We have to do Instructions every time we come,” she says, “and we come a lot for about five years. Then, frequently, but not a lot, after that.”

  “Not every day, even now,” Janis adds, urgently.

  I suppose she is picking up on my rising anxiety. “I am a very quick study and a good student. I can probably learn even this entirely new stuff kind of quickly. But, I need time between sessions to integrate what you’re teaching me or to accomplish certain tasks, right?”

  Mick extrudes a thin, lighter greenish appendage from the upper part of his body and flicks it upwards. A large screen-like object appears and hangs in the air above my head, slightly in front of me. Lights on his flat, top part begin flickering in some apparent sequence: red, blue, yellow, repeatedly. Text and diagrams begin to appear on the hanging display screen.

  I move closer to see what is on the screen, but Ringo stops me. “You don’t have to move. We’ll adjust it to you. Just tell us what sizes, shapes and distance work best for you and we’ll conform it.”

  “How do I show you?” I ask. This is so cool. I can tell that the technology for this is beyond Earth’s, but it seems not to be extremely out of our top geeks’ reach, to my untrained eye.

  [Mick and Ringo take turns explaining, and they switch back and forth so quickly I can’t tell, all the time, who is talking. So, I’ll just combine them, as “MR,” for now.]

  MR: “First, just look at the screen and tell us what you can read and understand,” MR says.

  MR adds: “Then, you help us adjust it by telling us when it’s best for you.”

  I look at it. “Well,” I tell them, “I think the words are too far away and small, so I’d just be guessing at them. Can you bring them closer and make them larger, please?”

  I don’t see them move anything, but as soon as I finish my sentence, the words are legible. I clap my hands, applauding. “Thanks! That’s great! I can see them all perfectly.”

  I look at the rest of the screen which has some kind of linear, diagrammatic representation across the bottom, with titles or headings that I can’t read, seeming to be demarcating sections on the line. “Is that a timeline?” I ask.

  Led bobbles up and down. I think that means “Yes” in a more excited way than his former wiggle.

  MR asks me: “Why do think it’s a timeline?”

  “What can you see?” MR continues.

  “Well,” I explain, “on Earth, we learn how to read and make timelines in early schooling and they look pretty much like this.” I move closer to the screen, remember not to, and return to my former position. “Yours is too small for me to read the words or captions, though. And, the line doesn’t seem to be straight….”

  Janis—Diana make what I recognize as laughter noises. “Of course it’s not straight,” Janis says. “Time doesn’t run in straight lines!”

  Diana extrudes a greenish, oblong, wide and flat appendage from near her upper-pickle region and points to the line on the screen: “See these parts?” As she talks, the entire diagram enlarges.

  I can now see many tiny divergences off each section and tinier forks off those, with offshoots or tributaries coming off those, and so on, almost endlessly. When the line was more indistinct, these offshoots make it appear crooked. It’s really more of a line-shape, with dozens of tiny, spiderweb-like areas branching off each section. I can t
ell it’s more representational than actually showing everything possible. Suddenly, I get it. “It’s the multiverse, diagrammed!” I exclaim.

  Led is bobbing, the others are swaying dramatically. I feel as if I just earned an “A.”

  “OK! Where are we, now, on this?” I ask.

  Ringo’s appendage has stayed “out” so he uses it again to appear to touch the screen. The diagram enlarges even more, zooming in on one portion. I can now read the words and see almost all the branching lines (they get tinier and tinier as they get further from the “main” line).

  “Clara Ackerman Branon, Ph.D., Earth Date, December 21, 2012,” I read, aloud, and then, “January 3, 2013.” As I read, a tiny red star appears right by my name. “What’s the star for?” I ask.

  “Whenever someone reads their ‘own’ portion, a marker like that appears next to the name. That way, anyone else seeing this, from now on, will know you see it,” Mick explains.

  “It even works ‘backwards,’” Ringo continues, “so that, if anyone from the ‘future checks in on this part, they know that, today, you see it.”

  I raise my hand to touch the screen and all of them move quickly to block my way. But, then, almost at once, they realize they’re just holograms and can’t interfere with my hand. They understand that they have to talk with me to stop me.

