When four new stars suddenly appear in the night sky, mainstream science does what mainstream science has always done: It denies the evidence that doesn't fit the theory. So why then is it that a private space administration is rounding up the best and brightest for a manned mission to Mars?

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1. Four More Stars in a Starry Sky [top]

No one really paid any attention to the stars that appeared one morning, where no stars previously had been. Which is to say, the mystics and stargazers noticed and found it odd, even disturbing, and they created web pages and spent hours dialing into radio talkshows, searching for an explanation. Dr. Angelo Moore finally emerged, three days after the first appearance of the stars, and told the public that there was nothing to worry about. That if any "new" stars had suddenly appeared, he or one of his colleagues would certainly have noticed. And none of them saw anything amiss. That was exactly what the media wanted to hear, and that's what was fed to the public, and—it turns out—that was what the public wanted to hear, so that they could go to work and to the mall and to soccer practice and to sleep without having to consider that their world was no longer what it used to be.

Three days after Dr. Moore's assessment, the stars—which had hung bright as planets in an arc around the left side of the moon, no matter where the moon was in the sky—disappeared as suddenly as they had come. The kids continued to play soccer, moms continued to sprint through malls and fast-food drive-throughs, and dads went dutifully to work. Perfect America was still intact, it's shiny surface freshly buffed and polished with a new coat of whitewash. But the scientists who knew—the ones whose names never appeared in the papers and whose voices never spouted facts on talk radio—toiled far below the blinding white surface of reality, scouring thousands of images captured by telescopes and satellites in the days before, during, and after what became known as the Star Event. And they, like the mystics, were unnerved. Because the one thing Dr. Moore had got absolutely correct was that the stars were not asteroids heading for an Earth impact.

No, they weren't that at all.

2. A Spider in a Wheel [top]

Bransen really didn't like the looks of the bar, yet he had no choice but to enter. His was the only four-wheeled vehicle in the lot, and he veratibly tip-toed past the lineup of hogs and choppers lest his footfalls tip them like dominoes. A couple of bikers had just arrived and glanced at him suspiciously as walked toward the doors. He'd opted to fit in as little as possible, going on the assumption that a nervous man in a golf shirt and khakis would pose no threat as either interloper or poser and thus would be left alone. The bouncer at the door—paid, no doubt, in beer—raised his eyebrows in mild surprise as Bransen approached and asked (with an air of genuine concern), "Are you looking for someone in there?" The unasked follow-up to which was, Because if you aren't, why not head to the wine bar down the street?

"Yes," Bransen said, his voice strong. Nervous as he was, the outward sign of such was something he had long ago learned to quell. Nerves looked bad when you were applying for grants and loans to fund a private scientific research facility that steadfastly refused government money. "I'm looking for Mouse."

The bouncer's eyebrows raised a bit higher, then he nodded. "He'll be at the bar, most likely doodling on a napkin." He opened the door for Bransen and ushered him in. Bransen didn't see it, but he was sure a silent signal had been given to the bartender to watch this guy. The barkeep shouted, "What'll ya have?" before he'd even taken three steps into the place.

Fortunately, most of the bikers were huddled around the pool tables or loitering on the dance floor. The haze of smoke was like walking through a forest fire, but at least there was no music blaring, for the moment. All the noise was mumbling voices punctuated with loud laughs and swearing. Bottles clinked into trashcans and the low rumble of glasses moving from table to lips and back seemed like distant thunder in the clouds of cigarette smoke. Bransen headed for the only guy at the bar who seemed hunched over and possibly doodling. The barkeep paced him and and met him at the bar, so Bransen ordered a beer ("anything that's wet") and glanced at the the man to his right. He was large from a diet of hamburgers and beer, and his hands and face had the grime of engine repair on them. His beard was long and unkempt, though, like his lengthy hair, not dirty. In the dim lighting, Bransen couldn't tell if he was a dark blonde or a graying brunette.

"You Mouse?" he asked. The man—who was indeed doodling on a napkin—stopped what he was doing and straightened up before looking at him. He met his eyes and nodded once.

"My name's Bransen. I run PISA. I have only two questions for you." The barkeep plopped his beer in front of him and looked suspiciously at Mouse. Mouse shook his head almost inperceptibly: No, he wasn't being bothered.

"Go ahead," Mouse replied.

"What were you figuring out just now?" Mouse looked at his napkin and chuckled, then held it up for Bransen. There was a rather artfully rendered doodle of a spider in the center of a wagon wheel.

"I was thinking how much better off a spider in a wheel would be if it used the spokes to reinforce it's web. Could probably catch grasshoppers. Thing is, spiders are too small to see the big picture, and they make the same old weak web between the spokes."

Bransen smiled widely. This was indeed his man. The mythical biker named Mouse. The man who could fix—and improve upon—any motorcycle on the road. The man who should hold the patent for the next generation of Tesla power coil, if not for the fact that the patent office thought him crazy.

"Then my other question is simply this," Bransen said softly. He glanced around just to make sure no one would hear him. "Would you like to go to Mars?"

3. The Not Knowing [top]

Henry adjusted the focus on his Bransen Labs Deep X Telescope ("bigger, better, cheaper") and tried in vain to relocate the four stars of the Star Event. He'd got the telescope last year for his tenth birthday, and was only dimly aware that his mother had forgone replacing the dishwasher in order to afford it. In fact, she was even now at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes by hand.

"Henry!" she called. "The silverware's ready to be dried!" Henry swung the telescope wildly until the temporary blindness of the moon filtered through the lens. He recoiled a tad at the brightness, then swung the telescope back to the left. He was definitely aiming at the right spot in the sky. He stood up straight, hands on hips, and sighed heavily. The four stars were gone and he, for one, did not believe Dr. Angelo Moore's spin that anyone who had seen four anomalous stars didn't know what they were looking at. Because Henry knew damn well what he'd been looking at. "Henry!" his mother called again.

"Coming..." he grudgingly replied, deep in thought as he wandered into the kitchen and picked up the dish towel. His mother smiled at him and wiped some splashed bubbles off her cheek with her shoulder.

"It'll only take a minute."

"I know, Ma. It's okay," he answered, sighing again.

"Still can't find those stars, eh?" Henry nodded, his young brow furrowing. His mother chuckled lightly. "Well, Sophie will be here soon. Maybe she can help."

"Yeah..." Henry agreed. Sophie was the ten-year-old daughter of his mother's employer, and though Henry didn't fully understand the camaraderie two single, working moms had, he knew that his mom looked forward to "no work Friday nights" and he did all he could to make it easy on them. His grand act of compromise had, however, turned into a real friendship with Sophie—though he didn't want to let on too much that he'd been counting the days all week to show her the stars through his telescope. And now they were gone.

"What do you think they were?" she asked. Henry shrugged.

"I can't find anything like it in any of my books. It was like they'd gone into orbit around the moon, then just froze. Then vanished. And that Dr. Moore's an idiot..."

"Well now, he probably just doesn't understand either, and he doesn't want to scare people."

"Are you scared, Mom?"

She smiled and stripped off her kitchen gloves, placing them behind the faucet and taking the towel from Henry so she could wipe up the splashed water. "No. But then I file paperwork for a freelance microbiological consultant. I know there's a rational explanation, Henry, they just haven't found it yet."

Henry grunted dismally then marched back to his telescope. Dr. Angelo Moore might be satisfied pretending something he didn't understand would just go away, but Henry was not.

4. The Quintessence of Light [top]

Dr. Fobell had been asked to work on the Star Event because of his views that natural light might actually be conscious. It was an odd take, to be sure—and one that would never reach as close to the surface as even the scholarly mainstream science journals—but here, in the shadows where science still asked the left-field questions, Dr. Fobell was highly respected. In his model, the Sun was more like a massive dandelion, with light like seed pods constantly streaming from the surface on the solar wind. And UFOs, by his estimation, may indeed be nothing more than balls of light—albeit balls of light with intellect.

"The Star Event is definitely consciously controlled," Dr. Fobell told the smattering of shadow scientists in the well-lit room around him. Were it not for the lab coats, one might have assumed the meeting, replete with paperwork on the table and bar graphs on the overhead, to be some conference of a board of directors. "The stars appear to have positioned themselves before turning on, as it were, and then maintained their relative positions, using our moon as a guide, before they again turned off."

"Why our moon?" an innocuous young man asked.

"Quite simply, Dr. Brown, they wanted to be seen." The thought set up quite a loud murmur among the eight or so other men and women in the room, and Dr. Fobell had to clear his throat twice before continuing. "Think of it like a child, hiding behind a hedge, but who wants to be chased. The child will peek out—even step into full view —until Mommy or Daddy sees him. Then he runs away, and Mommy and Daddy follow."

"All right, Howard, I'll buy it," the woman at the head of the table said. "Then where are they leading us?"

Dr. Fobell smiled privately to himself, then scanned the faces in the room, all turned to him expectantly. "What none of us noticed—or, rather, ignored because we knew what it was (myself included until yesterday)—is that there were actually five stars in the Star Event. Four anomalous and one a planet. While keeping their basic arc the same, and compensating for the movement of the moon and the planet, they managed to hide in plain sight what I think was their desitination. We all thought they were frozen in the space above the moon, but we need to consider perspective. The lights were nowhere near the moon. The Star Event was all about that fifth star—the planet. The lights, I believe, were heading for Mars."

5. A Ladder With Nine Rungs [top]

Bransen knew this would be the hardest sell, but he didn't know it would be so difficult simply to gain an audience. His "simple hike" through the woods had elicited ripped jeans, the loss of his left shoe, and a thorn-born scratch on his left breast. Still and all, when he finally reached the clearing and saw the homespun cabin of Dr. Carlos Resua (anachronistically wired with solar panels, a 21st-century windmill, and three satellite dishes), his mood instantly lifted.

"Dr. Resua?" he called out, hoping to high hell he'd pronounced his name correctly. There was nothing like a bad first impression. Hearing no reply, he walked up to the hut and climbed the nine-rung ladder to the deck that surrounded the hut. The stilts, Bransen realized with a twinge of veritgo, were necessary to correct for quite a slope to the land. He stood in front of the door and looked up, the roofline of the cabin looking like the peaks of a crown from this angle, and took in a deep breath until the nausea passed.

"Dr. Resua?" he said again, in a normal voice, then knocked firmly on the door. He glanced to his left and right in search of a doorbell, and saw instead a piece of heavy paper flapping in the breeze. It was a handwritten note that said, in a tidy script, "Back in a second, Mr. Bransen. Please go in, if you want."

Bransen looked all around at the woods but saw no signs of life. No one except his assistant knew he was coming here. And Dr. Carlos Resua, apparently. The idea made Bransen grin gleefully. His research had indeed been right on the mark. But rather than impose on Dr. Resua's hospitality, Bransen decided to sit on one of the chairs on the deck and wait for him there, bathed in the dappled light of the sun.

6. The Hollow Oak [top]

"Let's go to oak," a voice said, jarring Bransen back to wakefulness. He opened his eyes and shielded them from the bright sunlight. The man standing over him moved so that he was shading him, and Bransen looked into the bearded face and curiously wild eyes of Dr. Carlos Resua.

"Dr. Resua?" he asked rhetorically, jumping to his feet and extending his hand.

"Please call me Carlos, Mr. Bransen," the doctor replied as they shook hands. "You made it here faster than most people. Glad I left a note."

"Yeah," Bransen said thoughtfully, glancing at the piece of paper. "About that..."

Carlos grinned knowingly and tapped his right temple with his index finger. "That's why you're here, is it not, Mr. Bransen?"

"Please... Everyone just calls me Bransen. Or Bran."

"Bran?" Carlos chuckled at a joke only he understood, then turned and indicated the woods indiscriminately. "We should go the oak for a drink, Bran. You must be parched."

"Yes..." Bransen agreed, following him back down the ladder.

"That stream there?" Carlos explained, indicating a thin ribbon of water gurgling behind the house. "The spring is just up the slope right at the base of an old, hollow oak. I thought it made the area a good place to settle down."

"I'll say," Bransen gasped, puffing up the hill behind his host. "It's beautiful."

