“The Europa One is now on its final approach,” Petersen told the news crews. “Commander McCormick will begin firing the retrorockets in just about sixty seconds. This is necessary to slow his approach velocity from approximately 32 thousand miles per hour to less than 300. He will then use his right and left thrusters to guide him gently to the Jovian moon’s surface.”
Alex walked up into the visitors’ gallery, and took a place near his wife and son. He glanced over at a reporter standing nearby, and found himself hearing this reporter’s question before it was even spoken.
“Approximately how long should that take, General?” Alex said aloud, just before the reporter spoke.
“Approximately how long should that take, General?” the reporter asked.
“That’s Colonel Petersen,” Alex said softly, “and we expect a soft landing on Europa in approximately fifteen minutes.”
“That’s Colonel Petersen,” the flight director echoed, “and we expect a soft landing on Europa in approximately fifteen minutes.”
Alex stared up into the darkened auditorium directly at Uriel, as he said the next lines in exact synch with the flight director’s words.
“…provided there are no unforeseen circumstances.”
“…provided there are no unforeseen circumstances.”
Alex then gave the reporter’s next question not only at the same time as the newsman, but mimicking as well his exact tone of voice and inflection.
“What kind of unforeseen circumstances, Colonel?”
“What kind of unforeseen circumstances, Colonel?”
Once more, smiling eerily, he gave a perfect simulcast of the colonel’s sardonic response.
“We don’t know, son…that’s why they’re called unforeseen.”
“We don’t know, son….that’s why they’re called unforeseen.”
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” the flight director went on, “I’ve got a spaceship to land.”
“But sir, hasn’t it already landed?”
“But sir, hasn’t it already landed?”
Alex turned away from the scene and stepped forward to the edge of the stage, calling up to Uriel. “If I wasn’t there, how did I know exactly what they were going to say?”
Uriel hesitated, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Well?” Alex challenged.
“Well, you’re very familiar with all aspects of the mission. And you’ve served as public relations liaison for Colonel Petersen on several previous space flights, so perhaps you just
anticipated—”
“Word for word?” Alex interrupted. “I don’t think so.”
At that moment, on the stage behind him, red lights began to flash, alarms to whoop.
Alex turned.
Up in the visitors’ gallery, Gena and Andy sat forward on the edges of their seats. Andy started to rise, but Gena pulled him back down, conscious of the reporters’ scrutiny. Alex walked back onto the stage, as he approached saying exactly what Andy said next.
“What is it, Mom? What’s happening to Dad?!”
“What is it, Mom? What’s happening to Dad?!”
And he responded synchronously with Gena, his voice an exact copy of her voice.
“Shhh, sit…getting hysterical won’t help!”
“Shhh, sit…getting hysterical won’t help.”
Now again with Andy.
“But…he’s my dad!”
“But…he’s my dad!”
As tears streamed down Andy’s face, Alex reached up to touch his own, surprised to find it wet with tears as well. He turned toward Uriel in sudden agitation.
“Turn it off, God damn it! Turn it off!”
Uriel complied; the stage went instantly black and quiet.
Alex stormed back up the aisle towards him.
“What the hell is this?!” he raged.
“Perhaps you need a little more time?”
“Fuck time! Perhaps I need a little more information… I want to see more lives. Down here. Now!”
“Whose?” Uriel inquired placidly.
“I don’t know; it doesn’t matter! Hitler, show me a little Hitler.”
The stage instantly brightened. On it was the complete hologram of a Nazi war office, its walls covered with large maps, photos of Hitler and several of his generals, and posters bearing the infamous crooked cross.
Alex stood beside Uriel, looking down on the stage with a strange expression on his face, both distant and intense, uncertain and strangely knowing.
Hitler himself sat behind a desk covered with war maps and reports. Two of his war ministers stood before the desk. They were speaking in German, yet Alex found he was able to translate everything the men said, even though he’d never spoken the language in his life.
“Es kostet uns einen Tag 12 Millionen Deustchmarks, um sie nur am Leben zu erhalten,” the first minister said to Hitler.
“It costs us 12 million Deustchmarks a day just to keep them alive,” Alex translated, looking at Uriel.
“Was über der freien Arbeit, die sie bereitstellen?” Hitler responded. “Dies sollte uns über die Kosten für ihr Essen und Schutz Gewinn bringen.”
“What about the free labor they provide?” Alex repeated in English. “This was supposed to bring us profit above the cost of their food and shelter.”
Now Alex began to speak simultaneously with the German speakers, he in English, the ministers and Hitler in German.
“Die meisten sind zu schwach, um ihre Eingeweide geschweige denn Maschinerie, zu kontrollieren,” said the second minister.
“Most are too weak to control their bowels, let alone machinery,” Alex said at the same moment.
