Invasion and Other Short Stories

By DD White

Struggling science fiction writer DD White offers here a short story collection with examples featuring the author finally writing about Earth humans after five complete novels. DD White explores his story writing skills to extraordinary limits in a fabric weaved from a vast collection of 20 stories mostly gravitating toward the science fiction category. These stories also stir in fantasy elements, mystery, reality, humor, and horror. Let's explore the future when we travel faster than light, alternate futures, the metadata-processing surveillance reality today, or even the ancient past when Osiris tended his garden called Eden. There are allegories for today in a story from over four billion years ago, and even a story from several billion years before that during the galaxy's Photonic Age. Let's peer into today's conspiracies and behold the truth as only an imagination-crazed science fiction writer can reveal. There should be something here for everyone to enjoy, maybe even a couple thrown in to hate, but it's offered here as 20 complete stories that each include an illustration by artist Davol White. These short stories dare to take a reader where only the wizardry of science fiction fantasy writing can go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DD White
• Release date: Dec 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005476595

DD White

DD White is the writer / artist who created the free online graphic novels called Fantazine. You can still read Fantazine at www.fantazine.net where DD White’s inspirationfor Aquari began in issues 4, 7, and 9 as the Aquari Trilogy.

Book preview

Invasion and other Short Stories

By DD White

Copyright 2020 Smashwords Edition

Contents: Stories

Story 1: Invasion

Story 2: Obsession

Story 3: Faster than Light

Story 4: Malfunction

Story 5: Stealing from the Gods

Story 6: Neighboring Planet

Story 7: A Case for Silver Bullets

Story 8: The Men’s Room

Story 9: Initiation

Story 10: Reality

Story 11: BEAT Programs

Story 12: The Vimana

Story 13: The Last Animals

Story 14: Quasar Age

Story 15: Procreation

Story 16: A Bloodletting Mystery

Story 17: A Case of Undead

Story 18: The Tachyon Mirror

Story 19: Rise of the Beast

Story 20: Elvis Live

Contents: Illustrations

Invasion

Obsession

Faster than Light

Malfunction

Stealing from the Gods

Neighboring Planet

A Case for Silver Bullets

The Men’s Room

Initiation

Reality

BEAT Programs

The Vimana

The Last Animals

Quasar Age

Procreation

A Bloodletting Mystery

A Case of Undead

Tachyon Mirror

Rise of the Beast

Elvis Lives

Invasion

It is a sad but actual fact that the stars are an unfathomably long distance from one another. While stars taunt us out there they harbor planets where life can exist. Galaxies provide swarms of heavenly bodies that still produce distances between suns that are impossible to traverse by any human means. Stars within the universe are so incurably distant from one another that comprehension should dismiss distances between galaxies altogether as nothing that intelligent life could ever travel. Considering the unattainable remoteness, we might as well then dismiss any possibility of invasion from space, but not so fast. This galaxy always is traversed by cosmic rays traveling the infinite distances between stars and galaxies since time’s beginning. Sometimes these deep space traveling cosmic forces from the unfathomable depths originate from an alien intelligence that invades the planet Earth all the time. Usually, these microscopic particles from the great abyss pass harmlessly through the Earth or collide with a particle to produce no measurable consequence.

Cosmic particles that have perhaps traveled across many billion light-years can arrive with repercussions best appreciated on the microscopic dimension where life still exists in simple single and multi-cellular forms. Life still exists within this tiny realm like a densely populated ocean teaming with bacteria growing as plants amid frolicking fish-like protozoa. Different amoeba-like organisms move about more stationary fields of rolling bacteria and algae. From this enlarged perspective, the microbiological universe appears like the strangest distant alien world conceivable, yet it exists right under our feet if we only magnified the view. Here patterns made of cell structures fill the terrain populated by algae, bacteria, protozoa, and viruses existing like rouge DNA or RNA strands wrapped in proteins. While the other cell-like entities do resemble and qualify as alive, the virus arguably only exists on the precipice of life. Yet something unusually life-like about even rogue DNA-RNA pieces scattered to the winds strives to still reproduce.

