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More Of In The Mind Than Anywhere Else

Authors: Charles Mento
Crossovers: Tomorrow People
Show Year: Y1
Rating: PG
Date:
How the Alphans gave rise to the Tomorrow People.
Average Rating: No reviews.

"...the boy has shown several signs of a possible debilitating disease which has symptoms but no readable cause. I must then assume the pain which has affected his head is psychosomatic...which is a dangerous assumption. My studies and experience here have proven that and also that only 8 to 12 percent of our minds are used by us. Perhaps the boy, Jackie Crawford, who has been noted in my reports and logs over the years, now ten years old, is being affected by something we don't understand."

He could hear voices. Mumbled. Ones outside his head for a change. Not like the ones inside. Real ones. People he respected and admired. Those who were worried over his condition. The headaches had been worse. Worse than he ever imagined. Yet, something, no someone wouldn't let him go to sleep. She felt it would be dangerous...very dangerous. All he wanted to do was sleep...that might make the pain go away. It now seemed to go from his head to his chest, covering the rest of his body slowly and painfully. He twitched. "No, help me. You said you would help me."

"What's happening to him?"

"As a doctor, I wish I knew! Sedatives haven't proved helpful and I'm inclined not to use more. It may worsen the condition."

"What, so, let him stay in pain?" The man's voice asked, "And who the hell is she?"

"Please, John, you must be calm."

"I am calm. But all these unexplainable..."

The boy cried out, "I'm coming apart! Help me!"

The female voice, "No, don't give him that, Bob."

"But he's dying!"

"We don't know that for sure," the woman held up her hand gun, "If any of you touch him..."

"What are you doing?"

"I know what I'm doing, John--she won't let any of us administer more drugs...it could kill him."

"A moment ago, you said may kill him. How the hell do you know for so sure now! You sound almost positive."

"We know, John. She knows, they know."

"Aliens?"

"And Earth people..."

"Like us?"

"Yes and no, not like us--like him, like Jackie."

"You won't kill any of us," the Bob voice said.

"It's on stun. We won't let you interfere."

The two men were whispering to one another. "Someone's taken control of her mind."

"It could be those Tritons, remember?"

"Yes," the Bob voice said.

The boy couldn't hear more. He wasn't sure if more was said or if these adults from his world were making any sense. More may have went on but his mind and the pain were reaching some kind of climax. The boy, curly brown hair on his head, with blue eyes and a rounded face, knew he was going to die. Then, suddenly, he felt the opposite was occurring. Something in him was dying, to be sure, but then, he felt something emerge from all the pain, now the pain being gone after its zenith. A giant hand opened up in his mind's eye, his brain opening up. "More than 12 percent," a soft, kindly but wise and elderly female voice spoke into his brain. He felt a good, warm chill soothe through him.

Images flooded the dark behind his eyelids. A massive supernova. A series of explosions like the Fourth of July used to be--he'd never actually seen a real one--just video images on screens of how the Fourth of July was in the past. The images melted up toward his center of vision as if they'd hit him. They passed the center of his field of vision and quickly seemed to impart themselves into his very mind. One was quickly followed by another. A baby. An embryo. A flower opening its petals. A chick hatching out of an egg. A giant eye. An impossibly old woman in a hooded black robe, a woman with white hair, gnarled fingers, and pleasant, peaceful eyes and a heart felt smile. A large alien man with a high forehead, a triangular tatoo (or was it a natural mark of his people, eight feet tall, with long silvery hair, wearing a long blue- gray tunic and robe around his back. Spaceships of various alien races passed by. Stars. Black holes, black suns. Space brains, large green planets orbiting lively, peaceable stars. More stars and wild comets, purple, green, yellow. More planets, all livable, all able to support human life...and rows of babies in their first beds, hundreds, thousands, blue planets, asteroids which were liveable, moons which supported life and had air, trees, leaves, rose colored fields, farms, cats, dogs, mice, spiders, all the images of life passing him. Then it all seemed to explode as it passed by, leaving him with the image of our own Earth moon, his own Earth moon. It slowly went on, on its voyage through space and most likely through time as well.

"Jackie, can you hear me?" Helena Russell put her stun gun back onto her belt buckle. "Jackie?"

"Hello, Dr. Russell," the boy opened his dreamy eyes at her.

"How do you feel?'

"I feel tired a bit, tired but no more head ache."

"Arra, she helped us. Helped me to break out."

"Break out?"

John Koenig, the leader here, stepped forward, "Will one of you tell me," then he looked at the black young Jamaican Doctor, Bob Mathias, next to him, "...tell us, what the hell is going on here? I mean, I knew Arra. She was from that planet that transformed into another realm...what was it called... Asteria."

"Yes, John, and she, in some kind of ultimate life form, for her people, helped Jackie through this."

"But what? What happened to him?" Bob asked, "He looks fine. All his life signs register normal, no pain, no high fever..."

"Bob, all I know is Arra contacted me and told me not to interfere...as did to us when we were on a collision coarse with her planet, remember, back in 1999?"

"I can't forget," John said.

"You, John, and Alan Carter, of course, believed her. I see no reason now, to have doubted her words..."

"You did back then," John mused, "Is the boy all right?"

"I am, Commander," Jackie sat up but Helena made him sit back down to rest. Later, she would do some ESP tests with him, ones devised by Dr. Rhine back on Earth, have Maya look the boy over...maybe even try to transform into what he has just become...yes, Helena got the distinct impression the boy was no longer an ordinary human...not exactly alien as Anton Zoref had become or as Maya is, but something extra. She worried. Carolyn Powell had these powers also, when that Lambda Nova exploded near to Alpha and she went insane and evil on them. Now her mind wiped, she was being retaught all she had known before...and was at the mind of an eight year old. The same wouldn't, couldn't happen to Jackie Crawford, the first baby born on the moon.


"Moonbase Alpha Status Report. Dr. Helena Russell recording. Eight thousand, five hundred and eighty four days after leaving Earth orbit. Earth time referential relative due to the black holes, black suns, and space warps we've encountered from the beginning of our journey to just recently--near as I can determine from old Victor's notes, it is the year 2008 or would have been if we were on Earth, an Earth so hopelessly in the future from us since time has slowed down for us on Alpha as we travel through space. Jackie Crawford continues to improve. He gets along splendidly with Maya and Tony, and of course, his surrogate dad Alan Carter and Alan's new wife Morgan Hughes, a Life Support Technician. Jackie's real father, Jack Crawford, died only six days after our Moon was blasted from Earth's orbit by several nuclear explosions. Jackie's real mother, Cynthia Crawford, is understandably upset by this change, never having forgotten what Jarak and Rena, two leaders of aliens on the run, did to them. However, all of us, myself included and even John Koenig, the pessimist, have high hopes that Jackie's new found powers can open up possibilities for all of us undreamt of. These include having Jackie contacted by aliens willing to help us either to find a new home planet to live on, or several new planets to live on, or to have the aliens help us return to Earth orbit beyond any of our wildest dreams. Jackie has seen all of these events with his newfound powers. Happily, he shows no signs of regression as did Carolyn Powell. For now our future seems assured. We haven't given up hope yet, and Arra's spirit, not seen since 1999, still helps us as she has now, and we all feel better about the newborns and older children born after Jackie. As Arra told us we will populate the universe with our kind, our Tomorrow People."


The Earth's Moon continued its odyssey through space, lit up by nearby stars, a lone ball careening endlessly...it would seem.


Copyright (c) . Reprinted with permission.
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