“Schlagen Sie vor?” asked Hitler.
“You suggest?” echoed Alex with a shudder, his throat beginning to tighten.
“Deutschland kann sie, Fuhrer, sich nicht mehr leisten. In der Krieg wird verloren werden ihr verträgt,” the first minister said coldly.
“Germany cannot afford them anymore, Fuhrer. The war will be lost in their stomachs,” said Alex, tears welling in his eyes.
“Und damit der Reichland,” added the second minister.
“And with it the Reichland.”
“Machen Sie das, was Sie müssen, dann,” said Hitler, turning away.
“Then do what you must,” mimicked Alex, the tears now overflowing.
Alex looked up towards Uriel, wiping at his face.
“We seemed to have just solved the ‘Jewish Problem,’” he said, “and no, I never studied German…not in this life. Give me a scene from Joan of Arc.”
He walked away from Uriel, heading down to the stage. As he approached, the stage changed to the stark bedroom of a simple peasant hut. It was night outside. A small candle provided the only light, flickering its pale warmth gently upon the face of a young girl, who knelt on the dirt floor praying quietly in French. Alex walked onto the stage and over to stand directly in front of the girl.
“Oh mon Dieu,” the girl prayed in French, “s’il vous plait montrez-moi les thy veulent, s’il vous plaît donnez-moi un oh de la vision Jésus miséricordieux. Qu’est-ce que je ferai?”
She raised her eyes to where Alex stood before her, and reacted as if she was able to see him, or perhaps what she thought was a Divine Vision.
“Oh mon seigneur et sauveur! Merci,” she cried.
Alex now began to speak to her in French, his voice strangely resonant.
“Vous partirez le matin, mener l’armée française contre les Anglais à Paris.”
He then responded word for word in synchronicity with Joan:
“Oui mon seigneur, je ferai comme vous instruisez, et conduisez l’anglais détesté de Paris. Merci pour me laisser vous servir.”
“Oui mon seigneur, je ferai comme vous instruisez, et conduisez l’anglais détesté de Paris. Merci pour me laisser vous servir.”
He turned to Uriel, speaking once more in English: “She just thanked me for sending her to fight the English, and ult
imately for her death…in pretty good French, huh? How about JFK? In the car, Dallas?”
This time Uriel pushed a button to make the movie screen roll back down. On it now played the familiar film of John Fitzgerald Kennedy riding in the open limousine through the streets of Dallas that fateful day in November of ’63.
“No,” Alex protested, “I want the hologram; I want to be able to go inside the scene.”
“You can,” Uriel told him. “Go… Closer.”
Alex walked up to the screen, and as he did it became three dimensional. He looked back over his shoulder at Uriel, and then stepped right through the screen and into the film itself. He was now in the limousine, seated between the driver and the secret service agent in the front seat. Alex turned to look over his shoulder.
JFK sat on the right side of the rear seat, Jackie on the left; and Governor Connally and his wife occupied the middle seats in the limousine.
Jackie wore her famous fuzzy pink wool suit and matching pillbox hat, which she clutched to her head while waving at the crowd. She was also chewing Jack out between her smilingly clenched teeth and Alex inherently knew and matched her every word, in perfect synch and with chilling mimicry.
“Damn it, Jack, the wind is destroying my coif!” Alex/Jackie said. “Why the hell did you insist on an open convertible anyway, you’re giving the secret service fits!”
Alex looked at John, opening his mouth to respond in time with the president, his accent, pitch and intonation perfect.
“That’s why we have personal hairdressers on staff for you. Now please just shut up and wave.”
She rolled her eyes, then turned to wave at the crowd on her left.
A moment later, something that sounded like a pair of firecrackers went off near Jackie’s ear, and she was just about to complain to Jack about the rudeness of these Texans when she heard a terrible sound. She turned, and screamed.
Alex screamed.
Jack was bent over slightly, clutching his throat. Governor Connally had pitched forward, grabbing at his back.
A confusion of noise erupted in Alex’s head, and came out of his mouth as a babble of voices.
“Oh my God!” Jackie/Alex shrieked.
“My throat,” John/Alex moaned.
“My back, what the hell,” the Texas Governor/Alex drawled.
A second later a third shot hit JFK in a splinter of bone and gurgle of flesh, jerking his head back and sending a hunk of it flying outward. Alex felt himself sucked inside of Kennedy’s mind, speaking aloud in JFK’s voice as the President slumped helplessly to one side.
“What the hell! What the hell! Oh no…no, not this, not now!” Jack’s internal voice came out of Alex’s mouth.