Like greater macrocosmic reality where we all exist, this landscape mirrors the larger world with cell structures frolicking amid bacteria. In the same way, the minuscule also begets life and feeds. Here the same rules of survival must be obeyed by intelligence born from self-preservation and a drive to procreate. So this tiny universe resembles our larger scale terrain in every way to include parasites. In this microscopic world, viruses lack the cellular mechanisms to reproduce with more straightforward DNA-RNA code strands. However, they exert enough self-preservation to continue to still thrive while employing rogue DNA sequences existing since the most ancient times. Sometimes, a virus enters a cellular host to spring to life by protein shedding. That reveals the old DNA message, which hijacks the cell to reproduce its genetic sequence. Such is life’s nature while the cosmic rays spanning the universe’s incomprehensible expanse send alien messages from an ancient faraway intelligence.

On an even more microscopic level, the cellular protein flesh around the DNA strand of the virus becomes more like vast galactic macrocosmic distances where atomic nuclei exist as solar shepherds to the distant orbiting electrons. Here the alien messages traveling on cosmic particles mostly pass through harmlessly and out the Earth’s other side continuing a journey through space approaching light’s speed toward some other target. Occasionally the cosmic particle from deep space collides harmlessly against a protein to create a photon explosion that would blind the observer if they were this close up. This event happens all the time, and sometimes an alien cosmic particle passes through the protein to collide into DNA switches on the central strand. Then the transmission from deep space finally makes its intended connection.

Thus begins the alien invasion establishing a means of galactic communication. In this instance, a simple, age-old corona virus has its DNA switches profoundly triggered, which were before dormant for several million years.

Corona viruses like this one have brought common colds to humanity for millennia. To this day, they exist free from any known cure besides a human’s resilient immune system. In this current cosmic ray experiment, a single corona virus has become modified with a new message for any cellular nucleus it may manage to come across. This mutated germ will prove particularly resistant to treatment and immunities for whomever it sickens. This new corona virus will cause a severe acute respiratory syndrome, which will prove deadly down the road to many humans that may contract the offspring of our mutant gene strand wrapped in a protein.

Thus we have a typical corona virus profoundly altered with specific switches in its DNA strand changed by a mysterious cosmic ray broadcast from a long time ago, and perhaps even many billion light-years away. Those cosmic rays could have traveled at light speed through the universe for over a hundred million years, but nobody understands where these mystifying rays originate. Perhaps they were created within natural cosmic workings when galactic behemoths like neutron stars get destroyed in immense star skirmishes, or maybe these messages from the universe have something intelligent to say to their molecular recipients that they invade with alien intent. Perhaps this change in the virus DNA is just the fate of random chance, and the mutation always waited for this moment from no further than here within wandering dormant virus junk DNA switches.

Nevertheless, a cosmic ray has traveled across deep space to deliver a change to this single virus. The germ’s design has become intended to find just the right microbial cell host to invade bearing its mutated DNA.

The exposed mutated DNA uses the cell’s inner workings to evolve the invaded single-cellular microbe into splitting multi-cellular, which was previously impossible. At that point, the alien-altered cellular microbe grows into a multi-cellular Helminth, attaching to a larger organism to become an animal parasite.

That’s one possibility for our alien invaded microbe. Still, it more than likely will not find the right type of single-cell organism it intends to invade before first finding some wrong cells to only use cellular machinery replicating its sequence as viruses do. Thus mutant DNA from deep space spreads around the world.

The impact on intelligent life like the human race, should this organism reproduce and thrive, would be a devastating pandemic such as the world has never seen. Suppose this is a message from aliens invading the Earth. In that case, it is easy to see hostility being conveyed so diabolically fitted in with intensions to replace the dominant species on our habitable planet.

Should the human race be caught unexpectedly by such a virus chimera then the pandemic will decimate humanity, probably first spreading from a single country. If the invaded species is intelligent enough, the replicating mutant virus epidemic will only spread faster, using modern transportation methods from one government to many other unprepared countries. Cleverly calculated cosmic changes to this DNA strand create a deadly illness from what before only caused a common cold. Thousands in smothering distress are sure to drown in their respiratory mucus like being water-boarded by a heartless invader’s hands. The resulting pandemic will cause panic in the human species such as never happened before. Many will shop in a frenzy leaving only empty shelves for the less-panicky regular patrons. That leads to shortages and more suffering for the unsuspecting species plundered by an alien intelligence broadcast on cosmic rays from beyond deep space. Humanity has only begun to suffer, which plays into the invading alien’s programmed cosmic ray plan.

The tiny changes made to this microbe’s DNA strand causes humanity to shut down whole countries with state acts intended to stop the spread. Governments get forced to impose draconian policies to quarantine their populations in an unprecedented attempt to contain the deadly virus.

