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

As the big bird takes off, we look at Cairo once again. “Dad, are we ever gonna go back?”, Valerie asks, in a voice that leaves no doubt as to what her choice would be. I can see why, and I wonder if it would be possible to persuade her mother to let her go. If not, she can always return in about two years, having turned eighteen. We talk for a while longer, but decide to leave the problem unresolved until our return home.

The flight home takes a number of hours, but fortunately the flight attendant announces Contact as the in-flight movie. Now that is one of my all-time favorites, if not the one. I put on the headphones as the grand opening scene begins, and watch the extended zoom out that takes me into the vastness of space. It makes you wonder, is there life out there? If you've never seen it, then you haven't heard the view of Ellie's dad, who sums it up into one brilliant statement: “If it is just us, wouldn't it be an awful waste of space?”

Luckily I know that it isn't just us, having seen others with my own eyes. The Universe is a bigger, much better place than some people give her credit for, and I for one am thrilled to be part of it all. But I can definitely feel that I've returned to the surface. Once the movie ends, I doze off into a deep, dreamless sleep even though the seat I'm in is far less comfortable than my own bed.

“Hey, sleepy head, can we get out?” Valerie taps me on the shoulder. “Uh, Yeah sure” I blink once or twice, but then reality sinks in again. We get up, grab our bags from the overhead compartments, and leave the plane through the front door. “Great flying, Tom”, I say in passing to the co-pilot that also drove us to Berlin earlier on. He tells us to take it easy, and we venture through the corridor, into our ever familiar Schiphol airport.

“Do you have anything to declare?”, the customs lady wants to know. “Just a bunch of spectacular memories”, I tell her. I could have added the laptop that won't quit, but she'll never believe me anyway, so I just leave that out. We continue through the arrivals hall, and are greeted by a familiar figure: William has agreed to pick us up, partly because he loves to drive his new car. He has had to leave the girls' mother at home, otherwise we wouldn't all fit in the car, but they'll be seeing her in about ninety minutes, if the lack of traffic holds. But that is quite likely, because it is only about four o'clock.

And there we go, two big guys in the front, two pretty girls in the back, followed by a modest amount of luggage.

“Zutphen exit, 1200 meters” Jane alerts us after seventy-four minutes. Good, that means we'll be home in about twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. I've never been a vacation man, but looking back on our adventure in there, I could definitely get the hang of it. Maybe again next year?

Thursday, April 2nd, 2010, 22:22

Instead of frantically writing, I spent the better part of the evening watching a ten part Youtube video of shaman Keisha Crowther, self-proclaimed the whitest, most blonde and youngest female who is still in some way native American.

She tells a highly interesting story about what is going to happen in 2010, and it reads like a soap opera: one event even more improbable than the next, but at the same time it absolutely rings true!

If she's right, I'd better hurry up and rewrite this novel, because she will have things happening way before they do in this novel. But no, I'm not going to do that. Because that was one thing this shaman also talked about: don't let others take you away from your truths! So the novel stays as I felt it, because it is creating my reality, not hers. I say this in full love and understanding, knowing full well that her reality will probably seamlessly co-exist with my own, with the least bit of conflict. At least, such is the nature of Nature as I sense it to be.

One of her rules for better living had me worried for a spell though, Step #8: Do not become addicted to other human beings, this will stop your growth. Some of you will now consider me doomed, because my prima donna in this novel is doubly involved with me! But am I really addicted, or is this more of a way to get rid of this addiction once and for all? Sure, I love Selina more than anyone, but the mere thought of having her here unless she wholeheartedly chooses to be here would completely obliterate any idea of this being a fairy tale. And I'm not really addicted to Selina perse: I'm just figuring that Selina is the one being I've been looking for my whole life. However, that story ends the moment she says she doesn't want to be, and without any pressure from me. She'd be in fact denying she was the One, thus making it obvious to me I needn't pursue her.

Keisha said it in her video: decide on who you want to be, and then create that. Well, that is what I am doing, by placing all these letters in order. Because I'd just love to be a writer, a successful one if possible. And of course I want to make a difference in creating a better world! Which, if I listened to her correctly, we will see happening in the next few years, starting in 2010.

One important message from the video was that energy is freely available in quantities that we can never use up. There is no need any longer to take energy from others, or to give energy to them. Everyone can pick up more than enough for themselves from the world we live in. Go watch a sunset, take a walk in Nature, or drink some fresh water, but don't take it from your fellow men and women by for instance dominating your discussions.

