Chapter 14

DREAMS MADE OF LEGENDS

"As I sat together with Zeena and her parent Elders, we discussed many things. It was indeed a strange situation. You could say that my presence in the home of these people was an experiment on their behalf. But the experimenter was also observing those who would propose to do the experimenting!

"These observation I made while in their company may be worthy of your attention:

1) The entity known to me as Zeena was as much as a mystery to her parent Elders as she was to me. This new breed was exhibiting emotions on a scale never before encounter by these people.

2) Zeena herself, up until that time, was no more aware than her parents of where these emotions might lead her. In effect, she was navigating uncharted waters.

3) It seemed to me that these amazing beings (the Elders) were almost looking to me for advice on how to deal with this little-understood phenomenon.

"That last statement may not sound so dramatic, but these were super-intelligent beings.... Even Zeena’s intelligence level was far higher than my own.....

"....Our discussions were not always so serious, however, and because of this I cannot confirm the importance or accuracy of this next piece of information. Just like us, these people are not without their legends and time-honored stories. One such legend was both startling and disturbingly coincidental to me, but before I relate it to you it would be best if I explained why it had such an effect on me.

"Around the age of ten I had a repetitive dream, not too dissimilar in content and presentation to the legend I’m about to relate. But for some reason, the location - my family home in Papakura, a small town to the south of Auckland City - seemed to be the key.

I cannot remember having the dream but there....

"....Although twenty-five years have passed since I last had this dream, it is still clear in my mind. I would now like to share it with you and, after that, compare it with a most interesting legend of Zeena’s people.

The dream. . .

"Our airborne survey craft slid silently and smoothly over the jungle below. The succulent green overlay of tropical rainforest was beginning to look as if it was not going to provide us with any area large enough to land in, let alone set up our seismic and geothermal gear. From a height of 1,000 meters (3,000 feet), the heavy cloud cover was not exactly a help, either.

"Arriving in the humid tropical afternoon, we knew it would be this way: hot and wet - conditions not on the top of our must-experience list. There were even doubts as to why we were surveying this area at all, as it was not compatible with our biological systems. The silence on board was so intense as to be almost pervasive. Now that we were here, we would do what had been asked of us as quickly as possible and then leave. The craft was thermionically insulated, but some of us would have to spend time on the surface and we were not looking forward to it!

"This was the first time on this visit that we had ventured any great distance from our base camp far to the south. It was situated in an area with cooler climate, chosen because it was more in keeping with the native conditions of our upbringing.

"The valley to be surveyed run roughly in a north-south direction, with a range of highly active and somewhat intimidating volcanoes to the west - far too close for comfort as far as this survey party was concerned. To the east, some low hill country ran on down to the sea, which was some distance off and out of sight to us from our current position.

"We’ll have to launch the scout craft and get down a little closer to the surface to find an area, or we shall be here ’till next sunrise," was the thought from the flight deck.
"I’ll go and load it up, then," I can clearly recall replying.

"As I was loading the seismic gear into the tight confines of the surface interface or scout vehicle, for some reason I looked up and caught my own reflection in the highly polished night-landing light reflector. What I saw gave me a start! How could that be me? What was going on here? All that was around me appeared familiar, but the face and body in that reflector were not!

"For one, my entire body, even the face, was a light blue-grey, and the whole affair was rather frail-looking as well. I looked down at my hands, and as if seeing them for the first time I stood up and held them out in front of me. The three fingers and thumb on each hand were long and delicate and had no nails. I looked up at the reflector. The two eyes that looked back were a deep, dark blue, set about halfway down the hairless head, which looked oversized to what I felt should have been there. I reached up and touched that head. Was it really mine? Yes, I could feel it - and then the moment was gone! I was loading the rest of the equipment as if nothing had never been amiss.

"It was decided that just three of us would descend, as we needed no more than that to set up the equipment. There was no need to risk others on the ground with volcanic eruptions imminent. As I was in charge of the equipment, that meant that only two from the flight deck would be required to accompany me. It was decided that only males would be considered, even though the best geologist on board was female. We had too few females with us on this trip and we were not about to put any of them at risk. Most of the on-site information would be fed back on board anyhow, so we should be able to analyze it almost immediately. If there was going to be any danger to the ground party, there would be almost no delay in relaying the information back to us. We would not need any encouragement to clear the area.

"As we exited the mother ship we could see her silhouetted against the now clearing sky, her silver-blue bulk shimmering as she reflected the sun’s rays. The huge pyramidal shape was familiar and reassuring to us as we descended to a height just above the tree tops. Evening was not too far away, and the shadows in the trees below made it difficult to find a suitable place to land.

"Looks a little better over there to the right. If we give those volcanoes as much room as we can, I’ll feel better about it," came the thoughts from in front of me.
"No arguments here," I replied.
"Look! See that?. . . It’s gone . . ."
"What was that?. . .Did you see it?" came the questions from up front. I had two faces staring at me in wonder.
"Don’t worry," I replied, "the monitor will have picked it up. I’ll replay when we’re down."

