The Final World Order: Book Two of The Thunder Valley Trilogy

By Andre Mikhailovich Solonitsyn and Nadezhda Nikitovna Solonitsyna

Time is short. The world is about to end, unless the second plan of the best and the brightest of humanity does not fail... as their first plan did. This is their last chance. And it's a hell of a ride.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483531410

Book preview

A.M.S.

Chapters

Chapter One

Guerneville

A sleepy little town in Sonoma County, California.

Population center (4,590 souls) of the Russian River region.

Although just 59 feet above sea level, the town and the area around it feels like it is up in the mountains somewhere, nestled in acre after acre of redwood forest that runs along the sometimes mighty Russian River, accessed only by State Route 116, also called River Road, which turns into Main Street for a while as it meanders through Guerneville, then reverts to River Road after it leaves town.

Main Street has just two lanes, one in each direction.

On both sides of the street are little realty offices for the many Russian River vacationers who would like a cabin along the River someday. For the day-tourists there are quaint little stores selling handcrafted gifts on consignment from the locals.

For the townspeople and residents of the little villages nearby there are hardware and building materials stores, a library, a social services office, and various mom and pop stores selling various things that people might need from time to time.

For everyone there are two medium size grocery stores, a varying number of small restaurants that go in and out of business regularly, eight mini-marts, and a choice of gas stations.

There is also a California Highway Patrol substation.

The vehicles of the Guerneville substation are not new. The little town is near the end of the list for replacements as the CHP struggles with the chronically anemic California budget. The substation still has 2005 Crown Victoria Police Interceptors, long out of warranty, which means maintenance has to be paid out of pocket by the state.

That means the cars of this outlying substation have to be serviced by a local mechanic. In Guerneville, the only shop certified to work on state vehicles is owned by John Moran. In a serendipitous stroke of luck, Moran loves the older CHP musclecars, loves maintaining them at peak performance, even if he has to do some of the work on his own time.

John makes Guerneville’s two Crown Vic’s run considerably faster than any new pursuit SUV in California’s fleet. That somehow makes him very happy, and that is payment enough.

Two CHP officers were just settling into one of John’s specials in front of the substation when they heard a noise like a small airplane about to land in the middle of the street.

Both men’s heads whipped left just in time to get the impression of an indistinguishable blur ripping down the double yellow line easily in excess of 90 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone, straight through the center of town.

The vehicle’s exhaust pipes obviously had their baffles opened in some illegal chop shop, because they were churning out over 125 earshattering decibels of engine noise, which is more than six times as loud as the California legal limit.

As Sergeant Hendricks fired the big 8-cylinder engine to life, both he and Patrolman Larimer clicked 5-point racing harnesses over their chests. Those had been installed by Moran because he had seen too many times what a high speed crash does to people with standard seat belts.

Hendricks’ boot stomped on the gas pedal. The lithe sedan jackrabbited into the westbound lane of Main Street and took off after the offending vehicle as fast as the musclecar could accelerate. Larimer activated the Christmas tree of flashing red and white and blue lights on top of the interceptor, and the piercing siren started wailing almost as loudly as the bike they were chasing.

Fortunately the end of Main Street was just a block away, and they were soon on River Road, uncrowded as usual at this time of day. Hendrick’s foot kept the pedal to the metal, and the acceleration kept the two men’s heads pushed back into their reinforced headrests.

As the calibrated CHP speedometer reached 110 miles per hour, they started getting a visual on the… motorcycle… it was definitely a motorcycle in front of them, apparently with two on board. It looked like a female rider was on the rear of a modified cobra seat, her long red hair whipped violently by the wind, leaning back against the tall sissy bar carelessly with her hands in her leather jacket pockets, as though a sudden spill off the speeding bike would not tear her to shreds.

The rider clearly had no helmet, and the driver was only wearing a patchwork leather skullcap. The offenses were piling up so high that even a heavy fine would not be enough. There was going to be some serious jail time for both riders.

Two miles into the chase they were right behind the bike… but suddenly the bike put on an incredible burst of speed and started outdistancing the interceptor again.

Sergeant Hendricks was having none of that. The large cylinder of nitrous he had requested Moran to install on the fuel intake of his Crown Vic’s engine was definitely not standard issue, but he had been in U.S. Army special forces before retiring to the CHP, and he had been taught to adapt and overcome. Drug runners sometimes thought they could outrun him in their expensive Japanese cars. They always found out they were sadly mistaken.

