Part II
San Francisco, California, USA
Link MediaVerse Studios
December 22, 2040 Earth Date
ENLACES: Thank you for coming back, those of you who already attends or views/hears Part I. If you’re new, I hope hearing or seeing Part II is sufficiently interesting and complete for you. Please see Part I for a list of our Panelists.
Next question: Hala Bitar asks this of me! That’s interesting, Hala! Your question reads: “How does being the Chief Media Contact for the Chief Communicator change the way you write, film, photograph, record, report and select news to share? What advice do you have for InterGalactic ‘VerseCast Journalists for reporting to Earthers and to the MWC members at large?”
Well, I guess my experience is unique! I am pleased to discuss it here. I’m not sure I have much advice, though. Perhaps you and I can collaborate on that, soon, Hala? I plan to finish the Handbook for Chief Media Contacts for Chief Communicators any day now [Laughs; applause]. Wow! Maybe I really should consider doing that?
Best answer is that this work fundamentally shapes me, professionally and personally, because I begin my tenure as CMC for the CC in my early thirties and now I'm the same age Clara is when she starts being the CC (spooky, right?). I think about that on a day like today.
You all know the story of Clara's seeking me out, convincing me the "story" is part of a novel she's writing, and then springing The Band on me at her cottage in Kirov in early January, 2013? I don't write or talk much about the nonpublic encounters Clara and The Band invite me to be a part of because I'm not allowed to, but those are the ones I call "training" interviews. The Band, especially you, Led, prepare me, teach me, guide me quite clearly and strongly in those first several months of my tenure as CMC. Remember, Led and the other MWC delegates do this for a living, so to speak: they train many CMCs around the multiverse!
Back to your questions, Hala: I don't know that I can separate the ways I do my work in journalism from the way I do it as the CMC because I "grow up" as a journalist while being the CMC! I can't say how I'm different because of it; ask a timulter who can find timelines in which Clara chooses someone else or the MWC doesn't choose Clara!
Advice from me for others? I do give advice and encouragement to off-p 'Casters. First one I advise closely is Gabe Engel, one of Clara's numerous nephews, whom you all know is one of our most treasured 'Casters, especially once he is doing that full time (Gabe Engel also plays off-planet sports while 'Casting for about ten years). If you want to know whether or not my advice and experience are beneficial to 'Casters, ask Gabe!
My main advice to Gabe and others who come after him seeking my counsel is this: get your ESP training as soon as possible. Those exercises, even if you only go through the Beginning Levels, help with everything you do. In fact, I would broaden that recommendation to include EVERYONE. Excellent Skills are not "magic" or only for a chosen few at those Levels. Almost anyone can expand or uncover your own abilities and improve your capacities to use your ES. This is always beneficial: for you, for Earth, for the 'verse work you do. Do it!
Thank you.
Next, Clara Branon asks Alicia Elsbeth Russell, Meryl and Pekka Aalto: “Speak, please, in whichever languages you choose in addition to English, to explain some of the ways learning off-Earth or other-species' languages changes your perspectives, knowledge, emotions and lives. What would you say to encourage more Earthers to learn more MWC members’ languages?”
RUSSELL: I LOVE this question, Clara! My favorite paradox of timultenaity, as Zephyr terms the running together of past, present, future—all timelines and all possibilities—is evolution, especially of communication systems, which include language. Just in the first few years APC [After Public Contact], “APC” becomes “AppCee” whose logofication becomes a stylized English “A” superimposed over a lower-case “c,” [A screen appears on which this logo is centered] which is still vocalized as “AppCee.”
My all-time favorite is the fish, and we must give thanks for that both to Steve Jobs’ many “i-”-named technological advances and to Douglas Adams’ “babel fish.” As we here know but others may not, the IntraPlanetary or Interspecies Communication System begins, again, as a semi-acronym, “IntraPlanCS,” which morphs into “i-planCS,” which becomes “i-planX,” and then logofies into a slanted, stylized “i-“ beside an “X,” [A screen appears on which this logo is centered] which someone, and, again, I believe this is also Zephyr, names the “i-fish,” and which many now call simply the fish.
Third, and perhaps most important since the entire MWC adopts some form of this, is the Individual Access technology moniker. Begins as “Individual Access Devices Interface,” goes through many acronym-ish and abbreviational journeys to become “i-D,” whose symbol is just the slanted “i” leaning onto a very fat “D,” [A screen appears on which this logo is centered] pronounced “eye-Dee,” with the emphasis on the first syllable instead of the second, not to be confused with “Eye-Dee,” for "ID," emphasis on the second syllable, which still means personal identification for many MWC-ers.
So, here are all are, AppCee, with our i-Ds that help us learn and communicate across time and space, utilizing our fish so we communicate effectively with whichever species we are encountering. NONE of this even exists on Earth or elsewhere in the MWC prior to ED [Earth Date] 2013, conceptually or linguistically. Our concepts (and devices) must evolve right along with and just a bit ahead of our languages.
AALTO: Well, since we’re all AppCee, I want to pick away at the terms “language” and “linguistics” since these are, literally, “tongue”-based and do not apply to most species on this or other planets regarding methods or modalities for communication. I vastly prefer to use fish, mostly for its almost-irony, since cetaceans are vastly superior to humans in so many areas: empathy, speed and attainment of ESP training Levels, and overall intelligence, when one includes musicality and compassion as types of intelligence; also, because humans erroneously group cetaceans with fish species for many centuries.
