Chapter 2

Monday - June 13th, 2005

And so it was several days later, still in Missoula, that I found myself in a Taco Bell eating a late lunch when I had the weirdest experience! While standing in line at the pop machine everything just became completely silent. One moment the usual noises were there and the next it was so quiet the only sound was my breathing and the beating of my heart!

I looked around in sheer disbelief at the frozen world around me. No one was moving. The two women on my left were frozen in mid conversation as still as the mannequins in a store window. Ice stopped in mid fall between the dispenser nozzle and the cup below. "What the hell?" I exclaimed.

I looked at the clock behind the cashier and saw that it was stopped at thirty-seven minutes after one in the afternoon. Then I looked at my watch and found that it was still ticking away. "What is going on?" I wondered.

Stepping out of the line of people I was in, I headed up towards the pop machine staring at the suspended ice cubes. I reached around the woman who was holding the cup underneath the dispenser and plucked an ice cube out of the air. "This is really freaky!"

I tried talking to the woman but she obviously didn't hear me so I gave that up pretty quick. Looking out the window I saw that traffic had stopped. The children in the park across the street had been playing dodge ball and the ball hung suspended in mid-air. I walked out of the restaurant and looked up in the sky. There! Over there was a bird frozen in flight!

"Why is everything else frozen but I can move?" I wondered aloud.

Then, as if the scene around me wasn't strange enough, I heard a voice in my head, "You are an Anomaly."

In some way I just can't explain I immediately understood that I hadn't heard this with my ears. The 'voice' wasn't audible - it was speaking to my mind!

"Who are you?" I asked unable to keep a hint of hysterics out of my voice.

"I am the being that adjusts this planet's orbit and trajectory to maintain alignment with the other planets in the solar system."

"What's going on?"

"I have briefly stopped time to make my adjustments," the calm voice replied.

"Is that why everything is frozen?"

"They are not frozen Anomaly. A more correct statement would be that they are paused."

"Why do you address me as Anomaly? Are you saying I'm some kind of freak?"

"No. Not a freak, but the end result of an erroneous calculation made by my designer."

"Why can I hear you? How come I'm not 'paused' like everything else?"

"When the designer placed me within this planet his intention was to phase me through the atmosphere, the planetary crust, and the magma flows, leaving me in the inner core. He attempted to phase me through an unpopulated area of the planetary crust to minimize any impact on planetary life forms."

"Yeah? So how does that involve me?" I prompted.

"You intersected with a point along the trajectory chosen for me. I phased through your body. You have been aligned with me."

"How long ago was that? About a week?"

"If by a week you mean seven planetary revolutions then yes Anomaly, it was about a week ago."

"Right after that I was very sick. I thought I might even be dieing."

"I'm very sorry about that Anomaly. No harm was intended to you," the being told me.

"Look here, I really don't appreciate being referred to as 'a mistake' all of the time. Would you mind referring to me as Karl when we are conversing?"

"Karl is your preferred designation?"

"Yes. My name is Karl. What shall I call you? We will be able to talk again right?"

"As I have said Karl - we are aligned."

"I remember you saying that, but I don't truly understand what you mean by it."

"When I sensed I was passing through a higher life form I caused one of my nodules to separate and merge with you. In that way I would be able to mitigate the damage done to your person. As I mentioned, no harm was intended to you Karl; but by merging one of my nodules with you I now find that I must accept you as a part of me. It is as if you are an alternate interface to my powers."

"Your powers? And what would those be?"

"Well, as you have observed, I can pause things. I can also move matter linked with this planet through space. That's probably the best way to summarize it so that you can understand."

"Wow! You're very powerful then," I commented.

"Yes. I suppose we are very powerful," the voice mused.

"What do you mean we?" I asked still not grasping everything I'd been told.

"You and I are aligned. Merged. Joined. You have access to all of my powers."

"What?" I shouted out in fear. "I don't know the first thing about handling your powers. Why should I have powers like these? What if I mess things up?"

"Having power doesn't mean you have to exercise it Karl. My original control interface is still operational and will serve its original purpose of guiding this planetary body on its way through the universe."

"So I won't end up overriding that by accident?" I asked.

"Well, the power is yours to command; but we could decide on some limits for now if you'd like."

"Okay. For now, unless you hear me specifically ask you to do something for me, just follow your original plan," I replied. "I still have to ask though, Why me?

