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

I decide to get back to the pyramid I rescued from my old home. Next to the location where the cigar box was, are two tiny owls. Accessing my past selves memories I find they were a present from his eldest, on occasion of two different trips she made. Nothing more special to them than the craftsmanship they were made with, but that is remarkable. You can even see the marks the tools have left, something that almost never happens in our futuristic society, unless on purpose. These two were also stuck to the marble of the pyramid with a small piece of plastic adhesive gum.

I return to the memory card that was in the Buddha. Switching on the ancient laptop, I browse through the information that is on it. Most of it is pretty straightforward, and easily accessible. It's eerie how previous incarnations sometimes are dead ringers for the ones that come after them: even before she made her features match them completely, my Selina could have easily posed for the pictures that are amongst the data. No wonder I love to look at them. But today they are not the intriguing part that I'm after. There is also a diary on the stick, that I've had trouble accessing: it apparently requires a password of some sort, and stubbornly refuses to give me access. I've tried hundreds of passwords already, and none make the edit fields of the small program go readable.

What would my past self have thought about it? He used to always say: “Good programmers are lazy”, indicating that they love to make repetitive tasks go away by programming them in. Surely he would have made a back door into it, if only I could remember. But perhaps I don't need to remember: I noticed he'd put the sources of the program on the stick as well. Archaic, that's true, but since it appears to be based on written language, it is still quite accessible.

I spend the next two hours going through the various files, as far as the system will open them. Apparently they hadn't gotten to data mating yet, like we have here: any data we have on our systems have encoded in them the innate ability to apply them. No longer do we need to go looking for the program that will open a certain file, for it is always right there. But here, I apparently have to make do with a program called notepad, which can open at least some files for me. Not all of it is understandable, but my memories from back then at least allow me to understand the basics. Remarkable, how they had to code out every instruction by hand in the old days. In today's world, that would be undoable. Our programs take terabytes, have built in bug detection and perform their own maintenance. Even runtime design changes are entirely commonplace, allowing the user total adaptability. There are only few of us capable of debugging at instruction level, but that is mainly because they are fascinated by the whole concept. No one in his or her right mind (generally speaking) would want to go down to such excruciating detail.

But now I have to. It takes me a while to figure out how to find things in these archaic sources, but ctrl-F seems to do the trick. I start looking for things like password, encryption, even try to cash in on my old friend's passion about a certain lady, but no luck. But what's that? If a certain character is in the password field, followed by a NULL character, then he dumps in the string “Create It!”..... Hmmm, fascinating...

I return to the diary itself, and type in the trigger character. When I hit enter, the edit fields go white, but only the left one holds text. The other one is empty, but a quick glance at the calendar shows why: for some reason this computer thinks it is 1970, which definitely was not the time my 'old' friend wrote in it. I set it to a year that is more likely to be right, and land right smack into the middle of a journal entry. Well, looks like I'll have to brush up on my knowledge of Dutch.....

Saturday, March 27th, 2010, 06:09

Back when I chose the “Create It!” password, somewhere last year, I never dreamed it would spur me on to finish this novel later on. But it does, as if I needed the extra push.

The things I have been doing these last few years all seem to be culminating into the creation of this one novel, as if it was waiting for all these things to come together. Writing does not feel like a truly creative process, but more like a project of discovery, an unveiling of sorts, of text long slated to arrive.

Have I been procrastinating? Could it have been done long ago? Perhaps, but then it wouldn't have been this novel. No, this is completely on schedule, just-in-time as so many things are. Over time that idea has grown in my mind, and I've heard it repeated by many a fellow human: We are ready, ready as we'll ever be for what comes next! But it'll come in its own sweet time, when everybody agrees with it.

Maybe 2012, maybe never, but I have a feeling it will come. And it will be beyond our greatest dreams, beyond mine even! It could even be so that your greatest dream outreaches mine by far, but it will happen, for you!

For me it is now time to pursue some other activities beyond writing: first, some breakfast, and beyond that when the coffee is finished too, about an hour and a half of strenuous exercise in the local gym....