"Everyone’s thoughts merged as all eyes were diverted to the viewing ports. We’d been here before, but there was always a surprise or two on planets that were still in their basic evolutionary infancy.

"I thought all the really big stuff was extinct. . . ," I commented, waiting for someone to convince me this was so.
"Some space right below us now. Not very much but it should be sufficient," came the thoughts from up front again.
"You both realize that it will be dark by the time we get all this equipment laid out," I added.

"This statement was followed by an uneasy silence.

"As you have not lived in my dream before, it is best I give you some background to it. This information seems to come with the dream, even though I do not know quite how I learnt of it.

"This planet we were researching for future colonization and seeding was average in most respects, but larger than we’d prefer to have been working on. It was about four billion years old - just settling down, as it were. It was the second planet out from its sun and nicely situated as far as climate goes - if you don’t mind to be cooked alive!

"We, as such, had originally come from the fourth planet of this same system - a planet we called Khyber which had formed and matured many millions of years earlier than this planet we were now on. But that fourth planet no longer exists: it was lost to us many millennia ago. Only a precious few of us made it off in time, and some who did ended up on what was the third planet of our system at that time. This planet you will know by the name Mars. In fact Mars was known to ’us’ from then on as Mirdi Khyber ("mirdi" meaning "second"), our second home.

"However, it was always only a temporary solution. The destruction of our original planet also severely damaged the atmosphere of Mars, but at the time our technology was not so great and we could not risk travelling further than the red planet. To have made it even that far was considered a miracle then. After the passing of much time, we developed our technology to such an extent that we now travel the galaxy and beyond.

"Mars was already a dead planet as far as surface life was concerned, and had been for many years, although there were still a few of our kind trying to eke out an existence there in underground bases. We went on to colonize a few other planets, but this system was still home to us. We had been waiting for this second planet, known to you as Earth, to settle and cool. Colonization had been tried here in the past but it was destroyed several times due to the over-eagerness of settlers and the instability of the crust. Things were now looking a little more encouraging. This time frame would be of an age known to you as approximately two million years B.C.

"Seeding was also our intention. By this I mean that we would genetically modify an existing species to perform tasks for us like manual labour, with the idea that eventually they would colonize the planet in their own right. There were a few candidates for that task on this planet and some work had already been done on these entities by those earlier, unsuccessful colonists. Our task at that moment, however, was only to find sites for possible future re-colonization.

Back to the dream itself . . .

"The scout craft landed vertically in an area on the eastern side of the valley, approximately 10 kilometers (seven miles) distant from the line of active volcanoes.

"Within an hour we had set all the instruments in place. At ground level it was now dark. We used lasers to clear the area but had set them to cut only the light vegetation, leaving the trees in place. No one saw or heard anything out of place during this time. To protect the instruments from accidental damage by wandering native livestock, and for our own peace of mind, we had set up laser intercept lines around the external perimeter of our camp. These lasers were not set on such low cutting levels! We were there for the night, so were taking no chances.

"Protecting ourselves from the dangers of geothermal activity was not quite as easy, however, as the ground was rocked by minor tremors almost constantly. Despite our choosing this unstable valley for our survey, it was as stable an area as any on the planet. It was also rich in the mineral deposits that the new colonists would need in the future.

"For your reference, the area of land I am describing to you is that which used to lie to the north of what is now known as Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados and Martinique. At that time this area was part of one large land mass. A little further to the south there was a large inland sea or lake.

"It was always about now that I would awaken from this dream, as if the next portion was best not remembered. I can even recall trying to write about it many years ago, but it had no context; perhaps it still does not.

"Always, though, it has been the same green, steamy rainforest with me looking up at the canopy of trees and succulent tropical plants, knowing that this was Earth in some other time frame; but I was never able to remember what came next.

"Did I die back then due to some catastrophe of nature? Is that why I am here on Earth now - to complete my life cycle on this planet? Who could know?

"You may tell me this is only typical of any ten-year-old dream-world, but why should a dream last for fourteen years without changing? And why did I have this recurring dream only at the one address?

"Before comparing my dream to the Haven legend, I shall digress briefly to relate something that happened to me at about the same time this dream became such a large part of my life. I should say they must be related, but is everything ever that certain in our lives?

"This other event is even more bizarre and makes the dream pale into insignificance, for it happened in the physical world and in real time. It involved my taking a trip to hospital due to suspected appendicitis, which was confirmed us such after my arrival was confirmed. I was made ready for an operation, but while I was waiting in the ward I was visited by the strangest of apparitions.

"The apparition was of a small girl, not more than a meter tall. She appeared pale, almost transparent, and looked thin and sickly. I did not doubt for one moment that she needed to be in hospital. She had the most unusual eyes, however, that were quite large for her size, but the most striking thing about them was their colour. Until very recently I had never seen their like before. They were blue, but not blue; in fact, they were much deeper than that. With the advantage of hindsight, I would now say they were violet. I could not be mistaken on this account as she moved right up to me and touched my stomach. As she did this, she looked right into my eyes as if to understand my pain. In a blink she was gone - and so was that pain!