This alien invasion causes the world to shut down in a worldwide quarantine attempt that never happened before in the world’s history. It would be an attempt to flatten the curve of infections and deaths that would, in the beginning, appear as unexpected sharp death spikes on statistical graphs. Now the invaded species responds in a way that can lower the deaths. However, ultimately it still goes according to the alien plan because deaths and their consequences only get traded for other ramifications of the worldwide lockdown.

The long-term economic effects of this tiny change to a molecule causes workers to be unemployed; businesses to shut down; the spigot of the flow for life’s commodities dries up, all still playing into the ancient alien’s wicked plan. Governments provide too little too late in attempts to provide for the unemployed, but the means will have nothing to buy without production.

The resulting worldwide Great Depression will kill more people than the already recovered pandemic from deep space ever did.

Whatever alien intelligence decided to invade our planet this way, they would have to have been exponentially more intelligent than we are to create such a universal cosmic ray network beaming through the universe like this. Perhaps this is how life always has spread and evolved throughout the universe.

We will never know what these aliens were since they remain anonymous by incomprehensible distances from which the broadcast originated in both space and time. Cosmic rays spread throughout the universe to only occasionally find a planet like ours. These cosmic rays are ancient cosmic pollen programmed to a universal language known as DNA. So too, viruses are said to exist on life’s threshold, spreading like molecular biological pollen to evolve our immune systems. Because this cosmic ray invasion originated from such devious superior intelligence, the ensuing worldwide Great Depression claims exponentially more lives than the disease ushering it in ever did because we ground to a halt the world’s economy that supported billions.

With a plague leading to famine, the third metaphorical horseman is sure to arrive like a particular biblical red horse representing war. The cowed people left to unemployment will begin to revolt against already draconian measures that oppress humankind, and they will refuse to remain under house arrest, murdered with a well-intentioned smile. The desperate start to act out of desperation, and then more will die from the violence. The world cannot shut itself down without countries going to war against other countries. War also plays profoundly into the wicked alien hands, into which humanity will succumb. Like the previous plague and ensuing civil unrest against draconian controls, war is sure to also kill exponentially more people. Could some super-intelligent alien several billion years ago have already done the math for all this predictable human nature?

Then with the human race in tatters, Earth’s alien invasion can commence. The cosmically mutated virus eventually finds a means to replicate itself, thus increasing the probability of finding a single cell organism to invade intended to introduce our planet to the invaders. These aliens have intelligence far beyond human comprehension, and they spread their kind on cosmic ray broadcasts intended to program cellular DNA when a remote cosmic connection manages to happen.

This galactic cosmic ray panspermia must have been cultivating itself in our microbial domains since life first began. Perhaps this cosmic ray network initially performed as the conductor starting this symphony of life on Earth in the first place. Now the conductor has created a new song. These ancient aliens are super-intelligent enough to transmit their superior consciousness on cosmic rays this way across impossible distances between stars.

The invaded single-cell organism merges with the alien DNA strand carrying out its cascading division effects to create an alien multi-cellular organism from deep space designed as an animal parasite. However, this is no common parasite, and its impact on the more prominent host divides into a whole new organism. Now the alien from a billion light-years away arrives on Earth. Inside birds with fatal bird flu, it grows within its animal host like a fetus to an uninvited womb.

Invasion

Eventually, more than a virus, more than a parasite, and even more than a growing fetus, the ever-increasing alien sheds its animal host to emerge from a gory cesarean as a fully developed alien invader from another galaxy far, far away in space and time. Because it first spread around the planet in the viral form, it can now carry out its invasion plans from everywhere. All over Earth, animals sick with alien fetuses burst with emerging fully developed aliens from another galaxy. Sphere-shaped blobs with tentacles morphing into functions like eyes, ears, mouth, arms, and at least three legs begin to populate every continent.

Perhaps they will live in peace with the inferior humans decimated by plague and war, but that’s unlikely considering the misfortunes already built into their wicked cosmic invasion plans. Now a new intelligent species emerges that originated from unfathomable distances. Perhaps they are the survivors of a place in the universe that no longer supports life, and they fled here to Earth like the mythical benevolent baby from the planet Krypton when it blew up. On the other hand, they could be Borg-like aliens thriving where these cosmic rays originate. Maybe they remain there, still beaming their species into space across the galaxy like a universal master race convinced by an indisputable superiority about their right to exist everywhere the universe tries to create something else. Whatever these aliens are, they now arrive here from such an unfathomably distant journey through time and space that they must be tired, or maybe they come with a second wind fueling an ambition to finish off the intelligent species they are here to replace. That’s how much this mutation to a single DNA strand in a random corona virus can change the world.

