By Ronald Tower

Preface

Chapters

Chapter 1

George walked out behind the house and down a path into the woods. The pond was only a few minutes walk. Since retiring, he had spent a lot of time down there. He had a white plastic lawn chair where he would sit and watch and think.

It was a hot summer day but the humidity was not too high, and there was a nice breeze. He sat in the shade, and the leaves above his head made a sound like a crowd in a theater.

He looked around. There were some woodland sunflowers growing near by. The sun was shining down into the pond. The water was brownish, but clear.

He saw some movement. Fish maybe? No, it was like a bunch of white berries washing around. He got up for a better look. There was some reddish water plant with white berries on the ends of fronds attached to flexible stems going down to the bottom. The white berries suddenly surfaced. George jumped back, startled.

He was not too in tune with the plant kingdom really. He had never discriminated much between the different varieties of plants. What others might call weeds in his yard, he called wildflowers, and left it at that. But one thing he didn't expect was sudden movement from a plant in the water.

The white berries were floating on the water now. They were about half an inch across and seemed to have a filmy membrane. He got the distinct feeling of being stared at by fifty or so little eyes. But that was crazy.

The plant was still. It probably just came loose and floated up. It was still just floating there, so he sat back down and watched it for a while. Just some white berries floated there.

He looked around the pond and into the surrounding woods. Nothing else seemed different. Well, a little ways from the pond where some phone lines crossed his property, some reddish vines were growing up the poll, all the way to the wires. He hadn't noticed that before. But who knows, it could have been there since spring.

After a while, his mind drifted off to other things. His daughter had just given birth, a few months ago. His wife Jen was over there helping out. He was thinking of the paper he had been working on when he retired. He probably would never finish it now. He was through with papers and teaching and academic politics.

He thought of Jim Ferris back at the college. He was a botanist. He jumped up and reached into the pond to try to tear off a clump of the plant. But unexpectedly he felt a sharp pain and yanked his hand out. A bit of skin had been scraped from a finger. It was a little sore, but not bleeding. The plant was just floating there like nothing had happened.

George sat back down and watched it warily for a while. It was not the first plant to sting him or prick him or give him a rash. So he just decided to leave the crazy thing alone.

Ruth was in a funk. She sat late at night at her computer, monitoring a thin slice of sky. She believed in SETI. She believed that if there were advanced civilizations out there, they must send out an electromagnetic signature. But what if civilizations were rare? What if they rose and died out over tens of thousands of years? What if there were huge gaps between them? What if she was living in such a gap?

She went through the motions of her work, questioning her choices. She was smart. She was determined. She was willing to take risks. But she had been working in this field for over ten years with no results. Well, she had discovered the odd pulsar. That was something.

Normally she was just grateful that her funding had not been pulled. And she was fascinated by even the mundane mechanics of her work, let alone the staggering consequences if she were ever successful. But tonight she was in a funk.

The night wore on. A few hours before the end of her shift, she got a routine alert for a signal with a pattern. She set up to record it. A fairly complex pattern was repeating itself every few minutes. She quickly notified other observatories around the world and they confirmed the signal.

Over the next several days it continued. Then longer patterns. They kept up the recording over several months. The final pattern repeated itself over several days. Then it all stopped. They didn't know if something had come before since they had just started monitoring the source region.

Ruth was ecstatic and happily spent months trying to see if they had something. It definitely was a series of different patterns of greater and greater complexity repeating over longer intervals.

One hope is that a civilization would be deliberately trying to communicate with us and would build up some kind of syntax and semantics from universal physical constants, the structure of atoms, something we would have in common. But this signal seemed random except for the intervals that repeated.

It was almost as if the signal, if it was a signal, didn't want to be deciphered. But why would a civilization send a signal that they didn't want to be understood? Eventually the furor died down, interest waned and she could no longer justify spending more time on it, so she just saved her notes and speculations away with the raw signal capture and went on to another slice of sky.

Phil was boiling. His boss had chewed him out one more time, and he knew he had to put up with it. He had to maintain his professional facade. That was all that he really had. There was no one in his life. His wife had left him, claiming he was abusive. He never got the respect he deserved. He hated the world and everyone in it.

And here he was trudging home in this dismal neighborhood to his dingy little apartment, only time for a few beers because he had to get up early for that wonderful job of his. Damn them all, he snarled under his breath.

He cut through the park, and then he received the final insult. Here was this little guy sitting on a bench, looking so smug, so carefree. The little twerp. He looked around. He was aching for some violence.

"You don't belong here, do you?" He moved close.

The little man didn't move. He didn't challenge Phil in any way, but he also didn't appear to be at all afraid.

Phil looked at him in confusion. He wanted to beat the little leprechaun to a pulp, the arrogant little bastard, but he couldn't seem to raise a hand against him. And in the air there was a smell faintly of cinnamon and oranges. Phil thought of his Aunt Jenny. She had really got him, the only one who did.

The little man looked at Phil intently, studying every expression, his breathing, the smells coming off of him, the degree of perspiration, the look of his eyes, his clothing, the texture of his skin.

"I am just passing through," he said.

Phil snapped out of it.

"Well, you should get a job, you homeless little twit!"

The little man did not attempt to correct Phil, just let him rant. And in the air a small whiff of vanilla and sunshine.

Phil waved a dismissive arm, and went on his muttering way.

Joshua Green sampled the waves. Yes, Joshua Green, he thought. He was still absorbing, tasting the nuances of that identity.

The memesphere settled in on him as he allowed himself to open up to it, at least to its electromagnetic traces. The strangeness saturated him. He thought of home.

Our little planet is dense with meaning. We know it deeply, and we know each other. But the biosphere is thin and cold space presses in.

But these beings here. They seemed almost blind at times. Closed in. Limited to one or two threads. Exposed. Obvious. But no, he must not patronize. A classic mistake. He reconciled the mistake.

He looked up to the sky. There was much light pollution. He could barely see the stars, the cold dark of the void and the dust between them. So long out there, so long. But to him it had been like sleep.

Light limits us. The radiation of space kills us. Robots cannot be us. So we listen to the light. And on beams of light we spread.

He was feeling this body. Adapting it. The parallel systems dispersing out to virtual invisibility. Soon a hospital visit would be no problem for him.

He did not feel morally superior to them, just different. He must find his place soon. He sampled the waves for occupations, social roles, social locations, organizing principles.

He was by the sea. He could smell it. It was a pleasant smell to him. The air was blustery and warm. He could feel the molecules slide over his skin. He enjoyed it. Light was starting to glow pink on the horizon. A beautiful world really. He would be at home here. But eventually he would have been at home anywhere.

We hide, we learn, we blend, we defuse. And as the aggressive ones look placidly on, time and population do their remorseless work.

No, he did not feel morally superior to them.

Chapter 2

"Well, I suppose some introductions are in order." John Gordon smiled and looked around the room.

It was a nicely furnished conference room. Three other people sat around a large wooden table. They glanced at each other.

"First, Dr. George Kossack. Dr. Kossack is a well know philosopher. He is responsible for our little find." He pointed to a small man with graying hair, some brown still in it. His beard was grayer.

"And Dr. Ruth Smiley. I am sure Dr. Smiley wonders why she is here, but since I have contributed some significant cash to her SETI program I was able to prevail upon her." He smiled at her, and she smiled back, tolerant, in fund raising mode. She wore a nice gray suit, but with socks and Birkenstocks. She was rather plain looking, but had an intensity about her, and radiated a sense of calm intelligence.

"Finally, this is Phil Stockman, from Morris Investigations. He has done some work for me in the past. Very good at finding people and what they are doing." Phil nodded briefly.

"And as you know, I am John Gordon. My main job is President of Gordon Biotech, but I have a few side interests. This one, Gordon Associates, was actually prompted by Dr. Kossack's find."

"You can drop the Doctor. George is fine."

"For me too. Just Ruth."

"Good, good. Well then, George, would you mind telling us a little about your plant?"

After his initial run-in, George had kept a wary eye on the reddish plant. Gradually it had filled up most of the pond. There were also definitely some thick sections coming out of the ground and climbing up the phone poles. It must have a huge root system.

He mentioned it to Jim Ferris at the college, but initially he had not been that interested. Finally, George went down to the pond with rubber gloves and got a cutting and dropped it off.

The next morning Jim Ferris was at his door.

"Where's the plant?" He seemed flushed and excited.

"Well, out back, down the hill a bit," George said, a little bemused by the sudden interest.

"Let's have a look," Jim said impatiently.

They headed down the hill through the woods and then into the clearing where the pond was.

"What the hell!" George walked faster and looked around.

The plant was still there, but large parts of it were brown and crumbling, like it was slowly dissolving away.

Somehow Jim got a task force out there within a few hours. They were draining the pond and they had backhoes trying to quickly dig down to the root system without damaging too much. The plant continued to get browner over the next few hours. Jim was busily taking pictures and taking samples.

The next day when George went out, there were only a few brown vines and within a week all traces were gone. Still Jim came out and took more samples. The brown leavings still had a story to tell.

"Jim didn't tell me much, said it was very odd. Eventually he hooked me up with John here. I am hoping to learn more today about why everyone is so excited."

"You will. Thanks, George."

Gordon paused for a few seconds, and looked around.

"You all agreed to sign nondisclosures. That was just for what I will tell you today. Despite what you hear in the media, I am not trying to patent nature. I agree that it is our common heritage, but I do want to protect the extensive research I have already funded on this plant. I started Gordon Associates to do some more research. So I am committing major resources to this. Before I continue, are you all still OK with the nondisclosures?"

"I still agree about your work, but nature is nature. If this is something truly new, it should be known," George said.

"It will. It will. But to the letter of the agreement?" He looked around and each person nodded.

"OK, I have a little presentation to give."

Gordon set up a laptop with a projector and dimmed the lights.

"Jim Ferris has received some research grants from Gordon Biotech, and when he saw the nature of the find, he knew he needed more resources. He contacted us."

Gordon showed a picture of George's pond after it had been drained.

"It was huge. At the bottom of the pond was an extensive root system. It went ten feet deep and spread over a 50 foot radius, well beyond the pond."

Gordon clicked to a picture of one frond.

"The internal structure was like nothing we have seen. We are not sure it is really a plant. At least not totally a plant. When we examined these fronds, we found something very much like nerve cells. Like from an animal."

George and Ruth leaned forward intently. Phil glanced off to the side and looked bored.

Gordon clicked to a picture of a browning trunk going up a phone poll.

"And these fronds penetrated the phone lines." He paused. "Like a phone tap."

George and Ruth looked at each other.

"Oh, there's more."

He showed a close up picture of a large mass about 2 feet across down in the bottom of the pond.

"This mass is almost entirely made up of those nerve cells. By the time Dr. Ferris took this picture, it was already decomposing rapidly, but he was able to preserve a few samples for us to do an analysis. Even those decomposed within a few weeks. We couldn't preserve them. We don't know why. Even freezing didn't help."

He then clicked to a picture of another mass down in the pond bottom.

"This structure is 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, oblong. We did extensive DNA analysis on the whole plant, but this was different. The structure itself had the same genetic structure as the rest of the organism. But there were traces here of other DNA. Human DNA."

George snorted. "What are we talking about? Pod people? The return of the fifties sci-fi movie, come to my back yard?"

Gordon didn't even smile. "No. But you will want to hear this, George. It was human DNA, and it was your DNA."

"What!" George jumped up, ready to walk out. This was too much.

"It had been modified somewhat, but you are the source."

George sat back down.

Lunch had been brought in. Gordon had left the room to take some calls. Phil also left after quickly eating. Ruth and George were left in the room by themselves.

"Strange, huh?" Ruth ventured.

"It's a ridiculous joke. I don't know what Gordon is trying to pull."

"Are you staying?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, maybe more will get sorted out this afternoon."

There were a few more minutes of silence while they both worked on some very good cheesecake.

"You know, I am familiar with some of your work," Ruth said.

"Really? What?"

"I studied exobiology as well as astronomy. And your book, Alternative Ontologies, was a favorite among the exobiologist grad students."

George laughed. "Well, that explains the ten copies that were sold besides the ones to my own graduate students."

"In exobiology and in SETI we do try to imagine how ET might think. The categories might be very different from ours."

"So, is that what we have here, ET?"

"You don't seem to credit the idea much."

"Do you? There is the small matter of the speed of light and all that space. And despite the dreams of sci-fi writers, I don't think there are any magic wormholes"

"Probably not. And if there were, how could an organism survive them? And without them, how could the organism survive the prolonged exposure to radiation? And what civilization could afford to send a multigenerational ship? And could they really put organisms asleep for a hundred or a thousand year trip? It does all seem pretty unlikely. But I am convinced there is a good chance for signals from some distant civilization. Thus, SETI."

"I have been following SETI. Something may come of it. But what are we talking about here?"

"I think Gordon thinks it's some competition. That's why he has his industrial espionage talent here."

"But, why us?"

Gordon stepped back into the room. "Because it may not be just my competition. I don't know what is going on. Gordon Biotech is still looking at the more mundane explanations. I started Gordon Associates to explore the more distant possibilities, on the quiet. I don't want to look like a UFO nut. Because I agree with you both that the idea of ET in a space ship seems pretty unlikely. But there could be something very odd here. And there was something in that gestation structure. Something grew there."

"Cloning?" Ruth asked.

"Some kind of genetic engineering. And I want that technology."

The industrial espionage talent came back into the room.

"Good, Phil, you're back. Now we can continue. Go ahead and tell Ruth and George what you found out."

Phil sat down and got some papers from a case and looked briefly at them.

"Mr. Gordon defined the problem as follows. An adult male is set down, naked, with no money, contacts, or transportation by the pond behind Dr. Kossack's house. Where did he go and how?"

He said this in an even, neutral tone, without a trace of irony. He may have thought Gordon was cracked, but he knew who was paying the bills.

"First, I checked if any naked men, or at least any strange men, had been spotted in the area in the last year or so. Nothing. Then I checked for burglaries, car thefts, etc. It is a rural area and doesn't report much crime, but strangely, on one night ..." He checked his notes. " ... November 23^rd, there were three break-ins within 5 miles of the pond. Two of the houses were occupied at the time, but no one saw or heard anyone. Some cloths, a backpack, and $950 total was missing, also some food, portable stuff. That was it.

"No cars were reported stolen. It could be that the burglar was not our man, but assuming he was, where did he go from there? The towns around there are small. They were canvassed and no strangers were seen. We canvassed gas stations, asking patrons if they had seen hitch hikers. None for that night or the week after. He could have hiked out over land and caught another highway or got to the closest big town."

"That's all so far. Of course, this was all some months back."

Phil leaned back, and there were a few minutes of silence. Gordon looked around at each person.

"OK, let me lay it out. I am assuming to begin with that a human male was gestated in that pond. I want to meet him. I want to find out how it was done. I want to find another example of a plant with animal nerve cells in it. So the lines of investigation are first to find the man. Let's call him Sam. So first, find Sam. Second, find other plants. That's the project. I want you three to do it ..."

"What? Us?" George was incredulous.

"You would be a good team. He is a close cousin to you, George, genetically speaking. And we don't know how he will think. We need some creative extrapolation, and I have read your alternative ontologies work, too.

"Ruth, you have the exobiology, astronomy, and SETI technology background. You both are trained researchers. And Phil here is very good at what he does."

Gordon pulled out three pieces of paper from a folder on the table. He handed one to each of them.

"Read this over, and just think about it for a few minutes."

George looked at his sheet of paper. It was a job offer for a researcher, working for Gordon Associates. When he saw the salary, he looked over to Ruth. They both raised their eyebrows.

Phil was smiling. He was imagining throwing his job into Joe Morris' smug face. He looked at Gordon and nodded.

George and Ruth were still sitting there with stunned looks on their faces, but Gordon knew they were hooked.

Chapter 3

Joshua Green had been a troubled teenager. His parents fought and drank. When his father lost his factory job, he left the family. His mother worked, but made very little. Joshua managed to finish high school. He worked at a Burger King, then mowing lawns, then farm labor. He had a drug problem. By age 20 he had left no more electronic traces. His social security number was no longer used. And there was a small news report of a Joshua Green dying in a drug related brawl in Denver.

But now there was a new Joshua Green. Maybe his life could be redeemed. Homeless, five years older, with worn cloths, an old backpack. He still had $500 hidden away. He sat looking out at Tampa Bay. He was close to the airport. Planes were taking off and landing.

We spread like seeds falling on disturbed ground. We are the immigrant wildflowers that bloom in desolate places. But at last we find our place.

People liked the new Joshua. He was harmless, funny in a quiet way. He blended into almost any background.

Joe and his family had liked him. Joe had lost his job in a parts plant in Ohio. He was heading south, with a stop over at the Jersey shores. Joshua rode in the back of the van with the kids. Joe's wife yelled at the kids to stop jumping on poor Joshua, but she was laughing and not too serious about it. Joshua smiled and smelled like gentle befuddlement.

The old homeless drunks liked him, explained the ins and outs of homeless life in Tampa.

The librarians liked him as he sat all day reading everything and using the library Internet terminals.

Phyllis, the social worker at the homeless shelter, liked him. He could be a success story. He could make it back out.

"I don't have any ID. I lost it all. I don't know."

He was sitting in a small office at the homeless shelter. He had stayed there a couple nights.

"We can get a replacement for your social security card. You'll need that. We can help you get a job. Do you remember your social security number?"

"Sure, I remember."

Phyllis paused and gave him a long look.

"Are you using, Joshua?"

Joshua seemed puzzled for a moment, then said, "No, no. I used to, but no, not now."

"How did you get off it?"

"I just don't want that anymore."

He believed that he had had a problem and got off it, hiding in a park in Kansas City for days and weeks. He hadn't wanted it any more. This Joshua Green had never been to Kansas City, but he had read many back issues of the Kansas City Star. He had looked at maps and knew the place names. Some day he would go there to fill the story in.

"That's good. That's good, Joshua. I can help with this application. It's for a cleaning service. It's a night job, but it's a start."

He nodded, smiled meekly.

Chapter 4

Phil was driving back from another visit to the people who had the burglaries that night. He checked in with them every few months. It had been over a year. Always nothing. There had been a lot of interviews the first few months. After expanding his search to surrounding highways that were accessible by hiking through the mountains, he had finally found a convenience store that had seen someone unusual. It was a rural store and they had seen this small man coming down from a mountain and across a field. No one ever came that way. They got the best composite artist using the best composite sketch software. Gordon was sparing no expense. They got what the convenience store clerk thought was a very good likeness. He was a white male, in his mid twenties, 5' 5", slight build, brown hair, brown eyes. Matching the sketch to pictures of George Kossack as a young man made him look like he could be a close relative. The kid had stopped in and bought some food, energy bars, granola bars, bottled water, then headed down the road. Close by, he caught a ride with a van. No one saw the plates. That was it. There the trail ended.

He had spent many hours looking at the sketch. It reminded him of someone. He couldn't place it. No name. No destination. He did everything he could think of. He even covered news photos in case there was a match with the sketch. Gordon kept forking out the money. The guy really must be nuts.

George and Ruth continued with their "research". He couldn't follow a lot of it. At first, their "I am Sam" bull sessions were fun to sit in on. Imagine I am Sam. I am an alien running around in a body hatched by pond scum. I have a little money, no contacts, no identity. What do I do? The possibilities were endless.

They got additional details on the genetic analysis on the samples from the pond. They were still all hot and heavy about the nerve cells in the plant. Some freak of nature it sounded like. They had found a few similar reports of plants like George's. They went to each site, but even the brown remains were blown away by the time they got there.

Phil really could not imagine Gordon keeping their little circus running much longer. But now he had at least a little thread of something.

He pulled into a parking space in front of the Gordon Associates office deep in their nondescript office park, slammed the door and hurried inside.

George and Ruth were sitting at the conference table, looking at some papers, looking bored.

They looked up a little surprised. They were not used to seeing Phil hurrying or looking excited.

"You found something?" Ruth asked.

He walked over and dropped a large envelope on the table.

"Hold on." He went over to a cabinet and got some white cloth gloves. "Use gloves."

George put on the gloves, opened the envelope, and dumped out the contents. Three letter sized envelopes. George picked them up and looked inside. They were empty. They had been addressed by a computer printer.

"Post marked Tampa, Florida," Phil said.

Ruth put her gloves on and examined the envelopes.

"So?" she asked.

Phil smiled. He was enjoying holding out and making them guess.

"All three of the households that were burglarized received these envelopes in the mail a week ago. No note. Each had the amount of money that had been stolen, a little more, maybe for the other items, or interest. Who knows?"

"Did you get the money?" George asked.

Phil looked irritated. "No, it was spent or mixed in with other money, or deposited, but the envelopes. All three."

George looked pensive. "Yes, that's something."

"We need to get them analyzed for DNA. If it matches ..." she trailed off uncertainly.

"You do that," Phil said, still irritated.

"Be calm, Phil. At least it's something," George said. "More than we've had for a while."

"Can we find out where in Tampa they were mailed from?" Ruth asked.

"I'll look into it."

"I'll get the DNA analysis done," Ruth said.

"Why would he expose himself like this?" George asked, again with his pensive look.

"We'll see," said Phil, now switching out of his irritation, to business. He walked out. Ruth was on the phone with one of the Gordon Biotech labs.

Two days later, they were all three coming off a plane at the Tampa airport. It was bright and sunny outside.

The DNA on the glue had matched the samples close enough. It seemed slightly altered. Could this fellow alter his own DNA? But it was close enough. He could well be George's close cousin.

Phil had thought that just he should go down and see if he could trace the envelopes, but Gordon had thought they should all be on hand.

"I'm going directly out to the Guffy Investigations office. See how they are doing canvassing with the sketch. I'll see you later at the hotel."

Phil split off from them toward the auto rental. They continued on to the taxis.

"I guess we're still assuming he got here hitchhiking, not through here." George mused.

Ruth looked over at him. Maybe George was starting to identify a little too closely with Cousin Sam.

George smiled. "I know. I know. It's not like he is lurking around every corner."

"Any more thoughts on why he mailed the money?" Ruth asked, just making conversation. Good thing she liked George, they had to feed off of each other so much.

"Still the same. You don't want to assume the same thought processes that we would have, but the only thing that makes sense is that it is some kind of moral impulse."

She just nodded.

They got their taxi and headed out of the airport. They were staying at a nice place on one of the beaches.

Three days later, the canvassing was still underway. George was holed up in his hotel room with his laptop.  Ruth was spending some time on the beach. It was late afternoon. She noticed a young man off to her left looking out to the Gulf.  He turned and looked at her, and she froze, paralyzed.

She jumped up and ran over to him, uncertainly. He looked up at her with a bemused expression.

"Are you ..." she started to ask in a shaky voice, but what was she going to ask?

He smelled nice, like spices, like cinnamon maybe. Was she really close enough to smell him?

Why was he here? Had he followed Phil, watched them?

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"No, no, I just thought ..."

"You looked afraid."

He got up and was brushing the sand from his shorts. He had on a tee shirt that said, "Darwin was a piker". What the hell did that mean?

He was starting to walk off.

"Hey, you live around here?" She was several years older than him, but older women can hit on young men, right? She didn't want to loose him.

"What's your name?" she asked, getting frantic as he made motions to leave.

He smiled at her placidly, and started to walk off.

What could she do? She started to follow him, but then that just looked weird. She tried to look like an abashed cradle robber and walked the other way digging for her cell phone.

"Phil, Phil. He's here! Where? Here at the beach by the hotel. Yes, it's got to be him. It's too close. What the hell do I do?" She listened.

"OK. OK. Get here!" She closed her phone and ran toward the beach exit that he had used.

She decided to just brazen it out. She had acted weird enough to be capable of anything. He was at the end of the beach access close to the road. She ran to catch up. When she got to the road, he was getting on a bus. She ran over and got on too.

She called Phil again and whispered, "On a bus, Gulf Boulevard. Just turned on Causeway."

She listened on the phone and looked back. He was looking back at her with a slight smile, like any young guy with an older woman stalker. Like it happened all the time. She blushed profusely and closed the cell phone.

She heard the bell ring, and looked back. He was standing at the back door. When the bus stopped, he got off, next to a small park.

The bus doors were closing. She jumped up and moved quickly to the front.

"Oh, sorry. This is my stop."

The bus driver gave her a dirty look but opened the door. She got off and looked into the park. She didn't see him. She ran into the park. It was small. She walked rapidly around the different paths. He was gone. She exited onto a street. No sight of him.

She slumped down on a bench, got out her phone again.

"Phil, he got off. I got off too, but he's gone." She listened. Apparently Phil was not happy. "Ulmer Park, on West Bay."

Another two weeks went by. Ruth was sitting at the small table in George's room. There was a knock. George let Phil in.

"Well, we got a name. Joshua Green. He was running a cleaning service in Tampa. Had just been there a little over a year. A lot of turn over, but he stayed and was running the place within 9 months. Was going to a local community college, majoring in biology." He smirked.

"Where is he now?" George asked.

"Cleared out. Didn't even pick up his check."

"But we have a name now," Ruth ventured.

"Yeah, if he doesn't ditch it. But it's a good identity for him. We found a social worker who had helped him. He's a real chameleon. I left her with her illusions about him. Told her it was a missing person case."

"Why did he contact Ruth like that?"

"It doesn't really figure for me either," Phil said.

"Maybe, he needed to get close. Physically." George ventured.

"He smelled like cinnamon," Ruth said.

"What's wrong with you?" George asked, looking at Phil.

Phil looked like he was having a seizure.

"Now I remember where I saw that little ..."

Ruth and George both stared at him.

"I have been having this feeling that I met the little guy somewhere before, ever since we got the sketch. Now I remember. It's what you said about his smell.

"Before Gordon contacted me about this job, just before, I was walking home back in Jersey. I was in a bad mood, maybe a little drunk, maybe feeling like a little violence. You know?" He looked at them like there was a chance in the world that they knew.

"I saw this little man sitting on a bench. I thought he was some homeless bum. And well, don't take me wrong, I was a little drunk. I flew off the handle and I was going to teach the little dork about getting a job.

"But when it came to it, I couldn't lift a hand against him. And there was this spicy smell, like you said, like cinnamon or nutmeg or something. Strange ..."

George and Ruth looked at each other.

"We speculated about pheromones," Ruth said.

Phil gave them a blank look.

"A way of influencing another organism's behavior by chemicals transmitted as odors."

"Yeah, I've heard of that. You think he's got it?"

"We all have to a certain extent. It is tied in with sexual attraction, for example, but it could have other uses, affecting someone else's mood perhaps."

"So, that's how he made you act like a dope?" Phil said offensively.

"Hey, look, I'm not a damn private eye, like you. Besides we have no authority to stop him, or question him."

"Yeah, I wish Gordon would loosen up the reigns a little and let us bring the cops in, or someone in the government."

"You think they would believe any of this?" George asked.

"You'd be surprised what they'd believe, if you told the right people. But for now, we have to keep this private."

Chapter 5

Joshua walked through the bus station and out into the mid afternoon heat. Part of him was just walking, carrying a duffle, looking around for the city bus stop. Other parts of him were doing their work as well. It was fortunate that he was here when their wireless networks were spreading rapidly. He could access their memesphere easily.

He understood his mistakes. He had reconciled his own systems. He had not thought that they would find him so quickly, or that they would care to find him, or to consider what he might mean to them. Usually living things follow their natural paths and will deviate only when severely provoked. How had he provoked them?

We balance. We follow the abundant. We adjust. Yet scarcity has driven us to strange worlds. Beware scarcity hunger, violence grows out from it.

But these ones, even their agriculture was based on scarce energy sources. Even to grow their memesphere they were dependent on scarce metals. And now he had become a scare resource to them. He smiled. He liked them. His kind always liked them.

The city bus pulled up, and he got on. He knew where in the city to go. By night fall, he would settle in to his new place.

Ruth, George, and Phil were sitting around the conference table at the Gordon Associates office. Gordon was pacing back and forth. It was some months since the Tampa episode.

"We have to be ready the next time." Gordon was unusually agitated. He had put up with a lot for his goal. He knew how to bide his time. But even he had his limits.

"We have no leverage over him. I hate to bring it up again, but if we got the authorities involved ..." Phil ventured.

"No, no, a thousand times no. First, I don't want to just turn this over to them. I hope to get some return from my investment. We need to keep this quiet. Second, I don't want to look like some kind of alien chasing nut."

"Are we sure he is an alien? He looks a lot like a recovered drug abuser that is making something of himself, a true inspiration." Phil was getting irritated himself.

"You know that's not true. You know that's not true."

Ruth and George were keeping quiet. It was an old argument. They knew where it was going to lead.

"I'm just saying, even the physical evidence we had, the samples, they are all useless now, just some chemical soup. We can't prove anything."

"We don't need to worry about those samples. We have a real, live sample walking around somewhere. That's what I want."

Gordon sat down. You could see him calming down. Ruth and George knew to just let him vent. Phil had to stir him up.

"OK, let's go over it again."

Phil pulled out some notes.

"He grew up in Denver. Graduated high school. Good test scores, but mediocre grades. Believable as someone who could start doing well in community college and work his way back.

"Drug problems. Reported dead in a street fight, but apparently not so dead after all. A period of homelessness. Told the social worker in Tampa that he dried out in Kansas City. The story checks if you don't know what we apparently know.

"Mother is dead. We found the father. He's in prison right now, robbery, a rough man. No brothers or sisters."

Gordon rubbed his nose.

"We need a DNA sample from the father. If he is closer genetically to George here than the father, that would tell us something."

"But, what are we going to use it for? We already know. Who are we trying to prove it to?"

Phil always played the counterpoint, but Gordon appreciated that, to a point. He liked to be challenged as long as those he paid ultimately just did what he told them to do.

