All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  “He’s still gone,” explained Keeley.

  “Yes he is,” answered Linda.

  Linda filled Keeley in on the past days’ events, and invited her friend to come join them in Vermont. The President could use all the trusted advisors she could get right now, and Keeley’s experiences with the aliens would make her viewpoint invaluable. “I just can’t,” said Keeley, after considering the offer for a moment. “Not yet. Give me time.” Linda agreed to give her all the time she needed.

  It was a staggering blow when Alice disappeared. Grace ran into Cole and Linda’s room at dawn to wake them. Alice’s sleeping chair was empty, save for a short note written in her perfect script. “My father has come for me,” she wrote. “I must go. There are things I need to learn elsewhere, before I can complete my work. You must continue without me. And there is news of my mother.”

  There was nothing else. No signature. No loving farewell. No girlish hearts or flowers drawn in the margins. Just simple block lettering in black ink on a white sheet of college ruled. And yet the strange little child’s love was all over it. They knew. And they cried for her loss. A search of the home and the grounds proved fruitless, as they knew it would. She was gone. All they could do was hope that her “work” would bring her, one day, back into their lives. Until then, they could look to the stars and smile, knowing that she was out there somewhere, and beaming her their hearts, just as Grace had described.

  Linda and Cole spent long hours talking every evening, sharing their experiences and pondering what it all meant. So much of what had happened now felt like a dream. This was more true for Grace than for any of them. Her own experiences in the astral realm could barely hold their own against the stark reality of the physical. She was becoming a five-year-old girl, once again. When Cole found Utterpok’s drumstick in his bag and gave it to Grace, it took Cole’s prompting for her to remember who the old shaman was.

  Neither Cole nor Linda felt like they knew very much. Who were the alive ones? Who were the Angels, and the rest of those whom Obie had termed “all of the above”? What were they up to? Why did they leave? And what had they been doing with Rice and the People in the first place? Were they truly “good,” as Obie seemed to think? Linda remembered her own childhood fury and terror at the aliens’ hands, and wondered if “good” people could do such things. Hadn’t Obie said that some aliens were “here for purposes that many would consider exploitive, selfish, or even evil?” What was their role in all of this? Cole and Linda kept coming back to these same questions. They had few answers, and what answers they had felt provisional, at best.

  “I miss Obie,” said Linda. “He seemed to know what was going on.”

  Cole sighed. “I guess now it’s we who will have to figure things out,” he said.

  “You telling me I have to act like an adult?” she asked, playfully.

  “Not a bad trait in a President,” he answered.

  Linda remembered her promise to Aamai, that night on the ice. He’d told her it would take her every moment of the rest of her days to make up for the sins of her people. Unexpectedly, the thought buoyed her. It was good work. Worthy work. Work that meant something. She would do her best to keep that promise. The present world was collapsing. A new world waited to be born. Perhaps she could help find some better way from here to there.

  Linda stared at the dark ceiling as Cole snored beside her. Her dreams these days often jolted her to wakefulness, filling her with an urgency to get back to work. Perhaps she was being prodded. And perhaps whoever was prodding her was right to do so. She rolled over to snuggle up to Cole, only to stop short. His hands were both raised in the air, just an inch or so above his stomach, and his fingers were dancing and stretching, as if he were typing in his sleep. The sight of it stirred an ember of fear in Linda’s heart. She reached over and pushed his hands gently back down and held them in place. Cole sighed and rolled over and Linda spooned up against his back and concentrated on her breath, hoping to get back to sleep.

  She failed.

  Cole, she realized, was Mr. Thomas too.

  19.18

  The next morning they found another note, this one inscribed in the marble countertop in the kitchen. It was beautifully etched, expertly beveled, a perfect circle about a foot across, bisected by an inverted capital L. Nobody had seen a thing, of course. The security guards had reported no intruders. The video cameras showed no shadowy figures lurking in the corners. None of the children had heard a sound. Stan Walsh was livid when he heard of it. Such a thing should not have been possible.

  And yet, there it was.

  Cole ran his fingers along its edge. It was a quarter of an inch deep, at least, and very smooth. “I get the impression somebody up there is trying to tell us something,” he joked. Nobody else felt like laughing.

  When Cole found out just what it was they’d been trying to tell them, he didn’t laugh either.