"I never had the operation that day. You might say I’m still waiting to have it! I do not know if this kind of miracle cure happens often with appendicitis cases, and nothing was ever said about it again at home, from what I can remember, so perhaps it does. I’d forgotten about it until I began putting all this together a few years ago.

"That is not the only unusual thing I can remember about childhood and sickness, though. All my cousins had the usual run-ins with viruses, mumps, chickenpox, measles and so on, and as was customary at the time I was dumped in to get it over and done with. It was expected that all children would catch these bugs sooner or later - sooner being better than later, I believe. Just to be different, I caught none of them....!

The legend . . .

"According to my hosts, their history spans many millions of years. However, as I already suggested, having studied some of their records, there is a span time of unknown length in which some details are missing.

"A very interesting legend has grown up around the fragments of historical fact that these people do have of that missing time period. This legend reaches across the vastness of space and touches our own history on this planet Earth....

"....Strangely enough, their original planet went by the name of Khyber, but it was originally the fourth planet from our Sun. This was before the arrival of Venus into our system. Khyber orbited in a slightly elliptical manner outside the orbit of the Planet Mars. It was predominantly a watery planet, smaller than but not unlike the Earth in most respects. The water was mostly frozen, as Khyber was much further from our Sun than the Earth. In its elliptical orbit, in some stages it would get almost as close to the Sun as Mars - and we must remember that the Sun was just a little hotter in those early days.

"The land masses along the equatorial regions at these times of the year were quite conducive to life as we would recognize it. At other times, these same life-forms that had been seeded upon this planet would simply go underground. Some hibernated, while others used the planet’s natural resources, such as thermal heat, to keep themselves warm. After a while, some of this life-forms hardly ever came to the surface; there was no need to, as they had constructed huge underground bases with all the comforts of home. Because of this, too distinct races eventually emerged. Both were intelligent but had very little to do with each other.

"The surface race, if you could call them that, preferred to live the simple life. Even though they were very intelligent by Earth standards they shunned technology altogether, opting to live in complete harmony with Nature. It you didn’t know where to look for them, you would think they would not exist at all. They were so attuned to nature that they developed what we would call psychic abilities. Their outward appearance would be considered primitive by Earth standards, in that they had a somewhat hairy or furry outer cover to protect themselves from the cold.

"The other race was almost the complete opposite. These beings, too, were highly intelligent but they were also technologically advanced - a necessity due to their living underground. They became a race smaller in stature and more delicate than the surface-dwellers, and after aeons of time they ended up with no body hair at all.

"If you saw the two races together, you wouldn’t think for one moment that they were direct relatives. The only really obvious common traits were that they both had two arms, two legs, and a head. Yes, just like us!

"It was the more inquisitive, subterranean group that discovered space travel, but this was when everything started to become undone for them. Their first step in space exploration was to one of Khyber’s moons, and in due course they visited all three moons. They later turn the moons into ’space stations’, with the intention of using at least one of them at some future date as a vessel to colonize the far-distant stars.

At about this time, they were conducting experiments on the planet itself to do with travel of a slightly different nature: dimensional travel.

"Somewhere along the way, something went terribly wrong with experiments and the planet Khyber was totally destroyed.

"However, the subterranean group which caused this catastrophe did have warning of what was about to happen - enough time to launch a ship to one of their moons before the planet was lost to them. On this ship they took with them a group of the hairy surface-dwellers and several other life-forms that lived beneath Khyber’s abundant but cold waters.

"The subterranean beings acknowledged their responsibility to the other life-forms of their planet and tried their best to save as many as they could (perhaps in a scenario that somewhat parallels our own story of Noah’s Ark!)

"On arrival at the moon or moon station, they hastily finished converting it into a spacecraft. They then used this most unusual vehicle to travel the relatively short distance to their nearest neighbor, the planet Mars. And so it was that Mars inherited a second moon.

"At this time in our solar system’s history, Mars had an atmosphere and water, but the destruction of the planet Khyber and the subsequent after-effects were to spell the end of the Martian atmosphere. This was a gradual process taking many thousands of years, but eventually, as we all now know, much of that atmosphere was lost. However, even to this day, a large volume of the red planet’s water remains frozen beneath the surface, waiting to be used!

"In the ensuing period, both humanoid groups lived side by side on the planet, while the aquatic types lived in the Martian seas. However, these entities knew they would have to find a more permanent home sooner or later. There was one obvious choice: planet Earth and its Moon!

"The hairy and aquatic beings were given the chance to settle Earth first as they were more suited to the prevailing conditions.

"The smaller, subterranean entities used the Earth’s Moon as their home base. Over time, they improved their space technology enough to be able to go wherever they chose. A small group of them remained on Mars but was forced to live underground. This was not really a hardship for them, as it was the way of their ancestors. This small group, I understand, is still living on Mars!