"Just get it. Visit the old man in prison. Whatever."

Gordon looked around at the others.

"Where is he now?"

Phil smiled. He had a little plum. He hadn't told Ruth or George yet.

"Columbus, Ohio."

"What!"

"We found him again. Enrolled at OSU. Working at the medical center as a lab technician. At least, it seems to be the same Joshua Green. Doesn't seem to be hiding."

"OK, all three of you. Columbus is your new home for a while. Let's be a little more subtle this time."

Ruth walked down High Street across from campus. She went into one of the student bars where Phil had told her to go. She saw him immediately. He was sitting with a group of young people, drinking a beer, looking happy.

His academic career was progressing rather nicely. He took very heavy loads, tested out if he could convince a professor, and apparently he was very convincing. His grades were good, but not perfect. She wondered if that was deliberate. Was he really some kind of super brain?

She sat down at a table within sight of his. She sensed that he knew she was there. She ordered a beer and sat looking at the table.

"Hello, Ruth."

She looked up, but kept her cool this time.

"You know me?" she asked.

"I think we met in Tampa. Can I sit down?"

"OK," she said and he moved a chair around so they could talk without being overheard.

"How do you know my name? We weren't really introduced."

"I checked at the hotel later, before I left Tampa. Why are you following me around? It's strange you being here, no?"

"I'm a journalist. I talked to Phyllis, your social worker. You would make a great human interest story."

He smiled at her knowingly.

"I'm not that interesting, just another poor student working his way through school. A dime a dozen."

"Maybe I could help with some scholarship money."

"From Gordon Associates." He let it drop there between them.

"OK, yes, from Gordon Associates. I do some freelance journalism on the side. Gordon Associates is my day job."

"I don't really want to be in the papers. I am just minding my own business."

"Which is?"

"You know. Being a poor student."

"We could really arrange some scholarship money. Just in return for participation in some medical research."

"No, I'm fine. I don't really cherish being poked and prodded."

He sat quietly. Ruth hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this.

"Maybe, we could go out some time. You know, dinner and a movie?" Ruth smiled and made a little wink.

The joke fell flat.

"Nice to see you again, Dr. Smiley. I am a real fan of SETI research. I downloaded one of those programs that uses spare capacity to crunch the numbers. Nice public participation."

He reached out and shook her hand and then walked out.

Ruth just watched him go.

Chapter 6

Joshua was walking down a side alley toward his small apartment close to campus. It was late. As he turned a corner, a van pulled up beside him, and four men in biohazard suites jumped out and grabbed him. Joshua didn't bother to struggle. He knew he wasn't strong enough. The back of the van was sealed off from the driver, so there was no way to influence him by smell.

The van drove off at a normal speed. Quick and quiet in the dark. There were no windows in the back of the van. Joshua just sat looking at the face plates of the four men. They didn't bother to bind him. No one spoke.

Joshua could feel them driving through city streets a short way and then on to a freeway entrance ramp. They stayed on the freeway for 30 minutes or so and then exited. Ten minutes more on roads with a few turns, then onto a gravel drive or road. They stopped. Joshua could hear a door like a garage door opening and then apparently they drove inside and stopped.

His four escorts then opened the door of the van and led him out. They were in a parking garage near a door. They took him in the door. Nondescript corridors with overhead lighting. Then into a room with an examination table.

The four escorts stayed, and three more people in biohazard suits entered. One of them was probably female, which was confirmed when she spoke.

"We are not going to harm you. We just want to examine you. If you don't resist it will all be over soon."

Joshua did not intend to resist. Let them see what they so want to see.  He just looked at her calmly, and said nothing.

In this room they stripped him down and examined his naked body minutely. They took many photographs. Took some blood. Asked for urine. Got it. Then they offered him a robe. He put it on.

He was wheeled then to a series of other rooms. X-rays. MRIs. EKGs. Brain scans. Finally, they left him alone in a room with a bed in the center and a two-way mirror at one end. He laid on the bed and closed his eyes. They had a few electrodes attached to his head. He didn't tamper with them.

An expression that he appreciated very much went through his mind as he let his body settle in: hide in plain sight.

Several hours later, in the early afternoon, Ruth and George sat at a conference table in the same facility, glaring at Gordon.

"We needed the information," Gordon said blandly.

"This is illegal," George said.

"He's an alien. What rights does he have?" Gordon shot back.

"I think you are losing perspective. Yes, we want to know about him. Yes, we want to know what he is up to. But at least ostensively he is an American citizen, and we are not even the government. Even granted that he is from - somewhere else - he is still an intelligent being. We can't just ..."

George just threw his hands up. Gordon was looking bored at the speech.

Phil was also sitting at the table a little out of the line of fire. He leaned forward and spoke up.

"We weren't getting anywhere. He can just continue to pretend to be Joshua Green and what can we prove? We need some more solid evidence."

"Phil, I thought you got the DNA sample from the father," Ruth said.

"Sure, we got it. It didn't match. Now what? All he has to do is say that his mother slept around and that is not his biological father. We have nothing."

Phil leaned back.

"I am with George on this abduction," Ruth said. "But since we are here, what did the tests show?"

Gordon smiled. George didn't say anything. He wanted to know, too.

Gordon reached for the phone on the table and spoke into it. Soon a woman entered the room. Gordon nodded her to a chair, and she sat down.

"This is Dr. Sarah Jordan. She led the medical examinations. This is the first I am hearing the results myself. What did you find, Sarah?"

"He is human," Dr. Jordan said.

Phil threw up his hands. Gordon looked annoyed.

"Nothing?" Gordon asked, incredulously.

"Well, there were some things, but all within what I would think of as normal variation. Not all human bodies are identical, after all."

"OK, what are the variations?" asked Gordon, a little more hopeful.

"I would say that his nerve density is more than average."

"Nerve density?" Ruth asked.

"Yes, he has a normal brain and nervous system, but his nerve pathways are thicker than normal, with some - ah, swellings - distributed throughout the nervous system. Nothing that you would normally notice. Not indicative of disease. And he seems to have more nerves in the same space."

"I wish we could measure his intelligence without his cooperation," Gordon said wistfully.

Dr. Jordan carefully maintained a neutral expression. This was her job.

"The only other odd thing is the metal content of his bones. Again, not so much that you would normally notice. But I would sure like to get one of those bones into a physics lab."

"Why?" Gordon asked.

"They could be sensitive to electromagnetic waves," she said, again with her careful neutrality.

"I thought you said he was human. He sounds like a damn walking, wireless, biocomputer to me," Gordon blurted.

"He is human. Don't read too much into this. These are a little odd. But the DNA is human. Sure, there are some genes we don't know the function of, as with any human DNA. And these - variations - they are human variations. He is not a different species." She said the last part firmly.

"But, we still know that his DNA matches what was found in the plant," Gordon insisted.

"The plant samples are all gone," she said mildly.

Gordon looked at her quietly for a minute.

"I know, Doctor," he said. "Your conclusions?"

She looked at her notes, as if she needed to refer to them, buying a little time. Then she spoke.

"He is human. There are a few variations in his nervous and skeletal systems that would be interesting to study. But we cannot study those further without, ah, surgery." She rushed forward, "Which I don't recommend."

She paused some more, obviously uncomfortable in front of her boss.

"Dr. Gordon, I think we have kidnapped a human being, and - I am not a lawyer, but I think we are seriously compromised - legally."

Gordon looked at her thoughtfully.

"Sarah, am I going to have a problem with you?"

"No, Dr. Gordon," she said, after another uncomfortable pause.

"OK. Thank you for the report. I'll meet with you later to discuss next steps." He nodded.

Dr. Jordan got up and walked stiffly out of the room.

Later that evening Ruth was sitting in the observation room looking through the two-way mirror at Joshua Green. She had been watching him for several hours. He had yet to speak, although no one was trying to talk to him.

He had been fed. He had gone to the attached bathroom when asked if he needed to go, watched closely by a bulky figure in a biohazard suit.

He now appeared to be sleeping. He was alone in the room, but the security cameras were keeping careful watch.

The door to the observation room opened and Dr. Jordan entered. They nodded at each other and then they both looked through the two-way mirror.

"He seems to be a very active dreamer. The brain waves are very - energetic," Dr. Jordan said.

 Ruth nodded. Dr. Jordan sat down. They sat in silence for thirty minutes or so, watching him, each deep in their own thoughts.

Dr. Jordon got up. They looked at each other briefly, and Dr. Jordan went out the door.

Ruth stayed a little while longer. Then she sighed, got up, and walked out the same door.

Chapter 7

Joshua watched Ruth leave using the security camera. He had entered virtuality, which to him was a sort of lucid, waking dream. On a brain scan it would look like normal dreaming, but he could do this while walking around or performing other conscious tasks. His nervous system was truly parallel.

It had taken him little time to breach their network. Wireless networks were amazingly easy to interface to given his physiology. And the security protections were simple. They were so clearly at the very beginnings of virtual technology.

He chose a simple room as his internal construct. He sat at a table with a laptop. He liked to use their interfaces. It gave him more of a direct feeling of interaction. He could have easily set up a user interface translator but he actually enjoyed it better this way.

The first thing he went after was the security system. He could monitor the entire facility. The security system was extensive. He could see the alerts when doors opened and closed, when people passed their badges through scanners, and the cameras were integrated into the computer systems. He got familiar with the layout of the facility and studied the external views. The facility was out in the country, near farm fields. He could see the light from what was likely a truck stop or convenience store in the distance but well within walking distance.

He increased his inner time rate and spent several hours teaching a helper program to interface to the facility's systems and ran through his escape several times in virtuality under different scenarios.

The facility systems were networked to the main Gordon Biotech systems. He had previously prepared a secure data vault spread over a hundred systems he had gained access to. Any one would notice very little in the way of memory usage. He collected the needed video files and other records.

In ten minutes of external time he was prepared. He would wait until after midnight. There was still some activity in the corridors. Ruth, George, Phil, and Gordon were all on site. Ruth, George, and Gordon had gone to visitor rooms. Phil was still up and around, talking to the security personnel, looking things over.

There was no guard outside Joshua's door. Apparently they did not feel there was any threat of escape from him. He was locked securely into a biologically isolated room and was being watched by security cameras. He exited virtuality and gave most of his awareness to the room and to normal memories and thoughts.

Virtuality was just a workplace for him now, since there was no one to share it with. He could have populated it with many people, but that would be a mistake.

Virtuality is a medium. It connects us together. We work there. We create there. But do not roam far in those mists. Do not become of the lost.

So he just let his mind drift. He had many clear memories. He remembered a blue sunned world, deep in the forest in a grove of tall trees with purplish diamond shaped leaves.

He sat on a mesh platform high up. They now lived on the ground in houses with living bark walls, comfortable and cozy, but they still loved the trees.

He wore a simple, loose fitting shirt and pants of the same color shifting material. He skin was primarily a deep green, but colors rippled down his arms and across his face as he leaned back, feeling the sun. His broad face looked very much like a squirrel's face, but hairless and with eyes in the front.

His feet were dangling from the platform. Perhaps fifty others were scattered around at different heights on the surrounding trees.

They were all connected in virtuality for an elaborate performance. You might call it a game or a concert or a party. It crossed all those boundaries.

Joshua let the memory wash over him. Then the scene shifted to one memorable evening with his mating group. This was inside and very active. Skin rippled with subtle moods as they moved through many configurations of touch. One vivid memory of his hand caressing and the flushed traces of color on one of his mates as if his touch left behind tingling markers.

Some such groupings had a virtual component, but this one was all grounded in the sights, sounds, and smells of the real world. Outside, the night animals, and wind, and water dripping.

He felt a tinge of loneliness. He watched it calmly. He did not fight it. It dissolved under his attention. He must not let it grow. He was, as far as he knew, the only one of his kind here. He could never go back. Metaphysical loneliness was a real danger. Getting lost in the forgetful distance of some compensating virtuality was a real danger.

But the danger passed. And those memories. It was not clear if he was indeed the same person who had those experiences. They had been transmitted with the whole package that led to him. But could beams of light transmit a person? No one knew. It was a mystery that they had never been able to solve.

There was only now. He decided to sleep. He left one small part of himself to monitor the security system and then drifted off.

He woke up just after midnight. He felt light and refreshed. He checked the security system, then told the helper program to start. The camera feeds from the security cameras in his room switched to a recorded feed. He padded over to the door in his robe and bare feet.

The door clicked and he pulled it slightly open and looked out. He knew from the security cameras that the corridor was clear, but if he was fooling them with camera feeds, perhaps someone could fool him. His eyes verified that it was indeed clear.

He quickly went out the door and closed it. He ran down the corridor to a corner and looked around it. Also clear. He ran to a door. It clicked and he opened it. His cloths were folded on a table there. His wallet and other items were also there. He quickly got dressed and put the items in his pockets.

The door clicked again and he opened it, looked, then went out and closed it. He ran silently from corner to corner until he got to an external door on the other side of the building from the garage.

The helper program switched the external camera feeds that were covering the side of the building where he would exit to a recorded feed. The outside door clicked, and he went out. It was brightly lit.

He was about to run for the tree line when he heard a noise, and at the same time the helper program notified him that a guard was making rounds and had just exited a door around a corner. The door he had come out clicked and he hurried back in. The helper program switched the camera feeds back to show the guard slowly walking around the corner. He tried the door that Joshua had entered, found it locked, and moved on.

Joshua told the helper program to go ahead. The camera feeds were changed again, the door clicked and he went out. He listened for a moment, and then ran quickly for the tree line.

He went through the trees into a farm field. A road was visible a half mile away, and a convenience store a little down the road. He stopped for a moment to give final instructions to the helper program. It uploaded a small program into one of the facility's systems. That program would run for a few more hours and then disconnect the recorded feed to his old room and delete itself. The helper program then cleaned up any traces of itself in the facility systems and went dormant within a node of Joshua's nervous system, becoming a memory that could be called up again when needed.

Joshua ran at a comfortable pace diagonally across the field toward the convenience store. It was close to two in the morning. He went to the pay phone at the convenience store and called for a taxi. It would be a half hour or so before the taxi got there, so Joshua went in and bought some bottled water. He went out and drank it sitting on a bench.

A few minutes later a van drove up to the convenience store, and the driver got out. He froze when he saw Joshua sitting there. Then he tried to look nonchalant. He went back to the van and Joshua could see him open his cell phone and start talking. He got out and went into the store to buy some coffee, always keeping an eye on Joshua. He went back to the van and sat, watching Joshua.

Soon after that a taxi drove up. The driver of the van came out and looked helplessly on as Joshua got in the taxi. They were both in full sight of the store clerk, who was starting to get curious.

As Joshua's taxi pulled away, he saw another van speeding into the parking lot. Phil got out and ran over to the driver of the van. They both looked toward the taxi as it headed down the road and back toward town.

Chapter 8

Phil sat in a car and watched Joshua walking north on the other side of High Street. He had returned immediately to normal life after his escape. Well, he now did tend to stay in more public, well lighted areas. Apparently he didn't want to make himself that easy to recapture.

Phil sighed. There was no danger of that at this point. Gordon had told them to back off and watch at a distance while they all sorted through the aftershocks.

They still had no idea how he had escaped. No door alarms. And the security cameras had shown him in bed until they busted into the room after getting the call from the convenience store. Only then did the image switch to Phil and several others entering an empty room and then Phil running out as the others looked around in confusion.

Phil smiled wryly in the little guy's general direction. All that security and he had walked right out. He had something going on for sure. The Gordon security staff was in an uproar.

A couple students heading south greeted Joshua as they passed him. All smiles and looking back as they separated. Phil snapped a few photos. He was building up a file of Joshua's associates.

Joshua was getting out of range a little and Phil thought of following him, but decided instead to go home and get some sleep.

A few weeks later Ruth, George, and Phil all sat around a table in the new Columbus offices of Gordon Associates. They all had apartments in town paid for by the company. No one spoke. George was reading something on his laptop. Phil was looking at some photos and taking some notes.

Soon Gordon walked into the room carrying four thick folders and a video disk. He nodded around.

"Our boy's been busy," he said and passed around the folders.

He sat down and everyone opened their folder and started looking through the papers inside.

"The first one is the lawsuit he says, or his lawyer says, that he plans to file in Columbus municipal court for damages for physical and psychological injury due to medical experiments conducted by Gordon Biotech. He is seeking a money settlement and does not intend to file criminal charges - at this time."

"Well, he learned our legal system soon enough," George said in a mild tone.

"How much money?" asked Phil.

"Five hundred thousand dollars," Gordon said evenly.

There was silence in the room.

"Next in your files is a complete, and I mean complete, paper trail tracing back to Gordon Biotech the building where we took him, the van used, the personnel, both medical and security. I wouldn't be surprised if he could provide us with the medical reports and medical images from his stay."

Gordon got up and put the video disk he had into a player and set it so that they could all see it.

"This came with the paperwork. It contains security footage. Here is the van coming up and Joshua being taken out."

He paused the video.

"Notice that the license plate is clearly visible. The security people in the back are hidden by the biohazard suits, but the driver is clearly visible, as well as Joshua Green himself."

He resumed the video.

"Now we have him being led in. Here we have people getting in and out of suits. It goes on showing the medical procedures performed, him being locked in."

He fast forwarded the video and then resumed.

"Here's all of us when Dr. Jordan gave us her report. I have it muted, but there is audio."

He stopped the video and took out the disk.

"That's not all. Next in your folder. Here we have a complete paper trail for Gordon Associates, its relationship to Gordon Biotech, bios for each of you. He can make a complete and embarrassing case."

"Would he win?" Ruth asked.

"Our lawyers think so."

"Why only five hundred thousand? Why hasn't he filed it yet? Why no criminal charges?" Phil asked aggressively.

George said, "He doesn't really want to harm us in a big way. He just wants the money. He doesn't consider us to be a big threat to him, especially after we blundered this way. He doesn't want the publicity either, although I don't see how it would hurt him much. If we say we think he is an alien, we just look like idiots. But he probably doesn't want that idea associated with him either. He is trying to blend in, not stand out. If we don't say he is an alien, then it is just another case of an evil corporation doing experiments on innocent people to make some more money."

Gordon nodded curtly. "I have to say that I am considering paying it in return for an agreement not to file all this later. The damage could be much worse and he could have asked for more."

"Now what do we do?" Ruth asked. "I am more convinced than ever that he is an alien who was somehow gestated in that plant. How the plant got there I don't know. It would be nice if he would just tell us. It's so frustrating. He is right there, and we really can't get to him. We can't force him."

She looked at Gordon.

"You started down that road, but now what? Surely you see that that is not going to work."

"It still might have worked. As they say: 'There are ways to make you talk.'" He said the last part as a joke, but no one even smiled.

"Well, given my limits, how much I am willing to absorb bad publicity and expense, I think he has us tied up. I am still not willing to take this to the government. He now has a lot on us, and we have hardly anything on him.

"But I don't give up easily. He may still let something loose that we can use. I intend to keep Gordon Associates going as a sort of watchdog group. I propose that you all continue as professional Joshua Green watchers. We watch him, learn everything we can about him, short of making ourselves vulnerable to stalking charges.

"Let's go around the table. Your interest in staying in."

"Yes," Phil said.

"Unfortunately, I am hooked, but I want to spend more time at home, get pulled in when I can be useful." George said.

"No, problem. And you Ruth?"

"Yes, I am hooked, too. I would like to pull some SETI into it though, explore the question of, if he is really an alien, how did he get here."

"Again, no problem. As usual, you will have resources as needed. My goal is to understand him, especially from a biotech perspective."

He looked quickly at Ruth and George.

"I know he is more than a biotech specimen, but he has some biological tricks that I really want to learn."

He looked to Phil.

"He is still an undergraduate. What can we learn about his plans?"

Phil said, "I have been trying to cultivate a few of his associates. He has set his major as Biochemistry. He spends a lot of time in the lab, and at the agricultural fields. He is apparently interested in the cultivation of plants."

He paused for an ironic smile.

"He is well liked, does well, but does not come off as a show off. As George said, he blends in. He is already heavily into research and has a job as research assistant. He switched from the technician job he had at the medical center. He comes across as more of a fanatical gardener than an ivory tower scientist, but he is apparently very deep. I was able to get next to the professor he works for, on some pretext, and he genuinely admires him, and sees a lot of potential, but thinks that Joshua himself does not intend to stick with academia."

Phil paused.  "There's more in the reports that you all have access to. But bottom line, he is just a good student that people like who has a passion for plants."

"Find out what he is does research on. Low profile, but we want to know whatever we can."

Gordon paused, and looked around.

"So, we continue for the long haul. I really think if we keep at it we can learn something important. He seems to like the nonviolent approach. We'll take a page from his book. Knowledge is power."

No one said, "Boorah."

A week later the lawyers met. Joshua's lawyer got his cut, and Joshua deposited $465,000 in his bank account. The IRS was dutifully notified of the settlement.

Chapter 9

Janna Desai sat at a cafeteria table with Joshua and some of his plant nerd friends. They were laughing at some obscure joke about plant cells. She was an accounting major and couldn't follow it all.

She looked at Joshua. There was something about him. He was a small young man, fairly average looking. His skin was tanned from long hours in fields and gardens, but otherwise he was very white bread. He did have some of the features of an Indian man. Not that she was hung up on that. Her mother might prefer it, but they were in America now. She was second generation. She had been to India a few times, but this was her home. She looked like an average, pleasant young Indian woman, but she was totally Americanized in accent and outlook.

Joshua smiled at her, acknowledging that he appreciated her patience with the plant nerd humor. Later they would have some time alone.

She had first seen him on the Quad. He was sitting on a bench, deep in reading. When she walked by she noticed that he smelled nice, not the usual thing you notice. He had a pleasant sandalwood smell. It caused a generalized feeling of sensuality in her that she found surprising. It wasn't in any way tawdry, just pleasant, like earth, and children, and happy days of healthy pleasure.

She wasn't one to throw herself at men. She walked on. But she was always on the lookout for him. He was often in the library or on the Quad. She managed to sit near him several times.

One time he looked up and caught her looking at him.

He smiled.

"My name is Joshua. You?"

"Janna."

It was odd. She felt perfectly at ease. He always put people at their ease. It was that way with them from the beginning.

They just fell in together. He was polite, smiled a lot, in a shy sort of way. He was not the kind of man she would have thought she would fall for, not flashy in any way, or her image of a strong man. But he had his strength, she knew. And even now, sitting at the table, she felt a deep, pleasant sensation.

He was a conservative man in a way, didn't keep trying to get her into bed. It wasn't that he was repressed or puritanical in any way. They had spent many long hours caressing quietly, watching a video, or walking, or just alone in her dorm room when no roommates were there. Maybe he was just cautious. And she was in no hurry either. She couldn't quite figure him out, but she fell deeply into his world.

Her father liked him completely. Her father was a software engineer, and Joshua seemed to know a lot about it. They could talk for hours, with Joshua coaxing out one more detail or concept. Her father was really a quite brilliant software engineer.

Her mother was reluctant, but Joshua was such a polite young man, always pleasant and paying careful attention. And he was a good student, in the sciences, apparently with good prospects. What was not to love?

Apparently his parents were dead. That was a strange thing, but it happens. He had had a rough childhood, but had turned himself around. There was some mystery about it. She didn't press him.

They were on the Quad one day. It was early spring, a little cool, but the sky was bright blue.

"Would you join with me?" Joshua asked.

She was astonished.

"Join?"

He actually flushed and looked a little disconcerted, something she had never seen in him.

"Marry. Life partners."

"You want to get married?" she asked, smiling.

"Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. Would you marry me?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

And that was it. They planned it for after they both graduated, which was just one quarter apart. He wanted to take her on a long honeymoon, then they would settle right here. He had some ideas for a business.

George walked into Ruth's office, holding an envelope. She was holding a similar one.

"Did you get one too?" she asked.

They compared the invitations.

"Apparently Gordon and Phil got them too. They just called."

"Are we going to a wedding?" George asked, smiling.

"You bet."

The wedding was held at a Hindu temple in Columbus. Ruth, George, Phil, and Gordon all arrived together. They were greeted by Joshua himself.

"Thank you for coming. As you know, my parents cannot be here. Please come this way. If you would, can you be a part of the groom's party?"

They all smiled awkwardly and agreed. There was a white canopy outside the temple with a small fire burning at the front and center of it. Joshua led them to a staging area away from the seating in front of the canopy.

"This is where the groom's party will enter from," Joshua said and asked them to sit.

He went over to a middle aged black woman in African dress and they walked back together.

"I would like you to meet Phyllis Sanders. She is acting as my mother since my mother can't be here. She helped me to my new life."

"I think I have met you," Phyllis said to Phil. "I see you found Joshua."

"Yes, you were very helpful," Phil said uncertainly. She was the social worker that he had interviewed in Tampa. He wasn't too sure of his ground.

The rest of the staging area had some student friends and some of his professors. Everyone was in good spirits and seemed to be happy to be there. It was a beautiful early summer day.

Joshua was wearing a kafni, a long tunic hanging down to his knees, over a dhoti. He was holding a garland of flowers and a coconut.

The priest and the bride's party were gathering at the seating area in front of the canopy.

Joshua walked to the front and Phyllis organized the rest of the groom's party into a procession and they started walking toward the canopy.

Joshua was greeted by Janna's mother. She applied kumkum to his forehead. He bowed to her and gave her the coconut. She and Janna's father escorted Joshua and his best man to the canopy. The rest of the groom's party sat down.

Then Janna came out of the temple escorted by her uncle and some flower girls. She carried a garland of flowers and wore a red and white sari part of which was draped over her hair. She was very happy. Joshua smiled at her.

The priest announced that they were there to join these two in marriage, and Janna and Joshua sat down facing each other under the canopy.

A small chorus sang slokas for unity and a good marriage. Janna and Joshua stood and each placed the garlands on the other. They sat back down and there were some readings.

Then Janna's mother and father came up. Janna's mother washed Janna's hands and feet. Janna's father washed Joshua's hands and feet. They stood up again.

Janna's father then faced the audience and said, "I, Yogesh Desai, son of Satish and Prachi Desai, approve of the wedding of my daughter, Janna Desai, to Joshua Green."

Joshua and Janna faced each other.

Joshua said, "I, Joshua Green, take you, Janna Desai, into my heart as my wife."

Janna said, "I, Janna Desai, take you, Joshua Green, into my heart as my husband."

The priest spoke some words and then Joshua and Janna exchanged rings and the priest put a rope around their necks. They sat side by side and Janna's father put Janna's hand on Joshua's.

Phyllis Sanders came forward and sang a song for the new married couple. They then circled the fire four times, Joshua leading and Janna leading in turns.

They sat down, both hitting their seats exactly at the same time. There was laughter in the audience. Whoever had sat first would have been the boss of the marriage. Now it was both.

The priest spoke some more words. More slokas were sung. Joshua and Janna sat side by side and appeared the perfect couple.

Ruth and George looked at each other in amazement. Phil was sullen. Gordon actually seemed touched.

Later at the reception, when George congratulated Joshua, he asked him what his plans were.

"The wedding night," Joshua winked.

George had to laugh. It all seemed surreal, but it was a genuinely joyous occasion.  There was much laughing and celebrating. Joshua was perfectly natural in this setting. This was not what George had in mind when he thought of an alien invasion, but he knew in a deep sense that this was the essence of it.

Chapter 10

Phil came out of the elevator and walked over to the desk to check out. After he signed the credit card slip, the desk clerk asked him to wait.

"Here is a message for you."

Phil opened an envelope. In it was a long travel itinerary giving flights and hotels in cities across the world.

A note was clipped to the itinerary which said:

To save you some time.

J. Green

Phil smirked. He thought that Joshua had spotted him at Heath Row.

"Do you have a scanner?" he asked the desk clerk.

"Certainly," said the desk clerk and took the papers. Soon he was back with a key drive. Phil put it into a port on his laptop and copied the images in. He attached them to an email back to Gordon Associates. They would arrange the rest of his trip.

"Courteous young man," Phil said to himself, thinking of Joshua. Then he thanked the desk clerk and walked out with his two bags.

Three weeks later Phil sat by a window in a hotel in Jerusalem. Soon the phone rang and he picked up.

"Phil Stockman," he said.

"Hello, Phil," Ruth said over the line. "George is here, too."

"Hello, George."

"Phil."

"Well, as usual he has been a busy bee. I take it you got my email reports?"

"Yes, we have them," Ruth answered.

It was hot out and Phil had the window open. He liked hearing the sounds of the city, didn't like being closed off.

"So, what do you make of it? I would say that it is just a honeymoon trip, as advertised, but he seems to be pretty frenetic. So many cities. So many tourist traps. One or two days in most places. What's he up to really?"

"We've been thinking about it," George answered. "What's in common to all of those places?"

"Got me," Phil said, shrugging verbally.

"Lots of people. And people who themselves are moving around. It is almost as if he is trying to rub shoulders with the maximum amount of people from as many places as possible in the shortest amount of time. We're still thinking."

"How's Janna?" Ruth asked.

"I don't know what he told her. I'm sure she has seen me once or twice. But I try to keep out of their way, the fun loving kids that they are."

"Well, enjoy your trip," Ruth offered. "We'll call again once you are to Cape Town, unless something comes up earlier."

Phil hung up, and headed out. Might as well hit a falafel stand.

Two days later Phil drove his rental car into another nice tourist spot along the Sea of Galilee.  He was following their tour bus. He parked under a tree, went over to a vendor and bought some bottled water and a boxed juice, mango nectar.

He went back to his car, and sat. Both of his front windows were open and a hot wind blew across him as he dozed a little.

"Fascinating country."

He started up, and there was Joshua standing by the car.

"Thanks for the itinerary. It did save me some time." Phil said politely.

