by James Harris
Grayer smiled. “We, meaning ‘I’ now, share all our combined memories as one.”
His smile faded as he explained their situation. “You have met my nemesis, Stell, or Corey Wixon, as he is known, who works for the government intelligence agency.”
“Dad, we know all this,” Hawk said as they ambled along the shore. The front of his scuffed sneakers were dripping wet with dew.
“I guess you do.” Grayer looked into the distance. “We were as brothers once. Almost like you two. Close. We trusted each other.”
“Then what happened?”
“Others mislead him. People he mistakenly trusted.”
“He betrayed you, Dad,” Hawk said. “It’s simple. Who cares who led him astray? He screwed you over!”
Grayer studied the gurgling water. “I know what you want to hear. You want to hear that Stell is evil, the bad guy. He’s an idiot and does stupid things, but he’s not evil. He doesn’t have what it takes.”
Joe was about to protest, given what he had witnessed.
“Joe, listen. Stell was the only brother I knew. We grew up together. We shared secrets that only brothers can share. And then, suddenly … one day … The fact is that he was gravely misled by people he trusted more than me.”
“How could that be? Who could he trust more than you?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but his mother comes to mind.”
“Couldn’t he see through her?”
“Family ties run strong. In the end, they’re all you have.”
“But you were his family, weren’t you?”
“He was to me, yes. I was not to him. He never saw me as the brother I felt I was. He saw me as my father’s only true son. In his mind, he was always an outsider.”
A silence settled on the trio, broken only by the sounds of the stream.
“You know what’s weird?” Hawk said.
“What?”
“You have two fathers and two mothers.”
“Where did that come from?” Joe said with a frown.
Grayer chuckled, patting Hawk on the shoulder. “I’ve never articulated it that way, but you have a point. I have dual parentage.’
Grayer guided them to a fifty-year-old weather-beaten wooden gazebo. It was a moss-encrusted cedar-shingled affair with cedar-slat flooring. Octagonal in shape, it was open to the elements. Supportive cedar posts with enclosed black screening protected the occupants against annoying insects.
Inside was a patio table which had once held an umbrella in the center. A smattering of mismatched algae-discolored lawn chairs had been shoved under the plastic table.
Grayer produced an old hand towel for wiping off the chairs.
“Let me start off by telling you what has happened between Stell and me on this planet so far.”
After ten minutes, Hawk interrupted with, “So you and Uncle Stell have a sort of working truce going on.”
“Hawk, call him Wixon or Stell, please.” Grayer looked reproachfully at Hawk, but there was a hint of humor in his eyes. “Stell and I share a common fear of discovery by the general population. This would impede our plans and freedom of movement. The U.S. government is also determined that the rest of the world is kept in the dark about our existence.”
“It’s because of the weapons, isn’t it?”
“Could be. But it’s mostly about balance of power. If the U.S. military maintains a constant and consistent lead in technology and weaponry, the country will not lose its superpower status.”
“So it’s a truce of sorts. No public warfare between you and Wixon.”
“Or private, either. We both have intelligence networks that we can tie into. Attacking each other serves no purpose. At least for the time being.”
“Especially now that we have the crew orbs from the scout ship you found. Our numbers are even. Well, potentially even.”
“We haven’t transitioned them yet,” Grayer said.
“Wixon’s crew doesn’t know that. We have to find the right time to assimilate the remainder of the crew.”
“Counting you, we will have a six to five advantage.”
Grayer continued. “We have to examine the extraordinary gifts both of you have and hone them through special training.”
“Sure,” both brothers said.
“OK. Let me begin with Joe. I’ve been intrigued how you knew where the third scout ship was buried.”
“But I didn’t know.”
“I believe you did know. You just never realized that you knew.”
Joe shook his head stubbornly. “I never knew anything about a spaceship, Dad. That’s not what happened.”
“Oh, I know what happened. I know how you found it. That’s not my point. My point is that you found it. You believe it was happenstance; I believe otherwise.”
“Why?”
“Too coincidental. I don’t believe the mathematical probabilities of my sons discovering a ship from my own fleet are a mathematical coincidence. Coincidence theory. Look it up. It’s all mathematically driven. The odds against you discovering this ship, given your relationship with me, are off the charts.”
“In other words, there must be something else that led us to the crash site.”
“There is almost a 100 percent probability of that. It’s something genetic within you.”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t you or Stell – sorry, Wixon – discover the site?”
“Good point. First, it was buried in iron-rich ore riddled with uranium. Elliot Lake was a uranium-mining town, remember. We could not have detected the site. Our equipment could not have picked up any signals because of the uranium radiation interference.
“Second, it was a remote area. No scans were close enough to Elliot Lake.”
“You were scanning for the ship?”
“For years. So was Stell. I flew all over the world looking for that ship. One thing I can’t explain is why you and Hawk were fortunate enough to discover the wreck. Sheer luck maybe. Or maybe something to do with your genetic coding. It somehow communicated with you at a primal level.”
Joe scrunched his nose up. “It’s possible, I guess.”
