2150 A.D. Page 2

  Lea addressed my amazement explaining that their universal garment was, in fact, quite colorless until it entered someone's life field. This, she added, was the electrical pattern unique to each individual which emanates from the physical body he is inhabiting at the time. The tunic acts like a million tiny lenses reflecting and magnifying the colors of that personality's life field or aura.

  She went on to explain that there are ten basic predominant colors reflected by the tunics, and that these colors correspond with the person's level of awareness at the time.

  The basic grayness reflected by my tunic indicated the beginning level of Macro awareness.

  Before I could ask any of the hundred questions that whirled through my mind, she told me that C.I. would answer any and all of my questions and that we'd best get going, since my time was limited.

  C.I. occupied the top six floors of this huge building. We entered what appeared to be a shaft of light about four feet in diameter, which Lea called a void. A slight jump took us from the first to the twelfth floor almost instantly. I could see, though, that it would take me a while to adapt to this unusual means of transport.

  C.I. contained a thousand soundproof rooms ten feet square, each of which was equipped for what appeared to be a full wall video tape presentation on any subject one cared to ask about.

  We sat in large comfortable chairs that automatically adjusted themselves to our bodies.

  Lea touched a small white circle on the arm of her chair, and a pleasant female voice said, "Central Information. May I help you?"

  "What are the dimensions of the Delta 927 Lake?" Lea inquired.

  A large map of the lake appeared on the wall and we were told that the lake of Delta 927 was approximately eight kilometers long, five kilometers wide, and had an average depth of ten meters.

  Lea, sensing my mental calculations, asked for equivalents in miles and yards. Gaining this, she said, "I must leave you now."

  "Leave?" I asked, and came to my feet, totally unable to believe what I had heard.

  "Yes, Jon. I have to go now," she replied calmly.

  I was beside her in an instant.

  "I'll go with you."

  "No, that's not possible, Jon. It's extremely important that you stay right here with C.I. and learn as much as you can, as fast as you can. C.I. can help you do that much better than I."

  "When will you be back, then?" I asked.

  "I won't be back, Jon."

  "What do you mean? You can't just get up and go when we've only just met. I'll come with you," I insisted.

  "As much as I'd like that, it's neither practical nor possible," was her reply.

  "I don't understand, Lea. Why can't I go with you?"

  "It's critically important that you stay here and grow as fast as you can. My presence would be a distraction, and we can't afford that risk.

  "Let me try to explain, Jon, but I must be very brief and you must wait for further details until our next meeting, should there be one."

  "What do you mean, 'should there be one'?" I interrupted.

  "Please, Jon, trust me. Believe me when I say that we must use our time as best we can. I want to stay with you as much as you want me to stay, but that's not at all practical.

  "I don't know whether I will see you again, or, if so, when. We will attempt another time translation, but we don't know whether it will succeed or not. So you can see that there is no way for me to tell you whether or not we will meet here again.

  "This I do know, that the more time you spend talking with me, the less time you will have with C.I., and the less chance we will have of completing another successful time translation," Lea explained hurriedly.

  "How can you be so calm about it?" I said. "How can you just say goodbye and walk away knowing we may never meet again?"

  "We are together always, Jon. I am never far from you. Your dreams of me are real-a valid reality-not just fantasy or wish fulfillment. Believe me, Jon, I am always with you. True, I miss your touch, your voice, the joys shared on a physical level, but they will be there, if not in this lifetime, in another," she added. "What is, is perfect for its time and place. Accept that joyously, Jon, and enjoy growing your way toward what you desire."

  "But I don't," I began.

  She put her finger to her lips to quiet me.

  "When you fall asleep here, your other body, back in 1976, will awaken, hopefully remembering everything you've experienced here in 2150 and believing in its reality-its validity."

  "But Lea-"

  "Please, Jon. Just ask C.I. We must make every minute count if we're to have even a chance of seeing one another again in this 'time'," she said quickly.

  Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment, as her incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy, acceptance, and peace.

  "'Bye for now," she said warmly, almost to herself, and left me alone with C.I.

  Forcing myself to trust, believe, and act on what she had said, I began asking questions, but each question seemed to lead to another. I became fascinated with this magnificent learning technique.

  To be able to both see and hear the answers to my inquiries was a tremendous advantage I. compared it to my usual 1976 research procedures. I remembered the long waits in the library for materials from the stacks, the frustration at being told that pertinent volumes were already checked out by someone else or were never available in the first place. And there were the seemingly endless hours of reading through tomes of academically contrived chaff sifting out the wheat to be found floating there on seas of pedantic verbosity.

  For the next three hours I sat spellbound, soaking up information about 2150, and learning more and faster than ever before in my life.

  C.I. informed me that it had an almost unlimited number of data banks filled with information on every subject man has ever experienced. When I asked how this was possible, C.I. began describing technological processes so advanced and complex that I interrupted, afraid of spending my allotted time unwisely.

