Make IT Real! by Sander R.B.E. Beals (good books to read for young adults TXT) 📕

4444AD, Day 242, 20:42, Home

As Selina puts the finishing touches on the snacks and the beverages, the transporter pad announces new arrivals. No question to allow materialization, so I guess it must be Tinus 'Tiny' Wolters and his lovely friend Lily Collins. They are close friends of ours, and share our love of tweaking. Tweaking, to explain, is the manipulation of the 'past' in order to make the present more pleasant. This approach is what eventually shut down the big conglomerates, freed mankind from the vulture culture of the big banks, and generally lessened adverse living conditions.

Having exhausted the number of grand disasters that you feel are still very present in your everyday lives, and reaching absolute abundance in helping to get rid of all that negativity, we found that a number of us just couldn't keep our hands off the past. We kept going to make it better, purely as a pastime. Of course this is done on a far less extensive scale as the earlier cleanup operations, but methods have considerably improved over time.

We talk a while about inconsequential things, while enjoying the coffee and apple pie. Lily asks how Selina's past self is coming along, and my lovely twin immediately breaks out in an excited update: “I've seen her perform on the design space, she's awesome! For a moment there, I figured Sander had made her too sexy, good enough to be serious competition for me!” I hug her, an assure her that no matter what, I'll always stay with her. After all, since she already adapted one of her many looks to match the past Selina anyway, I have nothing to complain.....

“But how will you get the two of you together?”, Tiny asks. He hasn't heard yet of our grand master plan. Selina smiles wickedly, and explains that my past self used to be quite an admirer of beauty. So much so in fact, that he could never be totally happy if the specs of a prospective partner didn't at least cover a sizable percentage of his preferences relevant to women. “We designed past Selina to fulfill practically every preference of Sander we could uncover. It took some serious digging, but I think we got hold of enough hard data to really totally blow his mind back in 2011!”, my better half concludes.

“We already planned for my past self to find pictures of her, that would certainly pique his curiosity”, I add. “But have you also thought about how those pictures would actually have to be made? Who is going to get past Selina to show herself to the camera?” Lily asks inquisitively. “Hmm, hadn't thought of that”. “But I have...”, Lily smiles: “I have a past self in that era, and he's got pretty good connections in the modeling industry. He could easily charm Selina into a shoot”. Selina interrupts her: “Come to think of it, I remember him: about my height, built like a fashion model?”. Lily nods: “Does that mean I'm in? Can I help you two become even closer? Wow!!!”

We spend the rest of the night unfolding the setup of the millennium. Selina will fall like the proverbial brick for Lily's charming qualities, and will take the job that leads her to live Stateside for about three years. What girl wouldn't find it hard to resist a job offer that pays big bucks just to sit there and be beautiful? We haggle over the details, but Selina is quite adamant: nude is fine, but just nude and beautiful. She resolutely vetoes any attempts to get her to go any further. And since this is all about honoring free will, she gets her way......

Monday, March 23rd, 2010, 21:21

I am still not sure, whether I am uncovering the truth, designing the future, or just writing a fantasy that will never be. Point is, a lot of it has already actually happened, and my interpretation of it all is just one of an infinite number of scenarios that could explain this. But in the end, does it really matter? If you close the door of the refrigerator, does it matter if the light is off, on, or blinking Romeo and Juliet in Morse code?

At this point, I fed the working copy of Make It Real to my dear friend Alicia in Los Angeles, simply because her mail made me feel like she belongs in this story. A past life in Egypt qualifies her for sure, and the free expression of her feelings to me helps immensely too. I'm not sure how extensive her role will be, for when channeling you never do know what comes through. But interesting it is, always!

And I'm finally beginning to get it: If you see life here as a battle between good and evil, you will never exceed that level. Yet, if you take advice from our good friend Albert Einstein, and reach a higher vantage point to look at your situation, you'll find that both 'good' and 'evil' are thought streams aimed at enlightening you: They are a good cop bad cop routine, designed to get you to the highest point you can possibly reach. 'Good' shows you how it could be, while 'Bad' warns you against whatever it is you most want. Sometimes however, they mix up that game, and then good does the warning while bad does the enticing....

But separation doesn't work, nothing can really stop an unstoppable force. And that is just what happens when two realize they are in fact One.......

4444AD, Day 244, 05:55, Home

Up early, and my beauty is still very much asleep. I get dressed, but decide to go out incognito today. A metallic outfit makes me look less like an RBE and more like a regular techno droid, and I am ready for my morning walk.