“Did you have unusual dreams that might be linked to the find?”
The twins looked at each other, frowning.
“Not unless dreaming about space girls counts,” Hawk said.
“I did have a strange feeling, though, when I was near the ship,” Joe said. “Even before we knew it was a spaceship.”
“It’s true, Dad. Joe was sort of freaky around the dig site.”
“Tell me how you felt, Joe.”
“Well, there was a sort of subwoofer feel, a humming that I felt rather than heard. Also, a feeling of comfort, that I sort of belonged. That it was something that was meant to be all along. I was wasting time when I was not there helping to unbury it.”
“A sense of urgency?”
“I guess you could say that. I felt that I had to uncover whatever it was and free it from its, I don’t know, from its place, its resting place.”
“Dad, Joe picked up the piloting and ship navigating lingo right away. It was as if he had been born in outer space himself.”
“Interesting. And you didn’t?”
“Not really. I never got that same sense of piloting that Joe obviously felt.”
“And you, Joe, when did you begin to understand?”
“Me? I was already there! After the very first time in the stall, I understood how to fly my spaceship … sorry, the spaceship. I understood how it worked and why. Later, after more stall sessions, I could read the schematics and diagnose the problems that caused the crash.”
“I’m impressed. You’re the engineering pilot of the two.”
Hawk laughed. “Obviously. Give Joe a motorcycle, give him an airplane – he’ll have it figured out in no time.”
“That true, Joe?”
“For some things, yeah. For other things, I suck. I can’t read people like Hawk can. He can see through people, espe
cially if they are lying. The look of the Hawk.”
The morning sun rose to become the mid-morning sun. They basked in the young energy of the new season. The morning dew dripped off the mossy shingles in rivulets down the side of the weathered gazebo and melted off the fresh green grass that blanketed the shore to the stream below. The grass was as luminous as if the lawn had been dabbed with a fluorescent highlighter.
“I had to admit, I was concerned about Joe’s obsession with the spacecraft. It took over his life,” Hawk said.
“I had everything under control! I’m not your little brother. I’m your twin. I’m your equal!”
“Don’t get me wrong, bro. Dad asked about feelings. I was freaked because you went to the hill and began digging like a maniac and didn’t stop until we – sorry, you – had unearthed the ship. A spaceship! It was like you knew what it was all along.”
“I just felt I had to complete the dig as soon as possible,” Joe said, as if it was no big deal.
“Like there was something of yours buried there?” Grayer said.
“That’s one way to describe it. Once I had entered the ship, I felt … well, I felt …”
“At home?”
“Exactly. I just wanted to learn all about the ship. I wanted to fly her. I wanted to protect her.”
“Protect. That’s interesting,” Grayer said.
“Boy, did Joe fly her! Fast! I thought David was going to have a heart attack. You should have seen us boogey. We were gone before people could turn their heads and look!”
Grayer laughed. “I know, Hawk. We were tracking your progress from the coast of the Carolinas, over Cuba, across South America, and back home to California.”
“Cuba was a blast!” Joe said. “We almost got caught buzzing the place.”
“Almost? Intell told me that the Cubans made you. They even have aircraft recon photos to prove it.”
“Oops. Why haven’t they spilled the beans?” Joe asked.
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe they are trying to figure out the motive for the flyover. I’m sure they think it was covert U.S. surveillance. Maybe they figure it’s some drone we developed and were testing.”
“Maybe they will sit on it until the time is right, if that time ever comes.”
Grayer shrugged. “Maybe. The last thing they would imagine is that some teenager was taking a joyride in a spaceship!”
CHAPTER52
“Let’s start training. Let me say that your guidance will not be identical. Just like you are not identical twins. You both have stronger traits in some areas than in others.
“Hawk, you lean more toward psychic-kinetic skills and are strong with the push. Joe, you are molecular-kinetic and do well using the Aura Shield. I want to focus on your strengths and make them stronger.”
“We work well together,” Joe said. “Remember when we were attacked? We joined our shields and the overall protection was multiplied.”
“I realize that. I want to accentuate what you have that nobody else has. Let’s make the strong invincible.”
For their first exercise, Grayer told them to do nothing. “It’s harder than it sounds. I really want you to do nothing. I want you to sit, feet apart, in a relaxed manner. Close your eyes to eliminate visual stimuli.”
The twins sprawled comfortably on their patio chairs.
“Is this meditation?” Hawk asked.
“Partly.” Grayer slowly spread his hands outward. “Next I want you to focus on your mind, your brain. Listen to the chatter, the nattering, the constant seeking of attention. Your mind is a computer. As such it is seeking for problems to compute, to solve for you. If you do not have a problem, it gladly invents one for you.”
“Really?” Hawk said.
“Yes. Now relax and think of a warm comfortable place where you are safe. Don’t talk. Relax. Your mind is an amazing machine but it won’t turn off. In its most extreme manifestation, this is called mental illness. Simplistically, it is the refusal of the brain to shut up. Too much chatter drives some people mad in the end. You’ve seen people wander the city streets babbling to themselves as if they were carrying on a conversation?”