  ###

  Postscript

  Here ends Book One of the None So Blind series. Book Two, Rumi’s Field, will be published in the summer of 2016. Book Three, Imbolc, will follow after that.

  About the Author

  Timothy Scott Bennett was born in Michigan in 1958, the same year NASA was formed and Sir Edmund Hillary reached the South Pole. Always the polymath, or "expert generalist," he has studied astrophysics, theology, anthropology, and philosophy; painted watercolors and installed broken tile mosaics; founded and lived in intentional communities; raised children; restored houses; performed stage combat and local theater; and played in a rock band. He's a dogged questioner of cultures, paradigms, beliefs, and assumptions, and tries to balance paradox and uncertainty whenever he can. In 2003 he met his second wife, Sally, who was able to fully see who he was. Thus empowered, he wrote, directed, and edited the feature-length "cult classic" documentary, What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire. He followed that up with the science-fiction adventure novel All of the Above, and will soon publish the sequel, Rumi's Field. He lives in both Maine and North Carolina, following the birds in their annual migration. He writes a blog, entitled Everything is Research: Life, Asperger's, and the Written Word, and takes daily walks on the beach, thinking of the stars, the poles, and the ends and beginnings of things.

  Connect with Timothy Scott Bennett

  Read my almost-daily blog posts at Everything is Research: http://everythingisresearch.com/

  Visit my "artisanal publishing" site, Blue Hag Books: http://bluehagbooks.com/

  Visit my Smashwords Author Page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/TimothyScottBennett

  Like my Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/timothyscottbennett/

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  Find me on Tumbler: http://timothyscottbennett.tumblr.com/

  Link up with me on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5271307.Timothy_Scott_Bennett

  See my All of the Above book trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBV3EQaAWSQ

  A Brief Excerpt from Rumi's Field, the Upcoming Sequel to All of the Above

  "Linda?" The voice was far away but distinct, riding above the background static like a boat on a choppy sea. The space around her was darkness.

  "Yes?" answered Linda. She thought it was her father, come to wake her for school. But why did he speak with a British accent? And why was it so dark? "Daddy?" she asked.

  "No doubt you will require a few moments to gather yourself, Madam," said the voice, drawing closer. "Please understand that this is normal, and that you have not been harmed."

  Linda tried to raise a hand to rub her eyes but found that she could not. She felt neither numb nor strapped down. There was simply no response from her body. The sensation was vaguely familiar. Something to do with space ships. She realized that she was n
ot a schoolgirl but the President of the United States. Her last memory was of being strapped to a hospital bed by doctors in protective suits, with bright lights overhead.

  "Do you know who I am?" asked the voice after a moment.

  At the question, Linda knew that she did. "The Fisherman," she said, her voice dry with disuse. It had been almost three years since she'd heard his voice, but this was that man. It was not just the accent. There was a confidence in that voice that demanded her attention. It was a voice that resonated with the surety of control.

  "I'm glad to finally meet you face to face, Madam President, though I'm not sure that particular phrase precisely captures the full reality of our situation here." The voice had moved from her right side to her left, as though the Fisherman was walking around her. But she heard no footsteps and felt no air movement. She couldn't even tell if she was standing or lying down.

  "The connections between your mind and your body have been rerouted, Madam President," said the Fisherman. "You'll understand why soon enough. It will be much safer this way.

  "It was you..."

  "... who saved you, yes." interrupted the Fisherman. "And you can be happy I intervened, Madam President. You should otherwise be quite dead by now, I'm afraid, and no one the wiser." The voice had moved down near Linda's feet, telling her that she was either lying down or that she was now standing on the Fisherman's chest. She went with lying down as the correct answer.

  "Where am I?" she said. She knew that information was key right now.

  "Well, that's the most exciting part of it!" replied the Fisherman. His voice trembled with laughter and surprise. "If you will permit me to restore your visuals..."

  The darkness around her began to melt away, filling her eyes with a swirling brightness, whites and reds and browns and pinks and grays that spun and floated in front of her like dancers. Slowly the images resolved themselves to something she could understand. She was lying on her back in what appeared to be a glass coffin, her head turned to the right. Before her stretched a desolate landscape, a desiccated plain of red sand and dust and rocks. And in the far distance, a mountain rose up to the sky.

  The Fisherman's voice was in her ear now but Linda could not turn her head to see him. "On behalf of the Evolutionary Element of the Seven Families of the Great Consortium,” he said, his voice filled with obvious delight, "let me welcome you to the planet Mars."