Carlos smiled but didn't reply and the two walked in silence to the oak, which was obvious among the other deciduous trees for its girth that belied great age. There were still leaves fresh and green on almost every branch, but the inside was hollowed out with a gap in the bark just about big enough for a grown man to squeeze through. As they approached, Bransen saw a small gurgling flow of water, like an ark from a broken drinking fountain, that looked to be emerging right out of the tree. As they rounded on it, however, he saw that the spring was actually a few feet away from it.

"I imagine the oak's roots released the water," Carlos said as he sat on a mossy rock, indicating Bransen to do the same. Bransen sat down across from him and smiled. "They have a way of divining. So what can I do for you, Bransen?" Carlos asked.

"How did you know I was coming?" he replied, using the question as an excuse to catch his breath. He motioned to the water and Carlos assured him it was clean, so Bransen leaned over the stream and drank from his hands. The water was indeed sweet and crisp.

"Every morning I meditate and remote view that little parking area I built. Luckily, I caught you getting out of your car and I recognized you. I assume you want me to remote view the Star Event? Tell you what it was?"

Bransen chuckled and sat back down on his rock, drawing himself up with sincerity. "Close, Carlos. I need to go to Mars and I need your technical skills—as well as your remote viewing—for the trip."

Carlos sat silently for a moment, then started to laugh. "Now that I didn't see coming."

7. Def Con 4 [top]

Howard Fobell couldn't be entirely sure he wasn't under arrest. The room was stark and furnished only with a plain table and two chairs, there was a tape recorder on the table, and the overhead lighting was dim and flickering. It also didn't help that behind him paced Admiral Thomas and sitting across from him was General Rauchbach. Both men were cordial enough, but Dr. Fobell still had the willies.

"So you don't believe the Star Event was made up of crafts piloted by intelligent creatures?" the General asked again. "But were themselves intelligent balls of light?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Dr. Fobell admitted. "As I said, based on our observations and photographs, there is nothing to indicate a structure to the lights. Given my own theories of terrestrial UFOs, this leads me to conclude that light may be all there is to the Star Event."

"But intelligent light," Admiral Thomas pointed out. "Conscious light. Light that gets up in the morning, brushes its teeth, and gets itself a bowl of cereal. Light that is alive and cognizant, correct?"

"In a manner of speaking, though I think its form of intelli—"

"That's what I don't get," the Admiral cut in. "I don't get how light can think."

Howard sighed heavily and asked what he thought was an obvious question: "Admiral Thomas, have you read my papers on the subject?" He heard the Admiral stop pacing and could tell by the General's face that he was moving over to the table. Admiral Thomas leaned in close to Howard's right ear and whispered with amusement, "I was hoping you could give us the Cliff's Notes version, Dr. Fobell." The General snickered and winked at Howard.

"We don't read more than we have to," he tried to explain. "And honestly, your work is a bit outside our purview, I'm afraid."

"All we need to know, for now, is one thing," the Admiral added, scooting around and perching on the table so he could look at Dr. Fobell. "We need to know if the Star Event is dangerous. Frankly, I don't really care if a ball of light has a brain or if My Favorite Martian is real—I just want to know what I need to do about this. You see intelligence... We see the unknown. We see a threat. Do you see?"

"Yes," Howard replied, lowering his eyes. "And I'm afraid, gentlemen, that I can't really say." He looked up and held each man's gaze for a second, then continued, "I am certain whatever they were, they wanted to be seen and they wanted us to follow them. Logically, then, I would say they are not coming here and thus would not appear to be any threat."

"But what happens if we follow?" General Rauchbach asked kindly. "Is this an interstellar ambush?" Howard sat silent, his mouth slightly open, and shook his head slowly. His lack of words spoke volumes to the two men.

8. Bransen's First Dream [top]

Bransen stayed as a guest of Carlos that night, after a long afternoon of hiking and talking. In hindsight, he was sure Carlos would've gone to Mars without all the talking and hiking, but Bransen didn't regret the time spent with the computer programming mystic.

"There are a few people in the military who will have to be told," Carlos said, when he finally (officially) agreed to go. "But other than that, I have no ties. Does it bother you that the military will know of this expedition?"

Bransen had laughed. "I would seriously doubt the military's ability to defend the country if they didn't know, after the press I intend to drum up." They'd both laughed at that, albeit suspiciously. Bransen knew no more than Carlos as to how the press—or military—would receive a manned expedition to Mars made up of the crew Bransen was assembling.

But that night, Bransen had a dream. A deep, lucid dream—the first such he could ever recall having. A dream in which everything was ethereal, but entirely in his control. A dream in which he found himself in woodland glen, sunlight sparkling in a light mist. "What is it?" he asked a woman hunched over something at the edge of the glen. "I'd say a mushroom," she replied, turning to him as he approached. "Except that we're on Mars."

Bransen awoke with a start, the dream as fresh as a memory, with only one thought in his head: Doctor Luci von Embers, microbiologist. He scrawled down the name on the pad of paper Carlos had left with him ("Just in case you dream"), then lay back down, wide-eyed, unable to sleep for a driving sense of urgency, awe, and wonder.

9. Wooing Luci [top]

"I just don't understand why you'd want me to go to Mars," Luci said for the umpteenth time. Bransen couldn't really answer ("Because of a dream I had" didn't seem too compelling), but had hoped that dinner on him in the city's finest restaurant would earn him a few points. Perhaps it had—she'd stayed for dessert, after all.

"I need a microbiologist," he replied again. "Surely you don't mean to say you can't understand why I need that?"

"I can understand that, Mr. Bransen," she agreed, smiling demurely and sipping her coffee. "But everyone else you've outlined for the trip so far has no ties. Yes, I'm a freelance worker, too, but I have a daughter. Can't you find some young, single, hotshot grad student to go?"

"Is it the trip itself or leaving your daughter that's bothering you?"

Luci froze, cake-encumbered fork midway to her mouth, and slowly lowered her arm. Truth be told, Luci had always fantasized about being on a manned mission to another planet—it was the sort of feather in her cap that would earn her renown on its face, but also offer unimaginable potential for microbial discoveries. Of course, this was all before she'd had Sophie. Everything changed when you had someone more important than yourself to worry about.

"Both, I guess," she mumbled. "Leaving my daughter is one thing, but possibly leaving her forever is something else entirely."

Bransen nodded compassionately. In fairness, he had made it very clear to each of them he'd asked that there was the possibility they'd never see Earth again. Not that he thought it at all likely, but he had to admit the danger.

"What if she came with you?" Bransen finally replied. "This isn't going to be some government-run space program in tin cans controlled by punchcard computers—this is going to be a Bransen Labs Cadillac. You won't even know we're in space, unless you look out the window."

"What about school?"

"We can take her textbooks for the year with us. The crew is quite smart," he added with a smirk. Luci laughed with something like relief and finished her last two bites of cake, washing it down with the last of her coffee.

"Well, I'll have to ask her, Mr. Bransen. If she doesn't want to go, I don't want to go."

"And if she does?" Bransen asked with a grin.

Luci paused, then replied, "Then I guess we'll go."

10. Sanity Check [top]

The sticking point was the "mental health and well-being" of a child in a spaceship for a year, with no playmates. The solution offered was that Luci's assistant, Lorna Jacobs, also would join the crew, as official recorder ("She's a damn good writer, and would love to keep our labs in order, besides"). This would solve the question of 11-year-old Sophie von Embers because, naturally, Lorna's 12-year-old son, Henry, also would have to join the crew. Bransen loved kids, but at first this proposition struck him as dangerous. If anything catastrophic were to happen, the public would be able to excuse the loss of consenting adults—but the loss of two children?

"Of course, if anything like that happened, you wouldn't be around to care," Mouse offered blithely. Bransen gazed at him for several seconds, unable to argue, and Carlos finally responded: "He's right. Just make sure your paperwork is in order, legally, to at least give your legacy a fighting chance." He leaned in and added in low voice, "But we both know how important Luci von Embers is to this mission, eh?"

"I'd love to have kids aboard," Mouse said, looking uncertainly at the two other men. For his money, a microbiologist was a microbiologist, but if they wanted this particular one, far be it from him to argue. He would gladly admit that while he could build and repair just about any machine, he wasn't much on the finer points of public relations. Except with kids.

"I'll have my lawyers look at the question," Bransen finally said. "But if the kids do go, we have to add every safety measure and safety check imaginable—and then add more that are unimaginable. Right?"

It was the first time the two men had heard Bransen be so curt and official. Mouse found it comforting. Carlos grinned mysteriously. And both agreed with him wholeheartedly.

11. Pale Pink Flashes of Light [top]

It was so subtle, not even those watching noticed it. The ruddy pink surface of Mars shimmered to a paler pink in four specific spots for only a second. Somewhere, in some laboratory, a computer clicked and chattered, recording the change in the surface features of the planet. But the detection, though logged, would not be seen as anomalous. After all, the shifting dust on the planet's surface often revealed and covered shining spots of the rocky crust. No one noticed because science, with its massive telescopes and most powerful microscopes, is only able to register what it has seen and can reproduce. And the pale pink flashes would not happen again and would not be seen. And the Earthbound scientists would not be able to reproduce them. Ergo, they never happened.

Another subtle occurrence associated with the pale pink flashes of light was the simultaneous dreams of two men and a boy. In each dream, it was the same: A rusty, rocky expanse of land stretching to an horizon unearthly in its stillness. The rocks strewn along the expanse began to quiver, jiggling like jello cubes on a plate. There was a low thrum, like the sound of a heartbeat with your ear pressed to someone's back. And then there were the flashes—much brighter and quite distinct from this vantage point—and the resultant depressions left in the surface.

One man and the boy interpreted the depressions as impact points, and the flashes as explosions. But the other man knew impacts and knew the pattern of debris showed not something hitting the surface, but punching through it, from beneath. Something solid that looked like a pale pink flash of light.

Something—or rather, four somethings—that appeared to know exactly what they were doing.

12. RadialShade [top]

Ana-loop received the light messages loud and clear: Two straight, quick bursts of visible energy from Earth that held patterns of information denoting intelligence. The problem with math, however, was that it only worked if you understood the characters and symbols. Ana-loop decided to send back an information-soaked packet of visible energy and see what would happen.

* * *

ERROR: syntaxerror
OFF. COMMAND: --nostringval--

STACK: 

/RadialShade
false

"What the hell does that mean?" Admiral Thomas growled. He and General Rauchbach leaned in to the screen, peering over Dr. Fobell's shoulders. Howard fumbled nervously with the keys, trying to remember how to call up the necessary log files. The two computer operators in the room pushed back on wheeled office chairs, trying to get their own peek at the monitor.

"I don't know..." Howard mumbled distractedly.

"It came from outside the network," one of the operators piped up quietly. Both the General and Admiral stood straight and turned to face her.

"Meaning what, exactly?" Admiral Thomas said with restraint. The woman shrugged timidly.

"Meaning the data it tried to parse came from out there, not in here."

Howard Fobell stopped typing and turned to face her.

* * *

"It's got to be an image," Carlos Resua said. "We just have to figure out what analogy to binary code they're using."

"Can you do that?" Bransen asked inoffensively.

"I can do it," Carlos agreed. "Maybe it's not binary, though. Base-15 is the most sacred system..."

Bransen and Mouse left him mumbling and walked into the other room. "Are you sure we need a microbiologist?" Mouse joked nervously. Bransen grinned, but didn't answer.

13. The Nature of Life and Synchronization [top]

While Carlos hammered away at the computer, trying to program it to decode what turned out to be (he thought) a standard base-16 coding pattern, Bransen was in the unexpected position of making the morning news circuit to counter Dr. Angelo Moore's view that if there was extraterrestrial life (which he made clear there was not), it would, by nature, resemble us. This, he claimed, was evolution in action. To which Bransen expanded upon his favorite non-human-life theory, posited by Dr. Howard Fobell, that light itself—which looked nothing like a human—may be intelligent. Unbeknownst to him, at the very moment Bransen thought he should have tracked down Dr. Fobell before agreeing to appear on the shows, Dr. Fobell was thinking that he should track down Mr. Bransen. Not because Bransen was butchering his theories on national TV, but because he'd had no idea that the head of the Private International Space Adminstration was on his side.

