As usual this was afflicting me at a time when the world around me was demanding my full attention. I had been tasked by the government to head one of the scientific teams that was being attached to a highly secret Task Force; a Task Force that would affect the lives of every single human being on planet earth. Heady stuff.
By now, everyone knows the story of our abducted space station and the unrest this caused amongst the world’s population but the government, as usual, had information that wasn’t known to the general population. As far as the public knew there had been no further contact; we were waiting for the next shoe to drop. However, one of our most highly guarded secrets is that we are currently in contact with the aliens. Except that they’re not exactly aliens and we’re not really talking to the same group that moved Laze Fair One to Neptune…
Four years and 136 days after the space station event that shocked the world and four years and 135 days into the ‘Crazy Years’ scientists noticed lights in the sky. You had to already be using a telescope in that general direction because they weren’t close, but the explosions must have each briefly released more energy than anything else in our nearby region of space. Mostly unnoticed except in scientific circles, speculation was rampant regarding the cause. Prevailing thought was that we shouldn’t project our own experiences and failings and just automatically assume that the energy releases meant a war was going on—prevailing thought was wrong.
“Ok, maybe war is too strong a word,” I explained to the members of my newly assembled, hand-picked staff. I had spent a week selecting them and then the military had taken an additional two weeks to get them security clearances, give physical exams and psych evaluations as well as making sure all of the proper releases were signed, witnessed and notarized. I only lost one of my picks to this vetting process and was told to feel lucky that everyone hadn’t been screened out…
“We’re being told that it was more of a police action where the good guys encountered resistance.”
My four-person staff and I were meeting in conference room 412 along with my four squad leaders somewhere deep below the Nevada desert. Even the name of the facility was a secret, but it was the largest underground complex I’d ever seen and we were told it would be our home for the indefinite future.
“We have no reason not to believe them, but then we have no reason to take their word as gospel either.”
I had already brought my team up to speed on the basics: two years after the fireworks display the President of the United States answered her highly encrypted, secure bedside land-line in the White House residence and made a same day appointment to meet with a representative of another world.
They call themselves Noridians and we obviously have common ancestry but there are differences. Imagine if you were a Viking and it was the first time you’d ever met a Chinaman; you wouldn’t be thinking alien but he obviously didn’t grow up next door. Noridians are of a slightly smaller frame yet with long legs that still fit within what our minds perceive as ‘normal.’ Their bodies are lightly muscular with low body fat, perfect skin, and the only visible body hair would be their eyebrows, eyelashes, and the top of their heads. The Noridians we have met so far tend to have high cheekbones and earlobes that developed with a subtly different yet non-distinguished set of folds and their faces are universally symmetrical. The females look obviously human and well-proportioned and albeit the males are slightly effeminate looking every Noridian we’ve met could be considered beautiful. They could walk down any street and garner little attention—and they’d be totally invisible in downtown San Francisco.
That initial meeting with the President took place at Camp David and the male and female Noridian representatives were there waiting when the Presidential helicopter arrived. This came as a complete surprise to the Secret Service and the military; apparently the Noridian’s had a ship in orbit (that nobody knew was there) and some type of shuttle on the ground (that nobody could see). Technologically, they are very advanced.
Language wasn’t a problem as they spoke English, albeit with a funny accent that became less and less pronounced the more they spoke. It turns out they speak other languages too although it still takes them a little time to get the pronunciations right.
My immediate job was to organize my team, establish and assign priorities and objectives, and train the group in protocols and exigencies. In other words, I needed to turn a group of 32 disparate and independent thinking, mostly non-military individuals into a well-functioning team with common goals. A great working relationship was critical because mine was one of four such teams that were going to travel further away from home and safety than anyone had travelled before - I was taking my team to another star.
Chapter 4
Dr. Julie Schein
Julie had experimented with a number of different ways to handle men throughout her life. She knew she was smart but had undergone the common boy-crazy phases of adolescence that had taught her not to show it.
In high school she could usually wrangle a date with the team quarterback or the popular new transfer student or whomever… but second dates were rare. She just couldn’t find chemistry with boys that spent their days playing social games, their afternoons playing athletic games, and their evenings and weekends playing drinking games. She didn’t think she was stuck-up, it’s just that alcohol-addled brains that never gave a thought to the future… bored her.
Throughout most of college she changed her approach. She was enough of a realist to know that people (especially men) were attracted to her. She could look in the mirror and see that even though she didn’t have the classic sharp angled features of a fashion model all of her pieces were in the right place and her face and skin carried no obvious defects. What she couldn’t see was the totality of the package; the way she walked and carried herself made her the most dreamed about girl on campus—even if most boys were too intimidated and insecure to talk to her, let alone ask her out.
Maybe it’s because her mom had never been around or maybe it’s because most other girls were either intimidated or jealous of her, but Julie had had no one she could trust to get boy advice from. So in college she made a conscious decision to only hang out around the super-smart guys. Although much more intellectually stimulating there was still a lot missing. These guys were either oblivious to her or so intimidated that they could never relax around her.
She had even allowed herself a forbidden relationship with one of her undergraduate professors thinking he might be the perfect balance in what she was looking for in a partner—only to be severely disappointed.
Watching seemingly everyone around her enjoy happy relationships allowed those whispers of doubt that she’d always kept at bay to finally take root; what was wrong with her?
Perhaps it was no surprise then that once she was committed to a Medical Degree she gravitated towards Psychiatry.
Julie’s combination of intelligence and a dazzling smile helped her land a residency at the #5 ranked psychiatric hospital in the nation, Menninger Hospital in Houston, TX. She then spent a couple of years at John Hopkins before being offered a position at what is considered to be the top program in the world; McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA.