Giddeon (Silver Strand Series) (19 page)

Raymond Bradford left our house with a binder full of secrets and a head full of plans.
 
His mind works in ways that I can’t really fathom, and he’s got a circle of friends that are almost on his level.
 
Movers and shakers.
 
Captains of industry.
 
He knew that he would need help in the future, so he set about assembling a team of trusted moguls.
 
I know it’s often popular to demonize the rich, but, some people actually rise to the top because they’re straight shooters and men and women of their word.
 
The ones I eventually met through Ray certainly seemed to fit that mold.
 

Having risen to the tops of their respective fields, those folks didn’t want to see the rug yanked out from under them by events that could be avoided with just a modicum of forethought and action.
 
Well… I guess most of the situations called for more than just a modicum, but, to them it was all doable.

*****

To be, or not to be… that was the question.
 

And, they most definitely wanted to be.
 
Money can’t buy you love, but, it can perhaps buy some common sense precautions against preventable catastrophes.
 
Raymond, of course, didn’t tell them everything… he’s a pretty good poker player I found out, later.
 
But, the 2
^nd
and 3
^rd
problems in the binder were discussed at length at his Cayman home… out of earshot of curious ears.
 
Governments had been unwilling or unable to implement safety systems, so maybe it was time for private industry to step up to the plate just like Raymond was doing with his plans for the asteroid.

*****

You would think that the governments of the planet would be thankful for help making the world more secure.
 
Sometimes, they were.
 
Oftentimes, however, there were roadblocks placed in the way of progress.
 
Paperwork and environmental studies that would have to be dealt with before any actions could be taken.
 
That’s the problem with bureaucracies… no one wants to be in a position to take any blame should something go wrong, so layer after layer of protections are built in to each and every major decision.
 
The end result is that often nothing gets done, and if it does, it usually costs many times more than it should.
 
Those costs are then passed down to the public at large, so they can eventually fund more paperwork and more regulations around future projects.

I think another factor is that many of the officials don’t want to be exposed for their lack of foresight and action.
 
Kind of makes them look bad.
 
It’s just human nature, and we shouldn’t be too hard on them, because the systems… in democracies and republics, at least… were put in place by we, the people.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

*****

Giddeon says that it’s all due to what he calls, ‘
The
Ever Diminishing Circle
of Acceptable Behavior’
.
 
TEDCAB for short.
 
And, that the TEDCAB program runs in all relationships… both personal and governmental, alike.

In short, the best way to simply describe it is this:

Suppose a fellow gets a brand new girlfriend.
 
At first, everything he does is cute and acceptable.
 
He’s allowed to go out on the town with his buddies, sleep late on the weekends, call for a date at the last minute, waste money on gambling and watch football games pretty much non-stop… along with many other similar behaviors.

Then, over time, one by one those types of things become off limits or regulated.
 

Giddeon’s
not saying that there isn’t justification for the boundaries… he just uses this scenario as an example.
 

Slowly, ‘freedoms’ are taken away until the young man is domesticated and productive.
 
The problem is that sometimes it’s overdone and doesn’t have an endpoint.
 
The program keeps running for years, continuing on after marriage.
 
Positive and negative reinforcements are carried out by the man’s partner until, in the end, practically every motion he makes is out of bounds.
 
The wife ends up frustrated because she is left with a spouse that is in non-compliance with her rules and regulations most of the time… and, the husband becomes resentful of not just having his wings clipped, but shaved down to sensitive stubs.

Men do the same thing to women, too.
 
According to Giddeon, everybody unwittingly runs the program on those close to them.
 
The same with governments and their citizens.
 
Every time a law is passed, the circle diminishes.
 
More behavior gets outlawed, and more people become outlaws.
 
The State grows, and freedoms diminish.
 
Red tape takes on a life of its own, the court systems become overburdened, and the pursuit of happiness becomes the slow, fearful steps of halting progress.
 
Eventually, any motion at all results in punishment in one form or another, and, like a snake eating its tail, the circle becomes a dot.

Economies collapse and kingdoms crumble.

*****

I’m lucky because Melody and I agree on pretty much everything.
 
Don’t know why, that’s just the way it is.
 
I’m not going to question it.
 
The only circle I feel is the one her arms make around me during one of our frequent hugs : )
 

But, back to governments.

Since I have become such an avid reader, I couldn’t help but notice how much time the early philosophers spent on the subject of politics.
 
Aristotle, Socrates, Plato… I had borrowed a few of my wife’s old texts a while back.
 
Some of the reading was a bit dry, but, it did point out problems that have plagued societies for centuries.
 
Melody is fascinated by it all, and, if she could, would return to school in political science.
 
Probably she will, assuming FYI-616-B doesn’t slam into our ecosystem.
 
Or, the sun doesn’t spit out a fiery flare before were protected.
 
Or, any of the multitude of other things on our list doesn’t come to life like monsters in a closet.

Everything was simpler when I was in a coma.
 
Not better… simpler.
 
I just had one problem to worry about.
 