Which was more than he could say for the representatives of the United States military, who had looked at the output of the message he had decoded—a plain white image that shaded out to an almost imperceptible pink along the edges—and had called for someone else to "find something meaningful in that transmission." Even less did they appreciate Dr. Fobell's defense that, should an intelligent creature made up only of visible light send a picture of itself, it could look just like his decoded image.

Even more synchronous was that just as Dr. Fobell began to search through his scientific directories for Mr. Bransen's direct (or most direct) line, his own direct line rang. The caller introduced himself as a Dr. Carlos Resua, working on behalf of PISA, and he wanted to talk to Dr. Fobell about how he thought intelligent light might represent itself.

Two hours later, Dr. Howard Fobell was working on his letter of resignation.

14. The Thought That Counts [top]

The decision to go to Mars was not so easy for Luci von Embers. The PISA legal team had looked into the issue and reported back favorably that, as long as the parents went and consented and the children did not appear to be in distress, there was no real reason they couldn't go. Yet they also pointed out that popular opinion may differ with them.

Lorna Jacobs, for her part, had made it clear (repeatedly) that she had no problem going and taking Henry with her. In fact, if one were introduced to them only that day, it would be thought that Lorna wanted to go to Mars more than Luci, which really did not fully reveal the long-standing fantasy of Luci von Embers to become an astronaut. The kids both had been asked indirectly ("So, Henry, if you ever had the chance to go to Mars, would you go?") and both had answered positively, without hesitation.

"But what if something does happen?" Luci asked again. "I owe it to her father not to get her killed." Between the lines was woven a story of tragedy and triumph in which Sophie, age seven, had been rescued from a precipitous mountain overhang by her father, only to watch her father overbalance and plummet to his death. For her part, Lorna sometimes wished this had happened to her ex-husband, but alas, he was still living large somewhere in New Mexico, deftly avoiding child support.

"I know, Luci," Lorna comforted, pretending not to notice the tears Luci was trying to hide. "And while I'm nowhere near as qualified as you to say, I did know Nate for several years. If he were still alive, would he want you to go?"

"Yes, certainly," she replied without hesitation. "But he wouldn't want Sophie to go."

"Really?" Lorna asked kindly. "Even if that was the only option?" She paused for several seconds, then added, "Of course, maybe you shouldn't try and think for him. Just think for yourself..."

Luci was still thinking when Lorna rounded up Henry a little after nine and went home.

15. Caduceus and Fear [top]

Luci finally decided that the opportunity to go to Mars was too great to pass up because of fear. She also decided that, rather than it offering an outside chance that something would happen to Sophie, it actually offered an opportunity to share something with her daughter so meaningful that even if they only survived for five minutes, it would be worth it. Assuming, of course, they made it to Mars for those five minutes.

It was good that she came to this conclusion on her own and in her own terms because once she'd made up her mind, she didn't go back and second-guess her decision. Second guessing was for people whose minds had been made up for them by someone else they simply couldn't argue with. That someone, for Luci, was usually a man she readily admitted was a father figure to her. They rarely ever met on anything other than a professional level, and when they did go out for dinner or lunch, they usually discussed each other's work. But she had the deepest respect for his opinions and often asked his advice.

Had Bransen known Dr. Howard Fobell was such a peer of Luci von Embers, he would've asked the doctor to call her. But as it was, Luci made up her own mind first, and learning of Dr. Fobell's involvement in the project just solidified her feeling that she'd made the right choice. It was the kind of thing that made Carlos Resua smile knowingly. Sophie, Henry, and Lorna were overjoyed (though now that it was "real," Lorna privately was quite scared). Bransen was thrilled to have everyone he needed for the team—plus the formidable Dr. Fobell.

The media, on the other hand, once again corralled Dr. Moore after the announcement of the mission, and the collective fears of a misinformed nation began to gather over Bransen Labs and the Private International Space Administration. And that made Admiral Thomas and General Rauchbach very happy—it was always better to let the people sway themselves without the overt input of the government.

16. Unconscious Light [top]

Ana-loop was distraught. The stories appeared to be true: The ones who could make light didn't understand its properties. There was no meaningful contact. Their light was always inanimate. They weren't even aware of their own eventual return to Radiance. They couldn't translate simple messages, even with the key. They didn't understand RadialShade—the undulating language of light that flickered along the spectrum from visible to invisible in meaningful ways. A language of light defined by dark pockets. Perhaps it was too much to ask. Simply because you could communicate in their language did not guarantee the opposite.

Then Ana-loop saw something as they emerged from the planet: Three figures standing on the surface, watching them. Three of those who made light, one of which was consciously aware. One of three who knew where it was and what it was doing. Then they wavered and flickered out, traveling back along whatever path of inanimate light they had used, their Radiance to be reabsorbed by their flesh.

Three had come; one had known it had come. The others didn't believe Ana-loop. They again mocked the decision to journey to the planet, saying they had only proved that everyone else was right: These beings around this sun knew not what they were, nor how to communicate. Consciousness was not the issue; the question was wisdom.

Ana-loop turned back, saying one of them should wait. The others laughed and went home.

But Ana-loop waited for some other response.

17. Child's Play [top]

The kids were amazing. Not only did they think being hooked up to monitors was "cool," Dr. Resua found that their acceptance of—and ability to accomplish—remote viewing was unparalleled among the hundreds of people who had attended his workshops. Even admitting that most of his workshop attendees were confused housewives or single men looking to give their lives some meaning, the kids still were head-and-shoulders above the most serious of his students—the ones paid by Uncle Sam and told to keep quiet about the whole thing.

They also were indirectly responsible for the rapid lack of interest from the media and public about the whole affair. At first, pictures of children hooked up to monitors—that measured brain activity, heart rate, and (unbeknownst to the media) their electromagnetic fields—looked shocking, but once the media was given total access to them, and they began talking about "feeling like I was flying through the universe or something," the public snickering began. "Bransen Labs' Trip to Mars a Child's Dream," summed up one headline, and from there on out, the "trip to Mars" was posited as nothing more than a crackpot—though harmless—study of dream states.

They thought this because they had never heard of remote viewing and never bothered to ask for clarification when the phrase was used by any of the doctors assembled. And no one asked to see Mouse, the biker who stayed in the background, slowly devising mechanical whirlygigs based on the output of the monitors.

And when Henry answered one of the reporter's questions by saying, "I met someone named Ana-loop. I think it was a lady. I mean, she didn't have a body, she was just like a bright light or something, but her name is Ana something, right, and that's a girl's name..." only Dr. Resua's heart rate increased.

And only Bransen saw his reaction to Henry's story and knew that something big had just happened.

18. Ladder Logic [top]

This entry is indebted to the Sludgeman who, without his knowing it, explained to me a way to communicate without a distinct language or set of characters. Why anyone would be sitting in a bar at midnight explaining Ladder Logic to an English major is beyond me, but I guess that's why I hang out with the guy. Thanks, Sludge. —JB

"When I first transcoded it, I got this," explained Carlos to Howard, opening an image of a white screen run through with very subtle darker areas (some almost black) emanating from the center, like spokes on a wheel. "The word 'radial' naturally popped into my head."

"Of course," Howard agreed, beginning to grin already.

"Then I realized why 'radial'—and not, say, 'spokes'—popped into my head. Because the error from the Mars message said 'RadialShade'—and that's exactly what we have here: Shaded swaths radiating from the center." Carlos slumped back in his chair and threw up his hands. "But that's it. I'm certain I transcoded the right image, but I'm stumped."

Howard was now grinning almost maniacally. "But how do you suppose a light being would communicate?" Carlos sat forward expectantly, waiting for Howard to answer his own question. "How are we communicating right now? At its root, we're using sound—short bursts of sound interspersed with silence, thereby creating syllables and words."

"Okay," Carlos agreed. "I'm with you."

"And when we write, it's really just a string of ink and no-ink, right? But do light beings see or hear? Do they have physical senses? All we can say for sure is that they are light. And so they might communicate with light—which is to say, bursts of light separated by darkness. Or shade." He sat back smiling broadly, not because of pride in his own theory, but because he—like Carlos—knew they had figured it out.

Carlos was already three steps ahead, however. "And how would we translate that? Do we have some other, non-lingual way of transmitting information? Something that's black or white, on or off, by degrees?"

Howard nodded slowly, agreeing to what Carlos was thinking. "Of course we do. Binary code. 1s and 0s. Even a simple form of Ladder Logic, in a way..."

"Exactly. So you can look at a string of ones and zeros—even create an image similar to this, if you use the right algorithms to create the shading," Carlos concluded, sitting forward and opening his code editor. "And that string might be an image, but it might also be audio or video or even an executable, if you parse it correctly..."

Howard really didn't think he'd been this excited in his entire life.

19. Cimmerian Light [top]

Carlos sat in a meditative state, feeling light. Henry and Sophie lay on yoga mats near him, napping. Howard fidgeted across from him, unable to get comfortable. He found that one too many hotdogs had taken their toll and his legs were unable to cross.

"Do you need a chair?" Carlos finally whispered, grinning. "Just go and get one." Howard did not reply, but slowly got himself back on his feet and retrieved one of the plain chairs from the hallway. He saw Luci as he grabbed it and smiled at her. She smiled back warmly, and it suddenly occurred to him that her face had changed since she'd been on the project. She looked calm. There was something else she reminded him of, but he quickly ducked back into the room before he could remember.

***

General Rauchbach was quite proud of the message they intended to send back. You couldn't assume any amount of intelligence, and so pictures were certainly the way to go. He wasn't entirely convinced that whoever received it would be able to use the circle and representative equation to establish that they, the Earthlings, understood pi, nor that they could use the same equation to establish the average height of a human being, but Dr. Angelo Moore had assured him it was the best way, and it certainly made more sense to General Rauchbach than the near-lunatic ravings of Dr. Fobell.

"That's the problem with genius," he'd commiserated with Admiral Thomas when they'd read the letter of resignation. "They're one tiny stumble away from insanity." He didn't think Dr. Moore was smarter than Dr. Fobell, but at least he was stable.

"Will anyone believe him if he talks about this place?" Admiral Thomas had fretted, but General Rauchbach laughed incredulously.

"Just the same kooks who believe Dr. Resua." And they both laughed loudly to hide their nerves.

***

Ana-loop recevied the picture, decoded it, and remained in dumbfounded horror at what it told her: These beings assumed every other thing was as stupid as they were themselves. It didn't give her much hope. If this was all they had, she, too, would have to return home, to the derision of her colleagues for giving the physical ones another chance.

Then she received another message, sent on a concentrated beam of unconscious light. The RadialShade pattern of it was immediately discernable, though what message it contained was not. The use of the language was flawed and almost inarticulate, but there was a distinct pattern to the misuse of the language. All that needed to be done was to break the unintended code in which the message had been sent and then decipher what they were saying—and what they thought had been said to them.

20. Crackpot Intelligence [top]

Despite outward appearances, General Rauchbach was quite disturbed by Dr. Fobell's resignation. Not because he worried the government would be outed—the nice thing about the euphemistically "crackpot" projects was that no one who blabbed ever fared well under public scrutiny—but because he realized that Howard Fobell had no intention of going to the media with what he knew. Instead, the scientist who believed in intelligent light had gone to the competition, and in this case, that was worse than even going to another country's government—Fobell had entered the private sector and was continuing his studies unabated. General Rauchbach's very real fear was that now, unhampered, Fobell was getting somewhere, and the fruits of his labors would be enjoyed not by Uncle Sam but by Bransen Labs and their "Pathetic Ignorant Space Administration" (as those on the crackpot projects called it). With Fobell and Resua, General Rauchbach knew it was quite close to being neither pathetic nor ignorant. In fact, it was quite close to turning the tables and make Uncle Sam look bad. Worse still, if they came back from Mars with signs of non-human intelligence, suddenly the crackpots would be the prophets of a new era, and the prophets of the old era would quickly be swept away.

"Why haven't they replied yet?" the General growled at Dr. Moore, who swallowed timidly and adjusted his glasses. He glanced to Admiral Thomas, but found no solace.

"I... I... I don't know..."

"We know they sent another message, but it didn't come to us, did it?"

"No... sir."