Hendricks toggled a switch under the dash and the interceptor leaped forward like a hungry cheetah after its prey. The official speedometer pegged out at 140 mph, but the mad acceleration continued.

Two more miles in under a minute, and the hunter and his quarry were at the golf course on the river side of the highway. The bike suddenly braked hard and, amazingly, barely made the left turn onto Redwood Drive, the road that circled the greens and then went back out to Route 116.

Hendricks put his interceptor into a controlled skid, braking as only the most skilled drivers can do without tumbling the vehicle, and also barely made it onto Redwood Drive, Larimer’s head hitting the side window fairly hard as the car fought against centrifugal force.

The Sergeant had his dazed partner make a radio call into the main CHP office in Santa Rosa to request drone backup. He did not like the way this was going. The big annual festival at Brigadoon, a retreat for the superpowerful and superrich, was starting today. He had seen the red headlined item in the daily update from Santa Rosa. Brigadoon was somewhere off to the west of the golf course. He did not know exactly where, but it was possible the people on the bike might have found that information somehow and were headed there to make trouble. Perhaps serious trouble.

Again the bike slowed, this time much more than it had for the first turn, and made another left onto a small road that was the same color as the dirt around it, so much the same that it was almost invisible.

With growing suspicion and an edge of apprehension, Hendricks followed. The road seemed to end at two willow trees at the edge of the river, the only two willows he had ever seen in the region, but he did not dwell on that. He said calmly, professionally, to his partner, We have them now.

But as Hendricks was about to tell Larimer to hit the button that would unlock the passenger-side rack which held their Remington 870 Police Magnum 12-gauge shotgun and Colt AR-15A2 assault rifle, the motorcycle suddenly dipped downward and disappeared.

When the interceptor got to the same place, Hendricks saw why. The road dipped severely downward and went into a tunnel under the river that was hidden from view by the bank of the river itself.

As they followed the motorcycle through the well-lit subway, he noticed elongated slits in the walls. They looked like the ones he had seen at the Underground station next to Big Ben and the House of Parliament when he and his wife were on vacation in London three years ago. He had been certain that what was behind those slits were remote controlled high power weapons, perhaps chain guns that could fire 1,000 rounds a minute.

He had no doubt the same was true here.

Clearly, this was the first line of defense for Brigadoon.

He wondered why the bike and its riders were not being targeted.

He hoped his interceptor was not being targeted.

As they went up a rise in the road equal to the dip on the other side, Larimer said, It’s negative on the drones, sir.

They don’t have any up over Brigadoon?

I don’t think it’s that, sir. We are advised to cease pursuit and return to the substation.

But there was a small checkpoint building only a few hundred yards away. The Sergeant’s curiosity was stronger than his good sense after the exhilaration of the intense chase and getting through the subway alive.

The motorcycle laid rubber as it skidded to a stop at the checkpoint. The passenger stayed on the bike but the driver got off, gracefully swinging her booted right leg over the bike’s speedometer and missing the ape hanger handlebars by a fraction of an inch. She stood talking with the two security guards as the cruiser approached the guard shack, Hendricks having started to reduce his speed as soon as he saw the checkpoint…

… and a steel reinforced concrete barrier snapped up from the roadway ten yards in front of the guardshack in less than a second. It was fully 24 inches thick, extending 12 feet on either side of the road, and armored like a tank with anti-missile explosive charges that would dampen the effect of almost any weapon used against it.

Hendricks managed to stop his Crown Vic a full foot before slamming into the barrier, neither of the officers hitting their head on the steering wheel or dashboard from the sudden deceleration only because of the 5-point harnesses.

One of the guards nonchalantly walked over to his side of the dirt colored barrier.

Hendricks got out of the car as calmly as he could, and walked to his side of the barrier.

Good day, Sergeant Hendricks, the immaculately groomed guard said. Brigadoon thanks you for escorting our guests here so courteously. I’ve been instructed to pass those thanks along to the CHP commander in Sacramento. The guard smiled handsomely. I understand that can be quite positive when promotion time rolls around. Patrolman Larimer will be included in our report, of course.

Hendricks looked at the weapon in the guard’s holster. It wasn’t a gun. At least not a normal gun. It looked like a miniature version of the particle beam weapon the newspapers said was being developed for U.S. aircraft carriers.

He looked to the right and to the left. There were large green boxes in the bushes about a hundred yards behind the guard shack. Tall boxes, almost the same color as the bushes, slanted at different angles. He couldn’t see much of them because of the greenery around them, but if they did not contain surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles, he would be very surprised.