  C.I. addressed my level of understanding by explaining that its own beginnings were represented by a learning device designed for use-in the '70s and called Computer Administered Instruction (C.A.I.).

  My interest intensified. I had heard of C.A.I., but I had never experienced it, so I decided to test C.I.'s ability on a subject I knew more about-myself!

  C.I. began, "You entered this lifetime on September 12, 1948, the only child of Ben and Jessica Lake. Your father was the town physician, your mother the librarian, prior to her marriage to Dr. Lake. On your first day in school you met Karl Johnson, who was to become your best friend. After the death of your mother during your second-grade experience, and the death of Karl's father two years later, not; Karl became your stepbrother the summer before you entered junior high school."

  "You tutored Karl through school, and he returned the favor by getting you out of social jams which you seemed to have a propensity for. Take the homecoming dance during your senior year, for example. Even as Most Valuable Player on your football team, which you were voted that year, you couldn't take both Jan and Valerie as your date to the same dance-and you did promise them both. Thanks to Karl, you were saved again."

  C.I. went on, "There were some things that even Karl couldn't handle, though, like Valerie's pregnancy. That was the only time your father ever cursed at you. He didn't like the idea of aborting a pregnancy, but he had a strong conviction that no one has a right to create a child that he is not both, psychologically and financially able to care for. That lesson in sexual responsibility was dearly paid for by you, by Valerie, and by your father. Fortunately, you learned it well."

  "This and other hard-earned lessons left you with a relatively effective life philosophy which helped both you and Karl throughout your college careers. Karl, if you recall, was quite a rebel. He was constantly fighting, "... the ridiculous nature of most school subjects," or "... that monumental madness called the Vietnam War." You were the calming infl
uence, reminding him that what is wrong for one person may be totally right for another. And that each person can only learn when he is ready to learn. Your position that professors are just the victims of their own psychological needs and their own limiting belief systems never fitted quite right with Karl. He always felt it was the students who are the victims."

  "After your degrees in philosophy and psychology, respectively, you and Karl were drafted and within a very few months landed in Vietnam. There you served together until that final patrol where your platoon was destroyed. Karl used the one eye he had left to find his way back through miles of jungle with you, on his back, unconscious, and minus your right leg."

  "Karl was as bitter about your injury as he was about his own, perhaps more so. You, on the other hand, felt that this was your karma and that, sad as it might be, it was necessary for your growth during that lifetime.

  "While you, too, felt that the Vietnam War was a mistake from the start, you had by that time accepted a philosophy which held that truth is subjective and that whatever a person believes is true, is true for him. This, you felt, required you to – respect the right of each individual to believe whatever he wanted to. You could not condemn him for acting on that belief even though you disagreed with it.

  "It was this very philosophy that led you to sacrifice your own leg rather than destroy another person.

  "It was also this philosophy that got you involved in the Ph.D. dissertation that you and Karl are now writing on the development of values and self-esteem in children. And it is that philosophy, which provided the first link in the time translation path to bring you here to 2150 for whatever period of time is possible. But you can talk it better than you can practice it, Jon.

  "If you're satisfied with the accuracy of our data banks, we can go on to examine other significant lifetimes. If not, we can get far more specific regarding your present life-such as-"

  "Wait a minute!" I interrupted. "I've read a little about reincarnation, but what do you mean by 'significant' other lives?"

  "Yes, we know that you're familiar with what your age calls the theory of reincarnation and what, within your concept of time, you refer to as 'past lives.' Here in 2150 it is no longer considered a theory, it's a fact, though it's based on a very limited basic assumption regarding time.

  "If you wish, we can provide you with information on as many of your 'past' lifetimes as you would like to remember. We suggest that you limit this exploration to include only significant lives, meaning those whose lessons pertain specifically to the challenges of your present life. We would like you to keep in mind, however, that all these lives are, from a broader point of view, occurring simultaneously."

  Juggling priorities, I asked about 2150's concept of time and got totally lost in the details of C.I.'s doubtless excellent, but very complex, presentation of their metric time system. So I changed the subject enough to, hopefully, bring answers to within my comprehension.

  "I don't understand how you could tell me about my present life, much less about my past ones, or, if I understood you correctly, some of my future lives," I puzzled.

  "We have obtained information about you in two ways," C.I. explained. "First, from your own subconscious mind, and secondly, from the universal mind in which is recorded everything that is happening, everything that ever has happened, and everything that ever will happen to your immortal mind. The system is very similar to that used by our C.I. data banks. Most of the data is now available to us, though we're still establishing electromolecular-what you would think of as telepathic-for some of it."

  "But how do you have access to my immortal mind?" I asked.

  "You are sitting in a chair that provides us an electromolecular connection to all your memories as well as all emental* and physical data on your body right down to the sub-atomic level. However, since one of your twin souls, Lea, has a mind structure identical to your own, everything about either of you is recorded in both your mind and hers. We have this 'telepathic' connection to the mind of every member of the Macro society. This establishes a partial connection to the macrocosm."

  *Emental: Contraction of emotional and mental.

