Chapter 9
Oracle was her stage name and the world was her stage. She was accompanied by a flying orb. The orb was a camera. Cameron the camera. Her career started with a cell phone and a live streaming service back in the day. She was popular. Partly because of her exotic beauty. She could have been silent and just staring at the camera and people bouncing rooms would have hit her and stopped and stared back for hours. As it was, she also was insightful, and kind, and answered questions not with arrogance, but with a knowing. She was a Star Child. She was really psychic. Her name real name, which she rarely used anymore was Isabis Adisa. She came in and Cameron shot ahead of her, going over Emmitt who was situated on the massage table.
“Hello, Emmitt,” Oracle said. “Are you okay being on television?”
“I thought I already was,” Emmitt said.
“Oh, yeah, but your family’s rating are nowhere near mine. To be honest, the Gates are boring. You might see a spike if viewers after me,” Oracle said. Her eyes went up and to the right. “Their viewership went up when they brought you in. You do actually have a small fan club.”
“People with nothing better to do than watch a paraplegic lie there all day?” Emmitt asked. “I recommend adopting gold fish.”
Oracle laughed. “Always be kind to the watchers.”
Emmitt studied her face. He could now turn his head. They told him he would never do that, but he was now doing that. Sort of. He turned it towards her and sort of fell into position. Not the position he was aiming for. He over shot. Andrea, his android, his version of Cameron, only more substantial, adjusted his head, folding an end to a towel he used as a pillow to prop the head.
“Anyone ever tell you that you resemble Whoopi Goldberg?” Emmitt asked. “Cameron?” Oracle asked
“Post syndication?” the orb asked.
“All together,” Oracle said.
“123,” Cameron said.
“I thought it would be higher,” Oracle frowned.
“You’re the psychic,” Emmitt pointed out.
Oracle laughed. “It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “Chair.”
The chair in the room came to her. It was basically just a robotic stool, one that might be found in a medical room, with half C of an arm slash back. She sat in it and brought it closer to the bed. She studied him.
“Nice aura. Chakras are aligned,” Oracle said.
“Please don’t mess with them,” Emmitt said.
“I wouldn’t dream of messing with someone so in-lightened,” Oracle said. “I suspect your Kundalini will rise soon. Unfortunately, it won’t be the desirable slow incoming tide. It will be more volcano. Or lightening. Instant twin snakes.” “Thank you for finding me, back then,” Emmitt said.
“You don’t know the story?” Oracle said. “There’s a story?”
“He doesn’t channel,” Cameron said.
“Seriously?” Oracle said. “You don’t channel podcasts? You don’t surf the net? You’re
not getting off in your dreams. No wonder your Kundalini is ready to burst.” “Can we get off that subject?” Emmitt said.
“You’re not embarrassed,” Oracle said, not an accusation, more an assessment. “Do you know what your psychologist said about you?”
“Don’t really want to know,” Emmitt said. “Professional opinions bore me. But if you’re friends with Miracle Max, I would of those chocolate covered miracles pills.”
Oracle laughed.
“No one is going to get that reference, son,” Cameron said.
“He said either you’re the most ethical child past puberty he had ever met, or you’re an old man in a kid’s body,” Oracle said.
“I can’t wait to grow up, so I can be a young mind in an adult body,” Emmitt said. “Don’t rush it, kid,” Oracle said. “You’ll get there soon enough.” “I feel like I am running out of time,” Emmitt shared. “Really? Urgent business? Got to save the Universe?” “Yes, actually,” Emmitt said.
“Oh, son,” Oracle said. “Haven’t you figure it out yet? You’re not here to save the Universe. The Universe is here to save you.”
Emmitt’s eyes revealed he was considering it. He came back to her. “Thank you. You were going to tell me a story.”
“You were a great season finally. So, I was schedule for AlienCon, as you well know. Or maybe you don’t. I channel aliens. Aliens. Spirits. We’re all the same at that level. Anyway, alien spirit guide, my number one contact, Ekon, says land the car. I tell the car to land. Car protests, saying it wants to maintain the schedule. I tell it to land. We land. Mind you, just debating landing with the car added some time and distance, and so the car comes down. It feels random. But we landed in the nursing home parking lot. The car asked for more instructions.
Ekon tells me to go inside. I go inside. At first, they’re like no way! Oracle’s here. They’re giving me the tour and all super nice faces and directing me away from your room. They don’t want me to go there, but Ekon is insistent. I push through them and enter your room, and you go viral. Oh my god, what a disturbance in the Force you made. That’s why you have the viewers you do. Some of them feel determine to keep you safe. For a brief moment, everyone in the world was talking about you. Praying for you. The last time there was such a focused attention was on 9-11. No one realizes how bad that was going to get. The other time, when the whole world came into focus, was during Apollo 13. Every human being on the planet was praying for those guys. They made it home. You made it here.”