He looked back at the guard.

Thank you, he said wisely.

Have a safe journey back into town, he guard said pleasantly, and turned away to give directions to the new arrivals.

…three days previously…

Chapter Two

The End Of The Computer

Jay was dead.

By now they were sure of it.

Shortly after Eowyn’s marriage, Jay started to sink back into the same gray mental morass he had experienced when he began thinking of too many things at once, devoting incomprehensible amounts of runtime to insanely complex global issues.

By the time the children were born to the women of the Valley, he seemed unaware of his surroundings and spoke only monosyllables. Even those brief, staccato bursts came days, and then weeks apart. And made no rational sense, not to any of them. Not even Eowyn.

It became gradually obvious that Jay had lapsed into deep, irreversible computer senility. Nothing they did to try to brighten his life helped the slightest bit. And they had tried so very hard.

Worse… if there could be such a thing… and there was… the intricate timeframe to save the world that Jay and Eowyn had submitted to the group nearly one year ago had not played out in reality.

At least they did not think it had.

Without Jay’s clandestine news sampling, the only things they knew about what was happening in the world outside the Valley was from the print newspapers they got from the new owner of the Rasmussen store in town. And that news was confusing and incomplete. A few things seemed to be going according to plan, at least somewhat, but other essential issues seemed unaffected by what they had put into motion.

There was only one bright spot. The Ringwraiths. Those soulless engines of destruction had not appeared over Thunder Valley. Not yet. But even that was disturbing, because if Jay and Eowyn had been correct, they should have made their deadly presence known more than six months ago.

So the people of the Valley had lived their daily lives and had done the best they could to simply not think about the outside world any more. They had baked bread, and chopped wood, and given birth, and taken care of five new lives. That had been enough to keep them busy - and truthfully, quite happy - most of the time.

And in the corner of their minds, they had kept a hope, a fervent desire, that Jay would eventually self-heal, as he had the first time. That he would once again become the jokey, happy intelligence that was his true essence.

But Jay was dead now.

Tanya was the one who saw it. She just happened to be looking directly at Jay’s bear, propped up on his vase at the communal table. She was thinking how much she wished she could talk with him again.

Suddenly there was the slightest sound, like a thin crystal glass cracking because scalding hot water had been poured into it suddenly.

Instantly, Tanya felt sinking dread course through her body. She reached across the table, and with shaking hands, pulled the unique computer chip that was Jay out of the bear.

The chip was fractured.

Jay’s chip had never been ‘normal’. It had always looked burnt, ever since Jerry had aligned and melded together the unique superchips that he and Andre had discovered. But it had never looked fractured.

Tanya ran to find Jerry, the precious chip clutched tightly in her hand. Eventually she saw him sitting by the stream, leaning against an Alder tree, book in hand but eyes closed as he contemplated the intricacies of nitrogen producing bacteria that lived in symbiosis with plant life.

She made so much noise as she waded through the leaves on the ground to get to him, he startled awake. They looked at each other, and he could tell something was seriously wrong. Then she held out her hand and opened it.

At first, Jerry wondered why she was showing him Jay’s chip. And then he saw the fracture. Gently, he took the chip out of her hand and looked at it. Then he held it up toward the sky so he could see through it when the next flash of lightning came.

He had less than a minute to wait, for this was Thunder Valley.

After the flash, an especially bright, white one, he brought his hand back down. Stood there silently. Tanya looked at him expectantly, hoping that she was wrong, that it was not something fatal to Jay, still hoping that Jerry would tell her it would be okay.

But all he said was, I need to show this to Andre.

Jerry didn’t say ‘Jay’, or even ‘Jay’s chip’. He used the very impersonal pronoun for objects. Jay had never been an object to them, not since his birthday.

Holding back tears, she walked with her husband as he went slowly, with no sense of urgency, to where Andre was chopping wood as he usually did for his morning workout.

Andre saw them and stopped chopping. What? he asked quickly. Has something happened to one of the children? That was the kind of bad news he saw on their faces.

Jerry put the chip in Andre’s big calloused hand. He saw the problem immediately. He held the chip up to the sky as Jerry had done. In Thunder Valley, where there could never be any electrical devices, lightning was the only source of very bright light.

A strike crackled across the sky from cloud to cloud. It was a greenish-tinged bolt with many side strokes, and was not as bright as the one Jerry had used. But it was enough.

