“Yes. Please do,” Cadence said.
“I began using this machine about twenty thousand years ago.”
In the room, Lori could hear reporters take a breath.
“Twenty thousand years?” Janet asked.
Lori nodded.
Frank, Gadin and Cory all smiled broadly.
Matias began to speak, and both Samuel and Estella told him to shut up.
“But it’s cool!”
“Shhhh!”
Cadence spoke up. “So you’re twenty thousand years old.” She nodded in thought. “Where are you from?”
“Ahleth. Another planet. On the other side of the galaxy.”
“You’re an alien from outer space?” someone in the back said.
“This is getting freaky,” another said.
“It wasn’t already?” another said.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Major Wood said, speaking up from the side. “Decorum.”
Ella spoke on the monitor. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve looked over the plans Lori has provided, and also spoken with some other notable scientists, and I have to say that this device may actually function as Lori has said. With that, it is perfectly reasonable she’s had it a long time, renewing herself, and also with that, we’d have to wonder where the technology came from, as we still don’t have it in the 21st Century—of our own invention. So we may need to consider the possibility Lori is telling us the truth, or work with it as we learn about her.”
A room full of nerds in someone’s basement all screamed in joy and raised their hands into the air.
“Bro we got it!”
“The aliens are here!”
“Aliens have been here for thousands of years?” Janet asked.
Lori nodded. “For maybe a hundred thousand years.”
The nerds slapped each other on the back, whoping.
“For what purpose?” Janet asked.
“We spread out,” Lori said. “We’re not inclined to group. In the earlier evolution of our species, we did group. Community was important. But as we became more curious about other places, we spread out. We’re actually quite isolative.”
“How many are on this planet, now?” someone behind Janet asked.
“I don’t know. Not many, I’d think. It could be four or five, probably not ten. It could be several as far as aging goes, but accidents happen, and sometimes we die.”
“They want to take over?” someone asked.
“No.” Lori shook her head. “That is not our way. It would be more like colleagues, or scientists, but not many, I’m sure.”
“I can imagine so many things?” someone asked.
Lori shook her head. “We’ve been here for a hundred thousand years—earlier groups of us. Each of us is thousands of years old. The thought process changes with age. Things like greed and violence are primal, and they fade. That is my wish for humanity, also.”
Many other people clamored to ask questions, but Major Wood slowed them down as a moderator.
“So,” Cory asked, “If you came here from another planet, are you—human?”
Lori looked at him. “Yes, completely. My former species was not human, but we were close enough. We had the same double helix, a similar overall physique, but a different appearance and physiology. I think we may have had a common ancestor—or body shape evolved for similar reasons. Cousins. But when we got to this planet, we had to use the transmuter to become fully human, and then we had to use it more to slowly adjust the brain to evolve us, if you will, into a brain that is human. It’s retained as alien, initially but after a few years, we can get it to be just human— We need to do this to interface with you, to live here, to be biologically compatible with the planet and just to interact with you. This body, I, am completely human, though not quite usual.”
“How are you unusual?” Cory asked.
“Well, I’m intersex.”
“You.” Cory said as a statement. “You’re both sexes? Male and female? How much so?”
Lori nodded, comfortably. “Completely. Ahleths are. That’s how we reproduce. Sometimes with each other, sometime with ourselves. And when my group arrived here about twelve thousand years ago, I kept the pattern.”
“Why?” someone behind Janet asked.
“Because it’s me.”
“So John knew about this?” Frank asked.
Lori nodded. “He also knew where I came from. All of it.”
“Why would you want both a penis and a vagina?” someone asked from behind Janet.
“Take it easy,” Major Wood said.
“It’s okay, Tommie,” Lori said. “It’s me. Yes, I have both, and they both work. I’m completely human. Genetically, I’m a matrix. My form is female, because I like it that way, and Yes I have both sets of genitalia, because my former species always does. It’s natural for them.”
“So,” Janet asked, “You didn’t totally go native here on Earth because you kept the intersex of Ahleth?”
“I’m totally native. Totally human, down to every gene in my body. And intersex is a natural way for many humans. It’s a worthy way to live life. What’s wrong with that?”
Janet held her hands up with a smile. “Okay.”
“Look, everyone,” Lori said, “We’re in full swing on the transmuters, trying to get them to where we can work to save people who would like to rejuvenate. We’ll work up healthy templates for those who would like to change their body into some feature they’d prefer—”
“You could save Stephen Hawking?” Frank asked.
“Yes,” Lori said. “And we will, if he would like us to. But to continue, we will get that up and running as fast as humanly possible. Yes, Ahleths have been here for a hundred thousand years, so whatever you think life on Earth is about, we’re part of it—all of us are human—so no, there is no danger from us. Some of them might be concerned about me giving away a secret, but we’ll deal with that between us. I may have to pay a fine or use a get out of jail free card. But we’ll work it out, no problem. Are there more Ahleths who might visit? I doubt it in this millennium. They’re a long way away. Few come this way. So now,” Lori said, turning to the President, “I have some questions, too, if I may?”
