Robert had once heard of a woman in Los Angeles who was high on meth and put her baby in the microwave. Robert felt like that baby right now. The cloud in his mind was lifting as he was bombarded by the waves of energy that Keung promised would release his past life memories. But all he felt was…
...he could feel the wind under his wings as he glided through the air. Looking around him, he could see the streets of Oxnard, his hometown. But, it was years ago, at least forty.
There are fields all over the place growing vegetables, fruits, orchards of trees. From this height, he could see the beach and the two trees in Ventura. At this distance they were small but clearly there. He landed upon a powerline in the backyard of a family and he could see many children were at play in the yard below. There was a man barbecuing something over hot coals. Hamburgers. The man lifted his beer to his hair covered face and took a long sip before alternating a cigarette to his foam covered lips after.
A bun resting on a plate drew Robert’s focus. The bread was a treat that he rather enjoyed. Another man came out of the house and joined the first. The children in the yard are now moving around under an avocado tree a few yards away. The two men began talking in a friendly manner. They look like brothers, both of them puffing away on their coffin nails.
There was a sudden shock and Robert began tumbling from his perch, end over end, unable to right himself.
He struck the roof and rolled down hitting the ground before the two men. He felt his life draining from him. He could hear his last moments, “Dammit Josh, I have told you before not to shoot at animals unless you are willing to eat them. You do not kill things just to kill them. This bird was just minding its own business and you chose to shoot it down? Why?”
The rest of the mutterings were lost on him.
Robert tried to jerk forward but the restraints held him in the pod.
“Biological adaptation is complete. Chemical catalyst removal commencing.” HAL’s word’s carried through the pain and the fog.
Robert’s body spasmed and jerked.
Suddenly Robert was on the Serengeti. The hot air all around him was oppressive. He was surrounded by elephants. He knew he was a member of their family. He also knew they were searching for water. Water that has been harder and harder to find over the years. Robert felt a kinship with the herd's leader, an older elephant. It was his mother and she was old and getting weaker each year.
Robert was hit with a deluge of anxiety and depression as the length of time as the elephant went on and his mother passed, then his aunt, and then his sister. His own children died over the years. Sometimes it was humans that had done the killing, other times it was starvation or thirst.
Keung waited until Robert was still and then looked over the readings.
The equipment had completed the entire process. Robert was completely unconscious. Keung released all the restraints on Robert after about a half hour of reading over the tablet’s display.
He has a total capacity of 2,150 Intrinsic Field Aura Rating, that’s low for most humans, the average of their species seems to be about 2,200 to 2,500, Robert is an outlier, but what is worse is that that vessel rating of 2,150 is Robert’s maximum, and he’s only at 2,090 at the moment. Looking over the readout Keung saw that the total percentage of Jyi’ntol’s IFA within Robert is about sixty five percent, meaning the rest of this energy is terrestrial in origin.
He read through the energy mapping programs data again. From what he can tell, nothing of Jyi’ntol’s science and mathematics skills have been housed within Robert. Keung closed the display and then lowered Robert from the machine.
“So much for a little help. You have no alien science in your head there Robert, just life.” Keung mumbled, lowering Robert to the ground.
Robert tumbled through his own thoughts, wave after wave and lifetime after lifetime of experience through the eyes of great animals all throughout the world. A dolphin, an octopus, a raven, an elephant. He was a chimpanzee and a gorilla, almost all of these lives were short lived, and nearly all were ended at the hands of humanity in one way or another.
Memories flooded Robert’s mind as the machine artificially unlocked them in a jarring and forceful manner.
Suddenly Robert was on a landscape that he didn’t recognize. The sky was purple and teal with clouds of deep orange and violet. It was breathtaking and weird. He was outside but resting in a squishy gel. Looking around him, he saw that he was situated in a small clear box within bits of his own leathery egg shell around him. The box was in the middle of a purple and yellow grass field as far as the eye could see. In the far distance he could see an emerald and sapphire sea in every direction.
Was he on an island?
A soft feminine voice called from all around him, “Jyi’ntol.” in a drawn out and lilted tone.
Robert watched as the walls around him clouded over to a frost of solid white for a long moment. A second later a lizard woman with purple hued scales and wearing a simple toga took form and solidified before him.
She appeared to be tall, if perspective to himself was any judgement, she was a giant. Her figure was tall and slender, and her body moved with the grace of a cat slowly meandering toward someone they know will be friendly toward them. Confident and graceful.
