"I want you to turn around and lean back against my body, if you
don�t mind. I want to be comfortable while I make contact."
"How�s this?"
"Fine. Now let me explain what�s going to happen and that way you
won�t be startled. I�ll be surrounding the consciousness part of
your brain centre that controls abstract thoughts and image
making. It is where the souls brain resides. We have a similar
word that means the same thing. I�ll surround it and control it
by deep image telepathy, but before I can do that I must
separate the controlling area�s that handle automatic reflexes
and body functions. I don�t want you to stop breathing and
pumping blood. For just a second you�ll feel a disorientation and
a terrible separateness, almost akin to loneliness. That�s when
the soul is freed and I can take over with my mind. When I do
that, you will be me. With all my memories. I�ll be here, close,
holding you all the way. You will come to no harm. Ready?"
"Ready."
Then began the strangest journey Jamison was ever to make.
He had been looking at the woods in front of his eyes when all of
a sudden he felt a slight giddyness and then he was in a dark
world. For a second of time he swung between awareness of �I am,
and loss of �I�. Then with a scream the
�I�wandered/floated/gropped/ desparate, with only that, that was
aware of existance and nothing else to acknowledge �I� was. Then
came the �touch� of life rushing over and surrounding �I�. �I�
floated in the warmth, reassured, cradled. 'I am�, stretched
forth and grasped �I am she� and opened eyes wide to another
reality.
Phea/Jamison drifted in a time of shadows and nothingness. Then
with a might rush of movement entered her/his world of life.
She/he played games while life flowed by in a rapid stream of
time and existance. Lived in other minds that melded with
hers/his, touched the changing body with her/his hands and
delighted in it. Loved! ..What wonder! the boys mind entered and
there was a triad within. Then Jamison gave himself over to what
was. was lost in the wonder, submerged and let himself become
�Phea� at last!
"Jamison...Jamison! Wake up!"
Reality came back with a rush. 'Phea� was shaking him gently with
her hand. He sat up quickly and looked down at himself in
surprise.
"My God! What happened? I...I was a woman. Phea! Who??" He spun
around to her and then stopped dead still and let the tears
flow...
She sat and smiled back at him in glee. "Did you like my life,
dear one?"
"I feel like I want to cry until there are no tears left in me
ever again. I want to cry for my whole world. And then I want to
grieve just as hard as you are right now, because I know why you
are grinning and I want to grin with you." With deliberation he
reached out and took her in his arms and held her close,
cradling her."Oh, Gawd, Phea, I�m bursting with so much inside me
I don�t know where to begin. For the first time in my life I
think I really love myself! I know it�s just a holdover I�m
feeling of how you feel about yourself, but to live that way!
"That was more exciting than to see those other worlds. It�s just
like you tried to explain to us. Only we didn�t understand what
you were saying. How could we have thrown that away?" He
suddenly stopped and held her away from himself and there was
fear in his eyes. "Phea, will our children learn to live like
you? Will they be able to have telepathy? It would be so cruel
for them to live with you and not be able to share like you."
"Yes, it will come to them with our help. It will take time and
patience, but we have plenty of that."
"Yes, I know that now. Are you really that old?" He laughed out
loud, "I almost said,�am I,� as I still feel that I am you."
"Certainly, I wouldn�t lie to you, now would I?" and she burst
out laughing as she watched him.
"Mmmmmm, well for some reason I don�t mind...having just lived
the entire 252 years of your life with you, gone through all
five births, changed all those diapers, enjoyed all five
marriages. I�d say we had a pretty good time.Even the tragedies
were bearable when you know people are with you and care for you
and are so close to you. But there is one thing I don�t
understand about it all. I said I loved myself because I was you
for awhile. I know how you feel about yourself, because you
never had to feel ashamed about your weaknesses or alone like we
do, and I �love� you because I know you better than myself now
,but why don�t I love myself that way? Why should telepathy be
needed to love,�me�?"
"But it doesn�t my love. It never has been a factor. What is
needed is for a child to grow up with the chance to learn to love
themselves. We learn by imitating. We start to learn this way
long before we understand speach. We smile at a baby and it
smiles back. Oh, sure, it has a built in response to pain or
discomfort or hunger, but without the constant repitition of
�life experiances� it would not grow the right way at all. Here
on Earth even when a baby is given all the love and devotion it
needs it can still go wrong because when it reaches a time when
it branches out on it sown to imitate the world around it, there
are too many conflictions in its experiances.
"Let�s just take one small example; its own body. Long before he
develops a memory of time he is handled by other people. It
feels good to him because it brings comfort. Then as he gets
older he finds that he can touch and handle himself and recieve
pleasure by it. For awhile no one stops him and others might
even laugh at his �cute way�. Then, boom. All of a sudden it�s
naughty. Not nice. So he hides what he does. And by then he
begins to think he is bad. In a thousand little ways what was
once allright becomes bad. Then he learns its bad, but fun. Add
in a funny �uncle� or two and then he learns that it�s only bad
in somepeoples eyes. When that time arrives he usually has a
thousand other guilts to go along with his fallen image of
himself. Add to that the lack of truth he recieves from his
fellows and the lies he has learned to live with and you have a
cynic who can�t respond to others because he�s confused about
himself and what he really is and what he really believes about
his world.
"This lack of self love has caused him to seek love from others
and do those things that he thinks will please. But people
respond to that in a negative way the the self image is bruised
again. The result is self hatred for letting ourselves down."
"Yes, I see what you mean. We�re a sad lot, aren�t we?" Jamison
looked at her thoughtfully for awhile before asking the next
question that had been on his mind.