As humanity dwindles during a post-pandemic apocalypse era, a new animal emerges destined to become the new intelligent life on this planet. These cosmic ray collisions happen all the time, although they mostly don’t connect in any way so profound. On the sub-atomic plane of existence where this happens, it’s overwhelmingly space, and cosmic rays usually pass harmlessly through the whole planet and off to other worlds to conquer. Yet here we have a virus cell altered in this way, destined to cause all these things to come to pass. Fortunately, at the moment of this improbable intergalactic cosmic ray connection, a different multi-cellular organism passes by to then eat our little single germ. The deadly alien is then dissolved into harmlessness by digestive amino acids. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Obsession

Twilight dawned on Vanessa Cardui, whose obsession with the past followed her everywhere like a mental prison. At the same time, she dug into her covers desperately clinging to the only refuge from the dreaded shadow zone she woke up to. Vanessa knew that the day waited to greet her with constant thoughts over a past she had no power to change.

Each day arrived to taunt her with the same fascination. Like so many others, this day began by opening eyes upon a vacant pillow beside her on the bed. It used to be her husband's before the historic 9/11 incident took his life away along with over 3000 others in three buildings that collapsed straight down like controlled demolitions that day. Though it served nobody, she never could rid herself of the other pillow on the bed. She had relived her husband's demise constantly since he went to work that infamous day in Manhattan's Twin Towers never to return. That fateful day became an anchor for a depression problem she now realized would drown her if she didn't do something else.

You can't go on like this, she told herself in the bathroom mirror while examining the dark circles growing worse under her eyes. She opened the mirror cabinet only to look at the antidepressant bottle on the shelf. …And this stuff isn't working, she closed the wall cabinet returning to her face in the mirror. …And you have to stop talking to yourself. She sat on the commode putting her head in her hands to cry.

The day doesn't wait for the depressed. The necessity to survive finally got her ready for work with time to stop for coffee. Through what felt like a supreme effort, she did all that without taking her pills, which she took along just in case. The slow-moving line seemed to drag her depression even deeper till she found herself reaching into her purse to grab the pills. She had tried not to take them, but the line became so long, and they take forever to make those coffees. While looking at the bottle in her hand she still fought the urge.

I used to take those, came a voice from behind her in the line. One day after I started meditating with this Hindu meditation class I just didn't need those antidepressants anymore.

Vanessa looked up at another woman about her own age in a nice outfit, the kind a receptionist might wear. Vanessa's face when she turned around communicated a less friendly response while her lips said, Hi, my name is Vanessa. That moment the voice in her head told her she better find herself a friend.

My name is Beth, said the woman offering her hand to shake. I became deeply depressed after my husband died. That led me to the same kind of prescription as that.

Wow, this feels like fate. It seems we have a lot in common. Vanessa decided she wanted to get to know this woman better.

They sat down having coffee together before the nine o'clock hour took them to their jobs. They both shared stories about their husbands' deaths. She told Beth about him going to work at the Trade Center the day terrorists crashed airplanes into the towers. Her husband perished trying to escape the floors above where the aircraft had crashed. Vanessa described how those events ever since continued to replay in her mind over and over again.

I am so sorry for your loss, said Beth.

In a way, I blame all that happened that day for my husband's death too. Ever since that day, it's been senseless war after senseless war draining the country's treasuries dry, and what has that got us? We are so lied to anymore here in the fog of war that nothing is true. War has turned us all into assholes while at the same time it goes on flushing away our tax dollars. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to use that language, but I've had some solid antiwar opinions that also go back to that day your husband died.

I see your point, but how did 9/11 kill your husband?

Well, it's all connected. My husband died on August 1st, 2007, when that bridge in Minnesota collapsed. You see, we went to war all those years ago while the country's infrastructure got left to rot from lack of maintenance because we have to spend everything on bombs for the rest of the world. It's enough to make any rational person clinically depressed. You know, like I said, I started taking meditation classes, and it really helped me. Now I don't need pills to cope with what I have no power to change. You should come to the class tonight. The Guru will teach you how to meditate. You'll feel a friendly warmth from the group, and it's sure to cheer you up.