“Yes, please,” Cadence said.
“Am I a citizen of the United States?”
Geogina Wells, Secretary of State, walked into frame. “We need to see if you fit our laws, or make something special for you, because—hey—it’s new to us. But when did you come to this land?”
“I’ve made it my home since 1774. I was aware of the principles on which this nation was founded, and I like them. I’d been in England, before that.”
“Where did you first make your home after coming to Earth, by the way?”
“The middle east. That’s close enough. It was a different area, then.”
“I’m sure,” Gina said. “So you were in the U.S. before we were a country.”
Lori nodded.
Gina turned to Cadence. “Madam President, as such, then she is a citizen of the United States, the same as would anyoe else who had been here when the States were formed.”
“And another question if I may?” Lori asked.
“Sure,” Cadence said.
“I’ve had to fake some documents to fit in, until now, when I’ve revealed the truth about myself. If you live a long time, you have to do that, as documentation becomes required, and social turmoil would have resulted. Am I guilty of crimes?”
Harold walked into frame. “Lori, I’m Harold Trim, Director of the F.B.I. We’ve already been looking into that. We feel that in earlier days, it is possible that you may not have been understood, and that a revelation such as all this could have gotten you locked up, in a prison if not a mental hospital—because we did not understand extraterrestrials or longevity.” He shook his head. “Please let us look into it more, but on the face of it, I’d have to say no, that you should be able to get a full pardon, well considering the circumstances, and that you have
a clean slate.”
“May we continue to get to know you, Lori,” Cadence said. “But, yes, I see no problem there. An alien comes to us, tries to fit in. We need to be welcoming to you, not penal, so we will be.”
Lori let out some air.
CHAPTER
9
The bathroom monitor at the 16 cinema complex smiled at two ladies who entered the Ladies’ Room. “Good, good,” he said to them.
A man entered the Mens’ Room. “We’re good there,” he said.
A lady moved to enter the Ladies’ Room, but he stopped her. “Wait,” he said with a frown. “That one.” He pointed to the Mens’ Room six feet to the right.
“But I have to go in there,” the lady said.
The monitor shook his head. “Um-um. Females only.”
Horny Toad Calahan, otherwise known in real life as Melvil T. Hammil, bought a couple boxes of lead bullets for his .45, 500 bullets per box for reloading, and thanked the cowboy behind the counter. Everyone was dressed in old west era clothes, 1880s vintage, for the National Old West Cowboy Shooting competition—“NOWCS,” they called it.
Someone walked by on a horse.
“’Scuse me, Ma’am,” a cowboy said as he maneuvered around a well dressed lady.
Everyone at the shootin’ match was armed with either one or two six-guns in holsters; and everyone was, therefore, kindly.
“You have a nice day.” Horny said to the clerk. Horny Toad was 83, and not in the best of shape. He coughed a little and began to turn around.
“Lets go over to the saloon and sit a spell,” his old friend, “Sassy Britches,” said to him. “Come on.”
“What reloader you use?” the clerk asked him as he left.
“A Dillon 550B,” Horny said. “Got it in the garage on my bench.”
“Good machine.”
“It’ll do.” Horny coughed a little again.
“You thought about doing that rejuvenation stuff?” the clerk asked, with a look of concern on his face.
“Let the sick people have it,” he said with another light caugh.
“You not healty?” the cleark asked.
Horny touched the brim of his hat and turned.
Sassy Britches, elderly himself, took both gun cart hand trucks and leaned them back on their wheels to go. They were loaded with long guns, the box at the bottom full of ammo.
“I think it helps me to push my own,” Horny said. “It stabilizes me.”
“It’s heavy.”
“I got it,” Horny said.
They each pushed their own toward the saloon—the largest tent, inside of which were several tables and chairs.
They parked their gun carts outside the tent and went inside.
“Why don’t I go get us some drinks over there in the food court,” Sassy said.
Horny sat in a chair and shook his head. “Don’t matter,” he said.
Sassy sat beside him in the next chair. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come?” he asked.
Horny shook his head, looked at his old friend, seeming out of energy. “We’ve been coming here for, what, twenty years now, Nick?”
“And we been friends ever since grade school, Mel.”
“I had to come. It could be my last.”
“I worry about you, Mel.”
Mel shook his head and rubbed his chest a little with his right hand.
“Does it hurt?” Nick asked.
“Not so much right now.”
“I hear they got a machine up and running over in Denver, now,” Nick said.
“I don’t know.”
“That lady, Lori, ain’t chargin’ nothing much. Folks say they just put anything they want into the cup, and she does it.”
“But they’s a long line waitin’ for it, Nick, and I—”
“You are what she’s done it for, Mel. You’re sick. You get to the head of the line.”
