Giddeon (Silver Strand Series) (17 page)

She came to me again, one night.
 
I had figured out that when Greg and Melody shared a dream, that that was when we could most likely be together.
 
It doesn’t happen very often.
 
Once every few months, or, so.
 
I had been waiting, patiently.

It was winter, the night before Christmas Eve.
 
I was on the deck of The
Del
, sitting in a chair overlooking the ocean.
 
It was maybe 10 o’clock.
 
Kind of early for them to be asleep… I suppose that happens when you’re an old married couple :
 
)
 
She came up behind me and put her hands over my eyes.

“Guess who.”

I reached up and took her by the wrists.
 
God, she felt good.

“Since I’ve only been able to actually touch one girl in my life, I’m guessing Mia.”

She laughed and kissed me on the cheek.
 
I stood up and took her into my arms.
 
Mia buried her head in my neck and kissed me there.
 
She smelled differently than Melody, more like lavender and honey than lemon and mangos.
 
I took her face in my palms and looked into those deep, mysterious eyes.
 
Then, we kissed properly… long and lingering.
 
Finally, we broke apart and she put her head back against my shoulder.

“When they share a dream…” she began.

“I know,” I said. “I finally figured it out.”

“I don’t know how much time we have,” Mia whispered.

“We’ll have to make every second count,” I replied.

“Or learn how to stop time…”

I smiled and put my face in her hair.
 
“Not a bad idea… not bad, at all.”

*****

We didn’t stop time that night, but it seemed like we did.
 
Melody and Greg must have been having an extended foray, together, so we had enough time to talk and try to sort things out.
 

It was like a date.
 

The best date, ever.

We put on ice-skates and took a few turns around the outdoor rink with the tourists.
 
I could have found us another reality where the ice was deserted, but it was kind of fun swirling through the people and enjoying the holiday with them.
 
Almost like we were part of the world inhabited by the solid ones.
 

At least her hand was solid in mine, and that’s all of the interface with substance that I needed.
 
Of course, she was fantastic on the blades.
 
She could even do those spins and jumps like an Olympic athlete.
 
I contented myself with just scooting back and forth and holding her hand when she was near.

When we grew tired of that, we went for a walk on the beach.

She told me how she could still see me when she was gone. That hadn’t been mentioned on the golf course because she had no idea that she would ‘dissolve’.
 
Mia thought there would be time for her story, later… we were too caught up in the moment, and didn’t realize our moments were limited.
 

She explained how she had been with Greg and I on most of our adventures.
 

It was earth-shattering, to say the least.
 
Maybe not as Earth shattering as an asteroid, but it sure rocked my world, no pun intended.
 
I asked her about the particulars, and she did her best to relay to me how it was that she had learned to visualize us.
 
I thought the part with Boris was most intriguing.
 
We agreed we would try that and a multitude of other approaches.
 

Then, we just sat there together in the sand and listened to the waves.
 
The moonlight reflected off the water and danced softly in her hair.
 
We kissed, time and time, again.
 
Do you know how wonderfully sad it was to do that?
 
Kiss and feel the connection so deep down in your core… and, at the same time wonder when those lips against yours would disappear?
 
We knew each kiss could be our last… at least for a good long while… so we tried to make each one an indelible mark upon our memories.
 
I know I had never been kissed, before… except at the golf course… but, I believe those kisses that night on the beach will forever set the bar for all kisses that will ever come, afterwards.
 

Eventually, we lay down in the sand and brought our bodies close together.
 
Having her against me was… well, it was better than anything I had ever experienced.
 
Better than
MangoMooManias
that’s for sure.
 
Better than golf.
 
Better than surfing.
 
Better than… well, you get the picture.

Of course, we still had on all of our clothes.
 
Sex wasn’t really part of the equation.

 
Seems like I’ve heard that, before…

 
It was enough, as it was.
 
More than enough.
 
Almost too much.
 
I have a seven hundred thousand word vocabulary, and I still can’t really describe it.
 
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a touch from her is valued at a million.
 
Or, more.
 
I know this all sounds like the ultimate high-school crush, but,
geeez
… who cares?

 
I’ll admit it.
 
I was smitten.
 
No, worse than that…

I was completely, and totally, hers.

Still am.

*****

Jennifer shut the computer down, her 39 year old face wet with tears.
 
That particular session was one of her favorites, and she had played it over and over, again.
 
She knew exactly how Giddeon felt, because she had felt the same way, once.

The therapist turned off the light and fell asleep in her bed.

