SEE US AT:
Sally makes her entrance down the stairs like she's some kind of royalty gracing her adoring subjects with her presence. And honestly? She's got the looks to pull it off - she's about as stunning as any young woman has a right to be. The three guys waiting for her are practically drooling, though they're trying their best to play it cool. But Sally? She's completely oblivious to all the hearts she's breaking and cuts straight to the chase. "Look, if this whole thing is really about getting ready to go back to Earth, then why the hell did Ben say he couldn't find it? I mean, come on - something the size of a planet doesn't just vanish into thin air, does it?" she asks, looking genuinely worried while absentmindedly munching on some dry toast as they wait for their actual meal. They've found themselves a cozy little cafe tucked away from the hustle and bustle of main street - somewhere they can actually have a real conversation without half the town eavesdropping. Back home in Penny Lake, Sally never really thought about food unless it was part of some social gathering or event. But here in Powder Junction? After spending an entire day having her mind completely blown by all this crazy information, she's absolutely ravenous. That dinner better show up soon, or she's seriously considering making a move on those crackers sitting on the neighboring tables.
"Well, sweetie, I'm gonna take the scenic route around that question before I circle back to give you a straight answer," Michael says with a knowing smile. "Like I mentioned earlier, there are basically two ways you can experience Earth. The first way is pretty intense - you get born into a human body and you literally become that person, eventually forgetting everything about who you were before. It's a complete transformation, and for someone like you right now, it's essentially a one-way ticket. When you eventually make it back here, you're not the same person anymore. You've become whoever you were during that earthly life. The second option is what we call an ethereal visit to Earth. And here's the thing - what you think of as your body right now? That's actually an ethereal body. I know it feels completely real to you, and it is! It interacts perfectly with this domain and is absolutely part of it. Here, it's just as solid and real as any physical body on Earth. But here's the catch - it doesn't interact with Earth's domain at all, except when you go through the whole birth process and become one of them.
What I've been told is that level 3 and level 5 exist out of phase with each other, which makes any kind of interaction basically impossible. So when you visit Earth in your ethereal form, unless the people there have become enlightened, they can't see you at all. Your ethereal body is completely invisible to them because it doesn't interact with their four-dimensional matter. Light passes right through you, matter passes right through you. But here's the kicker - it works both ways. Since their four-dimensional light passes right through your ethereal eyeballs without any interaction, you can't see their light either. Their physical bodies, their matter, their light - it's all just as invisible to you as you are to them.
But here's where it gets interesting. All living things, no matter what level of consciousness they're operating at, have ethereal bodies too - not just humans like you used to be. The ethereal component in all life creates just enough of a phase shift that you can actually see things that are alive. Etheric energy has this glow, this light that someone at level 5 like you can perceive. So when you're visiting Earth, what you're actually seeing is all that ethereal glow from the living beings - all the life energy, including the incredible radiant life force that emanates from Mother Earth herself."
"Food's here!" John practically shouts, clearly relieved at the interruption. "Let's digest what our friend Mike just laid on us while we eat, and then maybe he can serve up some more wisdom for dessert."
"Sounds perfect to me, John," Sally says, practically slurring her words as she salivates. "I'm literally starving to death over here!" The four of them attack the food like a pack of kids who just came in from a hard day of playing outside. All this heavy theorizing and mind-bending new information has left them absolutely famished.
"Ugh, I ate way too fast. I'm probably gonna throw up, but order me that pie I saw on the menu anyway. I'll eat it whether I puke or not, hee hee," Sally giggles, holding her stomach.
"You've been pretty quiet lately, Pat. How you holding up there, son?" John asks with genuine concern.
Sally jumps in before Pat can even open his mouth. "Pat hasn't done anything but stare at my boobs ever since he figured out we could actually have sex here. And I've caught you deliberately walking behind me so you can check out my ass. Just so we're crystal clear here, you better get yourself a bedroll like Johnny boy over there, because you're sleeping on the floor with him tonight." Pat and John just sit there staring at Sally with their jaws hanging open, while Michael nearly falls off his stool laughing.
"God, I love this little firecracker more every second," Michael says, wiping tears from his eyes. "You might not have been too fond of Powder Junction when you first arrived, but you're starting to fit right in. I'm beginning to think maybe this is where you belonged all along."
"Well, thanks for the compliment," Sally says, feeling genuinely proud of herself, "but no thanks. I still think your stinky little town is awful. I just wanted to make it crystal clear that I'm here on a mission, and I don't need any emotional complications getting in my way. There are plenty of other 'young fillies,' as you so charmingly put it, bouncing around this town and flirting with every cute guy they see. So if Pat's interested in that kind of thing, he can certainly hook up with one of them and keep his hands off me. Now, it's dessert time. So Michael, pick up where you left off. Why the hell can't we find Earth?"