“Other people—”
“I ain’t gonna stand for this, Mel,” Nick told him firmly, with a tear forming in his eye. “Ever since my wife died—” he said. “Two years ago. Family’s gone. They don’t care ‘bout me since their mother took ‘em away, must ‘a been forty years, now. Ol’ Dick Beck passed eight years ago, you know. And he was my only other friend. You’re all I got left, and I ain’t gonna have it, you hear?”
Nick shed a tear while he stared his old friend in the face. “I’m tired of people dying on me.”
Mel looked at him seriously.
Nick stood. “That does it. If you won’t do it, I will. And you can’t stop me ‘cause you’re too weak.”
“What?” Mel asked.
Nick grabbed his old friend by the collar and lifted him out of his seat onto his feet.
“Nick!”
“Sorrento?” Nick said to one of the gals in the office. “Mel’s not doing so hot. Will you take care of our gun carts over there? We got business.”
CHAPTER
10
Windows in the office building blew, scattering debris over neighboring buildings of the Damascus cityscape.
“Now Go!” the leader shouted. “Go, go, go!”
Armed insurgents stormed what was left of the building to get closer to the transmuter inside.
“Here it is!” a soldier yelled. “Over here!”
“Rig it!” the leader shouted.
When the small, live-feed video camera was set up, he stood in view, the transmuter clearly behind him.
“Get this, every one of you,” he said in English. “Only God can make people. When we die, we go to Heaven with God and live in His arms for eternity. You want us to stop having children? Overpopulation? God has shown us how it should be. If we have no more children, we stop other souls from joining God! This,” he indicated the transmuter, “is an abomination, and we will destroy every last one of them.”
The terrorist ran out of frame.
The explosion cut the feed.
An army in a distant city square machinegunned a large crowd of people, killing many of them, forcing them back.
President Cadence Helmsley presented before the United Nations. “…so natural resources are at a premium. Transmuters are working, and to date over a million lives have been saved because of them. With these people continuing to live, with billions more on the way, how will we survive?
“In consultation with many of you here and leaders around the world, there is a way. It’s an adjustment. It will take some work. But if we can think, if we can plan ahead, if we can use restraint, it can be done.
“The plan is this.” Cadence paused for effect. “If the earth’s population as a whole rejuvenates, uses one of the transmuters, then we, as a population, will be living longer. How long? We don’t know, yet, but barring accidents or outright killing, maybe very much longer.
“And if most people are not dying any more, there could be a serious problem in our ability to find water, energy, to grow food. If we continue to have children—for the moment—at the rate we have been, we will go through those in very short order, polute the planet, and turn our home into a place unliveable.
“However, in living longer, using natural resources longer is not the only result. We also get to school longer, retain great thinkers among us longer, learn better ways as a society to organize and plan, and mature into more centuries than we could have ever imagined before.
“I believe it is through this evolution, that we will solve our problems. Projects that before would have seemed out of reach, become doable over a longer span of time. We can learn to grow as a species, learn our way past greed and violence.
“The way it is, now, even one of the brighter students among us goes to university to learn a field. They get an advanced degree in their field—and usually the brightest innovations are made when they are younger, I’m told because the brain is more agile, and as their age becomes adavnced, they may be less likely to innovate because the brain is less agile. But the way it can become, if the young scientist is interested, he o
r she can learn three or four fields and study them longer. The brightest innovators? The Einsteins among us? The Stephen Hawkings? The Kip Thornes? Richard Feynmans? Think of the ideas they may have if given a chance at a much longer period of time to study, a much longer period of time in which the brain is ‘tweaked,’ as Lori puts it, kept agile, as the years past.
“What would Einstein or Newton have developed if we had not lost them? How would Galileo have changed our future if he’d been given many more chances? Could we develop ‘replicators’ like they use on Star Trek, so food and material could be produced without the kinds of resources on which we currently depend? Why not? It’s related to the processes used by the transmuters. We’re reverse-engineering them, learning. Could we develop other places for our species to live? Space stations, Lagrange points, the Moon, Mars? Titan? Europa? We don’t’ know how to do all that, yet, or not as efficiently as we’d like, but what would Einstein do with it over time? Or Hawking?
“And then, when we learn how to spread our wings into the solar system, we—the same ‘we,’ us, you and I—can again consider again the idea of having children, when we have somewhere for them to grow, when resources are not a problem.
“I believe it is with this that we will find solutions to our problems. By retaining our genius. Through education, appreciation of creative thought.
“I’m here, today, asking you if this seems to be a vision you would embrace.
“In a life that is centuries long, or hopefully millennia, is it unreasonable that we learn to go through a time of a hundred years without creating children—just a while—until we can care for them.”
CHAPTER
11
The huge west exhibit hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center was chaotic with people shouting, raising banners, and screaming their views.
Camera crews were placed in the corners, videoing everything.
Police were there, but Major Wood and his team, Lori’s personal “body squad,” as she called them, kept the peace within a hundred feet of Lori, with some semblance of decorum. He scanned his crew who stood at the corners of his area. All were paying attention. He had more to call on, just out of sight.