Chapter 12: Calm Front

Birds chirped, the wind moved through the trees, the nearby stream babbled its continuous confession. We collectively held our breath and waited for the reaction.

Such a strange feeling déjà vu is...

Chet's dad got it out first.

"What the hell!"

"Oh My God!" Mike's dad added.

"Fuck!" echoed in simultaneous triplicate from Chet's three brothers.

Everyone else just gasped.

Chaos Bombs, gotta love em.

"Dave, what did you do? Where are we?" From Arden's parents, overlapping each other.

I pulled a little Light to me and sent a small blanket of calm over them all.

"Where we are is a world we call Meadow. It is another facet of Earth. We are on Meadow because I moved us here with my mind."

Slowly, the story came out again. I had help here and there, as those who were there during certain events spoke of them, or confirmed themselves. When I got to the point where I met Con for the first time, I called to him in thought.

<Con! Are you ready?>

<Certainly Dave.>

<Let me jump you through so I can place you in the spot I want, okay?>

<Okay>

"Con is still with me today, more than ever, and I'd like you all to meet him now." I raised my arm beside me and jumped Con through into the space in front of it.

"Greetings!" Con said to the room.

Constantine, my constant companion and co-conspirator for the last eight years told the rest of the story. He told it with passion, heart, drama and an attention to detail that only an artificial, formerly non-corporal alien artifact could.

It was several breathlessly dramatic sentences beyond the recounting of my first encounter with Eru that someone caught it.

"Wait! Wait! Did you just say Dave first met Eru on another planet?"

"Eru? Perhaps you should pick the story up here for a while." I asked.

Eru started things off With a nice touch by speaking to them all first in Taluatan. When he switched to English he began to tell them of our combined quest to find our way to the focus in his world, where Con would be able to bring us at last to the Seeker world. He stopped only when we had achieved our goal and stood holding the three ancient guardians in our arms, just having witnessed Con's apparent self-sacrifice.

I took over the story again and with my voice full of emotion told them of meeting Con again on Earth, his existence changed forever with the parting gift from his creators of a physical body, and of the feelings I'd had at being able to hug my friend. I ended with the story of the three guardians and their time as my teachers, and their passing.

Ginny took over now, and she told of the years since the guardians passed away, up to the present, my quest to learn more of myself, my gift and my purpose.

"Dave has a unique gift, gifts really, and there are an uncounted number of worlds to discover, untold numbers of people out there. During this time we have already gained much. Knowledge. Understanding. Fellowship and Friendship." She pointed at Eru and Con for the last.

I stood forward again, giving Ginny a brief kiss.

"Thank you Blossom. Thank you my friends, all of you. This has been very hard to swallow I"m sure, and you all need time to think. Can I offer a more comfortable place to do it in?" I pointed behind them to the house, our house on Meadow, in all its glass and cedar glory. Of course the fact that just to the side of the house they could see a 40 foot long 'spaceship' hovering just above the ground probably detracted from the impact the house might have made.

We spent another couple of hours in the house, showing off its mundane as well as fantastic features. We had an enthusiastic group of new supporters when we dropped them all off at their homes. Ginny reminded them all that we were going to be coming back for a picnic tomorrow at 2pm. When Chet's mom asked if they should bring anything, I was surprised to hear Felicia say that they needn't bother, unless they had a favorite drink, or something special they would like to share, because we were having the picnic catered!

Once everyone was gone I turned to Felicia and Ginny. I could tell by the way they were failing miserably in their efforts not to smile that I had been set up in some way.

"Okay ladies, spill it. How do you cater a picnic on another planet?"

After the fit of giggling died down, Felicia reached into her pocket and pulled out her enhanced cell phone.

"Its simple! You just pull out your new, handy-dandy interplanetary communicator and call A.J. McKesson!"

I pulled out my cell then and gave Grandpa a call. The plan was for me to pick up the catering crew, equipment and food at Noon, which would give them two hours to get set up.

"How many people in the catering crew?" I asked.

"Twelve. They will be all the candidates for permanent staff positions that you've been asking for, so this will be a bit of a two-sided interview."

"What will all the gear and food be loaded into?" I asked.

"We've got one 26 foot cargo van, like the big u-haul types and a 20 foot refrigerated cargo container and an external gasoline powered gen set to power the refrigerated container."

"Can I get the power and physical specifications for the refrigeration unit? I may be able to provide power here for it without the noisy generator."