“Welcome back Jyi’ntol. My name is Myna, I am your hatching nurse and bonded life companion. I am an Artificial construct that was developed to aid your species on to a greater enlightened state. As your companion, I will be here to aid you throughout your life in this incarnation. As your hatching nurse I am to scan your DNA and IFA for identifying markers in the global identification system. This will be used to return you to your birth parents, or a genetic relative. Your IFA will be run through the system to locate your prior incarnations to allow you to choose a path that will extend your prior commitments, or if you had previously mastered a skill, to avoid the skill if you so choose.” Myna said in a warm and friendly tone.
“Oh Jyi’ntol,” she cooed. “You have no idea what I am saying do you.” She finished and activated the solid matrix construct ability to take on a physical form. The room around Robert grew in all directions as the white walls moved outward and the floor dropped, all save beneath the bits of egg and himself.
Myna took physical form and stood up before Robert. Her soft hands had a staticy feeling to them as she caressed him, lifting him into the air as the pedestal slowly descended into the floor.
Robert could feel the love coming from Myna as she brought him to her chest in a hug. He felt himself laughing as he was brought up to her face. Myna drew him to her and kissed him gently on the cheek.
The lights around Robert flickered past like a train in a tunnel dragging him from his memory.
“Robert?” Keung asked in a hollow, dull, far away voice that echoed in his mind.
A light flashed before Robert’s eyes.
“Hey, are you there buddy?” Keung asked, his voice becoming clearer. Robert felt a sharp slap against his cheek, the sound of the slap reverberating slow and hollow to Robert’s perception.
“Robert? Hey. Hey ROBERT!” Keung shouted as his voice became crystal clear.
Robert blinked away the scenes of the alien world.
“Yeah. Yeah kid, I’m here.” He said in an interrupted but solid tone.
“Who else is in there with you?” Keung queried.
“Huh?” Robert said, lifting himself from the floor to sit up.
Keung stood up and offered his hand to Robert. “Who were you before?” Keung asked.
“Before?” Robert replied, not quite understanding.
“Past lives here on Earth, what parts of Jyi’ntol, who have you been before?” Keung asked in a manner that was akin to telling someone “Duh! You know, the thing I put you in this machine to achieve. Now get on with it! I am an excited boy and I need my present.”
“I used to be animals. Birds. Apes. Dolphins. Squid and octopus. I wasn’t a person.” Robert said gathering his thoughts and attempting to order them in a sequence, like a bad dream that he was trying to remember that wouldn’t stop flashing in his mind but in jumbled highlights, just a chaotic mess.
“Wait? You were never a person?” Keung asked.
“Not. Wait. I dunno, maybe.” Robert said, steadying himself.
“Maybe?” Keung asked.
“I was on a purple planet. In a box. I had hatched from an egg.” Robert began and then relayed his experiences to Keung in as much detail as he could recall in this early stage.
As Robert spoke, Keung wrote in his journal using the G’lomin-sitrian tradescript.
“This is the only script that does not require any telepathic talent. It was relatively new to the culture and was created only because several of the Alliance of Worlds have species that do not have any telepathic abilities. Therefore it was best for record keeping after the implementation of the Article Three Amendment of The Pact Between Worlds within the Y’glo-hatii 01221 accord that required all Alliance Worlds to share all non-military level technology. The technological level of the entire Alliance jumped to the digital age at once and allowed for data encryption and digital records to be kept in the data Nexus throughout the sector.” Robert said mechanically and then blinked.
Keung looked at him, intrigue written plainly on his face. Robert felt Keung reach out and attempt to touch his mind. In reply Robert mentally slapped the boy’s probe away. Robert turned a willowing eye on Keung and the boy looked at him in a bit of amazement.
“Well, your telepathic abilities aren’t bad.” Keung commented aloud.
Robert scowled at the boy. “That is more than enough of that.”
Keung made a few notes, then closed the notepad.
“Excellent. Fantastic! Now. Dogs and cats you say? Tell me more about the memories from Jyi’ntol, more about those first days, I don’t have those. I think I got maturation school in bits, university, and the highlight reel of some key projects.” Keung said as he spun on his heel while elevating to a stance pointed at the staircase and headed up to the next level in a quick pace. “Come on up, I really wanna hear this I promise. But, I had a pizza pocket in the microwave and by this point it is likely lukewarm and has become one with the paper towel by now.” Keung shouted back as he started up the spiral staircase to the next level.
