“General, does this program have a name or number yet?” Jan asked.
“What did Malcolm say, Sarah?”
The executive officer looked at her note pad. “P-Seventeen.”
“Sergeant,” the girl began, “would you open the session by starting your tape and announcing the program number, session number, date and time, please?”
The sergeant looked at the general.
He raised his eyebrows and nodded.
After pressing the record button, the sergeant cleared his throat. “Um . . .
Program P-Seventeen, Session . . . One?” He paused to glance around.
“Thirteen October 3662, nineteen hundred hours, seven minutes.”
The girl smiled and nodded, then looked slowly around the room. “My name is Heather. Some of you know a different name, but that name, first and last, must be left behind and forgotten.”
For the first time that evening, the colonel nodded his approval.
“Also present at this meeting are . . .” She gestured to the person on her right.
The young female officer glanced at the general before speaking. “Major Lisa Ka-markla, security.”
“Colonel George Ba-kerga, security chief.”
“General Samuel Bo-seklin, commander.”
“Major Sarah Ma-soran, executive.”
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 18
The major turned and looked at the sergeant behind the tape recorder.
“Me?”
“You’re in the building during a highly-classified meeting, Sergeant,”
Colonel Ba-kerga asserted, “so you’re technically in the meeting.”
“Um . . . Sergeant Ben Ta-nibon, security.”
The colonel turned to the general. “No one else in the building, Sir. I did a walk-through just before . . . Heather . . . arrived. The lieutenant who was driving the blind transport went home.”
“Thank you, everyone,” Heather said softly and closed her eyes.
“I’d like to start with a question . . .” Colonel Ba-kerga tried to say.
“Please don’t,” Heather snapped, eyes flashing and pinning the colonel. “I have a thousand thoughts swirling around in my head, and to be any use to you, I have to figure out which ones are important right now, and how to organize them. If I try to answer questions at this point, my mind will be going in twenty different directions. I promise I’ll take questions just as soon as I’ve said what I need to say.”
The colonel frowned deeply, but noticed a slight smile on the general’s face, so he said no more.
“We’ll give that format a try tonight,” the general announced.
Heather closed her eyes again.
Everyone waited as the reels of tape slowly turned.
“I am not a savant. A savant has some kind of extraordinary mental ability, like memorization or calculation.”
She saw several slight nods.
“Neither am I a voyant, although my letter about the rocket might make you think so. A voyant can see things that most people can’t — things far away, like clairvoyance or remote viewing — things in the past not otherwise recorded, sometimes called psychometry — or things in the future, pre-cognition.”
She saw discomfort on every face in the room.
“The fact is . . . I was born with an entire lifetime of memories, knowledge, education, experience — and if a seven-year-old may dare to use the word —
wisdom.”
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 19
Major Ka-markla’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Heather smiled briefly. “I could read as soon as I could focus my eyes —
the newspaper, the encyclopedia, anything. Drove my mother crazy for a while, but luckily she’s not the kind of person who desperately needs to be a mother to someone, so she got used to it and eventually realized how lucky she was.”
Major Ma-soran frowned with sadness.
Heather made comforting eye contact with the woman, then went on. “I realize there’s nothing very useful about a lifetime of memories and wisdom.
You can find that in any old-folks’ home.”
The executive officer’s frown changed to a chuckle.
“The unique thing about my memories is that the person I got them from is living in the same time-frame that I am. In other words, she’s seven right now, and will die at age eighty in 3735.”
The general twisted his face with disbelief. The colonel frowned.
Heather ignored both. “The important thing to realize is that I cannot see the future. I cannot sit here in the present and reach into the future with some ability. I remember the future. If a future event is in my memory, great! If not, there’s nothing I can do about it. I have the memories of only one person, not some kind of all-knowing omniscience.”
Only soft breathing could be heard in the silence that followed.
“I do not know who gave me these memories, but it must have been someone with powers far beyond us mere mortals. I call it God. If that offends you, you can use any word you want. I don’t care.”
She noticed frowns on several faces.
“He hasn’t spoken to me directly, telling me why He did it, or what He wants me to do with it. But He did leave me a clue.”
The discomfort in the room turned to curiosity.