  Led says, quickly and a lot more loudly than he usually speaks, “Do not interact physically with the screen, yet” he warns. “You may change it. You don’t know where the safe areas are, where the controls are or anything about how it works, yet. You could do a lot of accidental damage or cause some serious timeline interference!”

  I swiftly lean back. “Sorry!” I tell them. I lower my hand. “Seems as if you need some safeguards, there." I feel scared about how little I know and how much damage my ignorance and impulsiveness could cause. "Do you teach me how to use it?” I ask them.

  “Not yet,” Mick says. “You have to learn a lot more about the fundamentals, first.”

  “That won’t come until about year four,” Diana says. “Or, perhaps, earlier, since some get there sooner.”

  I notice a tiny impatience reaction, breathe into it, and look up at the screen, again. “What are those markings next to my name, besides the star?” I ask. I notice, as I talk, the markings become larger. The differentiation in their coloration becomes more clear to me. “Like, what are those blue ones?”

  Ringo starts to answer but Led stops him. “Clara, you are going to have to learn all this, that is true. But, not today. We have to begin with Instruction #2, today or we fall behind our schedule.” Led continues. “And, we have to get ready for Esperanza Enlaces’ arrival, which is now in about ten of your minutes, yes?”

  “Right,” I agree, looking at the digital clock on my computer screen. “Let’s go into the larger room (my combined dining/living rooms and kitchen are one large room), since there’s more space there for us all. She can set up her equipment to film you when she gets here.”

  They glide in ahead of me and I follow. Diana is last. She turns back toward me and says, quietly, “You’re doing great. Don’t mind Led. He is protecting you.”

  I am touched that she picks up on my impatience and my small worries. I am not even conscious of wanting to do well and not wanting to upset them, especially Led.

  “I appreciate that, Diana.”

  As soon as I sit down in my chair at the round table and turn to face them, I feel that sensation I remember from the first night, in my chest. I look down and then out, knowing I am about to see the holographic “page” appearing in front of me, seemingly having come from my heart area. Another blooms from my solar plexus as well.

  This time, since I’m not tired and it’s not new, I notice something else. There is a sensation of what is still there, inside me, of “stacks” of these “things,” not as weight, exactly, but as a kind of presence, a fullness. I make a note to ask about that, some time.

  Now, I begin to read the page, aloud. “Instruction #2,” is written in large letters across the top. Under that, I see the following:

  Upon selecting the Media Contact, the Chief Communicator invites her to document the visits so that media outlets find the information credible and are willing to publish, display and air the information as soon as possible, preferably within 48 hours of today’s visit.

  I stop reading and look up, a bit confused. “How does it know what I do before I do it? What is this type of data that you downloaded into me? How can it automatically update itself?”

  Led starts to explain but the neighbor’s dog begins to bark. Banjo announces every new car that comes up our driveway, unless he recognizes it.

  “Espe must be here, early. I have to tell her not worry about Banjo,” I explain, and get up to open my door and call to her. As I move to the door, the page seems to fold itself back up and return to my chest. Weird. I don’t remember the other one doing that. But, then, we aren't finished with this one…. No time to contemplate that, either.

  “Hi, Espe!” I call out to her. She slows down as she passes my porch. I stand on it and she rolls down her window. “Banjo won’t hurt you. You can ignore him. He just barks. If you try to go over to him, he runs away. Park over there and bring your stuff in. Or, you can unload here, park there, and then come back. Your choice. You just can’t leave your car here, since my neighbor can’t get by you.”

  “Hi,” Espe replies. “OK. Big, black, barking dog: not scary. I hear you. I will unload here,” she continues, “since I have a lot of stuff to carry.”

  I realize that she still thinks she is doing a “dry run,” meaning, she thinks my book is all fiction. She has no idea that the MWC members' holos are actually inside. Here we go.

  I turn around and move back into my dining room. “Hey, Led?” I look at the five of them, talking quietly so Espe can't hear above the sound of her car's engine. “Could you all please wait in my office until I announce you?”

  They are already moving before I can finish my sentence. I’m beginning to like this telepathy thing a lot. I go outside to help Espe unload.