Two Weeks of Qadaris

by J. E. Foltin

CHAPTER FOUR

  ARE YOU SCARED?

  Everyone slept a bit better their second night. They were more accustomed to their surroundings.

  As Chloe began her morning run, she was joined midway by Michael. As they passed his pod, Wayne joined the run. He hadn’t run in five years. Now, he was like a little kid.

  Also that morning, the first of the curing tents opened in Central Park in New York City. The red tablets were being given away to those with life-threatening diseases first. Diseases such as cancer and AIDS. Next on the list would be those with crippling diseases, such as Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.

  Once those who were most seriously affected were treated, it would be made available to the general public. It was being called a miracle cure, a cure-all for anything from hepatitis and diabetes all the way down to the common cold.

  Curing tents were also being set up in Detroit, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Montreal, just to name a few. There was also talk about making the miracle cure available for hospitals to distribute.

  Meanwhile, the Qadarians were discussing Phase Two to help in the recovery of earth. A way to stimulate the waning economy of most of the nations.

  Tobias visited with President Sinclair and President-elect Wheeler about a way to create a green, viable fuel source from water. A fuel that could be used as a form of gasoline.

  In New Jersey, Howard was gaining support from all over the planet. His blog now reached thirty thousand plus hits.

  Throughout the country, loved ones had now been missing for forty-eight hours. They went to the police to file missing person’s reports.

  News spread fast on the number of missing reports suddenly appearing. Howard took note of this and added this to his blog, saying it was the aliens who abducted them. That was how they knew their ‘miracle cure’ would work, by using them to study our anatomy.

  Within minutes of him posting this, his hit rate quadrupled. He had his army. Now, it was time to come up with a plan to send the aliens home.

  Back in the cube, Levi addressed the twenty-four again.

  “Good day. I hope you aren’t too inconvenienced. We want to make you feel as comfortable as possible. The information you are sharing with us is helping immensely.

  “For today’s topic, we would like to know about what you call fear and how you overcome it.”

  “As a surgeon, I’m always scared of something going wrong in the operating room,” said Akiko. “With the economy in such bad shape, people are willing to sue for just the slightest hint of malpractice.”

  “It’s my job to do everything I can to help a patient get better. I do my job to the best of my abilities, but sometimes, even my best can’t save someone.

  “You just can’t please all of the people all of the time. We just do what we can not to make the situation worse.”

  “As my father would always tell me,” Michael said, “‘The brave man is not he who is not afraid, but he who conquers that fear.’

  “I get scared every time the alarm rings and we are called out to a fire. There always a chance I will get hurt or possibly killed.

  “It’s my job to put out fires and save those injured. I took an oath, and my word is my bond. Plus, I owe it to my fellow firefighters who put their lives on the line as well to push through my fear.”

  “Nothing says fear like thinking you are about to die,” said Wayne. “Luckily, I was only paralyzed.

  “I got a huge rush out of jumping from an airplane. I had done it, like, thirty times. That was, until the accident.

  “My chute was packed like I normally did. The flight went off without a hitch. The jump was perfect.

  “When I went to pull the ripcord, my chute didn’t open. I panicked; I pulled on the ripcord until I eventually pulled it out.

  “By the time I pulled the secondary ripcord and the emergency chute opened, I had descended too low. The force I hit the ground with caused both tibias to fracture, as well as a fracture in my T-12 and L-1 vertebrae.

  “I knew with my legs broken, I couldn’t move them. Only when I got to the hospital was I told that I would never walk again.

  “Considering I didn’t expect to live after that fall, I took that disheartening news with a sigh of relief. Just because I couldn’t walk didn’t mean I couldn’t function. I was alive. That was all that mattered to me.”

  “Don’t mention flying to me,” Benjamin said. “After my last experience, I’m afraid to ever get on a plane again.

  “There were no problems with the take-off. The first third of the flight was fine, too.

  “All of a sudden, we dropped quickly. The pilot told us that one of the engines had failed and that we needed to make an emergency landing.

  “I was so scared that we would crash, that I would never see my wife and kids again.

  “Luckily, there was an airport nearby in Santa Fe that we could land at. They offered us a change of flight at no cost. I decided that I was done with flying and took the Greyhound the rest of the way to Phoenix.

  “Was I late? Yes. Was I alive? Yes. Ever since then, I can’t get onto a plane.”

  “I’m afraid of something happening to one of my kids,” said Luisa. “That happened once, and I freaked.

  “I was serving peanut butter cookies for snack time. Unfortunately, one of the kids was allergic to peanuts. After one bite, he had trouble breathing. His throat was swelling shut.

  “If not for one of my helpers knowing about allergies and having an EpiPen handy, he could have died. And I would have been facing a lawsuit that would have shut my business down.

  “Since then, I make the parents fill out an application that asks for any information that may be relevant, including allergies.”

