Author: Jason Halstead

Homecoming
August, 2002
copyright Jason Halstead

	“What brings you to us, Mr. Dixon?” The receptionist asked with a plastic smile on her face.  Ron wondered just how tired her cheek muscles were by the end of the day.
	“I saw the ad in the paper and thought I’d give it a shot,” Ron answered, glancing around the full waiting room.  He was one of many people that had answered the advertisement.  $100 for half an hour in a shrinks office, letting them try to hypnotize you.  Easy money.
Unlike most of the other patients, Ron was not quite as down on his luck as they were.  Ron had a job, sort of.  It was not much of a job, he scraped by on $21.50 an hour at the Alliance Motors plant in Detroit.  Good money for most people, being $11.00 above minimum wage, but Ron was terrible with money.
“Okay Mr. Dixon, just take a seat and we’ll call you in as soon as we can,” She told him, her voice dripping with fake sweetness.  She meant well, he supposed.  Maybe she even thought she was doing some good.  About as good as anybody did, he mused.
Ron moved off and found all the seats taken.  He shrugged and leaned up against a wall, guessing from the number of people in the room ahead of him – 27 at a quick glance – that he had a wait of at least 90 minutes.  He closed his eyes and let his mind roam, trying to remember the name of the girl he had seen singing at the bar the other night.  As it always did, his mind took off and wandered.  One moment he was on the verge of a breakthrough on the repeller problems the latest AM Banshee hover SUV had, then his train of thought shifted to the protein skimmer he had recently installed in his 240 gallon saltwater aquarium with the ultraviolet sterilizer in it.  Then it was back to Becky, the singer with the soft brown hair and bright green eyes.
By the time the nurse stuck her head out the door and said his name, he was wondering how well the Red Wings would play in the hockey game later that night.  He was going through what he imagined the starting roster would be for the Wings when he opened his eyes and noticed the light glinting off a woman’s sapphire ear ring.  The nurses voice broke him out of his trance and drew his attention to her.  He followed her back into the office, checking the clock in the office and noting with some satisfaction that 95 minutes had passed.
“Hello Ronald,” The doctor said a few minutes later when he came into the room where Ron was sitting in a high backed but comfortable wooden chair.  Real wood too, Ron was impressed.
“Doctor Turner,” Ron greeted him by standing and shaking his hand.  “You can just call me Ron.”
Doctor Turner smiled professionally and motioned for him to retake his seat.  The doctor sat behind his desk and quickly rifled through the papers in the folder that Ron had filled out already.
“Just here for the quick cash, Ron?” The question could have been insulting, but the tone and manner in which the doctor said it made it feel like a private joke between the two of them.  Ron had to hand it to him, Doc Turner had a great bedside manner.  Then again, he was a psychiatrist.
Ron decided to level with him.  “The money will be nice, might buy a nice dinner for me and a guest somewhere.  But the real reason behind it is curiosity.”
“Curiosity?” Turner asked him, leaning forward with interest.
“Yes sir,” Ron responded, forcing himself to focus on the shrinks eyes and not on the archaic “magic 8 ball” sitting on a plaque on his desk.  “I have weird dreams sometimes, stuff I can’t make any sense out of.”
“What kind of dreams?” Subconsciously the doctor glanced at the 8-ball himself.
“I’m not really sure.  It’s like I’m somebody else and somewhere else,” Ron admitted.
“Who are you in these dreams?”
Ron shrugged.  “Beats me.  They are weird and I don’t usually remember them.  I don’t recognize any places in the few I do remember.  Sometimes it’s not even Earth, I feel like I’m floating in space or something.  Weird stuff.”
Doctor Turner nodded, trying to hide his excitement.  “Yes, that is a little out of the ordinary.  Well Ron, I think you’ve come to the right place.  Just lean back in your chair a bit and get comfortable.”
The doctor opened up a drawer on his desk and pulled out a small holographic projector.  He set it on the desk and turned it on.  A globe of the earth roughly 10 centimeters in diameter sprang into existence.  The holograph began to slowly revolve on the projector.  Needless to say, Ron was quite entranced by it.
“Now Ron, you’re starting to feel sleepy…”

	The next morning Ron woke up from a deep and refreshing sleep.  He hopped into his refresher unit and came out feeling quite cheerful.  A cup of soycof was waiting for him in the kitchen, automatically brewed when his apartments computerized wakeup system had been programmed to.  He sat down at the table and called up the mornings news on his newspad while he munched on a flash-pack of eggs and bacon.  Or at least what constituted eggs and bacon in the early 22^nd century.
	Ron called up his notes and saw that he had left it on yesterdays calendar page.  He glanced through them to make sure he had accomplished everything he had wanted to and chuckled softly when he saw the appointment with Dr. Turner’s office.  Selecting a link it brought up the ad that had prompted him to go there in the first place.

	“Ever have an unexplained feeling of Déjà vu?
	Ever wake up from a dream you can’t explain?
	Ever have that nagging sense of familiarity about a person or place?