"You intersected my trajectory. You were in line with the path chosen for me. I do not believe it was my designer's intent Karl. That is why I earlier referred to you as an Anomaly."

"Alright, let me see if I understand this right so far. When you passed through my body you were concerned that it might harm me, so to prevent that you merged a part of yourself with me. Now that we are 'aligned' we can communicate and I have access to your powers," I summarized.

"Yes; however, we will now be operating with the additional precaution that I will not act upon your thoughts or whims, but wait until you specifically ask me to do something," the voice told me.

"Will I always be able to hear you and talk with you then?"

"Yes Karl. We are aligned."

"Sorry. I guess I should have figured that out by now. So do I have to keep talking out loud or could I just kind of think at you?"

"I am directly linked to your brain Karl. Perhaps it would facilitate things to have you select a designation for me?"

"A designation? Oh! You mean a name."

"Yes. That is another word or it. Why don't you give me a name?" the voice suggested.

I thought for a moment and then remembered a character from one my favorite sitcoms as a kid. "Okay. Do you mind if I refer to you as Genie?"

"Genie will be fine."

"Well then Genie, how long will everything be paused like this?"

"Until we decide to un-pause it," Genie answered. "I have made the necessary planetary corrections and can un-pause things now if you'd like."

"So you're some sort of watch dog for things on the planet then."

"Your hypothesis is incorrect. My original functions are to guide the planet through the universe. You have very many interesting words in your mind Karl. I think the two that best describe my function would be pilot and navigator. I'm sort of steering the planet within the solar system as we travel through the universe."

"Cool! So you're not like an angel or anything?"

There was a bit of a pause before the answer came this time as if some thought were required before a response could be given.

"I can see the concept of an angel here in your mind Karl and I can assure you that I am not an angel, devil, or god. I perform a precise set of functions on a planetary and solar level. Until merging with you I had none of the aforementioned concepts. Your concepts of morals and ethics appear to be what you are truly concerned with here. These types of concepts and their related issues are not of concern to me," Genie informed me.

"Maybe not to you, but they are of concern to your creator right?" I inquired.

"If by 'creator' you mean the being that designed me I can only tell you that there isn't the slightest hint of such an intent or concern anywhere in the guidelines written into my being. Honestly Karl, I believe that my designer maintains a focus at the Galactic and even Universal scale - not the individual."

"So, if I walk in there and rape one of those women while you have things paused that's okay with you?" I said thinking of the most outrageous and extreme thing I could come up with at the moment.

"I believe it would be more accurate to say it is irrelevant to my functions and therefore not of concern to me."

"This sure is a lot to think about," I told Genie. "I think I'm going to go and get back in line where I was when you paused everything. Once I'm in place you can go ahead and start things back up again. I need a little time to think and then I'd like to talk again - okay?"

"Certainly."

I moved back into line and suddenly everything was back to normal. Ice was falling into the woman's cup. The clock on the wall was moving. The noises of conversation, movement, and machinery were back. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

"I must be going nuts," I thought to myself, and then I happened to glance at my watch and noticed that it showed the time as nineteen minutes past two in the afternoon.

For the rest of the day I thought a great deal about 'the incident' as I termed it in my mind. Everything I thought I 'knew' about gravity and time and space and motion, everything that dealt with physics really, almost all of it was wrong. Or, I really was going nuts.

I drifted to sleep with a great deal of concern about what the future might hold for me. Either my mind was going, a strong possibility, or I needed to deal with this new set of 'Powers'. Even though the idea of having such powers might sound cool in a way, it was my experience that if something sounded almost too good to be true - it probably was. There had to be a hitch to this somewhere.

Tuesday - June 14th, 2005

When the alarm went off in the morning I got around quickly and checked out of the hotel. I wanted to get back on the road today. I felt rested and needed a change of scenery. The really nice thing about the Motel 6 I'd been staying at was that it was a decent place and fairly easy on the budget - but it wasn't exactly laden with amenities either and I wanted to get back to more familiar surroundings.

Soon enough, with a good meal in my stomach, I was back on the road and ready for a long day of driving. I was guessing that the drive from Missoula down to Phoenix would take about twenty-two hours give or take an hour or two depending on traffic. I figured it would be about two or three days' worth of driving since I still needed plenty of rest.

Everything was going along pretty well and I'd just about written off the 'incident' from the day before as a post-fever hallucination; a concept that was shattered when I got back on the road after lunch. I was driving along when he started hearing that voice in my head again.