Well, actually, I've been dominating this monologue long enough. Better get myself off to bed because I still have to go working in the morning. That would be one of the added perks of being a successful writer: no three hours traveling to and from work each day, and deciding for myself when I will write. Confucius said it: give me the job of my dreams, and I will never work another day in my life!

4444AD, Day 296, 19:21, Liberator

“Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I've got a desperate plan!” Rush's lyrics seem aptly appropriate, or do they? I'm returning to the control room, to hear about Haley's findings, but they aren't half bad: she's calculated that our energy reserves are sufficient to keep us going for about a year, even in this slightly offset set of physical properties. She even has an explanation of why the space we find ourselves in is 777 light years large, when we'd concluded from measurements outside that the black hole was no more than three light years in diameter. Apparently the immense mass of it caused so-called gravitational lensing, where light is bent around the huge mass, thus making it appear smaller than it really is. So it wasn't just Haley's initial disregard of it that caught us.

And it is something I'd never actually realized, but which feels childishly logical in hindsight: if you detect a black hole in your Cosmos, have you then even realized that your own Cosmos, which includes that black hole, must be a black hole itself? So it isn't half bad to live inside a black hole, right? And they do seem far larger from the inside!

We're restricted to this 777 light year vacuum right now, but somehow I feel like that might not even be a permanent condition. I go and tell Selina the 'good' news, and to celebrate we decide to throw ourselves a little party. With the state room's hologenerator, we conjure up an image of our favorite 21st century restaurant, in an out-of-the-way Italian village. It was amongst the TeraQuads of data that I'd downloaded from our home before we left. Being waited on hand and foot is a nice way to recover from such a scare, and we will no longer worry about being restricted for now: something will come up to get us back out of here......

In the meantime, we enter our cozy establishment. The waitress show us to our table overlooking the lake, where the sinking sun is radiating its last bit of life across the waves. The lady hands us our menus, and we spend the next few minutes browsing through them, and discussing our options. As an entree, we settle on the Minestra di Pane e Ribollita, but we do not see eye to eye on the main course. My lady prefers the Linguine Diavolo, while I'd rather have the Orecchiette Genovese. I realize we're in the Liberator, but the entourage is so perfectly set up that I could easily forget. “No Sander, stay here, forget about the ship, she runs herself”, Selina reprimands me. And she's right. I switch off the real world, and submerge I the dream together with my one and only. I am aware that it is not the physical being I love, not just the RBE with serial number X42169Y, but someone much more extensive, spread out over multiple dimensions. Across incarnations, she's appeared to me as various beings, sometimes even more than one at the same time, just to make our entanglements all the more tantalizing. In moments like these, when I look deep into those pitch black eyes, I realize the boundaries between her and me are non-existent. The One being I feel most at one with is perfectly identical with myself, without being the same. It is a feeling beyond words, similar to the taste of the zuppa, which our waitress is now serving. Not nouvelle cuisine, that's for sure, because one of the main ingredients of our particular soup is one day old bread. But I've always been a lover of down-to-earth dishes, and this one is no exception. “But how can you compare the love of a multitude of lifetimes to something as simple as a bowl of soup?”, I hear you say. That, my friend, is the result of living in a state where comparisons become less and less important. Joy is the important issue here, and given the right circumstances, it may be more joyful to savor a bowl of soup, instead of spending time with your very own twin flame. But do you know what really tops it off? Enjoying that bowl of soup with your very own twin flame! ;-)

As we finish it, the sun dips down below the horizon, and the ever darkening expanse of space gets littered with stars. Like in the movie industry, I've fidgeted with the hologram's parameters to increase the star density, making for a far more agreeable atmosphere.

Perfectly timed, our waitress serves us the Linguine Diavolo and the Orecchiette Genovese. She does make the mistake of aiming the spiciest dish for me, not figuring Selina to be such a 'hot' lover. That error is easily corrected however....

I cherish the small, shell like pasta, with the strong flavor of garlic, and the crispy pine nuts. It really is one of my favorite dishes. “Are you breathing fire yet?”, I ask my lady. Selina smiles, and scoops up another fork full of her linguine: “You'd better not kiss me now, you'll be scarred for life!”

“Do you figure we'll ever get back to our old universe again?”, Selina asks. I look her in the eye, and have to admit I'm not sure yet.