“Yes, they’re nuts,” Joe said. “Sometimes they’re thrashing out at some invisible person. They look dangerous.”
“Only to themselves. Try not to engage in conversation. Relax. The point is that they are carrying on a real conversation with someone that their mind has conjured up. The mind has done this on its own without the conscious permission of the person. The person does not believe it is imaginary. If they did, they would stop. To them it is as real as this conversation. The conversation is between their mind and them.”
“Hold on. Since when isn’t their mind them?”
“Watch them. Does it look as if they are talking to someone else, like an invisible person in front of them or walking alongside them, or does it look as if they’re talking to themselves?”
“Talking to themselves, of course,” Joe said. “That’s why they’re crazy.”
“But it’s a real person talking to someone else, right? You have a sense of a distinct person talking to another distinct person, no matter how delusional the apparent conversation. The conversation is with a phantom that the brain has invented.”
Grayer paused to let this sink in. “I propose to you that your brain is a different ‘thing’ from you. For instance, you are not your liver. You are not your lungs. You have livers and lungs. The same holds true for your brain. You have a brain, but it’s not you, it’s a part of you, like your liver. Your mind is a bio-mechanism that calculates, postulates, formulates, and solves problems, among other things. But you and your mind are not the same thing. Furthermore, you must not be your mind’s slave. It must be your slave.”
“I can’t think without my mind. How can I be someone, anyone, without my mind? I need my brain to think for me. I need it to tell me who I am.”
“You’re getting close, Hawk. It is true that you cannot process thought without your mind. But you can be without your mind. It is not true that thinking defines you. You exist, period. You existed before having a body and a brain, and you will continue to exist after your brain has decayed and died.
“Your mind creates parameters and boundaries. You don’t need them. I am going to teach you how to reveal yourself to yourself without the static interference of your mind.”
“You’re going to teach us how to lose our minds?”
“Close to the mark, Joe.”
“Then what? Insanity?”
Grayer was a little exasperated. “No. More like revelation. Bliss. You name it. Give it a name if you will. I can’t.
“You may not achieve anything for several tries. We will repeat this until you do. Back home this was the primary elementary exercise of every person. It was a simple fact of existence, of being, not some great discovery.”
“Every kid had to learn this mind control?” Hawk asked.
“Absolutely. When they were ready, everyone was coached on the technique.”
“It wasn’t, like, hereditary?”
“No. Even young wizards must learn. Eventually most of us learned how to find ourselves by deadening our minds.”
“Most? Not everyone?” Joe asked.
“Some better than others, for sure. Some not at all. They just couldn’t enter that state of mind on command. They learned how to live in the NOW and shut down the past and the future. If the NOW was thoughtless, this opened the gate to their Being.”
“How will we know if we get into this state of … of … well … nonmind?” Joe asked.
“That’s the beauty of this exercise. You will become enlightened and you will tell me when you do.”
The boys shrugged, unconvinced.
“Time to get down to business. Get into a relaxed state.” He closed his eyes in meditation. “Listen to the stream as it passes nearby.”
The twins scrunched up their faces in a mockery of concentration.
“Don’t goof a
round. Listen to the stream beside us and the water. Listen. What is the purpose of the stream? That’s right. It has no purpose. It just is. It is flowing water that passes by. We know of its passing only because we are here at this spot at this point in time. Had we not been here, we would not have known about the water as it passed by. The same water will never pass by the same spot ever again.”
Grayer’s voice droned on and on in a seamless monotone. The twins were outwardly relaxed, sagging in their chairs with their eyes closed.
Grayer recited a relaxation mantra. He watched his sons’ facial features lengthen and soften. He noticed the telltale involuntary twitch of tiny muscle spasms. He spoke softly with his gentle mesmerizing incantations. His voice sounded farther and farther away, barely audible.
“Now listen to your mind. What is it telling you about the passing water? Is it not telling you to forget the water? That it is not relevant. That this is a waste of time.
“Your mind will urge you not to waste time. There are problems to solve. There are important things to think about and consider. What have you forgotten to do, it asks. It will remember things that must be thought about. It will show visual movies of memories relived.
“Now, tell your mind to be quiet, you need quiet, absolute peace,” Grayer commanded softly. “There are no problems in this here and now. There may have been problems in the past and there will be problems in the future, but right now you are perfectly safe. There are no problems to think about. Relax. Let your whole body relax. You are not in danger. I am beside you, guarding you. You are safe. Perfectly safe. You will have plenty of time to think about things later.” His voice was a soft echo.
Grayer turned his eyes to gaze at the gurgling stream. He was pleased that he had picked such a good place to begin their training. There were no outside distractions.
“Your mind wants to demonstrate how hard it works for you. It wants to be the center of attention. It resists not thinking because its only purpose is to think. It resists staying in the NOW because there is no thought. Think about nothing, a gray wall. No thoughts, just think about feeling good and go totally limp. Your body is melting into the chair. It is sinking through the chair.