"Eventually one of the subterranean splinter groups returned to settle on Earth (my recurring dream?). At first, these beings chose the colder areas of this planet - the north and south polar regions, where they still have underground or underwater bases today! But they were also using other areas (as they still are), much to the consternation of some regimes that would call themselves the unelected leaders of planet Earth.

"As I listened to this fascinating legend - and remember, at this time it was only a legend - I felt like butting in with some small additions from my own dream.

"How could that dream of mine fit so well into a story I had never heard before? The universe is truly a mysterious place. . .

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Chapter 15

AN ALIEN AMONG FRIENDS

"My first introduction to one of Zeena’s closest friends was to one who went by the name Mahirishi....

"....Mahirishi, also female, was slightly shorter than Zeena, as they all seemed to be, but only by an inch or so....

"....Mahirishi worked for the recently formed hydroponics laboratories (as close as I can describe it) which was created as a contingency plan in case solid food became necessary for their experimental offspring in the various breeding programs underway.

"....it was interesting to hear what Mahirishi felt about Zeena’s volunteering for the above program....

"I am sure Zeena has calculated everything out very carefully. She always does," ...."I only wish I had the same courage," she added. "I should really be on it, too. I probably will, once we see how Zeena gets on."

"Her second friend was male, although, once again, shorter than Zeena. He was of more help as he worked on a portion of the breeding program.... When Zeena was otherwise engaged, I spent every spare moment pumping him for information on the project. Even though he was hesitant at first, when I explained I could possibly be introduced into some part of the experiment he did give me some reassurance: my part would involve no risk at all.... He did admit though that they were running out of ideas to speed up the development of a stronger race.

"He (it’s "he" because I can’t remember his name) seemed a nervous enough sort, anyhow, always twiddling his long fingers or playing with his liquid dispenser. He kept looking around the room as if trying to find someone. His long neck rather reminded me of a giraffe trying to look over a high fence at the zoo. His head seemed a little bigger in proportion than most, anyway, I wondered to myself if he had problems holding it up! I had to be very careful that none of these thoughts slipped out as I conversed with him....

"I was amazed at how nonchalant the crowded entertainment area was about having an alien, namely me, in their midst.... Their contact with the likes of Millie must have made me old news.

"....some very curious to know, of all things, how we managed to tolerate such short day/night periods on Earth. And with our having to sleep a third of it away as well, they seemed to be of the opinion we wouldn’t have time to get anything done!...

"Others could not comprehend the enormous population growth on our planet. I explained that the country I came from on Earth was sparsely populated by world standards. This seemed to make them even more confused. I had to confess I had no answers. I’m sure I could see their estimation of Earthlings fall by the minute, and who could blame them?

"I pumped Mahirishi as much as I could for information about Zeena....

"....Their bigger immediate concern was that no one was sure how long the new breed, like Mahirishi and Zeena, would live.... There was concern that any quickening of development, such as in the direction they were presently going, could severely reduce their life expectancy, not to mention their mental powers.... This is what was holding back development at this point. Only now did they realize that any more delay could spell the extinction of their race.

"Zeena had always been near the top of her classes.

"You should have seen her," said Mahirishi, "arguing with her tutors, never accepting anything unless they could prove it right in front of her. Then she would spend the rest of her spare time trying to come up with another better way of doing something, just to annoy them."

"Sounds familiar, I thought to myself.

"As Zeena progressed through her schooling and continued to outstrip the other students around her, she was carving an inevitable path toward her involvement in the Earth relocation plans. Even though all major decisions were, and still are, made by the Elders, it was obvious they themselves would never be able to settle on Earth and would have to make way for the new generation that existed, or would exist in the near future.

"Zeena’s first and only trip to Earth had occurred approximately one year before this adventure of mine. This second trip had been to test her abilities aboard ship; at exactly what, I was not told.

"....Eventually her friends left, and we were alone with Jarze and Theurus. A rather enjoyable chat ensued - the first time I had been with them without something else going on, if you could call a mind-link transference a chat. For all their imposing appearance and intelligence, they were easy to get on with, asking me details of my life on Earth and events leading up to my appearance in the transporter - details that up until then I had not even discussed with Zeena....

"....They were indeed a gentle and understanding race. I couldn’t help but feel that the Earth would be a better place for having them, even without the wealth of technical information they would bring.

"Every moment I spent with these people was weakening my desire to return home....

"....We talked on through the night. Zeena and I were planning to leave on our coastal trip at first light so as not to waste any of our last half-day together....

"....Zeena and I decided to push off in her boat, and sit and contemplate our fate as the sun slowly rose above the lazy-looking Haven sea.... I only hoped that by the time Haven’s sun finally did its thing, Zeena’s people, perhaps just the next generation of them, would be far away on Earth or some other planet they might yet find.

"In spite of these thoughts, it was pleasant sitting out on the water, listening to the gentle clink of the wavelets on the side of the boat as a soft, warm breeze started to ruffle the water around us. We were only a hundred meters or so from the shoreline but it may as well have been a nautical mile as we both sat back with our own thoughts....