*****

The second time I got to be with Giddeon was
sooooo
romantic.
 
It was like every tender love scene ever written rolled into one… times ten.
 
Knowing we were on borrowed time just made it more memorable.
 
It was heartbreaking when I dissolved, but at least I got to tell him that I could still see him when I was gone.
 

Even when I disappeared, he laid there for a long time in the sand with his arm over where he knew I was.
 
I think that was almost as sweet as the time we had together.
 
Finally, he told me that he needed to get some rest, and he went back into the hotel to go to sleep.
 
Of course, I went with him, and I spent the night right next to him.
 

The next morning he kissed me, making an educated guess as to where my face was.
 
He was pretty close, and I could just barely feel his mouth on my eyelid.
 
Good enough… a girl’s got to take what she can get, sometimes : )

Anyway, they say love makes the world go round.
 
He and I wanted the opposite.
 
We wanted it to stop.
 
Stop while we were together… or, at least slow to a crawl.
 
Slow down so much that we could savor each and every moment and draw it out like sweet taffy.
 
Sweet taffy that we could consume together… like with the two dogs in ‘Lady and the Tramp’, where their spaghetti slurping ended in a kiss : )

Oh, my… I do sound kind of ridiculous, don’t I?
 
Oh, well… that’s in the Bill of Rights, isn’t it?
 
The right to sound ridiculous when you’re in love?
 
Freedom of Gush?
 
The pursuit of sappiness?

I guess it’s just the way we’re built… women that is.

*****

Speaking of built… I really like the way he’s built.
 
I know it isn’t ‘real’, but, let me tell you, he sure felt real that night on the beach.
 
Nothing happened… you know… nothing R rated.
 
But, that was one steamy PG 13 encounter.

Speaking of movies, doesn’t our current situation with the asteroid kind of remind you of that film with Bruce Willis and Steven Tyler’s daughter?
 
Is this a case of life imitating art?
 
Or, do you think the collective sub-consciousness kind of saw this coming way back then?
 
Do you suppose that’s possible?
 
I guess I should be the one to answer that… after all I’ve seen more of what can happen than you.

So, yeah… I think it’s possible.
 
That somehow the creative types in
Hollywood
picked up on a future event.
 
I think it happens quite often.
 
Consider how many times the Science Fiction writers have been right on the money.
 
What are the odds of that happening?
 

Then, again, what are the odds of finding your soul-mate when his other half is in a coma?
 
Probably not very great.
 
But, someone’s got to win the lottery or no one would play, right?
 
Is that what’s going on, here?
 
We’ve all won some type of raffle and get to star in the ultimate movie?
 
A reality show that’s just a little too real?
 
And, everyone on the planet is an extra?

I don’t know.

I only hope that this one has a happy ending, because I’ve had enough of sad ones.
 

*****

Later on, Giddeon showed me how to sample realities, and I don’t care for most of what I’ve seen.
 
He says that it wasn’t always this way.
 
That it was more like half and half.
 
I don’t know why, but, lately it’s tilted.

Tilted like a set of scales that’s too heavy on the wrong side.

*****

The most immediate problem, according to Ray, had been identified correctly by Melody and put at the top of the list.
 
It was also the most easily solved.
 
The hundreds of nuclear reactors (700 plus, counting the 250 smaller research reactors) around the world all stored spent fuel, usually on site, that must always be kept cool by water flow… at least for several years.
 
If the electricity is shut off to the plant (the second and third problems on the list… I’ll get to them, in a minute), then diesel generators are used as back-up power sources to keep water pumping over the rods and thereby prevent an exothermic reaction.
 
An exothermic reaction that would first release clouds of radioactive steam into the atmosphere, and then, as the water boiled off, a plume of radioactive particles as the casings surrounding the rods cracked and vaporized.
 
That would result in runaway reactions that would continue for years.

We’ve all seen the result of that with the Japanese catastrophe.

The trouble, according to Giddeon, is that even though all plants have generators… usually more than one… there’s only a limited amount of diesel fuel at each site.
 
Suppose there’s a major problem with the power grid.
 
Do you remember the traffic jams after the blackout in
San Diego
and
Southern California
a while back?
 
Can you imagine such gridlock on a national scale?
 
In a black-out scenario, some of the nuclear facilities would be unable to truck in the diesel needed to keep their water pumps functioning.
 
When the cooling systems started to fail, even more chaos would ensue, and roads and bridges would become impassable.
 
Since, sometimes, nuclear plants are in fairly close proximity to each other, the supply routes to the neighboring plants would also be blocked.

