2052

PROLOGUE

As I think back to the year 2052 on Earth, so many different thoughts and emotions enter my mind. Each month of this Earth-shattering year brought different challenges. Even with all that was going on, none of us could have imagined that this was going to be the last year of life on Earth.

I’ll begin this historical recap on the night of my 90th birthday party, in 2052, and then backtrack from that point in time. Victoria had sent me to the attic, in search of memorabilia, as our guests were about to arrive for the celebration. Victoria specifically asked me to look for old pictures and movies of our family. As I trekked around our dusty and cold attic, I came across this early version I-Pen scanning and recording device, which I hadn’t used or seen in nearly twenty-five years. In 2028, the I-Pen was the most sophisticated piece of technology we had. When the holographic version of the I-Pen came out a year later, it replaced this unit completely.

My old living room lounge chair, which I told Victoria had been thrown out (at her insistence), was actually up here in the attic, hidden under an old bed sheet. I loved this chair way too much to ever let it go. It may not have coordinated with Victoria’s ever-changing color schemes, but my fortress of solitude and I have been through too much together. Besides, it was still the most comfortable chair I’d ever owned.

As I sat down and began listening to my own memoirs, recorded between the years 2022 and 2028, the overwhelming urge to continue this verbal diary washed over me. Twenty-four years had passed since my last entry and now, as my last two-digit round birthday arrived, I was overwhelmed by powerful feelings of both nostalgia and fear. It wasn’t the fear of my own death that frightened me, but the disappointment and grief over the impending death of our planet.

By the summer of 2052, many of the world’s previous problems had been resolved, yet many more threatening ones had taken their place. On the positive side, ninety percent of all cancers had been cured. Heart disease, for those who could afford the artery wall opener, Artery Cleanse, had been eliminated. You could now eat anything you wanted, including full-fat cream cheese, French fries, and bacon. You name it – you could eat it and not worry about any negative effects.

Henk and Ena had cured Alzheimer’s disease, so if you were fortunate enough to live until the very ripe age of 110, you were truly living. Having your mind and heart functioning perfectly until death was a monumental medical achievement for mankind.

I still carried the mysterious power of the orb into my old age. The life-saving abilities of the orb could cure leukemia or radiation-induced disease, but only if I handed the orb to the ill person. Over the years, I had cured thousands of people around the world, yet I still felt guilty because I couldn’t save everyone. When you receive 1,000 requests per day from people to save their lives, and you are only one person, unfortunately, you have got to pick and choose who to save.

As stated earlier, the I-Pen device that I am recording with right now was replaced by air computing. Holographic tablets tied directly to Earth’s satellite network are now being used everywhere on Earth. Virtual reality helmets have replaced the old X-Box video games completely. It’s a sight to see thousands of people on their lunch breaks, sitting on park benches with those motorcycle-like virtual reality helmets on their heads. Pickpockets were having a field day preying on these individuals, as they mindlessly walked around the city.

The United States had become the world’s leading energy producer, due to the gradual global changeover from oil to natural gas. Trucks and buses were the first vehicles to switch over to natural gas, but cars soon followed. Oil is still widely used but amounts to a mere 20% of the world’s various energy sources. Enemies of freedom and democracy were hurt drastically by this transition to natural gas from oil, as they had less money to fund trouble around the globe.

On the negative side, half of the world’s seven billion people were still desperately poor. Every few years, condoms and birth control pills were donated and brought into villages all over Africa, with little effect. The women forgot to take the pills and the men didn’t want to wear the condoms. To be blunt, forced sterilization was the only long- term answer, but few political leaders, anywhere in the world had the stomach to fight the civil liberties’ groups and to see this plan through. To my way of thinking this was the reason our planet would never be able to solve the dichotomy between the richer nations and the poorer ones.

The boys’ sterilization formulas were being discussed once again, to remedy over-population, particularly in the poorest nations on Earth. However, once we learned of our planet’s inescapable fate, those plans were shelved. In the economically sound countries, life spans had increased to an average of 110 years. However, half the world was still starving and living much shorter lives, due to nutritional deficiencies and the squalor of their surroundings. It was hard to believe that in 2052, people were still dying of typhoid fever, dysentery, Ebola and AIDS, just to name a few.

Charles Dickens said it best. It was the best of times it was the worst of times on Earth in 2052, depending on where you lived and your financial position. With all of our advanced technology we never managed to elevate the poorest people on Earth, to a decent living standard.

Gerald hit the nail on the head when he spoke at the United Nations.

When people who live in abject poverty have multiple children per family under such conditions, the problem is increased ten-fold.

I’ll pick up my recollections where I left off, filling in the historical blanks from the time of my last verbal entry into this device, recorded back in late 2028 when Prela and I were traveling back to Earth from the planet Elkin.

2029

On our flight back to Earth, Prela used the Saskian word "clee" to describe when one individual mentally contacts another. Now I had a term I could use when Prela sent me telepathic messages. I had developed a special mental connection to the Saskian people, after I had entered another dimension to retrieve their souls on planet Elkin: they could now read my mind and I could read theirs. My main side effect from entering an alternate dimension for those two fateful minutes, was, and still is, extreme dizziness. I’ll have bouts of vertigo once every two weeks or so for the rest of my life, but this is a small price to pay for saving the Saskian race.