Now a cacophony exploded inside Alex’s mind: four different voices were screaming and babbling, barking orders and pleading for help. And Alex’s own voice mimicked all these speakers at the same time, or as near to simultaneous as was humanly possible, the eight conflicting voices speaking almost at the same moment, their voices overlaying in a chaos of confusion and cross emotions that somehow achieved a horrible pattern and harmony.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, they’ve shot him, they’ve shot Jack…. That’s a piece of his head back there,” the Alex and Jackie voices screamed together.
“Get down, Mrs. Kennedy! Get down!” the Alex and secret service agent yelled at her.
“My God, I’ve been hit! I’m shot… Somebody, help me over here! The Governor of Texas has been shot!” the Alex and Connally voices demanded.
“I have to get that piece of his head so the doctors can put it back on,” the Alex and Jackie voices shrieked hysterically, the latter speaker climbing over the back seat and down the trunk. “No, stop the car he needs his head… Let go of my arm, you idiot, his head’s back there!” she and Alex screamed at the driver and secret service agent.
“Get us the hell outta here!” Alex and the secret service agent yelled at the driver. “Where’s the nearest hospital!”
Suddenly the chaos of speaking in all these voices at once, of hearing all the thoughts and feeling all the disparate emotions at the same time, was too much for Alex. He snapped,
“SHUT IT OFF!!”
* * *
34. Awakening 2
The limousine disappeared, leaving Alex standing in front of the blank innocuous-looking movie screen. He buried his face in his hands, and stood like that in silence for several minutes. Uriel came down to stand close beside him, wearing a look of concern. Finally Alex raised his gaze to Uriel, his expression one of horror and dawning realization.
“Why did I know everything everyone was saying?”
“This can be explained,” Uriel answered nervously.
“And feel everything everyone was feeling?” Alex continued.
“It’s, uh…” Uriel stammered.
“They were all me! They were, weren’t they?!”
“Now don’t jump to conclusions…”
Alex looked down, licking his lips. “I was playing every single role simultaneously.”
“Well, almost simultaneously…that doesn’t usually happen.”
“Why weren’t there any other players in these roles?”
“There…just…weren’t,” Uriel admitted.
“So, I played everyone?”
“Yes.”
Alex stood there a moment, trying to take this in. He couldn’t.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he said, looking back up at Uriel. “Where was everybody else in all these roles I’ve been seeing, and playing?”
“Who do you mean?”
“Everyone! All the other souls, the beings, the spiritual entities…the dead guys, you know!? Whatever you want to call us. Those that keep playing all these life roles again and again, like you said.”
“Don’t…don’t ask this, please.”
“Why not? Where are they!”
“Just pick a role, Alex,” Uriel pleaded. “Play the game…you want to be the French whore?”
“Where - are - all - the - others?! Answer me!”
Uriel hesitated, looking very sad, very uncertain. Then he answered in a low voice, barely above a whisper. “There are no others.”
“What? What did you say?”
“I said there are no others,” Uriel repeated a little more firmly.
“No others,” Alex said. “What do you mean, ‘no others’?”
Uriel looked at him levelly. “There’s only you.”
“What?!”
“Only you,” Uriel said again.
“Me.” Alex stared at him. “What do you mean, only me?”
“There is just one being, one…eternal entity. You.”
“No.” Alex said, shaking his head.
“You,” Uriel affirmed. “You play all the roles, all the time.”
“I can’t. I won’t!” He was looking at Uriel, but he spoke as if the argument was with himself. “How can that be? It’s not possible, it goes against all natural laws. You can’t be in two places at the same time, let alone six billion—”
“Infinity…” Uriel reminded him gently.
“Fuck infinity!” Alex yelled, turning on the robed man in rage. “Two things can’t occupy the same place at the same time! Period.”
“ Remember Pi?” Uriel suggested.
“Off subject, Uriel,” Alex said, trying to compose himself, to regain self-control. “Just answer this one question: If I am the only player, how do I keep any degree of separation between the different identities I’m playing, so they don’t all just collapse into one?”
“Like almost happened with the JFK incident?” Uriel smiled gently. “To prevent that very thing, pi was invented. The number pi. Think, Alex, think back to the academy. You had an inkling of the truth even then.”
Alex thought.
* * *
35. The Pi Factor
An Air Force officer with a doctorate in astrophysics stood at a podium in the front of a small auditorium, lecturing to a full
audience of academy cadets. The portable blackboard nearby was filled with a scribble of almost indecipherable equations, today’s subject the conflicting theories of a linear versus a circular universe. In one hand he held a thin, flexible fiberglass rod which he was using to demonstrate his points.
“So, if the theories of a closed universe prevail, then—in contrast to a linear plane of infinite distance—”
He held the rod in front of him in one hand, running his other hand along it from one end to the other to illustrate the concept of a linear plane.
“…space may be viewed instead as a curved space/time continuum…”
He bent the flexible rod into a circle as he said this, fastening its ends together with a plastic clasp.