"Still working my way around to that answer. Sally, Pat - do you remember what you were doing right before you ended up here? Really think hard about it." Sally scrunches up her forehead and purses her lips, concentrating as hard as she can, while Pat stares at the floor, still reeling from Sally's brutal honesty and feeling guilty because her accusations were absolutely spot-on.
After a long moment, Sally starts to speak slowly. "It's all fuzzy, those last few days. I know I had just finished getting registered for college. I was ahead of most of my classmates and graduated a few years early. I was in the graduating class of 2122. I had this part-time job and was hoping to save up enough to buy a used hover-car so I wouldn't have to keep bumming rides or dealing with public transportation. If I'm remembering correctly, I was on my way to work, and then suddenly I was at the apartment talking to Ben. I have no idea what happened in between those two moments. Wait! This is really strange. My dad was giving me a ride to work that day. We were incredibly close - he was like my best friend. But this is the first time I've even thought about him in over three thousand years. How is it possible to just completely forget someone who was so important to you your entire life? Someone you were so close to? Does that make any sense at all?"
"It actually makes perfect sense, sweetie," Michael says gently. "Families don't always end up in the same domain when they reach level 5. So during the transition - which people rarely remember anyway - we say our goodbyes and then we close what we call 'the veil' over those memories. It's like they never existed. But that's not actually a sad thing, even though it might sound like it. They're doing just fine in whatever perceptual frame your parents ended up in, and you've been fine in yours. It makes life much easier when you don't have those memories constantly gnawing at you. Sometimes couples do come together. Sometimes partial families make the journey and then other members join them later. But for the most part, level 5ers arrive as singles. That's why you see so many single people in Powder Junction. The singles tend to have a pretty good time here."
"So what's your story, Pat? You showed up the same time I did. How did you end up in level 5?" Sally asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.
"Are you sure you actually want to know, or are you still pissed off at me?" Pat shoots back with a hint of defensiveness.
Getting irritated again, Sally snaps back, "Oh, did somebody's feelings get hurt? Get over it, Pat. We've got serious work to do here. So what's your story?"
"Okay, okay. Look, I'm sorry. I'll let it go. Just... maybe ease up a bit and don't be so harsh?" Pat takes a deep breath and continues. "I actually remember my last day pretty clearly. I was at this peace rally we'd organized. There wasn't an actual war happening or anything, but there was tons of political fighting going on in the various councils. The Earth group felt like they were losing control over the other planetary councils and were trying to rein everyone back in. The other councils weren't having it, especially the Mars council. The terraforming project was going really well and Mars was approaching complete self-sufficiency, except for all the products they were being forced to send back to Earth, which was a huge drain on their economy. Earth maintained that their investment in the terraforming project needed to show a profit, while Mars felt that once they'd paid back the initial balance, Mars should be independent and not have to pay what amounted to interest to Earth for some indefinite, possibly unlimited period of time. The extra-planetary groups that had helped with the settlement of all the planets and moons had probably contributed even more to the terraforming projects than Earth did, and they'd done it as a gift. They weren't asking for repayment like Earth was. This had all the councils in an uproar and made Earth look like the villains. The whole situation was getting really ugly. So students like Sally and me would organize these peace rallies, hoping to show our elders that there was a path to peaceful resolution instead of letting everything escalate into future conflicts, possibly even war.
There was also this huge debate about INA chips - that stands for Intelligent Network Augmentation chips. A bunch of us kids had them, but a lot of the older generation didn't think they were a good idea. Those chips were the reason we could get through our PhD programs by age 14 or 15. The INA chips gave us direct connection to a planetary information network - it was like having all the knowledge in the entire solar system right there in your head for instant access. Not only that, but we could communicate with each other just by thinking at them. It was incredible. Sally and I would chat and send images to each other all day long, even if we were on opposite sides of the planet. I think I was at that rally and then suddenly, boom, I was with my family in level 5. The really weird thing is that we didn't even question it. We didn't ask 'what are we doing here?' or 'what's going on?' We just set up our new home in level 5 and went about our lives without even wondering that we used to be somewhere else. And I could still communicate with Sally through thought and send her images and receive them back. So it felt like nothing had really changed. It wasn't until recently that I realized I'm no longer connected through the INA chip. That's really strange. Why is that?"
Michael nods thoughtfully. "Like I explained to Sally, we rarely remember the journey from the physical body to level 5, and we never know what happened to the body after our etheric presence left it. So during your transition to level 5, you and your family made the conscious decision to come together, and you chose to close the veil on your past life and start fresh. That's often much easier than bringing a lot of emotional baggage with you into level 5. When a soul is preparing to return to Earth and enter a physical body, part of their preparation involves awakening those veiled memories and dealing with any unresolved issues before returning to a level 3 existence."