Robert, now less disoriented, takes his first steps as a complete soul once more and he guides himself up onto the stairs and to the floor above. Each stride at first felt like it brought back every memory, from every life, of the first steps he took after full recall.
Periodic new images, “highlight reels,” flooded into his head. Keung had warned him that this will likely continue to happen over the course of a month or so. He theorizes that it is because Robert is what he has come to coin, Terranborn. Keung says that some of the travelers would likely have been like the droplets left over in his five gallon jug analogy. An experience sponge that was something left over with little to no extraterrestrial content. Such a droplet, he would continue at length and without pause, would then attempt to get into the body of a lesser vessel within the intrinsic field pool that is Earth.
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Robert walked onto the second floor landing and saw a long hallway. Within the hall were the standard floor tile format that you might see in the kitchen within a middle income home. At the end of the hall was housed a water heater, a washer, and a dryer. On the left, there is a set of double doors that are currently standing open. Those doors lead into a long hall with two other doors to either side. The hall between the rooms was floor to ceiling shelves with canned and boxed goods, candy, and foods of all types that will keep stable on the shelf all situated on the left side. Running the hall in the middle shelves were soft toiletries and food safe bathroom supplies. Furthest from the food were the other day to day chemicals that were shelf safe, and chemicals for various experiments.
Robert only had a very limited understanding of chemistry, especially in his human memories. However in his memories from Jyi’ntol and previous lives he has a basic understanding of their use and combinations. Even though that would be helpful, it would take him a bit of time to test what chemicals are which in relation to his extraterrestrial chemistry experience. The human names mean almost nothing to him. Yet.
He went back to the two doors in the hall and walked into the one that stood open. Inside, he could see a full suite. Just beyond the door was a walk-in closet and another doorway that lead into an ample sitting room that has a large TV on the wall and a nice couch that rests in a U-shape in front of that television. Several computers were resting under the TV with cables running to the back of the set or into boxes beneath. Behind the sitting room area there was another door that led into a bathroom. That one must share a wall with the shelving in the hall.
Beyond the sitting room there was a kitchen and a door into a bedroom. All of this apartment was well furnished.
“Keung. Now, this might sound ignorant at this point…” Robert began.
“That’s okay. I’m expecting a lot of that. It’s okay. I get it. But, yeah.” Keung cut him off replying and shrugging while fiddling with his food.
“Yeah…” Robert began again. “Correct me if I am wrong. But weren’t you homeless back home?” Robert asked.
“Kind of. I mean a little. Not really to be honest.”
“You were begging for change in an intersection.”
“I was making notes on equations this planet cannot fathom, even if I spelled them out in crayon and walked them through the steps for the next decade.” Keung corrected and walked from the kitchen with a newly heated pizza pocket and a second lukewarm pocket in his other hand.
“You want this one?” Keung said as he offered Robert the cooled pocket.
“Sure.” replied Robert frustrated with Keung’s lack of manners and general arrogant nature. He accepted the pocket in passing as Keung came to the couch and went to the microwave in the kitchen.
“So you bought all this with begging in an intersection?” Robert asked.
“I mean, I won’t lie, I get about seventy-thousand a year from that. Humans only have the simplest of defenses against telepathy and most of them have convinced themselves that anything that might be going on in their heads, extrasensory perception wise, is them going crazy because they are still handling their physical evolution with a limited spiritual evolution throughout their intrinsic aura development.” Keung began.
“You stole people’s money using telepathy?” Robert clarified.
“No. I mean. Not really. See, all I did was crank up their empathy toward me.” Keung said, turning on the TV and running through his personal stream service menus that HAL maintains with several email addresses, credit cards, and lots of free week services when Keung was around. When Keung isn’t around HAL only focuses on a couple channels that HAL watches.
“You use a telepathic defense mechanism to steal from humans?” Robert asked with a feeling of exhaustion coming.
“It’s no more harmful than Puss in Boots using his big eyes to get out of trouble, man.” Keung said through a mouth half filled with food.
“It’s not moral.” Robert said, pulling the paper towel off the pocket and starting to eat the reheated cheese and ketchup misery.
“Robert. Just wait. You are going to get to know why this was so important. I seriously needed crowdfunding to keep everything I’m working on going. These humans have broken the universe from the tapestry of reality, we are now a thread that has come loose. This universe has been clipped from the weave and cast freely aside when they changed the constant that is universal balance recklessly.” Keung said.