Vanessa felt that synchronicity caused by fate brought her and Beth together. It seemed like divine intervention to meet another woman who also suffered from the same problem she had, and just when she almost decided to take her medication. She already, earlier that morning, decided to try something else. After they exchanged numbers, she decided to try Beth's meditation class. Later that evening she showed up to the class.

Glad you could come, Vanessa. Beth greeted her with a friendly sincere smile at the location they had arranged to meet.

It felt good to have a new friend that could cheer someone up with just a smile. The class turned out to be around the corner in an Episcopal church rented out to the Hindu group three times a week.

Vanessa greeted many friendly faces there. She could actually feel her chronic sadness lift in this room filled with friendly people she met in a church's basement.

Beth, Vanessa confided, I feel that warmth you described this morning. I do like it here.

Beth helped her way around the group to a dark bearded man wearing a white robe with a constantly beaming smile. This is Raja Chimno baj ha, our instructor for this class.

Hello.

The old man smiled warmly. It is a pleasure to meet you. Beth was telling me earlier that she brought a friend here tonight. We shall get started soon, and I will introduce you to a simple exercise for your mind that will indeed act as a treatment for depression Beth tells me you suffer from.

They all sat in a circle, pillows propping them up on the floor with their legs crossed. Beth helped Vanessa with the half-lotus leg position on the pad.

Then the Guru Chimno baj ha spoke. He introduced Vanessa and some other newcomers to the group with their names already memorized. Then the new ones were put on the spot to repeat their names to the others and then a little about themselves. After some discussion and a speech from the group's Guru, they all in the circle did a collective meditation for a half-hour. The group featured a wide range of experience from a first time to some who considered themselves experts. She sat in a comfortable half-lotus, but others were show-offs sitting without a pillow in full lotus with their legs looking like pretzels.

Then the Guru instructed them to perform a simple breathing meditation. We simply want to concentrate upon the rhythmic breath of prana, which is the air. This air carries the life force with it. We gain control over many feelings we experience through this rhythmic breath, such as anger, depression, and stress. This exercise will, in a way, reset you psychologically. Simply clear your mind of mental chatter and concentrate only upon this rhythmic breath. We tend to hold tightly to some emotions, thoughts, and ultimately even our personal identity. Let go, and be free from such attachments. They are hindering you from experiencing your true self. You may find yourself becoming limitless as you allow the breath to just flow through you.

Vanessa tried to remain still and concentrate the way they instructed her, and at first it seemed like she would never be able to stay still physically or mentally. With a determined effort, when it seemed like the class would go on forever and never end she didn't give up.

Eventually, Vanessa began to feel stillness set in. She noticed that doing this surrounded by other people engaged in the same silent endeavor pushed her along, encouraging her somehow. She ended up surprised when suddenly the meditation turned out to be over, and a half-hour had gone by.

Later she confided to Beth that it really did help. She felt her spirit lifted by the experience. Soon she became a regular at the meditation class. For the first time in a long time, it felt good to have a friend. She and Beth began meeting for coffee regularly, and they liked chatting together. Vanessa enjoyed the simple mediations taught to her and noticed when surrounded by others doing the same thing she seemed even better at controlling her mindlessness.

Then one day, while alone meditating on her bed, she suddenly had a vision appear before her like a light coming on behind her closed eyes. She saw her dead husband sitting at the kitchen table in her old apartment drinking coffee with a newspaper. The Sun through the window shined with cloudless blue skies over Manhattan. The scene before her closed eyes became more vivid than a dream. She could move about the location noticing the old kitchen precisely as it looked so long ago, with her husband oblivious to her presence still alive sitting at the table. She could even read the paper he held before his face while navigating a coffee cup from mouth to table. She read the date on the Newspaper's header, September 11, 2001.

Obsession with the Past

Vanessa involuntarily opened her eyes only to see her own familiar empty bedroom after the vision's vividness gave her a shock after reading that date. The entire image got dismissed in a moment, and closing her eyes again didn't bring it back. The dream disappeared; gone, but not forgotten.

I had a vision last night while I meditated, she told Beth the following day over coffee. I was suddenly returned to the day I lost my husband. He sat right there just as I remember him that morning, but it all looked so vivid. It was the same old kitchen as my previous apartment. He sat at the table like he always did every morning, but he was reading the paper from that day. It looked so real I could even read the articles. It seemed so vivid, but then I opened my eyes, and it all went away. Was I dreaming?