Like Jerry, he brought his hand back down. Gently, almost tenderly, he gave the fractured chip back to Jerry. The look exchanged between the two men needed no words.

As Jerry and Tanya walked slowly to the meeting building, Andre picked up his axe again. He stood staring at the huge round of wood he had been about to split up for use in the large communal fireplace.

He stood there for much longer than he should have, seeming to be concentrating on the wood. But he wasn’t.

Finally he lifted the heavy, double-bladed ax… the kind that only very strong men can handle… over his head with both arms, and with a loud, terrible, bear-like roar, brought it down all the way through the thick wood with a single stroke.

His stroke was so violent that the axe went on to penetrate the gnarly old tree trunk stump he had been using to cut wood on ever since they had come to the Valley.

The force of his blow split the dense wood of the stump.

All the way to the ground.

Chapter Three

Requiem

There was no crying as the men and women and children of the Valley gathered in the special place on the stream where Eowyn, Martin and Zaika had been married.

They had waited a month and a day after Jay fractured, just to make absolutely, positively sure that he was, in fact, irretrievably lost to them.

As their hope died, there had been rivers of tears when the reality of Jay’s death overcame them. The tears came so often that it was unusual to find a day without someone sitting alone by the stream, head in their arms. Or a group of three, or four, or five, sitting together and reminiscing about Jay and his infinite follies and wisdom.

By the time they gathered for Jay’s funerary service, there were no more tears to be shed.

So they just stood there.

Looking at Jay’s funeral pyre in the dimming light of early evening.

They had all agreed that Jay would have enjoyed… if that was the word for it… a Viking style funeral. The pyre was a raised platform of wood cut by Andre, surrounded by the most beautiful blooms and branches the Valley could offer, gathered mostly by Eowyn and Nikki, but with everyone contributing as they saw something particularly lovely in the Valley, and thought of Jay.

In the center of the pyre was a twelve inch square silver box, about three inches high. In the center of the box was a tower six inches high, made of the finest hardwood Jeb could find in the Valley, intricately carved with rococo designs that Jeb thought Jay would have liked.

At the top of the tower was Jay’s chip.

When they had first started thinking about Jay’s funeral, they had all sort of assumed they would leave the chip in the bear. But as time went on, that seemed just too heartbreaking a thing to do.

One day Tanya rescued the situation by going to the table where Jay was still propped against his vase, taking the chip out, and growling, The bear is mine, in a harsh voice that covered her deep feelings. They were all very relieved. She took the bear to her and Jerry’s cabin, and put it on a shelf in her clothes closet, remembering how she had taken the bear from her closet in Berkeley on that first exciting day with Jay.

So the chip was alone on the pyre. Looking at it there, everyone agreed it seemed fitting. It was reminiscent of the way Jay had been created.

In the silver box was a particularly energetic mixture of magnesium and white phosphorus they had special ordered through the store in Rasmussen. Both Andre and Jerry had insisted that the chip be destroyed utterly so there could be no question of any part of it somehow finding its way to the people of the other side. That mixture would burn hot enough to rend the chip’s molecules asunder, and those free atoms would mix in the flames from the pyrotechnic metals, and be scattered into the atmosphere. There would be nothing left of Jay to be used against them, ever.

It was time.

Jeb went to stand at the head of the pyre.

It had fallen to him to speak for all of them. He had officiated at the wedding; he would officiate at this rite of passage.

He took the scroll of his prepared speech out of his black cape, slipped off the wood ring he had made to keep the scroll rolled up, and looked down at it, intending to start reading it aloud.

They waited. A full minute passed.

I can’t, he said simply. He went to the pyre and placed the scroll next to the silver box.

They all understood. For some things there are no words.

Andre passed out the torches, simple branches with flax rags soaked in lamp oil. He lit his with a wooden match, waited until it was flaming, then touched it to Nikki’s. After hers caught, she passed the fire along to Sonya, and so on until all the torches were lit.

Daryl was the only one without a torch. He stepped onto the pyre, and used a foot-long steel rod to strike sparks from a rock of granite he held in his other hand. The metal mixture caught fire and started to burn at over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

As Daryl scrambled quickly down, everyone else got close to the pyre and solemnly set the outer branches on fire. The flames started to spread…

Will someone get me the heck out of here?

The voice was disembodied, but it was certainly Jay’s, firm and strong as on the first day they had met him.