	The psychiatric office of Dr. Turner is offering $100 cash to any and
	all with the above or related symptoms for experimental research.
	Call DrTurner276BB to make your appointment now!”

	Ron’s chuckle died off.  He had gone because he often found himself struggling with things that he felt he knew.  Concepts and ideas that felt like they were elementary or, in other cases, just wrong, yet he could never quite grasp them.  He had shown remarkable aptitude as a child and only when entering into higher education had his strange problem reared its head.  He was told that back in his high school his IQ had tested at 170, easily the highest in the school, yet his grades had been far from as exemplary.
	Unfortunately, Dr. Turner had not been the answer for him.  Sure he had gone and been interesting enough to earn the $100, but it had not explained why he had those problems.  On the other hand, the conversation and limited therapy that Dr. Turner had given him had seemed quite helpful, and Ron had scheduled another appointment the following week.  So much for the $100.  Ron wondered how many new patients Dr. Turner had acquired with that ad, and just how many of those $100 bills the good doctor was going to be getting back.
	Putting it behind him, Ron turned off the display on the newspad and went into his spare bedroom.  It hosted a small bed, his desk, and both a small 90 gallon and his most recent purchase, a 240 gallon saltwater aquarium.
	Ron stopped by his 29 gallon hospital tank, an aquarium set up to help isolate and heal a wounded or sick fish, and peered in at the large yellow tang in it.  The tang had been displaying some increasingly erratic behavior, including increased aggressiveness and longer periods of inactivity, as well as a drastically reduced appetite.  His color had started to pale and his fins seemed to look ragged.  He stared at the fish a moment, wondering what was wrong with it.
	It seemed only a few seconds, but Ron found himself becoming immersed in the fish, everything else faded away from his consciousness.  He felt as though he was able to understand the fish in a way unlike he had before.  He emphasized with it.  He felt the fishes pain, and understood suddenly that it’s problems were in its stomach somewhere.  Coming back to himself, Ron opened up his cabinet where all of the medicines and chemicals for the fish were kept and he quickly dosed the tank with something that he had a hunch would help remedy the tang’s problems.
	Thirty minutes later he had fed the rest of the fish and performed what limited maintenance he normally did in the morning, though he found it was increasingly difficult for him to turn his back on each tank as he finished with it.  Complete, he prepared to head in to work then realized that he was going to be late… again.
	Using his hovercars telecom, he let his foreman know about his impending tardiness and drove as quickly as he could through the morning rush hour traffic.  All told, he only arrived 15 minutes late, not so bad in itself.  What was bad was that it was his 3^rd late slip that month alone, and his 18^th of the year (pretty bad considering it was only July).
	He flashed his ID card over the scanner to clock into work and received a note on the display terminal that he was to report to his foreman immediately.  Cursing under his breath, Ron headed to his boss and waited for the bad news.
	“Ronny, you know the rules, why do you have to go and do this to yourself?” His foreman asked when he got there.
	“I was up on time, Carl, I just got caught up in taking care of my sick tang.  You see I think I figured out what was wrong with him this morning and –“
	Carl held up his hand and shook his head.  “I believe you Ron, that’s not the problem.  You’re already overdue on your late incidents, almost by twice what you’re allowed.  Management is cracking the whip lately son, there’s nothing more I can do for you.  You’re a great kid, hands down.”
	Ron nodded, he was afraid that was going to happen sooner or later.  It was frustrating, he felt so damn handicapped most of the time by whatever rules or guidelines he was subject to at the time.  “It’s okay Carl, no hard feelings, I’m used to it.”
	Before AM it had been Figuero Diesel, and before Figuero it was as an automobile mechanic.  Only 26 years old, his trend stretched back to his first job at a auto dealership washing cars.  Ron was definitely used to it, but that did not make it any less frustrating to him.  For the thousandth time he vowed that he would get his schedule under control.
	“I gotta walk you out, Ron.  I’m real sorry about this.”
	Ron nodded and handed Carl his ID badge before turning around heading towards the exit.  On the way there he glanced over at the line he normally worked on, seeing it was still down while the engineers tried to figure out why the repellers in the Banshee 22x were not working properly.  Carl ran into Ron’s back as Ron stopped short suddenly.
	“Hey Ron!  Be careful would you?” Carl said, overcoming his surprise.  He noticed where Ron was staring with a faraway expression on his face, an expression that anybody who had worked with Ron quickly came to know well.  “Ronny, what’s the matter, did you forget something?”
	Instead of answering Ron turned and started walking towards where the engineers were going over one of the faulty pieces of machinery.  Slowly at first then faster he walked.  Carl hurried to catch up and finally grabbed Ron’s arm in his hand.
	“Ron, stop this!  You don’t work here any more, you need to leave.”
	Ron turned and saw Carl, his eyes clearing up as he recognized him.  “Hi Carl! Um, just a minute, would you?”
	“No Ron!” Carl said, his pity for Ron being overcome by annoyance.  “No minute, no second, no nothing, you have to leave.  That’s the rules.”