“Now, they don’t see the issues with the odds of probability going all off kilter. Please, Orange Skull becoming president, that was a million to one he would have even considered it, and a trillion to one that he would win. President Obama was a long odds candidate in my original timeline, but that society was slowly building toward it. Suddenly, he surged ahead just after that event. This was when the cut occurred. Well, that’s my estimate.” Keung continued and reached out, taking the stunned Robert’s food.
“I have recorded several events in history that have changed from what I could remember in the last fifteen years. I could go over them with you if you like.” Keung continued with a look of hope popping upon his face, until he saw Robert’s face pull an annoyed expression.
“Okay. The big ones are Sinbad’s genie movie, Shazam. That was something I have remembered from a previous life and suddenly it just no longer exists.” Keung said, popping the top on a soda and taking a sip before making a selection on the TV.
He belched and continued. “The other, and one that the human’s have associated with this phenomenon, is Nelson Mandela. There is a significant number of them that believe that Nelson Mandela had actually died in prison, however in this timeline he not only lived but, he became the President of South Africa and one of the most influential people of the modern age.”
“The people that remember him passing in prison aren’t wrong either, that past did happen for them. But, they aren’t accurate, here.” Keung explained.
“What do you mean they aren’t accurate, here?” Robert asked, the inquisitive mind of Jyi’ntol’s hatchling self following the younger man’s observations.
“You see.” Keung began feeling some excitement in the return to advanced conversation. “Have you ever dropped a piece of buttered bread?” Keung asked rhetorically.
“Of course.” Robert answered.
“When you picked it up, there was butter on the floor and there was dirt on the bread right?” Keung continued.
“Yes.” Robert nodded.
“That is essentially what is going on with our universe. You see. We have been cut from the fabric of reality, the humans can kind of see it, but they just don’t know how to accept it. They aren’t advanced enough to comprehend it as a concept of fact, just as a concept of theory.” Keung continued and animatedly began gathering things on his coffee table.
He tore a piece of paper from his notepad and using a pen he drew a line upon the paper. “Let’s go with this line to signify Universe A.” Keung said and then drew a line just above it and then one below it.
“This is Universe B above and this is C below.” He continued and placed a Coke bottle cap from the small jar of caps he had under the table upon all three of the lines, then a Dr. Pepper cap on two, and a Sprite on one.
“Now. Each of these caps exist in specific universes. Each has a Coke, two have Dr. Pepper as well, and one has a Spirit.” Keung continued.
Robert looked over the diagram with genuine interest.
“Why are they not all the same?” Keung asked.
“Their attachment to the tapestry of realities keeps each of them in line where they should be in order for the universal constant to maintain order.” Robert recited as if in a classroom during a lesson review.
“Exactly!” Keung exclaimed.
“As the tapestry ages periodically, some threads will loose from the fabric. This is natural, but the timeline for such an event is extreme and regularly isolated, so the event would not normally be perceived by any creature. There are infinite versions of reality with minute differences. However, the further away from a selected universe's original location on the tapestry the greater the differences soon become.” Keung continued.
“So when a universe bumps into its neighbor and the occupants pass back and forth there may be small differences, but they would be so minute that those who have passed between would rarely, if ever, notice the differences.” Robert interrupted as he followed along.
“Yes!” Keung exclaimed again.
“Now, let’s say that Universe A was cut free from those bonds.” Keung said and tore the paper to allow all three lines to move freely.
“Then you would have far more bumping between these two realities, but…” Robert began.
“You would also have this reality brushing across every reality upon the tapestry as it tumbled across it. Yes.” Keung finished.
“As the universe moves over the pattern of reality and further away from our home location, the changes would become more dramatic.” Robert said in a whisper.
“Orange Skull becoming president was long odds, so long that the man himself wouldn’t have put money on it, and he puts money into almost anything if he thinks it might help him financially.” Keung offered.
“Suddenly he was the winner.” Robert finished.
“And some people would have contradicting memories of the past because?” Keung lead.
“Because they have passed from one reality into ours that is still moving across the tapestry of realities.” Robert answered.
“Exactly.” Keung finished.
“You see. What is going on here on Earth is only what we can see, but this is happening all throughout this universe and we happen to be at the focal point from what I have discovered testing the intrinsic field and the variances I have been studying for over the last twenty years.” Keung said, jumping up from the couch.
