Hooman Saga Book One - Mind Timing Chapter 4 & 5
SO FAR: Mari recovers from her introduction to chain restaurant breakfast, while finds Peter to be perfect gentleman. She relaxes her guard, yet the risky challenge she was brought here for remains...
IV
PETER'S EYES WERE FIRM, his brow set, as well as the corners of his mouth. He was serious.
"You brought me all the way here just to tell me that?" I asked. "I've allowed myself to be drugged, perhaps just then again, and moved to a time and location that I do not know. So risk is something I was prepared for. Tell me something I don't know."
"Or tell you something that you are not aware of," Peter continued. "You were practically bored to tears when I entered your Club several hundred years from now. And came with me armed to the teeth with multiple weapons from a 'more enlightened' time. Where the local laws currently don't even have permits for most of those now-unknown weapons, but they would be confiscated were you ever arrested. Just for carrying them."
He’d moved through the doorway, standing now behind the counter in the kitchen it was part of.
He took the carafe and snapped on a plastic lid, turning away from the counter to place it in a tall cabinet behind him, one I presumed was for refrigeration and preservation. Then he returned, picking up my glass and rinsing it in what had to be a narrow bar sink on his side of that counter. The sound of a clink told that he had placed it upside down to drain. Not the most sanitary, perhaps, but a simple expedient.
Placing both hands on the counter, to show he meant no harm to me, his next statement might be alarming. I shifted my stance slightly to the balls of my feet, prepared.
"I find your heightened awareness amusing," he smiled. "And you know I don't have any weapons on me while I can make out at least a dozen on you. But that is logical, since I am the one who needs to earn your trust. In your time it was the male, particularly the white male, who was the most dangerous and unpredictable. Here, in this time, you are a queen to almost everyone you meet, because of your advanced mental and physical training.
"And there is also the error you've been raised with. Also why I had to bring you here. In your time, you were to have an unfortunate accident of your own Club a couple of hours after we left. Ultimately, you would have died. Because you sought relief from your own boredom.
"It was your own advanced training that killed you. In that time. Not now."
Peter moved his hands down and turned to leave the kitchen back into the long main room. He turned off the kitchen lights as he passed through that doorway.
I shifted my position slightly and moved back to appear as normal as possible, turning to walk down the side of the conference table.
He walked along the side of the long table I'd put between us, both seeming to sense my high preparedness and to ease it.
"This is the problem of that time. Both sexes are in such a high state of conflict that it is too close to an actual war between them. One that would be the end of the human race. And this is why artificial intelligence failed where artificial insemination succeeded. To preserve the human race. Although your genomic work proved that it's better for Nature to decide the sex of the child. Not humans, before or after it is born.
“That much of the history of this time was preserved. For Nature has ways of equalizing the balance when it shifts too far off course." Peter was talking he walked.
And now we had reached the end of the table. He stopped on his side, at the corner.
"That is what our challenge consists of. You need to interact with this culture in order to revert a certain mental habit that has crept in," Peter looked at me with his steel-blue eyes.
Those eyes were simple truth. His brows weren't elevated or narrowed. He was simply gauging my reaction and staying neutral so I could react without his influence.
I appreciated that. Again, this man was intuitive beyond bounds. It fit his tale of being from another time-line.
"The principles of this challenge we went over on our way here. This is another nexus where the decision is yours. We can continue, or the challenge is over and you will return to the time you left, the instant following." Peter waited for my response.
I knew the correct response had to be physical. "Obviously, I need to refresh myself and get into something more comfortable and less aggressive. I won't need any weapons with you..."
"...as you are safer with me here and now than you could be in any time and space. The combat we seek isn't between us, but rather before us," Peter finished.
I smiled at this. He had a quaint way of talking, of explaining things. They matched my scientific outlook. Maybe a little too closely. "Well then, I'll get cleaned up and find something more appropriate for our next conversation,” I said.
A small smile started at the corners of his mouth. "And that next conversation should be rewarding. We have so much still to cover..."
V
SHOWERED (I BELIEVE the phrase is) and dutifully clean, I dressed and walked back into the main room (called the "living area") barefoot on the soft, deep carpeting. I was wearing a matching gray set of yoga pants, a crop top, and a comfortable cotton fleece top called a "sweatshirt" (probably due to its absorptive properties.) I had not a single weapon on me, even having removed my fingernail add-ons. Because I needed to earn Peter's trust to get him to tell me what I had to know.
Peter rose from the center of the couch set as I entered, another courtesy from a long-lost time. I crossed in front of him to sit in the corner farthest from the door. A position that denoted I was willing to trust him with my life. Or was a damned fool. As I passed, I again caught that earthy fragrance he wore and realized that it wasn't gardening or an added scent. This was his own particular scent. And I found it intriguing.
Peter sat as I did. He was also barefoot, and wore a simple light blue cotton t-shirt that fit his broad shoulders as if tailored, but not tight. He had no need to show off his physique to me. I could tell by his walk and gait that he was used to a lot of daily exercise.
He smiled at me. "And I'll be 'staying out of your head' as the saying goes. You can finish your own sentences. Because in my own time-space, it makes our communication faster, but here it sets you on edge. Mental privacy matters more here, as you have reminded me."