That is so cool, said her friend. This sounds like you are attaining spiritual advancement. You should tell Guru Raja Chimno baj ha.

It was all so vividly real. I want to look up the issue of the New York News from that day to see if it's the same paper I saw in this vision. I read some of it and remember the pictures. I swear it was as if I were there.

Wow. I've been at this for a couple years now, and I still just think it helps with my mood swings, and I also don't seem to ever get very sick anymore. You have to tell the Guru tomorrow.

I will. I kept on meditating afterward, but the vision didn't come back.

What if you really were there? You could change history. You know, ever since that day, everything in this country has gone on a downward spiral with endless wars that can never be won. The whole country has abandoned empathy, and everybody has become so angry all the time. Before that day all the mass shootings were once so rare.

I don't know, said Vanessa while gazing into the past. I've been obsessed with 9/11 since it happened. But if I could change anything about that day, I'd just stop my husband from going to work. That's all. I don't want to change the world. Just that.

The next day, she told the Guru. Unlike Beth however, he responded with much less encouragement. You must ignore this vision if it happens again and return to the meditation with your mind clear of such distractions. The mind is cleaver and will resist the discipline of meditating that you now subject it to. That is what your mind wants to do, but like a loving animal trainer, you must discipline the creature that is your mind to obey. The goal of the mediation is to ignore such things, for they are stopping you on your path to enlightenment. That is the true goal you must focus your mind upon.

She knew the Guru was correct. The goal she initially took the class to achieve had been to stop her obsession with that day, and now she found herself more obsessed with that day than ever. This had undoubtedly been a sign that her mind, which Vanessa tried to discipline, fought back to return her to the usual obsessive depression trap. It threatened to trap her back into the shadow land that she lived in every day after that day. She realized it would not be easy to just let go.

The meditations went well for a couple more days until again she found herself there in her old kitchen with her husband, Robert, at the table reading the newspaper. She tried returning to the mediation without opening eyes, but the scene remained before her closed eyelids to ignore in vain. Her husband turned the page of the newspaper as she tried to ignore him. She realized the only way to turn it off would be to open her eyes, but before she did that she suddenly saw herself enter the room with the old hairdo.

'Vanessa?' she thought to herself, startled by her own appearance upon the vision scene.

Yes, dear? the woman asked.

Hmm? I didn't say anything, honey, replied her husband from behind the paper.

Didn't you just say my name?

No, dear. He peaked up from behind his reading with a concerned look, and then he took a coffee sip. That beautiful, still youthful husband's face held her attention, meditation be damned.

The Vanessa in the vision then looked right at her. Not resisting a sudden emotion from that fright, she opened her eyes tangibly fearing she would be discovered in her own mind there in that historic scene. Vanessa closed her eyes again, but her view greeted only darkness and frustration that the vision disappeared. She really did want that scene to return. Still, Vanessa ended up obeying her Guru to finish meditating without any more distractions, except a distant thought from that memory of seeing her husband's face so beautiful in its youth. So real, she felt she actually saw her husband again after all these years. She realized what an intense therapy this meditation idea turned out to be.

It happened again.

Really? The same scene? The same day?

They shared coffee together again at the coffee shop before work.

Yes. Only this time, I saw myself from back then enter the kitchen. I looked just like I did back then, same hairdo and clothes. So tangible like I was actually there. In fact, after being surprised by seeing myself, I mentally said my own name when I saw her, and it appeared like she heard me. It all looked vivid enough to reach out and touch. That was when I opened my eyes, and it all went away again. I really didn't mean to open them. It felt like I could talk to myself from back then.

That reminds me of what I wanted to show you.

Beth tapped on her smart phone and then held it up. Is this the 9/11/2001 issue of the Daily News that you saw?

Vanessa looked at the phone like she saw a ghost. She squinted her eyes at the same article she had read in her vision. The same font and back page pictures were identical to her dream. The picture on the phone inspired her pale astonished look already answering Beth's question.

Yes. How did my own mind paint such a perfect memory with these details?

I think you're developing a magic power. Rajas Chimno baj ha has mentioned that before as something you can attain with meditation.

He told me to ignore this, said Vanessa, make it go away. He told me it would block me from reaching enlightenment.

I don't know. I would tell your Guru it happened again.

I might need his help making this go away if it's going to keep happening. Vanessa realized after saying that she didn't want this to go away. She felt like an addict that couldn't kick a habit.

