Terry Neale - Jo-el

If Cirion was truly four hundred and fifty million years ahead of us, shouldn’t there be something incredible they had discovered, that we hadn’t even thought of? Who had projected the internet prior to its invention. Little did I know that in a few short hours I was going to experience a quantum leap into the future.

Breakfast was grape-nuts, blueberries and bananas. Coffee was dark roast ground beans from Kenya. I was ready for my final instructions.

Ensconced in my usual place, with fresh, hot coffee close by, I called up Sally. She was dressed in a plaid, red, mini-dress. As usual, very distracting. Why didn’t I have teachers like that growing up? Not a chance of skipping school. I was starting the day in a great mood.

I spoke out loud. “Hit me with the final chapter, Sally and let’s get to your leader’s motive.” I was smiling and she recognized my mood.

She seemed delighted with my enthusiasm. “You remember when you found the container and picked it up,” she pointed at where I’d left it on the floor. “It appeared to be empty, very light. And when you placed the monitor tile in the air, it remained in place.”

I nodded, she was referring to the business-card thingy.

“That’s anti-gravity,” she continued. “you can do that; it’s programed into the belt around your waist.” Her expression invited surprise. I was.

“Say that again.” I said.

She started to repeat herself, but that wasn’t what I meant. I raised my hand and she stopped.

“Are you saying I can fly?”

“Yes,” she said.

I was suddenly hot under my arms. “But if you counteract gravity, you just float upwards, vertically,” I said, redundantly. For some silly reason, I indicated with my arms.

“Initially of course, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out how to gain horizontal motion. Different parts of the body are subjected to oscillating anti-gravity waves, they move very fast, so you can’t feel the changes. But the effect is you can move vertically as well as horizontally.”

“Oh,” I said, not understanding a word. “How?”

“Guess,” she said, grinning.

Guess! What’s she saying? I looked at her with my best hangdog expression. I recalled the same dumb feeling throughout my childhood education.

Sally continued. “You just think it.”

“I do?”

“Uh-huh! Stay where you are and use your thought to imagine upward motion.”

“Here!” I glanced up and wondered how hard I would hit the ceiling.

“Sure, just imagine how far you want to go up, the computer will take care of the rest. It knows there’s a limit in the room that you can reach.”

The best for last, she said, I guess she was right. Okay, here goes nothing, Superman in born. I thought ‘up’ and suddenly I was sitting in midair. My heart jumped a beat and I flailed around with my arms. It was damn scary. I looked down at my family room and for a second wondered how the hell I was going to get down. So, I thought, ‘down’, without being prompted, oh yea, I’m a fast learner. And down I drifted, very gently, back to the sofa. Holy crap! I can fly.

I was grinning broadly. I wanted to rush outside and give it a real go. Sally stood quietly reading my thoughts. “Try horizontal,” she said.

I looked at her and then glanced around the room. Not a lot of space to play with. The drapes were drawn, my usual precaution. I could imagine the fright I’d cause to a nosy neighbor.

I thought, ‘up’ and drifted off the sofa, already more confident. I thought ‘pause’ and hung there in mid-air, disconcerting but quite honestly amazing. I looked at the door and thought ‘towards door’ and immediately drifted in that direction. I was still in the ridiculous sitting positing, which didn’t feel right at all. Almost instinctively I began to straighten into an upright, the thought process was not definitive but worked just the same. Incredible. I looked down and began to float down to the carpet, where I came to rest in a standing position.

“Oh my God, that is so cool. How fast can I fly?” I was beaming at Sally who was standing nonchalantly against the wall next to my television, opposite the sofa.

“Your speed through the air is dependent on several things. Mostly it’s a problem of safety. The smart-suit will cover your head as you gain speed, like a crash helmet. The computer will be able to recognize objects to avoid, but you don’t want to veer off to the side at such a speed that it wrenches your limbs. In theory, you could reach almost the speed of sound, but that would be very dangerous. If you hit a bird or even a small insect it could kill you. Effectively up to a hundred miles an hour is about all you should even attempt. There are suits on Cirion that allow faster speeds but we don’t have one here and anyway they’ve died out except for thrill seekers. But don’t fret I’m now going to tell you of how you can move around the planet safely at a little less that the speed of light.”

The thing that hit me the most following that statement was that there was little to no emotion in her outward appearance. It was as if she had just explained that two plus two equals four. She just told me that I could travel at almost the speed of light, that’s a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second. That is about as crazy as this whole myriad of craziness put together. I was dumbfounded, speechless and agape all at the same time. The concept was so out in left field that my belief was stretched to breaking point.

I walked back to the sofa and sat down. I didn’t say a word. Not sure if I wanted to know. My imagination was buzzing, unable to fix itself on any firm concept of light-speed travel. I guess I’d thought earlier that such an advanced civilization should have come up with something incredible. I waited, expectantly.

“It’s called ‘the bounce’, or that’s how it translates from the Cirion language. It was called ‘bounce’ because that’s what happens to the molecules of your body. Each atom that makes up your body, plus what you are wearing and holding is set into a very fast oscillating motion only a fraction of a centimeter apart. Sort of bouncing back and forth. Then those atoms are sent through the air, not unlike the digital packets sent through the internet on earth and reformed into the original, wherever you have designated. It all happens so fast, that you hardly skip a heartbeat.”

I listened but felt inside that I didn’t want to hear this, because I knew the next words out of her mouth was, ‘let’s try it’. I didn’t like the ‘hardly skip a beat’ it seemed a bit too close to missing a beat.

I said, “so I’m sent through the internet?”

“Sort of, yes. But using the network we set up here on earth many years ago.”

That made me think. “So, it’s old, this technology. I mean, your computers were send here two hundred and forty-eight million years ago.” I think my sphincter muscle had tightened, a lot.

“It’s been updated,” she added.

“When?”

“About thirty million years ago.”

Oh, well, that’s alright then. I’ve got myself a software update. No problemo. Only thirty million years out of date. What could go wrong?

“Want to give it a try?” Sally said, grinning.

There it was. What was I supposed to say? The concept was lunatic, but everything had worked so far. Why should I assume this would be any different? I had a few more questions.

“So how do I decide where to land?” Not that landing in the aircraft sense was how I imagined this worked.

“You search out a location site using the heads-up display and basically activate the bounce system just like anti-gravity. You do have to be a little firmer with the instructions, wouldn’t be good to be imagining a visit to the Eifel Tower and suddenly be standing there.” She laughed.