Furthermore, with every larger primate (orangutans, baboons, great apes, chimps and monkeys) as well as all cetaceans involved in every aspect of The Transition along with humans, our first experiences with fish occur right here on Earth. We have to learn to communicate among ourselves before we can take our act on the road, so to speak.
[Sounds and movements from both Meryl and Angelina, untranslated.]
MERYL: [Signing and vocalizing as before] Need to communicate: all species, everywhere. Need to understand, see similarities, accept differences: stop wars, live peacefully. MWC helps with all this. Earthers continue, happily, these ways. Must go on, learn more, share more. Want all species to speak at least one new language, other species. Large improvement comes from that, alone.
AALTO: Also, by viewing Clara’s relationships with you all—Led, Janis—Diana, Mick and Ringo, via Espe—you become our models for the importance of interspecies relationships. You inspire us, Clara, to learn more modalities for communication [Pekka Aalto nods to each and speaks to them in their own languages, using old Spanish for Espe, hand-based Primate Sign Language for Meryl, and sound-based reflectors, which he carries in his top shirt pocket, for Angelina, to say this same sentence again; he continues to do this; the official Translator steps down]. I cannot overemphasize the ways an individual’s neural networks are forever altered by learning to communicate in new ways, with new sounds, concepts, “words” and gestures. We have fMRIs [Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagers] to show this, in colored lights, while we are communicating.
When Clara and others say, AppCee, “this changes everything,” I believe this is the foundation of all that we mean. Brain-changers are game-changers. Yes. And, we desperately need major changes for Earth.
Neural network changes include neurotransmitter alterations similar to those The Transition begins for us all. Our emotional “vocabulary” becomes larger. Our capacity to feel either remains somewhat limited or
expands, depending upon our ability to label and communicate our emotions. The greater the complexity of our conceptual abilities, the greater our capacity becomes to be empathic, compassionate and present with a variety of cultural and interspecies experiences.
Interdependence is the foundation for peace; interspecies communication and understanding are the bases for this foundation. They/we evolve together (I would say “hand-in-hand” [Makes a gesture of holding hands], but that would be species-ist [Laughter]).
So, Earthers, change or be changed! [Applause]
ENLACES: Thank you. I hope our Translators and Pekka bring you all the nuances of this unusual conversation.
Next, we have a question from Ringo, for Clara. He asks: “How might new MWC Delegates serve best the next Chief Communicator? We ask for your evaluations and recommendations, please.”
BRANON: In 2012, almost a year before the MWC contacts me, Time Magazine asks one of my dear friends, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, African-American host of a popular science public television series in the USA at the time, Nova: "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the universe?" His answer, all these decades later, resonates with me, still: "We are part of this universe; we are in this universe. But, perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.… Many people feel small because they're small and the universe is big, but I feel BIG because my atoms came from those stars!”
In this same interview he also talks about the way that most people prepare for disaster while scientists attempt to prevent disaster. Remember, he doesn’t have Access to the Many Worlds Collective Resource Library, doesn't have confirmation of multiverse timelines, hasn't heard of Re-set or any other ESP trainings at that time!
Neil and many others who are "ahead of their times" without being timulters amaze me the most!
As we find out, adequate warm-up and other types of prevention are much more productive than intellectual preparation, but all have their uses, I say. I believe this next Chief Communicator and MWC Delegates are much better prepared to prevent all types of difficulties than we first lot are!
Neil also reminds us that scientific success centers around posing “the right questions.” I wish Neil were here, right now. He’s one of the smartest, funniest, warmest scientists we ever have on Earth. I miss him. I would ask him this question and I bet his answer would be excellent! Better than mine!
I mention Neil because his example, of inquiry, support and excitement for learning, inspires me and others the way the MWC Delegates do. My most important recommendations come from that: keep getting the Chief Communicator to pose better and better questions. Keep supporting the inquiry, keep instilling and encouraging the excitement.
The best way to be excellent trainers for any CC is to maintain an open line of communication at all times just as you all do with me. I always feel I can ask. I always feel supported. Very early on, I trust each of you. I always feel inspired. And, when I need it and deserve it, I get challenged, or Reprimanded [Laughs]. But, always, encouraged. Respected. Loved, even.
Yes, there is love.
It’s not “all good” but it can get there!
ENLACES: Thank you so much! This concludes our Panel for this evening.
We hope you feel as enriched and enlivened by this exchange of information, experience and knowledge as I’m sure we all here do. I share all of our gratitude for each of our Panelists and your generous giving of your time and expertise to this evening’s events.
I especially thank you, Clara, for your many years of service as our dear CC and particularly, for selecting me to serve you, and Earth.
I’m sure I speak for us all when I say that I hope to keep hearing from you, even after retirement![Applause for Branon as she stands, puts her hands together and half bows, sits back down.]
[Applause resurges rhythmically to the beat of her name as crowd chants: “ClaraBranon… ClaraBranon… ClaraBranon… ClaraBranon…,” imitating The Band's first visit to Branon]
[Branon stands again, smiles through tears, waves, sits back down.]