Chapter 1

I was dead.

Really Truly Dead.

R.T.D., dead.

What did I remember about dying???

The first time I died was the genesis of all the dying I did after that. Once upon a time – in the future, apparently – I was Carl Fleming.

Then I died.

What did I remember about dying in general, or dying this time? That is a very good question. When you’ve died as many times as I did the causes of all of that dying can become rather confusing. I was pretty sure that I died of natural causes, which was a huge change from all the other times I’d died.

My mind existed in an in between state. If I recalled correctly, my last body – Former President of the United States of America, Phil Rasmussen - died in North Carolina, at a place we owned, up in the mountains, of what I think was a heart attack. If so, then it was the first time I had ever died by something other than violence.

And I died a lot.

Jenny and I lived out the years in between nineteen-fifty two and nineteen-sixty nine in relative comfort, as an ex-President and former First Lady. Our children were both grown by the time I had my fatal heart attack and we enjoyed the days when they visited with their children.

We were sitting out beside the pool, enjoying the hot afternoon sun when the excruciating pain hit me in the chest and down my right arm. Before I even spoke, I knew it was going to be fatal. My last thought was to reassure Jenny that it would all be Ok and not to worry.

And then I died...

At least I think that’s when I died...

At least I thought it was...

The dark place kept me until my essence became aware that what was me had begun to accelerate into the past...

My mind was assaulted with images that had no connection to me, or any of my lives. The images became memories and they centered on a family traveling in a station wagon on their way to a Memorial Day picnic at a small, local park and campground near Winter Haven, Florida for a community day followed by fireworks. Their car was the typical American family vehicle. The father was a confirmed Chevrolet man and as such, bought a brand new 1955 Chevrolet station wagon. Since it was in the days before air conditioning they were all hot and sweaty.

The memories poured into my soul and took their place in my head. There was no linkage to them. They simply were memories, thoughts and experiences that were not mine. As the information jumped into my brain, the images arranged themselves in no particular pattern, leaving me to puzzle over their importance. The thoughts that took up residence in my mind were as strange to me as Martians would have been, were they inhabiting the same space.

‘They,’ consisted of a mother and father, Edward and Connie Ryan, two brothers Joe and Michael, along with three of their Aunts, Cary and Edwina. They were nineteen and seventeen and a half, respectively. Joe was ten and Michael was sixteen that summer.

They were a typical upwardly-mobile, very upper-middle class family. The father worked at a large manufacturing plant as the Vice President of production and the mother stayed home with her children and her younger sisters. Edward had a high paying job and he loved feeling successful, on way up the corporate ladder and assured of a great career and retirement, someday. I knew them but knew not why.

Their home was actually a small farm, well out of town, in an area of larger farms. The Ryans were a family that even though there was far more than sufficient salary to keep them all in modest comfort, the farm provided enough extra income to see them through any lean times that might come along. As every family that lived through World War Two learned, it was important to have something to help feed the family when jobs start to disappear.

The mother had another sister – Tara - that stayed with them that summer before starting junior college in August. She was twenty-one and needed to live with them because their parents were deceased. There was a small inheritance that helped Edward pay for keeping the three sisters even though he didn’t need it and he kept it in a separate bank account for them, doling out spending money whenever the girls needed it.

Tara attended the local university to save money. Edward loved having extra bedrooms available for a needy relation. It made him feel even more successful. They shunted Michael off to a small bedroom in the basement that was hastily erected so Tara could live upstairs with the family, where the mother of the household could keep a close eye on her behavior.

Good girls didn’t go out on dates with boys that weren’t approved by Edward. They didn’t go to drive-in movies, or a local lover’s lane. They were home by ten and in bed by eleven. Their skirts and dresses were always spotless and neat. Connie ran her home with a disciplined precision that would have been at home at West Point.

Michael loved his aunts. They doted on him in return, knowing that he truly cared about them as people, instead of women. There were plenty of boys who tried to feel them up, squeeze a boob, pinch their bottoms and generally make fools of themselves. Michael seemed to simply love them without any baggage. When he gave up his bedroom, sent to the Siberia of the basement, he did so gladly because he was doing it for Tara, not his mother.