	Ron looked crestfallen and nodded.  “I know why it doesn’t work, Carl.  I’ve been trying to figure it out for days now and it just came to me!”
	Carl looked at him.  Ron was spaced out as often as not, but when he was on his game Carl had to admit the man was sharp as a laser torch.  “What are you talking about, Ron?”
	One of the engineers had overheard the conversation and had his curiosity piqued by it as well.  “Yes, what are you talking about?” He asked, coming over to join them.
	“Well, first I thought it was just bad equipment, like everybody else,” Ron explained, delighted to have the attention of the engineer.  “But that was wrong.  It’s your impeller fields, they are overlapping and negating because of the proximity.”
	“Impeller fields?” The engineer asked, raising an eyebrow questioningly.  “What’s that?”
	“Oh yeah, you don’t know about those yet, sorry,” Ron said, looking embarrassed.  “I made that name up myself.  It’s a bad name, I just used it one day because I’m not sure what they really are yet, you can forget I said it.”
Greg looked at him mystified.  Ron, in a rare moment of lucidity, realized he was losing his audience.  He plunged on, “There’s an equal reaction to every action, right?”
	The engineer and Carl both nodded.  Both looked equally lost.
	“Well, similar principal.  You have a repeller field coming out in whatever beamed direction you specify in order to make the truck hover.  Well, if you are creating a field of repellent energy, the opposite must also be true.”
	“A field of attractive energy?” The engineer asked.  “These aren’t the crazy super magnets they tried back in to 2030’s, you know.  It’s not positive and negative electro-magnetic fields.”  Another engineer had come over to see what was going on and caught only the tail end, but decided to remain quiet and see what was going on.
	“That wouldn’t work,” Ron said, shaking his head emphatically.  “If it attracted it would negate the repelling field.  No, this energy takes on a different type, and the repellers are spaced too closely together, they are overloading each other.”
	“What type of energy is this?” The first engineer asked.  He had a name tag that read Greg Simmons.
	“I don’t know,” Ron admitted, looking a little upset at the confession.  He struggled with it briefly before smiling triumphantly.  “Negative energy!”
	“Negative energy?” The second engineer, Peter Busrayen asked incredulously.  “That’s a theory out of science fiction, my friend.  Nobody believes in negative energy.”
	“Why not?” Ron asked plainly.  “You are projecting a positive force out of it, the exhaust from it must take on a different form.”
	“Okay, say you’ve got something there,” Greg said, holding up his hand to hold Peter from protesting more.  “Why do all the other vehicles work with the same repeller technology?”
	“Two reasons,” Ron explained, walking over to the Banshee 22x that was partially assembled.  “First, these aren’t the same repellers used everywhere else.”
	“Of course not,” Peter snorted.  “Same technology though, these are just more efficient, no two models use the same ones.”
	“Too efficient,” Ron said, nodding happily in agreement with the surly engineer.  “Coupled with their proximity the negative energy fields overlap each other and prohibit them from properly bleeding off.  It’s kind of like a pressure and exhaust system for the repellers, similar to the old fashioned internal combustion engines.  You’ve got too much pressure and they can’t build up enough power to function properly because of it.”
	“This is bullshit,” Peter said with a snarl.  He turned and stalked off, leaving Ron standing there with his grin fading.
	Greg’s gaze followed his co-worker.  He turned back and looked at Ron and shrugged.  “I don’t know, it’s quite a wild theory…  I’ll check into it.  Hell, it can’t make it any worse for us then it already is!”
	Ron’s smile came back at that.  The news was as good as praise and praise was something Ron had always been short of receiving in abundance.  Chastised for his dreaminess and scatterbrained ways, his parents had ridden him hard to make something out of his life.  To them though he brought nothing but disappointment after disappointment.  Ron knew they were good people, they just wanted him to succeed everywhere and anywhere that he could.  If they had a fault it was in their acceptance of Ron’s inability to conform to established standards.
	“How can we detect this negative energy, if it’s there?” Greg asked him.
	Ron frowned as he pondered the question.  “I’m not sure, really.  Any normal method of detecting energy would not show this, because it’s the opposite of it.”
	“Like anti-matter?” Greg asked, confused.
	“No no no, that stuff is easy.  Anti-matter is just matter that is charged the opposite of normal,” Ron shook his head again.  “This negative energy does not exist the way you think it would.  We’re not talking about negatively charged ions here, we’re talking about a field of negative power that drains strength from whatever positive power there is that comes in contact with it.”
	Greg’s brow wrinkled as he struggled with the implications of what Ron was saying.  It was a fantastical theory, and if it was true, the implications were far ranging.
	“What you would need to do,” Ron continued, lost in his thoughts, “is create a device that will create a beam of some sort of energy that can also be read by the device to determine its strength.  Then as you bring it into contact with a negative energy field it will show reduced levels of power.  Yeah, I think that would do it for starters.  Pretty rough but it’s a start.”
	Greg had pulled his PDA out of his pocket and was quickly dictating into it as Ron talked.  When Ron was finished Greg finished up quickly himself.  He reached into a pocket on his shirt and pulled out a business card to hand to Ron.