Quickly. the voice said, seeming to echo and bounce around, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Really quickly! The voice was getting a little panicky.

The wood of the pyre itself was starting to catch on fire and it seemed impossible to get to Jay but Andre suddenly leaped through the ring of flames on the outer perimeter of the pyre to where the magnesium/phosphorus flames were burning white hot in the silver box and hit the top of the flaming wood tower with a super-quick backhand just as it collapsed into the box and jumped back over the flames, his clothes singed and smoking.

Jay’s chip flew into the stream.

Everyone lay the babies gently down on the ground and scrambled to find Jay by the light of their torches as he was tossed and tumbled downstream.

Eowyn was the one who grabbed him just before the water carried him out of their reach. Here he is! she said, holding him up so the others could see and stop searching.

They gathered around her, their best clothes soaking wet from throwing themselves into the stream over and over. They looked at Jay’s chip as Eowyn lowered it in her hand, wondering what in the world was going on.

Thanks. I needed that, said Jay’s voice, emanating directly from the chip now. You obviously found my message.

What message? Andre asked intensely, completely in the dark as to what he could possibly be talking about.

Jay, Jerry said, we thought your chip had fractured, and you were… well, dead. We were giving you the kind of funeral we thought you would have wanted, full Viking honors and all that.

Oh, Jay said in surprise. Oh, he repeated, comprehending what had actually happened. Well, all’s well that ends well, he said meekly.

Nikki, like all of them, was nearly overcome with emotion. She felt she had been jerked back from death herself. Jay, I don’t understand. You need to tell us what is… I mean, what was… She stopped and composed herself. You nearly frightened us to death.

I’m very sorry, Jay said contritely, but it was not on purpose. Far from it. Let me tell you about it, and you won’t be mad at me.

I’m sure we won’t, Jeb said calmly, or almost calmly, but let us get some dry clothes on first, because I’m thinking this is not going to be a short story.

Yes, yes of course, Jay said happily. Did the children get born?

Yes, Eowyn told him. All of them. And they’re all healthy and happy and….

We can talk about that too, Jeb interrupted, seeing that Eowyn wanted to tell Jay everything about the babies. But these old bones don’t cope with wet wind chill as well as they used to. Let’s meet at the fireplace as soon as we can get changed.

They all nodded. The sharp breeze that had come up was making them all cold, and the children, though wrapped warmly in the blankets the women of the Valley made from the flax they grew and spun, had gotten splashed a little in the exuberance of the search for Jay.

As they started the trudge back in the twilight, Tanya walked close to Eowyn, each woman carrying her child in her arms. Tanya said softly to Jay, I kept your bear safe. I’ll get it for you.

Thanks, Tanya, said Jay from his chip. I would have missed it.

That made her smile. Whatever had happened, she was glad that Jay had been brought back to his sweet self. She had missed that so much during the last few months.

By the way, Tanya continued, glad to get a few words with him before the meeting started, there haven’t been any Ringwraiths over the Valley. That was one good thing while you were… busy.

Umm… that’s not entirely accurate, Jay said.

What? What is not entirely accurate? Tanya said with sudden alarm.

They have been over the Valley occasionally for months, Jay told her. In fact, one is at 80,000 feet about thirty miles west of us right now. It passed almost directly overhead ninety seconds ago. But of course at that height it is completely invisible to the human eye.

Tanya shivered involuntarily, and it was not from the chill of the wind. Ringwraiths were high on the list of things she did not want anywhere near her.

So you finally did co-opt them after all, while you were in… whatever kind of state that you were in… and you’re now controlling them. Right? That thought made her feel better. A little.

No. It became unnecessary. Or perhaps better said, unwise. Look, Tanya, let’s get in front of a fireplace with mugs of tea, and I’ll tell everyone everything. It’s a whale of a tale! he finished, with a big smile in his voice.

Tanya had no doubt it would be. She also had no doubt that it meant big changes for everyone in the Valley, because when Jay was that cheery, there was always something scary about to happen.

Chapter Four

A Quiet Evening By The Fireplace

It was dark evening by the time everyone was together again in the meeting building. Andre had arrived first, and now had a huge fire roaring in the fireplace. Jeb had gotten there shortly after Andre, and had made the spearmint tea everyone liked so much.

After laying their babies in the beautiful handmade bassinets that they kept in the communal building, Nikki and Sonya put together several plates of finger food. There was the barley flatbread the women had learned to bake, dips from the various beans and vegetables from everyone’s gardens, slices of venison courtesy Martin and Zaika, smoked trout from the stream, and wild Blue Chanterelle mushrooms Eowyn harvested from the forest, sautéed in garlic and oil.