"....Better get started," Zeena said, breaking the silence, "if we are going to get any distance down the coast this morning...."

"I would have been quite happy to stay out there all day....

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Chapter 16

LAST MEMORIES

"....The car was set on automatic mode. Evidently these vehicles are not meant to be used on the manual setting, but that didn’t stop us the day before. Zeena had let me have a go, knowing my love for fast cars.

"How does it compare to your Earth machines?" she asked.
"Do you know of one of our expressions, ’chalk and cheese?" I asked in return.
"Yes," she replied.
"Well, we drive a lot of chalk back home," I suggested.

"We both laughed.

"....The sea brought back memories of when she, Mahirishi and another friend, Myron, had set themselves the task of traversing an arm of their local sea - a distance of approximately 1,000 nautical miles to the nearest land, save for a few small islands. This was to be done without the help of any external power source, and with their mind-power alone.

"The idea ran into trouble almost before they started, when Mahirishi discovered after just half a day’s travel that she was prone to seasickness (they had allowed five days for the trip). Secondly, the boat started to leak, and in their over exuberant attempts to repair it they made it worse. Such is the nature of plastic boats.

"This rather interesting adventure took place when Zeena was fifteen years old.... Like all teenagers, they knew everything and had all angles covered - or so they thought!

"They spent the first night trying to stop the boat from sinking, with Mahirishi trying to stop herself from feeling she was going to die. They eventually made it to a small island but were determined not to ask for help, as both sets of parents had told them not to go....

(I hope one day you will get to read Zeena’s whole hilarious adventure from Alec’s book, and find out how the crossing of the sea went!)..

"....As we left the developed areas behind, the coastline became more natural in appearance. I asked Zeena to stop at the first beach we came to, as, apart from the desert, I had not seen anything else on the planet that was not artificial or ’man-made.’ I was eager to explore. We duly stopped and got out onto a grass verge. The grass, or the like, ran down to the beach line.... The coastline itself was very rocky, but on the beach there was sand, brown in colour, very fine, and nice to walk on. We sat on it after a short time of my poking around just up from the water’s edge. It was great just to seat there. We didn’t have to say much. The sound of the sea lapping up the beach soothed the two of us, I am sure.

"....I knew we both felt a little sad. It rather reminded me of school holidays long ago, when, for all the fun that was to be had, the last day or two always lost its gloss because you knew it would end soon. I wasn’t too sure, but I thought I caught site of a tear in Zeena’s eye. I know there was one on mine as I looked off in another direction.... We were as different as that chalk and cheese metaphor I had used a few miles before....

"....That’s an interesting peninsula just up ahead," I said. "Do we have time to take a closer look?"

"...."I should think so," Zeena replied....

"....We left the beach and walked back to the car.

"It did not take us long to reach the peninsula....
"I had acclimatized to the Haven gravity, but it was still difficult for me to downgrade some of may movements... I could almost have jumped to the top of the rock-face, but held back just in case Zeena needed a hand. She was more precious to me than gold.

"Speaking of gold, it looked like that was what I had found.... Zeena set me straight.
"It is iron sulphide which has been crystallized. That makes it look like gold. No need to pick at it, Alec; I have some at home that you may have."

’These crystals were the two I later found in my car after the long drive home - the only things I know about that came home with me.

"I continued my exploration of the stream itself, right to the point where it exited the plateau in a small but exquisite waterfall.... Some of the more sheltered side-shoots of the stream still had ice in them, so this gives an idea just how cold it got at night.

"Our time was up, and we had to rush to get back to the city for our appointments, for there were still a few small tests we both had to undergo. I would be leaving that night and needed to report in several hours before hand.

"Zeena had earlier told me that, as with all newborn experimental babies, her child would be put into simulated Earth-type conditions as soon as practicable after she or he was born. It the tests were encouraging, the baby would then be transported to Earth for further tests.

"If I knew Zeena, she would not be far away and would probably insist on accompanying her child to Earth. I suggested she call in for a coffee as they passed overhead! That was worth a laugh!

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Chapter 17

THE RETURN

"Alone in my room later on, I was examining the rock samples I had collected out in the desert.... my initial cursory inspection suggested these were samples of glazed pottery, but I realized on closer examination that the samples exhibited all the characteristics of a plastic material.

"....Most rock or stone is cold to the touch, but this material had a rather warm feel to it, more in keeping with an insulator.... I thought some of the samples worth hanging onto.

"....I’m no geologist, but I’d never seen anything like it on Earth.

"As I sat in my room, I reached another conclusion, but it was not a happy one. I wondered if this material could be the residue of annihilation. Could artificial structures, made from this material, once have existed out in that desert area and been destroyed in some holocaust so catastrophic that their only remnants were the shrapnel-like pieces I had picked up out there?....