4444AD, Day 250, 06:37, Home

“Hey Cutie, where do you think you're going?” I smile at Selina as she passes by in a very sexy outfit indeed. I have an idea, because I know she always dresses the part even though she won't be there physically to witness it firsthand. “Going to give you a slight incentive”, is Selina's reply. “What time?”, I counter. “July 15th, 1988”. I think back, something remarkable about that date. Must have been the past life we are mostly engaged with, the crucial one where we met up as twin flames. What was he doing back then? Not school, he'd just finished. No, July 15th was his very first working day, part of which he spent dreaming about his boss's secretary, Annette. Was that my little twin flame again? “Yup”, Selina replied: “most of the dark haired ladies in your life back then were just me....”

“Well, forget about him for a minute”, I countered: “Why don't we go do something together?” “Great idea! Any suggestions?” is Selina's quick reply.

“I know, let's punch the book I'm reading into the enactor, and watch it together!” The enactor can take any written account, and make it into a believable filmed storyline, based on it's detailed knowledge of the world around us.

We snuggle up on the couch together, and have the replicators materialize us something refreshing to drink, and some snacks. With the lady in my arms I watch a story from a time when she was still nowhere to be found.....

'Over the Moon'

Come to think of it, that is just about all I miss in here: our pale, but mysterious moon. Other than that, it's perfect. But when I mention this to Kayim, he comes up with a simple solution: “Then I know our next destination. Let's go to Exteria, where the saucers that I mentioned earlier are stationed”. Nobody else has a better idea, so after another delightful breakfast we pack our things, thank the hostess, and are walked out to the floater by Taquatl. As the distance to our next destination is somewhat further off, we will be soaring again. Only this time we will not approach the Inner Sun quite that closely.

We do however have a marvelous view of Exteria, which can be considered Inner Earths international airport. They have a remarkable Air Traffic Control system: as soon as we enter their control sphere, a set of luminescent markers appears before the floater, telling it where to go. Kayim tells me that this is done from a central transmitter, that fires concentrated bursts of energy, to excite the atmosphere so it will give off light. The projector serves the entire city, sometimes telling over five hundred vehicles where to go. The one advantage of this system is not entirely obvious: it requires no specific equipment on the flying object itself, and can thus guide even devices from far-off locations.

Following the white dots (not the rabbit) leads us to a parking spot very near the center. We are greeted by LeeYooh, to whom Kayim had spoken earlier about our intended plans. After some refreshments, and a remarkable absence of paperwork, LeeYooh leads us trough the corridors of the building, and up a shaft of some kind. When we come out of it, we find ourselves in a brightly lit circular room. Windows all around, so the Inner Sun is obviously responsible for all that light. LeeYooh reveals that he will be our pilot for the day, at which moment it suddenly dawns on me: we have already left the building like Elvis, or rather yet, more like Will Smith in Independence Day. That, by the way, is a movie that gives me mixed feelings: on the one hand it shows a united humanity, which I like. But united against aliens, which are invariably painted as evil, which I thoroughly disagree with. It is my feeling that more advanced races will generally be less prone to violence and other 'negative' emotions. But I am losing the thread of my story here. Where was I?

A barely perceptible shudder indicates that we have now definitely severed from the building. Our pilot follows the dotted line outwards, and tells us we are free to move about. Apparently the saucer is equipped with a system that compensates the accelerations of it in any direction. It is a smoother ride than the train that I take for work normally. And it goes much faster too! We cluster together at one of the windows as Jane and Valerie take turns in pointing out the most remarkable views. I myself look at what they show me with only half an eye, wanting to keep track of where we are going.

Zooming along, it occurs to me that down here the amount of cityscape is much lower than up top. Nature obviously has a much more starring role in the lives of the Inner Earth people. But what do I see now? Still far off, there is a gaping hole in the ground. And its not just a molehill either: it looks like a sea, but the 'surface' is definitely not water. “Dad, am I dreaming? Are there stars down there?”, Jane asks. I can do nothing but agree with her: there's a giant hole in the ground, that leads straight into the night sky. Gina explains it all to us: Earth is said to have two gaping holes in the North and South Pole, that connect Outer Earth to Inner Earth. Apparently we will soon be exiting the interior through the opening that currently has winter. If my reasoning is correct, that would be the North Pole, since by my reckoning it is only the beginning of April.

As we emerge, I ask LeeYooh if he isn't afraid of being spotted. The Inner Earthling looks at me, and a smile comes up: “See this?” He moves his hand over a schematic of the disc, and it disappears from