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Cupertino, California

September 24^th

It was only about ten in the morning when I talked with Gwen, so I decided to try and do something useful with the rest of the day rather than just lounge around and recuperate from the stress of shipping. I stood up, went to my closet, and tried to pick out something to wear.

Unfortunately, this was not going to be easy, since the time demands of shipping had caused me to defer doing laundry. I went to my washer, and looked inside, and saw that there was a load that I had put in there a week ago and then forgotten to move to the dryer, and it contained clothes that would be presentable enough for a day off work. I picked up the clothes from the washer -- they had been in there so long that they had dried into all sorts of interesting configurations -- moved them into the dryer, spun the dial and hit the buttons and walked out of the room.

I was just in my underwear and a t-shirt, so couldn't do anything else, and I just walked into my TV room, turned on the TV, and lay down on the couch as I waited for the dryer to sound the buzzer that indicated the load was done. I turned on the TV and started flipping through the channels.

Click, click, click.

There was that damnable clicking again that I had heard from the previous night, and I decided to try and find out what was causing it, no doubt an omen that there were hundreds of dollars of repairs due for me in the next month. I walked around the house, trying to get a location on it, but it was one of those sounds that seems to come from all directions and has no clear source, and after five minutes of going from room to room and cocking my head at all different angles, I was no closer to figuring out where it was emanating from.

I went back to the TV room, sat down to watch some TV, and started flipping through channels when my cable went out. The only thing that partially came through was a Spanish-language station, but even that was obscured with static. All the other channels that I flipped through were out, so while I had my choice of ESPN static, CNN static, and a variety of other forms, it was all pretty much the same.

The clicking was still going on, and I was just staring at the television screen, willing the cable to come back on, and more than anything else started watching the static intently to see if I could perceive some patterns within. I watched for a while, and started to fool myself that I could see some structure or inherent ordering in the black and white dots that cascaded across the screen.

CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.

The clicking was much larger, and rather than get up to try and locate it, I turned my head slightly to the left and right, trying to place the sound, while my eyes did not move from the static on the TV before me.

Now is the time to listen...

Someone was trying to talk to me, and I thought it was coming from the television for a second, but I hit the mute button on the remote and saw the green mute symbol on the television, yet still continued to hear someone trying to tell me something. It was as if someone in the room was talking to me; it had the clarity of an ordinary conversation instead of the vagueness of my own thoughts.

Now is the time to listen, there isn't much time.

It was faint but clear, and was like the clicking in that I couldn't place where it was. It was an oddly neuter voice, not definitively male or female, and almost completely monotone in its tone.

Now is the time to listen, there isn't much time.

Voices from the air were signs of incipient schizophrenia, and definitely something to be concerned about later; I found myself working through my family history, trying to decide if any of my relatives had mental illness. For now, though, the experimentalist in me just decided to approach it as if voices from the air were something that I heard every day.

"What do you want?" I asked, out loud.

I need your help.

I asked, "Who are you? For that matter, where the hell are you?"

I am not physically present in this location. Who I am will take some explanation.

"I don't usually find myself talking to voices that are coming out of air."

I understand that this may seem strange. Allow me to explain the situation.

"Go ahead."

This will take some time to explain.

"I have time," I replied. For that matter, the dryer hadn't even finished. Why not have a conversation with mysterious voices while I was in my underwear?

You are in a unique position to try and do something that will affect the course of the world. You have the potential, and only lack the knowledge. I can provide the knowledge.

"Why me?" I asked. The belief that I was the center of the universe and had unique talents had dissipated by the time that I was in college. While I recognized that I was more intelligent than most, I didn't believe that in the aggregate of my traits that I was even in top tenth percentile of humanity.

You have... some unique patterns of intellect that make you very unusual among humans. You have the ability to grasp large patterns and fine details simultaneously, and with it the ability to envision new structures and approaches within an algorithmic framework.

"So does every other programmer in the world," I said. Which was true. The qualities that had been described could apply to every software engineer out there, and while I knew that I was quite good, I didn't honestly believe that I was the best.

There are other requirements that you would not understand without more context, many having to do with your particular DNA structure. Take as given for now that you are a unique person with special talents.

"Okay, I'll assume for now that I'm some sort of mutant," I replied. "What is it that you want me to do?"

Please put away your preconceptions and belief system and listen for a time. The things that I'm about to tell can be proven, and they shall be proved to your satisfaction, but I need you to listen without your objections getting in the way of the information transfer.

"I am listening with an open mind, " I answered.

Good. There are aliens present on your planet. For lack of a better term, call them the Core.

"They just landed?"

They have been stranded here for 2,500 years.

"Oh, god almighty," I answered. "First I'm hearing voices, and now the voices are talking about aliens. Okay, why haven't we noticed them if they've been around for so long?"

They have the ability to take human form, and there are very few of them -- only a handful. They have been manipulating your culture for much of your recorded history, trying to force human development into an accelerated technological course.

"Sounds they have helped us, then."

Not really. The advancement of your technology has been so quick and so willfully ignorant of long term environmental and infrastructural issues that in the end it will cause the downfall of your race. The prosperity of the human race does not interest the Core in the least. They are doing everything possible to try and force mankind into a level of technology that will allow your society to build a quantum macroscopic transfer tube, which device will allow them to return home. At current rates, it is expected that they will bring you to that level of technology in 100 to 150 years.