Michael pauses, clearly gathering his thoughts. "Okay, let me see if I can tie all of this together for you. When Sally appeared at that apartment house in Penny Lake, along with 50 other newcomers, and when Pat and his family showed up at their new home, we had almost half a million people suddenly appear in Powder Junction and the surrounding area. We had people sleeping in tents out in the pastures, living in corners of restaurants, cramming into hotels and public buildings, and some just camping out in the woods. It took quite some time to build homes for everyone and find them all jobs. But it wasn't just people. We also got tons of other etheric energy - grass and weeds and trees and cows and bugs and flies and gnats and all sorts of living things. It took years to stabilize all that life in our little world here. And it happened everywhere, not just here. It was genuinely terrifying. We called it the Great Influx, or just 'the influx' for short."
John gets this serious, thoughtful expression on his face and says, "I'm sitting here listening to all this, and I can only think of one thing that could account for something that massive. I remember the influx into Penny Lake, but it wasn't that big and Ben got it under control pretty quickly, so I never really thought much about it. But if it was as enormous as you're describing, then like I said, I only see one explanation. All life on Earth was wiped out, wasn't it? One minute everything's there, nobody sees anything coming, and then boom - it's all over. Is that what happened? Is Earth gone for good? Did the whole planet blow up?" John stares at Michael like a patient waiting for a terminal diagnosis from their doctor.
"Well, we still don't know for certain. That's exactly why we're so excited that Sally and Pat - if they can stop bickering long enough - are interested in going back. We're planning to send them on an intelligence mission to see if we can figure out exactly what happened, and maybe even find a way to fix it. What we do know from a few etheric visitors who were there at the time is that starting from the north and south poles of Earth, a wave of death moved across the planet, with the two waves meeting at the equator, sterilizing everything on the planet from the upper atmosphere down to miles deep in the crust. The whole thing happened in just a few minutes. Nobody saw it coming. From the perspective of the etheric witnesses, the planet just disappeared and they found themselves floating in empty space. At first we thought maybe it was an asteroid, or some kind of bomb, or a series of bombs. But none of those theories held up. It's unlikely that it was an asteroid because something that size would certainly have been detected well in advance - if not by Earth's monitoring systems, then definitely by the extra-planetary civilizations who were much more technologically advanced than Earth. But that theory just didn't make sense. Plus, it wasn't just Earth. Mars, all the moons, and the extra-planetary expeditions all disappeared at exactly the same time. No extra-planetary beings have come within a parsec of Earth since that event. The entire solar system is completely dead, dark, and from our perspective, invisible. We can see a few tiny dots way off in the distance, sort of like very faint stars, which we believe is life on other planets, but it's so dim that unless you really concentrate, you can't make it out. We believe it's still there - the mass, the rocks, everything in level 3 four-dimensional reality - but from our six-dimensional perception, we just can't see it. So we need to go there and find out what actually happened."
"Sally? Pat? Are you willing to accept this mission? We can't force you to do this. But I have a feeling you're just as curious as we are. And to be completely honest, we're all starting to get pretty bored here in level 5, but we don't have anywhere else to go. Finding another suitable level 3 civilization is nearly impossible these days since they're all inhabited by some form of life, and besides that, Earth was special - it was a gem, a rare find, a pearl of great price. So we believe it's absolutely worth the time and effort to see if we can locate and possibly restore Earth. Our hope is resting with the two of you."
"Hell if I know," Sally says, staring intently at the older men. "You guys have all this information about what happened, and you've been sitting around for several thousand years waiting for two kids to solve the problem for you? There's definitely something missing from that equation. Why us? I mean, I'm excited about the adventure and all, but this is starting to sound like some cheesy Saturday afternoon movie about kids with magical powers who end up saving the world. Pat and I don't have any special powers. Why are we being asked to go on this mission?"
Michael smiles and tries to explain. "First, you have firsthand experience that we don't have because you were actually there when it happened. Second, you're the first people to start getting restless and wanting to go back. And third, I have a strong feeling you might have some abilities that you're not even aware of yet. I'm just guessing on that last point, but my intuition is telling me I'm right. So what do you say? Will you guys give it a shot? It could actually be fun."
"As long as Sally wants to do it, I'm with her," Pat says without hesitation.
"Well, I guess we're doing this then," Sally says with determination. "Let's get this adventure started. But first, I'm going to go relax for a while, get properly dressed for dinner, and then meet you guys back down here for some real food."