	“Like I said, I don’t have any idea if what you’ve said has a chance of working.  Pretty wild ideas, but the effects that could be drawn from them resemble the problems we’ve been having with the Banshee 22x.  Do you have a card or something so I can get in touch with you if I have any more questions?”
	Ron beamed at the approval, conditional as it was.  “No card, sorry.  Ron Dixon, RDixon979z is my telcode though.”
	Greg hurriedly put the information into his PDA and when he looked back up Ron was heading back towards the exit.  “Who is that guy?” He asked Carl, who was still standing there looking slightly lost.
	“Ron Dixon,” Carl answered.  “He worked here until this morning on this line.”
	“He get a better job?” The engineer asked, considering the knowledge of high level physics Ron had displayed.
	“No, he got fired for lateness,” Carl said quietly.
	Dumbstruck, Greg just stood there silently alongside Carl for a few more moments as they pondered the enigma that had just walked out.

	The remainder of the week Ron spent working with his fish.  The yellow tang rapidly improved to the point where Ron could move him back into the aquarium it normally inhabited.
	Ron knew he needed another job, and the sooner the better.  He was never much of a saver, it seemed the concept escaped him altogether of hoarding away money for a rainy day.  Nonetheless, he had a hard time tearing himself away from his intellectual pursuits and his hobby of being an aquarist at other times.  In between he made time for his electronic subscriptions to various scientific, astronomical, and aquatic netzines.
	Running low on funds, Ron still made time to head to Dr. Turner’s office the next week.  He greeted the doctor warmly when his time came and spent the sessions discussing his childhood and his parents.  When he came out, he had trouble remembering anything specific, but he felt better nonetheless.
	His feelings improved when he got back to his apartment and discovered that Greg Simmons, the engineer at Alliance Motors, had left him a message in a rather excited voice asking him to return his call.  Ron did so before he let himself get sidetracked by anything else and was routed quickly through the automated system when he gave it his name.
	“Ron!  Man am I glad to hear from you!” Greg said, smiling widely.  “Any chance you can come down here?  I want to show you some things.”
	Ron shrugged and returned the smile.  It had been quite a while since anybody had invited him to do anything, even if it meant going to the place he used to work.  He told him he would and ended the call, wondering what had the engineer so excited.
	25 minutes later Ron was met at the gate by the same engineer.  He picked up a visitors badge and passed through the assembly lines to where the Banshee 22x line was.  Ron’s former line, for that matter.  It was full of trucks, in various states of completion, with crews working on them full time.
	“Got the problem fixed, thanks to you,” Greg told him.  “I came up with a device that fired a stream of photons into a receiver which in turn measured the percent of power lost based upon the percent employed, given a plus or minus 5% due to simple energy bleeding off.  Photons are terribly unpredictable little beasts, after all.”
	Ron listened, fascinated by what Greg was telling him and momentarily forgetting that all of it was based on his theory.
	“Well, you were right.  Our new repeller design does indeed cause a negative energy field to be generated, which largely negates the repelling field allowing the truck to hover.  Further, the power shortages we were having in the vehicle are also caused by this field.”
	“What did you do to fix it?” Ron asked, as rapt as a child listening to his first fairy-tale.
	“Well, we have orders to fill, so we couldn’t afford to wait to redesign the repellers.  Instead we just put governors on them to reduce the efficiency of them and lower their power output.  Once this order is filled though we’re going to redesign the Banshee 22x and move the repellers further apart and try to come up with a better design for them,” Greg explained.
	“And that brings me to my next reason for wanting you down here.  Would you like to work for Alliance Motors again, Ron?”
	Ron’s face brightened even more.  “You want to give me my old job back?” He asked, excited.
	“No, I’m afraid not,” Greg said, smiling widely.
	Ron’s expression darkened briefly but Greg’s continued good nature kept him from becoming upset.  “What then?”
	“I want you to work in the engineering department.  You can help us come up with the repeller to replace this one, for starters, and then do whatever you get assigned from there on!”
	Ron’s eyes widened.  He was being offered a job that appealed to him in more ways then he ever dared to dream.  It was even possibly something his mother and father might consider worthy.  Maybe.
	“When do I start?” Ron asked, promising himself for the thousandth and one time to not screw up on his schedule this time around.
	Greg chuckled and patted Ron on the back.  “Got some paperwork to fill out, Ron, and on the way I’ll explain what the deal is with it.”
	Ron stumbled briefly.  “Deal?  What do you mean, are there strings attached?”
	“No, Ron, no!” Greg laughed.  “Sorry, bad choice of words.  I meant stuff like vacation time, who you report to, salary, office hours, stuff like that.”
	“Who do I report to?”
	“Me.  I’m the head engineer here for the prototype department.  We do R&D for AM mostly, and when we come up with something that works, it gets put into production as soon as safely possible.”
	Life seemed to have taken a turn for the better for Ron.  He liked Greg and Greg appeared to like him.  Then again, he had always liked most of his bosses, and they him, but that never stopped the inevitable from happening.  “When do I need to be here?” He asked, concerned about his chronic tardiness and absenteeism.