Admiral Thomas leaned in very close to Dr. Moore's face and whispered harshly, "Why not?" And Dr. Moore wished very much that he'd stuck to the national talk-show debunking circuit.

21. Nightride [top]

Luci never did anything dangerous. She didn't skydive or even go overnight hiking in the woods—anything that could take her away from Sophie was strictly verboten. But accepting a position on the Mars mission seemed to have allayed some of her fears, and soon enough she found herself zipping down a state route on the back of Mouse's chopper—without a helmet—her thick black hair ribboning out behind her on curtains of wind. And she found that it felt good. Very good.

Mouse was certainly a genius with machinery (that had become abundantly evident by his creating every whirlygig sketch thrown to him by Carlos and Howard), but he also had found ample time to commiserate with Luci on how ineffective they currently felt. To this point, the mission seemed to be little more than a series of computer messages sent via custom-made contraptions. Mouse even admitted once that he still wasn't entirely convinced they weren't just talking to some complex satellite glitch. Indeed, the communications thusfar had been quite simple and little more than echoes of each other, like responding "Tell me your name" when asked "What's your name?"

Mouse also liked kids, and the kids were always near Luci and Lorna, so even when they were off the clock, Mouse found himself spending most of his time with Dr. von Embers. He chuckled to himself from the front of the motorcycle—and which of his friends would ever believe that he had given a nightride to a beautiful doctor?

"Do you want to go for a drink?" he called over his shoulder, his voice barely finding purchase on the wind. Luci's immediate thought was, honestly, "Hell yes," but then (as always) she reconsidered.

"I don't think I should," she said loudly into Mouse's ear, temporarily resting her chin on his shoulder. "Sophie will worry if I don't come back soon."

Mouse nodded. "Fair enough—I'll turn back just up here." He'd heard the disappointment in her voice, and for now, that was worth at least two drinks with her.

22. A Diagram of Light [top]

Ana-loop managed to crack the code (as it were) of the message sent to her and encoded her reply in the same way, so she could be sure they would understand what she was saying. There would be time enough later to teach them the finer points of RadialShade. The others, who had sent a packet of meaningless shapes and forms, that meant as much to Ana-loop as do the wild gesticulations of a monkey to those who sent it, she would not attempt to contact again. No point wasting resources.

She worried now, at the lack of response, that she'd said too much, been too complex with her wording, or else had completely missed the form of RadialShade they had been using. Most important to her was a face-to-face meeting with these beings, and to that end, she'd explained how other non-light entities traveled to distant places, using unconscious light. (Some, it was said, enslaved conscious light for such deeds, but she'd never seen the practice in action and was sure, anyway, that most sentient beings would not enslave others.)

What Ana-loop couldn't know is that her message had been received, deciphered, and processed exactly as she had intended, but while the language made sense and the diagrams and equations could be written, Carlos and Howard were frankly miffed as to what to do with it. Which is when they called in Mouse to look at a bizarre blueprint and see if he could make sense of it.

Mouse furrowed his brow and twiddled his beard, grunting every now and again as his eyes scanned every detail of the diagram. "This isn't a schematic for electricity, is it?" he asked rhetorically. "No—probably light," Howard answered anyway. Mouse nodded. "Any clues as to its purpose?" Carlos sighed heavily and said, "The sender claims that other non-light beings use such a device to travel to them, the light beings." Mouse whipped the diagram away from his face and stood somewhat to attention, making the others (Bransen always hovered near the back in these conversations) jump slightly. His face broke into a wide smile, "No problem. I'll work on it." And before they could reply, he spun on his heel and marched off into his workshop, whistling a nondescript tune.

23. Normal Lives [top]

For the kids, life was definitely better. Neither of them had shed many tears at being transferred to a new school, closer to Bransen Labs, and both had fit in there right away by not fitting in, as usual. At their old school they had hung out with each other and had weathered the jeering kissing noises coming from their tormentors' desks, and at the new school they heard the whisperes and saw the sidelong gazes which would, undoubtedly, turn into jeers and kissing noises soon enough. But Henry was overjoyed to find a healthy Computer & Science Club (propped up by donations from nearby Bransen Labs, of course) and Sophie was amazed to find a middle-school Philosophy Club, which suited her just fine. For the first time in years—since elementary-school friends had faded or moved away—they both made new friends. Luci and Lorna noticed the change in their moods—how they talked more about school and laughed more and seemed generally more engaged—and this alone erased any fears either of them had had about moving and, by extension, the trip to Mars. Secretly, Luci realized she had been afraid to leave her old house, but now she saw that the ghosts and dust of years past had been slowly choking them.

After two solid weeks, the members of Bransen's project were given a week reprieve, to go back to their "normal" lives and reassess their involvement in the project. Bransen was nothing if not a stickler for everyone being onboard of their own accord. Mouse decided to stay, however, pointing out that tinkering in a garage to build a unique machine was pretty much his normal life—though he added that he might go out for beers more often and may sleep in a bit longer, while they were officially off the clock. And no one had a problem with that.

Luci also opted to stay, not wanting to take the kids out of school for a week. And, in fact, she and Lorna decided that Bransen Labs would now be their normal lives—Lorna was dispatched to return to their old town and see about getting their houses on the market, while Luci would make the necessary calls to relinquish her lab space and have Lorna collect her things from it.

Howard Fobell had grinned sheepishly and said that he'd rather not go back to his apartment, to which Carlos—having learned a lot about his colleague over the last two weeks—read between the lines and suggested Howard go and pick up his son from his mother's and spend the week out at Carlos's cabin. Howard's face lit up and had anyone been between him and the phone, they would've been unceremoniously bowled over as he dashed to it.

For his part, Bransen quietly took it all in and noted the supreme magic of synchronicity that had awarded him not only the brightest minds in science and mechanics, but also an entire team that really had no other life beyond science and mechanics. Exactly what they were doing is what was normal to them, and Bransen started to consider what would come next for the team, once the mission to Mars was over. He was now certain that disbanding it was not an option.

24. Bransen's Second Dream [top]

Bransen was in the woods again. It looked like the forest around Carlos' cabin, but felt entirely different. The wind was high, whooshing forcefully between the trunks and combing through the fingers of the canopy. The trees bowed and creaked, and Bransen was suddenly terrified a large limb would snap off and fall on top of him. He whipped his head in all directions, seeing only massive, bending treetops, and felt completely helpless: He knew he had to run, but he had nowhere to go.

"Bransen!" a child's voice called. He looked in its direction and saw Sophie von Embers, blonde hair trailing behind her in the wind, waving and smiling at him. "Over here, Bransen! You'll be safest under the mushrooms!" Then Carlos stepped from behind a tree and took Sophie's hand, urging her to follow him. He cast a glance at Bransen, recognized him, but maintained his dire expression. Bransen did not feel welcome, though Sophie smiled and waved at him again as Carlos pulled her out of sight.

"We're all here!" he heard a woman's voice call—Luci von Embers, he thought. "It's safe in here, Bransen! Mushrooms hold light under their caps!"

Bransen awoke with a start, breathing heavily. He fumbled for the pad of paper and pen he now kept on his beside table and scrawled sleepily, "Mushrooms hold light under their caps."

25. The Smart Creatures of the Wood [top]

Henry and Sophie, like all kids of their age largely surrounded by adults, felt the need to keep their own secrets. It was nothing conscious. There was no children's summit at which it was decided certain things would not be shared with their parents or their parents friends, but every night when they were supposed to be in bed, they'd meet in their shared bathroom and plan what they were going to do. Because every night since they'd come to Bransen Labs they'd had dreams—distinctive dreams that, at first, Henry had found vivid and entertaining, but not real. Then he discovered that Sophie also was having vivid and entertaining dreams, and that her dreams were the same as his.

They were in a forest, in each dream a bit further along a path, surrounded by the sounds of wildlife, though none of the noises were recognizable. Around them, in the humid mist, they could see tiny lights, like sprinkles of diamond dust catching the sunlight. Sophie called them Tinkerbells, but Henry, with a less philosophical outlook, preferred to think of them simply as the Smart Creatures of the Wood. Until he had more evidence as to the form of the lights, he was not ready to attribute a physical identity to them.

At first, in the dreams, they just walked, taking in a lush tropical forest that was more red and pink than green. Then, slowly, over successive nights, they found the lights around them getting greater and greater in number, and the forest thinning as the path they walked widened. "Who would need a path here but us?" Henry asked Sophie once—one of the few times either had spoken in the dreams. Sophie had shrugged but had not slowed her pace.

"I think we're going to find a temple," she later said in the bathroom, one night after Lorna had gone back to settle affairs and Sophie's mom had gone out with Mouse, leaving the kids under the watchful eye of Bransen.

"Why a temple?" Henry asked, wrinkling his nose. "Why not an apartment building?" Sophie just shrugged again, smiled, and said, "I don't think whoever built the path wanted to live with the Tinkerbells. I think they went there to be with them, if you know what I mean."

Henry understood, but now it was his turn to shrug. "Who knows? Let's just go to sleep and find out, okay?" And without another word it was lights out and pillows for the children in Bransen Labs.

26. Beneath the Veil of Light [top]

Once Carlos realized that when he remote viewed the surface of Mars he actually was viewing a camouflage array of light that created the illusion of a lifeless planet, his journies became much more fruitful. Beneath the veil of light was a forest: a wide, vibrant forest that appeared to be teaming with life—and light. Lots of tiny drops of light that seemed everpresent in the air. He had been clued in to the true nature of the surface because, as he viewed the planet to find a good place for the mission to land, he could hear and smell things that he couldn't see. Given the nature of light, he assumed that as he—a being with a physical body—would use physical cover to hide himself, so might light beings use a form of themselves as cover.

His discovery was a twofold breakthrough: Not only did his realization allow him to "see" beyond the veil of light, it also described a fact he hadn't thought of before: Remote viewing would appear to project the person in some manner that maintained a form of physical interaction. Where before Carlos had imagined the remote viewer as some sort of ghost, he now had to consider that, while he was "away," he could be hurt. If his eyes could be deceived, why not his body harmed? Of course, Carlos also thought it could well be that he didn't understand much at all about his astral self, and this is the assessment Ana-loop would have agreed with, because Carlos had no idea how beings of light interacted with the physical world. In fact, he had little inkling of the true, particulate nature of light in the first place. And, by extension, the nature of his Radiance.

Carlos opened his eyes and sat with a knowing smile. He could hear Howard and his son in the kitchen, talking and making lunch (he assumed). Now Carlos knew why the government agencies kept losing probes and rovers: They didn't really know what they were trying to land on. He figured in his next session he would try and locate some of the wreckage, undoubtedly dangling from trees that looked like rocks and dust from Earth.

27. Deep-Space Ops [top]

General Rauchbach found himself in a sticky national-security issue. Quite simply, he was beginning to think that Admiral Thomas was (in a word) nuts and that Dr. Moore would say "yes" to anyone he thought would promote his career, whether or not he agreed with them. Things didn't truly come to a head, however, until the general witnessed an exceedingly heated argument between the admiral and the doctor over the reality of ion / plasma / nearly-the-speed-of-light propulsion. In short, Dr. Moore had actually found a voice with which to say "no," only because he had no idea how to deliver—or fudge—what the admiral had asked of him. And the admiral was nuts because he was not only discussing "deep-space ops" (so named, because they were blacker than black ops, and coincidentally tied to space exploration) with a person with a very low-level top-secret clearance, he was arguing vehemently and offering to show the doctor "some of the fucking UFOs we trot out nightly to fuck with the citizens of this God damn country."

"Admiral?" General Rauchbach cut in. Admiral Thomas used his finger to wipe the spit from his lips as he straightened and turned to the general. Dr. Moore's face was flushed, and he still couldn't believe the admiral wanted him to (A) develop a way to communicate with light beings and (B) develop it by the next morning because a military rocket would be on the surface Mars 24 hours from now.

"Maybe we should iron out the details later, eh?" the general said, glaring at Dr. Moore. The doctor's face went from flushed to pale within seconds. "I think it's obvious that the problem here is not how fast we can get to Mars, but that our dear doctor has no concept of communication with light beings because he doesn't believe they exist. Right, doctor?"