"Thank you for that, Peter." I noticed he had been reading from a set of documents in front of him off a narrow mahogany-colored tea table. While more inside, there were a few loose sheets of paper on top of their gray card stock folder. "But I have some questions before we continue. How is it that I'm able to know the local names for rooms and fabrics? I haven't had time to study the programs on that screen, er, TV set."
"Mental habits," Peter answered. "They are like the global winds that move around every planet and every bit as penetrating. What people think are private thoughts actually spread from one to the other with impunity. This is the reason for mob action, and for both the elevation and degradation of cultures. Why the rural areas are more peaceful and the cities are more violent. And why half of all scientific studies are wrong - inside the same study itself. We covered this earlier, but it had to sink in by experiencing it. We become what we think about. And it is a definite 'we' that is the cause and effect."
"Then how is it that we just don't all become a great mental "melting pot" residue?" I asked.
"Because we are individuals first, and work as a team or herd or pack secondarily. No two people consider the same, just as they don't observe the same accident 'facts.' There are as many slightly different accounts as their are witnesses. Prosecutors and defense attorneys wanting to determine the 'truth' will emphasize one version over the others, and so accomplish the legal result they want," Peter explained.
"Yet we still have choice over what we think, and can so choose our own results," I said.
"Yes, as long as one is aware that as you become what you think about, and so the world is what you think it as," Peter added.
"That then brings us to why we are here?" I asked.
"Indirectly, yes." Peter pulled one of the paper-clipped sets of papers and handed it to me. "You'll have to wade through some of the scientific academia-ese on the back papers, but the summary sheet pretty much lays it out."
I looked over the front sheet carefully, and then scanned through the rest. Peter had selected this data as key and knew my background. I got excited.
"This is amazing stuff. It was – or will be - only theoretical in my time," I said with wide eyes.
"It's actually little known here and now. Those that might know this to be true aren't listened to in these days." Peter said. "It's because of the viral mental habit that created what they call 'news' in this era."
I frowned. We didn't even have that term.
Peter noticed the frown. "You don't have the term, but you have been effect of the result. That news reader you were scanning when we met is part of the 'news media' in this time. Mostly those are owned by conglomerate corporations who also own televised broadcast media, and even a temporal fad called 'social media' at this time. But there lies the problem and the solution. Our job is to simply leverage certain factors which have been pointed out as crucial to tipping the scales."
He handed me another paper which I scanned quickly.
Then I stood to move over to reach the papers on the table myself sitting closer to him in the process.
Peter relaxed and watched me work, one arm hanging over the couch back, which turned him slightly toward me. A perfect angle for him to observe.
I was so intrigued with the rest of the papers, I hardly noticed until I finished.
He was smiling as I put down the last paper. "Want some more of that protein shake?"
I nodded and sat back. Watching him walk the distance to the bar.
Putting my hands down to each side, one wound up feeling the warmth Peter had left on rising. This again raised my pulse in a not-unwelcome manner. And his scent rose again from the couch fabric, which compounded the effect.
Peter soon returned with two tall glasses, along with a white cloth napkin for each. I took the glass and napkin from one of his hands, while he sat calmly in his earlier position.
We both sipped in quiet.
"You know, this is darned good," I said.
"Yes. All natural and invigorating," he said.
I set my glass on the tea table, on top of its own cloth napkin. And then just relaxed on that couch next to Peter, considering what we had covered. The heat from him came over to me, although we weren't touching. This made thinking a bit difficult for some reason. But a welcome distraction.
Soon my thoughts were only about Peter.
I didn't really understand how this could be. Perhaps it was the "mental habits" floating around this city, or those of Peter himself. Either way, it didn't matter. I liked the sensations, much different from those sugar/salt/fat laced pancakes and caffeine-powered coffee.
What was different is that the society I came from treated men as something to be wary of, that sex was a personal thing, not related to having children directly. Now I saw the direct connection on an intimate level.
It was intoxicating to experience.
"You know, this is getting hard to concentrate," I said.
"Is it alarming to you? We can move to the table," Peter said.
"No, it's a unique experience, one I think I want more of," I replied.
"In answer to your question, this isn't a mindset habit of this culture, rather the result of your moving away from the mass mindset of your own culture," Peter said.
I looked up to his face as he turned to look back at me. His angular jaw and hard lines somehow seemed softened to me, as if I were looking through a filtered lens.
"And I won't 'try anything' on you without your permission, meaning that it's up to you what you want to explore as part of this experience," he said.
I sent my hand up to the back of his head and pulled his face close to mine. "I hope you don't mind that I'm not experienced in this sort of thing," I said softly.
He whispered back to me, as our faces were nearly touching. "I'm yours to teach you whatever you want."
Our lips touched, and the time for talking was over...
A new serial begins this series
Book One of the Hooman Saga is an anthology compiled from earlier short stories which tell how their dystopiac world started before, well, everything in Hooman Saga Book Two.
An alternate future-history. This first story starts in about 2018 in this Earth’s time-line.
Delivered here as a new series of serials. From this point forward. For nearly 350 print pages.
For now, set your calendar to keep track of these new adventures. Every Saturday.
Table of Contents
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