After returning to Earth with Prela, I began to love using the expression, "Prela cleed me." Victoria soon grew tired of my new favorite expression, and she let me know it. So I tried to stop using the word in her presence.

The family was beginning to grow apart in many directions. Victoria became a full time business woman, traveling the world and making speeches about both her Vena rejuvenation cream and our alliance with the Elkin people. Due to the ever-increasing stock price of her product, Victoria was now on the Forbes 100 list of the richest people on Earth. The minor downside of this increased wealth was the continual phone calls and visits from charities and politicians looking for donations. Okay, I will admit that this was a very small price to pay for never having to worry about the cost of anything anymore, but it still drove me nuts. I found myself using a Chinese accent whenever these charities called asking to speak to Victoria, despite the fact that we were on the Galactic Do Not Call List.

Oh, she no live here no more, moved to Elkin.

It didn’t work, they kept calling.

Henk and Jake were now young men, having left their minimal childhood behind them. Henk was close to six feet tall, and as Victoria liked to call him, tall, dark, and handsome, due to his Dutch and Antiguan heritage. In contrast, Victoria’s son Jake was short, maybe five feet five inches tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Both boys were frustrated by their inability to solve the remaining problems with the body shield they invented, to make the device fully operational. I had never heard Henk and Jake argue before as much as they did when discussing the possible solutions to the body shield’s remaining glitches. I actually had to separate them a few times.

Jake believed the problem was that the Elkin shield technology (which the body shield was based on) was flawed. He argued, If this planetary shield is the answer to stopping the Kraz from attacking, then why don’t the Elkin use this shield on their planet?

Henk, on the other hand, was sure that the problem lay within the air-flow systems, which didn’t allow the human inside this full-body suit the ability to breathe properly for long periods of time. My opinion, for what little that was worth, was that they were both right.

Jake had begun dating Prela. Despite Prela being bald, four feet tall, and having very small ears, she was a delicate, green-eyed beauty who could pass for human. The Elkin told us that humans and Saskians could mate, if they chose to do so. Because Prela was mute, she used sign language to communicate with the rest of the family, but she sent me hundreds of questioning clees about the intricacies of dating. I tried to help her understand Jake’s motivations, but it also fell to me to argue on her behalf with Jake, as she couldn’t speak verbally. Strange didn’t quite cover how I felt about doing this.

I remember once yelling at Jake, Sometimes you have to consider my feelings and not just your own!

I found out pretty early on that I needed at least two beers before I could take on the role of speaking for Prela in these little spats of theirs. Taking the female side of the argument wasn’t easy for me, but I have to admit it did help further my gender-based negotiating skills. Despite the barriers to their communication, Prela and Jake did seem to be falling in love. There were no objections from anyone in the family.

Lola, an inch taller than her twin brother, was very attractive and had the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Jake. She was dating a minor league baseball player, Joe Collins, who she had first met in high school. Joe was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina but his family had moved to New Jersey when he was a teenager. Joe was blue-collar, hard-working, and very devoted to Lola. As I had heard the story, when Joe was failing English, Lola let him cheat off of her, so he could pass the course. After that, Joe went around the school telling everyone how great Lola was for helping him. Years later, they ran into each other and started dating. Joe didn’t comprehend half of Lola’s talents, but we felt that he could handle it emotionally once all of her gifts were ultimately revealed to him.

Both Jake and Lola had Masters degrees by the age of 13, but being home-schooled, they were completely isolated. Victoria decided that they needed to go to high school, both to make some friends their own age and also to be part of normal adolescence. The high school teachers were fully aware of Jake and Lola’s academic achievements, so they were in on the scheme. The kids purposely tanked some of their tests.

Lola said, We’ve got to pretend to be average so we can fit in.

Jake put it a bit more insultingly when he said, Going to high school for us was like a college graduate auditing a kindergarten class.

Henk and Ena, my two adopted children, were both unattached and they planned to stay that way. Ena stood five feet seven inches tall and was a striking brunette with dark skin, and light brown eyes. I kept telling her she should have been a model. Both Henk and Ena dated sporadically, but none of these relationships ever went beyond casual levels.

Clearly, their focus was on saving the Earth from the predicted 2052 Kraz invasion force. They committed all of their efforts to making sure that our planetary shield would work as it was designed to when completed. It bothered me that Henk and Ena seemed to carry the world’s problems on their shoulders. Unfortunately, fun was not something either of them expressed any interest in at that time.

Our thoughts soon turned to Sheltok, our Kraz friend, who we all prayed could prevent this attack on Earth from happening, somehow. However, we had not heard from our Kraz ally in over two years.

As of 2029, Victor and Zing had a two-year old son. They named him Ben. Ben had no special talents we could ascertain, but he had an incredible ability to listen and to understand what he was being told. You don’t see too many two-year olds that are better listeners than talkers.