Emmitt considered. He might have nodded. “And yet, people say there is no evidence for psi.”
“Most the time, the evidence is small. It is never statistically zero. Academics are still fighting it, and rightly so, but they have shifted. They now say negligible, not absent. But it’s not that people can’t or don’t do these things, but because holding that level of attention takes serious effort, and we are bombarded by thousand distractions, and we get caught up in our own dramas, and so, here we are. Yeah, mostly, the world moved on after that episode. We go back to work. We do our things. And sometimes, we get pieces of stories in films and things get revived. Like that story Quint tells about the USS Indianapolis in the movie Jaws. One day, an 8 year old is watching that and he pauses the movie and asks, ‘is that real.’ His parents didn’t know, but he couldn’t let it go. He researched it. He found the survivors and he managed to bring them together for medals in front of the White House. I would be surprised if he wasn’t the reincarnation of the sailors who was eaten by a shark. You believe in reincarnation?” “I believe in a lot of things,” Emmitt said.
“Aliens?”
“Oh, hell yeah. They’re here,” Emmitt said.
“Really?” Oracle asked. “What’s your evidence?”
“Every episode of Star Trek!” Emmitt said. “Yeah, the Time Tunnel aired before Trek, but the Guardian of forever, that’s a time tunnel. That’s a Star Gate before SG1. Oh, and seriously, people need to read the credits of SG1. The show thanks the US Air force, the Pentagon, and Space Command. Why the hell would Canadian based show be thanking the US government agencies? And why were Pentagon staff doing cameos on the show? Hollywood is the soft disclosure machine, and the secret military agencies have been keeping the world safe since before WWII. We’re actually the good guys.”
“Interesting. How do you feel about Reptilians?” Oracle said.
“Ignorance breeds hate. The Reptilians are not evil. Some of them are assholes, but so are some humans. The Reptilians do have a formal grievance. They came from Earth. They were the dinosaurs and they had colonized other worlds and they weren’t paying attention and Earth got cosmic makeover. When that happened, a number of races moved in and started repairing the planet, but they also seeded to get a foothold. The Pleiadian is just one that had a hand in saving the Earth. So, multiple parties, with multiple agendas and investments. Star Trek, the Gorn episode got many things right. We’ve been fighting from a distance for a long time, and there is another party playing that to see if we matured. What they got wrong was the Gorn, the Reptilian, they’re stupid, lumbering beasts. That was just creative license. Had Kirk gone up against raptor, the Gorn would have won that. Interestingly, though, Kirk won, and consequently the Gorn won, and then we won. Humans have a bad rap on many scores, we’re quick to violence, we’re as greedy Ferengi, seriously, the Ferengi that’s just human projecting their present paradigm on a fictional species, but, we are also one of the most loving species to emerge in a long time. We may be quick to violence. But we are also quick to forgive, ready to work with others. People complain how divided we are politically these days, but maybe that’s our Arena test. Maybe they’re trying to gauge how mature the public at large has become. Can we set down our paradigms and come together to heal this planet? We are on the verge of becoming adults. We will pass out of our legalistic phase of childhood, and step up into a galactic community that is waiting to greet us with open arms.” Oracle smiled. “Now that’s the speech of a century.”
“If I could move my arms, I would be as dramatic as Kirk,” Emmitt said.
Oracle laughed. “What do you know about Remote Viewing?”
“I am not a psychic. I am interested. I think I would make a good handler,” Emmitt said. “I have read every book of Ingo Swann and Robert Monroe.” “May I hold your hand?” Oracle asked.
Emmitt was quiet. He didn’t break eye contact. “I don’t want a public reading.” Everything she does is available to public. Almost everything he does was available, because of his family’s celebrity status.
Oracle nodded. “May I hold your hand?”
He moved his eyes up and down. She understood that was a nod and took his hand. She held his hand. Her face shifted through pain, fear, confusion, recognition, love. In some ways, she appeared to have gone through all the stages of Grief. When she let go, she wiped her eyes.
“People should know,” Oracle said.
“It would be too much of a distraction,” Emmitt said.
“People will know,” Oracle said.
“Probably. In time,” Emmitt said.
Oracle mused, her eyes shifted up and to the left as she listened to an inner voice. Her foot anchored, turned her chair slightly to and fro. Her hands came together and her right hand pinched the left hand’s index finger. She realized she was doing that and dropped her hands to her lap. Her left hand eventually rose again, coming up to her mouth; she bit on the nail. She frowned and put her hands in her lap.
“I can’t say it?” she asked
“Let me. You and I have always been friends,” Emmitt said. “I returned to you, Master, because I have so much more to learn.”