	“We usually show up between 6 and 9 in the morning, and work until we’re done.  No set schedule as long as you put in 40+ hours a week,” Greg explained.  “Since you’re new to the department, you’ll start out at $80k a year, but within 30 days if you know your stuff you’ll go up to $90k, then in another 30 days if you’re still impressing me, we’ll see how much we can offer you.  Sound good?”
	It was more money and a better situation then Ron had ever had offered to him.  He nodded vigorously and pumped Greg’s hand in his own.  “Yes sir, I’m your man!”
	Greg laughed and clapped him on the back again.  “Get over to HR, Ron, and then come back in on Monday.  I’ll have a new ID badge waiting for you.  We can worry about all the paperwork and reports we’re going to have to file over the discovery of this negative energy you theorized then.  We’re going to shake the world of science up quite a bit, my friend, and all because of you.”

	And so Ron worked anew at AM.  His theory and design ideas brought great pleasure and commendations to him, landing him a job he truly enjoyed above and beyond what he had held before.  On the side he continued to visit Dr. Turner weekly, further exploring his troubled childhood.
	Ron had trouble when it came to mathematics at work, however.  Above the simplest mathematical practices and formulae he grew confused and found it difficult to understand.  Seemingly against what would be common sense, his inability with math in no way hampered his problem solving skills of a highly complex scientific nature.  Inside of a month Greg and he had filed their findings on the negative energy with the American Scientific Association, drawing criticism from those better established.  As time progressed the complaints began to die out as their discoveries proved themselves true.  They patented and developed new technologies and methodologies, listing their names in scientific journals and among the general community of physicists repeatedly.
	Ron’s dreams continued.  Strange dreams that left him feeling misplaced and confused when he woke.  In many of them he was swimming, or at least in a body of water.  At first it was water like he would expect to see, but the dreams grew stranger and stranger, until he was seeing fish and marine creatures unlike anything he had ever seen.  Great plant and coral formations unlike anything on Earth.  He woke with a start one day from a dream where he had glanced down and noticed that the color of his hands was a pale grin, and his skin looked to be more like scales then flesh.  To add to his shock was the sight of not four fingers and a thumb, but rather six digits, four similar to his fingers and the other two being opposable digits located at opposite sides of his fingers.
	Ron discussed this most recent dream with Dr. Turner, for it bothered him greatly.  Ron’s aquariums had continued to flourish as he took care of them with only the utmost of care and attention to detail.  Dr. Turner suggested to Ron that he cut back on his time spent with his fish, as it might be turning into an obsession for him.
	Though it pained him to do so, Ron worked harder at being a little less attentive.  The one thing in his life he was unfailingly devoted to began to slip.  Somehow in spite of it no unwanted algae grew, no fish grew sick, and none went hungry.  It was as though a perfect balance had been achieved within the aquariums and no more need be done with them.  This fascinated Ron even more, prompting him to study them all the more carefully, partially violating the suggestion from his doctor.
	Ron continued to dream as well, and his dreams of underwater beings grew.  In them he began to see great cities and civilizations.  Technology undreamt of.  He saw the creature he dreamed himself as with others, calling upon them as friends and relatives.  He saw himself, or the fish-person he perceived himself to be, as a great scholar among them.  In addition to the first few moments of disorientation he suffered from waking from such dreams, his confusion continued into the rest of his waking day, making him wonder where they came from and why.
	At work one day Greg was trying to explain a new idea he had based upon the latest advancement in repeller technology that would allow for their vehicles to move independent of nearby mass.  As it was, the hovercraft were required to be within a few feet of the ground so that the repeller fields could interact with the surface of the earth.  Greg believed, and his mathematical formula seemed to prove, that with a few more changes and a new prototype, the next generation of repeller would theoretically allow all concerns over mass to push off of irrelevant.  Ron followed him until he began to try and show him his equations.
	“Why do you carry that over, it makes no sense,” Ron asked, pointing at the screen where Greg had added some numbers in the first phase of his theory.
	“What?”  Greg asked, confused.  He had grown used to Ron, indeed he had even grown rather fond of his somewhat eccentric behavior, but as time progressed Ron seemed to be growing more and more distanced.  “If you add 11 and 9 it becomes 20.”
	“No it doesn’t, it’s –“ Ron stopped abruptly as he realized what he was saying.  He did some quick thinking and stared at the screen while Greg looked at him in wonder.
	“Ron –“ He began but was interrupted by Ron waving his hand at him to indicate a request for silence.  Ron grabbed up a light pen and began scribbling furiously on the display screen, his haste making his handwriting barely legible enough for the computer to interpret it and display it properly.
	After several moments of Greg staring confused at what Ron was working on, Ron finally stopped and looked at it, a slow smile growing on his face as he worked over it in his head to double check it.
	“Ron, that doesn’t make any sense,” Greg said finally, after having reviewed it himself.  At points it resembled his equation, but only barely.