"....I remember Zeena saying that the great rift canyon was created in a monumental earthquake around the time of some of their early dimensional experiments, but I was puzzled. Had there been more to the desert trip than just sightseeing? Zeena had gone out of her way to show me this area of land but she hadn’t exactly elaborated on any major catastrophe. Was I reading something into this that she hadn’t really intended? Somehow she’d already known of my interest in rock-hounding, so had she been hoping that my interest would help me discover these catastrophic facts accidentally after she had pointed me in the right direction? But what facts were they? If annihilation had indeed occurred, what was the message? Could this be the future fate of planet Earth?.... Why had she not just come out with it?

"....I was still not entirely sure why they had singled me out from five-and-a-half billion other Earthlings. Zeena would not answer that question for me, but kept on insisting I would be capable of answering most of my own questions in due course! In any case, once I became truly involved in the complexities of the breeding program, some of those answers came blatantly obvious. My thoughts now turned in this direction.

"....Soon, my rather beautiful golden bodysuit would have to be removed and replaced with the blue version - a procedure that had be performed under controlled conditions in an underground laboratory.

"....Zeena had let it slip earlier that the gold colouring was a reflection of the fairly high gold content. I remember commenting at the time that perhaps I could take one home with me.

"Many people back on Earth believe that gold worn next to the skin is beneficial for health and well being, but I know there was much more to the Haven suits than this....

"....I have found that gold leaf not only conveniently absorbs blue and violet light, but its texture surface strongly reflects yellow and red - hence its colour. Curiously, this then leaves us with the green sector of the spectrum which is neither absorbed nor reflected....

"....This might suggest that if a suit could be designed to incorporate a thin gold compound, it would have all the necessary properties to make a great UV sunscreen, heat reflector or insulator, with possible inbuilt health benefits as well - and all this while letting in the gentler solar rays.

"The second type of bodysuit, the blue one worn on board the transporter, is an even deeper mystery to me....

"....Lapis lazuli, the stone that was held in high regard by the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, is also blue. I have seen several photographs of ancient Egyptian wall paintings that depict people who appear to be entirely blue in colour. As most Egyptian art is representative of people’s daily lives, I would consider it very unusual for the Egyptians to have drawn such figures in this colour if they had not been trying to represent something that they regarded as familiar or had seen in the past. Whatever reason these alien people had for their past interactions with Earth races, they could not have been more important than the reasons they have for interacting with us now!

"Their aims with their breeding programs were never going to be easy to achieve, complicated as they were by the lack of compatible donors from our side.... It could just as easily have been any other male from our planet to fit the bill - except the real problem was the rarity of compatible males. Evidently it did not seem to matter if a female from our planet was not entirely compatible, provided that she was ’utilized’ only the one time, curiously enough. If compatible in all aspects, she could be involved more than that one time as a foster mother. I do not know the reasons for this. The male was a different story and had to be right on every count....

"....Bruce Cathie may have unwittingly touched on this subject in his latest book, The Harmonic Conquest of Space (NEXUS Publishing, 1995). If you are at all curious about the technical aspects of harmonics, space and the Earth grid system, I recommend you read this book...

After quoting a paragraph from Bruce Cathie’s book, Alec continues:

"....Add to that the vagaries of A-negative blood, and how many are there from whom to choose? I began to see the importance of my childhood interactions, being singled out at an early age and nurtured simply because there were so few of us that they wanted to be sure we were available when needed! There was no coincidence or luck involved in my abduction, it would seem. They knew all about me, even before I was taken aboard.

"The clinical precision and long-term planning of this operation made me think they would not tolerate for long the buffoonery of the human race back home on Earth. I decided that if they did arrive on our doorstep one day, life on Earth was going to be very interesting.

"My final hours on Haven went by very quickly, and before I knew it we were on our way to the transporter terminal. Zeena had accompanied me so that we could say our last goodbyes.

"Our last trip together was indeed a somber affair.... but this time I knew there might be future opportunities for space travel, time travel or both - possibly the dream of half the population of Earth! It was a strange turn of events: I felt like I was leaving home, not returning to it.

"The act of leaving was more emotional for me than I could possibly have imagined just a few days before. Some of the happenings immediately prior to this final act on alien soil had rather taken me by surprise. Perhaps one day, when experiences such as mine are no longer considered controversial, and ridicule does not flow so readily from non-believers’ lips, I may summon the courage to tell you the complete story of my adventure.

"....I could hardly believe that just six or seven (Earth) days had passed since my involuntary induction into the Haven transporter and my meeting up with Zeena....

"....I was saying goodbye to the most important part of the adventure, standing before me standing in the guise of a four-foot-ten-inch alien. An exquisite creature in every way, there was nothing more certain than the fact that I would never again meet anyone quite like her in my lifetime....

"We had already said all there was to say, so we just stood there and let the silence say the rest. Finally, I turned and entered the building where I was to be fitted with my new blue new suit. I knew that Zeena would be watching me as I walked out onto the flat field in front of the transporter, and would keep watching until the transporter eventually disappeared from sight. My eyes were more than a little damp, but I could not bear to look back. I entered the transporter as quickly as possible so as to not be tempted.