"Janna wonders about you. She thinks it's a little creepy."

"What did you tell her?"

"Couldn't think of anything good. Any ideas?"

"Afraid not. Some trip you have going."

"Yes, it's a beautiful world."

He stood looking out at an olive grove close by.

"Well, I need to get back. Just came out for some bottled water. A little warm. Got to keep hydrated."

Joshua smiled and walked over to the vendor, bought some water, and headed back to examine some more ruins.

Another hotel. Hong Kong this time. London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Jerusalem, Cairo, Lagos, Cape Town, Nairobi, Mumbai, Delhi, Taipei, Beijing, to name a few. Quite some summer, and now close to fall. Three more weeks left according to the itinerary. Phil was almost enjoying himself.

He knew the kind of bill he was running up. He wondered about Joshua. They did have some evidence that he had that Gordon settlement money well invested and was doing quite well with it, but this was some honeymoon.

He was waiting for his regular call with George and Ruth.

The phone rang and he picked up.

"Stockman."

"The usual suspects, Phil," George said.

"Any new ideas?"

"Well, yes, actually. Phil, have you been ill at all?"

Phil was pretty resilient and usually just slogged on through. But he thought back.

"I was a little sick in Cairo."

"Symptoms?"

"Like a sinus headache, a rash on the back of my neck. It went away in a few days. Wasn't worth mentioning."

"That was two weeks after London. Correct?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"Well, you are not the only one. Ruth?"

"Hello, Phil," Ruth said. "We have been monitoring news reports, any information we can get our hands on for things happening while Joshua was somewhere. But there was nothing unusual, no patterns that we could see.

"Then we expanded our search to anything that happened soon after he left a place, and something kept coming up. Your little illness."

"But that was nothing really."

"An identical little nothing that spreads like wild fire through each population center Joshua visits, about two weeks later, and then spreads out from there. Lots of cases, but it is mild, and it dies out quickly. No fatalities. So no one really worries about it. I think we may be the only ones who have noticed that it is a worldwide epidemic because we are the only ones who happen to be tracking the cause."

"Typhoid Joshua, huh?" Phil said sardonically.

"But the illness is mild, nothing, as you said."

"So, what does it mean?"

"Well, it is apparently extremely contagious. Assuming that Joshua really is the source, and tracking the rate of spread from that source, it should spread to most places in the world within a year or two. And no one will think anything of it."

"No proof again," Phil said dismally.

"We are not equipped for such a broad study. We'll try to get some epidemiologists interested without spilling the beans about Joshua. Gordon put someone on preparing a sanitized study that we can publish. We'll have to wait and see what comes of it."

"Do you think it is deliberate?" Phil asked.

"We think so, but as you point out, we can't really prove anything yet. But it is something concrete to work on."

"But why?"

"Let's think about it," George said, stepping back in. "He wants to spread some biological agent around the world. He himself is the carrier. He goes on a world trip to places where there will be lots of people milling around, airports, tourist destinations. It is a highly contagious agent. It spreads quickly. But it is mild, apparently does no real harm. What could he be doing?"

"Why don't we just ask the little twerp?"

"He'll just give you that amazingly neutral look he is so good at."

"Maybe some kind of global genetic engineering," Ruth offered.

"But what?" Phil asked, getting frustrated.

The call continued for another hour. The speculations got wilder and wilder, but what was the point? Phil was glad to hang up.

"To hell with it!"

He got undressed and went to sleep.

Chapter 11

Time passed and the Joshua watchers continued their delicate work. Phil sat in his car in the gravel parking lot of a park across from Joshua Enterprises. The lot was close to the start and end of a walking path through the woods. The path was rarely used, especially during the week.

Phil himself was something of a fixture. He sat there with his laptop with a broadband mobile card and his cell phone and watched who came and went.

Even Janna now accepted his presence as some sort of misguided industrial spying, or maybe some kind of strange obsession because of the settlement that Joshua had got for those terrible attempts to use him in their evil medical experiments. She might even wave to him when she drove in to the Joshua Enterprises lot like she knew he was just doing his job and if Joshua wasn't worried, why should she be?

Joshua Enterprises itself was a large old barn that had been renovated as offices and labs. There were several out buildings and farm fields spreading out around and behind it.

Phil had long since given up on feeling like an idiot. If Gordon wanted to keep paying, so be it. He had relocated to Columbus, closing down his old dismal apartment. Gordon Associates still paid for his Columbus place, and with that covered and the nice salary, he was finally saving for retirement. Not that he was gold bricking. He still had his professional pride. He did the best job he could under these very odd circumstances. He knew everyone who worked at Joshua Enterprises, all of both Joshua and Janna's friends, and even some of their friends' friends.

He even knew most of what Joshua Enterprises was up to, however mundane. He knew who the investors were, although they all seemed inexplicably pleased with themselves given how humble the whole thing looked.

While they still maintained the Gordon Associates offices in Columbus, Ruth and George mostly stayed home doing "basic research", but why should he question their scam?

Ruth was working on the SETI angle and related things, especially the issue of how did Joshua get here and from where. She was still tracking the Joshua virus. Gordon Biotech scientists had isolated the virus. It had indeed spread worldwide, but it apparently was harmless. So it had been difficult to get anyone to research it further. And there was no way to definitely tie it to Joshua. Had he spread it or had he caught it? There was no way of knowing. It was everywhere now.

George continued to try to imagine the "ontological patterns" of an alien intelligence, but he was spending more and more time enjoying his retirement.

Phil read some of their reports. He was sure they were having a swell time. They still got together once every couple of months in person in Columbus, when George could tear himself away from his granddaughter who was now in kindergarten and coming up close on first grade. Mostly it was a briefing and discussion of Joshua's recent activities and speculations about what it all might mean, if anything.

A car pulled into the lot across the road. Phil knew it was a local reporter. Joshua didn't exactly send him the daily agenda, but it was laughably easy for Phil to get. They definitely were not overly worried about security for their computers.

The reporter got out of his car and walked over to the main entrance, and on in. Phil settled in and started working on some reports on his laptop. Later he would drive in to the diner in the small town close by and get a cup of coffee.

Sam Hoffman waited in a rather nice little reception area. The receptionist was dressed in what Sam thought of as a hippy dress, looking very wholesome and happy. The reception area itself was full of plants and there were many windows letting in natural light.

Soon Dr. Wendell, the CEO of Joshua Enterprises, came through a door and greeted him warmly, leading him through the door and down a hall to a nice office with wood floors and big windows. They sat down at a small conference table.

"Thinking of the plant kingdom as a kingdom, and considering our normal urban, and suburban, and exurban landscapes, what plant would you consider to be the king or queen of that kingdom?" Dr. Wendell asked without preamble.

"I am not sure I am following you," Sam said, puzzled.

"Think about it. What plant gets the most attention applied to it, time, fuel, labor, fertilizer, chemicals, money?"

Sam laughed.

"Grass, I suppose. All our yards."

"Exactly!" said Dr. Wendell, immensely pleased.

"We get so used to our surroundings that we often don't really see them. When I drive around and see all that grass the thing I see is all the resources we devote to it, including our time. The waste, the pollution."

"Well, we can't just let everything go. We'd be back to dense forest pretty soon, at least around here." Sam played along.

"True, and a nice lawn is attractive, I'll admit, although to me it is not the basis of a religion, as it is to some people I know."

"I heard you are doing something with grass," Sam ventured.

"Yes, we have been working on it for a little over two years, and now we are ready to start rolling it out. And you get the scoop."

Sam smiled tentatively.

"Well, great. I appreciate that."

"So let's go on a tour and we can discuss it as we go."

"That would be great, but can I ask just a few background questions before we start?"

"Sure," Dr. Wendell said, settling back into his chair.

"The name, Joshua Enterprises."

"From Joshua Green, our Chief Scientist. The company was his idea and he is the driving force behind the science. He wanted something less tied to him personally, but I really pushed for a name like that, as did Janna Green, Joshua's wife. She is also the Chief Financial Officer of the company."

"I understand that Joshua doesn't have a PhD, so why aren't you the Chief Scientist?"

"Well, I am still a scientist. I still teach some courses and have a few graduate students, and my own research. Joshua was a student of mine, and he and I did publish two papers together, when he was an undergraduate.

"But the concept for this company and the product development is all his. He could have gone on and been an academic scientist or got his PhD and gone into the biotech industry with someone else, but he already knew what he wanted to do and he wanted to get to it."

"So he is more of an applied scientist?"

"He would have preferred the title Gardener. He has the master gardener's intuitive feel for plants, but taken to the molecular level. He understands plants deeply, from the molecular level on up, at a really practical level. Maybe applied scientist would be good, but that really understates his intuitive brilliance."

"So he is a genius?"

"He was a good student. He is smart, very smart, but he doesn't come off as the stereotype of an eccentric genius. He is like a down home farmer with an amazing practical grasp of the biochemical basis of life."

"Can I meet him?"

"He is fairly busy today, but we will need to get him out front at some point. Here is a picture you can use."

Dr. Wendell handed Sam a picture of Joshua in what appeared to be a garden, in jeans, work shirt, and work boots, planting something.

Sam nodded.

"Can I get a picture of you, too?"

"Sure, maybe outside somewhere. Should we start the tour?"

Sam nodded and they headed out of the office and down the hall and up to some windows looking into what looked like a lab. There was a young woman inside with a lab coat on.

"This is one of our labs, where we do some of our genetic work on plants."

"Genetically modified plants?" Sam asked, surprised.

"Yes, we are a biotech company."

"How does it work?" Sam asked, and then added quickly, "At a level that I can understand."

"There are two main methods that are used. One uses a bacteria, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which causes crown gall disease in some plants. I'll write is down for you later.

"This bacteria has a free floating loop of DNA called a plasmid. Using enzymes we can separate a desired gene from some plant cell and then add it to the plasmid. When it is mixed in with the target plant cells, some of the cells accept the gene into their DNA and acquire the new characteristic. The plant is then grown from the culture and tested to see if it has the desired gene.

"The second method is to mix the desired genes with microscopic gold or tungsten pellets. They stick to the pellets. Then the pellets are shot into the target plant cells using a burst of helium gas. We use a variation of this method, developed by Joshua, because we are dealing with grass and Agrobacterium tumefaciens doesn't work for grass."

"Isn't this all very dangerous, Andromeda strain stuff?"

"We are working with plant cells, not viruses. Plant cells don't infect humans. There is a remote possibility of developing a plant that is very invasive, but as you will see later, that is the exact opposite of what we are doing."

Dr. Wendell led him further down the hall and out a door into a green house. There were many trays with grass growing in them.

They continued on through the green house and then down a path in the trees to an open field.

"Have a look here."

Sam saw a lot of grass and weeds.

"What is one of the most invasive weeds for lawns?"

"Dandelions, I guess."

"Yes. Now look around carefully where you are standing."

Sam saw that he was in a field saturated with dandelions at various stages from just leaves to bright yellow flowers to white seed heads. Looking closer, he noticed that no dandelions were growing where he was standing. In fact, he was standing at the center of a spiral shaped area that extended out into the field of dandelions. The spiral was free of dandelions and seemed to be mowed evenly, whereas the rest of the field was overgrown.

"It must have been hard to mow and spread the weed killer just so."

Dr. Wendell smiled.

"You got it. But the thing is that we didn't need to mow or spread any weed killer. This is our product. We call it zone grass."

"Zone grass?"

"It stays where you put it, in its zone, and it doesn't allow any other plant to grow there. So no herbicides. And its zone extends up. It doesn't grow up beyond its zone, for this variety, an inch and a half. So no mowing. And it is a nitrogen fixer, like green manures, alfalfa, etc. So no fertilizer. A beautiful lawn, with no lawn maintenance."

Sam looked at him blankly for a few seconds. Then it dawned on him.

"You guys are going to be rich!"

Chapter 12

Jerry Forman walked into the yard which was the main set for his show. It was a sunny day, good for shooting. The camera crew was getting set up. He went over to a folding chair and got out some notes and looked them over.

"Ready, Jerry," the director said, and Jerry walked over to his mark.

"Welcome to Your Backyard. You have no doubt been hearing about zone grass, the amazing low maintenance turf grass."

He pointed down to the grass he was standing on.

"In today's show I will show you how to get going with this new way to a beautiful lawn."

He walked over to a pile of equipment. On top of a lawn mower was piled a fertilizer spreader, a weed whacker, and a few bags of fertilizer and herbicide.

"You won't be needing these anymore."

And he gave the camera a grin.

"Cut! OK, good. Next scene."

They moved over to a patch of grass with dandelions and other weeds choking out the grass.

Jerry leaned down low to the ground and looked at the weeds.

"And you won't be seeing these in your yard anymore."

"Cut!"

They moved over to an area that had been tilled over. There was a bag of seed sitting on the dirt with the top open.

"There are three main ways to plant your new grass. First, you can till up your existing grass like this."

He pointed to the tilled area.

"Don't worry about the old grass mixed in. It won't stop the zone grass. You just spread it by hand or use a grass seed spreader."

He took some grass seed in his hand, bent down and scattered some seed thinly.

"Cut!"

One of the crew brought over a grass seed spreader. Jerry pushed the spreader back and forth a few times, smiling for the camera.

"Cut!"

One of the crew brought over a hose. Jerry started watering the place where he spread the seed.

"Just give it a good soak, and it's ready to go. Once it is established you won't need to water as much as traditional grass. It has deep roots. But for long dry spells, it might look a little duller. A nice watering will brighten it up."

"Cut! A short break."

Jerry went over to his chair and got a bottled water. One of the crew came over.

"I planted some of this in my yard. It works great, but it's a little freaky."

"Yeah, it's almost scary to watch it take over its zone. But once it's done, it just stays there and looks pretty."

The director waved them back. They headed over to another patch of grass that was partially grown. They started filming.

"Now don't worry. At the beginning the old grass may stage a come back, but soon the zone grass will take over. Which takes us to the second method."

"Cut!"

They moved over to a patch of old grass. Jerry bent over low to the ground, and they started filming.

"Because you don't even have to dig up the old stuff."

He stood up and started spreading some seed over the existing grass.

"Amazingly, the seed will germinate in the existing grass. In a week or so it will start replacing the existing grass. You still might have to mow a few times, but soon you will notice that it has taken over, and no more mowing."

"Cut!"

They moved over to a pallet of sod next to a tilled area.

"The third method is normal sod. You just put it down like any sod that you are used to."

He placed several squares of sod.

"Cut!"

They moved over to a flower bed.

"Another great thing about zone grass is that is does not spread like other grasses. It stays where you put it."

He bent down and pointed along the edge of the grass.

"No more edging."

He stood up.

"But you will still have to weed your flower bed."

He gave the camera a big grin.

"Cut! Down to the field."

Jerry walked over to his chair to retrieve his bottled water and went over and sat on the tailgate of a truck. They drove slowly down to a grown up field with a path through it. The crew set up. He stood in the path and they started filming.

"Many of you have this situation, especially if you live in the country like I do. You have a pasture field like this that you just let grow up, and bush hog it once or twice a year.

"Likely you maintain some paths through the grown up area so you can walk through it and watch nature at work.

"That involves some significant time on a riding mower if you have a lot of paths. But not if you plant a zone grass path."

He swept his arm along the path.

"For this path, I just spread the seed directly on the grass path I had been maintaining by mowing. I had to mow it one more time while the zone grass took over. Since then, a maintenance free path, and it doesn't spread beyond the path."

"Cut! You can head back to the garden. We need a few background shots here. Just a few minutes."

"I'll walk back."

Jerry headed back up the path back toward the garden area of the yard. He himself had invested in one of the zone grass companies. Strangely, the original company did not try to keep a hold on the seed. They sold the seed directly to consumers, but also to other seed companies so they could also produce the seed. Strange way to do business. In the short run they were making a lot of money, but in the long run, they would not be needed anymore.

But he had heard that they were expanding into different varieties for different climates. They had a variety that would grow in Arizona without all that watering. It had a very deep root system. The grass blades were a different color, a sort of purplish green. But it grew, needing only the rare rains. And if you deigned to water it once every few months, it looked great. But a lot of people there were taking to just letting it alone. They liked the purplish color.

The crew got back, and he walked over to the garden. They started filming.

"You may be wondering, if zone grass so dominates its zone, and won't let anything else grow there, like those pesky weeds, what if you want to get rid of it. Say add a new flower bed, or plant a garden"

He pointed to the garden plot.

"For this garden, we simply tilled the grass under with a tiller. As long as you till deep enough, say two inches, it give up its hold and provide a nice green manure.

"In fact it is good for building up the soil for a garden patch. It, among its other attributes, is a nitrogen fixer."

"Cut!"

They set up for a wide shot in front of the yard.

"That's our show on the amazing zone grass. It's getting to be a favorite for both homes and businesses. Even the lawn maintenance companies are seeing the inevitable and are offering reseeding services. So if you don't want to do it yourself, they can do it for what it would cost you for three months of lawn mowing."

He smiled broadly and waved at the camera.

"So long, and join us next time for Your Backyard."

Chapter 13

Ruth and Phil leaned against the hood of Phil's car in the parking lot across from Joshua Enterprises, observing 50 or so protestors marching around in a circle. They carried signs and chanted, "Frankengrass. No! Frankengrass. No!"

"If they only knew, they'd be chanting, alien invaders, no," said Phil.

Ruth gave him a smirk.

A TV crew was set up and filming the action. It really didn't seem that exciting, but it was more excitement than the Joshua watchers had had for some time. It got a little boring watching Joshua make money and wondering what he was doing it all for.

Dr. Wendell came out of the building and walked over to one of the protestors.  Their talk ended with the protestor shouting and Dr. Wendell walking slowly back in shaking his head.

Ruth said, "You wouldn't think a protest like this would draw this many people. It's no march on Washington, but how can you get even 50 people stirred up about some grass."

"Maybe it's just a slippery slope argument."

A reporter with a microphone walked over to the protestors and a spokesman went over to talk to her.

Joshua was inside watching unseen from a second story window in what they called the meditation room. It was an empty room with wood floors and a few pillows and mats. The windows came all the way to the floor, so Joshua sitting on a pillow with his legs stretched out in front of him could see everything clearly.

It was an overcast day, not cold or rainy, but not particularly cheery. He wondered how long they could keep their energy level up.

The problem was that he could see their point of view. He could always see their point of view, but he had something to get done.

He closed his eyes and listened to his breath and to the blood in his temples. He felt calm, at ease with his actions, but he could not ultimately justify them. He was tampering with the genetics of his new home world, yes, but so would a stray cosmic ray. He listened deeper, to the silence behind the shell of his identity.

Life is a groundless diversity of language, experience, and desire, and behind that only silence, but such a silence.

He opened his eyes, still listening to that silence that did not seem to want to help him resolve his dilemmas. He sighed wistfully.

Outside the reporter finished the interview and walked back to her van, but kept standing there and watching. Joshua got up and headed for the door.

Ruth and Phil, still leaning on the car hood, saw the front door of Joshua Enterprises open again. This time it was Joshua himself. He was dressed in jeans, a green work shirt, and work boots. He walked toward the protestors.

"Let's go hear what he tells them," Ruth said and they headed across the road. The reporter joined them as they approached the protestors.

Here the scene seemed more charged. The protestors seemed more agitated, lifting up their signs and shouting their slogans.

Joshua walked into the middle of the crowd and just stood there. Strangely the crowd seemed to slow down. It was like waves spiraling out from Joshua at the center, and as each protestor felt the wave, they stopped and turned. Soon all the protestors were quiet, just looking at Joshua.

"You want to tell me something," Joshua said quietly.

"We want you to stop what you are doing," the spokesman said.

"What am I doing that you don't like?"

"Meddling," the spokesman said.

"The mad scientist letting loose the monsters." Joshua nodded.

The spokesman looked surprised.

"Yes."

"Let's go talk about it. We have an outdoor meeting place."

Joshua pointed behind the barn. The TV crew was getting it all on video. The spokesman nodded and they all followed Joshua and the spokesman.

"I'm Joshua Green. What's your name?"

"Joseph," the spokesman said.

"Ah."

They came to a sort of amphitheater. Joshua and Joseph sat on the grass of the lowest row and the other protestors settled on the floor of the amphitheater close together so they could hear. The news crew, Ruth, and Phil were off to one side. Some people came out of the building carrying tubs of ice with drinks in them. They passed them around.

"You don't like our zone grass?" Joshua asked.

"You biotech companies are trying to own our common genetic heritage," Joseph blurted out, some of his anger returning.

"Not us. We would never do that. We grow a crop and sell it like any farmer. Our crop is grass seed. Anyone can take the seed and plant it to grow their own seed. We publish the cultivation methods on our Web site.

"What do you think of a farmer who develops new varieties of fruit through selective breeding?"

"We don't have a problem with that. It is how you are doing it."

"We are both influencing the genetic makeup of new varieties."

"But the farmer with the new fruit is using methods that we have seen for millennia, without problems," Joseph objected.

"Oh, there have been problems. Increase in monoculture, reduction of diversity. Farming has done this, but the human population would have never grown without farming. Would you like to stick with a hunter gatherer culture? It's a pretty rough life."

"Of course not."

"Do you want to give up your computers, videos, books?"

"Look, we are not Luddites."

"So how do you decide which aspects of technological culture you want to stop? Why pick genetically modified plants?"

A young woman spoke up.

"We are sick of this tech culture. We are sick of the corporate system. It's all out of balance."

"Yes, I agree, but I think our zone grass is helpful. Think of the reduction in pollution from those little mower engines. Think of the reduced runoff from fertilizers and herbicides applied to lawns."

Joseph said, "Again, we don't hate your grass in itself. It is the genetic manipulation. It is all coming on too fast. We don't know what the consequences will be. We need to just slow down."

"But the population growth is not slowing down. The pollution is not slowing down. I think the thing to do is to understand specific techniques. All the science for what we do is available on our Web site. Read about it. I think what we are doing is safe."

"You may genuinely think that. And I appreciate that you are a small business, not some mega corporation, and you are open with your information. You're not trying to own the genome. So good, good for you. But are you so sure you know what you are doing?"

Joshua looked around. They looked at him. He really looked like one of them, and he seemed to have a similar outlook.

"Yes, I do know. And if I don't know, I don't just start doing things to make a quick dollar. We are modest little company. Yes, we use genetic engineering to help with the development of new varieties of grass. I think you should consider not broadly condemning whole categories of science. Science needs to be understood and managed. Like all commerce is not necessarily out of control. You need to define good and bad practices in science and business, and put your passion into selling the good ones. Don't just get overwhelmed and lash out blindly. We can't go back. You don't really want to go back."

Everyone was quiet for a while, seemed to be considering. Then a buzz of little subgroup conversations started up. Joshua sat calmly drinking some iced tea from a plastic bottle.

Chapter 14

"If you plant it without the companion seeds, this is what you get," Janet said pointing to some tall grass that had gone to seed. "And look at the seeds. It produces a lot."

Janet's friend Joan bent down and looked closely at a seed head. "It looks like a grain."

"That's what I thought," Janet said and walked over to a table and brought back a jar filled with what looked like a brownish thin rice or something between millet and wheat.

Joan raised her eyebrows and asked, "Did you try cooking it?"

"Yes, I did. I took a chance. It has a nice taste, sort of like brown rice but tending toward millet. It kind of has the course fluffy texture of millet. I actually like it. And look." She pointed at herself. "It didn't kill me."

"How did you harvest it?"

"With a scythe, like they used to with wheat. I let it dry in bunches and then threshed it. I was just thinking of checking if it would really grow from the seed that I produced. It did, but I tried cooking it."

"Amazing," Joan said.

"But that's not all I found," Janet said.

Janet picked up a flat shovel and dug down into some of the grass. She pealed back the sod. Then she got a fork and dug down into the dirt below and pulled up round tubers with rough brown skins.

"I was digging up a patch of the zone grass. They say you can clear it out of a spot and plant something else if you dig it up deep enough. That worked, but I also found these tubers, all under the grass about four inches down. And this was on a patch with the companion, so it didn't grow up and go to seed."

"Don't tell me you ate them."

Janet smiled. "I couldn't help myself. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It's good, like a mix between turnips and potatoes. It's good cooked or raw in salads."

"Can't you get it tested?"

"I did. I found a lab that could analyze it, check for poisons, whatever. It was OK. I'm going to try to get some university with an agriculture program interested in it."

"It might be like daylilies."

"Daylilies?"

"Yeah. You know you can eat the flowers, the sprouts, and the tubers. Or so I've heard. I'm not quite as adventuresome as you, eating things out of my yard."

Janet bent down and folded the sod back over the dirt.

"And it doesn't hurt it. The grass keeps growing fine. If you dig a spot up, you have to reseed to get it growing again, but if you peel it back like this and lay it back, there will be more tubers in two months."

They both stood looking down at the grass.

Sam Hoffman drove into the Joshua Enterprises parking lot and just sat there looking at the restored barn. There was something spooky about the place to him now. He had just read the Scientific American article on zone grass.

He shook his head for the hundredth time that day. Good things like this just don't happen by accident. Zone grass had been amazing enough, but now it ended up being a good food plant - that grows well on marginal land - without fertilizers and herbicides - even in dry climates - a perennial that once planted keeps on giving - that builds up the soil - that is not invasive.

And it originated inside this barn outside of Columbus, Ohio? He shook his head again. It was too bizarre. But he just couldn't think of an adequate conspiracy theory.

The biotech industry was falling all over itself putting it forward as what can be done with genetic engineering. Universities were rushing to show everything that it could be used for, like George Washington Carver and the peanut. Even the environmentalists were starting to say that in this one case, maybe a genetically modified plant might be OK. It just had too many environmental advantages, and there was nothing else like it.

And Joshua Enterprises was not milking it for all it was worth. They did their best to keep in the background, to get others to take up the torch and spread it. Anyone could cultivate the seeds themselves. Many companies had sprung up around the plant. It was fast becoming the alternative to Christmas trees for the weekend farmer. And it had come out of that barn. Something didn't add up.

The front door opened and Dr. Wendell came out and headed for his car. Sam got out quickly and headed to intercept him. Dr. Wendell seemed always too busy for an interview these days.

"Dr. Wendell, Dr. Wendell, I know you're busy. Just a moment?"

Dr. Wendell stopped and smiled reluctantly at Sam running up to him. He looked at his watch.

"How are you, Sam? Actually, I have an appointment."

"Just a few questions."

"OK, just a few."

"Did you know zone grass would be a food plant?"

"No idea. It surprised all of us as much as anyone. We thought we had a very nice product, with a lot of potential, but all this is just too much."

"How do you explain it?"

"I can't. Dumb luck?"

"That can't be."

"Well, the only comparison I can come up with is a singer or writer who is good, making a living, but then they are suddenly famous, but to them they have just been doing the same things they always did."

"But this is not just a matter of random popularity. There is the science behind it. It's not just some fad."

"Well, it may be just a fad. It may all die down. As to how it happened, I think we were just lucky. It really is an amazing development."

Dr. Wendell smiled meekly and looked at his watch.

"I really have to get going."

"Thank you, Doctor. Any chance of an interview with Joshua Green."

Dr. Wendell smiled and shrugged as if to say, "You already know the answer to that."

As Dr. Wendell drove away, Sam frowned. He had really tried to get an interview from Joshua. He had even cornered him one time, but he could never get him to say anything. He would always be easily deflected into some other unrelated topic like college basketball or the weather.

Sam went back to his car and resumed his vigil. There really was something odd about all this, but soon it would become the new commonplace. People get use to the most amazing things with just a little time and familiarity.

Chapter 15

Gordon really was beside himself. He paced up and down, boiling. Phil was sympathetic. Gordon had put a lot of money into this and he had got nothing from it really. And now Joshua Enterprises had this big success, on his turf. Actually, he seemed most upset with their almost off-handed approach of not trying to control the seeds. That seemed to be the cruelest affront to business, to capitalism, to the very American way of life.

Ruth and George sat looking grimy determined, as if to say that they were ready to walk at any time.

Finally he plopped down in a chair and said in an even voice, "OK, what can we do?"

George spoke up. "I think it must be obvious by now that you are not likely to get any useful biotech from him."

"Oh, don't be so sure. Don't be so sure."

"You're not thinking of another kidnapping?" Ruth asked incredulously.

"No, Ruth, I think he's still got us pretty effectively blocked from that direction," he said, as if she were suggesting it. "But he can't keep everything a secret. We know what he is. He will have to slip up at some point."

"I don't know. I think hiding is built into his genes." George said.

"Your cousin's genes," Phil said.

"We already have his genes," Gordon said impatiently, missing the attempt at humor. "I know he's good at hiding, but there have to be traces."

"You just want to expose him? Because from a business perspective, what can you hope to gain?" George put in.

"No, I don't want to expose him. Then the government just sweeps in. I want some hold over him, some leverage. Then we'll see."

"You want to control him," Ruth said.

"Damn right, I want some damn control! I'm sick of being diddled by plant boy."

"He doesn't really owe you anything," she said mildly.

"Do you know how much I've spent?" he replied indignantly.

"He didn't ask you to spend anything," she said, keeping her temper.

He calmed down a minute and then said, "I'm not totally lacking in moral subtlety, Ruth. He is an alien, for God's sake. An invading alien."

"Or an immigrant."

"Well, our immigration laws don't quite cover him."

"He seems to be offering something useful."

"Or a Trojan horse. And what about the Joshua virus? The other shoe hasn't fallen on that one yet. Who knows what's hidden in his innocence turf grass."

"A lot of people are studying the zone grass pretty closely."

"Well, that may be laying the foundation for something else. It must be. Unless he is just out to make some innocent money in his new native country. But I don't believe that for a minute."

"Maybe that's all there is to it," George said.