  “I didn’t plan to get pregnant,” Twyla said. “I thought this would be a blessing.

  “Then, Gary left me. Now I’m scared, wondering how in the world I’m going to raise this baby all by myself.

  “Eventually, I’m going to need to go back to work at the beauty counter at JC Penney. Who is going to watch my baby? My mom lives in Miami, and I can’t afford daycare or babysitting.

  “Then, there are the clothes, the food and formula. And I can’t imagine all the diapers.

  “And once I have that baby, there’s no man out there that’s going to want to go out with me. Thank you, Gary for ruining my life, you selfish piece of shit.”

  “That is almost like my biggest fear,” Helen said. “I was always afraid of how I would survive if anything would happen to my Alan.

  “Then, it happened. About six months ago, he had a heart attack and left me alone. Now, I have to do everything around the house. All the cleaning, cooking and fixing anything that breaks.

  “I don’t want to put the pressure on my kids to take care of me. They have kids of their own to worry about. They don’t need to worry about their mother.

  “Luckily, I found an apartment that caters to the elderly. The rent is reasonable. They offer Meals on Wheels. They offer housekeeping services. There’s always somebody there if anything breaks.

  “It’s perfect for me. Alan would have loved it, but I’m sure he is happy that I’m safe, that I’m happy.”

  “I wish I had something like that,” Christian said. “Too bad I’m a long way away from that.

  “At least I don’t have to worry about losing my wife. I can’t even get a woman to go out with me. I’m afraid of dying alone.

  “At least when you’re with someone, if something happens, you have someone to help. If I slip in the shower and knock myself out, I could drown in a few inches of water. No one to call 911.

  “I just want to know what it feels like to be wanted by someone, to be needed by someone, before I die.”

  “I’m afraid of just the opposite,” Travis said. “I’m more afraid of getting too committed. I don’t want to pour my heart out to anyone.

  “My parents divorced when I was thirteen. I saw the pain my mother went through, and I couldn’t bear to
put a woman that kind of hurt.

  “That doesn’t mean that I will never get married. I need to know that she is the one for me. I plan on only getting married once, and I want it to last forever. Call me crazy, but that is what I want.”

  “When I was in high school,” Chloe said, “I was afraid of talking to boys. My mom told me that boys were only interested in one thing. So, every time a boy asked me out, I thought that was what he wanted, so I shut down. My guard was always up.

  “It was only when I started dating my best friend Grant Duhon that I was able to see past that. From then on, I had no problem talking to guys.”

  “You know, a classic story of fear was that of Jesus walking on water,” Dennis said.

  “In Matthew, Chapter 14, Jesus had just fed the five thousand. He made his disciples get into a boat and leave while he prayed on a mountainside. Just before dawn, Jesus walked to them on the water. When they saw him, they were terrified. They thought they had seen a ghost.

  “Verses 27-29: ‘But Jesus immediately said to them, ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ ‘Lord, if it’s you,’ Peter replied, ‘tell me to come to you on the water.’ ‘Come,’ he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.’

  “Because he believed rather than feared him, he, too, was able to walk on the water.”

  “I get nervous whenever anyone presents a script to me,” Jessica said. “I know that all it takes is one bad movie, and my acting career could be over. Directors would always ignore all the great work I had done and concentrate on the one bad role.

  “Or just as bad, I could take a role and be typecast, hurting my chances of future roles. I mean, look at the kids from Harry Potter. Once the franchise was over, no one would hire them. All producers could see when they looked at them was Harry, Ron, or Hermione.

  “I still have a lot of movies left in me. I want to do this as long as I can. I’m scared of what would happen if I couldn’t act again.”

  “I was afraid of what would happen my first night in prison,” Quincy said. “You hear all these prison stories, about prisoners getting beat up in their cells. I’m not a fighter. I only killed in an act of jealous rage.

  “Or worse, I didn’t want to become somebody’s bitch. I never turned my back to anyone in the shower. I didn’t trust my cellmate, so I had to keep home base covered.”

  “I kept to myself and didn’t bother anyone. In return, they left me alone.”

  “I’m afraid of having to speak in public,” Bella said. “In school, I would always freeze up whenever I had to give a speech in class.

  “I tried out for the school play and would up with a major case of stage fright.

  “I tried the old trick of imagining everyone in their underwear. The problem with that was sometimes, that picture was actually scarier than public speaking.

  “That is why I took a job as a secretary. That way, I can talk to people and not have to face them.”

  “I have a paralyzing fear of heights,” Cassidy said. “Even climbing a ladder is too much. I lock up more than a few feet off the ground.

  “Living in Toronto, I’ve always wanted to go to the top of the CN Tower, but I know one look out the window one thousand eight hundred fifteen feet up and I’d lose all bodily control.

  “It also makes flying impossible. Being that high up and knowing I’m stuck there until we land.”