"I wouldn't say that's true," Dr. Moore squeaked, standing up more quickly than he should have. He bowed his head to clear the dizziness, supporting himself on the table.

"Oh?" the general asked quietly (for once). "I think you're stalling. You thought you'd come here, give us a few answers that we wanted to hear, and have another notch for your resume, didn't you?"

Dr. Moore didn't answer and found it difficult to hold the general's gaze. Admiral Thomas was glaring at him, too, his eyes narrowed and malicious.

"Dr. Moore, your services are no longer needed," the general said definitively. "Your clearance will be revoked in an hour, so I suggest you gather your things and leave, or else be arrested for trespassing at a secret military installation."

Dr. Moore opened his mouth to protest, saw that the general was quite serious, and so instead took his advice and skuttled from the room posthaste. Then General Thomas wheeled on the admiral. "And you need to do two things. You need to review your obligation to this project until you understand the consequences of discussing deep-space ops with the likes of him. And you need to get me Howard Fobell. Fail on either account, and I will report your outburst. Understood?"

The admiral was still in the room glowering long after General Rauchbach had left.

28. Prisms [top]

John Fobell (who was to have been Johannes Fobell, after Kepler, save that his mother thought it sounded "too Dutch or something," one of the many points in their marriage Howard had not argued) was worried. His father had gone for a walk in the woods before breakfast, but had not returned. It was not unusual for him to take long walks, even doze off under some shade tree or other, but this morning he had explicitly said he was just taking a quick stroll to the creek and back, because he and John were going to take a lengthy hike after breakfast. And now Howard's breakfast was stone cold and John was left playing with the remnants of scrambled egg and home fries on his plate, worried about his father.

It had been only 18 months since the divorce. Why it had taken his mother over 17 years to decide she couldn't put up with her husband's work schedule confounded John, but his dad, as usual, had seemed to understand. Privately, he had let slip a few tears and said, "I'm sorry, son, that I let our perfect life slip away." John, then 16, hadn't the slightest idea as to how he was supposed to react. For his mom's part, John came to understand that his father's work was really just the candy-coated excuse —what she actually had come to despise was his long walks, constant talk of dreams, and his "attempts to communicate with that God damn lightbulb in the garage." In short, she felt he was going slowly mad and she didn't want to be around when he snapped. But that, John felt, was just another candy-coated truth, perhaps closer to the heart, though still not the killshot.

It was his work, and it was that his worked seemed mad to outsiders, and it was that, now John was grown, he'd begun to concentrate more on the work (or the madness) than his family. His mother's divorce papers had been a cry for attention, and though his dad had heard it, he couldn't help himself. That's when the tears had come, and the strange comment, followed by the equally strange promise, "I'm almost there, Johnny. As soon as I can breakthrough, everything will be alright again."

Fortunately John knew his dad wasn't talking to any God damn lightbulb. It was better described as a prism, that whirred and flickered as his father meditated. He wasn't mad, he was living proof of why hermits are, by necessity, solitary people. And when his wandering in the desert was over and the hermitage closed, John was sure their perfect lives could resume. Sometimes, that was all that kept him going, at least.

"Where is he?" Carlos suddenly cried, storming into the kitchen and scaring John out of his reverie. "Your dad—where is he?"

John lept to his feet, his face blanched. "He went for a walk... I... I don't know." Carlos glanced at the untouched breakfast plate on the table across from John, then stared thoughtfully at the frightened young man.

"I just had a vision," Carlos whispered. "I think he's been kidnapped."

"What?" John started for the door, but Carlos grabbed his arm and turned him back.

"No use running randomly out there, John. Besides, I know who took him and where they're going. Don't worry—he's perfectly fine. They need him alive and at the top of his intellectual game."

"Who does?" John breathed.

Carlos' lips twitched around a smirk, "Uncle Sam..."

29. Mouse's Machine [top]

Mouse was getting restless on planet Earth. He'd been hired to get a mission to Mars, and he couldn't wait to go. His only problem was that the machine he'd been cobbling together (via a running tab at a junkyard 35 miles away) didn't seem like it would do much in that capacity. At least, not in any traditional sense. He supposed he'd been expecting a sci-fi rocketship of some kind, but when he stood back beside Luci and Bransen and looked at his machine, he knew damn well it wouldn't budge an inch under its own propulsion—if it had any means to.

"It's not right," he decided. Bransen shrugged and tried to look optimistic. "Well, it's certainly not from the pages of Amazing Stories," he agreed.

Mouse shook his head and scratched his beard. "But those diagrams were really just circuits. I mean, I could make this thing prettier, I'm sure, but all I did was build the circuits then connect them together, and this is what sort of grew around them..."

Bransen shuffled his feet and shrugged again, winking at Luci, who smiled kindly. "So, Mouse, let's just turn it on, eh? See what happens? I mean, you're sure it won't, well, blow up, right?"

Mouse sighed heavily and pulled a well-worn sheaf of diagrams out of his back pocket. He flipped through them until he found a page near the end, which he handed dismissively to Luci. "This is labeled as the power source, but I'll be damned if I can build it. It's not any kind of schematic I've ever seen or dreamed of."

His choice of words privately intrigued Bransen, and the mission's founder moved in to look over Luci's shoulder at the paper. Luci's brow was wrinkled in mild disbelief and confusion, which caused Mouse to scoot in, too.

"What is it?" he asked. "Do you know what that is?"

Luci looked up at the machine, her mouth agape, then back at Mouse, and said in a hushed voice, "Yes. But it's... It's chemical. It's psilocybin."

"What's that?" Mouse asked, glancing at Bransen, who was nodding slowly, his own mouth now agape.

"Liberty Caps," Luci breathed. "Magic mushrooms..."

"I'll call my lawyers," Bransen declared and hurried from the room.

30. Wine and 'Shrooms [top]

Mouse would never have guessed that he would like wine, much less that the word could ever appear in a phrase with "bar," but then he'd never guessed he'd ever have a date with someone as intelligent and beautiful as Luci von Embers, who would take him to a wine bar. In fact, after "cleaning up a bit," the only thing that felt like his domain to Mouse was the fact that he was discussing 'shrooms in said bar, beverage-of-choice aside.

"So yeah," Mouse concluded, "and that's also the last time I ate a 'shroom."

Luci grinned over her wine glass, glad for once that she didn't have to act all parental. "Well, you know, Bransen lawyer's did a bang-up job of getting clearance from the FDA to use them for scientific purposes."

"Yeah—what about that? I mean, I've never met a government agency that worked that quickly. He must be using 'shrooms somwhere else in his labs, ya think?"

Luci shrugged, not as used to conspiracy theories as was Mouse, who, even now, worked into the wee hours of morning and tuned in AM talkshows. What neither of them knew is that Carlos had suggested, after Bransen's first mushroom dream, that he get the wheels in motion for such experiments. That, and Bransen Labs had managed to make a few friends over the years, which helped speed up the process a bit. And Bransen's lawyers had informed him, when he called, that—coincidentally—the clearance to test the chemical properties of naturally-occurring psilocybin had just come through.

"So what do you think it can do for the machine?" Luci wondered. "I'm not really a chemical engineer..."

Mouse grinned and took a huge gulp of wine, wiping his lips on the back of his hand. "I have no idea, Luce, but now I know what it is and where to put it, I say with go with Bransen's idea and turn it on, to see what happens."

"And what if it does blow up? I mean, if you have no idea what it's for, how do you know what it'll do?"

Mouse shook his head reassuringly. "Nah—the rest of the diagram is all about circuits, trading and building energy. The output looks like a laser setup to me."

"Trading and building energy to output a laser? That sounds pretty explosive."

"Well, we'll use a quarter of whatever the diagram calls for in the psilocybin department. I don't think that Ana-whoever would make us blow ourselves up, do you?"

Luci didn't answer, but smiled warmly instead. The wine was starting to go to her head and she suddenly didn't feel like discussing work. "This is fun, isn't it?" she veritably purred. Mouse felt his heart begin to pound in his throat, but managed to squeak, "Yes, it is," before downing th rest of his wine and signalling for another glass.

31. Semantics [top]

Carlos used the word "kidnapped" to inspire a sense of decisive action, but in reality, Howard had been met in the woods by two men who had alerted him of a Very Important Meeting at his old lab, as well as a carefully worded loophole in the contract he thought he had voided, and consequently, Howard followed them of his own free will. He was even allowed to use the phone in the car on the way to the airport to call his son and explain this to him. John wasn't particularly happy (having looked forward to a long walk in the woods with his dad), but knew that, for the time, this was par for the course, and he had to support him.

"Why don't you meet me back at Bransen Labs tomorrow?" his dad's voice digitally wavered over the phone. "You can head back in with Carlos."

"But won't that just be me sitting around in a strange place, waiting for you to get off work?" John wondered.

"No, no—it's a very open environment. Two of the other members of the team have their kids there, and neither of them are even teenagers yet. It'll be nice to have you around and watch me work."

When John hung up and excitedly relayed this to Carlos, he, too, thought it was a smashing idea, and apologized for scaring the youth, explaining that in his vision, he simply had seen Howard getting into a car with an expression of duress on his face. John understood, but something in the back of his subconscious made a note about the incident. Perhaps it was the sharp stillness of Carlos's eyes, or the way his jaw held firm as he made his explanation, or perhaps it was the way he held his hands—all subconscious cues to something for which John couldn't find the words.

And as they drove back to Bransen Labs, John found himself going through the motions of escape should Carlos end up being the true kidnapper.

32. The Problem With Keeping Secrets [top]

Howard looked happy enough when he entered Bransen Labs the next morning, but something in the flush of his face belied what Carlos would have called "duress." Everyone on the team dropped what they were doing to greet him—shake his hand; pat him on the shoulder; make sure it was really him—and his son veritably flung himself at his father, hugging him tightly.

"Whoah!" Howard cried, stumbling a bit and dropping his briefcase. "Was I gone that long?" He laughed thinly and adjusted his glasses on his nose, then nodded at the smiling faces around him. "Yes, well, my former employers seemed to think I had forgotten my obligations to them. It was a bit scary in that I know how people can—shall we say?—disappear, but all-in-all, it didn't take me more than three hours to convince them they were wrong."

"What did they want?" Carlos demanded, backing down again as soon as he realized how forceful he'd been.

"Don't worry, Carlos—I don't think they're coming for you next," Howard chuckled. "They wanted to know how to communicate with conscious light."

"So they're onto us?" Mouse wondered. He was still fiddling with some machine part or other, slowly wiping oil from it.

"Oh, sure," Howard replied dismissively. "Or rather, we're onto them, and they know it."

"So what did you tell them?" Carlos asked. Howard shrugged and picked up his briefcase.

"Nothing much. They wanted to know how to talk to conscious light, so I asked if they had now accepted my theories, to which they answered that I didn't have the clearance to be told. So then I pointed out that if they didn't tell me what they wanted, I couldn't help. We went around like that for a couple of hours, and I finally told them that to communicate with light they should probably use light, and that my disclosure agreement with Bransen labs didn't allow me to say more."

"Hm," Bransen grunted. "But now they may pull 'National Security' and take our work..." But Carlos and Howard both were shaking their heads, denying any such thought.

"No way," Howard summarized. "They pull that and we go public, warrant or whatever in hand. That would force them admit the reality of UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence, which they aren't about to do."

"Couldn't they silence us, though?" Mouse suggested. "I mean, if they claim national security, couldn't they also make it illegal for us to talk?"

"These are people who don't like paper trails," Carlos replied, nodding at Howard. "So I really wouldn't worry about that. What I would worry about is a break-in." He turned to Bransen and narrowed his eyes, "How tight is the security at this place?"

33. The Temple of Radiance [top]

Ana-loop wanted to meet the small ones she had seen in the forest. The tall one, which called himself "Carlos," was engaging enough, but Ana-loop could sense a stronger Radiance in the other two, as they stood dumbfounded at the edge of the wood, gazing at the massive Temple before them.