Sometimes I wonder why Giddeon never mentioned any of the axes hanging over our planet when I was unconscious.
 
Do you suppose he was a bit like me?
 
Clueless?
 
Or, was he just focusing on the problem at hand.

Trouble down the road is not the same as trouble on your back.
 
One step at a time, I suppose.
 
One step at a time.

At least I have someone to walk with : )

Back then,
years ago, I was aware of the multitude of problems that could potentially have dire ramifications in Melody and Greg’s world… but, I suppose that I didn’t think it was my place to do anything about them.
 
Not that I could have, at the time, anyway.
 
I had very little interface with the ‘real’ world back then.
 
The one time I did influence things over there… the next day Greg was in a coma.

Okay… there was the one other time where I picked out a stock for him and that seemed to go alright.
 
At least he got a boat out of it.
 
But, even so, he probably wouldn’t have even been working at the golf course if I had left things alone.
 
He probably would have been busy flunking out of college and wouldn’t have been hit in the head by that
Titleist
.
 
Hard to say, for sure, on that one.

Anyway, I pretty much had my hands full at the time just trying to get him back over to the proper side of things.
 
Plots and secrets and governmental duplicity weren’t high on my list of priorities.
 
Towards the end of the four years, I knew Greg was slipping away.
 
And, if he went into his own tunnel of light, I’m sure I would have had no choice but to follow, and I wasn’t ready for that.

*****

Even though the EOLTs… End of Life Tunnels… fascinated me, I wasn’t eager to go jumping into one.
 
I did sneak a couple of
peeks
, though.
 
The first time was accidental.
 

Every so often, a patient at either the rehabilitation center or the hospital next door would pass away when I was there to visit Greg’s unresponsive shell.
 
Usually, I went down there about once a week to check on things.
 
Poor Father
McCreely
really felt guilty about the whole situation, and he never missed a Friday… or a Wednesday, for that matter.
 
He would pray and pray and pray.

I don’t know if anyone ever heard him, but, here we are.
 

Where was I?
 
Oh,
geesh
… now, I’m sounding like Mia… she says that all the time.
 
Oh, yes… one afternoon an old lady passed away in her room all by herself.
 
It was kind of sad.
 
She knew she was going, and was too weak to press the call button.
 
I watched her eyes take in the pictures of her daughter and grandkids on the table next to her one last time, and then her heart started to fail and she closed her eyes.
 
I put my head on her chest and listened as it finally gave its last, feeble beat.
 
I was still in that position when the tunnel appeared above her bed.
 
From my angle, I could see inside of it, and it looked pretty much like what I would experience when moving about in time and space.

I was afraid I would get sucked up in there with her, so I ducked out pretty quickly.
 
I didn’t see her soul, or spirit, or essence, or anything of the sort leave her body, but I did feel just a slight drop in temperature as something like a breeze went past me and up into that vortex.

I call it a vortex, because it seemed to be oscillating just a bit… like there were concentric rings of energy spinning round and round.
 
Before it left, I reached out and touched it with my hand.
 
I didn’t feel anything solid… not really, but when I made contact, the strangest thing happened.

Music.

Well, not music, exactly, but a resonance that seemed to be a precursor to music… or maybe a left over imprint of it.
 
The sound or vibration was harmonic, and seemed to have several layers to its tone.
 
I can’t really describe it.
 
Like I said, it was more of a feeling than a sound.

*****

As Greg grew weaker, I grew more and more interested in the EOLTs.
 
I would go to wherever they were most prevalent, hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities… and try to observe their formations and disappearances.
 
Sometimes, a tunnel would stay and remain stationary for quite some time.
 
Hours or days.
 
I suspect even years.

I developed a theory about that phenomenon, and finally I found a situation that I had been searching for.
 
I found it right here on
Coronado
, by the way.

*****

A widower, a cat and a stationary tunnel.
 
I would hang out there, sometimes, and observe the cat.
 
He didn’t pay much attention to me unless he was hungry.
 
Then, he would try to rub against my leg.
 
Upon being unable to elicit food from me, he would turn and do the same behavior in the empty air nearby.
 

Sometimes, even after eating, it would look intensely in the atmosphere of the room, as if staring at something there.
 
I can’t be sure of what he was seeing, but I think it was his owner… the ghost of the man’s wife.
 
Who knows, though… it could have been dust bunnies… like I said, before.
 
Cats are equally as entertained by floating motes in a sunbeam as they are by Inter-Dimensional Tourists.

The tunnel just stayed there in her room.
 
I don’t know how long it had been present… I suspected years… and I got to examine it very closely.
 
This one, like the other one, had an oscillating resonance to it.
 
When I held my hand against its glow, I could hear its song.
 
But, there was something different to the sound/vibration.
 
It had what I can only describe as a pleading quality.
 
As if there were a plaintive, beckoning chord buried in the hum.

It wasn’t something I liked to think about, but it appeared that even if the worst happened to Greg on the solid side, we might still have an option to remain as we were.

It wasn’t ideal, but options were few and far between at the time.

*****