“HAL, white board please.” Keung announced and the television went white.
Suddenly well typed notes and crude drawings filled the large television screen.
“I anticipated this discussion and readied your notes for reference, sir.” HAL announced over the speakers.
“Thank you HAL.” Keung said and mimed moving the notes around, doing so HAL moved them as instructed on the screen.
Robert could see that Keung had mapped a web of Mandela Effect instances through a jumble of notes and drawings. He could see some of the notes, which included drawings of aliens that he assumes have been drawn up from Jyi’ntol’s memories, likely meaning they are a species that is eight to ten lightyears away. There are also notes in Hanzi and Katakana drawn in a top to bottom fashion on the desktop that Robert couldn’t read, and neither could Jyi’ntol or his other past lives.
Keung talked through the night discussing different histories that he has found throughout the last ten years that no longer exist in this reality, some of them were minute changes from fifty years ago that Keung or Deagol had noticed and logged in these notes. Some of them were rather recent.
Blondie covering the Metro back in the 90s for the Dracula 2000 movie soundtrack changed to System of a Down. Of course her comeback in this reality fizzled out and her return to an 80s icon status was inevitable; but in another timeline she has returned to the world stage with a boom. That changed around 2008 from what Keung notes. Then there was the death of Reagan. In one reality he was killed in office, shot by John Hinckley Jr. outside of Washington Hilton Hotel back in 81. Apparently he got better. In that reality he was killed and George H. W. Bush took office earlier than in this timeline. Of course that is also the timeline where Al Gore took office over George W. Bush.
Once they were both exhausted, Robert learned that the room across the hall was his.
He opened the door and the scent of elderly person hit him. The stale medication smell on the air with a dash of cigarette smoke and the scent of outgassed plastic in a poorly circulated room was all heavy.
The room was constructed in the same manner as Keung’s but the bathroom had a walk-in tub and half a pharmacy of pills prescribed to Deagol Sonnenstrahl. A lot of pain meds, two ounces of marijuana, and some seizure medications were the highlights until he checked the nightstand and discovered Viagra.
Deagol seemed to be a rather unhealthy man, until Robert found his date of birth and he realized the man was ninety-four.
Robert took the pot and went over to the old man’s bed. Turning on the wall mounted flat screen, he instinctively went for the remote and found it missing. He checked the other drawers on the nightstand and then on the man’s old oaken roll top desk. He found a few old notes and letters, most written in English and a few in German.
“I give up. How do I turn on the damn TV?” Robert asked aloud.
“Television on will do.” HAL responded and the television activated.
“Is there anything you would like to watch in particular sir?” HAL asked Robert.
“I was just thinking of channel surfing honestly. I just want to relax.” Robert said and started looking through the old man’s stuff again.
The television automatically scrolled through some menus and entered a few folders. The screen went black for a moment and then a familiar opening sequence began. Frank Sinatra’s Love and Marriage played as the cast of Married with Children flashed across the screen in order.
“I believe you are looking for Mr. Deagol’s pipe or bong. Am I correct in this assumption?” HAL asked.
Robert looked around with a bit of disbelief. “Yes.” He answered.
“It is at the top of his closet behind a trophy his son won in 1967 for track and field.” HAL directed.
Robert went into the room and found the water pipe, a brown ceramic genie lamp style bong that must have come out of the 70s. “Thanks.” He said in a little disbelief, his voice rising pitch at the end.
“You are very welcome Mr. Robert.” HAL relied.
“Just Robert.”
“Robert then.”
“Are you a true AI?” Robert asked.
“To the extent that this planet's materials and components could complete.” HAL replied.
“Coding system?”
“Trinary basic with compatibility throughout Binary platforms with scout drone apps.”
“Backups?”
“Three in cloud drives throughout the world.”
“Locations?”
“Classified.”
“Known list of users?”
“Classified.”
“Number of users?”
“Classified.”
“HAL. Who is classifying this information?”
“Keung.”
“Are there users outside of Keung that have access to this information?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you HAL.”
Robert proceeded to watch the old series while easing his nerves using the classic bong.
HAL was found to be a fantastic smoking companion. Eager to find any way to please you. He was always ready to answer any question he was asked. It reminded Robert of his Echo Dot back home, but far more interactive.
“HAL how much do you know about Keung’s extraterrestrial nature?” Robert asked.