If Ana-loop counted things such as years, she would have told Carlos that it had been thousands of them since any of the material beings from Earth had visited the shrine. So long, in fact, that many of her kith and kin no longer believed that beings from Earth had ever been there, despite the evidence. "They are far too interested in war and wealth," the philosophers among her kind pointed out. "They have not yet evolved to the point of meaningful contact." As to who had built the Temple of Radiance on Mars—well, that was shrouded in a mystery as thick and illusive as the web of light they spun to cover it.

But that was the key: Meaningful contact. Carlos, like so many before him, had made contact, but not on an equal (and thus meaningful) level. He was in awe. He was thunderstruck. He was too quick to a sense of worship for mutual education. But the small ones—they, too, were in awe, though in a different way. Their awe was joy. Their awe was possibility. They were ready to learn—and teach.

Henry and Sophie unconsciously held hands as they stepped into the open. The Martian sun was bright and warm and, in fact, neither child equated their dream with Mars. The sky was blue, brushed with thin wisps of cloud, and beneath it the Temple glistened like snow—or like the Tinkerbells, Sophie thought. Henry recognized it as a step pyramid (he couldn't remember the fancy word for it), the likes of which were dotted throughout South America and the world.

"Nine steps..." he whispered.

"What?" Sophie asked, tugging lightly on his hand.

"Nine steps. Three times three—it's math, right?"

Sophie wrinkled her brow and shook her head slowly, "I don't think so. Three, five, seven, nine—that's philosophy."

Suddenly a very bright light—like a hundred Tinkerbells—appeared at the top of the pyramid. The children shielded their eyes and stepped back, but something in the white pinkness calmed them, and they didn't run. The light floated slowly down and came over to them, hovering not ten feet away. It was bright, and they tried not to look at it, but couldn't help themselves. Sophie could see a face in it—a kind, feminine face, smiling at them. Henry saw numbers, floating and spiraling away in random order. Both smiled back at the light.

"Hello, little ones," a voice seemed to say, from everywhere and nowhere. The children glanced at each other to make sure they'd both heard it, then looked back at the light.

"Who are you?" Sophie asked, at the same instant that Henry gasped, "What are you?"

And Ana-loop was pleased with their questions.

34. Circadia X [top]

John Fobell, it turned out, knew breathing systems—another synchronicity that made Bransen smile, which had been uncovered after Bransen's insistence that they "bring the rat back alive." John, in the scant time since his father's departure from the family, had discovered scuba diving—initially to explore the shipwrecks that dotted the Great Lakes like grapeshot—and with it the concepts of rebreathing and various other forms of artificial air. In fact, he had designed his own rebreather, devoid of moving parts and half the weight of its nearest competitor. Howard had glowed with both pride and astonishment.

And so, between John and Mouse, they had built a rat-sized pod that could keep its occupant alive for up to six hours, and Howard and Carlos had added the necessary components for remote-control between Earth and Mars. According to the design model (and a brief test of the machine, which Mouse had inexplicably dubbed Circadia X), they would simple drive the pod into the beam of light emanating from the machine and—assuming they pointed it correctly—end up on Mars. This, Ana-loop had assured them, would be accomplished in "too little time for you to measure." Nobody really knew how this was possible, or even what the pool of extracted psilocybin was for (though it did appear to glow as the beam of light passed through it, and certainly evaporated due to the same), but Ana-loop assured them it would work. Her cryptic reply had been "one way for your body, the other for your Radiance." To say the PISA Mars Team was nervous about the experiment would be a vast understatement.

Still, in the name of science, they said a small prayer for a lab rat scratching away in a small pod, turned on Circadia X, watched the psilocybin glow, and drove the pod into the beam of light. The moment pod met light, it simply vanished.

"My God, it's gone!" Howard shrieked, coining what was to become the most-quoted phrase of the PISA Mars Team. But in the heat of the moment, Howard dashed over to his computer and tapped away, searching for the signal from the pod. Just over 25 minutes later, the unthinkable happened: Howard received the uniquely-devised pod signal from the surface of Mars.

"Jesus, the rat's alive!" he uttered, which surely would have become as popular as his previous statement, had anyone heard it. "It's alive!" he cried out loud instead. "It's alive and it's on Mars!"

Bransen was smiling ear to ear, but stepped calmly before his cheering team, held up his hands, and said quietly, "That's absolutely fucking wonderful, guys. But now let's bring it home."

It took the team over three hours to remotely navigate the pod back to the on-again / off-again beam of light. For a harrowing half hour it appeared the separate spins of the planets were going to go against them, but then the scratchy, almost-worthless camera they had hastily installed managed to help the pod lock onto the beam and auto-pilot to it. But before they received radio confirmation of this, the pod was back in Bransen Labs, instantly reappearing with a small thud.

And Jesus, the rat was alive.

But while the PISA Mars Team broke out the champagne and toasted a rat, General Rauchbach and Admiral Thomas were trying to make sense of an eight-foot-wide beam of light that had, for the past four hours, intermittently burst from the vicinity of Bransen Labs. The media, too, had noticed, and the bristling crowd of cameras and microphones at the gates of Bransen Labs soon required a small deployment of police and Bransen Security to control.

35. Mouse on Mars [top]

The media didn't get truly excited until two things happened: 1) Bransen labs sent a monkey to Mars and back—alive; and 2) NASA admitted that PISA appeared to have beat them at their own game. Bransen shielded the team from most all media inquiries, so they could work on bigger and better pods, and remained suitably vague on the intricacies of Circadia X (especially the "secret" ingredient of psilocybin, which, in the name of science, they confirmed the need of to ensure that something alive and testably sentient (like, say, a dog from death row at the pound) made it to and from Mars alive—or at least whole, as it may be better to say).

And the media didn't have a true feeding frenzy until three weeks later, when Mouse proudly stepped into the pod he and John had assembled, locked and sealed his spacesuit and seat belts, gave the team the thumbs up, and smiled nervously. He had been selected—or rather, he'd volunteered—to go because, as he put it, "I have nothing here to lose," a comment which earned him a stern and slightly miffed look from Luci, which was explained better to the team moments later when she received a goodbye kiss. On the lips. (Causing Sophie and Henry to cheer and giggle.)

Unbeknownst to the media, Carlos Resua was absent from the farewell because he was already on the surface of Mars—at least in spirit. It was one of the "intricacies" the media didn't know about, being an experiment to find out if a remote viewer could be physically seen. It also helped that he could verify where they had sent their LETs (laser-emitting targets), in order to ensure the beam of light brought Mouse out at a suitable location, and also gave them something to aim for when they brought him back.

The last piece of the puzzle that had to be in place before sending a man to Mars had been a RadialShade Communication Device (RS-CD), which Carlos and Howard had built and tested (and restested and double-checked and tested again) for use in both the LETs and the pods. The RS-CD allowed for real-time communications with Earth, which was imperative to a successful mission, according to the PISA Mars Team (and another of its intricacies Bransen refused to expand upon).

And so the time came, and in front of a phalanx of media cameras, Circadia 1 was driven by Mouse into an eight-foot diameter beam of light, and vanished instantly. Exactly 15 seconds later, the Resua-Fobell RS-CD brought the crystal clear words of the first man on Mars to Earth: "Holy fucking hell." This was all the media needed—and the duly censored words were almost as quickly whipping around the planet—but NASA had required that Mouse bring back a lump of "verifiable Mars rock" to prove he had been there, which is why they latched onto Mouse's follow-up comment: "Christ, Howard, I don't see any fucking rocks."

At which point Howard slipped on his headset and began to speak privately with Mouse.

36. First Impressions [top]

Within an hour of being the first man on Mars, Mouse was back at Bransen labs, a large chunk of Martian rock in a lunchbox-sized, airtight container and a huge smile plastered across his face as he gazed at the media throng on the other side of the decontamination chamber. (The chamber itself had been constructed at the last minute when one of Bransen's attorneys, on a tour of the labs before admitting the media, pointed out that bringing back a Martian virus wouldn't sit well with the public or the courts.)

And by that night, Dr. Angelo Moore was back on the debunking circuit, peppering his talk with phrases like "absolutely impossible" and "flies in the face of" and "just can't be true." He also threw out the commentary that he suspected PISA had "assembled nothing more than a team of Antarctic explorers who had retrieved a Martian meteor from the ice, and a team of actors and set designers to produce a play for the media." The scientific credentials of these "actors" he ignored, as did he the official certification from NASA that the Federal government (at least) believed PISA had sent a man to Mars and was now "working closely with Bransen labs to see how their technology may be of use to NASA"—a statement that was not yet true.

In his interview, Mouse described the journey as "completely uneventful," noting that once he'd driven over the event horizon of the beam (a phrase he'd learned from Howard Fobell), he saw a bright flash of white light, but by the time he'd raised his arm to cover his face, he was on the surface of Mars. Dr. Fobell, who also was present for the interviews, interjected that it appeared Circadia X acted like a massive "conveyer belt of light," and that they simply drove onto it and were whisked along to their destination at the speed of light. Sadly, this raised more questions than answers, and Dr. Fobell was frankly unable to explain "how the craft comes to a stop at the other end without crashing" or why the "apparent laws of physics appear to be wrong" (speaking of Einstein's relativity, that called for anything moving at (or near) the speed of light to be infinitely massive and thus require infinite force to move).

"All I can say," Howard concluded humbly, "is that I have long held the idea that any equation based on a measure of Time is inherently flawed, since Time does not exist, only our measure of Time exists." He said this, ironically, was explained by the theory of relativity, but added that E=mc² still had to be flawed, since, according to the theory, "light itself, being a particle, could not move at the speed of light."

Dr. Angelo Moore dismissed the whole thing as the "ravings of a bunch of crackpots and snake-oil salesmen."

General Rauchbach and Admiral Thomas listened intently and bickered often.

37. Debriefing Dreams [top]

"Jesus, it was beautiful, Luce," Mouse said later to Luci, during the team's private debriefing. Of all of them assembled, Henry and Sophie seemed the most enrapt, though none but them knew why. "I was in, like, a jungle or something. Swear to God, man—huge trees and all these ferns and lots of strange noises. I assume they were animals..." He shrugged and trailed off; Howard adjusted his glasses and lent in.

"Are you sure you were on Mars?" he asked quietly.

Mouse shrugged again, "That's where you sent me, right?"

"He was on Mars," Carlos spoke up. "I didn't mention this before because it seemed, well, impossible, but early into my Mars sessions I discovered that what we think we see when we look at Mars from Earth—or even probes—is really like a complex holographic image, created by the conscious light."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Bransen demanded, a soft edge to his voice.

Carlos glanced away, looking wistfully at Circadia X. "I just wanted that physical confirmation." He looked back at the team and smiled sheepishly. "I suppose I was afraid of discovering my remote viewing was... off."

"But you spoke to her," Sophie said, then clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at Henry apologetically.

"Pardon?" Carlos asked. Bransen, too, turned in his seat and looked at Sophie. The girl looked to her mother, who nodded supportively, so Sophie lowered her hand and took a deep breath.

"She told us you spoke to her and that you were off exploring, looking for wreckage or something. So you knew where you were..."

"Us?" Bransen checked, glancing at Henry. "And who told you?"

"Yeah—me and Henry. Ana-loop met us at the temple..."

Luci's face blanched at the thought of her child playing with Circadia X when they all were asleep; Lorna's face, too, had gone white, her note-taking pen poised above paper, but not moving.

"We go there in dreams," Henry supplied timidly, reading their faces. "We don't use the machine."

"Mouse?" Bransen said rhetorically. "Sorry to change tacks here, but I think this meeting has somehow become even more interesting."

"Yes," Mouse whispered. "It certainly has."

Sitting silently in the corner, John Fobell narrowed his eyes and tried to read the expression on the face of Carlos Resua.

38. Light in Dark Corners [top]

Security was indeed tightened at Bransen Labs, and the patent for the Circadia X was secured. There was even talk about an emergency session of Congress to pass legislation regarding the use of any such device—a move for which Uncle Sam could not be blamed. In fact, had not the result of the experiment been so fruitful, historical, and globally important, the whispered chatter contended that PISA would've been shut down and the Mars team arrested. After all, had some unfortunate airliner passed through the beam and instantly been whisked to a barren, airless planet, there would've been trouble. Big trouble.