  "That's enough," I said. "You've lost me again. I always thought there was only one twin soul for each person. And what is this Macro society you spoke of? And can you give me more on the macrocosm?" The questions pouring out of me were barely representative of the hundreds I kept within. I was so anxious to learn, so much, and I didn't know which questions to ask first.

  "We will start by presenting the basic concepts of the macrocosm," C.I. began.

  I won't try to include here everything that C.I. said during the following hours, but a few of the highlights are important and should be mentioned here.

  C.I. began by saying, "The human soul is an integral part of the perfectly balanced macrocosm. Thus, in the beginning, each human soul was part of a soul matrix which was perfectly balanced in positive and negative polarity-masculine and feminine traits. However, to experience complete devolution and microcosmic awareness, each soul matrix mentally separated itself into seemingly individual entities which, in periodic incarnations on this planet Earth, function as either male or female.

  "The entity you think of as Jon Lake, like other soul matrix entities, temporarily forgot its oneness with all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be, as well as its macrocosmic origin. However, since you completed your devolution into the microcosm and began evolving back toward awareness of your macrocosmic origin, your soul matrix entities-your twin souls-have been seeking each other."

  Trying to comprehend the fascinating things C.I. was saying, I began to sense a relieved rightness about it all. It was almost as if these words were touching some deep hidden memory within me that was now slowly beginning to emerge into consciousness.

  "Please continue," I urged. "What you say somehow feels very right to me, though I'm not sure I really understand it all."

  "You're remembering," C.I. replied. "In time you will begin to remember fragments of other lives. You dream of them often. Ever since you were born, Lea has been visiting you on the astral plane, but you didn't remember, since you had not yet learned the importance of your dreams."

  "Is that why..." I hesitated. "Is that why I woke up so many times feeling full of joy and hope for something that seemed to be there just beyond my reach?"

  "Yes," was C.I.'s reply. "It was all you could remember of your contacts on the astral plane where Lea reminded you again of your oneness and that she was working to bring you to 2150."

  C.I.'s voice was fading, though I listened intently.

  "Your time translation is our most advanced 'continuity of life' project. It has been achieved through the joint efforts of the most highly evolved minds in our galaxy, with your own budding belief in macrocosmic oneness playing a..."

  CHAPTER 2: Was It a Dream?

  I awoke fresh and alive, as though I had just come in from a brisk walk.

  My big round alarm clock read 7:41.

  Where had I been? What had I been hearing?

  A female voice seemed to echo back into my dream. Some kind of a formula... or a process. A sentence, half finished.

  Pulling my pillow over my head I tried to go back to sleep, mentally stretching back into my dream.

  Then it hit me as though I was still dreaming.

  But I wasn't!

  I could hear the pleasant voice of C.I. presenting so many new ideas that my mind was reeling under their impact.

  Then there was that girl, Lea. What clarity!

  "Clarity"? Where did that word come from? "Clarity."

  It had a nice feeling attached to it, yet it now meant something new-something it had not meant before last night's dream.

  Lea was "clear." There was no game-playing, no being what she thought I wanted her to be, no pretense, no expectations, no defenses, just a very bright, capable, honest, straightforward woman joyously experiencing and respecting herself, others, and life itself.


  Hers was not the shallow, brittle beauty of a Hollywood starlet, but a deep almost spiritual essence that seemed to radiate from her. While her physical beauty was obvious, it was the sparkling multifaceted depths of her mind which aroused and excited me with a completeness that I had never quite reached before.

  Hugging my pillow, I felt Lea warm against me and, once again, argued with myself. Why cover my bare body? Just so I wouldn't be embarrassed? Why be embarrassed? If the body is just the outer garment of the essential self.

  And there was another new term. "Essential self." It, too, meant something new; something more complex. This dream was a more interesting education than any class I'd ever attended!

  Why?

  The question brought my mind's focus from a fantasy world of the future back to the prosaic present. Mentally I moved into this new day. Physically, or was it spiritually?-some deep core of my essential self reached forward into 2150 and stayed there.

  The feeling of loss was strong in me as I sat up in-bed and strapped on my artificial limb. Karl had already left to teach his 8 a.m. Introductory Psychology class. I was glad that I had given up my teaching assistantship this semester to work full-time on our dissertation. This left my time relatively free of demands, so I could let this incredible dream drift about the edges of my mind as I pursued my day's activities.

  Was it just a dream? Just. Maybe that was the wrong word. That booklet I had scanned-a light brown booklet-said something about dreams being much more important, a reality of their own. What was it? Maybe I could find it again. Just a little booklet, "Interpret Your Dreams from a... " something or other.

  Finishing my breakfast, I cleaned up our small kitchen absorbed in conflict. Never had I experienced a dream so clear and vivid and with such an incredibly detailed story.

  Yet if I took it seriously, I might just as well forget about becoming a respected social psychologist. Anyone in my field who spoke of time travel, astral bodies, parapsychology, or other forms of intelligent life contacting us here on Earth, would be ostracized by his colleagues.