Oracle scoffed. “Clearly, my little Star-Child,” Oracle said, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly. “How many ways can I tell you the old paradigm is flipped? It’s not matter first, then consciousness. It’s consciousness first, then matter. It is not when the student is ready, the master will come. It’s when the Master is ready, the student will come. We are all masters, and we are all students. When you recognize everyone in your life is either a gift or a lesson, then you will advance. Embrace the lesson, or lose the gift. The gift is opportunity.”
Emmitt blinked. Oracle stood. She leaned into him, patting his chest over his heart.
“It’s going to go much faster now,” Oracle whispered. “I am sorry.”
“For?”
“It’s going to be unpleasant,” Oracle said.
After Oracle departed, Andrea turned his head back, facing up. She blinked. “You okay.”
“Yes,” Emmitt said.
Andrea withdrew, but remained in line of sight, standing completely still. It was one of the oddities about androids that they could just go still and hold a pose for hours. They generally didn’t do this in public, or in high trafficked human areas, because humans were disturbed by it. Had she been in Emmitt’s line of sight, she would have continued to emulate normal human movements. Not the weird sway of avatars of old, always in motion when the player was indecisive or out of the game, but actual people like behaviors. People couldn’t explain why they were disturbed encountering frozen androids. Mannequins and statues had been around forever, and yet finding an android in standby mode provoked humans to crazy thoughts. As it was,
Andrea was fantastically created so as not to be mistaken for human. Her eyes were rather large.
Her skin was porcelain white. Better than Geisha. Whiter than white. If she stood in a store window, people probably wouldn’t have given her a second thought. She had hyper-feminized body and face shape. Her lips were heart shaped; a squashed heart, with lip line extending beyond the red, natural smile. There were lots of heart shapes to be found in the female form, Emmitt thought. Bosom to stomach, heart. Inverted heart, from buttocks to back, and from hips to stomach. Nirvana’s ‘Heart Shaped Box’ played in his head as he considered the most precious heart shape female anatomy. Emmitt accused Andrea of resembling Shalon, a character from
‘Six Million Dollar Man,’ played by Stephanie Powers. She was an alien, and essentially a biotech engineer, and the creator of Sasquatch.
Andrea came out of her pose. She focused on Emmitt. “I am detecting an increase in stress. Do you require assistance?”
“No.” Emmitt said.
Andrea blinked. She did not believe him, but she had insufficient criteria for over-riding his response. Heart rate up. She detected sweat. She remained actively focused on him.
“May I share your experience?” Andrea asked.
“No.”
She remained silent through ten minutes.
“When is Christopher getting here?” Emmitt demanded.
Andrea blinked. She messaged Christopher for an ETA. A message returned a moment later, apologizing for not updating his schedule sooner. He would not becoming today, family situation. Andrea reported this.
“Call him,” Emmitt said. “Speaker phone.” Andrea blinked. “He said it was family related.” “Call him!” Emmitt snapped.
“I am concerned,” Andrea said.
“Get him on the damn phone,” Emmitt said.
“This is Christopher.” There was sound of a toddler in the background.
“I need you!” Emmitt said.
“Emmitt? I am sorry, man. My wife’s having a migraine and I couldn’t get a sitter,” Christopher said.
“You don’t have an android?” Emmitt said.
“No synthetics in this house,” Christopher said. “What’s going on?” “I need you. Bring your toddler,” Emmitt said.
“I can’t focus on you and my son,” Christopher said.
“Andrea can entertain him while you work,” Emmitt said.
“Dude, it’s not going to happen today. I will fit you in tomorrow,” Christopher said. “I promise.”
“Please,” Emmitt said.
“Emmitt, I am going to end the call now. I will swing by tomorrow.” Christopher ended the call.
Andrea came up into line of sight. “I can do everything Christopher does.”
“No,” Emmitt said.
Tears were going down the side of his face.
“I am calling Doctor Gates,” Andrea informed him.
“No!” Emmitt said.
“I am sorry,” Andrea said. “I believe you are in distress and parental and medical intervention may be necessary.”
Mr. Smith-Gates arrived first.
“Emmitt?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“Call Pia and see if she will see me,” Emmitt said.
“Seriously? After all that drama last time?” Smith-Gates asked.
“Please,” Emmitt said.
“Messaging her,” Andrea said. A moment later a frown occurred. “She declined.”
“Do I want to know?” Smith-Gates asked. Andrea shook her head.
“Son, please talk to me,” Smith-Gates asked, feeling his forehead. “Temperature?”
“Slightly elevated, for him” Andrea said. “Tap in,” Smith-Gates said.
“I will not link with his mind without his permission,” Andrea said. “I am the parent, over-ride,” Smith-Gates said.
“No,” Andrea said.
“What?!” “All human beings, regardless of age, have the inalienable right to privacy,” Andrea said. “He is not homicidal. He is not suicidal. There is no ethical reasons for me to violate the sanctity of his mind.”