"Now there was no turning back. I was going home.

"Once on board, the few things that I had been able to bring with me were placed in my sleeping area - not that I would use it for sleep, but it was a place I felt was my own private space. As I was making my way to this area, Zeena’s last few puzzling words were still uppermost in my mind:

"Forget the abomination you have seen here. When you get home, with all caution and commonsense, let the Sun see your eyes. In spite of what others may say, do not hide yourself from a friend."

"I am not sure whether this was the same craft I had arrived in, but it looked identical with the same arrowhead-type insignia above the entranceway. (Alec explains more about this insignia at this point in his book).

"....We did not depart immediately. However, my judgment of the passage of time had been affected throughout this interaction. I had no timepiece or even a frame of reference. In other words, they did not ring a dinner gong every few hours.

"Eventually there was a gentle bump, and the next moment we were well above the city.... We were out of the atmosphere in what seemed only a few seconds. I watched until Haven and its oversized moon were fast- disappearing dots. A few hours later, so was their sun. There was a slight surge in gravity, then it eased off.

"....Before I left Haven, Zeena had given me a severe lecture about the dangers of dehydration with this particular form of travel and had told me to have liquid at regular periods, whether I felt the need or not.

"....I was hoping I would now have the opportunity to interact with some of the crew members, if only they would communicate with me. There was still much I didn’t know about this form of travel and I was about to try to remedy that.

"....The thing I most wanted to do was to get a look at the control room, if they had such a thing. I realised this was going to be a fairly tall order unless I could get in with someone who had some clout....

"....Eventually I came across Yarvitie.... was also a hybrid, I guess; at least he was similar in appearance to Zeena. This was his fourth trip to our time sector, as he put it, and I had many questions for him. Some of the answers were complex in the extreme and there is every possibility I have misinterpreted some of the answers. Still, I feel it is an interesting field of study for us here on Earth, and worthy of including at this point rather than leaving it out just because I may have misunderstood a small portion.

"If you have made mistakes in the past, and you can time-travel, why don’t you go back and correct them?" I asked.

"That could be an even greater mistake," he replied, for then you would have no control over your ’now time."

"....You may end up in limbo, as your Earth people say. You may find your present time does not exist any more when you get back to it, or it is no longer where it should have been. You would become lost in time, as I believe some of our early travellers were," Yarvitie cautioned.

"From this I deducted that they had indeed tried to go back in time to change things.

"What is time anyway?" I asked. "Do you have the same unit of time as used on Earth?"

"We measure it in a similar way. There is a small unit of time that we use because it is a natural rhythm that can be found throughout this universe. Crystals can be made to vibrate at a rhythm, which makes it easy to measure time in this small unit. This measure of time was given to your people by friends of ours tens of thousands of your years ago. Your people used it back then, so it is not strange to you, but it was lost for some reason. You have recently rediscovered this unit of measure and, much to our amusement, you now call it your own! It is known by you as a ’second’ of time," he explained.

"A friend of mine, Zeena 5, who is one of your people, told me that you had to change your density level before you could time-travel over great distances. That seems like a lot of trouble to go to just for time travel," I suggested.

"To understand the subjects of time travel and matter transfer through space, you must first understand that nothing in this universe is solid.... Perhaps the best way for you to understand what I am saying is to imagine the universe as being constructed only of wave-forms - microscopic vibrations or small waves of energy that are too small to be seen....

"....Matter attracts matter, or, in reality, these small waves are a form of electromagnetic energy that appears to travel in thread-like lines of ribbons of force.... As matter is formed, some parts of it become more compressed than others - so you have the different elements, as you may know them, in the universe. However, if you stop and pull all these elements apart, you will find they are nothing but small energy-waves once again and have no real, solid form.

"....Our studies have shown that these waves at their inception are nothing more than a very intelligent and powerful thought. That is why your thoughts are important: they become one with the universe and make what it is....

"....So you see, it is true when they say that all things start with a thought. When you travel through time or space you are no more than travelling through a thought....

"Yarvitie continued, but with a slightly different theme.

"Time travel also made space travel instantaneous for us, and we now no longer use the old methods of gravity manipulation. It is not a good thing to play with antimatter in this way. It would be a good idea if your own people stopped playing around with it, also! We have lost many craft and personnel in the past by using it, and if you heard some of our ancient legends while you were on Haven you might have guessed there is every possibility our parent planet Khyber was destroyed by some overzealous experiments with this substance.... That is one of the main reasons we have tried so hard to achieve space travel outside of gravitational manipulation.

"....If you think about it for a moment, if you started a long trip through space and then projected yourself forward in time to the point where the trip would end, no matter how long it should have taken you could arrive there almost instantaneously if you wished it so. On the return journey you could set yourself to arrive back at your home base at whatever time you wished it to be.... For instance, if this expedition that we are on now to planet Earth took thirty of our days to complete in real time, excluding the time travel aspect, we would prefer to arrive back after those thirty days have gone by on Haven. That keeps us in synchronization with our life cycle at home - that is, we do not age at a different rate to those who remain behind in Haven...."