They met with the meditation class that evening. Rajas Chimno baj ha still discouraged her from indulging her visions. Your mind is very cleaver. You must tame your mind to surrender this obsession over that day.

I just find it hard to believe my mind is that cleaver. I mean with the newspaper. I read an article in the vision that I'm sure I never read before, and it was right there on the front page that Beth showed me on her phone.

Oh, but your mind did read that before when you first saw it. Your mind took a picture. Only your own ego becomes distracted from your mind's perfect recording of your reality. You must dismiss this vision to progress to your actual goal, which is enlightenment.

I know, but Beth says this might be a magic power I'm developing with mediation.

I wouldn't say that is not possible, but I as your Guru, must lead you past this distraction on your way to enlightenment.

So this might be some kind of psychic power?

The Siddhi is what we call magical attainments, but you are only just beginning. Developing such a thing during this early stage is a symptom of a less desirable problem blocking your path to enlightenment beyond.

So I'm a natural.

Not exactly. You have a blocked chakra stopping your energies like a dam that stops a river from further attainment. The kundalini energy tries to rise in your spine like a snake hypnotized by the mesmerizing music of meditation, but the snake becomes blocked by the chakra. He pointed at her stomach as if to indicate what chakra gave her trouble. Because the chakra has become blocked, perhaps by your inability to let go of these memories, you are not allowed to progress. Because it blocks kundalini's progress, that chakra consequently becomes energized by this blockage like a lake that grows because of a dam. So yes, some powers that come from that body's energy center can manifest this way. We call those manifestations Siddhi.

He seemed to be trying to unblock something around her stomach with his massaging hand. She held back a fear that this Guru would be getting more invasive with his touch, but then he withdrew, finished with whatever that was.

Whatever the Guru did, it worked, at least for a time. The visions did stop for several weeks after consulting Raja Chimno baj ha about this problem. Her personal progress seemed to increase, and her antidepressants had long since become forgotten in a drawer somewhere. She found herself thinking about other things as if maybe she had finally got over this obsession over a lost husband she could never bring back. She realized she had been using meditations to master a PTSD that had terrorized her since that infamous day way back when. It played in Vanessa's mind, over and over again, like a broken record making her constantly relive the trauma of that day. The past really held her back from a future always offering peace. If only she would turn around to look towards it. Meditation became her new therapy, and eventually, the antidepressants would be further abandoned to a garbage can.

Then one day in deep meditation, just as she genuinely embraced the oneness of a single focused thought, the vision returned like a dark drape suddenly pulled away from a sunny window.

She looked over her long-lost husband, still within his twenties from many years ago in the past. He remained immersed in his news articles, oblivious to her presence. Her husband turned the page just as before and then sipped his coffee before returning to his paper. She knew she had to dismiss this entire vivid scene as a mirage concocted by a desperate mind that didn't want her to let go and move on into the future. The future, the future, Vanessa!

Then her past self entered the room. What about the future, honey?

Hmm? I didn't say anything, dear.

Her past self looked around, wondering what she heard. Vanessa knew she only had to open her eyes to make this all go away. She didn't want it to. 'Vanessa,' she voiced in her own mind, 'it's me.'

Looking like her self all those years ago, the vision turned to look right back at Vanessa as if she now saw. Who are you? said her past self in a low voice her husband didn't hear.

I am you, from the future. I've come here to tell you to not let our husband go to work today. No matter what, make sure he stays home today. Do not take ‘no’ for an answer.

Don't let Robert go to work? Why? she replied silently while looking around to see if her husband heard her. Robert, behind her, just turned the page to his newspaper again.

He is in danger. If he goes to work, he will die. She could see in her past self's eyes that she would never allow that to happen, no matter how remote the possibility. She turned to tell her husband to stay home and that she didn't want him to go to work.

I have to work today, honey. There is the financial business I am working on that will cause all kinds of delays today if I'm not there.

I need you to stay home today, dear. Please, just call in sick. She knelt next to her husband to embrace him with a promise for more of that if he stayed.

Well, okay. I don't understand, but okay. He grabbed his cell phone to make a call.

Vanessa opened her eyes. She suddenly noticed she no longer sat up in a half lotus. She found herself lying under the bed covers clinging to sleep again. Was that all a dream? She looked up over at her husband's snoring face on his pillow, which shockingly looked a few years older than her recalled memory.

You're alive! she yelled like a morning