	“It makes perfect sense!” Ron said triumphantly.  “It’s math.  Not base 10 like you use, but base 12.”
	“Why?” Greg asked after he had studied it and made a few rough conversions in his head to try and see if Ron was right.
	“Because that’s how many fingers I dreamed,” Ron said, as if everything were obvious now.  “Anyhow, you’re idea is good, but not the way you want to do it.”
	“Why not, because it doesn’t work out in base 12?” Greg said, wondering if Ron’s eccentricities were getting the better of him.
	More frenzied scribbling on the screen and Ron stood back.  “This works,” he said, motioning to it.
	Greg peered at it, following it as best he could.  Most of it made sense to him, once he did the interpretation from decimal.  But not all.  Some of the symbols and figures Ron had used were not only over his head, but over the level of the computer to translate them.  “Ron-“
	Ron interrupted him before he could address the issue of the unfamiliar figures.  “Of course, until humans discover…um… something that will allow for stable containment of a zero-inertia field, this won’t work.”
	“A what?”
	“Zero-inertia field.  Or whatever you want to call it, that’s just my name for it,” Ron said, as if explaining something to a child.
	“What is that?” Greg was bothered by Ron’s attitude, but he was intrigued by the concept enough to overlook it.  For a little while, at least.
	“A bubble in space-time that is unaffected by the physics outside of it.  It would have all sorts of implications and uses, but for this purpose only rendering inertia and gravity from outside of it ineffective within it is important.”
	“You’re talking Star Trek now Ron,” Greg said, laughing at the near impossibilities of what Ron was describing.
	Ron gave Greg a condescending look worthy of any collegiate professor to a student who had just suggested that God had created the universe.  After all, the current syndicated episode “Star Trek : Warfare” used technological theories disproved years ago but continued merely for the sake of series continuity.
	“Okay,” Greg bristled, seeing Ron’s look.  “Suppose this bubble is possible.  What then?”
	“Then gravity becomes important.  After all, the universe exists within a zero-inertia field.  Everything within it is created from within.” Ron said off handedly as he went back to looking at his discovery of base 12 mathematics.
	“Wait a minute!  If that’s the case, what created that field?  And more importantly, what’s outside of it?”
	Ron shrugged.  He turned to look at Greg and said with a hint of distaste.  “I don’t know, that’s why religion was invented.  I pointed out the impossibility of your improved repeller field here and here,” Ron pointed out two spots in his equations that Greg had not included in his, “so go back to the drawing board and work on something else.”
	Greg’s cheeks flushed red.  He bit back a sharp reply and said rather caustically, “Religions have been kicked aside for the nonsense that they are.  You must have a better idea then that!”
Ron cocked his head thoughtfully before responding.  “Any superior being or beings could have indeed created the universe using their own version of technology, which would seem like magic or divine powers to us.  Still, they are no more a God then a parent is to their child, nor then we are to our pets.  Everything has a creator, in a sense, be it a mother, father, single cell amoeba ready to divide, or a self aware AI program suddenly executed by its programmer.  But those creators have creators as well, people that may or may not have more power and knowledge then they do.  There is no God, Greg, only another step up the ladder of evolution.”
“So which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Greg scoffed.
“Irrelevant in context,” Ron said.  “You mean to ask where did it all begin.    Yes, there are obvious other entities in existence that, either in the past or presently, possess science and technology and abilities dwarfing our own, but in no way are they the ridiculous deities worthy of worship as the cults would have us believe.  Those beings did not initiate the existence of the multi-verse, for what then created them?  It did not begin anywhere, for there are no beginnings or endings, it has always been and always will be.  Perhaps at one point there was no points, which is to say that time was non-existent, then suddenly everything was with a sudden event.”
“The big bang?”
“This time or another, perhaps,” Ron shrugged, showing he had little interest in the line of questioning at present.  “As for the chicken / egg, nobody who was not there will ever know.  Certainly the chicken mutated and evolved from it’s ancestor, but the mutation must have taken place during it’s creation.  It’s embryo stage.  Thus at that stage it would be considered an egg, either merely a released ova, fertilized or not, or an actual shelled egg laid and nested upon for warmth.  Thus the egg of a chicken came first, but it was the chicken within it that was the catalyst of a new species.”
“Ron, it was a joke,” Greg said, rolling his eyes.  “Why not work on this bit of science fiction you call a zero-inertia bubble?”
	“Oh, when I get to it, I don’t think humans are ready for it yet though,” Ron said smugly.  “Right now I am working on math.”
	Greg ground his teeth at the increasing aloofness Ron displayed and stalked away, feeling as though he had been dismissed.  It bothered him more when he realized that he was the boss, after all.
	It was only a matter of time at that point.  Ron grew increasingly confident in himself and less respectful towards the engineers that worked there.  Just inside of 7 months Ron had grown condescending to the point that once again he found himself unemployed.  His unemployment was short lived, however, for within a few days he was contacted by a member of NASA asking him to come for an interview, all expenses paid.  If Ron noticed the amazing timing, he considered it nothing more then mere coincidence or simple good luck.