"The catch," he added, "is to make sure you do not arrive back before you personally have left. There are two reasons for this. There will be two of you in almost the same place at the same time, and much confusion. We have since found that one of those two people or items, if it is items that have been sent through time, will be catapulted into the past and will occupy that vortex or space that was created back there by these overlaps in future displaced time. Please do not ask me to elaborate on that, this journey is not long enough...."

"Why was it necessary to become dimensionally variant to time travel?" I asked.

"If you remain in a lower order of vibration, such as you would normally be in [he was referring to me personally], you would only find it possible to time-travel within your own lifetime - your third-dimensional lifetime, that is, which will be the only one you can perceive at this time, as I understand it.... It would be an unreal world for you - perhaps similar to the way you perceive a dream, which is one that you can access the future even now," he explained.

"Do you mean, then, that we could time-travel right now on Earth if we had the technology?" I enquired once more.
"Yes, why not, but what do you mean if you had the technology? For you surely do," Yarvitie suggested.
"....No one on Earth can time-travel. We fantasize about it a lot, but no one that I know of has done it yet," I replied, slightly puzzled.
"Well, then - how is it you say? - someone is pulling the wool over your eyes," was his answer....

"Do you communicate with other alien races?" I asked trying to find some other subject that he felt comfortable in discussing with me.
"Yes, when we feel it may be appropriate, which is not often," was his reply.
"Like who, then?" I asked....
"Well, you have some close neighbors. I believe they are interacting with you more frequently than we are," he commented.

"What do they look like and where do they come from," I asked eagerly.
"Well, from your mind’s eye you already know what they look like. [Zetas or Greys - the aliens I had read about in the magazines.] They come from, well, shall we say, not too far away - at least the ones that are presently interacting with your people."

"....How close? The Moon?" I pushed on....

"....Something like that, but no, not that Moon!" He backed off the subject, almost startled....

"Well, then, why do they come to Earth?" I asked.

"Much the same as us. They perhaps need your understanding as well as help. They have been around a long time. They are mostly a very gentle race, but they do not really understand you at all. You have changed since they were last there in numbers. In spite of that, there is every chance they may be among you openly, sooner than we will be!" was Yarvitie’s most unexpected reply.

"May I ask if there are other reasons for your most frequent visits to Earth, other than for breeding purposes?

"Yes you may. We are at the present time preparing for a major repair and correction that is to take place in your 1993. It will change a few things - all for the better, you should know. It is of our doing, long ago, that some of these repairs are necessary, it is a payback, if you like. It is for our own good, too, should we be lucky enough ever to share your planet with you," he replied.

"....A little voice inside me kept wondering why I had not asked these questions of Zeena. I was only just beginning to realize how strong her influence had been over me, now that I was free of it! Somehow I was starting to get the feeling that I was only able to ask the questions she was prepared to answer. There were some strange emotions at work here. To say I was confused would not tell half the story!

"What are the others [aliens] doing, then, apart from genetics? I asked....
"Some are also assisting with the repairs, some are doing things with your governments. There is much distrust, mostly from your side," he said.
"How do you feel about all this?" I asked.
"We try to stay distant. We do not like some of what is going on, but we must not judge."....
"What if I were to tell my people back home of all this?" I suggested.
"You may tell whom you like. Those who believe, already know. Those who will not, will not."

"There was no arguing with that logic.

"What is important to us," Yarvitie continued, "is that you know we are here and who we are. When we call on you to help us, you will know who we are and what we are trying to do. That may just make the difference in the end."

"I thought that now would be a good time to ask about a tour of the control room.

"Would it be too much to ask if I could see how you steer this thing? The transporter, I mean."
"Control centre ... hmm ..." He thought about it. " I will get back to you on that," he added....

"....I rested, rehydrated, and then searched for more people to cross-examine - not very successfully, I might add.

"I had some long talks with Millie who had been told this would be her last opportunity to see Earth for quite a number of years, so she was going to make the most of it.... We got along very well for two people who were more than a generation apart.

"Time passed and eventually I was informed that preparations were underway for my transmutation back to a lower density. I would undergo a similar course of events as had happened on my way in nine days before, but of course, in reverse order. It was a process that would speed up or slow down my metabolism; I’m not sure which. Just before this took place, I had to consume quite an amount of a very salty liquid - not the best experience of the trip.

"The total time for this transmutation process was approximately twenty-four hours. The sequence of events was explained to me beforehand, as it would not be possible to communicate with me once the suit had been removed. What this meant, in fact, was that for just over twenty-four hours I was to become a golden ghost again!

"From this point on, things are a little sketchy. I did arrive in Auckland eventually, as you already know from the sequence of events at the beginning of my narration. However, little did I know that my adventure was not yet over, in fact, it was just beginning to warm up! What I had been through was the prelude to, and the reason for, an equally bizarre series of events which were to occur right here on home ground.

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