  Smashwords Interview with Timothy Scott Bennett, Discussing the Entire None So Blind Series

  Read my Smashwords Author Interview here: https://www.smashwords.com/interview/TimothyScottBennett

  Excerpt:

  Q: So let’s start by talking about your new book sitting here on the table. It looks pretty thick.

  A: (laughing) Yeah, it’s a whopper all right. It’s called Rumi’s Field, it’s a sequel to All of the Above, and it picks up the story approximately three years later, following many of the characters from the first book, as well as a great many new ones that stumbled onto the playing field as I wrote. Were we in an elevator and I only had thirty seconds, I’d give you the rough draft of my tagline:

  As the world falls further down the stairwell of environmental and societal collapse, President Linda Travis meets with a member of the Secret Elite Rulers of the World to discuss the intentional reduction of the global human population.

  Q: Hijinks ensue, no doubt.

  A: No doubt.

  Q: That’s… uh… quite a topic you’ve chosen there. No wonder you needed so many pages.

  A: That’s part of it, yes. The discussion between Linda and the man she knows as the Fisherman is long and far-ranging, and the topic takes a great deal of time to unpack and examine. But there are a number of subplots and side stories that play out at the same time. Unlike All of the Above, which tended to stick closely to Linda and Cole as they had their series of adventures, Rumi’s Field plays out in parallel, as we jump back and forth from character to character and situation to situation.

  Acknowledgements

  My deepest thanks go to Hannah Bennett, Rocco Anderson, and Sally Erickson, who tag-teamed each other in the editing process, pushing and pulling me toward the finish line. Hannah, now studying publishing at Pace University in New York, has a keen eye for copy edits and clichés, and made sure that Linda Travis pushed back against Obie when he most needed it. Rocco is a wizard at syntax and a ceaseless demand for clarity and compassion. His skilled critiquing style left me laughing out loud more times than I’d have imagined possible in what proved to be a sometimes grueling process. Sally added what felt like a “director’s touch” to the process, helping me step more fully into the emotional, psychological, and spiritual lives of my characters. Without these three, the book would not be what it now is.

  Thanks to Andy Erickson for his ongoing partnership in the process of publication, distribution, and marketing. Thanks to Sarah Erickson for her last-minute cover makeover. Thanks also to Rick Gottesman, Jeff Jones, Mary Bennett, and Nancy Bennett, early readers of my first draft, whose words of encouragement and feedback were greatly needed at that point in the process. And thanks to Keith Farnish, without whom the phrase “hoiking his clavicles” would never have made it to print.

  This story did not spring solely from my own mind and soul. The Blue Lady was the one who sat me down and requested, firmly, that I put fingers to keyboard in a process that felt, at times, more like taking dictation than mere “writing.” And there are many others whose presence I can feel in the pages herein. Some taught me to write. Others taught me to think. Most taught me to question the beliefs, assumptions, and stories I’d been programmed with by the culture in which I was raised. A representative list, though woefully incomplete, includes David Abram, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Richard Bach, Itzhak Bentov, Thomas Berry, Octavia Butler, Orson Scott Card, William Catton, Richard Dolan, Stephen Donaldson, David Edwards, Raymond Fowler, Chellis Glendinning, Graham Hancock, Richard Heinberg, Frank Herbert, Richard Hoagland, Russell Hoban, Derrick Jensen, John Keel, W. P. Kinsella, Joanna Macy, Terence McKenna, Robert Monroe, Daniel Quinn, Tom Robbins, Carl Sagan, Jonathan Schell, Starhawk, Whitley Strieber, Michael Talbot, Jacques Vallee, and Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks to you all, and to the many more whom I have not mentioned here.

  And thank you, finally, to a certain rabbit, who often strays from my thoughts, but never from my heart. You know who you are.

  Timothy Scott Bennett

  Eastport, Maine

  August, 2011

  Endnote

  Thank you for reading my book. I hope very much that doing so was a valuable experience for you. I've heard it said that the best way to thank an author is to write a review. In my experience, reviews are crucial to the process of an author and his or her readers finding each other. If you enjoyed this book, please, take a moment and post a review at your favorite retailer. And then post it wherever you hang out, on Facebook or Twitter, or even your own blog. Even a one-sentence blurb is a great help. I will be eternally grateful. Pax, Tim