	Needless to say, Ron was on the plane the next day.  Early the next week he went to his final visit to see Dr. Turner.  Turner was disappointed to see him go, but wished Ron the best and they both decided that he had probably done as much for Ron as he could, the rest was up to him to do on his own.  When Ron left the doctors office he noticed that Dr. Turner was busy writing some sort of memo down to close out Ron’s file.  He noted the header across the top of it stating that it was classified.  Ron appreciated the patient-client confidentiality, though he felt he had nothing to hide.
	Ron had kept himself so busy at his past job that he had little chance to spend the money he was making.  Just above a modest salary, he had been making almost $100,000 per year.  Forced deflation in the late 21^st century had restored the dollars value somewhat, thanks to the congress and the president agreeing on fixing the dollars value and basing it not upon the centuries old standard of gold, but instead platinum.  Now the dollar was worth roughly the same it was worth around 2030.  Foreign governments and markets had been heavily annoyed by the U.S. fixing one ounce of platinum at $600.00, but they had gotten over it in time and realized it led to a more stable world economy.  Soon the euro-dollar followed suit, and the rest were quick to follow.
	Thus, through mere coincidence, Ron had enough money set aside to buy himself a nice house when he went to Texas to work at NASA.  An entire room in his house became devoted to aquariums, allowing him a maximum of somewhere around 1700 gallons of marine tanks.  Many of the tanks were custom designed and interconnected as well, allowing for truly unique living environments.
	He was received by his peers at NASA somewhat coolly.  The more established scientists scoffed at his not having any formal higher education and found themselves working extra hard to prove him wrong at every point.  To their dismay, they were never able to do so.  Once Ron had mastered his version of math, a decimal system based on the number 12 instead of 10, he was able to more easily understand the standard decimal system used by everyone else.  He still did all of his work in his own, but he converted it when he could to the base 10 in order to explain things to his co-workers when they would ask.
	Ron would frequently begin a project based upon little more then an idea and as soon as he had discovered or proved it to the extent that pleased him, he abandoned it to the ‘little people’ he worked with and moved on to bigger and better things.  His work began to wholly consume him, causing him to spend great stretches of time in the NASA laboratories and neglecting to take care of himself.  Sometimes he had to be reminded to go home and sleep or eat.  Had it not been for the ever growing and evolving situation of Ron’s aquariums, he would have become totally lost in work and abandoned virtually everything else.
	The dreams had lessened for him, for in them he had followed a young kethapid -  Ron had learned that to be the name of the species he dreamt of - from youth through his later life.  Time had little meaning in his dreams, only that it passed in between them, and sometimes during them.  By the time the aquatic being Ron dreamed of himself as, a kethapid with a name that defied pronunciation in English, had advanced to being an elder among the species, the race had escaped the oceans of the world they lived on.  The atmosphere was largely nitrogen, but small amounts of oxygen and other gases existed.  All were poisonous to the kethapid as they were an aquatic species.  Poisonous that is, until a surgery was developed by their advanced healers that allowed them to breathe the air and survive outside of the oceans for as long as they wished, provided they kept themselves wet – an easy feat on a planet covered 5/7 with water and exceptionally humid.  Building great vessels from the depths of the sea, they took to space naturally, it’s similarity to ocean dwelling not lost on them.
	Now Ron saw himself as an old kethapid on a spaceship flying through the stars at speeds thought to be all but unattainable by humanity.  The destination of the ship was a planet that consisted largely of water, 2/3 or more in fact.  A primitive but sentient race was said to be on the surface, but the oceans were largely uninhabited by intelligent life.  Still millions of miles from their destination, Lormsputhrymlor knew his time was coming to an end.  He had lived many generations, and had led the kethapid to discover a great many things.  His final voyage was yet ahead of him though, and when he strapped himself into the machine he had designed that aided in the departure and transitioning, he felt a small amount of fear at what the unknown course he had chosen held for him.
	Ron awoke then, feeling as though he had reached a completion.  He knew what it was Lormsputhrymlor was attempting.  It was Earth the kethapid were trying to reach.  Earth was their destination.  Earth would be their new home.  They sought it out not from necessity, but out of the burning desire to explore and learn.  Earth’s solar system had been the closest to theirs that supported a chance of supporting life as they knew it, thus they had gambled.
	Feeling certain that his dreams were real, Ron hurriedly got dressed with the intent to go to work.  He had no idea why he had been contacted by these alien beings.  He had no idea why he had been able to review the life of the kethapid, Lormsputhrymlor.  He felt a moment of sadness that he would never know the alien who’s life he had shared, for Lormsputhrymlor had died of old age at the end.  Ron was uncertain of how long he had lived, but it seemed to him that it had been a great span of time, easily centuries in comparison to Earth.
	Ron stopped and surveyed his personal aquatic paradise.  He pondered the fish in it anew, wondering at what they might have accomplished had evolution allowed them to progress further then they had.  At times he pondered the intelligence of the fish, but each and every time he tried to test them on it, they displayed nothing greater then a low animal intelligence.  Sure, he had some that were a bit brighter then the others (usually the more predatory ones), but even they existed only at the whim of Darwin.