"Why did you come to see me Phea? Something tells me you have a
prupose that is more than just curiosity. I don�t mind anymore
if you want to use me. Whatever the reasons are, I�ll go along
with them. I know now that what you and your people are doing is
right. I also know that you stopped letting me be you before I
had a chance to find out why you came to me."
"Now that you know we are not to be feared and are really trying
to help, we want to inlist your aid in directing your people
when the time comes. You see Jamison, I know all about you. I
wanted to wait to tell you that until after I had shared my life
with you. I didn�t want you to be afraid of my telepathy. You
were before but I don�t think you are now. You see, it�s easy
for me to �read� you. I have gone back in your mind to your
birth. There are others like you all over the world. And just as
I have come to you, so have others almost like me visited, or
are visiting them.
"We will give you the gift of long life for your help. We warn
you though, this is not always an easy gift to live with. To
live on after loved ones and friends are gone can be lonely."
"Phea, there�s a lot about us on Earth that is rotten, I�ll admit
that, but we can be heroic at times. Look, I don�t claim to be
anything special, but I happen to love this green earth as much
as it�s possible to love something that is only an idea, and I
don�t need to know what you plan on using me for, before I say
yes. If it needs me to live until I am the last man on Earth, I
will do it. If it means the world will see humans living here
once more. I saw a movie years ago called,�On The Beach�, that
showed the earth silent and lonely, and I don�t think I could
bear to think of her that way if I have the power to stop it."
"We were hopeing you would feel that way. Come! Let�s walk
through these beautiful woods of yours while I tell you what you
can do to help us."
Christopher Jamison came back to the present with a start as a
cheeky blue jay darted past his face with a rush of wings
flashing blue-black in the sunlight.
He looked about with the vague air of age, trying to recall why
he was up here. Phea, that�s it...it had something to do with
�Phea� and her last words to me. What was it she had said? These
memory lapses were getting down right annoying these days, he
thought.
The air was getting chilly and still he lingered. He had a
feeling of importance about this trip up the hill but couldn�t
remember why and it worried him. He finally gave it up and
drifted back into reverie.
It took the world two years to come out of its shock and discover
where it was going to go. Two long years of riots and death and
anarchy until a man named �Sanju� began to lead the world out of
the darkness.
Under his guidance the world returned to a semblance of sanity as
he repeated words they had heard many times before but were only
now coming to understand; "Life can only be lived one day at a
time, one hour at a time, NOW was all there was of life so make
it have value." He showed us that nothing we had valued in the
past was lost, not a thing in the future taken away, for we
never owned the future. He reminded us again that we could still
strive for the future, only now we could be sure of it if we
would only trust the people of the �Inner Circle�. Didn�t we have
the tela-plates to watch? Couldn�t we see for ourselves that the
children were thriving as never before out there on those other
planets? Weren�t they still our children? Then why wast our time
and energy? Why not leave an inheritance worthy of the name?
It was decided to make no rash decisions for 10 years while the
entire world had a chance to submit ideas as to the form this
would take.
The final choice was one that appealed to most of the people. It
was a simple one really. Return the world to its original
condition as much as possible. As the population declined, move
the poor into better housing left by the gap, and slowly but
steadily destroy the slums and put them back to grass and trees.
Leave only the best the world had to offer.
One of the first programs that was offered free of charge to
every woman on earth was sterilization and free birth control or
abortions. A great many women still had babies in the hopes that
they would be allowed to keep them somehow. It only ended in
tragedy for all concerned when they dissappeared like the rest.
In fifteen years the project was well under way and helped to
take the strain of waiting from the people. The youngest human
alive was now 20 years old and no one under that age was to be
seen. All the schools that went to grade twelve were slated to
be torn down as fast as they became obsolete. But a strange
reaction set in to this. Adults that had no future became
interested in an education. Teachers were in great demand all
over the world.
All the dreamers who had ever wanted to climb mountains, fly
kites, or explore the world, gave vent to their dreams. People
really started to enjoy life for a change; even though it was an
ironic achievement. Some jobs were hard to fill. They were the
ones that had always been demeaning; not because they were
lowly, but because they brought little personal reward. some of
the lowest jobs, like garbage collecting, became the prized
possession of those that wanted to give the most. There was a
small outbreak in several large cities over the jobs until it was
solved by people donating trucks to the ones that couldn�t get
accepted to these positions and they were allowed to collect on
their own or as back up for the others. More care was taken over
the actions of every one. If it would affect the future neatness
of the planet; forget it. All mineing, logging,construction came
to a halt. Most manufacturing came to a halt also.
It was a wild time. All the gloom that was expected didn�t
materialize. The Psychologists had a hard time explaining it, but
it was simple enough really.. Greed begets wars, wars beget
tension and tension begets a need to feel safe. Overcrowding
causes stress to nations as well as people. Take away the
propoganda machine of wars and the people can�t be fooled into a
useless war. Nobody gave a damn anymore who owned what part of
the land. The nations had gotten together early to make the
movement of people cheap and easy from one country to another so
that families got together again.
People became more interested in quality instead of quantity. Oh,
the greed was still there. The only difference was that people
were no longer envious or admired the greedy. In some cases they
even took pity on them, and in one instance in Toronto,Canada a
man who still tried to accumulate wealth was swamped when
everybody in his city decided to accomodate him and started to
cart all their coins over to his house and threw them at the
front door. For weeks people would casually stand in front of his
house tossing money at him or his front door. Wherever he went
people refused his money and gave him service or goods for free.
He finally gave it up and went bumming around the world and
then wrote a best seller about his adventures. He became quite a
celebrity.
Jamison sat with a smile on his face as he thought of all the
weird and wonderful things that took place. It had all been a
time to remember. Just the thought of it started his eyes
watering again. They were misted so bad he didn�t see Phea
walking towards him over the grass.