Defender the Second, who I will simply call Defender from now on, was a cool dog. He had two distinct personalities. He wanted to play 99% of the time, chasing balls, Frisbees, and birds. However, the other 1% of the time, he’d sit and stare at me, seemingly looking right through me. Henk matter-of-factly stated that the actual Defender, (the supernatural being who has helped us in the past) would enter our dog’s body from time to time to relay messages to us. When Ena confirmed what Henk had said, I found myself unwittingly talking to this dog in serious, one-sided discussions. Zing spotted me a few times having deep philosophical monologues with the dog, when I thought I was alone. On a number of occasions Zing told Victoria, that, Vito should be watched closely and not left alone for long periods of time.

Prela was now officially an ambassador to the planet Earth, representing the Saskian people’s interests. I went to the United Nations several times to interpret for Prela and speak her thoughts to the General Assembly. I was very proud of Prela and what she was doing for her people back on the Saskian home world. With the help of the Elkin transport vessels, food and raw materials were sent to Saskia from Earth, to help the survivors of the Kraz attack build a new society.

The price of gold had dropped from $5,200 per ounce, down to $400, when the United States suddenly liquidated much of the gold we had brought back from Elkin to help pay off our national debt. The rest of the world was extremely jealous that the United States was able to pay down almost all of its debt in this way, while Europe, Russia, and other struggling economies could not. By the time representatives from Europe traveled to Elkin to get their own gold reserves boosted, the price had dropped dramatically, as the supply and demand equation on Earth had changed.

FAREWELL OLD FRIEND

Gerald and his family returned to Earth from Elkin. His tour as ambassador had ended after two years. I met little G when the ship landed in Washington. Gerald looked great, but I noticed he raised an eyebrow at me as he glanced my way while exiting the ship. I soon knew why. Zoey, Gerald’s oldest daughter, was holding a baby in her arms as she walked off the Elkin ship.

The writer, Paco Stevenson, who was living with the Finkelstein’s in the human-friendly residence while chronicling Elkin-Earth relations, apparently embarked on a relationship of his own with Zoey. Knowing Zoey’s propensity to flirt, I had an open mind as to who may have initiated this horizontal hoedown. Claire Finkelstein kept insisting to anyone who would listen that her daughter had been taken advantage of by the suave South American who was three times her age.

When I spoke to Paco about this, he told me that he was willing to marry Zoey, but Claire wanted him gone from their lives ASAP. Poor Gerald was once again in the middle of a family crisis, trying to keep his wife calm and rational. Zoey named her baby boy Pablo, after Paco’s father, so you could imagine Claire Finkelstein’s opinion of this name. She was a complete basket case.

After being home for a few weeks, Gerald called to inform me that Walter Krone, our good friend, the former under secretary of state, was very ill. I felt guilty that I had lost touch with Krone for the past few years. We went together to visit him at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. Krone had liver cancer. Gerald chastised Krone for ignoring the early signs of pre-cancerous lesions in his liver, which had been scanned years earlier with his I-Pen.

Krone, ever the calming force, told Gerald, I wasn’t going to give up drinking, just so I could live another year or two. I wanted to go out on my own terms.

I brought Defender along with us to the hospital, though I suspected the hospital rules wouldn’t allow him entry. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if bringing the dog along was my idea or his. I held Defender in my arms as we entered the hospital. We walked past several employees, who I felt certain would detain me and my dog, but no one seemed to take notice of our canine, at all. Defender jumped from my arms and led us directly to Krone’s room.

Gerald and I just looked at each other, asking with our eyes, How could the dog know Krone’s room number?

While visiting our emaciated and extremely ill friend, Defender jumped on the bed. Krone stared deeply into Defender’s eyes for what seemed like a minute or two, before he came out of it. Krone then whispered, My god, I have just seen the future. Your adventure has barely begun.

Gerald and I looked at each other, but said nothing.

Krone then asked in a fading and graveled voice, Could you get me some crushed ice to suck on?

The last thing Gerald and I saw as we left Krone’s room in search of ice was Defender on the bed, staring into Krone’s eyes. When we returned, Krone was dead and had the most peaceful smile on his face. Defender looked at both of us for a moment and, suddenly, our sadness over Krone’s death turned into an overwhelming feeling of calm and peace of mind.

Krone was a great man. Gerald and I both eulogized him at his funeral. As I was standing at the podium speaking about the lifetime achievements of my good friend, I glanced out into the audience to see dozens of beautiful women of all nationalities crying profusely. Gerald and I knew that Krone had younger, beautiful women on his arm in every country, yet it still surprised us that they all flew in for the funeral. Krone would have been delighted that all of his lady friends showed up to pay their last respects.

The feeling that a part of you is now missing after someone close to you dies is something we all experience. Yet, in Krone’s case, Gerald and I were spared this feeling of loss, as we were somehow at ease. It’s hard to explain why we shed no tears for our old friend. Perhaps the reason was that we knew his soul was in good hands.

After the service, Gerald and I noticed that several congressman and senators were moving in on Krone’s lady friends. The women didn’t seem to mind but, personally, hitting on women at a funeral always seemed