	Ron left then, heading to his laboratory.  It was only 3:30 in the morning, but none of the night guards would be the least bit surprised by his appearance.  Similarly, none would bother him, for he was considered odd and unapproachable.  Surly.
	NASA was uninterested in any pursuit of the world’s oceans, however.  Ron did everything he could to try and prove that somewhere in the ocean there existed an alien spacecraft.  He even confided to one person in charge as a last ditch effort about his dreams.  He ran into a brick wall every time.  With the last attempt, fresh rumors began about him.  His competency and even sanity were questioned, in private if not officially.  In a semi-public incident Ron finally snapped at the red tape and close-minded behavior of his co-workers.  He stormed out of the building, no longer an employee of NASA.
	Ron had managed to save up a considerable amount of money while working there, however.  He had no expenses other then his mortgage (long since paid off), his fish, and food.  Thus he took his findings and research and sold his house.  He purchased a large tract of land on the northern shores of Australia, building a sizeable house that included a scientists dream of a workshop.
	At the age of 39 and in relatively poor health due to his borderline malnutrition, long stretches with little or no sleep, and lack of physical activity, Ron hired a team of experts to teach him how to scuba dive.
	Ron spent more and more time on leisure activities then, according to anyone who might have casually observed him.  To those few people who had enough contact with him to claim that they knew the irascible man, they found him to be driven beyond obsession and to the edge of madness at times.  His chosen “leisure” activity was, of course, scuba diving.  He dove far out from Australia, trying desperately to find some sort of proof of the kethapid ship.  His pale complexion and anemic figure filled out and grew healthy with the exercise and improved diet.
When he was at home and not researching, he spent time tending the marine ponds he had set up.  Several ponds, many joined by culverts and streams, were scattered throughout his property.  As many of the fish and species of coral in them were native to the great barrier reef, he maintained the salinity and chemistry of the water by simply having a tunnel dug into the nearby ocean from which he could easily administer new water to them at any given time.
	To the local men and women that served as crew during his diving jaunts he became just another wealthy diver.  Someone who was often annoying but who helped them pay their bills.  It was whispered among them that Mr. Dixon was so hot blooded and temperamental that even the sharks that frequented the warm waters where he dove were afraid to tangle with him.  It was based on the fact that Ron dove regardless of whether any sharks were spotted in the area or not, and at no point did any of them treat him with anything other then passing interest.
	Years passed, with Ron continuing to search for what he hoped to be the kethapid ship.  His savings quickly diminished because, in spite of his age, he had never really learned how to manage money well.  He had few expenses but in spite of that he always seemed to spend more then was possible.  Instead of letting that bother him, he returned to doing research, publishing his papers in scientific journals throughout the world.  The year was 2236, virtually everything was in some type of electronic media by then, but competition still waged fiercely amongst the different netzines and journals.  Top price was paid for his work, and he continued to turn up new ideas and information that were to be the basis for great leaps in technology in the years ahead.
	Then one day the articles stopped being published.  A young man from the nearby town drove his hover truck out to Ron’s place, bringing him his bi-weekly groceries.  Ron was not home, but that was not out of the ordinary.  He knew the passcode to get in so he let himself in and took care of the groceries.  Mr. Dixon paid him well whether he was there or not.
	Two weeks later, the delivery boy returned.  Again Ron was missing.  Dismissing his concern, he again delivered the groceries and conducted a thorough search of the grounds.  Nowhere was the 47 year old Mr. Dixon to be found, and the prior grocery delivery was untouched.
	Another two weeks and the teenager was truly concerned.  He had no room to put all of Ron’s food, since none of it had been consumed.  Some had begun to go bad though.  Still there was no sign of Ron to be found.  This time, however, one anomaly remained.  All of the fish ponds were empty.  Oh, there was water in them still, but all of the plants, fish, coral, invertebrates, and other forms of life had disappeared.
Disappeared, just like Ronald Dixon.

*****

***Classified Memorandum***
To :		Jonathon Holmes, Deputy Director FBI Domestic Affairs
Subject :	Final report : Ronald Dixon

Mr. Dixon has responded remarkably well under regressive therapy under hypnosis.  He will be leaving soon, but I strongly urge that he be looked after due to the increasing signs of merging his past and present together.

Unlike most patients who recount tales of past lives under hypnosis, Mr. Dixon did not display any knowledge or awareness of past life as an ancestor of himself or somebody he knew.  He regressed instead to fantastical stories of life as something he called a kethapid, an aquatic species from the planet he named Kapathes.  He claimed his name was Lormsputhrymlor. 

To the best of my knowledge, I considered Mr. Dixon to be fully under my hypnotic influence during our sessions, and his regression to be as complete as humanly possible.  The implications are obvious, and given his sudden rise in expertise, knowledge, and abilities, I believe this to be the first real fruit of this experiment in extraterrestrial intelligence conducted by the FBI throughout the United States.

Regards,
Dr. Ian Turner
Circa 2221