  “I’m petrified of snakes and spiders,” Tracy said. “I know that most of them are harmless, but they just look so icky. Every time I see one, I run away screaming my head off.

  “I can’t even look at them in the zoo. I know they’re locked up, but the sight of them makes my skin crawl.”

  “When I fought in Vietnam,” Francis said, “we had some intense battles. I was aboard the USS Hanson during Operation Custom Tailor.

  “We entered Haiphong Harbor to suppress hostile shore batteries while other ships mined the harbor. We took on a lot of fire, especially when we had to save about a hundred twenty men who were overrun in the Mo Duc District.

  “Any soldier that tells they aren’t scared in battle is a liar. As much a chance as you have of killing your enemy, he also has of killing you.

  “We are trained to suppress that fear to honor our commitment to our country. SSgt. Wilkes can attest to that.”

  “You got that right, Petty Officer Kolar,” Brody said. “Each and every time we were under fire, I was scared.

  “I was scared of dying not for myself, but for my family. A soldier’s wife is one of the hardest lives to live. You have no guarantee that your husband will be coming home.

  “Add kids to that and that is all the more reason to do everything I could to come home safely. Thankfully, I did. I was shot in combat, but the thought of my family gave me the will to come home.”

  “It’s like that on the force, too,” Wyatt said. “Every chase, every arrest has the potential to be hazardous or lethal.

  “I had a colleague who was killed in the line of duty for merely pulling someone over for a speeding ticket. The guy had a gun and drew it on the officer when he asked for his license. He was shot twice in the chest.

  “My wife gets scared every time I get a call at dinner. She is afraid they are calling me out and that I may not come home.”

  “I get scared every time I hear of a shooting at a school,” Scott said. “I had just gotten my tenure when the Columbine situation happened.

  “I still remember the shooting at Virginia Tech and, most recently, at Temple just last year. And those are close to where I live.

  “If it can happen there, what is to stop it from happening at Coppin State? All it takes is one person with a thought of killing, and me or my students could be put in danger.”

  “I get scared for the future of the economy,” Neveah said. “When the government defaulted on the national debt, inflation increased exponentially.

  “As a result, more and more people who were able to make their payments before could barely afford the bare necessities of food, gas and heat.

  “So more and more people filed for bankruptcy, both Chapter 13 and Chapter 7. My docket was overloaded.

  “Then there was talk of doing away with bankruptcies given the high number of people trying to take the easy way out. That would mean I would be out of a job, another reason to be afraid.”

  “Especially with unemployment as high as it is, even in Canada,” Marc said. “That is why I try to do everything I can to stay on my boss’s good side.

  “If I lose my construction job, I have nothing else to fall back on. I’m not trained to do anything else. And if I do find another job, I’m back at the bottom of the pecking order at base pay.”

  “I’m more concerned with the fate of the planet,” Robin said. “For years, the government has denied the existence of global warming, but the facts are there. The polar caps are a fraction of what they used to be.

  “The rainforests are being destroyed at the rate of ten acres an hour. Ninety percent of the species on this planet are either extinct or endangered.

  “And that doesn’t even count the rate of violence in this country. Every second in this country, a person is killed as a result of a violent crime.

  “If we keep this up, even the Qadarians won’t be able to save us.”

  “When my divorce with Jack was finalized,” Barbara said, “I had no idea what I was going to do.

  “I couldn’t stay in that house with him, and he wouldn’t leave. I had no living relatives. Friends didn’t have the room for me to move in.

  “What would I do for income? I hadn’t sold a painting in over a year. How would I eat?

  “If not for the homeless shelter, I surely would be dead now. I still don’t have a car; I have to use public transit to go places.

  “I’m still here. As long as I am, I will create art and try to make a better life for myself. Who knows how much time the shelter will give me.”

  “Thank you so much for a
ll your input,” Levi said.

  “Can you tell us more about Qadaris? What does it look like?” Robin asked.

  “Qadaris resembles your planet in a lot of ways. With the exception of the abundance of water, our worlds are quite similar.”

  With that, dinner appeared. There were two choices for spaghetti: meat sauce and marinara. Along with the pasta was a tossed salad and garlic bread.

  Outside of the cube, the curing stations had finished being set up and started taking patients. Some were turned away at first to help those with the greatest need first. The Qadarians said all would be treated in due time that requested it.

  Back in New Jersey, Howard’s cult had reached a hundred thousand people worldwide. It was now time to act. He urged those in the Newark area to meet at his house in two days to begin strategizing their attack.

  Night fell on the cube. Travis was still enamored over Jessica. He sat near her at every meal. He tried talking with her, but the gibberish he sputtered made little sense to her.

  Michael had started to make a connection with Twyla. She was due any day now, and he was trained in child delivery.

  For the first time since their abduction, Benjamin and Tracy slept in the same bed, hers.