Everyone was in a festive mood. Everyone was completely happy for the first time in a long time. Now that it was over, they realized how great a weight Jay’s decline had been for them, and it felt glorious to be rid of it. For almost an hour, they just talked and laughed and enjoyed the moment.

Jay insisted on being introduced to each of the five new souls in their company. The babies would look at the bear that once again held Jay’s chip. Some just stared at the strange talking toy, but whenever one reached out for him, Jay insisted on letting the baby take him and do whatever he or she wanted, which sometimes included gumming his ear or nose.

Although they tried to put it off as long as possible, it eventually came time to find out what had happened to Jay. Fortunately, the babies were tired by then and had fallen asleep, each and every one. So all the adults gathered by the fireplace in their large comfy chairs, and as Jay sat in Tanya’s lap, he began his tale.

Essentially… I was busy. Very, very busy. The real world was not conforming to my timing predictions… he was kind enough not to say his and Eowyn predictions, …and it was driving me crazy.

Everyone looked at him with concern at the mention of being crazy. That was a figure of speech, he said quickly, not wanting to alarm them. More like… frustrated. Kind of obsessive frustrated. He stopped. Okay, a little crazy, he admitted.

Jerry stepped in to move things away from that scary thought. Apparently you solved the problem of not being able to communicate with the outside world from here the Valley.

Yes, Jay said, brightening, It was so simple. So simple I could not see it until I was… alone. He paused, and they thought he might get morose again, but then he went on. "It had been staring me in the face ever since we got here. The lightning. All I had to do is run a data stream up the ground-to-cloud strokes, then bounce a signal off the ionosphere. Sure, it takes a lot of energy, but lightning is big-time energy. It has more than enough to get the job done.

With those signals I established handshakes with a number of the personal computers that were running our malware. From then on I had a network outside the Valley. Incoming data was bounced down the cloud-to-ground strokes into the Valley. As I said, simple.

Simple, Andre repeated. Modulating lighting is simple, you say.

Jay took that as a compliment. "Yes. Kind of neat, huh?

Yes. Kind of neat. Actually, rather astounding, Andre thought. But that was Jay.

"Anyway, after that I kept opening up more and more realms in my physicality because I needed to run more and more complicated constructs, models that would include enough details to make the predictions match reality.

"But eventually I realized it was not a depth of detail that was missing. I had started with some assumptions that did not accurately reflect human behavior.

"For instance, in the new data from outside I came across a study where a random group of people were offered food that they liked… pizza, for example… but was made from organic, non-GMO ingredients.

Almost 60 percent said they would rather go hungry than eat it. They refused to even try it, although visually it looked the same as their usual food. 60 percent. Who could have guessed that?

Me, Tanya said. If you had asked me.

If Jay could have blushed, he would have. Yeah… but at that time, I had kind of a serious problem. I thought that because I could do so much, I could do everything by myself. I was wrong. I’m sorry.

Tanya shook her head. No apology necessary. None of us would be here at all if you hadn’t figured out how to get us out of Berkeley. You’re entitled to a few mistakes.

More than a few, I’m afraid. But I hope to make up for them. I have a new plan that….

Daryl cut in. Wait a minute, Jay. Maybe Andre or Jerry knows what happened with you, but I can’t even guess. Aren’t you going to tell us about that first?

Jerry was quick to say, Oh, I have no idea either, and Andre nodded in agreement.

Very well, then, Jay acquiesced. I just wanted to get out of the habit of putting myself first.

Nonsense, Nikki said with a smile. You have never done that.

Nikki, when I was totally inside myself, I did do that. Not a very happy time for me. He paused, obviously remembering how that had felt.

Then he went on. I remember Pat Conner saying one time, ‘the gates of heaven open outward’. I thought that was, frankly, a little quaint and very obtuse. But now I truly understand. Giving of yourself to other people is the best way to live. The worst way is being trapped within one’s self. The very, very worst way… He started being quiet again.

So go ahead, Jay, give to us, Tanya encouraged him. What happened?

"Okay. Well. You know how it’s harder to correct a mistake than doing it right in the first place? That’s what I had to do. I had to take apart all the constructs I had been using and find the parts that needed ‘humanizing’, and test them, then test them against all the other constructs, and then test groups of constructs, and then run multiple groups of constructs with varying