Chapter 8: Welcome to the Human Race

Initially, it felt a little strange to Caleb as he boarded the city bus to go to the airport. Caleb had visited cities that viewed public transportation as the normal way to get around town. New York and its subways was one example. Japan's train network and the bus system in Portland, Oregon were other examples of excellent public transportation.

Phoenix, Arizona had been struggling to create a public transportation system for a couple of decades, but the effort was obviously not finished. The 3.8 million people that populated Phoenix, sprawled over 9000 square miles of desert. Public transportation had a lot of ground to cover, and the demographics were constantly changing. The people trying to reach the transportation routes had to contend with summer temperatures over 100 degrees. Walking to, or waiting for, a bus or train in those temperatures could easily be a serious health hazard.

The result was a transportation system that was only used under the most dire of circumstances. Many of the passengers were from the lowest economic rungs of Phoenix society, and they used the bus system because they had no other choice. Caleb was justifiably cautious about boarding the bus.

Caleb realized the wariness wasn't just Al's enhancements, but common to all people. He remembered getting on public transportation in the past, in other cities, and the initial uncertainty of joining the group of strangers in an enclosed space. Who is it okay to sit beside? Sit in the back or the front? Is there any obvious danger that should be avoided? It was different on airplanes with assigned seats because someone else made all those decisions. It was someone else's responsibility. Caleb also realized this was just another example of the clarity of thought caused by Al's adjustments.

There were a few empty seats beside other passengers, but a few rows from the back there was one row on one side that was unoccupied. There were some gang-bangers in the seats behind the empty seat, but he didn't think they would cause a problem in broad daylight, and with the bus's security camera blinking its red light at them. The walk back to the empty seats was interesting. He was picking up images from the driver and passengers as he walked. Some images were vague, and he let them slip to the background of his thoughts, while still being aware of them. Some were clearer as he brushed against people as he walked down the aisle. Caleb realized Al was sorting and filing these images and suddenly understood that items of interest to him, which fit within his particular realm of likes, were being highlighted for him.

The bus driver was worried about a friend that he had made on his early morning route. A lady that always got on his bus at the same location seemed to be more tired than usual. Actually, he thought the lady was a hooker, but that really didn't matter to him. She was polite to him, as he was to her. Encountering courtesy in his job was a rare enough occurrence to be noteworthy. Today, she was tired and seemed to have had a hard night. He hoped that she was going to be okay.

A middle aged woman had a fight with her husband before she left for work. She was worried about her husband. She knew he was just upset because he hadn't found a job yet, but it wasn't easy for her, either. They could outlast this economic downturn that had lasted for six years, if they worked together. Apart, they didn't have a chance.

A forlorn looking young girl was worried about what her parents would do. They had received a letter from the principal of her school before the Thanksgiving break. Her grades weren't up to expectations. Her dad had made her study until late the night before. He'd promised her that she could expect the same thing every night, until she brought her grades up. She was wondering if she could talk them into allowing friends to visit. She felt lucky that he allowed her to go to the library.

Every passenger had a story and a concern they were wrestling with, as the bus carried them through the city. To Caleb, many of the concerns would have seemed trivial a few days earlier. A teenage boy worrying about how a cute girl was going to react to him asking her for a date. It wasn't a big deal, in the game of life, but it was of paramount importance to the boy. A young woman was concerned because she hadn't received a letter from a good friend in Afghanistan. It was important, but not earth-shaking. Yet, to her, it was a crisis of global importance, because she hadn't told her friend that she loved him yet. She was kicking herself for being too shy to tell him, before, and now it could be too late.

Caleb felt stunned at the revelations and understanding that bombarded him as he made his way up the aisle to his seat. He began to relax, thinking the refuge of the empty seat was a reprieve from the mental assault. His reprieve was short lived, when a Mexican gang-banger dropped into the seat beside him. The gang-banger blocked Caleb's exit and smiled cruelly as he gripped Caleb's arm tightly enough for it to be painful.

In the instant the gang-banger touched Caleb's arm the entirety of Jorge's life flashed into Caleb's mind. Caleb saw and felt the resentment caused by the bone-grinding poverty of the first few years of his life. He saw that the only light and hope for the young Mexican boy was at church with his family. He saw the young Mexican boy working in the fields, picking fruits with his family, until he was eleven.

The white owner of one of the fields separated the young boy from his family, with a task that he promised to pay extra for. The owner of the fields raped him. Caleb experienced the anger build and, a week later, when the white owner tried to repeat the rape, felt the satisfaction when the younger Jorge sank six inches of cold steel into the white man's belly. The beating the younger Jorge was given was so bad that he had to go to the hospital.