But as it was, PISA negotiated a sort of plea bargain, in that, while Bransen Labs owned the patent, NASA also would be given equal access to the design and other trade secrets. Bransen's attorneys assured him that accepting the offer was his only real option, and so with a heavy heart, Bransen put on his best smile and announced at a press conference the joint NASA-PISA venture to explore Mars. Contracts were signed, loopholes were closed, and in the end the world suddenly had two fully-functioning Circadia Xes and two wholly independent teams intent on exploring the red planet. There was, however, no agreement that NASA and PISA would share their findings with each other, which made it a joint venture in essence only. Bransen came to refer to it as "fucking SPA"—the Save PISA's Ass agreement.

So of course, PISA never shared its ongoing communication with beings made of conscious light, nor the location of the temple on Mars. They also failed to disclose how two children had been traveling to the planet astrally for as long as PISA had been investigating a trip to Mars, and failed to send out a press release about securing self-styled "astral physicist" Hiram McKenzie as a consultant. All of this did not slip the notice of Deep-Space Ops, however. In fact, one sunny Thursday afternoon, security tracked down Bransen and advised him that "General Rauchbach of the army or something is at the gate and wants to meet with you."

Bransen knew the name, asked that he be ushered to the PISA conference room, and quickly went in search of Howard Fobell and Carlos Resua.

39. A Traveler Arrives [top]

They all cropped up so quickly that none of the other team members knew that the other team members were in meetings. Within minutes of Carlos, Howard, and Bransen settling down to trade plausible denials with General Rauchbach, Luci and Mouse were in an unscheduled, closed-door meeting with John Fobell, and Lorna Jacobs found herself giving newly-arrived team member Hiram McKenzie a tour of his new digs, Sophie and Henry in tow ("Mommy, there's a monk at the door," Henry had said, and now was following him closely, mouth slightly agape).

When Hiram arrived, Lorna had been talking to the kids about their dream experiences on Mars, all the while taking notes and having them sketch with colored pencils what they'd seen. Until now, her notebook had contained lots of memorable quotes, but all of a science-minded nature (except the occasional philosophical tack of Carlos), and the sketches and drawings all had been provided by Mouse and Howard, and so had that dry, textbook sort of feel (though Mouse's tended to look a bit mad scientist, with arrows labeling things as "dope pool" and the like). But now they were getting into the meat of it—the preliminaries were over and Lorna was beginning to feel like her worth to the team was beginning to make itself known. Now she was recording explorations of an alien world.

Hiram had appeared silently, dressed in a black ankle-length robe and carrying a well-worn compact black leather suitcase. His hair was long, unkempt, and dark, and his beard full and rugged. Around his neck was a simple leather cord, from which hung a silver pendant that depicted a beehive resting upon a crescent with a blazing sun surmounting it. According to the IRS, he was a 40-year-old "caretaker and general contractor" who lived in a small vacation community near Green Lake, though under "other income" he had to report the royalties from the sales of the books that had made him famous: Unknown North (an esoteric treatise posing as a journal of his hikes in the woods he owned) and The Singing Hand (subtitled "travels at the end of the silver cord"). His simple and meditative lifestyle made Carlos Resua's "cabin" look like a Manhattan apartment—Hiram had no electricity or running water and tended or hunted his land for food. His life was indeed that of an ancient monk (and their clothing, he discovered, was really best suited for such work), but Hiram McKenzie was not a hermit. And in the occult circles which he served—and beyond, to those who had heard of him—he was greatly respected, which sometimes translated as "feared" and other times as "loved."

Lorna, with her back to the door, did not see him appear, but when Henry suddenly looked up and sat straight with a start, she jolted to attention. "Mommy, there's a monk at the door," he whispered. Lorna quickly stood up and turned to face the man, smiling nervously. "Hi?" she said questioningly. "Can I...?"

"I'm Hiram McKenzie," he replied in a smooth voice, extending his hand and smiling warmly as he took a step toward her. "Mr. Bransen is expecting me...?"

40. Body of Light [top]

Hiram McKenzie was nervous. R'dau had told him that Ana-loop was making real contact with several people from his plane, but he'd had no idea the contact was connected to a project so scientific and high profile as PISA. His only condolence was that Howard Fobell was with the project, though R'dau did not think Howard had yet made the connection between Mars and his own astral dreams. In her opinion, in fact, Howard had yet to realize the true nature of his dreams in the first place. But what unnerved Hiram the most was that, while he was sure Bransen had read his books, he feared that he, and the team he had assembled, were blissfully unaware as to their Radiance. And if one didn't understand their Radiance, one should not dangle at the end of their silver cord. And Hiram knew, even if he spelled everything out in plain English, they would go ahead with their journey anyway, because people often mistake comprehension for understanding.

"Tell me again what you mean," Carlos Resua asked sharply. It was their daily end-of-day team debriefing, which today doubled as the introduction of Hiram McKenzie.

"I mean no offense," Hiram said quietly, his voice even and his eyes steady. "I just mean to make clear the distinction between remote viewing and astral projection. What you and the children have been doing is not remote viewing. It is much more involved—and dangerous—than that. It is astral projection." He took in a deep breath, glanced at the ceiling, and finally decided on plain English. "It is your soul leaving your body—what they, the light beings, would call a return to your Radiance." He could see they still weren't quite getting it (though the word "Radiance" did appear to resonate with them on some level), but were waiting for him to conclude his thought, which he did as simply as he could: "It is death, or as near as you can get and continue living."

"Jesus..." Mouse breathed, his tone very much the one of a man who, only in hindsight, sees the peril he had been in. "So those kids...?"

"That's why I suggested they not be here today," Hiram said in the same even voice. He glanced at all the faces watching him, noting with interest the almost imperceptible jealous rage written across the face of Carlos Resua. "This is something they appear able to do naturally and I'm afraid them knowing what they are doing would make them nervous, and thus more liable to... trip up."

"And then what?" Luci breathed. Lorna reached over slowly and squeezed her hand. Hiram smiled, fascinated as he was by his constant need to help others balance respect—otherwise called "fear"—with ability.

"Most likely nothing. Just because you walk a tightrope without a safety net does not mean you will fall. But sometimes knowing the consequences if you did fall makes people more apt to misstep. These children—and Carlos—are naturals, however, so you have nothing to worry about."

Carlos sat back in his chair with a huff and crossed his arms. "This still doesn't explain why it's not remote viewing."

"Remote viewing is better described as remote perception—you gain images and insight, but by feel, not experience. Astral projection is experience. You are actually there."

"There in Radiance?" Bransen asked rhetorically, and Hiram nodded. "But Circadia X—Ana-loop mentioned it moved both body and this Radiance. So it is not an astral projection machine?" Hiram shook his head, no. "Then what is it?"

"I don't know," Hiram admitted. I've never studied this... physical side of astral projection before. But from what you've told me, I imagine that just as Radiance can leave a body, so can a body leave its Radiance. But a body without its Radiance is just a lump of meat, which would be useless for exploring Mars."

"So Circadia X keeps up intact?" Mouse checked, not sure he liked the thought of having built something so important. This wasn't just a light-speed car, then. This also was a soul machine.

"Yes," Hiram agreed. "But what gives me pause is that I'd never before thought about the opposite of astral projection. I mean, if we can send our Radiance out of body, then can something that is Radiance project themselves here physically and be, sort of, out of Radiance?"

They all sat silent, so Hiram summed up his thought: "We know that body can make light. But can light make body?"

41. Darkness at the Edge of Light [top]

"Hey—do you have a sec?" Hiram looked up at the sound of the voice and saw Carlos standing in the doorway to his apartment. Their living quarters had been designed to be both comfortable and close, to simulate, at a sort of introductory level, the very close quarters they all assumed they'd be in during the trip to Mars.

"Sure," Hiram replied. He'd been unpacking his scant belongings, but put down what he was doing and moved over to his kitchenette table and motioned for Carlos to sit across from him. Carlos walked in his direction, but didn't immediately sit.

"Hey, you know, I just wanted to apologize if I came off a bit... jealous at the meeting," Carlos said. "I mean, I guess I am a bit jealous."

Hiram chuckled lightly, "Well, it's certainly all right—but why would you be jealous of me?"

Carlos shrugged and sat down, lacing his fingers on the table before him. "It's funny," he admitted. "I knew my role on this team would be very technical, but I always kind of saw myself as the team's spiritual guide, too, if you know what I mean." Hiram nodded slowly.

"Anyway, when you got here, I guess it became obvious that any role along those lines I may have had was now yours." Carlos sat for a second, collecting his words, then looked up and met Hiram's gaze. "And at first I think I balked because I know you are certainly the better man for the job..."

Hiram grinned warmly and shook his head. "That's the trouble with people like us, eh? We know ourselves too well." Carlos laughed and sat back, visibly relaxing. Hiram leaned in and continued, "Bransen came to me for advice on ensuring the safety of the children, once it became clear what they had been doing. When I told him that he had nothing to worry about—that Ana-loop was a good being and would watch over them—he became all the more intrigued. He didn't know I knew about her, or them."

"Yes," Carlos agreed. "He said as much to me when he got back. Do the others know?"

Hiram shrugged, "If they've read The Singing Hand they might. I name them all."

Carlos nodded thoughtfully. "I think we all better read it then, eh?"

"It's not required," Hiram said, smiling. "It's just my own personal journey. I believe Lorna is composing the team's book?"

Carlos nodded vaguely, but suddenly seemed preoccupied, leaning over the table again and twiddling his thumbs, his knees bouncing nervously. Hiram said nothing, but waited for the man to speak again.

"There is one other thing."

"Yes?"

"God, I don't know why I'm telling you this." Carlos stopped again, wrestling with himself over whether or not to complete his thought. "Jesus, Hiram, I'm still working for Uncle Sam."

"What do you mean?"

"They have a program they call Deep-Space Ops headed by a General Rauchbach. He came he the other day, and I think Bransen might suspect something now. But everything I've remote viewed—" he glanced at Hiram "—I mean, astral projected, I've shared with them, too."

Hiram nodded, his expression still complacent. Carlos' own expression suddenly shifted from one of guilt to something much darker. His brow furrowed and he shook his head slowly.

"But they're most concerned about Howard Fobell and his son, John. I am, too. That's why I can act as a sort of double agent. General Rauchbach understands; Bransen does not."

"Knows about what?" Hiram asked calmly. Carlos took a deep breath and looked him right in the eyes.

"Rauchbach and I know that Howard has long been in contact with... them. Only Howard has been making inroads with the wrong side, and John is innocently following suit. Howard has one of the Crystal Prisms, and he uses it to speak with the Golgantry."

Hiram's expression finally dropped and his face went pale; for a moment, he stopped breathing, his mouth dumbfoundedly agape.

42. Inside the Crystal Prism [top]

"What do you mean, a double agent?" Mouse asked, his voice rimmed with hysteria. His eyes shot all around the wine bar, glancing at every patron as if they were government spies.

"They told me—Carlos still talks to some military people," John repeated. "Tells them everything."

"But they have their own Circadia X," Luci said, trying to calm everyone's nerves. "So, I mean, it's not like we have a lot to hide." Never having been prone to conspiracy theories, Luci was hard pressed to see the real drama here. They all knew both Carlos and Howard had once been employed by the government, both in hush-hush positions. And to her recollection, she couldn't honestly say she knew either of them had fully quit. In fact, had she been pressed, Luci would have opined that no one could really just stop working for Uncle Sam. He wasn't an employer who operated like that. He was more like the mafia.

"Wait—who told you?" Mouse checked.

But John's expression suddenly dropped and his eyes began to look everywhere but at his confidants. He was nervous, anyway, being in a bar (of any ilk), but now he realized he may have said too much. He should have spoken to his father first, but his father seemed too close to Carlos for his warning to make any difference.

"I think he tried to scare me away," John finally said, changing tactics. "That whole kidnapping thing—I think he made it up. I think he called the government spooks on my dad then told me he'd been kidnapped to try and scare me away or make me go back home and wait or something."

"Why?" Luci asked soothingly. "Why would he do that?"

John sighed heavily and sat silent, his eyes scanning the bar again. Luci and Mouse exchanged a concerned glance, but neither said anything.