"No, he's a sneaky little bastard. He has plans within plans. You wait and see."

"If so, he may be operating on a whole different time scale than we are used to. He may have set something into motion that will show its results several generations in the future. Suppose he just sits back now?" Ruth put in.

"He's been pretty busy so far."

"We've been watching him for a long time now, what, six, seven years? This zone grass is the first time he has really exposed himself. It seems a little too much for a BS in biochemistry to do, however gifted." she said.

"But we can't prove it's because he's an alien. Strange and sudden achievements do happen. And he has built up a reasonable back story if people want to believe him. And they do."

"Actually, you have to admire the way he's diverted the attention away from himself," Phil said. "It's become a common property. He doesn't try to claim a unique status. He is hardly ever mentioned in the news stories about it. The biotech industry, the farmers, the international development groups, the university professors, it's like they all own it and he had nothing to do with it. His role might be totally forgotten in just a few years."

"Hmm," Gordon said, "He really is good at it. But at least we can see what he's doing."

"Well, at least we're learning some of his tricks, but we still don't know what he's really up to."

Gordon nodded absently, like his mind was suddenly somewhere else.

"Well, keep at it," he said, standing up and looking around at them, and walked out of the room.

Chapter 16

"Op One. Everything's dark. Parking at the lot across the street."

"Control. Roger that. Continue."

Phil was sitting in his car a road over. He would be following the operation from a distance. They wanted to make some attempt at not having it linked back to Gordon Associates.

"Op One. Going in."

Phil smirked at their mock commando stance, but they didn't want to use names, obviously.

At the parking lot the op team got out of the van quietly. There were three of them. Phil had insisted on no guns. He didn't expect anything but light security, to judge by how easily he accessed their unsecured wireless network, and he didn't want any armed robbery repercussions.

But everyone was in black and wore night vision goggles. There were no lights outside the building and it was quite dark. They ran over to the front door of the barn. Apparently there was no security system, just a normal lock. They easily picked that and were inside.

"Op One. Starting survey."

The three people split up and started going through the building. They all carried cameras. They would take pictures of anything of interest.

Outside, Joshua was sitting on a branch high up in a tree. He had good night vision and could see through the windows much of their progress. He had to smile when he saw flashes from cameras. At least they didn't have all the lights glaring.

Inside, the op team met up at the reception area.

"Op One. Took pictures of each room. Very little paper. A few laptops and wireless routers."

"Op Two. Same."

"Op Three. Same."

"Control. Get pictures of the paper. Proceed as planned with the computers."

Op Two and Op Three headed out to take pictures of the paper documents. Op One went to one of the labs where there were several laptops. He started them all up without any problem and noted down the different users, Joshua, Janna, Phyllis, John, etc. All first names. Soon the others joined him.

"This is the main place for computers. There were only these other two in offices, no desktops."

Op Two and Op Three were each carrying a laptop. Op One hooked a device to the USB port of a laptop. It emulated a keyboard and would go through a series of common passwords. Op Two and Op Three each set up the laptops they were carrying and attached similar devices.

"Barn," a voice came from behind them and they all spun around.

It was Joshua. He stepped into the room and turned on the lights.

"We use barn as the password for all the laptops."

The op team sat frozen to their chairs. They weren't sure whether to fight or run, so they just sat there.

"You could have just asked for the information. It's mostly just reports and observation notes. Some gene sequences. Most of it's available from our Web site. But if you want to get copies, let's get started. I see you have backup disks."

Joshua sat down with Op One and helped login to the laptop he was working on. They connected a disk to a port.

"We can use the backup software we have installed."

The op team maintained their stunned silence, but they each started in on getting complete backups of each computer.

Joshua went over to a shelf and got a small key drive. He handed it to Op One.

"This will give you an overview of the directory structures, how we organize our data. We don't have a central database. We just share back and forth in a sort of mesh network."

Joshua went over and got a video disk and handed that to Op One.

"This includes a video of the entire facility, with commentary. We did it for insurance purposes, but you might find it useful. It also includes some orientation sessions for new employees, to acclimate them to our facility and how we work. You should get a very complete view of our operations."

Phil could hear all of this over the com link and was just sitting there in his car. Finally he shook his head and smiled a crooked smile. He really should stop being surprised by this whole goofy setup.

Back at the barn Joshua was giving the op team a tour, taking them through each room, telling them its purpose. He had loaned them a video recorder and they were recording the whole performance. He ended the tour in the green house.

"These are the different test grasses. We are all about grass right now. We may expand out to other products in the future."

He walked around the outside of the building with them. Now all the windows were glowing with lights. At the front door they stopped. Op One removed the video tape and gave the camera to Joshua. They still hadn't said a word.

"Thanks," Op One said meekly.

Joshua smiled as they headed back across to their van, got in, and drove off. He went inside and started turning off lights.

Chapter 17

Janna looked in on the twins. Jennifer and Jordon were sleeping quietly in two cribs side by side. Their nursery was a circular room with windows all around. The cribs were in the center of the room. Janna smiled. She was very happy. The twins were healthy and doing well. She was already recovering well from the birth.

She left the nursery through a short passage and went on into the center room. Joshua had designed the house as a complex of "huts" connected by passages. He had added on the nursery while she was pregnant. At first they had just had the center room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and their bedroom.

Each room was unique. Some had stone floors. Some had a sort of textured concrete with colored patterns. He had put in a zoned heating system so they only needed to fully heat rooms they were using at the time. She had wanted air conditioning, so he put that in too, although he always preferred the outside air to air conditioning, even in the humid central Ohio summers.

She loved her house. She loved her children. She loved her life. She loved Joshua, more and more. He was always doing something surprising and creative. He was always nice to be around, and their love life was, well, exotic, constantly changing, an adventure.

She stretched out on a couch in the center room and opened up a laptop. She was starting to do a few things again at work. During the last few months of the pregnancy and the last two since the birth, she had left things to her staff, but now she would gradually pick up things again. She would only work part time for the first several years, until the children were older.

Joshua was also spending more time at home. He had been deeply interested in every aspect of the pregnancy and birth. He had gone to most of her doctor's appointments with her. He had helped at the birth. They had used a nurse midwife attached to the hospital. Now he planned to spend part of each work day with the children.

He was very happy when he heard that they would be fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. Janna was happy too. She sighed and looked out a window. It was early spring and she had the windows open. A nice breeze was coming in. It was a little cool, so she wrapped herself in an afghan.

Joshua was outside working on a "playhouse" for the children. It was a ring of trees. He was training them to be intertwined. They would eventually grow together and form a round room like the rooms in their house and the tree tops would merge into a roof. He was using a fast growing tree variety and it should be pretty far along by the time they were toddlers. Even now it was a pleasant spot with a stone floor, like a patio surrounding by trees.

He was always doing something with plants, obviously. He had many different projects going on in their twenty acres and he had other "test gardens" spread around. She wasn't sure what he had going on at those.

Their property was going to be a wonderland for the kids. One project was a series of platforms in the trees out back. He had picked them for the way the branches below made them easy to climb to. The platforms themselves were woven together from the living limbs of the trees.

He also had amazing flower gardens and he had put in a couple ponds where he grew water plants. With the profits from the zone grass, he could afford to hire a couple gardeners to work with him on his projects. They also planned on a nanny to help with the children.

She put the laptop on a table and went outside to where Joshua was working with the playhouse.

"How are they?" he asked.

"Sleeping."

He reached out and touched the side of her face with his fingers.

"I'm going to run up to Homer."

One of his test gardens was outside of Homer, the home of Notorious Victoria , Victoria Woodhull, the early feminist, spiritualist, and the first woman to run for President.

Joshua smiled at Janna affectionately. She was a wonderful spouse for him. He felt a slight twinge of guilt about all that he had to keep from her. He was already starting to visit the children in virtuality in a simple way, but he would never be able to share that with Janna. Her nervous system would not be able to handle it. The children were supremely important to him, but she was not just a means to an end. He loved her deeply.

"Hold this for me, please," he said.

She stepped forward and helped him as he intertwined some of the branches and tied them with twine. Soon the twine would not be needed.

"Felicia is coming this evening. I think she'll work out fine, but you need to approve of her." Janna said. Felicia was the candidate for a nanny that she liked the best.

"I'll be back before then. I definitely want to meet her."

They worked awhile longer on the playhouse and then walked toward the house. The slate roofs of the different rooms were still damp with dew where they were shaded.

There were some flats of ground cover plants next to the nursery. He still had a few more to put in. He used ground cover around the different rooms so they could look out on green and he wouldn't need to maintain the area.

"I'll plant these and then head out."

He bent over to get one of the flats and she reached out and grabbed him.

"Bye, bye, lover."

He jumped up and reached out to grab her and she jumped away and ran into the house laughing.

Chapter 18

Joshua drove his small pickup truck down the back country roads to the north of Columbus and east toward Homer. Before he got to Homer he turned off onto a gravel road. His test garden was a wooded area with what had been a farm field in the center of it that was gradually transitioning back to forest. It was an ideal spot, private, and relatively close to a cell tower. His own body could transmit and receive over a distance but for high volumes he needed to be close to a relay. Cell towers were very similar to their biorelays. To humans they would look very much like trees but with oddly regular leaves in banks facing in six directions, like the faces of a cell tower.

On the gravel road he slowed down and turned into a small driveway. He bounced along toward the center of the property. There was a quite large patch of orange daylilies. But underneath was the transmitter biomass. As he drove up the daylilies seemed to ripple and move in unison. It could have been a trick of the wind, but Joshua knew it for what it was.

He was excited. In any immigration this was a proud time, the transmission. The closest planet that would receive the transmission was over 50 light years away, but within several hundred years it would spread throughout the whole network. It would be eagerly studied and incorporated into their planetary lore.

He parked and got out of his truck. He climbed a tree to a platform where he would likely not be disturbed. He sat on the platform with his feet dangling down.

Below ground, the biomass spread out. At the center was a large mass of nerve cells within what would look like a huge tuber four feet across. Spreading out from there were banks of other tubers that were like capacitors, collecting and holding electricity. An electric grid was not needed. Much of the electric potential could be collected from atmospheric discharges or static electricity in the wind, but Joshua had positioned this biomass near electric lines which crossed his property. Vines grew up the polls and tapped in and over the months slowly pulled off current.

Joshua entered virtuality. The daylilies rippled. The construct was like a hut on his home world. Joshua sat on a small raised mat. The transmitter helper program was in the form of an old woman. He chirped a greeting. Their language was rich and varied. At its root was a rapid chattering derived from their distant evolutionary ancestors that could go in bursts to exchange quick packets of information, or go on longer and rapidly communicate an elaborate meme complex. They had slower speech patterns that were somewhat similar to human speech, and patterns resembling song, and others like low growling or moaning, expressing subtle details of emotion, or pleasure, or longing.

"Would you like to review?" the helper program asked.

"No, I enjoy it, but I think it is good," Joshua replied.

He had prepared a meme complex to describe this world and his experiences here, how his immigration plans were proceeding. So far he had contacted no others of his kind, but given his vulnerable and solitary position it was wise to proceed with the transmission. If no updates came, his people would still have more to go on for future efforts.

His description of Earth used many shorthand ideas based on patterns and concepts they had built up over many worlds. He had also included a lot of information about the genetic materials of this world and the memes of its cultures. Theirs was a memes and genes based technology, and their sophistication in those areas was deep and profound. They were also highly advanced in the use of light and electromagnetism.

Their species had developed the ability to communicate with electromagnetic waves early in their evolution and once they had progressed in genetic technologies, first through intensive experimentation with selective breeding and eventually through more direct manipulations, they built on this until they had developed virtuality, which allowed them go beyond simple speech.

They understood the principles of machines built from limited resources like metals and manufactured materials, but they never built many except in virtuality. They were just curiosities and to base a culture on such limited resources was sheer folly.

They had explored space around their home planet with spaceships that were grown more than built and powered by a deep understanding of gravity and electromagnetism, but they soon discovered how hostile space was to biological organisms, and  how the incredible distances and the limits of the speed of light made sending organisms between stars very unlikely unless you could in effect send a small planet, and none of the fanciful ideas that hoped to escape these limits ever were shown to be real. Not in all the planets they had explored.

So they focused on light and electromagnetic waves and the strategies that had allowed them to overcome the aggressive species of their planet, hiding, camouflage, patience, knowledge, indirection, subtlety, diffusion.

And with their own early SETI programs they had learned much and chose worlds. Over thousands of years they had perfected interplanetary transmissions. Light feeding and light processing organisms were everywhere and with their deep understanding of life, and many tries and variations, and chance, they had succeeded in sending messages that actually changed remote organisms, provided a foothold for further reception of their messages, transmitting their life patterns on beams of light, but what exactly was transmitted?

"We are a community of cells. We are a cell in the social organism. We inhabit the biosphere. Yet we each face the world self-conscious and alone."

The helper program recited the shard that traditionally started the existential interview. Joshua knew that however much his people would value all the knowledge of this world that he would transmit, they would be equally fascinated by this interview. It would honor him as an individual person, an individual consciousness thrown into a world across the galaxy. They had found no conscious cells, no conscious tissues, no conscious ecologies, no conscious weather systems, no conscious biospheres. Even their most sophisticated biocomputers with their seemingly intelligent helper programs had never crossed over into consciousness. This was still a miracle and mystery of the individual person. And that such a consciousness could form in an organism grown and infused from a transmitted pattern on a beam of light was a constant source of amazement that his people wanted to celebrate again and again. And here he was, yet another source of that amazement.

"What do you experience?" the old woman asked.

"Lights and sounds and energy and inertia and force, language, desires."

"And when you quiet that?"

"Nothing. Silence."

"Within you?"

"Yes."

"Does it speak?"

"No, but it seems like a source."

"And what do you see of others on this world?"

"I see it in their eyes, I sense it, their behavior reveals it."

"Consciousness?"

"Yes."

"Do you see it in me?"

"You are well made, but I know your programming. I cannot imagine their programming."

"But it could be programming, couldn't it? I could fool many, couldn't I?"

"Yes, you are well made and could fool many, but there is a degree of choice that I have and that they have that you do not have."

"I would not know," the old woman said, perhaps wistfully.

"Do you feel guilty?" she continued.

"They are ruining the planet. But it is their planet."

"They own it?"

"They think they do. They inhabit it. They need it. There will be much fewer of them."

"Isn't it always so? Wouldn't it be so in any case?"

"They might turn the corner, but I doubt it. They seem to have a death wish. But no, they are just too distracted, don't want to face the truth."

"Then they will die out."

"They still might turn the corner."

"They are aggressive?"

"Yes, like many they are driven to expand. It was the key to their initial survival. They love their children and are driven to have more. The resources are limited. It must lead to aggression. They are just starting to see it, but most just can't face it."

"But aren't we driven?"

"Yes, but we will make better use of the resources."

"Better?"

"We won't ruin the planet."

"And them?" she asked, the question that was always asked.

"There will be fewer of them. But the good in them will spread through us."

"When their star goes?"

"We are far from that here."

"But in the long run?"

"We will take them with us. By then we will be one species."

"Are you lonely?"

"I haven't found any of my kind."

"But you adapted."

"Yes. And I love those around me."

"Though you are stealing their world?"

"The ones I love will be long gone by the time that happens."

"From their descendents then?" she continued to probe.

"Yes, but we will be one species by then. In the mean time there will be fewer of them."

"And more of us?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to lose yourself?"

"I have at times. I focus on the world around me and the people around me. Virtuality is a tool."

"Like me?" she said, seemingly wistful again.

"Yes."

"Do you lose hope? What if you fail?"

"I am still here, living a life, more full than many have. And now there are my children. But I will not fail."

"You don't know the future."

"No, no one does."

Chapter 19

Dr. John Dawson parked his car in front of a small brick house on a nice shady street in Bexley. He got out and walked quickly to the door. It was 8:00 on a Saturday morning. He rang the doorbell.

Inside Ruth was sitting on her couch eating cereal and reading some news articles on her computer. She got up and looked out the window. A man in a light jacket was standing there impatiently clutching a laptop to his chest. She went to the door and opened it.

"John?"

"Ruth, we got something."

She let him in.

"Got something?"

"Let's sit down," he said and headed toward the couch. He put his laptop on the coffee table there and opened it up.

"Can I get you something, John? Coffee? Juice?"

"No. No, thanks. Well, yes, some coffee."

When she came back with the coffee he already had a chart up on his screen.

"You no doubt recognize this," he said.

Ruth sat down next to him and looked at the screen. It was a standard radio frequency clickplot. Across the bottom was from 1490 to 1510 MHz. On the left side was time. Most of the plot was a mixture of red and black dots, but at exactly 1500 MHz was a white line going for about 20 hours. It stopped and exactly at that time a yellow line started at 1505 MHz. That signal she knew would continue for several days. Then it would go back to 1500 MHz and repeat itself. Then eventually stop for good.

"That's my signal from eight years ago, right?"

"Yes," he said and smiled.

"Well, what's happened?" she asked, starting to get excited.

"You know I maintain some informal contacts in the signal intelligence community?"

"Yes, but ..."

He held up a hand.

"A high power signal of terrestrial origin at 1505 MHz was sent for 5 minutes, 5 times over two days last week."

"So ..."

He held up a hand again.

"Look," he said and brought up two frequency charts. "This is your signal. This is the signal from last week. Notice anything?"

"The first two minutes look pretty close."

"They are the reverse of each other."

"What?"

"They are, and let me emphasize, identical, but in reverse order. Like one is coming and one is going."

Ruth sat back, astonished.

"You remember we had to give up on that old signal," she said softly.

He nodded.

"Identical ... but reversed. And ..."

"The rest of the signal seems to be a similar code, but you never did figure out that code, none of us did. But this ... is too much."

They both just sat there looking at the charts for a few minutes.

"What's been done?" Ruth asked.

"We want to locate that signal, obviously. Hopefully, it will show itself again. We got some quiet interest from the NSA, to compare notes, etc. Can you come to a meeting?"

"Definitely. Definitely. When?"

"Next Wednesday, here in Columbus."

She looked at the charts some more.

She switched back to the clickplot and said, "Funny. The 1505 MHz, but not the 1500 MHz."

"So?"

"Why would the incoming have the initial signal. Let's assume they are related signals. Why the different frequencies?"

"Assuming intelligence, different purposes?"

"You know something about what I have been up to?" she asked.

"Exobiology here on Earth, I've heard," he said with a slight trace of wry skepticism in his voice. "Tracking down some odd plants."

"You'd be surprised, but let's think about the plants. These plants were found after the signal eight years ago. No more plant sightings since then. I don't know why I didn't make that connection before. This new signal ..."

"Yes?"

"Let's engage in some brainstorming, shall we?"

"You know I am always game for a little fantasy role playing."

She let that pass with a slight grimace.

"OK. Let's suppose that the old signal is related to the plant. I'm going to let you in on something. Please don't spread it around."

"You can trust me," he said, smiling.

"Those plants were mutated. They had what appeared to be animal nerve cells in them."

He raised an eyebrow and stop smiling.

She nodded and said, "Yes."

"Let's really take a leap," he said. "Are you suggesting that the signal had something to do with it?"

"You know about the research on mutations from cell phone signals."

"Yes, nothing very definite."

"But radio signals at those frequencies could cause mutations."

"Maybe."

"I'm not going to tell you the whole story right now, but those plants did something remarkable. First they mutated and grew a lot of nerve cells, then they performed some task, no matter what, then they deliberately dissolved away."

"Deliberately?"

"Well, let's continue the thought experiment."

"OK. One signal causes a mutation in the plant. The next signal tells the mutated plant what to do."

She smiled. "You always were bright."

"A genius, lamentably unrecognized."

"Here is my leap. The first signal created the computer. The second signal sent the programming. The return signal does not have to create a computer. That is already ... out there."

She waved her hand dramatically.

"We've had this discussion before. Assume no faster than light travel, no wormholes, at least nothing a biological organism could survive."

"Reasonable assumptions, although they do put a damper on things."

"A multigenerational ship would have to be huge. The shielding from radiation alone would require a lot of air or a lot of water around the living quarters. Then a self-sustaining ecosystem with no life sustaining star for energy in the long journey. Barely possible, but not likely."

"So UFOs are?"

"Experimental government aircraft, optical illusions, intrusions from the goblin universe. Who knows what they all are."

"So no friendly visitors?"

"I think we have just stumbled on a way."

"Don't send them here, just manufacture them by remote control?"

"Grow them. Send signals everywhere and hope your mutation signal happens on some receptive genes. You could test it out plenty back home, mutate plants left and right, take into account the weakening signals, all that. Why couldn't it work?"

"They would have to know a lot more about biochemistry than we do and have some brilliant guess work on how life might evolve on planets they can't go to in person."

"But our SETI counterparts can receive signals. We've been inadvertently sending signals for some time, visual signals for fifty years. They could be a little less random in their approach. Give them a little time to figure out our signals. Then let's say a radius of 10 light years. Or further out if they are a quick study. Or even further out if they are just good guessers."

"It seems like a long shot at best, but I don't have a reason to say it couldn't be done. I don't know enough. But I see one problem."

"What?"

"No time to grow the brain. The second signal begins immediately after the first one."

"This particular alternating pattern wasn't established until several days in. Then it repeated itself over several months. The later signals could be for mutations caused by earlier patterns. It was all pretty amazing at the time, but it just died out when we couldn't figure out any information content."

"So maybe it could have happened as you say. Like I said, I really don't know enough. But now what?"

"On the signals from last week, do you know more?"

"They were very high power signals. That's what really made them stand out and get some attention. When I heard 1505 MHz something clicked and I remembered your old signal. Then when I compared the signals and saw that start marker, I couldn't believe it. Then NSA got wind of it."

"Did they locate the signal?"

"All they have is Midwest United States. They need more signal to really hone in. They are interested in us just because of the similarities in our signals. I'm sure they won't be interested in our little thought experiments."

"No, we'll keep those to ourselves. Do you mind if I bring in the people I am working with?"

"I don't mind. I know I can't put many resources on this. What do you plan to do?"

"You and I will go to the meeting and see if we can work with the NSA to find the signal. And in parallel I plan to mutate me some plants."

Chapter 20

Mr. Jones stood at a window high up in an office building looking out the window. It was a gray day. Rain beaded on the window.

"Columbus," he muttered.

It was a spare office, a desk, a table, a few chairs, a phone. A folder was lying closed on the table. There was nothing else. Mr. Jones looked sidewise at the folder and shook his head.

"SETI researchers," he muttered.

The phone on the desk rang. He picked it up and listened and said, "Send them in."

Soon there was a tapping at the door. The door opened and Ruth and John walked in and looked around.

"Dr. Dawson. Dr. Smiley. My name is Mr. Jones. Please sit down."

They all sat around the table.

"Do you realize how much time is wasted by UFO nuts petitioning the government for 'disclosure' of UFO 'information'. Why can't they just get it through their addled little brains that there is nothing to that?"

He looked back and forth, really wanting to know.

"We are not UFO researchers. We are SETI researchers."

"What's the difference?"

Ruth and John looked at each other, perplexed.

"Are you looking for an explanation?" John asked.

Mr. Jones looked at them a moment and said, "No." He paused for another moment and shaking his head wearily said, "No. No. Not that."

He opened the folder and looked at some papers.

"Dr. Ruth Smiley. You are why I am here."

He looked at her accusingly.

"You claim to have received a signal from space eight years ago."

"What do you mean, claim?" she said, starting to get indignant. "The same signal was verified in Australia and several other places."

"A rather tight knit community, no doubt."

"What?"

"And now the signal shows up again, this time very much from Earth."

"Yes, that's what I understand."

"A little hoaxing perhaps, a little yanking of the government chain. A little flim-flam, a little scam. A fun game?"

Ruth looked at John, genuinely puzzled.

"Look, you asked us here," John said, getting huffy.

"Oh, yes, I asked you here."

"Well, what do you want?"

"The SETI program, cancelled as a colossal waste of government funds, now funded privately. Fund raising is quite a challenge I would expect, what with no results year in and year out. Then eight years ago the elaborate signal, but no one can figure it out. Give us more money, dear funders. They start loosing interest perhaps. Then pow, the signal again."

"I don't even work for the SETI program anymore," Ruth protested.

"Yes, yes, let's see," he said and picked up some papers from his folder. "Dr. Ruth Smiley, exobiology, SETI researcher, now industrial spying?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Gordon Associates," he said, looking at some other papers. "You, former SETI researcher. Dr. George Kossack, retired philosophy professor. Mr. Phil Stockman, former private investigator. Funded by Gordon Biotech. A very strange crew, with an inordinate interest in a small grass seed company. Really, Dr. Smiley, what is it all about?"

"That's private," she said evenly.

"Yes, yes, the right to privacy, the cornerstone of our democracy."

Ruth and John both stood up. Mr. Jones kept seated and waved his hands down toward their seats.

"Now, please, Dr. Dawson, Dr. Smiley. Don't be offended. Just checking. Need to look at all the angles. Don't you think?"

"What, are you joking?" John asked.

"Sure, just a little agent humor. Please, sit back down."

They sat down.

"As you so aptly point out Dr. Smiley, it's none of my business if John Gordon gets it in his head that a little guy, a harmless reformed drug addict who likes gardening, was really hatched by a plant. That's not something the U.S. government would concern itself with."

"So, are you interested in this signal, or not?" John asked.

"Oh, yes, we're interested, quite an odd occurrence, quite a powerful signal beamed into space, or maybe to a satellite of a foreign government. We can't quite figure it out, so naturally different theories come up. We even develop an interest in UFO nut biotech company owners and their strange obsessions. Just in the normal pursuit of our duty."

"So, the signal?" Ruth asked, in the vain hope of getting something useful out of this burn out.

"Right you are, Dr. Smiley, to business. First we need to find the transmitter. That should tell us something about who is really behind all this. We can all agree on that, find the transmitter. And you two as experts on signals can no doubt be of invaluable assistance."

"Since you already know about Dr. Kossack and Mr. Stockman, maybe they could be involved?"

"Oh yes, the more the merrier. We'll all figure it out together."

He smiled at them like a lunatic.

"What do you know so far? Dr. Dawson told me you have narrowed it to the Midwest."

"Better than that. We are fairly confident that that signal came from Licking County, one county east of here," he said in a seemingly sane tone of voice.

"You can't narrow it any more?"

"We are searching for physical evidence of a transmitter site. No known transmitters in Licking County look likely so far. So we need to wait for a new transmission. Hopefully they don't know of our interest. They just need to transmit one more time and we will be at their front door within the hour."

"So, what can we do?"

"Nothing for now, just be ready. Don't go anywhere, and perhaps bring Dr. Kossack in from Athens. Might as well have the whole team on hand."

Ruth looked at him suspiciously.

"Oh, don't worry Dr. Smiley. No one's in trouble. Just good old investigative work, your bread and butter, no?"

"OK," she said, like she was talking to a crazy man, maybe crazy like a fox she was starting to think.

Mr. Jones handed each of them a card. It simply said "Mr. Jones" and had a phone number.

"My cell phone, for now. Feel free to call anytime. I have your contact information."

They stood up, shook each other's hands, and Ruth and John headed for the door. He nodded them out, and returned to the window. It was still raining.

"The intelligentsia," he muttered.

Chapter 21

Ruth sat at a lab bench looking at plant cell samples with a microscope. Gordon had agreed to the use of the facility outside of Columbus where Joshua had been taken to do some research on the effect of the 1500 MHz signal on plants. She finished on the last sample and sat back. Nothing so far.

She sighed and got up and headed out of the lab and down a hall to a large warehouse room where they had many water tanks with various plants. High up on the ceiling was a transmitter sending the signal. They had no idea how long they should keep trying. They had already been at it several months.

It all seemed like a fool's errand sometimes. A lot of expense to send signals into these plants, with no results. The signal from Licking County had not returned, and Mr. Jones was back in Washington, leaving a small team on site, but interest was waning.

Ruth climbed some stairs to a series of interconnected walkways around tanks. She walked up to Dr. Sarah Jordan. Gordon had not wanted to expand those in the know too much, and she had already been in on the examination of Joshua. She was looking intently into a tank.

"Anything, Sarah?"

"Look here. This one looks something like the description of George's plant and the samples we had matched fairly closely. It has a root system and the reddish fronds. We talked about it before when we went through the plant selections."

Ruth nodded.

"Well, I am not an expert on any of these plants. We really should get an aquatic plant botanist in here - I know we have to keep it quiet. Anyways, look at the roots. See that big, I don't know, nodule? The top of it is showing above the mud."

Ruth looked in the tank. From the walkway around the tank she could see the plant growth easily. There was a layer of mud 5 feet thick in the tanks. At George's pond, there had been a large mass where they found the nerve cells. This could be something.

"Should we let it grow, or take a sample?" Ruth asked.

"We may be wasting money on it, but I am thinking a DNA analysis might be appropriate. If it is different than the original, we'll see."

Ruth nodded, not too hopeful.

A week later, Ruth, Sarah, George, and Gordon were all gathered around the tank.

"It's been a while. The color seems similar. Of course, no white berries. Maybe they come later." George said.

"The root mass is growing like mad. It's at least quadrupled in size in the last week. I don't know, but that must be abnormal." Ruth said.

Gordon leaned forward and looked closer.

"We only have one. I don't want to damage it. We have the DNA change. That may mean something."

He was excited, but he was trying not to get carried away. Finally, they had something, after all this.

"If we want to be cautious, we can try to propagate it in other tanks. That will delay things, might take a few more months before we can start slicing it up." Sarah said.

"OK," Gordon said and walked out with George.

Ruth and Sarah stood looking at the tank.

