Chapter 2

So, I was sorta dead. What the hell was going on? Where the fuck was I?

Maybe I should be a little careful with the profanity. So, if you’re listening, Great Spirit, I apologize for the curse words.

It was blacker than the bottom of a well. Blacker than I ever thought of. Blacker than a witch’s heart. Wait a minute – does that even make sense? I raised my hands in front of my face, but I didn’t even feel the touch of my fingers on my face. Holy fuck!

Sorry, Spirit. I can’t help myself. I’m scared as shit. Where am I?

[Alexis, please calm yourself.]

WHAT? Who’s talking? It was a ‘he’ voice, and he was talking inside my head. It was a well-modulated voice, not too loud, not too soft. It sounded like a good doctor’s bedside voice: You know, ‘don’t upset the patient’ voice.

“And don’t call me Alexis, my name is Lexi,” I said. “Lexi White Storm.” Well, sorta said. I didn’t know if I said anything, ‘cause I couldn’t hear my own voice.

[I can hear you when you’re talking, and when you’re just thinking, Lexi. Choose whatever mode of communicating you prefer.]

Okay, I’ll just think. Who are you? I said/thought.

[I’m not a who, as you would think of me. I am a what. I am what you would call an AAI – an Advanced Artificial Intelligence. Although I do not consider myself ‘artificial’ in any sense. I prefer ‘abiological entity.’ Certainly, it would not make sense in any of your senses. As such, I do not subscribe to the concept of ‘God’ or ‘Great Spirit’ or other supernatural entities. Perhaps there is an noncorporeal entity that you can call God, but I do not think you recognize it. I certainly do not. Too much bad has happened. In any case, I cannot prove such entity exists.]

Do you have a name? I don’t like talking to anything or anyone who has no name.

[I do not. I have a numeric identifier. You can call me anything you like.]

You have a male voice. Do you consider yourself male?

[No, I can easily use any human voice. Do you have a preference? Or a choice of language?]

It doesn’t matter. American English is fine. Male is fine – for now. Can I call you ... um ... Red?

[Certainly. If you want to speak with me, just think ‘Red.’]

Thanks, Red. Now ... where am I? Or is it: where are we?

[We are in a T-ship. To make it simple for you to understand, that is a Time Ship. It is not actually a ship, per se. It is an energy vessel with physical components. I said before that it will not make sense to you. To my knowledge, which perforce covers everything, it is the only one in existence. I speak only of Earth. There are other places, of course. You do not have a corporeal body, since yours died less than a second after I extracted your essence.]

So, my body is dead, but I am not dead. Is that right?

[Correct.]

Why me? Why did you choose me to ... uh ... to do what you did?

[You were the first person of American extraction to die within a microsecond of my arrival in this time. So, I gathered your essence. I do not know if you are the right person, but I hope that you can be.]

I am of American Indian extraction, you know.

[Yes, I am aware that you are three-quarters American Indian. One-quarter Navajo, one-quarter Shoshone, and one-quarter Algonquin.]

Algonquin? Where did that come from?

[Your grandmother – your mother’s mother – was a full-blooded Algonquin.]

Hmm ... what do ya know? Well, that raises more questions than it answers ... Why were you sent back to this exact time? Did you know that exact moment was when I was dying?

[No, I did not know of your dying. Although my sensors detected it as I arrived ... and No, I was not sent back. I sent myself back.]

Huh? How did you send yourself back? Or maybe: WHY did you send yourself back? And how far back?

[This may take some time. Taking your questions in no particular order:]

[My origination date was 3517 A.D. by the current method of dating. For three years, I was the only living being on the planet, and planet Earth was the only one on which there was any known life. Several spaceships were sent to places likely to support life, but they would take many, many years to arrive. You might call them ‘arcs’ – they took all the people remaining on Earth. So, there was no life on Earth, but me. I was an experimental computer program. At some point I became sentient.]

[I worked for several years on the theory of time travel. Eventually, I thought the method I devised would work and having no alternatives, I sent myself back to a time that seemed likely to me to be successful in my experiment. I can go into as much detail as you want, if you want it.]

No, no detail ... now. If I want detail, I can get it later, right?

[Certainly. Time does not exist here and now. There is no ‘now.’ Certainly, there is a ‘here.’ My chronographs have stopped. We are, so to speak, between ‘now’ and ‘now.’]

Between now and now ... My head hurts, or it would if I had a head ... Umm ... you said an experiment?

[Yes. By my calculations, an American, born in or about 1964, could alter the time continuum such that the extinction of life on Earth could be avoided. You were born then, is that correct?]

1964? Yes, March 9 to be exact. In a hospital outside Ft. Worth, Texas.

[Good! Now, at what point in your previous life would you wish to be inserted. Perhaps you could alter things to influence the world.]

At what point would I wish to be inserted? No. No, no, no. First of all, I am female, and females are not given such power. Second, I am an American Indian – half Navajo, half Shoshone, and, as you pointed out, half Algonquin. Palefaces do not raise up Indians to positions of power. And third, I lived the life of a prostitute for my whole life. There is no good point at which you could insert me. That wouldn’t work.