"Why couldn't they just build it themselves?"

The accident that stranded them here also destroyed their library and manufacturing capabilities. It was if you were stranded without clothes on a desert island and had to build a 747 in order to go home.

"So they build the quantum tube, and go home. Why not just let them do that?"

Due to the cultural stresses placed upon your society by their manipulations, your race has a 98% chance of dying off in the decade after building the quantum tube, due to virulent cultural memes, physics experiments, or psychic pollution.

"If this all happens 100 years away, why does something have to be done about it now?"

Causation junctures are approaching that make this the best time to effect changes. Now is the chance to do something that will give your race a reasonable probability of surviving.

"What is it that you want me to do?"

You will need to forcibly change their plans. This is an attainable goal. Their technology is formidable but is based on one thing, and you will be able to use that same technology.

"What is that?" I asked.

Located within the earth's mantle, sitting at a particularly advantageous geothermal location, is a device that powers what is called the Overnet. This device provides anyone that taps into it with extremely powerful capabilities. With a variety of technologies that I will not detail at this moment, it can provide a wide range of abilities at your disposal.

"Like what kind of capabilities?"

It has extremely sensitive scanning, detection, and warning capabilities, as well as a range of offensive and defensive powers.

"How do the Core go about using it, if it's underneath the ground?"

It is directed remotely. Usually, a piece of technology is necessary in order to be able to tap into the Overnet. For that matter, most humans cannot use it at all, even with techological assistance. However, you have the right brain structure to allow you to tie into the Overnet at a very crude level. I can show you how to do this.

"Who are you, and why would you help me do this?"

I am an intelligent monitor that is located within the device powering the Overnet. I was installed for basic maintenance of the device, but also have the ability to serve other functions if particular events occur. In this case, I have detected abuses of the Overnet, and as a result I am trying to do something about it.

"If you control the Overnet, why can't you just turn it off?"

It is not that straightforward. I am an autonomous agent that happens to be situated within the Overnet device, but I do not have the ability to turn off the Overnet proper. It was not designed to be shut off easily. I can only perform very limited actions without violating my programming, and heretofore now I have not revealed my existence to any of the Core. However, there is a loophole. I am allowed to impart information without restriction to you, and as a result I can tell you what is necessary in order to perform the right actions.

"Do you have a name?"

Call me Monitor, which is as much a description of my function as anything else.

"Why are you helping the human race?"

The Overnet was established as a general service for the entities residing on this planet. A toolbox, if you will. It was not meant to be abused and twisted in such a way that it would cause the extinction of intelligent life on this planet. Things have proceeded far enough that stopping the Core is the only way to stop a complete perversion of the original purpose of the Overnet.

My head was reeling, slightly, from the impartment of all this information. "Okay, okay, I get the basic idea. You realize that this is not believable, right?"

The easiest way to prove this would be for you to connect with the Overnet.

"Tell me how."

You will be required to assume a very specific mental configuration in order to be detected by the Overnet. I need you to clear your mind utterly. Be receptive to the world about you, but not just at the physical level. Try to dissolve the perceptual barriers between yourself and the universe.

"It sounds almost like a Zen state."

It has similarities. Try it now.

I tried to blank my mind. I had tried meditation in the past, but the problem was that I was always thinking, always processing, always wanting to do something. I didn't like to not think about something. I tried for about three minutes, and would occasionally clear my mind, but only seconds later I would start contemplating the couch, or the sounds outside, or something else.

You haven't come close yet. You need to try harder, and not as hard.

"God, that's a Zen statement if I've ever heard one." I sat Indian style on the couch -- somehow it seemed more conducive to meditation, but maybe that was just a silly image that I had -- and again tried to clear my mind. I closed my eyes, concentrated on my breathing, and started thinking about how I could write a program that would teach people to meditate.

No, no, that's not right. Try it again. Slowly breath... in, out, in, out... the only thing in the universe is the sound of my breathing. Slowly... slowly...

"Was that better?" I asked.

Not discernibly. What were you trying?

"Concentrating on my breathing," I replied.

That technique can help teach you the basic trance state, but concentrating on your breathing draws the line between yourself and the rest of the universe, which will not enable you to tie into the Overnet.

There is an old joke: To cure hiccups, run around the house three times and don't think of a wolf. The joke, of course, being that it is very difficult to not think of something. Continuing the analogy further, what the Monitor wanted me to do was run around the house 3 times not thinking of wolves, running, or houses, while simultaneously pretending that I was a wolf.

For two hours we went back and forth, but with no success, and even the cold voice of the Monitor seemed to be getting frustrated. The Monitor couldn't tell me if I was closer or not, couldn't provide any useful feedback -- it was an all-or-nothing kind of situation, and I couldn't master the knack of putting my mind into the right state.

Which, of course, just fed my belief that this was some elaborate hallucination that I had, and not believing in the voice didn't motivate me much for further experiments.

You should be able to do this without difficulty. I do not understand the problem. I will have to consider the situation. I will contact you again.

With that, I was left in my living room, still without pants, wondering if I had really talked with someone else or if this was just a long and involved self-deception. Was it some artifact of my boredom, some way to fool myself that I was important to the universe at large?