“My memories are not complete. There are things I cannot remember that anyone should, like the source person’s name, where she lived and went to school, the names of her husband and children, things like that. When I try to find those things, it’s like someone spray-painted over them with black.
Believe me, I’ve been trying for seven years — I’d like nothing more than to
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 20
know who’s in my head.
“I know it’s not me in the future, because I remember a fairly normal childhood, without any unusual knowledge, and that child had two left feet and couldn’t dance if her life depended on it.”
Both female officers, young and old, laughed.
Heather smiled. “I don’t understand why all that biographical information would be missing — I hope you can get a scientist on the team who might know something — but I realized it was a gift from God. If my memories have been pre-censored, that means I’m free to share the rest with
. . . whomever I think should have them! And I can’t think of anyone who would make better use of my future memories than our own Department of Defense.”
Several voices started to speak, but fell silent when they noticed Heather glaring at them.
“Even though my memories are not complete, I’ve learned a lot from what is there, and you can help me figure out even more.”
She saw their happiness at being included in the process.
“Our source person lived all her life, except for vacations, in this city, as I have many memories of local events, and few from any other city or town.”
The general nodded agreement with her logic.
“She was a clinical psychologist, a mental-health therapist at the doctoral level. I figured this out after I ran into some college students in the library about a year ago. Some of them were graduate-level psych students, and I knew a lot more than them.”
Major Ma-soran raised her eyebrows.
“Also it fits with glimpses I have of college classes she’s teaching, seminars she’s leading, lectures she’s giving, stuff like that.”
Colonel Ba-kerga nodded.
“She was not a government agent of any kind, did not serve in the military, was never a political leader on any level, never worked in industry, and was not a scientist.”
Heather saw some disappointment in the room, as she had expected.
“But she was a highly-intelligent, well-educated citizen who kept up with the news, read in-depth articles on anything of substance, and had a broad
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 21
understanding of most topics, including the hard sciences. She was successful, highly-respected, and middle-of-the-road politically.”
Colonel Ba-kerga took a deep breath and smiled slightly.
“If anyone could bring you the judgment of the future, about events in the world through 3730 or so, she could, and therefore, I can.”
Heather could see the magnitude of the project beginning to dawn on several of her listeners.
“If that sounds useful, I would be happy to work for the Department of Defense, given appropriate living and working conditions, and a good package of salary and benefits.”
Suddenly the frown returned to the colonel’s face. “What makes you think you can dictate terms to us, considering we have you in our custody?”
General Bo-seklin cleared his throat. “You don’t have to answer that, Heather.”
After a moment of tense silence, she spoke. “I’d like to. It needs to be said.”
The general slowly nodded.
“The memories I have cannot be taken from me by force, intimidation, drugs, or brain surgery.” After a pause, she went on. “I have, at least mentally, lived an entire lifetime . . . and died. I am the last person in the world you can scare.”
She glanced at the colonel. He kept his eyes on his note pad.
“There is no way my memories of the future,” she went on more softly,
“could be shared with you quickly even if I wanted to. It will take years to get at them. It can only be done in a safe, respectful, teamwork environment.
That team will need to include several scientists. A philosopher and a psychologist, also, to help keep us sane. The things that team will have to learn, to deal with knowledge of the future without making a complete mess of it, will make college look like kindergarten.”
She paused to let her last statement soak in, then slowly turned to the colonel. “There is a place on that team for a hard-nosed, skeptical security chief.”
Colonel Ba-kerga glanced up from his note pad.
Heather looked around the circle. “I gather that this facility has become
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 22
nearly useless to the military and is in danger of being torn down. I also sense that most of you have been passed over for promotions and more interesting assignments, and are just looking forward to retirement.”
She knew the truth of her words when all her listeners smiled and looked at their notes.
“Instead, with a little hard work remodeling and lots of hard work team-building, which I will help with at every step, this program will become the most important thing happening in the military, in any military, indeed in any government anywhere in the world.”
They were all looking at her now.
“I cannot prove this to you in the short term. I can only show you in the long term. Are you up to it?”
Their faces told her they were going to try, if for no other reason than because they had little else to do.
Even Colonel Ba-kerga.