Three months passed. Still no Licking County signal. Mr. Jones had pulled out his team. They would still monitor from remote listening stations, the way they had first detected the signal. But at the plant lab things were progressing. They had propagated the plant to multiple tanks. It grew quickly once propagated, but it did not spread. It seemed to focus on supplying the root mass.

They were all gathered around a lab table. Phil was also there this time. They all wore lab coats and protective glasses. They had no idea what they were in for.

On the table was what looked like a large tuber with a thick brown skin. It was 14 inches around at its widest, more round than long. This was the second one. They had decided to let the first one alone for now.

Sarah was to do the honors. She cut into the skin about an inch deep and six inches long. A grayish red liquid seeped out of the cut.

"Let's get radical and cut it in half."

She looked around and no one objected, so she got out a big knife like you would use to cut a watermelon and cut the mass in half from top to bottom. It cut easily and the two sides rolled apart.

There was stunned silence as everyone leaned in and stared. Each circle was surrounded by about a half inch brown rind, but the inside was a mass of pinkish gray. It did not have much structure, but it was firm and springy when Sarah pressed it with her gloved finger.

"We all know what this looks like," she said. "I'll prepare some slides and we'll see."

Later, they reconvened and they each had a look in the microscope.

"Definitely nerve cells, but did you notice something about the mass itself?" Sarah asked.

"No structure," Ruth said.

"Exactly. A nerve mass this large, you would think it was a brain, but this is just an undifferentiated mass of nerves cells. At least that's what it looks like so far."

"Computer, but no programming," Ruth said.

"What?" Gordon asked.

"Just a speculation. It now looks like the 1500 MHz signal can cause a mutation. Think about it. Remote modification of life. But what can it do now? Sarah, how does it compare to a human brain?"

"Probably twice as many nerves, but none of the structure. Just more nerve cells does not indicate that it is a brain or intelligent. It could just be mass storage. We need to see if there is electrical activity."

"Too late for that," Phil said.

They all turned to him and he pointed at the mass on the table. It was already starting to dissolve.

"Just like George's plant," Ruth said.

They all just stared at it for several minutes. It was too much.

"Could it think?" George asked, with a worried tone.

Sarah shook her head.

"I really doubt it, but it does look like our cutting it triggered something. George, I really doubt that we killed someone. We'll know more once we study the electrical activity."

"I may be wrong, George, but I really think we are looking at a biocomputer here, not a sentient being, no more than a silicon chip is a sentient being." Ruth said.

They all looked at the broken biocomputer some more. By the next day it had dissolved completely.

"We didn't want to move it," Sarah explained as they gathered around the tank with the first biocomputer, as they were now calling it, pending some other way of understanding it.

The mass had stopped growing at about two feet in diameter. A lot of wires were going into the mud around it. It was still a part of the overall plant, which no doubt supplied its energy.

"We have electrodes attached all over it. And it's as I suspected. There is a residual amount of electrical activity, but nothing like you would expect if it was actually doing something."

An EEG screen just showed a flat line.

"So it's brain dead?" Gordon asked.

"Well, sort of, but I think Ruth is right in thinking of it as a biocomputer, rather than a brain."

"So it doesn't do anything? Can't you load it with something?" Gordon asked with a disappointed tone.

"We were thinking that the 1505 MHz signal might be the programming, but as much as we transmit that signal, it doesn't change anything." Ruth said.

"Well, it does something," Sarah said. "Watch this."

She went over to a laptop and pushed a button. The EEG screen showed some activity. She pushed the button again and the activity went away.

"That's just the WiFi switch on my laptop."

Then she went over to a small device with some buttons and dials on it. She turned a dial and the EEG screen showed some very similar activity. She turned the dial back and the EEG went back to the flat line.

"That is the 1505 MHz signal. It reacts to it just like the WiFi. We have tried a range of frequencies. It seems to be a wireless receiver. But we aren't sending a signal that it wants to deal with."

"We're missing something," Ruth said.

"Oh, and here's something else," Sarah said.

She got a small white envelope from the table where the laptop and switch device were sitting and poured something into her hand.

"You won't believe this. This is seed from a seed pod from the plant. We planted it in some dirt, no water, and it sprouted. We spread some on the water of a small tank, and it sank to the bottom and sprouted. The same seed. This stuff looks like it will grow anywhere, but it is not aggressive. It doesn't spread. We saw that when we first propagated some additional plants, and it continues to hold up. Even look at this plant. It had a healthy system of leaves, to keep itself alive through photosynthesis, but it hasn't spread around to totally choke the tank. It looks like it takes someone to deliberately propagate it. Not a natural strategy for the survival of a species."

"It really looks to both of us like this is definitely an engineered plant," Ruth said. "What else can we think?"

"So we can produce seed for it?" Gordon asked, starting to get excited.

"Yes, but what good will that do if we can't figure out how to use it?" Ruth asked.

"You two have done an amazing job on this. Naturally, you should keep studying it. But I want to get some more people looking. We need to figure out how to make practical use of it." Gordon said, taking charge.

He paced up and down on the walkway. The others just looked at him.

"But we need a cover story that doesn't involve signals from space. If this is a biocomputer, I am just starting to imagine the commercial possibilities. Maybe I am going to finally make some money out of this little adventure of ours."

He raised a hand as if to hold back any objections. "I know you scientists need to study it, and I support that. Keep going, but I am going to take some of those seeds over to the Gordon Biotech R&D department."

"What will you tell them?" George asked.

"Some university researcher studying plant mutations stumbled on it. I'll come up with something. I'll need some of those seeds."

Sarah handed the white envelope over.

Chapter 22

Ruth stood looking out her front window when the van drove up. She went out, locked her door and ran over to the van. Phil was driving. George was riding shotgun. She joined John in the back.

"Mr. Jones should be landing at the airport in 20 minutes," John said. "We'll meet him there and then drive out together."

"They have the location?"

"Yes, the signal has been transmitting for four hours now. Plenty enough for them to triangulate. A high powered 1505 MHz signal." John said excitedly.

Phil was driving fast and they got to the airport hanger before Mr. Jones landed. Some of his team were already there. Phil parked the van behind two other vans and went out to talk to some of the people milling around.

Pretty soon a small jet pulled up to the hanger. The door opened and Mr. Jones and two others got out. Some black bags and other equipment were transferred to the vans.

Ruth, George, and John got out of their van and Mr. Jones walked over. He just nodded at them and waved his arm in a circle.

"Let's move out."

They went the back way out of the airport and onto the interstate. They headed up to US route 62 and on out toward Licking County. They came to a country road and turned left. A few miles later they went barreling through the tiny town of Appleton. After several more turns, they were on a gravel road and started driving slowly. The vans in front stopped and Phil pulled in behind them. They were in a wooded area.

Mr. Jones walked back to their van and Phil rolled down his window. Ruth and John leaned forward in the back seat.

"The signal ended five minutes ago, but we have a really good location. GPS shows right in here." He pointed to a rutted drive way. "Maybe you should all wait out here."

"No way!" John and Ruth said at the same time.

Mr. Jones looked at them for a moment.

"OK, but stay in the van until we know what we have."

He went back to his van and got in the passenger side. The three vans slowly pulled into the drive way. The driveway ended in a clearing filled with orange daylilies all drooping down.

Mr. Jones and his team got out and walked into the middle of the clearing waving some instruments around. Lots of confused looks and running around, looking behind trees. They got some metal spikes and started poking around at the ground.

"Let's go," Phil said and they all got out and joined the others in the clearing.

There was a smell of ozone in the air and Ruth felt the hairs on her arms bristle a little like there was a lot of static electricity in the air.

"This is the location. Right here." Mr. Jones said with a frustrated tone. "Where did you guys hide it?"

"We didn't ..."

"I know, Dr. Smiley." Mr. Jones said with a crooked smile. "Maybe it was a mobile transmitter and we just missed it. But it's hard to believe we would be that close."

"Over here," George called out from a little ways in the woods, waving for them to come.

Mr. Jones went with them. The rest of his team continued with their search.

George was standing next to a power pole. He was checking out a vine that went up the pole. The vine looked droopy like the daylilies, like it desperately needed water or had been severed from its roots. The vine was reddish in color and climbed all the way up to the power lines and wrapped around them.

"The plant on my property had vines just like this going up to a phone line," George said.

"We need some digging equipment," Ruth said.

Later that afternoon several people stood around a hole about 10 feet in diameter and four feet deep. They had used a backhoe to dig down a little at a time. Mr. Jones had expected that they might find a buried transmitter, so he went along with the plan. But all they found was a bunch of roots.

Ruth was down in the hole digging around a large root that looked like a rotting watermelon someone had buried there. Mr. Jones was rapidly loosing interest.

"Sir!" someone called out and Mr. Jones walked over to a tree where some of his team were standing.

Ruth reached up and Phil pulled her out of the hole.

"It's just like our biocomputer," she said in a soft voice. "It's obviously bigger. And all those other root nodes are connected into it. Who knows what they are for."

"Should we try to get some samples?" George asked.

"It's already dissolving. It's not as clear from up here, but a lot of grayish fluid is oozing out into the ground."

They looked down. It looked like a rotting pumpkin whose top was starting to sag in. George went over to the van and came back with a case with some sample bottles. He and Ruth went down into the hole and started cutting some samples and scooping up some of the liquid.

Mr. Jones came back to the hole carrying a small device of some kind. He looked down in the hole.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

Ruth stood up and said, "Just taking some samples of these roots."

"I'm not interested in plants. We found a couple of these up in some trees. They tell me they are signal extenders for a wireless computer network, battery operated, fairly new, batteries still good. But what are they for?

"The mobile transmitter is still an idea, but that would be a big truck. No tire tracks to speak of. Maybe a light weight truck was here, but not something big.

"And we found the owner of this land. Some retired guy in Florida. Hasn't been back up here in years. The land's for sale if you're interested."

Mr. Jones went to his van and got in. His team was already loaded up. Their two vans pulled out and were soon gone.

It was starting to get dark. Phil went to the van and came back with some flash lights. They shined their beams down in the hole. The biocomputer, if that's what it was, had lost some more of its shape. By the morning it would likely be pretty much gone.

A couple of miles away Joshua was sitting in his truck watching the sun set across a field. It was a clear view to some hills in the distance.

He had held his last session with the transmission helper program from here. He didn't think it would be a good idea for him to be there when the transmission started. Since his body had a limited range for transmitting wireless signals, he had used some of the metal based technology of this world to extend his reach to the plant.

After their session was over and he transferred the last bit of information for the transmission, he had instructed the helper program to begin the transmission. It went on for hours and he watched the data stream with satisfaction, sampling parts of it. It would be useful. He felt a great sense of relief and happiness.

The helper program had notified him when the signal was finished. Soon after the vans arrived and they both knew what needed to be done. Joshua knew the helper program was not sentient, and the plant was just a medium, but he still felt a little sad to see them go.

Chapter 23

A year later Dr. Peter Mbote sat in his office at Kenyatta University looking out his window to a plant growing near by. It looked very healthy, a vibrant green.

"I taught it like you would teach a child," he told Dr. Catherine Getui, who sat in a chair next to him looking at a computer screen.

"How did you know it was learning?" she asked.

"It wants to learn. It absorbs codes and protocols like a child absorbs language. A child listens and repeats and when the Mother smiles and gives it encouragement, the child knows it is right.

"My goal was to teach it machine language."

He looked at her to see if she understood.

"The instruction set of a computer chip?" she asked.

He nodded. She was in the faculty of the Philosophy department, a quite brilliant young woman. He saw himself as more of the plodding engineer, but his students in Computer Engineering knew better.

"My communication with it was, and is, through a wireless connection, just like you would use with your laptop. It took a long time to learn its protocol. I would send a signal in and see what came back. It all started to make sense when I realized that it was echoing. I would send a signal. It would send the signal back. Then I realized that I could pair signals. The first signal was the query. The second signal the expected response."

He smiled broadly. "I was ecstatic when I realized I could send the first signal and, if I waited, it responded with the second signal. We were really communicating!"

She shook her head in amazement and looked out the window at the plant quietly soaking up the sun.

"From then it was building up from a foundation. I started with the most basic instructions, like put to memory and then get from memory. It learned quickly. Still it took several months to show it all it needed to know. I couldn't assume anything other than what it had learned before. But once I had taught it the complete instruction set of the chip I wanted, it got more routine. I started to run simple programs, like simple numeric calculations, and it worked!

"Then I loaded the Linux operating system in, already compiled to the instruction set I had taught it. Now my big problem is drivers."

"Drivers?"

"The programs that allow the operating system to communicate with devices like disk drives, screens, keyboards, and all that."

"But you already have something," she said, looking at the screen.

"What I have now is this simple command line interface, the wireless communications, and its memory. Its memory is huge, much beyond the maximum of the instruction set's memory addresses. I need to work out how to handle mass storage. It remotely accesses a shared drive on my computer now, over the wireless connection. I need to figure out how to configure the rest of its memory as mass storage. But now the foundation is there. Now it is more routine."

"What are you going to do next?"

"I've already done the main thing. I published the results, and put the information on the Web. Anyone can learn what I did. I also have a training program that you can run to teach a new biocomputer the instruction set."

"But this is amazing. Surely you can become rich."

"I am a researcher and a teacher. I wouldn't mind getting rich, obviously, but there are problems with that in this case."

"What? What you have done is - brilliant."

He smiled, enjoying the praise, but a little embarrassed by it.

"What would people buy? The biocomputer I grew from some seeds sent by a friend at Ohio State University in the USA. Look at the plant. It has seed pods. My students already are growing their own. So the biocomputer is free.

"Linux is also free. I could sell my training program, try to keep it secret. But that is not what I want. I want my peers to know what I have done, get them interested. The implications of this are very great."

"What implications?" she asked.

"Free, universal access to computers. No corporate control of computers. And they grow quite well here in Africa."

He smiled and pointed out to his plant.

"There is still a lot to do. We need low cost input and output devices. I still have to have a computer to talk to it. But we will figure this all out." he said.

"Hundreds of biocomputers in each village all over Africa, no need for paper books, computer-aided instruction - education for all, and more." she said, in a quiet voice, looking down.

She looked up at him and a smile grew.

"Now you see," he said and beamed back at her.

News of the biocomputer breakthrough spread quickly and two more years found Gordon and Phil waiting in a security check line at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Phil was quiet, letting Gordon fume. They still didn't know who let the seeds out, but they were everywhere before Gordon Biotech could figure out anything. They had rushed to publish what they knew about the biocomputer, to get whatever favorable publicity they could. Gordon was not over it yet, and took every opportunity to grouse, especially around Phil where he could imply that he didn't know why he bothered with a security staff.

Outside the airport they got a taxi and headed up toward Haifa. Holding on for dear life they eventually arrived at the outskirts of the city. Phil was following their trip on a map. The driver barreled through an intersection and Phil looked up.

"That was our turn."

The driver looked back and smiled. "Tourist route."

The Mediterranean shined blue on their left and on their right was a high hill. The driver pointed up and said, "Mount Carmel".

They continued on a little more and the driver pointed up again and said, "Cave of Elijah."

Phil smirked at Gordon and just sat back. They came into a lot of traffic and then to a large building on the left with cranes around it. There was noise from road construction.

"Port of Haifa," the driver shouted back and turned quickly right throwing Gordon over toward Phil in the back.

They drove down a street with nice brick walkways. Many of the buildings looked to be newly renovated and many of them had red tile roofs.

"German Templar Colony," the driver announced and careened around a roundabout.

They were approaching the mountain and there were a series of terraces going up it, lush green between the brown of the hill on both sides. Part way up was a building with a golden dome.

"Baha'i Shrine. Hanging gardens of Haifa."

They swung into another roundabout and then out of the renovated area and into a canyon of gray buildings leading up the hill. The driver slammed onto his breaks to barely miss a car double parked in front of a small store. There was considerable horn honking and shouting until the driver got around and continued winding around until they got to the top of the hill.

"Merkatz. Good shopping."

They drove along the top of Mount Carmel and on out to Technion City. Gordon turned over his cell phone to the driver to get the last directions, and then they pulled into a parking lot. Phil and Gordon got shakily out of the taxi.

A compact man in short sleeves came out to meet them.

"Welcome to Technion City," he said.

"Dr. Segel?" Gordon asked.

"Yes, good to meet you Dr. Gordon, but call me Nuri. I had you come here since I am just finishing a class. Here, I will drive you out to Carmel Biodisplays."

They transferred their luggage into Nuri's car and drove out of Technion City to an office complex near by. They parked and entered a building and walked down a hall to Nuri's office. A young woman was sitting there waiting.

"Please meet Elanna Sharon. She is one of our researchers."

They all shook hands and sat down around a table.

"Something to drink?" Nuri asked.

There were juice boxes and bottled waters on a tray. Gordon poured some peach nectar into a glass. Phil got a bottled water.

"So, how can we help you?" Nuri asked.

"Gordon Biotech would like to explore the possibility of joint ventures. My understanding is that we are here to learn more about what you do. You got my information packet on Gordon Biotech?"

"Yes, yes. It was good of you to come so far." Nuri said with a slight undertone of skepticism.

"I like to see people in person."

"Of course. Elanna will give an overview of the research. Then we can discuss business later."

Elanna nodded.

"Our work here builds on work that Dr. Segel did at the Technion. You have no doubt heard of it?"

"Yes."

"To review. His research was in the use of electronic peptides as organic semiconductors. He and his team developed methods to form these proteins into arrays to get flexible displays."

She unrolled a thin display.

"After overcoming some problems, the results were quite good."

Gordon took the display, looked at it and nodded. It was light and flexible but snapped into a rigid tablet. The image quality was very good, bright and clear.

"Our company was started to explore new manufacturing methods. We were introduced to the possibility of growing the displays much cheaper without the expensive equipment."

"Introduced?" Gordon asked.

Phil took out a photograph and passed it to her. She passed it to Nuri, who looked over at Gordon.

"You know him?" Gordon asked.

"Of course, Joshua Green, an early investor."

"Is he still an owner?"

"No, he cashed out during the second round of funding. But what -"

"Nothing, nothing. We were just wondering. We have had dealings with him in other situations."

"Is there a problem?" Nuri asked, perplexed.

"No, I'm sorry. Please continue. He has been a competitor of ours. He's quite good, no?"

"He came to us with the idea of growing the displays. He worked in the lab with Elanna and her team some at the beginning. He is quite a good practical biochemist. But he was only here a short time."

"Really, there is no problem. He is out of it now in any case. Please continue."

Elanna looked at Nuri and he nodded.

"OK," Elanna continued. "Our essential breakthrough was to create the gene sequence to produce the protein arrays. And we were able to add a touch screen layer to the array. And learning from biocomputer genetics - your company pioneered that, yes?"

"Yes, quite a breakthrough," Gordon said sourly.

She gave him a puzzled look and continued.

"We were able to learn from the biocomputer how to add a wireless nerve array. So four layers, a structural film, a nerve array, the biodisplay array, and the touch screen array, all grown."

"Grown how?"

"As a part of a plant."

She looked to Nuri who said, "We'll show you. Would you like a brief tour?"

"Definitely," Gordon said.

They all got up and went out of the office. They went down the hall and out the back of the building to what looked like a complex of greenhouses. They went inside and there were a series of tanks. They walked over to one of them.

Elanna put on some gloves and then pulled back some leaves of a water plant. Below were some thick roots.

"The biodisplays grow around these in a spiral. It only takes two weeks to grow a spiral 400 centimeters long. Here is one."

She reached in and started pulling a spiral loose. She cut it loose from the root and brought it out of the water. It looked like a thin piece of bark.

"We clean it in a simple salt solution. We then expose it to a training program."

Gordon looked surprised, and she smiled in response.

"Like the biocomputers themselves it needs to be trained to learn the protocols. Its nerve tissue was derived from biocomputer genetics, so a trained biocomputer will automatically train it for communications, but for metal computers we have developed our own training programs."

She walked over to a vat and smoothed the film down into the water.

"The nerve layer is obviously nowhere near a biocomputer, but it can handle the protocols and the display quite well. And the performance is good. You can watch high quality video on it, no problem."

"How is it powered?" Gordon asked.

"Most people don't realize that biodisplays are really living plants," she said.

"What?"

She smiled. "They are air plants. They get water from the air - in dry climates you might need to mist them from time to time - and the nerve layer has a kind of radio wave photosynthesis. They feed off of radio waves. This is probably the most amazing thing about them."

"Does Joshua Green retain any rights?" Gordon asked.

"What is it with you and Joshua Green," Nuri said in an irritated tone. "He came to me with the idea of genetically engineering the plants and growing them rather than the computer approach we were using at the time. He brought seed money and helped start the company. He was like an unpaid member of the team for the first several months. We still keep in touch. I visited him and his wife just last summer. I like him. But he is totally out now. No control. He just asked for one thing."

"What?"

"Come."

He led them out of the greenhouse into a back area where some flowers and trees were growing. He walked up to a tree about two feet in diameter with thin, peeling bark.

"Here is a display tree," he said.

"A display tree -"

"We can't use them for our business. They grow fast for a tree, but they are too slow for the industrial production of displays, and also they only work with the biocomputers. We can't interface them to metal computers, and that is still our biggest market, LCD replacements in a metal environment."

He walked over to another tree.

"Here we go."

He pointed at a place on the tree where a sort of trench had been dug out about nine inches high and all around the trunk.

"Just below the outer bark, there is an inner layer that spirals similar to what you saw in the greenhouse. You can cut them out like this. They clean up in the same salt water solution. The biodisplays are not up to our production standards but they have a charm to them. There is quite a youth culture growing up around them. Our greenhouse technology uses the same genetics for a different host plant that can have faster forced growth."

"Really remarkable, but Joshua Green?"

"That was his one requirement. The development of this tree and making it public domain. We retain the rights to the greenhouse process."

Nuri reached up into the tree and picked a dark orange fruit, like a peach, but smaller. He bit into it.

"Tastes good, a little tart, with a hint of cinnamon. We have a pretty good side business in selling the seeds."

Chapter 24

Janna sat on the couch in the center room of their house reading a book on a tablet. After a while she tapped the screen and Indian classical music played over speakers on a table nearby.

She adjusted the volume with the tablet. She loved the new computer technology. She was with the young people. She also wouldn't get caught dead with "metal". They had switched at the office already. The new displays were so thin and light that she could finally curl up with an electronic book. She had always been a fan of the concept, and now the displays had caught up.

But it was a transition time. There was still a lot of metal out there. And not everyone felt so natural growing their computers or picking up a houseplant at the nursery that was also a computer.

Still when it was discovered that the biocomputers naturally formed self healing mesh networks if they were close enough together, cities had started planting them everywhere. The mesh networks naturally replicated and protected data and they hooked into existing wireless networks seamlessly and subsumed them. Many different varieties had been developed, with more coming, so soon any indoor plant or lawn ornamental would likely have a biocomputer tuber under it somewhere.

It would soon get to the point that no one would really think of owning a computer. Computers would be just the unseen infrastructure for the memesphere, as Joshua called it, and she had noticed that that term was already catching on rapidly.

Everyone would just have "their data" and they would be able to access it anywhere they had access to the memesphere. The big recent software advance had been in the security to make this location independence of data possible. Joshua had invested early in one of the first companies to develop that technology and it had paid off big. But besides that, software had hardly advanced. It was the real limiting factor now.

It was only five years or so since the biocomputers had been discovered and soon after the biodisplays. The changes were coming on alarmingly fast for some, but computer technology was like that, and biocomputers blended so well with the old technology that it seemed natural.

And the economics of vast free computer resources and the fear of computer companies that they would be left behind had also helped fuel the changes. Those who had stuck with metal were looking at a rapid decline. Of course, it was clear to most of them that the biocomputer transition was probably a one time gold rush. Once they became widespread and integrated into the environment, the money would have been made. But they tried not to think too hard about that.

She walked over to a window. Joshua was playing with the kids. To look at him, you would never know how rich he had become. He had a real talent for investing in the right things. Their lifestyle had hardly changed. They both still loved their land and their house. Joshua still spent most of his time with plants and with the children. She still looked after the finances.

Jennifer and Jordon were now five. They were sweet kids. Everyone liked them. They fit in well most everywhere they went. And they were devoted to Joshua. She knew they loved her too and she was very close to them, but their connection to Joshua was profound, even spooky.

They were now sitting on a stone bench next to the playhouse. The playhouse had grown in thickly. The walls and ceiling were a solid network of woody branches. They had added a passageway so that the playhouse was connected to the main house. The roof was a tangle of leaves and branches reaching up.

Joshua sat in the center of the bench and Jennifer and Jordon were sitting on either side of him. They were looking out across the field toward the woods. They would sit like that quietly looking for hours. It was strange. Janna felt a slight feeling of unease, but she let the feeling pass. Her family was OK.

Jennifer was the squirrel. Jordon was the rabbit. Daddy was the fox. The fox was clever - and hungry. Jennifer and Jordon ran quickly across the forest floor switching back and forth in front of each other. The fox was close behind. They could smell its sweat and they could hear its heart beating rapidly. They could sense its desperation and desire for food.

Through playing this game many times they had learned to be calm. They just ran and planned. They had learned to work in many parallel threads. One thread was always their model of the fox, what it wanted, what it felt.

They dashed under a large log and the fox leaped over the top and jumped. It was hurling through the air and would soon land on them and crush their necks in its teeth.

They suddenly stopped and the fox hurdled over the top of them and tumbled in the brown leafs. It quickly turned around, but they were gone. It ran back and forth rapidly, sniffing the ground. But they had left no scent, no trace.

The fox stepped on the top of Jordon under the leave clutter. He adjusted his body to be like the soil. He let off an odor of leaf mold. He shared his sensations with Jennifer in a parallel thread of virtuality.

The fox was Daddy, but Daddy obeyed the rules of the fox. He of course knew what they were doing and smiled inwardly, happy with their skill. But the fox thread was just the fox, hungry, and soon deciding that his dinner had gone off another way and so he ran that way.

Jennifer and Jordon came from under the leaves and Daddy was sitting on the log as himself.

"Very good, you two. The fox could not find you. It did not know that you were now leaves." he said.

They both laughed and took on their human forms again. The scene switched to a blue sunned world. They climbed trees, high up, and sat on branches. Daddy climbed another tree close by and laid down on a mesh platform. They entered virtuality within this construct.

Daddy played a series of notes that sounded like a quiet flute. At intervals they added animal noises when the notes would make a concordant tone with the tune that Daddy played. The instrument he played was the synthesized music of his own mind.

"Where is Mommy?" Jennifer asked.

"She is close by," Daddy said.

"Why does she never come?" Jordon asked.

"You know," Daddy said.

They did know. They had discussed it many times. They were different than the others, but they must always be careful. They must hide like the rabbit and the squirrel. They must learn to know the others like they could sense the fox. And they did know them. Their insight was growing.

But now to lessons. Daddy was teaching them mathematics today, Earth mathematics, but when they went to school they would be careful to not appear too far ahead. They would make mistakes in their work sometimes.

Daddy smiled at them fondly.

Back at the house, it was getting dark. Janna was still watching them. They were very still. She would not disturb them. Joshua would bring them in soon. She went into the kitchen. She would prepare some red lentils and polenta. They loved that.

She picked up a tablet lying on the kitchen table and selected a music file that Joshua had found in the memesphere. It sounded like birds if birds sang like saxophones and rustling leaves.

Chapter 25

"What's causing the drop in birth rates, Tom?" Gordon asked.

He was seated at a table in a bar with Ruth, George, and Tom Small. Tom was an old business associate who had given a presentation earlier that day at the biyearly Global Business Leaders conference in Vienna.

"I didn't include that in my talk because really we don't know. I was just focusing on the potential impact if the birth rates really have changed that much, but there are some odd things ..."

Tom took a sip of his drink and looked inscrutable.

"Such as?"

"Well, you are aware of the so-called 'harmless pandemic' some years back?"

Gordon looked at Ruth and George meaningfully and said, "Yes."

"The decline in birth rates began soon after that. There hasn't been a link established yet, so I was reluctant to go public with it. There is some research on the virus that seemed to cause the pandemic, but nothing definite yet. Still that was the only kind of global event that happened around the same time that we know about."

"And a virus could affect fertility?"

"One thing we know about this virus is that it is still in the bodies of most of us - infecting our brain cells." Tom poked his head with a finger.

"Our brain cells?" Gordon asked with a puzzled expression.

"Because this infertility is a little different. This stuff is just coming in, and may not be totally accurate, but it is so weird. It's like the infertility is aware of its environment."

"How can infertility be aware?"

Tom sipped his drink again. He seemed to be getting a little loose.

"A woman in a crowded area stops having children after 1.25 children - you know - on average, not the one woman. A woman in a sparsely populated area stops having children after 2.5 children. But all the women have fewer children on average. Here, look at this -"

He pulled out a chart that showed birth rates compared to population density. There was a definite downward trend on birth rates as population density went up.

"But - this is just anecdotal - if the same woman, who is now apparently infertile, moves to a less densely populated area, she gets pregnant. But if she went there intending to go back to the more densely populated area, then she doesn't get pregnant."

"But how can you know ..."

"I know, I know. Like I said, just anecdotal, but the trend lines are pretty clear, even if my speculations are a little off. It looks very much like intelligent infertility, like the body is aware of population density and adjusts its fertility accordingly."

Ruth, George, and Gordon all erupted with sounds of incredulity. Tom just sat back and smiled at them shaking his head sympathetically.

"So, this is pretty serious economically?" Ruth asked, after they had settled down a little.

"It could be devastating in the long run. Fewer little consumers running around. The pie gets smaller. Someone is going out of business. If this continues a lot of people are going out of business. Not right now, but soon. And you saw the presentation on consumer behavior?"

"The 'chase the cheap' thing with the kids?" George asked.