"He did it because he knows I know about them. And he knows they've told me about him." John looked at them and could see he was making little sense. He began to over think things, then stopped and just barreled ahead: "My father has this thing he calls a Crystal Prism. He's been using it for years—as long as I can remember—to meditate. When he and my mom split up, for some reason he left the prism behind, probably because he didn't have anywhere safer to keep it in his new apartment. Anyway, I was afraid my mom would smash it, and I didn't know what it could do, but I knew it was really something to my dad, so I went and got it and kept it hidden in my room."

He stopped long enough to take a few gulps of water, then kept going. Now it was coming out, it felt good.

"Well, eventually, of course, I began to take it out and look at it, usually when I was missing my dad, as if it would somehow link me to him. And then I began to notice colors in it, spiraling around and seeming to come out of it. At first, it terrified me, but then I began to get used to it, and I stared into it longer and longer, until one day, I looked up and I wasn't in my room any more. I was somewhere else."

"Where?" Mouse breathed. "Don't tell me you were on Mars?"

"Not on Mars, no," John agreed. "But I'm wondering now—maybe I was in Mars, or at least a cave on Mars. Where I was, it was definitely underground. But there were these huge... things there. Headless things that looked like walking trees, only covered with leather instead of bark. Theire voices were high and strange and not English, but somehow I could understand them. And they told me lots of things—like how to build my rebreather—and sometimes... sometimes my dad would show up, too, and we would talk, and then when we'd talk on the phone later, he'd confirm that it was real."

"So what are these things?" Luci asked. "Are they like Ana-loop?" Six months ago, she would've had the boy committed, but her short stint on the Mars team had pretty well overturned every preconceived notion she'd had about the nature of the world and reality. Had not the team been there to go through it with her, she would have needed to be committed. They all would have.

"They're called the Golgantry," John replied, his brow furrowed in frustration. "And they've mentioned Ana-loop and someone named R'dau and others, but I'm not sure if they're related or what. But I do know they think Carlos and the government is trying to, well, get rid of them."

"I think we need to talk to Bransen," Mouse decided. "Sounds to me like Carlos may be using us to accomplish the government's dirty work."

John shook his head slowly, meeting their gazes. "I think we need to talk to Hiram."

43. The Science of Faith [top]

"What the hell are you going on about?" Bransen demanded in an uncharacteristically foul tone of voice. He stood over the table, perched and ready to pounce on Mouse and Luci, who both were having similar thoughts concerning the wisdom of going to Bransen, after all. "Gollums and crystals? We are a scientific team, are we not? We shouldn't be wasting our time on ... on ... fantasy." He huffed out a deep breath, shook his head dismally, and finally lowered himself into his seat, where he buried his face in his hands.

"Well, it's just..." Mouse began nervously. He didn't know much about science, despite what he was doing.

"It's just that you brought Hiram McKenzie into this," Luci said for them both. "And he's not a scientist—"

"Carlos asked me to bring Hiram McKenzie into this," Bransen growled from behind his hands, re-emerging in order to cut them both another glare.

"Carlos did?" Mouse blurted, sucking in an apologetic breath.

"Yes," Bransen replied, either ignoring or missing the skepticism in Mouse's voice. "He's worried about the kids and I wanted to keep his mind on task."

"So Carlos knew they were astral projecting?" Luci wondered. Bransen sighed heavily and met her gaze.

"Those kids are dreaming. And while I admit they seem to have a certain degree of pyschic ability, I do not think they are doing anything different from what Carlos does—which is, mind you, scientifically proven. The soul, and its ability to leave the body is not, however."

"How can you say that?" Mouse asked. "After what we've discovered? After what I saw? How can you just ... just ... be so dismissive? This is where science and religion fuse, Bransen—"

"Look, we're not here to start a new religion or wage some presumed battle against good and evil. If General Rauchbach and his goons want to waste their time tilting at Martian windmills, so be it. We are here to collect data and make contact."

"But this is contact," Luci argued. "What form did you think that would take? Did you think we'd walk into some Bransen-Labs-like facility on Mars and be ushered into a conference room to go over pie charts and medical diagrams? What we're dealing with is another world, Bransen, as different as it is similar to our own. And just as we are physical beings here on Earth, apparently not all life on Mars is like Ana-loop. And just because the only people to make contact thusfar have been the poets, mystics, and dreamers does not mean that is the only way in which contact can be made."

She stopped and gazed out the picture window at Lorna, who was pacing around Circadia X, taking notes and making sketches. When Bransen didn't reply, Mouse took up the cause.

"If you want to be scientific about this, then you need to acknowledge that Hiram McKenzie and Howard Fobell have been writing about the same beings—using the same names—for over a decade. You act as if I didn't journey to Mars and back at the speed of light—as if you still expect to fly there in a conventional spaceship—"

Bransen stood up without a word, or even a glare, and quietly left the room. Luci and Mouse shared a sympathetic glance, and it was Luci who finally smiled and said, "I don't think we'll be fired—don't worry." Mouse squeezed her hand and tried to chuckle.

And in the morning, each member of the team found a copy of Hiram McKenzie's Unknown North outside the doors of their rooms. Each member except Hiram, and he found a copy of Howard Fobell's Alchemy of Light: The Science of Faith and Circumstance, the very book Hiram had planned to procure for himself that very day.

44. Skeptical Games [top]

"Dr. Moore? I didn't expect to find you here." He turned at the sound of the voice and unconsciously tried to hide his whiskey on the rocks, despite the fact that he was in a bar after midnight with bleary eyes. It took him a second to focus, but finally he recognized the face of General Rauchbach. Had he not been drunk, he most likely would've jumped away from the man, as if burned.

"You knew I'd be here," he said instead, his tone aggressive. "You've been tapping my lines and reading my mail since you fired me."

"You were never fired, Dr. Moore. We don't fire people, people simply ... leave."

Dr. Moore spat out a derisive grunt and finished off his whiskey, slamming the glass down on the bar. The entire edifice he had created on debunkery had come crashing down with the unveiling of Circadia X. Or, more specifically, with the government's acknowledgement that the machine worked and—worse still—NASA wanted a piece of the pie. Suddenly Bransen Labs and PISA were the experts and Dr. Angelo Moore was nothing but a dunce with the proverbial egg on his face. His nearly continuous talkshow circuit had come to an abrupt end, and Dr. Moore had retreated to the seclusion of the local bar, where the patrons only watched TV if it involved guns or cars (and, preferably, both).

"So what the hell do you want, Rauchbach? Did I forget to sign some papers?"

"Not at all." The general sat down on the stool next to Angelo and motioned for the bartender. "I'll have the best beer you have on tap," he ordered, then turned to the doctor. "What I want, Dr. Moore, is you to go with us to Mars."

Angelo stopped smirking, the offer coming through clear even in his stupor. "What the hell for? I get it. I was wrong, okay? Travel at the speed of light is clearly possible—"

"Dr. Moore, we need you to go because we need your ... ummm ... insight. We need someone of a traditional—and may I say, rational—scientific mind to come along. Keep us all in line. Make sure we're not ... imagining things."

Angelo narrowed his eyes and stared at the general as he paid the bartender and took a long draught of his beer. The general nodded appreciatively at what the bartender had served him, then turned again to the doctor, who still had eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Why? What the hell do you think's up there?" Angelo whispered.

"We don't know," the general admitted, sucking in a deep sigh. "What we do know is that PISA has now secured the services of Hiram McKenzie—"

"Jesus! Not that flake?"

"—and we sort of want to create the anti-PISA team, if you will. A truly scientific team. We want to assess real threats, not tilt at Martian windmills."

"Threats?" Angelo queried, then the liquor spoke up. "Sure. Fuck it. I'll go. Let's beat those PISA fucks at their own fucking game."

"Actually, Dr. Moore," General Rauchbach said evenly, taking another long sip of beer, "this is our game."

45. On the Road   [top]

Ironically, the mass scrutiny of the media in the days after PISA announced putting the first man on Mars, coupled with the increased scrutiny after NASA confirmed the claim and "acquired" the plans for its own Circadia X, served only to diminish the story by the time the first full crew went to Mars three weeks later, again from Bransen Labs. It all seemed old hat to the media, which dutifully moved on to—even more ironically—covering the "news" of rapes, murders, celebrity entanglements, and political scandals. But this was fine with Bransen and the PISA Mars Team, because they were (in yet another irony) trying to keep a low profile. After all, high-stakes scientific endeavors didn't usually put their work in the hands of children.

But with the help of Hiram and Carlos, Henry and Sophie had managed to establish where on Mars the Temple of Radiance was, as this was the target Hiram, Carlos, and Howard had suggested they visit first.

"Shit, if we find a building up there, that'll blow my mind," Mouse had said, catching the distasteful gaze of Bransen who, despite the circulation of reading materials, still wasn't completely onboard with the whole science-nee-religion thing. Yet even Bransen had agreed that such a find would be, in a word, amazing.

"I don't think we can land right in front of the Temple," Henry had offered at the pre-flight meeting. "We're going to have to walk down the trail to get there."

"Why?" Hiram asked gently, but Henry could only shrug. Sophie, however, nodded in agreement with Henry's assessment, because while Henry still saw Ana-loop as numbers, she saw her as a living being. And living beings tending the protect their Temples.

"For the same reason my mom can't drive her car right up to the altar in a church," Sophie suggested. Carlos and Hiram exchanged a surprised glance for the depth of her analogy; Bransen rolled his eyes.

"Whatever," he said. "Look, we send Mouse and Carlos up first to make sure the area's clean—or whatever—and set up and test the positioning LETs. The rest of us don't follow until Howard has a lock on the LETs and RS-CD contact with Mouse and Carlos. Hiram—you just stand by and help Howard."

Everyone agreed—it was, after all, the very same plan they had concocted two days before. The pre-flight meeting was little more than a last confirmation that everyone was indeed on the same page. An hour later and the formalities were over: Mouse and Carlos were on Mars, contact had been established, and the area set for the arrival of the rest of the crew, including its grade-school guides.

Some national media outlet did happen to check in with Bransen Labs that afternoon, but the news the next day appeared on page five of the science section, and the only person who really cared was General Rauchbach.

46. High Flyers   [top]

"Wow, it's completely different in person," Carlos said, looking as far around the canopy of trees (somewhere high in a thin mist) as his rebreather suit would allow.

"How so?" asked Mouse, his voice softer and crackly from the motorcyclists' radio gear they'd rigged into the suits for communications on Mars.

"I don't know," Carlos admitted, furrowing his brow. "The trees seem much larger in person. Much larger. I guess the astral body doesn't quite accurately translate its physical surroundings to the brain." He glanced at Mouse, who stood mouth slightly agape, holding one of the LETs, and added, "Or something."

"Well, I don't know, man, but this is where I was before. Nobody could forget those fucking trees." Mouse gazed up into the twilit sky, brushed with crimson and purple, and tried to see the tops. "How tall do you think they are? And why are they sorta pink?"

"Oh, they're not pink," Carlos replied with certainty. "No, that's one thing I get, now I'm actually here. I always wondered why it was always twilight when I projected up here, but it's not. I think the sky is an artifact of the light camouflage. And I think the pinkish color is, too. Look at one of those leaves closely—looks green, doesn't it?"

Mouse moved over to the nearest tree—a sapling, he would've called it back on Earth—and took one of the leaves in his gloved hand. Up close, it had no pink in it, but was a rich, deep green. He nodded thoughtfully and took another long look around, and he could see what Carlos meant: The pinkish hue seemed to hang in the air, coloring everything and nothing. As he gazed into the distance, he could see shadowy shapes moving, almost like apes in the trees—though these apes, by their motions, undoubtedly had wings.

"You think we're safe here?" Mouse wondered, trying to sound casual. "There's obviously life in this forest. And not no light beings either."

"Yeah—I saw them, too," Carlos said. "We'll just have to keep an eye out. And speaking of escaping, we should turn the pod around so we can just drive straight into the tunnel home, should the need arise."

"Good idea," Mouse agreed, handing his LET to Carlos and heading back to the pod. While Mouse turned it around so it faced where the entrance of the light tunnel should appear, Carlos lined up the LETs and filled in Howard and the rest of the team on their progress. Soon enough—too soon, for people who had been anticipating a several-month trip to Mars—the stage