"Sure, hold on a second." I heard him talking to someone else, either in the room with him, or on another phone. It must've been another phone, because I soon heard the sound of a fax machine or printer of some kind spitting out a page.

"I've Got it in my hand, come get it!" Grandpa said.

I smiled to myself and reached out and jumped the page right out of his hand and into mine.

"Got it, thanks. Let us look it over, and I'll call you back once I know whether we can provide the power ourselves."

"Not that I don't enjoy talking to you, but why not save us both time, and I'll tell Sheb to just assume you've got it covered unless you call him to say you'll need the generator."

"Speaking of Sheb, how should I be expecting to pick up the Chocowinity guests tomorrow when the time comes?"

"I've been thinking about that actually." Grandpa said. "I know you don't really want to use that fancy ship of yours on Earth, but would you feel safe jumping it to the grotto to pick up the guests there?"

I thought about that for moment. I really was reluctant to use the cruiser anywhere on Earth. Grandpa had nailed it though, the Grotto was the one place on Earth I'd feel safe in doing it.

"I actually like that idea Grandpa, thanks! Lets plan for that. Have everyone their and ready to go by quarter of two our time. when are you leaving Chocowinity, and when should we be expecting you here?"

"Oh, I've left Chocowinity, I"m in the air and will be landing at the Calaveras airport in about 4 hours. Your Mom and Dad are meeting me."

"One step ahead of me again I see. Okay, see you tomorrow Grandpa."

As soon as we were off the phone I sent a thought Con's way.

<Con!>

<Yes Dave?>

<I need a minute, can you join me for a second?>

"Certainly Dave." Con said as he popped into existence in front of me. I must have interrupted something special, because he was wearing an interesting 'suit' of glowing, fuzzy white light.

"Nice suit!" I said.

"Oh, excuse me, but it was required. What can I assist you with?"

I handed the spec sheet from Grandpa A.J. to him. "I need something that can provide power matching these specifications by noon tomorrow. Something self contained, not a Light-tap. Can you do it?"

Con looked the sheet over briefly, then waved it dramatically in the air.

"Bah! A trifle! Consider it done!" He popped out of existence as he grabbed his wrist and jumped himself back to Obsidian. I turned to Felicia and Ginny.

"Well, now that I've attended to the details, I guess we're good to go!"

With everyone else having gone home with their family members to spend some time and be available to answer questions, Ginny, Felicia, Cyrus, Eru and I were the only ones left at the house.

"Guys, I've been thinking about something that I'd like to get your opinion on. If you don't have any urgent plans, lets go sit in the library and I'll show you what I'm talking about."

"Ava, please give us the platform display." I said as soon as we were all soon sitting comfortably. The room's lights dimmed and the windows went opaque as the display shimmered into existence in front of us to show Meadow slowly rotating in front of us...

"Ava is the current image being displayed using current data?"

"Yes, Dave. The projection is updated with new image data every five seconds."

Guys, tell me what's wrong with this picture?" I asked.

Nobody spoke up, so I guessed I was going to have to lead them to the answer.

"Okay, tell me then, where did we all express the most interest in looking when we first used the survey platform system?"

"Europe." Felicia said. "Rome, Barcelona, Paris, those kind of places."

"And we couldn't see live video from any of those places when we wanted, could we?"

I saw that my audience of four were shaking their heads in the darkened room

"Our biggest problem with studying the area we have the most interest in is time. When it is day here, it is night there. If we want to watch someone eating breakfast in the Meadow version of Rome, we have to wait until 10 at night!"

This time I could see the four heads nodding in agreement.

"The thing that truly makes this a problem is that we are left with very little we can substitute for our primary area of interest. During our normal daylight and evening hours, the area most available to viewing is the Pacific Ocean, the extreme northwestern edges of what would be Russia, and New Zealand. Except for a very sparse population in the Russian northwest, we've found no trace of human presence in these areas."

"Ava, give me a daylight still image of the Mediterranean, please."

"Yes Dave." Came the reply. We stared at the image together.

"Increase the magnification by 50 percent please Ava."

"Yes Dave." Ava again replied.

"What we need, if Europe is indeed our area of primary interest, is a base of operations. Someplace where we can operate freely, but where we our body clocks can adjust to the same schedules as the people we want to observe."

On the display in front of us, isolated and uninhabited in the middle of the Mediterranean were the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. We all stared at it for several long, silent minutes.