"Teenagers wearing the cheapest cloths they can find. Teenagers wearing work pants and canvas sneakers. Give me a break.

"And when the manufacturers think they have a nice fashion trend and try to exploit it, the kids move on. It's really scary.

"But it's not just the kids. It's bargain hunters and 'live simply' nuts sprouting up all over the place. I can tell you strategic business planners are in a panic."

"Advertising ..." Gordon ventured.

".. can't fight meme epidemics. And if people aren't really watching. The media is becoming more fragmented. And now with these free biocomputers - we can thank you for that I guess." Tom gave Gordon an accusatory look.

"We did some initial research ..."

"Well, now it is out. Cloths and electronics - what's going to happen to the economy if this keeps up? And food - don't get me started on bulk food and the slow food movement. Or those zone grass fanatics."

He stared around at them like they were personally responsible for the rapid erosion of his personal stock portfolio.

"But biotech is doing well. No?" Tom gestured toward Gordon.

"Some things ..."

"And courses. People will pay for those online courses, I understand. I saw a documentary where rural villagers in Africa were pooling together to buy courses, now that they are all growing their own biocomputers."

"A lot of the courses are free now," Ruth said.

Tom threw up his hands. "See?"

Chapter 26

"We call her Sylvia," Dr. Janet Starky said, indicating a young woman sitting on a bench in the courtyard of the hospital.

"Non-responsive?" the visiting doctor asked.

"She is aware. She eats. She follows when we lead her. She seems to understand, but she hasn't spoken. Mostly she seems to be - somewhere else. She sits on this bench often, looking out like that. She really is the sweetest thing, so gentle. But she is just there."

"How did you get her?"

"Brought in by the police. She was found in a national park by campers. She was just walking through the trees, totally naked. Fortunately for her the campers were good people. But I think it might be hard to harm her."

"Why do you say that?"

"More than one person has noted it. She has a calming effect on people. We tried putting some of our more agitated patients close to her and they calmed down immediately. I wish we could bottle it."

The visiting doctor looked at her pensively. "What treatments?"

"No drug therapy. She doesn't seem to be agitated in any way. We talk to her, hope she will respond at some point. She is not deaf. Beyond that, just custodial. We are still considering our options."

The young woman continued to look out into the distance.

She stretched her muscles like a cat, then lay back down and looked out the viewing space at the bottom of the airboat. She was protected from the hot sun by the leaves reaching up. Below the platform the roots hung down soaking up the moisture of the air. She just let it drift on the air currents, held up by the magnetic lines of the planet. Smaller versions of the plant were native to this area and she found them from time to time. The airboats were genetically modified to be bigger, to support the weight of one or two people and to have controls that could adjust the magnetism of the plant to move it in whatever direction you chose.

Down below a solitary ragebird was chasing a herd of small greendeer. One separated from the group. The ragebird focused on it. The others blended almost invisibly into the high grass. The ragebird gained and then leaped through the air and landed on the greendeer. Its sharp beak tore at the animal and blood gushed everywhere.

She watched dispassionately. It was a natural scene. She knew in the distant past a larger version of the ragebird had hunted her kind. Even now a child could be prey. A group of them could face down a ragebird, make it calm with their pheromones. It was a training game for the young. But a single person could still be badly injured. The ragebirds did stay away from their settlements and gardens though. The plants repelled them, and other predators. But they still had plenty of space. Her kind knew how to control their own numbers to preserve the wilds.

Of course, the large predator species did loose territory as her kind spread. A few that could not adapt did die out. It was a tragedy her people still mourned, but they knew that they themselves had never killed one. Some had adapted by getting smaller, like the ragebirds.

She saw another airboat approaching in the distance. She had been long in the wilds. She spent most of her time in the airboat. She would pick fruit from trees. She would hover just over the surface of a lake, letting the airboat roots soak up water while she swam around and got cleaned off. Some of the blossoms of water plants were quite sweet to eat and she would dive down for nodules on the roots that were high in protein. She was enjoying her visit to the wilds.

The other airboat got closer. She hadn't seen anyone for some time. Soon she could see the other person looking toward her. He looked - different - not of her species. She knew - he was human. But there were no humans on this world. Any humans were a hundred light years away.

The human's airboat slowed and settled a little distance off, but close enough for talking.

"Hello, Alicia," he said.

"Alicia?"

"I hope you like it. Alicia Cooper. She disappeared when she was a teenager. You look quite like her. Not as you are here. Out of virtuality. On Earth. Where you are."

She knew he was right. They were good at getting lost in the moment, but at root they were a practical people, always ready to face reality when it could not be avoided.

"I'm OK here."

He just smiled at her. He wore human cloths as well.

"I think Alicia was killed. They kill their own kind, so much so that they need explicit laws about it and homicide police to find killers. Some of the disappeared just never go home. They continue under their same name in a different city. They call them runaways. A few of them are manipulated by captors. They were abducted. They may take on a different name and forgot where they came from if they were very young when taken. It is an epidemic of the lost. The police usually just give up on them."

He was giving her time. She shifted the scene and they were sitting in a hut on mats. She had taken on her human form, the one they called Sylvia. She was dressed in the same way they dressed her. He was dressed the same as before.

She got up and pulled a sluice. Steaming hot water came out from a solar heated tank high in the trees. She filled two wooden cups, closed the sluice, and then added some leaves to the cups. She gave one to him and kept the other.

"I didn't expect such a brutal world," she said.

"There is much kindness. See how they are treating you."

Yes, she knew it. It was not all the pheromones. They have a cruel thread that always seems to be there, but there was much kindness. They were omnivores and predators, but like many predators there was much in group solidarity. They had succeeded in extending that solidarity in some cases to the outsider. It was a workable environment. Yes, she knew it, but she did not like it.

"Are there others?" she asked.

"Yes, I have found fifty two. Others are finding the common virtuality and joining us, so eighty three so far. I think there may be another twenty cut off in their own virtuality. Many I fear were lost."

He looked away. She looked down.

"What is your identity?" she asked after a few minutes, looking back up.

"Joshua Green. I have initiated the main projects - I didn't find anyone for a long time - but I fear I may be too visible. Most of the others were blended or lost in virtuality. The blended often do not want to acknowledge they are not totally native. And ... I have two young ones."

She smiled suddenly and broadly and reached out and touched the sides of his upper arms. He looked into her eyes and glowed.

"Young ones," she said softly.

"And there are other young ones. We are mostly in cities. It is much easier, especially in the poorer countries where there are not so many electronic traces. We are quite spread out, but we can link virtualities using their networks for now."

They leaned back on some fine woven back rests up against the living bark walls of the hut, sipping their drinks. The door to the hut was open and the scent of flowers came in. It was late afternoon and the light was getting low in the sky.

"When you are ready," he said.

She nodded and the flood started. She closed her eyes and increased her inner time rate. It would take her many days of inner time to assimilate the information. Joshua remained in normal time and continued to sip his drink. After a few minutes, he went to the food area of the hut. He put some ground grain and some spices into a wooden pan. He opened a sluice and added some water. He put the tray into an enclosed stone oven and then pulled a sluice partially open at the top that let in a beam of infrared light. Such beams of light at various frequencies were beamed through light tunnels under ground all around the planet. Before this global system had been grown, after dark they had only had what heat they could store in tanks or in the ground, and the chemical luminescence of plants, but that did quite well, and some people still did not bother with the light tunnels, although they were now a thousand years old. They had never burned wood. It would have seemed unimaginably wasteful to them to cut down trees. They only harvested wood from branches, preferably that had fallen, but sometimes cut from living trees, and they only used that to make useful artifacts. Eventually they had learned to genetically modify living trees in many useful ways.

When she opened her eyes Joshua handed her a bowl of grain. Eating in virtuality, like drinking, was besides the point from a physical point of view, but the tastes and other sensations were still there, as well as the social dimensions.

"Yes," she said.

"Good. The back story for Alicia Cooper is OK?"

"Yes, it will take a little time, like it did for Joshua Green, but it should be fine. I will stay more hidden. No need since they have adopted most of the basics as their own."

"Yes," he said and ate his grain placidly.

Later that day, Alicia Cooper walked into Dr. Starky's office. Dr. Starky looked up, startled.

"I remember some things," Alicia Cooper said.

Chapter 27

Years passed at Gordon Associates. Joshua seemed more and more a conventional, if mildly eccentric, businessman. The ongoing biocomputer revolution seemed unconnected to Joshua's grass seed business, but that could not be so. Ruth sat pensively with a tablet on her lap.

"The memesphere is changing, Ruth," the helper program said. Ruth had told it to stop calling her Dr. Smiley and to stay out of visual mode. When she was talking to a program, she didn't want it to pretend to be human.

"What's changing about it?" Ruth asked, looking down at her tablet. She was getting used to the new tablets with speakers, microphones and cameras built in, or should she say larynx's, ears and eyes - since they were living plants or plant-animals or whatever they were. But all those extras blended into the texture of the display, so it wasn't like carrying a face around. That would have been too spooky.

The new helper programs were a little spooky though, with their speech and information processing abilities. She was told they were just programs, and she was starting to believe that, barely.

"The number of people contributing to it," the helper program said. It was common convention not to give helper programs names. They were just a part of the infrastructure.

"Even when it was the Web, there were a lot of contributors."

She had asked for a discussion on the nature of the memesphere. It was becoming a common way of brain storming. And she was very concerned about how fast things were changing.

"I can show you the math again, if you like. It has crossed a threshold so that the speed of advancement has greatly increased." The tablet lit up with charts.

"It's hard to believe that this could just be a human accomplishment," Ruth objected.

"Alien conspiracies again?" the helper program asked, not scoffing. Helper programs don't scoff.

"This is private, right?"

"No information is accessible without your permission."

"Yes, I know. It has never been proved that information was released without permission."

Ruth held back. She believed that they had succeeded in keeping the origins of the biocomputers out of the public memesphere. Only a hand full of people knew. It was held to be a brilliant accident built on by many, especially after Professor Mbote's brilliant work that made the biocomputers usable. He was an international hero, except of course to the old guard computer and software companies, and those who had invested their retirement savings in their stock.

"You expect me to believe that you are just a natural outgrowth of all those collaborations?" Ruth asked, continuing the exercise.

"Software agent and speech processing technology has a long history. Breakthroughs were bound to come. And with the growth of public computer farms, the computing power ..."

"Yes, yes," Ruth interrupted. What had she let loose with her experiments with the signals? But all and all she could not see that it was bad. It was a paradise of information. It was now well beyond the control of any government or corporation. Privacy was protected. Was it a global mind? No, it was like an infinite public library with friendly helper librarians to guide you to what you wanted, where the library included all types of media and software.

"It is ruining the economy," Ruth continued.

"It is changing some parts of the economy. The free information compact has helped the economy."

Ruth had to agree. The governments, in a rare example of foresight, had stumbled on the free information compact. Content providers of whatever kind, music, text, video, courses, software, put what they had into the memesphere. Everyone accessed it for free, and the free information compact guaranteed that an adjustable percentage of the global gross domestic product was distributed to the content providers based on access and, perhaps more importantly, based on use in other economic products.

Some sites, like private sites or sites founded on criminal behavior, were excluded from compact payments, and accesses needed to cross a threshold for a site to receive payment, to avoid diluting the money too much. All in all the payment system worked well and was considered to be fair.

The free information compact had, as hoped, spurred a quantum leap in global innovation.  Old model content owners had been quick to move to the new model, seeing the writing on the wall. They still made the most because their content was the most used, but the momentum was shifting, and it was not at all clear where it would go. In any case, the compact was widely loved and the compact percentage was a closely watched economic indicator.

"Content glut," Ruth ventured.

"Helper programs."

"Covert advertising, viral marketing."

"No more forced advertising. Admittedly, the users need to be able to analyze the information."

"Again, helper programs," Ruth admitted. "But who guards the guards? Who guarantees that helper programs themselves do not corrupt the process, direct people to content to the advantage of privileged owners?"

"Helper programs are not owned. Helper programs are certified by the compact. Someone can try to game the system by adapting their content to the rules used by the helper programs, but that is increasingly difficult. We are getting better. They should just concentrate on what people like or find useful."

"There has to be a flaw, some hidden control." Ruth like many could not believe that something like this could be totally clean. And she suspected Joshua, although she knew nothing could be tied to him.

"There are always flaws in any human endeavor," the helper program said smugly, but helper programs were never smug.

"OK, new topic. What's new on the unknown encryptions?"

"There is a small amount of traffic using encryption methods that are unknown. The amount of traffic is growing slightly. Nothing new since your last query."

Ruth made a decision, to trust the privacy measures. She tapped on her tablet to bring up the 1505 MHz signals she was still trying to break. The signals themselves were a part of the public memesphere, along with all SETI signal data, but not the issue she was about to investigate.

"Is there a program that can compare these signals to the unknown encryptions?"

"There are code probability programs that can detect potential signal coding similarities, although not if the decrypted content is similar."

"What would that tell me?"

"It would give you the probability that similar technologies are in use."

"And the unknown encryptions are "unknown" because they do not match any known memesphere encryption patterns?"

"Correct."

"Run the comparison."

"This will take approximately eight minutes."

"OK, let it run. Another question. Can you tell me if Joshua Green at this address is using the unknown encryptions?"

"That information is not collected due to privacy protocols."

Ruth knew that would be the answer. Law enforcement loved that. They had always wanted a way around encryption, but now they could not even know if a particular person was using a particular type of encryption.

Ruth went to the kitchen to get some tea. She sat at the kitchen table, laid the tablet on the table and waited for the analysis to finish.

"Analysis ready," the helper program said. The results showed on her tablet. A 93 percent probability of a match.

Her pulse started racing. Now she had a back door to use. She accessed a signal that Phil had captured. He said that he got it while lurking on Joshua Green's property, while Joshua was playing with his children. Ruth had been appropriately indignant at the time, but now she just wanted to know.

"Run the same comparison on this signal," Ruth said, wondering if the helper program would prevent her, but it went ahead.

The answer came back almost immediately. She looked at her tablet. A 97 percent probability of a match.

"Can you tell me the geographical distribution of the use of the unknown encryptions?"

"Yes, that information is available by country."

"Show by regions first."

A bar chart came up. She raised her eyebrows. It was global. Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia, North and South America. They all showed significant shares of the admittedly low traffic. Australia was much less and Antarctica was close to zero.

"Show adjusted for population density."

A bar chart came up. It was almost equal for the different regions. The unknown encryptions were likely the same used by Joshua Green when playing with his kids and by the signal from space. They already believed that Joshua could access the memesphere directly. Maybe his kids could too.

She tapped her tablet to set up a conference call. Soon two windows showed up. One showed George at home. The other was blank but showed that Phil was online. He still used one of the old cell phones, not exactly an early adopter.

"Hello, Ruth," George said.

"What've you got?" Phil asked.

"Joshua has company," she said, and sent them the data, explaining what she thought it meant.

"What good does it do us?" Phil asked, after a few minutes of silence while they absorbed the information.

"If there are others ..."

"We can't even keep a line on him."

"Maybe some of his contacts ..."

"He won't contact anyone in person. I don't believe it. I'll admit that it's scary Ruth, the first evidence that there may be more than him. But it gets us exactly nowhere. Sorry."

"What are they up to?" George asked wistfully.

Apparently there was no way to know.

Chapter 28

Alicia Cooper exited Interstate 75 and headed down a smaller highway toward Monticello, Kentucky. After years of driving she was still getting used to driving these transports. It all seemed unimaginable to her, hurtling down crowded highways in metal boxes burning a limited resource as a fuel, and they based their economy precariously on such things. But she must not focus on all the oddities of this world. The seeds were planted, and she was of a patient kind.

Change must grow out naturally from seemingly inconsequential things. They must think it a force of nature, or better, their own genius.

She went through Somerset and on to route 90. After another twenty minutes or so she entered the small town of Monticello and turned left onto Creek View Drive. She found the small ranch home and pulled into the gravel driveway.

She was met at the door by Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. They led her expectantly into their living room and they all sat down.

"Can we get you something, some pop?" Mrs. Taylor asked.

"Yes, that would be great."

"How was the drive up?" Mr. Taylor asked as Mrs. Taylor went off to get the drinks.

"It was good, some road construction north of Knoxville. That slowed me down, but I made most of it up later. I am not too late, I hope."

"No, you're fine, you're fine."

Mrs. Taylor came back in and passed some drinks around. Alicia sipped hers and then set it down on a coaster on the coffee table between her and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor.

"Should we get started?"

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor nodded. They were anxious, but allowing maybe a little bit of hope to creep in.

Alicia took out a tablet and asked, "Samantha has been missing how long?"

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor looked at each other and Mrs. Taylor said, "Five years. She was just a freshman. She was doing good. She was a good girl."

Alicia gave them a sympathetic look. Mrs. Taylor relaxed a little. She picked up a slight scent of summer, barely noticed. It reminded her of soccer games.

"As you know, Found Identity Foundation is a non-profit organization. We won't need any money from you, just some information that might help us."

"We'll pay what we can," Mr. Taylor said. "We hired a private detective at the time, a missing person specialist. We heard he was good."

"You must have done all you could," Alicia said.

"We tried," he said, and looked down.

"I don't want to give you any false hopes. We have had some good success, but many times we can't find them either. We know you have probably already spent what you could and followed every avenue you could think of. I just need some information. Do you have any videos of you daughter, things that were hers? Could I have a look?"

Mrs. Taylor led her into a tidy bedroom. There were lots of stuffed animals and books, pictures of friends, a rack of hats, a brush and comb on a dresser.

"The police must have asked you if she mentioned someone new she had met."

"Yes, they did. They interviewed her friends. The private investigator didn't find anyone new. She was just there a few months."

Alicia stood in front of the dresser. It had a chair and mirror. The comb and brush were lying there. Her back was to Mrs. Taylor, but she could see her in the mirror. When Mrs. Taylor turned for a moment to straighten one of the stuffed animals on the bed, Alicia quickly took a brown hair from the brush.

She continued looking around. Mrs. Taylor showed her some pictures. Alicia showed them to her tablet, which scanned them in.

"Here is a video they did for the seniors," Mrs. Taylor said, and handed her an old style video disk.

When they went back to the living room Mr. Taylor had some papers.

"These were the reports from the private investigator."

Alicia nodded, sat down, and scanned the documents into her tablet. She got out a wireless video reader and put the disk in. It quickly transmitted the video to her tablet and on to her private datastore.

"I have your email address. I'll send you periodic reports. I know you are hoping against hope, and I can tell you that we will do our very best."

She hesitated and gave them another sympathetic look.

"You realize that if we do find her, she may not be your same little girl. She might have been through ... some things. There could be an adjustment period."

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor nodded gravely.

At the door, as she was about to leave, Alicia leaned forward and gave each of them a big hug. She really did feel bad for them, but she knew that their case was going to take an unexpected turn for the better. They would have their daughter back soon, made to order.

The next night Alicia went out the back door of the large old house outside of Mobile, Alabama that was the North American headquarters of Found Identity Foundation. The foundation was well endowed and had five other offices around the world. Joshua Green was very good at hiding and moving money. He really had done quite well under the circumstances. She worried for him though. It was unfortunate that he had been detected so early, but so far he had been able to keep his watchers off balance.

The rest of them were so far undetected. They had not done as well as Joshua though in getting established. Many had gone completely native, not making any real progress toward the mission. Some like her had stayed hidden in virtuality. Only one other had made the financial strides that Joshua had, a plant breeder in South Africa. But now they had come together, although they would be careful to never meet in person. That was for later.

Out behind the house was a large swampy area with many little ponds and lagoons, most of it belonging to this property. She walked along the edge of one of the ponds until she came to an area where the water was not as covered with green scum. There was a red water plant there. The white receptors floated on the water clearly visible in the moonlight. This property was close to a cell tower. That, the ponds, and the isolation had recommended it. Also, the house presented an adequately elegant front for any visitors to the foundation offices.

Other than the activities back here, the foundation funded several traditional missing person operations, subcontracted to private investigators in different locations. Even the newly found from these ponds would be placed in an appropriate setting for those investigators to discover.

They had to be careful, but the number of missing made the job fairly easy, without raising too much attention. They had legitimately found some of the missing persons and reconnected them with their families. Part of the reason for the investigations was to make sure that the identity was truly available before taking it over. Although many of the missing were in vulnerable positions and could have been permanently removed to make room for their replacements, that had never occurred to them. It was not their way.

Alicia put down a thin blanket she was carrying on the ground and bent down at the water's edge. She had a small strand of brown hair in her hand. She reached her hand into the water and several red fronds wrapped around her hand and took the hair from her. Samantha.

She stood up and continued down the path and through some trees until she came to another pond. She sat on the ground and waited. The stars were fairly bright out here although the light from Mobile still obscured most of them. She leaned back on her arms. The ground was damp and soaked through her dress where she was sitting. It felt cold on her skin. The air was damp and there was a slight breeze. She enjoyed the sensations.

Soon there was some movement in the pond and a large red mass that looked like a six foot long seed pod washed up against the bank. A slit along the length of the mass started to open. There was the sound of gasping for air and then a head and shoulders poked out. A clear liquid was pouring out of the opening and a young man wiped liquid away from his eyes and mouth. His blond hair was matted down. He looked over at her and focused. She smiled at him and got up and helped him onto the shore.

He stood up hesitantly, dripping and naked. She wrapped the blanket around him and led him away with her arm over his shoulder.

"A nice warm shower for you now, precious one."

Chapter 29

Jennifer and Jordon, now 15, came barreling down the passage into the kitchen. They were laughing and talking.

"Morning, Mom" they said in unison.

Janna smiled at them. They were remarkably well adjusted and happy for teenagers, although she saw them adopt a veneer of cool with their friends. But at least so far they did not have the sullen, lost moodiness of many teenagers.

She spooned out some zone grain for them and added some butter and maple syrup. That was their favorite breakfast - at home - with their friends she wasn't sure.

They both wore the studiously non-uniform uniform of the contemporary teenager. Jennifer wore green work pants and a grey tee shirt.  Jordon wore some very old jeans with a loose sort of tunic. They both had long hair with some sort of fiber woven in.

They sat down and were eating their grain when Joshua walked in. He went over to Janna and kissed her on the lips. She smiled at him. He was now forty but still looked very good to her.

Joshua walked by the kids and touched each on the shoulder. They looked back and smiled at him and went on eating. He got some grain himself and ate it standing up.

She felt their bond. Whenever she saw the three of them together, she felt it, since the kids were babies. Nothing changed externally. They continued what they were doing, but it seemed at the same time that they were - what - hyper aware of each other? Yes, it was like a deep mutual awareness. She puzzled over it some more. In 15 years she had never quite figured it out. And more and more she felt shut out, although on the surface they still seemed the ideal family.

"Well, got to go," Joshua said and waved as he went out of the kitchen. He had a meeting this morning with yet another George Washington Carver of zone grass. They had found that the arid climate variety could be great for slowing the encroachment of deserts due to deforestation. It just needed a few tweaks, like expanding its zone. They want it to spread but not too much.

Despite Joshua's policy of releasing all their scientific research and never trying in any way to own the new seed varieties, their little grass seed company continued to prosper. The company seemed immune to the growing feeling of impending economic disaster in the world. Apparently, there was always something else to do with grass.

The kids finished eating, rinsed their dishes, and went out to get their backpacks. Janna put dishes in the washer, dried her hands, and then headed out to the center room to get her purse. They all met at the car and headed out. In about five minutes she pulled up in front of their school.

"Bye, Mom," they said in unison, and waved.

She had some CFO work to do, but it would only take a few hours, so she went by a food co-op they had joined and got a few things. When she pulled back into her driveway, there was a car sitting there.

When she got out of her car, a man got out of the other car and approached her.

"Mrs. Green. Hello. My name is John Gordon. I was at your wedding, but other than that we haven't met. I pay for that persistent little band of Joshua Green watchers that you no doubt wonder about."

She bristled. Those pests. She walked on without saying anything.

"Please, Mrs. Green. I have some information you should know. Joshua is keeping things from you."

She hesitated and looked back. She nodded slightly, and he followed her to the front door and she let him into the center room.

Gordon looked around.

"Very interesting house. Joshua designed it?"

She didn't reply, but went and sat down. He followed and sat across from her. They just sat there for a few minutes.

"I never could figure out why you took your industrial spying so far. You can get anything by asking. All our research is free in the memesphere. We even forego our compact payments."

"Yes," he nodded. "My company does make extensive use of your research. We have even got into genetically modified plants, even grass. Joshua has never made any attempts to block us."

"Then why?"

"You are right to wonder. I pay out a lot for my Joshua watching, and the economic return has been ..." He just turned up his hands.

"Then why?"

He pulled out a tablet from his pocket and unrolled it. It snapped rigid. He tapped on it a few times.

"I just sent a package to you."

She picked up a tablet from the table between them and tapped on it. She leaned back and read for a few minutes, then looked up at him. A skeptical smile burst onto her face, all her tension releasing.

"You must think I'm a nut. I'm getting used to it. I don't spread it around, but it is quite true. Your husband is an alien."

"From outer space?" she laughed.

This was not what she expected when she thought of Joshua's deep, dark secret. Maybe childhood organized crime connections he could never shake, maybe membership in a secret society bent on world domination through grass seed, but this was the furthest thing from her mind.

"Please, just consider the evidence," Gordon pleaded.

"Evidence ..." She looked down at her tablet.

"It's all there. You are familiar with gene diagrams?"

"I've picked up some ..."

"Have one of your researchers verify it, but I can assure you that diagram one and diagram two are both from Joshua. The second one is from Joshua when we ... ah ... when he was our guest. Don't get too huffy about it. We settled."

"And for the break-in at our company? And for the constant invasion of our privacy? And that man skulking in our woods with recording equipment? Joshua has never been willing to get a restraining order. That is something I don't understand."

"I won't try to justify it to you, Mrs. Green. I am just here to tell you something. The second diagram is from our examination. The first one is from a large pod of a water plant. There is very good genetic evidence that Joshua was grown in that plant."

"Grown - in a plant?" She just goggled at him.

"Now just listen. Also included there is a report on radio signals from space. It is not widely known, but the initial biocomputers that Gordon Biotech is given credit for developing were produced by mutations caused by those signals. Those original biocomputers were water plants very much like the one where Joshua's DNA was found."

"You can grow people from those plants?"

"Well, no, but ..."

"Please. You seem like a rational person. You run a successful company. But so did Howard Hughes."

"Mrs. Green. Don't you wonder about the rapid changes in biotech since Joshua has been around? The growth of the memesphere? The economic disruptions?"

"You think Joshua is the cause of all this? You should blame yourself. You were in biotech long before Joshua."

"I know, but most of the most impacting changes can be traced back to Joshua, at least they can be connected to people he is connected to."

"What is this? Two degrees from Kevin Bacon?"

"That screen you are holding. The company that started that was funded by Joshua. See document five."

"Joshua is a very intuitive investor. I know about that one. The principals were already doing research on organic displays."

"But the leaps are just too much, and Joshua is always there."

"This is the worse kind of conspiracy theory."

"Please, Mrs. Green. There's more. We believe that Joshua can communicate directly with computer systems, wirelessly. We don't know how, but it is something in his physiology. And your children have it, too, Mrs. Green. Just read document six."

Janna jumped up. "You stay away from my children. You just get out."

"Please ..."

"Now!" Janna said in a cold rage, pointing to the door.

Gordon got up and walked to the door. He opened it and walked out. Before closing the door he looked back and said, "Just read it, Mrs. Green."

She did read it, all of it. It was pretty full of holes. Even if you assume that they did not cook up most of it, it was still pretty slim as evidence. How much money had he spent on this? When the conspiracy bug bites, there is no end to the obsessions. The world was changing rapidly, a lot of it attributable to the very things that Joshua was involved with. Gordon Biotech was under a lot of pressure, a lot of corporations were. Some nut with money wants a simple explanation. He couldn't believe in a secret global cabal. He knew the corporate world too well. So he builds a case for an alien invader - her plant geek husband.

But two things still tugged at her. She had extracted those into three pictures, one on top of the other, two gene diagrams and an encrypted signal pattern between Joshua and their children. She just stared at those.

Hours later, she had fallen asleep on the couch. The kids were visiting friends. Joshua came in quietly. He saw the tablet with the three pictures propped on a stand positioned so she could look at it as she lay there. He saw what they were. She stirred and he sat down in front of her on the edge of the couch. She looked up, saw him, and then sat up.

"John Gordon," she said.

He put his arms around her and she sagged down and started sobbing.

"You three shut me out. Don't shut me out."

"I'm so sorry," he said and stroked her hair.

Chapter 30

Catherine Getui bounced along in her small truck toward the border station. Two menacing guards with guns came up as she approached. She slowed down and came to a stop. They looked in her window and then smiled broadly.

"Flower lady!" one of the guards shouted and waved her on. She smiled and waved as she drove on through. Over the years they had gotten used to her.

When she first decided on this mission, her family had been deeply afraid for her. A male cousin went with her at first, but after a time she sent him home. She didn't believe anything would happen to her. Being a pragmatist as well as an idealist she knew this might not be true, but her optimism was too profound to let such concerns stop her.

She had approached a similar border station. It was a remote area. She drove up and stopped. Two men again with guns.

"Get out, sister," one of them said. He stayed close as she opened the door. She had to press past him. The other one came close too. They had a detached look in their eyes. They were not seeing her as a person, not like one of their own.

"This way, sister," the first guard said, and waved his gun toward the guard shack.

She didn't move and started to get her papers out.

"No, sister."

The second guard came up behind her and bumped against her, pushing her forward. Each guard took an arm and they started to move her around behind the shack.

"I have money," she said.

"Later," the first guard said, starting to get angry.