The legal system didn't believe the young migrant Mexican over an upstanding white, prosperous, citizen of the community. Caleb saw the new rapes, while in juvenile detention, until Jorge learned to defend himself. He learned so well, and so violently, that the other inmates learned to leave him alone.

Caleb felt Jorge's satisfaction a few years later. He was sitting in a very public place, with one of his women and many friends, when he received a message. One of his cadre whispered that the assigned task had been completed. The white owner of the fields that had set him on this path had been gang raped himself, along with his wife. The wife was killed in front of the farmer, and then the man's balls were cut off and they let him bleed out.

Caleb realized that he could be in very deep shit.

"Hey, white boy," Jorge said softly, with a heavily accented voice. "I need some money from you. Why don't you say, 'no', so I can knife you? Then I can leave you to ride the bus the rest of the day. They'll find you when they go to the bus barn."

Caleb answered just as softly, "You don't need money from me, Jorge."

Caleb pushed feelings of loss, desolation and loneliness into the forefront of Jorge's mind, the same way Al had communicated with him at the crash site.

"You just want to scare a white guy. It really isn't necessary," Caleb said as he took the image in Jorge's memory of Jesus on a cross and pushed it to the forefront of Jorge's mind along with feelings of safety and love.

Jorge looked at Caleb with a stunned expression for a moment before silently asking, in his mind, 'How did he know my name?'

Caleb softly answered out loud, saying, "I know everything about you, Jorge. I know what that farmer did to you and what you did to him and his family, in return. Both actions were wrong, but you still have time for redemption. What you are doing to yourself, because you hate what you have become, isn't necessary."

Jorge visibly shook, and his eyes bulged slightly when he realized that he hadn't asked the question audibly.

"La Madre Santa de Dios. ¿Quién es este hombre?" Jorge muttered in a strangled whisper.

Caleb heard the Spanish with his ears, but his mind heard, "Holy Mother of God. Who is this man?"

"I am just a friend that doesn't want to see you hurt again," Caleb replied gently.

Jorge heard, "Soy justo un amigo que no quiere verle duele otra vez."

Jorge nodded slowly, released Caleb's arm, and moved back to his own seat. Caleb could hear the angry whispers, as others in the group wanted to move on Caleb.

Jorge angrily retorted with, Deje al tipo blanco sólo. El es Santo," which stopped them all.

Caleb's mind translated it as, "Leave the white guy alone. He is Holy."

"Al, how am I understanding them? I don't speak Spanish," Caleb thought to his passenger.

"The words are an interpretation of the thoughts. I am just putting those thoughts into your context," Al replied.

"Thanks, Al," Caleb thought. "You are pretty handy to have along." Caleb contemplated for a moment before asking, "Al, am I able to pick up the, ah, electrical signals from people easier, and at a further distance, than I could yesterday?"

"Yes. Understanding that we are dealing with a quantum connection makes it easier, and more efficient. It will take a few days to optimize completely, kind of like your paunch," the alien replied with a hint of disapproving humor in the thought.

"Damn," Caleb thought with a little frustration. "This is like I'm laughing at myself."

Walking into the crowd at the airport was a completely different experience. Most of the people on the bus had been on the bottom rung of society's economic scale. The people in the airport spanned a much larger economic demographic. They came from every economic strata, and from countries around the world. Business men, rushing home from a long week, were intermixed with other business men rushing off to meetings they were dreading. Weekend meetings always seemed to indicate an emergency, someplace. Families were being reunited as soldiers returned home, and others were being ripped apart as other soldiers were leaving for their duty stations.

Travelers were traveling for every reason under the sun, and their families surrounded Caleb. Despite the different economic range of the crowd of people, the hopes, dreams, and fears were remarkably similar to what he had experienced on the bus.

There were also the scavengers of society, drifting through the mass of humanity, hoping to steal something that would support them for another day, or another hour. The highest hopes of mankind, and the lowest dregs of despair, were represented in the crowd. Caleb felt like he was being bombarded with wants and needs that darted from reality to fantasy, and from hope to denial.

Often, a person can be more alone in a crowd of people than they would be sitting on a mountain top. Caleb was anonymous in the crowd, and the rush of images almost overwhelmed him. He stumbled at the initial onslaught, before Al shoved most of them away, to something like a background buzz. The alien allowed some images of interest to lightly impinge on his conscious, but not so badly that he couldn't walk.