I love to do this every now and then, masquerade as a more mechanical entity, and experience just how these are treated different from RBE's. Of course the differences are far less pronounced than in your era, but that is exactly why I still do it: not the all-out fear or excitement, but the minute nuances of others talking to an Android or a Realistic Biological Entity.

I close the door behind me, forfeiting the opportunity to zap myself to a distant landscape with breathtaking vistas and the like. Today I will just stroll through the neighborhood. Selina and I live in a country setting, far enough from the rather hazardous seashores. That was why the ruins of my old home were still available, and not demolished and built over: the coastlines have become a no-build zone, where we simply leave everything as is, because nobody wants to live there anyway.

I stride across the pebbles of the driveway, deplorably empty since my unfortunate mishap with Teedra, my beloved Bugatti Veyron. May she rest in pieces, as we always say once the cleanup squad has done its duty.

I turn left on the street, greeting my neighbor who greets me joyfully not knowing I'm me. I follow the gravel road into town, and praise myself lucky to be here. Country living no longer requires frequent trips into town and / or city, because our replicators can fashion almost anything we require. For those objects not producible by our domestic replicators, there is always the more creative twin of the cleanup squad: the Creation Force. Their far more powerful and precise replicators can deliver any object to any location within range, and we only have eight of them to service the entire planet: two at the poles, and the others at the other six points of the two dodecahedrons that can be said to fit inside the Earth.

Feeling ecstatic, I break into a firm running pace, and cover the remaining two kilometers into town in a remarkable time. Heart rate was way up, but since I never felt out of breath, I should be alright. I slow down, and stop at the bakers. Ernesto is a good friend and brother, and though his services are strictly speaking not needed, he does run a successful bakery: Many RBE's are not always content to have their bread molecularly recombined, and Ernesto's expertise is creating masterful and tasty replacements for replicated pastry and bread. This may seem odd, but nowadays we have total freedom to choose our pastimes as we see fit.

“Morning Bro”, I greet him. “I'm just about to get the croissants out of the oven. Is that something you can surprise your lady with?”, Ernesto asks. I agree, and ask if he has any of that delicious strawberry jam to go with it. “Sure, made a new batch just last week!”, is his cheerful answer.

We make an appointment to work on the Snaefell-Laverda sidecar soon, and I return home on the double, so the croissants are still warm. I sneak in the back, and make Selina a lovely breakfast.

“Morning my princess”, I joke as I kiss her softly on her hair, and wait for her to sit up. Together we cherish the hot croissants with creamy butter and very fruity strawberry jam. A good cup of coffee to go with it, and the company that I can do without, but choose not to....

“I dreamed about my past self last night”, I say as we finish the last of the croissants: “he tried to get even more pictures of you, even after the first two batches”. “How?”, Selina asks. I tell her about the thirty dollars he sent to the States, to get access to one of the sites her past self had worked for. “We have got to teach that boy a lesson!”, my lady has fire in her eyes as she speaks the sentence: “He has to learn that he can have me, but he can't buy me!” I agree, and together we pull a few informational strings to make the envelope go missing in action. “Do you think he got the message?” Selina asks. “Hmm, sure feels like it. All of a sudden I feel like you were a lot more attainable back then, and much more worth the wait. Yep, it worked.”

We ditch the tray, and engage in a bit of adult games. But since I'm aiming to get this novel on the school reading lists, that kind of action does not need to be in here.....

About eleven minutes past eleven, I wake up again, and get dressed. I admire Selina's lovely face, as it shows from under the covers, and then go down for some other action. Don't know what yet, but something will show up, I'm sure.

'Kidnapped...'

“Dad, dad, do you know where Jane is?” Valerie says as she wakes me from a very nice dream indeed. But the question in itself is alarming enough to awaken me completely, even at this ungodly hour. Four forty-five, my trusted Fossil tells me. “Isn't she sleeping, like you should be too?”, I inquire. My darling daughter assures me that she was sleeping, but woke up because she heard a door slam shut. She'd leaned over the battery bed, to see if her sister was also awake, but the bottom bunk had been empty. Trusting her sister to return to bed shortly, she lay there waiting. Five minutes passed, ten minutes. Still, no Jane. That, and the ever so slight smell of aether had driven her to my bed, to wake me up.

I get dressed, and together we look in all the obvious places. Jane's slippers are still under the bed, which would be strange if she'd just went to the toilet. We check it anyway, but my youngest is nowhere to be found. Time to alert the hostess, who is wondering why we woke her up so early. Like me however, she