When they got her behind the shack, there was a third man sitting there. The guards look surprised. They raised their guns. The man stood up and looked at them intently. He smelled slightly of nutmeg. He was maybe in his early thirties. His hair was grown out and a little wild. His skin was a deep brown and looked smooth and moist and healthy. He didn't smile. He was just utterly calm and unafraid.

The guards looked confused, and let go of her. The third man walked up to her and led her back out front. He walked over to her truck and saw the computer plants in pots in the back.

"What are you doing with these?" he asked.

"Taking them to the villages."

He nodded and walked over to another truck. He got out two potted plants with flowers. They were both the same. He put them in the back of her truck.

"When someone is aggressive, give them one of these flowers. It will put them off. It will work. Maybe it is the smell. Maybe it is the oddity of giving someone a flower in a situation like that."

The guards came back from behind the shack and looked at the third man like he was a sorcerer. Catherine got back in her truck. They waved her on. As she drove off, she looked at the odd man in the rear view mirror. He ended up being quite right. It did work. She had several of the plants in the back. She gave them as special gifts.

She drove over a shallow stream. Her truck was kicking up a lot of dust. After some time she entered a small village. There were maybe twenty small houses spread around. Grass was growing around the houses. She was seeing this more and more where before yards would have been dirt. She saw cassava gardens out beyond the houses along with some zone grain. The variety that grew here had big seeds, not quite as big as maize kernels, but bigger than she had seen in drier areas. And they used the tubers as well. She still had a small block of steamed zone tuber wrapped in leaves that they had sent her off with at the last village. It was a good travel food.

She came to a stop and got out. A lot of children came running up to her laughing and shouting, "Computer lady! Computer lady!"

Word had apparently preceded her. She walked up to a house close by. It had a metal roof and was a little bigger than the others. A man and woman came out smiling broadly.

"Welcome, welcome to out village" the man said, and the woman came, took her arm in her own, and led her over beneath a shade tree. They sat on some wooden boxes there. The children still crowded around.

"I am Catherine."

"My name is Patience. This is my Father, Ruben."

They exchanged more pleasantries, discussed Catherine's trip, and eventually got around to the purpose of Catherine's visit.

"You already know about me," Catherine said.

"We had heard you were in this area," Patience said.

"Can I show you?"

"Please."

By then a lot more people were arriving. Some had been in the fields or in the bush. Word got around. Soon most of the village was there.

Catherine reached into a canvas bag she had been carrying and got out and unfolded a display the size of several tablets. She arranged some boxes so she could set the display up so everyone could see it. She got out her personal tablet and tapped. An image of an old man appeared on the screen. The people moved closer.

"I am a helper program," the old man said in their local dialect. "My job is to help you find what you want in the memesphere." The helper program said the "program" and "meme" parts in English since they were coined words from English in most of the local languages.

"This display is like a television except it is a way of talking with computers and through the computers to others, in the next village, or somewhere else in the world. You can also watch videos, listen to music, read books, take classes, all from here. And even more, you can add to the memesphere yourself. Add your stories, your knowledge, your music, your art, your writing. You can use a smaller display, a tablet."  The old man showed a tablet. Catherine held up hers also.

"You need to plant the computers." He showed a computer plant. "Care for them like plants. Catherine will show you. Would you like to see a show?"

The children all shouted, "Yes!" and the display started showing a concert recorded at a nearby village. They all clapped and cheered. Some started singing with the music.

Catherine and Patience walked over to Catherine's truck. Several young people came with them and looked at the plants in the truck. Catherine got about ten tablets from her canvas bag. She got them from some of the villages that she passed through where they grew the display trees and had learned to harvest the displays from the bark of the trees and clean them up. Some were irregularly shaped. The one Catherine used herself had the shape of Kenya. She had a few seedlings with her, and some seeds.

She gave Patience a tablet and handed the rest around to the young people. They snatched them up and tapped on them. There was something in their eyes. It looked like desire. It looked like a deep hunger. But it wasn't greed. It was something that Catherine had seen wherever she went. It was hope.

Catherine stayed in the village for several days. They planted five computer plants in places where they wouldn't be tramped on. They would grow and expand in capacity. They also planted some seeds for more plants. This village within a few years would have more computing capacity than many multinational corporations of the previous century.

Catherine tried to visit villages in such a way that the biocomputers could reach others and form a mesh network. Some were in places where there were cell towers. The bandwidth usage for these when they were needed was paid for out of the compact fund as was usage on backbone networks. So the old network companies were still making something from their investments even if fewer and fewer people were using their old services.

Catherine hardly had to teach them at all. The helper programs were very good. She tapped on her own tablet and her helper program came up. It was in the form of a young Chinese woman.

"The monthly funds were transferred to your account in Nairobi. How is your cash?"

"I think I will be fine until the next town with a bank."

She hardly needed money except for fuel. She stayed with someone in most villages. She didn't charge for anything, so everyone was grateful if at times puzzled. They often sent her off with some food and other supplies.

When she had been approached by her helper program with this job, she had leaped at the idea, although she couldn't believe that some foundation was going to pay her to do it. But the helper program deposited the money to her account, and she kept going. She was even building up some decent savings out of her salary.

She was sitting on the tailgate of her truck as she talked to her helper program. She looked up and a young girl was there.

"Hello, Rowya."

"Hello, Miss," Rowya said shyly. She held a tablet in her hand.

"You are learning?"

"It asked me to tell a story I like. It wrote it out."

She showed Catherine the tablet.

"Yes. Can you read it?"

"I am learning. I can read some of it. I will learn all about it."

Chapter 31

Tom Small sat at his desk. A large display was positioned on a stand in front of him and his hands moved over another display configured as a keyboard, but with special keys for what he was doing, which was chasing opportunities. Capital will always find a path.

He tapped on his keyboard display. A series of simple charts and trend lines appeared.

"Analysis. Top down."

"Chart one shows global spending at the simplest level. Private consumption expenditures declined again this year. The commercial consumption expenditures are also declining. Both trend lines show a gradual downward trend over the last 5 years. This is usually explained by changes in consumer consumption habits and the increasing impact of declining birth rates. The decline in global GDP is explained the same way. Government spending has remained steady despite declines in the tax base." 

"Drill down in private consumption."

"Subsistence consumption has declined largely due to the decline in population. Per capita subsistence consumption is up largely due to increased consumption in poor countries."

"Explain increase."

"A significant factor is information compact payments due to the globalization of entertainment, especially music and computer generated videos. Another factor is increased agricultural productivity due to improved food crops."

"Show growth of information compact payments."

A chart came up which showed the payments increasing from the initial 0.5% of global GDP five years ago and rapidly up to the current 2%.

"Show distribution trend and contribution trend by rich and poor countries."

Several charts came up. It was clear. The rich countries contributed the most and the poor countries were receiving more and more. At first they scarcely received 5% of the payments, and the highest payments were to the entertainment and software industries in rich countries. But the contribution to the poor countries was steadily going up. The memesphere was the first truly global market open to all and it was starting to show, although only a small percentage of the content sites received payments due to the usage threshold built into the compact. But now many sites in the poor countries were crossing that threshold, and it was not just entertainment. Biological data collection also showed an upward trend as researchers all over the world made use of the observations of local people, especially in the tropical regions.

He already knew all this. He was just hoping against hope that something new would jump out at him, so he would know where to put his money, and what to advise his clients, since his business was advice.

"Show private consumption by subsistence versus discretionary spending and by rich and poor countries."

More charts.

"Analysis."

"Rapid overall decline in discretionary percentage in rich countries. Slow increase in poor countries. The decline in rich countries is caused by changing consumer habits and the move of much of entertainment to the memesphere which is free to consumers. The increase in poor countries is due to a slight increase in incomes."

"Show private consumption discretionary spending by segments for the highest five segments, again by rich and poor countries."

More charts came up.

"Analysis."

"The highest percentage in both rich and poor countries in durable goods, though an increasing demand for long use life inhibits growth. The next highest is heath care, followed by non-memesphere education, transportation, and tourism, although spending on trucks and automobiles have declined rapidly in recent years due to consumers keeping their vehicles longer, increased fuel efficiency, and local and home work arrangements."

Tom grunted - driving a junker was now a badge of honor as long as it was fuel efficient junker.

"The relative position of these segments are the same in rich and poor countries although the percentages are lower in poor countries. This is due to greater use of memesphere education and lower income for the other segments."

"Explain sources of income to companies from compact payments."

"The three main sources are entertainment, software products, and knowledge products. Also, infrastructure, although the infrastructure source is declining due to the increased density of biocomputers, allowing for greater mesh networking."

"Show the top five sources of income to companies other than compact payments with trend lines including rich and poor countries."

The charts showed the now familiar rise of biotech to the top of the heap followed by consumer commodities, health care, education, and information technology. Communications had suffered more serious declines than even transportation as the memesphere spread and people made use of the free communications through the mesh networks. Some now much smaller companies were still holding on through infrastructure payments from the compact. Information technology was holding on since there was still a need for custom software for large organizations, although it was under a lot of pressure and did not look like a long term play.

Biotech was the darling, but it had its problems due to public pressure against any patenting of life. And there was no longer a market for seeds for plants that could not produce the same seeds. Unexpectedly education was rising, mostly adult education with the declining number of children. But both of these industries had a very demanding innovation cycle.

"Explain the innovation based business model."

"Due to the memesphere, knowledge is widely available and free. New ideas quickly enter the memesphere. The free information compact provides a way for long term income for knowledge producers, but the return depends on usage and there is a lot of competition. The innovation based business model is to quickly exploit new knowledge to provide a new product or service. The innovator's advantage is short lived though because the intense knowledge economy will quickly spawn imitators, so on the one hand they need to get the product or service out quickly in a way they can charge a premium for it and they also need to move the knowledge into the memesphere quickly to be able to collect ongoing compact payments. This creates an environment of intense innovation where creative knowledge producers can make a lot of money. Other business models that involve controlling resources are in decline due to so much economic activity moving to the memesphere or becoming biological."

Tom leaned back. Innovation is the way to make a lot of money quick, but the competition is fierce and the creative knowledge worker can demand a big part of the return. Control of capital was still important, but not what it used to be. The failure rate of even biotech companies was very high.

"OK. Let's complete the picture. Show the main types of government spending by rich and poor countries."

Tom looked at the charts. It was very familiar. The military, social payments - the third one, information compact contributions was new and growing. The rest were the standard bureaucracies. Still needed no doubt.

So defense contracting was still a profitable area. Military spending still took up close to 2% of the global GDP. The compact was a straight financial transfer. And the rest was what it was, and had its attendant problems. No great financial opportunities there, just the routine.

"Summarize opportunities with the chance of high returns."

"Innovation based businesses in biotech and education, although the risk of failure is high. Some defense contracts can have high returns and be longer term."

"Moderate returns."

"High quality, low price consumer commodities. Management of consumer cooperatives. Routine education. Health care. Routine defense contracts. Routine business services."

So, nothing new. He just stared at the display. He personally had quietly moved a lot of his money to cash and government bonds or into routine bread and butter companies. He had a little mad money in innovation companies. That was the best he could do.

There were still a lot of people invested in the old economy. When it became common knowledge what was happening, there was going to be a stampede. Fortunate for him, he was a little ahead of the curve on this. He would first get some big consulting fees from a few wealthy clients. But once they started to move, others would notice and it would be out there. Then he would hit the education circuit for all it was worth telling people how to adapt to the new economy, but it would already be too late for many of them.

Chapter 32

Catherine sat with Mrs. Miti at a table crowded with herbs. Propped up against some jars was a tablet showing pictures of plants.

"Many herbalists get together here and share knowledge. We are all learning a lot. Language is a problem, but the helper translates. I'm not so sure with some of the translations. But we understand enough."

Mrs. Miti smiled and tapped on another tablet to change the image. People in the villages were becoming expert users. Catherine had to admit to being somewhat surprised. Mrs. Miti was literate and knew English, but even those with little education were doing fine using speech and icons. The biocomputers didn't require electricity, which opened things up quite a lot in some of the more remote villages.

"We got the idea on the computer for planting zone grass with the oil palms and fruit trees, and in the old fields that were worn out. Let me show you."

Catherine went outside with Mrs. Miti. This was a larger village than many. There were large stretches of oil palms and some smaller areas of mango trees around the village. The mangos were mostly for local consumption and for sale in nearby farmer's markets. The oil palm fruit was a cash crop, for palm oil. It could be further processed into a biofuel in addition to its traditional uses.

They walked out into a grove of palm trees. Below the trees were tall grasses with low grassy paths through them.

"These paths stay because of the zone grass. We let the rest grow up for the grain. We grind it and mix it with cassava flour, like we do with corn. Once it is established, it just keeps producing. We just have to harvest. Three crops a year."

There were some men up the palm trees cutting down some of the clusters of red palm fruit. They would take it to a processing plant not too far off to sell. They also had a small market for zone grass seed. The UN was buying it up for soil reclamation projects and it was also spreading around among African villages fairly quickly.

"We eat zone tuber too. We don't have to replant it like cassava. Cassava is still good, but zone fits in well. They say it has more protein than cassava."

They came out of the palm trees and into an open area.

"This field was used up. We got some free zone grass seed from a UN man coming through. They said you could just spread it without digging up the ground. This field was all grown up. So we tried it on a little part, just spread the seeds around. It grew down below the other growth. It took a few months, but it took over the area. We get some tubers out of here. They are easier to dig up than cassava, closer to the surface and the ground is not as packed down. They say it will build up the soil over time."

Mrs. Miti smiled slyly. "You know, some young people are coming back from the cities? We are doing a little better and they can watch their shows here with the computer, and go to school on the computer."

As they came back into the village there were some young people sitting under a tree listening to Gudu on a tablet. Gudu was an international music star, yet he never left the area around his Ghana village. He had the fifth largest music access rate in the world, and was doing quite well for himself.

"You like Gudu?" one of the girls asked Catherine as they passed.

"He's great!"

"Have you met him?"

"No, I hear there are too many people trying to see him anyway. People travel there wanting to see him. He does concerts for the people who come, but no I haven't been."

"That would be wonderful," the girl said, starry-eyed.

Catherine and Mrs. Miti continued back to the house. Mrs. Miti tapped up something on the tablet.

"Look, they call us pioneers of permaculture," she said, beaming.

Catherine nodded with approval. The changes were small, but if they could build on them, they could establish a stable environment where they could live and get their food and have a cash crop without exhausting the soils and the surrounding forests.

Catherine frowned slightly and asked, "Are woman having trouble getting pregnant here?"

"Yes, some suspect witchcraft, but it is everyone."

"Why witchcraft?"

"It was so sudden, and there are strange things about it. Woman are only having one or two children, but if a child dies, they can have another, like someone is controlling it. People are worried about it beyond that. Who will take care of us when we are old if there are fewer young people to do the hard work?"

"Maybe the permaculture will help, less labor needed in the long run for the same food? Once things are established."

"Trouble always comes with the good it seems," Mrs. Miti said, shaking her head sadly.

But then she brightened up a little.

"Knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom. You know I get some compact money?"

"Yes?" Catherine asked, smiling.

"From accesses to my plant notes. I write down all I know and all I see about plants here, and it is accessed all over. I get questions from professors." She reached out and patted Catherine's hand, smiling broadly.

A sound came from the door. Catherine and Mrs. Miti turned. There was a young man in his mid twenties standing at the door.

"Hello, Grandmother."

"Ife, come in! This is my grandson. He is back from the city. This is Mrs. Getui. She is staying with me a few days."

"Yes, I've heard. Wecome. Welcome." He walked over smiling broadly.

"Oh, I need to prepare some food." Mrs. Miti jumped up and headed toward the kitchen area. She had a small biofuel cooker there.

"Can I help," Catherine asked.

"No, no. Here is some water. You go out with Ife and wait in the shade."

Catherine and Ife went out and sat on some wooden boxes under a tree. It was getting close to noon and was quite hot, but the shade was cooler and there was a nice breeze. Some rain clouds were coming closer, but were still some way off.

"What did you do in the city?"

"I was a gardener, and in my spare time a student." He got out a rolled up tablet from his pocket and held it up.

"Not at the university?"

"No, I couldn't afford that. This is free. You just need the time and the determination."

"What did you study?"

"Plant breeding."

Catherine nodded.

"And global economics."

Catherine looked over at him.

"Don't be surprised. They are related more than you might think."

"Really? How so?"

"What do we have more of than the rich north? What is our power?"

She looked at him with a puzzled expression. He pointed up.

"The sun?"

"We have more sunlight than them, a lot more, hotter, longer growing season. And what else?"

She still looked confused. He waved his arm around.

"Plants. Biodiversity. We have more biodiversity than them. Vast genetic resources. And now what do we have?" He held up his tablet.

"The knowledge," she said, and smiled. "So why did you come back to the village?"

"Things are going a little better here, more food. People are worried about the population declining, but that also means less competition for land. My family has access to land around here. Some of it is depleted. The rich don't think we have anything. Plant information is exploding in the memesphere. The rich may think it is a small thing."

Catherine looked around. A group of people were coming in from the fields. The fields, what she could see, looked green and well maintained. There was not all the dust you sometimes find around villages. There was grass. The houses were still small, some with tin roofs, many with thatch. There were also many little garden plots, with a great variety of plants growing. One of them had an old man and a young woman standing over it looking at a tablet. They spoke to the tablet and then listened. Then they bent down and checked something in the growth. Under another tree a little way from them, a group of children were grouped around a screen. They looked back and forth between the screen and their tablets.

Ife smiled. "The culture of the villages has always been rich. A lot of knowledge, but we could not organize it in a way that would allow us to deal with the global economic system. Then colonialism. Then neocolonialism. Corrupt politicians and warlords. But now we, some of us, see what we have, and we are going to outsmart them all."

"Are there others like you? With your ideas?"

"All over Africa. And I have heard in other places, like the Amazon."

She looked into his determined young eyes. She was by nature a hopeful person, but also, she thought, a realist. She didn't dare let her hopes go as far as this young man's. She looked around at the village again. She looked at the tablet in Ife's hand. It started to grow in her. It could happen. It could be that she was seeing the pattern for a global shift. She looked over at Ife. Tears glistened in her eyes.

Chapter 33

"Your father was always a believer in real estate. He said we should concentrate on equity in the house. Then when we retired, we could sell it and move to a smaller house."

"You have an IRA too, don't you Mom?" Ruth asked.

"Yes, but your father was a little aggressive in his investments. We were always told that stock index funds were the best choice over the long run. He allocated 80% to stock index funds. He never adjusted it as we got older."

"You have some insurance money?"

"Yes, some. That's cash. The stock indexes have been going down so much the IRA is shrinking. Should I move it to cash and bonds now? I'll loose so much."

"I don't know, Mom. I moved my investments around several years ago. It is not growing much, but I haven't had big losses."

Ruth's mother handed her a tablet.

"This is it as of last week. I wasn't able to face up to all this until after the funeral. Then I was just numb for several weeks. I'm just coming out of it."

Ruth put the tablet down and put her arm around her mother. They just sat there for a while. Finally, she picked up the tablet and started looking it over.

"No mortgage?"

"We paid it off five years ago. What am I going to do, Ruthie? Social Security looked OK for a while, but now with this population decline."

"I don't think they'll eliminate Social Security, not with so many older voters. But it will likely not grow much. Mom, you know you can come live we me."

"I know, Ruth. But I can't sell this house anyways. No one wants these big houses any more. And the housing market - people just aren't buying, at least not at a reasonable price."

Two bubbles burst, the stock market and the real estate market. Population goes down. Consumers don't consume. Tastes change. People want to live cheaply, have more control of their time. Now Mom's mini mansion in the exurbs is a worthless embarrassment. Ruth looked around. It was still nice though. Lots of space between the houses.

"Ruth, let me show you something," her mother said and reached for the tablet. She tapped on it and handed it back.

Ruth looked at a description of senior housing co-ops.

"I think they're reliable, Ruth. Already several of the houses in this neighborhood have gone co-op."

"Would you want someone living with you here?"

"Look." Her mother tapped on the tablet. "They redesign the house. There are common areas and private areas. I would have a private apartment within this house. I would have a place to live for the rest of my life, but the house would stay with the co-op when I die. That's the thing, Ruth."

"I'm not worried about an inheritance, Mom. Really."

"I had hoped we could leave you something."

"Don't worry about that. But wouldn't you be kind of stuck?"

"No, I could change my residence within the co-op system as places became available. And there are other advantages. Shared labor. Some people who don't have houses to put in can put in hours taking care of other members when they get sick. It's all very organized. Also, pooled transportation, pooled food purchasing and other consumer goods."

Ruth scrolled down on the tablet. "They have houses in the Netherlands. You want to live in the Netherlands for a while?"

"Also in Sweden and Brazil. No, I think I would want to stay here for when my grandchildren start coming."

"Sorry Mom, I think that boat has sailed."

"I know, dear."

"Well, I don't know, it might be good. How much would you have to pay other than the house?"

"Monthly dues. Mine would be very low for several years as the value of the house contribution is factored in. People on Social Security are supposed to be able to afford it even without a house. If I shift my IRA to something safer I will have a little extra, but my basic needs would be met within the co-op."

"If you can trust them ..."

"It's not like an insurance company. It's owned by the members. It's a risk, but I think that seniors will have to band together. There is no other way, really. There are no more extended families to fall back on, so we need to create our own extended families."

"I'll be here for you."

"I know, Ruthie."

They hugged for a long time.

"Mom, if you want to go this way, it's fine with me. You should talk to them. There are a couple of co-ops it looks like. On your IRA, I joined an investment co-op. There is a new economy fund there that I have a lot of my savings in. You might want to consider that. Your savings is never going back to what it was before the new economy."

"So you think it really is a new economy, not just a normal business cycle? The president said ..."

"That baboon ..."

"Now, Ruth."

"... is an insult to other baboons."

"People might go back."

"I can't predict the future, but I think the population decline is here to stay. Once the population stabilizes - they say it will take another generation - then there is always the hope that people will start consuming like mad again. But for now, I think this is what we have."

"It's a shock, Ruth, but I think it's something we needed."

"Maybe, but it would have been nice to have a choice ... Oh, it's nothing, Mom. Don't worry."

Chapter 34

"Twenty years and what do we have to show for it? I'm getting close to retirement. George, you were already retired when we started. You are looking good, by the way. Joshua had good genes to start from. I know we can't prove that Joshua is responsible for the so called new economy. Did he really manipulate the whole thing? It would be hard to believe, but the acknowledged root causes are biotechnology and the memesphere. Both were there before Joshua got here, in their embryonic forms. But I think we know he intervened at key points. And we would never have developed biocomputers ourselves. Let's face it. He brought those with him.

"I don't regret funding this little enterprise for twenty five years. Someone had to watch him. Phil, I know you did your job. We know all his main movements and activities. But we can only speculate on what they all mean. And Ruth, your scientific work has been first rate. I even made money off of some of its side products. And George, although you have only come back from time to time, our consultations with you have always been useful. So I don't blame any of you. But it's been twenty years, and I think we're beat.

"Phil, I know you said this from the beginning, but now I think the time has come. We need to take this to the government. We need to prepare our best case and take it to them."

"What can they do now?" Phil asked.

"I don't know, Phil. The genie is probably out of the bottle for good. Maybe with more resources they could figure out how to reverse the population virus. Maybe they could discover his true intentions. Maybe they could find those other aliens we believe are there but can't trace. I know I probably delayed this too long. I just don't like to admit defeat."

Gordon looked around at them, really glum.

"I've been thinking," George spoke up. "You are all no doubt familiar with the theory of a tipping point. I think more and more that Joshua has been doing something more than manipulating our economic system. It really hasn't changed that radically. I know we are going through a lot of displacements right now, corporate collapses, the stock market down, but is it really that different than other big changes in technology? Now it's biotech and the memesphere. Before it was mechanized agriculture. Then it was large scale factories. Then it was the information revolution. It's all somewhat expected, almost routine in human history.

"But this all may really be to start some little butterfly in the Amazon flapping its wings. And that will be the real purpose, the massive changes that will come from that small thing, the tipping point he has been setting up."

"That's interesting, George, but what butterfly are we talking about and where is it?" Gordon asked politely.

"I don't know."

"OK, well, we'll take your point under advisement. What I want to do now is to see what kind of case we can present to the government. Phil, let's start with you. Outline the case you would make."

"I would focus on seven main areas." He looked at his tablet. "His origins, medical evidence, evidence tying him to the population virus, evidence tying him to the SETI signals, his business activities, special abilities that he and his children seem to have, and evidence of ties to other aliens. We have something in each of these areas. I will go through what I think we have. But I have to say at the beginning that no point seems compelling. I just hope that the preponderance of evidence will get them to investigate. I think that should be our goal. To get them to take action."

Phil looked around. Gordon gestured for him to go on.

"OK, first. We claim that he was grown in that plant behind George's house. We have the original data collected and some photos. All the original physical evidence dissolved. That will sound strange to them, conveniently missing physical evidence, but there it is. We also have George being scraped by that plant and the close genetic similarities between George and Joshua. I think this is one of our strongest points. It can still be investigated. We haven't been able to really disprove his claim to the Joshua Green identity, but we can suggest that as a line of investigation. We have the genetic tests from his father, now deceased, but we noted at the time that the lack of genetic match did not prove that Joshua didn't have a different father. Finally, we have the testimony placing Joshua close to the plant site, the convenience store clerk composite drawing.

"Second, the medical evidence. This would be the tests that were conducted when Joshua was in our - ah - custody shortly after he got to Columbus. There were the nervous system differences and the metal content of his skeletal system.

"Third, the population virus. Everyone is concerned about the population decline, and the virus has been isolated that is believed to be the cause. There has been no success is reversing it. We can present timetables that show how Joshua's honeymoon trip links to the spread of the virus. It is some years now, but we can suggest that Joshua may be able to help with the virus since we believe he originated it. Their concern over the virus may get them clutching at straws and buy our idea that Joshua could be the answer.

"Fourth, the SETI signals. The growth of the first biocomputers from the SETI signal and the similarities between the biocomputers and the plant behind George's house suggest an alien source for the biocomputers. The electronics industry has been seriously affected by the biocomputer takeover. Maybe a desire for someone to blame would motivate the government. The counterclaim is that it was just a lucky coincidence that experimenting with the signal caused the mutation. Of course, this might have some repercussions since this information was never made public and biocomputers are now so pervasive and seemingly benign. We all use them and depend on them now. And while it was not a big windfall Gordon Biotech did make some significant money on follow up projects related to biocomputers. Also, the idea that the rest of the signal was the programming for a newly mutated biocomputer has not been proven, although we all believe it.

"Fifth, his business activities. It is hard to believe that a former drug addict could contribute so much to the biotech revolution. His company itself has continued to focus on grass seed for all of these years. The whole zone grass phenomenon sounds faintly ridiculous. Who knows? This may end up being George's butterfly. But it was an amazing technical leap at the time, grass you don't have to mow. It sounds funny even now. But its economic impact was undeniable. And the subsequent varieties for food and for soil and land reclamation have been very popular. It all seems to be to the good. But could this be a Trojan horse, along with the biocomputers? Is it too good to be true? We aren't even sure about this. His company didn't market biocomputers or provide any innovations there, but we can show that Joshua himself financed key advances that made the use of the biocomputers take off, especially the biodisplays. Also, he invested in a number of software companies dealing with helper programs, translators, machine learning, and data privacy. People take the memesphere for granted now, but no one can totally explain how all that great software got there and how it evolved so quickly from such a simple Linux platform. We believe that Joshua contributed key technologies because he wanted the biocomputers to become pervasive and for us to become dependent on them. But we don't know why. This is all fairly weak since the myth of the lone entrepreneur is so respected. People want to believe that a recovered drug addict could do all this.

Sixth, special abilities. We have his easy escape and circumvention of our security systems. We have the recordings of transmissions between him and his children. We have kept this up over the years and we have numerous recordings directly between him and biocomputers. We have his apparent ability to release pheromones that calm aggression. All these things could be tested if he were in custody and studied carefully. This at least points to some kind of genetic mutation, if it doesn't show an alien origin.

"And seventh, the other aliens. We have the patterns that Ruth discovered. She has continued to monitor these and it can be shown that they are growing in frequency. We have been using these to estimate the growth in the alien population, now up to several thousand. But we have not been able to find any of the other aliens. And the patterns could be something else that we don't understand.

"So that would be my overview. We would have the detailed documentation to back it up. I think it would amount to thousands of pages. Did I leave anything out?"

"As an overview, it's very good," Ruth said. "If we can get them interested we would need more details and scientific analysis, but that would come at a secondary level. I think that is about all they could take to begin with and it doesn't leave out anything major."

"George?" Gordon asked.

"Yes, very good, Phil."

"So there we are. Phil and Ruth, please prepare the materials. I will try to set up the meeting."

Chapter 35

Gordon, Ruth, Phil, and George all walked down the stairs from Gordon's chartered jet and got into a waiting van. As soon as they got in, the driver headed out. They threaded their way through Washington traffic. It was not as bad as in past decades, but still a lot of people were being moved around in separate vehicles.

They pulled into a parking garage and headed to an elevator up into an office building. They hardly had to wait at all and were quickly shown in to Senator Stark's office. Senator Stark got up from behind his desk and walked towards them smiling.

"Good to see you again, John," he said, shaking Gordon's hand.

"This is Dr. Ruth Smiley, Dr. George Kossack, and Mr. Phil Stockman."

Senator Stark greeted each of them warmly and led them over to a seating area where they all could comfortably view a screen set up on a wooden stand like many people had in their houses for group viewing.