“Fucking do an override, now,” Smith-Gates snapped.
“You cannot direct me to violate ethical codes,” Andrea said.
“STOP IT!” Emmitt yelled. He never yelled. He was now crying. “God! Please!” He was in distress, and yet part of his mind wondered why people said god when in severe distress, or when having orgasms. How were the two connected? Was this a version of Tourette’s? Did the brain always go to Fuck and God during pain and pleasure events?
“Override!” Smith-Gates said.
Mrs. Gates entered. She went from mom to Doctor in zero flat.
“I want him in his bed, now,” Gates said.
Andrea complied, moving him. Holographic displays came up around Mother-Doctor. She was a little confused. When she looked back, she saw his hands coming together over his chest, his arms floating, his hands clenching. She touched his jaw, confirming his jaw muscles were contracting. His legs were coming up and he rolled over into a fetal position and screamed.
“Andrea, go get a sedative from my office.” “No!” Emmitt yelled.
“Son, you’re experiencing severe muscle cramps,” Gates said.
“I am moving!” Emmitt said. “I feel it!”
“Let me give you something for the pain,” Gates said. She was crying. She was back in mom mode.
“NOOO!” Emmitt screamed. “God!”
Siblings were in the door way. Since he had been here, he had never complained, never as much as whimpered. The whole house reverberated from the sounds of his voice.
“Where’s Christopher?!” Gates snapped.
“He took a child care day,” Andrea said.
Heart monitor gave an alert. Blood pressure was now elevated into dangerous levels. Gates called the chair to her and instructed Andrea to go get the sedative-Ativan, 2 ML. Andrea complied, departing the room, and once past the kids, she ran. Gates sat in front of Emmitt, touching his face.
“You get this under control now, or I will knock you the fuck out, you hear me?!” Gate said.
“No!” Emmitt said.
“Get this under control, then,” Gates said. “Breathe! No! Deeper. Focus. Breathe in, deep, hold it. Hold it as long as you can. Exhale, slowly! Again.” Andrea returned with a syringe.
Emmitt was suddenly Garcia, in the fetal position, in a medical bay, with Bliss and Sophia hovering over him. Bliss was coaching Garcia. “Breathe.”
He was in two worlds. There were worlds in between. There were others present. Ekon introduced himself. Oracle’s Ekon. Oracle was there, in the shadows. Her silhouette was unmistakable.
“No one comes into being without birthing pains,” Ekon explained.
“It’s so much!” Emmitt cried.
“I know baby, but you’re doing good,” Gates said. “Keep breathing.”
“Why does it have to be so hard,” Emmitt cried. “Why is everything a test?”
“Breathe,” Bliss said. “Emote love. Bring in compassion and radiate forgiveness. I take this so others might avoid the same.”
“Bliss!” Emmitt said, angrily.
“Focus” was echoed in many worlds. “Breathe.” “I am with you.” “We are with you.”
“Always with you.”
Emmitt’s eyes narrowed. He gasped. He blinked. “There’s a light.” “What kind of light?” Gates asked.
Emmitt smiled, through tears. “Thank you. Thank you.” He breathing fell into a slower, deeper rhythm without forcing it. Bio-stress indicators began to fall. His nose ran and Gates wiped it, disposed of the tissues, and then wiped his eyes with a clean tissue. He closed his eyes. He reached out with his hand and grabbed his mother’s wrist. His grip was solid, not the accidental cupping and tug of the immobilized. He went to sleep. Doctor Gates cried.
Chapter 10
Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. It was the song in his head as Emmitt ran. He didn’t need ear buds. He had perfect clarity. In the real world, Andrea ran beside him. They were on a track at a high school he didn’t attend. He was homeschooled, but the state allowed him to access the sports facilities. Mostly he just ran, normal pace, endurance. He could run for hours, especially with a song. In his head, he was running with House MD. Episode, ‘Meaning;’ season 3, episode 1. His parents knew this reference. For his siblings, his peers, this reference was now gone. This meme had carried people several season, and it impacted a good size audience, it was a paradigm shift in the nature and image of ‘TV’ care providers; not only does ‘everyone lies,’ not everyone is nice, even Doctors. Doctors could be ill, addicts, and assholes; and still loveable in a quirky, human way. In his inner world, he had access to a healthy House MD. A little older. A little wiser. He still had that look about him, that Hugh Laurie look. He had access to a group of
‘Invisible Counselors’ who were as solid real to him as real people. This was not craziness. Napoleon Hill, author of ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ offered a pathway to accessing these inner archetypes: same book, chapter thirteen, "the Invisible Counselor Technique.” On the rare occasion he had tried to make a friend with a peer, or hold discussion with an adult at the underground library, he had offered this, and pe