No, problem… you might say.
 
The military could helicopter in the fuel.

Under normal conditions, you would probably be right.
 
But, what if the power outage was caused by an EMP?

*****

‘What’s an EMP?’ you might ask.

An EMP is an Electromagnetic Pulse.
 
The second problem on the list.
 
They can be caused by exploding a nuclear bomb in the upper atmosphere.
 
The pulse released from the explosion is strong enough to fry most solid state electronics (in a 1500 mile radius) unless those electronics are properly shielded.
 
Most of our electronics, are not… even those depended upon by the military.
 
In such an event, communications will be down, cell phones and land lines will not work, and air traffic will for the most part be non-existent.
 
One by one, the nuclear plants will melt down, spewing their deadly products into the air for all of the world to breathe.
 
And, that’s just in
America
… there are plants all over the world in countries that don’t have our military capabilities.
 
Even if we did have enough aircraft left functional to bring in fuel for us, the other nations most certainly would not have enough transport vehicles if attacked.
 
Not to mention that the water pumps at the reactors themselves may have electronics that are vulnerable to EMP’s.

Well, you might say, let’s just hope no one is foolish enough to set off a nuclear bomb in the upper atmosphere… after all it would affect the entire planet.
 
It would be like suicide.

What if that’s the goal?
 
The 12
^th
through the 24
^th
problems on the list.
 
So many plots and sub-plots designed to pretty much wipe out the human population, or at least drastically reduce the number of people on the planet.
 
There are those that want to destroy not only themselves, but all of humanity.
 
Likewise, there are some that want to destroy everyone but a select few.
 
Both types of individuals are, by any measure, insane, but that has never stopped such people from accomplishing their dreams.
 
Or, should I say, night-mares?

Look at Hitler.
 
Stalin.
 
Mao.
 
The Khmer Rouge.
 
The list goes on and on, down through history.
 
Religious purges.
 
Ethnic cleansings.
 
Genocide.
 
It’s been done, before and, most likely, will be done again.
 
Only now, the insane have better tools.
 
More power at their disposal.
 
Let me ask you this… if everyone on the planet had a button they could push that would cause massive problems on the Earth, how long do you think we would last?
 

Not very long.

That’s what I think.

The buttons are out there, and more and more people are obtaining them.

Look at the internet.
 
There are people that live to hack into systems and insert viruses that disrupt and corrupt.
 
You can’t be stupid to do something like that.
 
But, intelligence is not the same as wisdom, and even wisdom is not the same as morality.
 
That’s the problem with those 13 plots on the list… no moral guidance.
 
We all have darkness inside of us… I think the trick is not to let it out.

*****

‘But, wait…’ you might ask.
 
‘You left out number 3 through 11.’

I don’t have time to go through them all… maybe later.
 
Let’s just go over number 3.
 
Number 3 is a lot like number 2.
 
A solar flare.
 
Every so often our sun produces a mass ejection of cosmic radiation that hurtles through space.
 
Sometimes it hurtles towards the Earth.
 
It happened in 1859, and again in 1921, but we had no electronics to speak of back then.
 
Both of those events would have knocked out our power grid, today, causing many of the same problems as an EMP.
 
Smaller flares happen all of the time and don’t really cause many problems.
 
With a large one, however, it would be different.
 
We would only have a few hours to prepare, and could hopefully save some of our systems… but, if the flare was strong enough, it would take months or even years to get all of our systems fully restored.
 
The same troubles with the nuclear power plants would, of course, be in play in such a case.

*****

The good news was, our grid could be shielded for a modest amount of money.
 
Considering the capital spent around the world on wars, conflicts, bailouts and fraud, it was miniscule in comparison.
 
500 million to a billion dollars, maybe, to strengthen the grid in
North America
.
 
A similar amount for Europe, and
China
, and
Russia
.
 
Less for Africa,
Australia
, Asia and
South America
.

*****

So, you can see that we had a lot on our plate.
 
I hated to dump all of that on Ray, but, if he could handle the asteroid problem, we figured he was the man to coordinate responses to the other things on our list.

Sort of a CEO for disaster prevention.
 

After we finished up in the study, we ordered pizza from Alexander’s… a small eatery on the island.
 
Ray decided he was hungry, after all.
 
I went and retrieved a large bell pepper and mushroom, along with three
MangoMooManias
and a huge bucket of vanilla ice cream from
MooTime
.

We all dug into the ice cream immediately.

Life’s short, eat your dessert first.

*****