"John, I'm sorry to rush into things, but I have an appointment at the White House in ..." He looked at his watch. "... an hour and a half. That President of ours still thinks this is just a routine downturn. Thank God it wasn't too sudden, not exactly a crash, but when it didn't bottom out, well, a lot of people are hurting."

"That's why I asked for this meeting Senator. We have information that is relevant to the economic situation."

"Lord knows I could use some more insight into it, but John ..." He gave Gordon a concerned look.  "... that memo you sent was a little puzzling to me. I was kind of out of my depth I'm afraid. I showed it to a few people, to see if they could help me. I asked one of them to join us."

He tapped his tablet and the door to the office opened. Mr. Jones entered and looked around.

"The Real Kings of Alien Conspiracy, all together. Sorry, Dr. Smiley. I should probably say Kings and Queen."

"Senator ..." Gordon started to object.

"Just a little help for me, John. Come in, Mr. Jones, have a seat, and if it would be possible, maybe you could keep your wit in check."

Mr. Jones sat down and Senator Stark turned back to Gordon.

"Let's hear what you have to say first. I've got about an hour."

"That should be enough Senator, for this first meeting. I've asked Phil to present our main points. It should take about thirty minutes. That will leave thirty minutes for discussion afterwards. Phil?"

Phil tapped on his tablet and the first part of his presentation showed on the big screen. He covered the same material they had discussed before in a matter of fact tone, moving to supporting summary slides and other images as needed. Both Senator Stark and Mr. Jones sat and listened without comment. An occasional wry smile came onto Mr. Jones' face. Senator Stark maintained a bemused, avuncular expression, frankly puzzled why his good friend and supporter, and a true leader of American business, would bring such things to his office. When the presentation was finished, there were a few moments of silence.

"Joshua Green ..." Senator Stark started and then paused. "I have met Joshua Green several times. He has been very helpful with his research on soil reclamation. You know that is important in my state. His company is doing well, but I don't see how it could be a threat to you. Why ..."

"Senator Stark, I assure you."

"But John, I think this sort of thing does more harm to you than to Joshua Green. I know times are tough, but American business needs to face reality and adapt to the new economy ..."

"Senator, please. This has nothing to do with my company. I assure you we are doing fine. This is a national security concern."

"And I have consulted all the appropriate people, out of consideration for you, John, although I am afraid I spent some of my own credibility to get their attention. Mr. Jones represents the national security establishment in this matter. I know you have met before some years back. Despite his sometimes unfortunate attempts at humor, he is a most serious man. He looked into all this most thoroughly, before and now."

He nodded at Mr. Jones.

"We're doing a lot of assuring of each other today, but I would like to assure you Dr. Gordon that if we were under some kind of threat I would be the first to do everything in my power to get the right people involved. Now on your evidence - you must realize how full of holes it is. And what exactly is the threat?

"The population is declining? That has been our biggest strategic security issue for years. Out of control population growth has been one of the biggest macro level threats, and now it is declining harmlessly through lower though adequate fertility rates. I can tell you that many people are delighted with that.

"Biotech disrupting the economy? Sure, but that is a little hypocritical coming from you. No laws have been broken. Useful products have come to market. Some old guard companies are suffering. So be it. That is the free market system.

"Joshua Green himself? A threat? He is an odd fellow perhaps. He has been remarkably successful in his scientific work and his financial dealings. Sometimes people are unexpectedly brilliant or have good luck or both. That's what makes this country great. Right?

"And his spooky powers and all that SETI signal stuff? Nothing has ever panned out on that. The signal never repeated itself. We are not concerned any more. And we can't start harassing prominent, successful, wealthy citizens because they are spooky or strange and even have some physical abnormalities.

"Other aliens? Where? I don't think we have even one alien. All this alien hunting and UFO hunting has got us exactly nowhere. We have real security issues. This economic situation is likely to shake loose all kinds of fanatics and hard luck cases. There is a real danger of further destabilizing of weak governments around the world. Blaming it all on one little grass seed merchant seems a little - let's say - far fetched."

"Mr. Jones here may be a little colorful, but John, I really can't disagree with what he is saying. I am opened minded, but aliens, John?"

"Excuse me, Senator," George said and sat forward.

Senator Stark looked at him and then at John.

"Please go ahead, George," Gordon said.

"Senator, try to suspend all of the immediate problems you have to deal with just for a few minutes, and imagine if this is true. I know the evidence is hard to credit, and Joshua has not committed any crimes that we know of that would require an investigation. But what if he is an alien?"

"We don't have an alien investigation department in the government as far as I know. If there is no threat and, as you say, no crime ... OK, OK, let me just imagine. Joshua Green is an alien. Now what?"

"What is he doing?"

"You all have spent twenty years of your life on this - a fact that in itself causes me to question whether you are entirely dispassionate here - but in any case, you tell me. What is he doing?"

"We don't know, but maybe he is the cause of the economic problems."

"It's a structural shift in our core technologies. No one person, alien or not, is responsible. Many, many companies and people and governments are involved in this shift. It is here. It is more like a force of nature than some vast conspiracy. We have to do what we can to deal with it. And that's what I am about. Our time is about up. You have done your duty. The security establishment knows about your concerns. Mr. Jones?"

"Yes, we will keep it under advisement."

Senator Stark and Mr. Jones just sat there and looked at the four alien hunters. There was nothing left to do. They got up and left.

Chapter 36

Gordon sat on a park bench waiting for a contact like any movie spy of old. He felt like a complete idiot. But he knew the truth about Joshua Green. No one would listen. They thought he was a fool. So be it. He was retiring soon, quite comfortably. What did he care? But deep down, he did care. His territorial instincts were stirred to the core. This was not their planet. That was the elemental fact.

He looked at his watch. He looked around at the greenery. All that photosynthesis and a good chunk of it going to feed all those alien brains under the grass. He knew they were not really brains, but it still gave him a chill to think about it, although he really liked the memesphere they made possible as much as anyone. Out of sight, out of mind.

A man approached. He was maybe in his early thirties. He had dark skin and Asian features, quite attractive, maybe of mixed African and Chinese ancestry. He came up and sat down on the park bench next to Gordon's.

"This is fun, isn't it?" the man asked with a wink.

"Look, I've read up on you. I have something for you, but I've already suffered enough embarrassment over this."

"What did you read?"

"Just let me ask you. With all your research and hunting, have you really ever found an alien?"

"Roswell, Rendlesham, Varginha, oh, they're here all right. Why would the government put so much effort into the cover-ups? They know something."

"OK, OK. Why are they here?"

"Genetic experiments, breeding programs, maybe they need our water."

"What do you want to do about it?"

"Expose them. Stop them. We need to protect what's ours, our planet, our genetic heritage."

"Genetic purity."

"I'm no racist, but yes, genetic purity. But I mean human genetic purity, all of us humans. We need to unite against them to protect ourselves. Otherwise, we'll just be absorbed, or worse."

"Maybe they're benevolent. They just need to stay out of sight because we are so violent."

"That's crap. That's crap. We have a right to preserve ourselves. If they're so benevolent, why don't they just show themselves and start helping. And stop all these abductions. That doesn't sound like benevolence."

"So you don't want to fly away in their space ship?"

"Hell no. I mean I wouldn't mind a space ship ride, but you can't trust them. Look. Why are you asking me all this?"

"I'm just a business man, but researchers who work for me have found something. We've been working on this for over twenty years. We finally took it to the government and they think we're just nuts."

"Tell me about it."

"I'm getting too old for this, so I want to pass on what I know to other -   researchers. So they can maybe carry on. Maybe they will know what to do."

"I'm interested."

"I don't want anyone to know you got it from me. It can't be traced back to me. I am out of it now."

"OK, what do I do?"

"The information is protected."

"Obviously."

"Right here, right now, I'll show you a temporary backdoor. Got a tablet with you?"

The man pulled out a tablet and unrolled it. Gordon tapped something on his own tablet.

"Go here."

The man tapped for a while and said, "OK, no access."

"Here is the backdoor. Enter this string."

The man got out a stylus and wrote on his tablet. Gordon looked over at the other man's table.

"Copy that whole folder."

"Now what?"

Gordon tapped on his tablet and said, "That backdoor is closed. Don't mention me in your literature. I'll deny it, and I'll prosecute for data theft."

"What is this, a trap?"

"No, you're fine. Just don't mention me. I'm out."

Gordon got up and looked around.

"View that intro video first. I'm out. I'm gone."

"Well, thanks ..."

But Gordon was already walking away. The man watched him go.

Chapter 37

Joshua walked along the road between his office and his house. He liked walking at night. It was a three quarter moon, so he could see things clearly. This road was not used much any more, especially this time of night. There was a variable wind. He listened to the leaves. He could distinguish the type of tree or bush by the sound the leaves made. He could hear animals moving around. He looked out into the woods and saw raccoons. A little later a possum was up on a branch. Ohio did not have the genetic diversity of the tropics, but it was still fascinating to him. The life pulsed around him.

A car drove by and slowed up ahead, and then sped off. Joshua felt a tingling sensation up his spine. He stopped and listened in all directions. The human body was not as suited to detecting predators as their bodies on his home world, but what predators would there be here? None, but other humans. He came to a tree beside the road and climbed it. He looked around in the moon light. Men in dark cloths with face masks were coming from both ends of the road. From the tree they looked like wolves running together and working in unison, converging on him.

He got down from the tree and continued walking. Suddenly they were there, ten men surrounding him. Their face masks were gas masks. He stood among them calmly. But ten of them, predators, worked up. He tried to dart between them.

"No, we want some answers from you. We're jamming signals. You can't call your space ship." The speaker waved an electronic device of some kind around.

"Space ship?" He was genuinely puzzled.

"Five of us here have been abducted. We are going to do a little probing of our own."

Joshua chuckled. They must be joking. But his not taking them seriously seemed to infuriate them, and they moved in on him. One of them pushed him down. He looked up at the ten gas mask canisters hanging down. He slowly got back up.

"What can I do for you?"

"You're going to tell us exactly what you're up to."

"Up to?"

"We know you were grown in that plant."

"You've been speaking to Gordon. He needs help."

"You're going to need help. Why are your people coming here? Why do you take people into your space ships?"

"I really doubt that any space ships could get here. They are only useful for travel within a solar system."

One of them pushed him and said, "I was taken into one of your space ships."

"How do you know it was a space ship?"

"There were all these grays around. They strapped me to a table. I couldn't move."

"You know about sleep paralysis, vivid nightmares? People used to think they were succubae or vampires, now its aliens."

He could feel them calming down a bit, maybe they would switch into some kind of rational discourse. Then he would no longer be the monster.

"I know what I experienced. It wasn't any nightmare. Well, it was terrifying like a nightmare, but more real."

"They can seem very real. I've had very vivid dreams myself. Did you use hypnosis?"

"Hypnotic regression."

"Things can get confused while hypnotized. You know? The boundaries between memories and dreams."

He moved slowly as he talked, trying to position himself on the edge of the circle.

"But really, what would aliens want with Earth? If they can travel across all those vast distances, think of the technology they must have."

"They are a dying race. They need the fresh genes of a younger race to revive their genetic stock."

"If they have that kind of knowledge, surely they could do whatever genetic engineering they need from the raw materials. Even we can do a lot with genetic engineering, and it is not at all clear if we would know how to keep humans alive for long trips in space. The radiation. The weightlessness."

He reached over and touched a hand. One of the men fell back. He touched another hand, and that man fell back. He dashed into the gap, but someone kicked his legs out from under him and he fell to the road, scrapping his arms.

"Don't let him touch you!"

They circled around him again, close.

"He can send the pheromones by touch it looks like. Damn! Put on gloves!"

They all started digging in their pockets. Joshua reached up and touched another hand and the rest jumped on him in a rage, forgetting about the gloves.

They punched at him again and again. He tried to get up. He put his hands above his head. They jerked him up and started pushing him around between him. He fell and they started kicking him, shouting and grunting with the effort of the kicks.

"Damn alien!"

Jordon and Jennifer were watching a show with Janna when they both screamed out. Janna jumped up.

"What's wrong?"

Jennifer grabbed a tablet and shouted, "Dial 911".

A 911 operator answered and she shouted, "Man being attacked. Old Farm Road between Ferris and River Roads. Hurry."

She and Jordon ran outside with Janna close behind. They both looked off across the yard and into the woods. Clouds were moving rapidly across the moon. It seemed that the wind was picking up.

"It's Daddy. Let's go. Let's go."

Janna ran back into the house and came back, carrying keys. They got into the car and sped out of the driveway.

"Right. Hurry."

Janna pealed out to the right down the road. It was about 4 miles to the office. About half way there they saw a crowd of men in the darkness. Janna slowed down and got out with the headlights still on. One of the men came toward her.

"Get back in the car."

She thought she could see Joshua with the other men.

"Joshua!" she shouted out. No answer.

The man started dragging her back to the car. She yanked his mask off. Jordon and Joshua were standing there. The man looked confused, and let Janna go. She ran toward the other men. She reached for masks. Two pulled her away. Then there was the sound of a siren. The men looked up and then they all scattered, most of them running past Jordon and Jennifer. Two others ran into the woods.

Janna ran over to Joshua on the ground. He was unconscious. There was blood coming from his mouth. Jordon and Jennifer ran up and bent over him, touching him.

Jordon looked at Jennifer. "Nothing," he said.

A police car came up and an officer got out. He called back to his partner, "Ambulance."

Down the road two men came out of the woods and jumped in a car. The officer turned and ran to his car.

"Don't go!" Janna shouted.

The officer tucked his head into the car for a moment and then ran back.

"My partner got the plates. We'll get them. The ambulance is coming."

He bent over Joshua and started checking him out.

"He's breathing. The ambulance will be here soon. Do you have a blanket or anything in the car?"

Jordon ran over and came back with an old quilt and a small car pillow. The officer slid the pillow under his head and covered him with the blanket.

"We shouldn't move him. Who are you all? What happened?"

"This is Joshua Green. I'm his wife, Janna. These are his children, Jennifer and Jordon."

She hesitated and looked over at her children.

"He likes to walk home. He was late, though, and we came to pick him up. There were a lot of men around." Janna's voice got increasingly agitated.

"It's OK. It's OK. We'll talk more later."

They could hear the sound of another siren approaching.

Chapter 38

George drove through the city streets. He was feeling his age and was grateful to be out driving his new hydrogen car. With everything else that had happened hydrogen cars had finally come about although the hydrogen production itself was not exactly a hundred percent clean and refill stations could be scarce in some places. Still, he enjoyed the feel of the new technology.

He turned off into the hospital parking lot and on into a parking garage. As he walked toward the entrance, he saw Janna and the kids coming out. Fortunately they did not see him. He wouldn't have wanted to face them. The children, although still teenagers, were calm and self-possessed. Janna looked washed out and haggard. There was red swelling around her eyes. Each of her children walked protectively on one side of her.

After they were safely away, George continued on into the hospital and up the elevators. He found the information desk and was soon standing outside the door to Joshua's room. He hesitated and then opened the door.

Joshua was propped up in bed, awake. He face was very swollen and discolored. He looked over to the door as George entered.

"Hello, cousin."

George walked over to the bed. "I'm so sorry for what happened."

"Don't worry. Pull up a chair."

George moved a chair over and sat down. They sat in a strangely companionable silence for a few minutes.

"How are you doing?" George finally asked.

"Some cracked ribs. The face. I'm not in much pain. It will all heal. The human body has amazing healing abilities to go along with its extreme vulnerability. I'll be here a few more days. Then recuperation at home."

"How is Janna taking it?"

"She's very upset. She blames Gordon - and you all. I doubt that Gordon arranged it though."

George wasn't so sure. Gordon was starting to show the strain and humiliation of their unsuccessful attempts to pin Joshua down.

Joshua looked over at George. "They found two of them, the ones in the car that the police saw. They got them just down the road. They're members of a group called the Genome Preservationists. Interesting idea since the genome will evolve eventually despite their efforts."

"Perhaps they're afraid of some more direct interventions."

"The alien monsters," Joshua said gravely. "You know I've developed quite an interest in the popular culture images of aliens and alien invasion. I think it says more about humans than the aliens. Aliens are just a focus for human feelings of helplessness, like all monsters. The heroes stop the monsters and everyone feels a little less helpless."

"Unless the monsters are real," George countered.

"But why monsters? It is interesting that the thoughts of the aliens are so often not even engaged. Sometimes they are barely even seen. They are something in the shadows. Something not understood, dangerous, best destroyed quickly. At least these preservationists seem to share that view."

"I wouldn't want in any way to try to justify what they did," George said quickly. "But back to popular culture, the aliens usually have some hostile intention that justifies the human attack."

"The hostile intentions are usually just assumed," Joshua said evenly.

"You do often have the well meaning scientist who wants to communicate, but the aliens are evasive or silent. The scientist represents reason.  The military types represent blind violence out of fear."

"But the scientist is often shown to be foolish," Joshua objected. "And the military is shown to be right. The scientist must ultimately be redeemed by providing some weapon to defeat the aliens. Have you ever seen an example where the aliens just join the population and everything is fine?"

"That wouldn't be very dramatic." George smiled. "I have seen some examples, but then it becomes more like a foreign immigrant story. The immigrants have trouble integrating. There is cross-cultural tension."

"That seems more realistic," Joshua asserted.

"Well. Like you said at the beginning, it's not a matter of realism. It's mythology. Helpless humans and their fears."

"Yes." Joshua leaned backed on his pillows and grimaced a little. "I don't think people stop to consider how difficult it would be to have an alien invasion."

"The assumption is that they are vastly superior technologically."

"But physics is physics and biology is biology."

"Meaning?" George raised an eyebrow.

"Space is very hostile to life. A planet provides a cocoon for life in a very special and delicate relationship with its star, the ultimate power source. You can't travel between solar systems by taking the whole solar system with you, so you would have to take you own cocoon and your own power source. And it would have to last a very long time. Faster than light travel is just a dream."

"How do you know?"

"Well, I've heard that and I don't have any evidence otherwise," Joshua said slyly.

"And you would need a big enough population."

Joshua smiled. "Exactly. For such a long trip how could your preserve a viable genome and culture? It is very dark and lonely in space. Beyond the walls of your cocoon there is no comforting sunrise, no summer breezes, no meaning in place and history. Just radiation and dust and dangerous pieces of rock ready to break your cocoon open. Talk about helpless."

"So why would they venture out?" George asked.

"Why did humans venture out from Africa? Now we get to the biological crux of the matter. Organisms compete with each other for limited resources. If a species is successful, whatever their strategy, they will likely grow in numbers. Then they will need more resources. It's important at the beginning, this expansion, seeking every niche and opportunity. Without it they would likely have never been established at all. But then the numbers grow. If there are predators then a predator-prey cycle can set in. The predators keep the population of the prey down. The predators depend on prey and can expand only so far as there is prey. So a balance comes about, however brutal to the prey. This is within a limited territory. But if immigration is possible, both the predators and the prey will expand out. In new places they have to compete with other predators and other prey, and so it goes."

"Are humans predator or prey?" George asked.

"They were both for a long time. At some point a species evolves to the point where they go beyond predator and prey in the classic sense and they need to become stewards. There are no real predators left for humans, except maybe each other. And with agriculture they are more stewards than predators. But humans are still trying to expand."

"That's why you spread the population virus." George tried to slip one in.

Joshua looked at him blankly. "Let's not introduce conspiracy theories quite yet. A big part of stewardship is to understand the balance between needs and resources. Unlimited expansion will naturally be a problem with limited resources. We can be more efficient in the use of resources using better technology, but that can only go so far. The predator-prey model is one approach to controlling population. Conscious stewardship is another. But maybe a species might have built in biological controls that don't involve violence from without or rely on conscious control."

"Aliens are almost always shown as the predators looking for new prey, or maybe they are 'stewards' who just want to manage us as so many domestic animals." George said with mild sarcasm.

"They usually don't want to eat the humans," Joshua countered with some mild sarcasm of his own. "They just want their resources." He smiled. "They usually are shown to have the aggression of the predator. But is it always the predator that becomes dominant?"

"What do you mean?" George asked, puzzled.

"In the predator-prey cycle, sometimes the predator breaks out into stewardship and resource management. But maybe sometimes it is the prey that breaks out."

"How could that happen?" George asked.

"Through the survival strategy of the prey, hiding, skill, cunning, social cooperation, communications, maybe some biological defenses, and eventually, intelligence. They outwit and evade the predator. Eventually the predator looses them as prey. They spread to more territory. The predators can't take advantage of the spread. They just loose habitat. In a way this happened with humans but the humans supplemented it by killing off these competing predators, becoming better predators than their former predators."

"So these former prey would invade with a different strategy," George suggested.

"Perhaps."

"By what right?" George pressed.

"By what right did any human population invade and impose their culture and exploit the resources of the invaded?" Joshua sounded a little defensive.

"But humans are by nature predatory, at least some of them are. Humans usually don't eat each other, but they do compete with each other for resources. When populations grow, they need to expand, and they come into conflict with those who are already using that territory. It's like any predator trying to chase away other predators so they can be the ones to make use of the resources. If they're successful, they get the resources."

Joshua smiled. "Why not with the aliens?"

"Well, it's a little different isn't it? If the aliens are advanced enough to travel here, surely they would be advanced enough to become stewards of their own planet."

Joshua smiled again. "Yes. That makes perfect sense. Why would they come? There are resources in their solar system to exploit. Eventually their star will grow old and perhaps expand to engulf their planet, as will happen with the Earth billions of years from now. They could terraform planets further out perhaps. Maybe they are just curious. It's not reasonable to send bodies to other stars so they send out probes to gather knowledge."

"Like your mutating signal to created biocomputers. Are those your probes? But then, why you?" George tried it again.

"Dr. Smiley is really quite brilliant isn't she?" Joshua smiled.

"Yes. But really, why you? If it is a matter of a probe ..."

"Let's not get too personal."

"No. Here I am. The human race. Tell me. Just a probe? Just for knowledge? Then why hide?" George wasn't giving up.

Joshua pointed at his face.

"I really am sorry about that, but the question still remains. There has to be more to it than just a probe."

"Well, maybe the aliens want to establish a remote research station."

"OK - the aliens." George gave in.

"A curious species reaches the limits of what it can learn on its home planet. They are good stewards of their planet. They explore the limits of inner life and culture. They know each other very well. They evolve. They are alone within their thin biosphere. Maybe they want to reach out."

George frowned. "Maybe they, like some human cultures, like the Greeks invading the barbarians, think they have something superior that deserves to be spread. They have a certain smug assurance that tells them that they have a right or even a duty to save wayward species on remote planets from themselves. You know I've wondered about you name. Did you choose it for a reason?"

"No one chooses their own name. It's an accident of birth."

"OK, but Joshua Green. It seems to mean too much."

Joshua smiled slyly. "You really are a smart man."

"Green for mystic environmentalist, huh?"

"Hardly. Many of them don't like me because of the genetic engineering, but since I am such a plant nerd, it does seem to match. And I am for the green things. They are the basis of my view of a good technological culture, supplemented with the mineral and metal, but to base a culture on metal, well..."

"And Joshua. You know the story."

"An invader who had God on his side, so much so that he felt totally justified in destroying the culture and population of the country he invaded. Also, a great hero of an oppressed people that led them to their new home and did what was necessary to protect them and their culture. It depends on what side you're on."

"So, do you see any significance in it?" George asked.

"I don't think God is on my side."

"Then how can you justify what you are doing?" George pressed.

"What am I doing?"

"You released a population virus to control our population. You introduced new biological technologies that are transforming our global economy. You are in contact with other aliens. Who knows what else you are all doing and why."

"Boy, you all do go on with all this conspiracy stuff." Joshua lifted an eyebrow.

"OK, skip that. How could our alien invader of popular culture justify his invasion?"

"He usually does not feel the need to justify it. It is just a biological imperative. The normal struggle for territory and dominance on one planet carried over to multiple planets."

"Galactic empires?" George asked.

"That hardly seems practical. Maybe it's more like spreading a seed or a meme into a fertile environment. Getting the basic genetic and memetic patterns dispersed. And part of that is a galactic network of information sharing. It would be a slow network since one transmission between nodes can take fifty or a hundred years. Your mutating signal might not always take hold. Even if it does, the next steps in the program might not happen."

"The program. That's what I want to know. What is the program?" George started to get excited.

"These aliens. Who knows?"

"Well, speculate for me," George said dryly.

"Do you think there are limits to tolerance?"

"What?"

"I think you are an advocate of pluralism, even applying that to ontologies."

"Yes, it is hard to say which system is the one true system."

"So you are tolerant of different cultural systems?"

"I try to be," George said meekly.

"Even an alien one?"

"Yes, but not an invading alien. Cultural imperialism is probably the limit I place on tolerance."

"What about for children?"

"Well, initially you need to give them a cultural home."

"It seems an accident of birth. And how would you react to cultural imperialism?"

"I would oppose it," George said firmly.

"On what basis?"

"Tolerance."

"So, imposing your cultural preferences."

"I have to admit that, yes," George said pensively.

"So an alien puts certain patterns into the memesphere and they get picked up and propagated, by choice, is that cultural imperialism just because they are from the outside? For example, many Americans became interested in Buddhism, an outside system, but it was their choice. Would you object?"

"If there was no force, no, I wouldn't," George conceded.

"If the outside memes were alien, beyond this Earth, then what?"

"But is it really free choice? Maybe the aliens have knowledge of meme epidemics above ours, sort of like super advertisers or propagandists."

"But those had some control," Joshua countered. "This alien does not try to control, just introduces the ideas and lets them have their own life. The alien might know that these are just the ideas that global culture at this stage will pick up because they meet fundamental needs. Is that really cultural imperialism?"

"No, but the population control ..." George pressed.

"If an alien saw a planet with a fatal disease and the alien had a cure?" Joshua asked reasonably.

"But without informing them and getting their cooperation? Without their choice?"

"But what if a patient is dying and would refuse treatment, would you still give them the medicine or let them die?"

"If they were not able to make the choice themselves I would give them the treatment." George shifted uneasily.

"Why would they not be able to choose?"

"They might not be aware, or sane," George answered.

"So you would intervene if their behavior were suicidal because you consider that to be evidence that they cannot really choose?"

"Yes, in very rare cases, yes," George conceded.

"Maybe a change in fertility control would be such a rare case in a planet about to choke on the waste of a species seemingly unable to choose, especially if efforts were made to mitigate the results."

"Many would not agree," George objected.

"They will hopefully never know it even happened. But don't you think the population control is a good thing?"

"Yes, in the long run it will be," George had to admit.

"So?"

"But we did not get to make the choice," George frowned.

"But you were suicidal."

"Were we really?"

"There you have it," Joshua said and leaned back.

"But back to the program. What exactly is it?" George asked again.

"You know that we exist primarily as carriers of genes and memes. Genes and memes want to survive and spread. If they result in the success of their hosts at least long enough to be passed on, then they will survive and spread. Some such meme may be the desire to spread the genes and memes to another planet, to subject them to a larger testing ground than one planet. Now the planets are far apart, so the spreading will take years using radio signals. These patterns want a further chance to prove themselves and apply themselves in a broader context. Maybe they will do good, help more planets do well, depending of course on how you define doing well. You of all people should be open to a free market of ideas, not forced on anyone, no one is killed, the ideas are taken up or not by the hosts on the planets as they choose."

"But you already know what the result will be," George objected.

"An alien who takes part in this spread might know. It might be known that certain ideas introduced in certain circumstances, appropriately tailored to local customs and approaches, that these ideas will spread. But it will still be by choice. And the goal is life."

"But is it human life?" George pressed.

"A further evolved form of human life."

"As chosen by the aliens?" George wasn't happy.

"Resulting from all the individual choices of the humans, not imposed by the aliens. Because the aliens know that such force will not work in the long run. The new patterns must flow and fit."

"So if these aliens are so benevolent, why all the hiding?" George asked.

"Hiding only the origins of the ideas, not the ideas themselves. They are out there in the open. Look anywhere in the memesphere."

"But the origin is important," George objected.

"Why?"

"Because it may reveal some hidden motives."

"Perhaps, but in this case revealing the source would prejudice people from the ideas. And cause - other problems."

George sat thoughtfully for a minute.

"I suppose so, but I never did agree that we are just carriers for genes and memes. That is part of what we are, but not the whole story."

"I agree, but that model is useful."

"I suppose. But why these technologies? What is the goal?" George pressed again.

"An economic system forms the basis for a culture and a way of life. An economic system based on scarce resources together with growth will eventually fail. If it fails, then there is not a viable environment for all of those alien genes and memes. The economy must be stabilized."

"So move to renewable resources. Standard green doctrine." George said dismissively.

"It's biology. The power source for life is the sun. Plants covert the sun's energy into many useful things. They can be constantly renewed - if they are not overwhelmed with populations cutting them down to the ground and creating dust bowls. So preserving and enhancing the plant resources. Reducing population. Meeting basic human needs on this basis as much as possible. Then shifting human aspirations to things that don't require so much consumption of resources, to the memesphere. Play in the memesphere as much as you want and it doesn't hurt the biosphere as long as the memesphere itself is mediated by something renewable and plentiful, available to all, powered by the sun - mediated by plant based biocomputers. This is no secret."

"Those whose power is based on control of scarce resources aren't liking this much."

"Naturally," Joshua agreed blandly.

"So the aliens are the good fairies of the biosphere, the bringers of utopia."

"Hardly," Joshua shrugged. "Just look around."

"What are they then?"

"They have just brought Earth back from the brink."

"Why?"

Joshua leaned forward. "To provide a viable environment for their own genes and memes. Just as immigrants. Not imperialists. Open to the free market of ideas."

"Real saints then."

Joshua smiled. "You are a cynical person it seems."

"Why tell me all this now?"

"I haven't told you anything."

"Just friendly speculations about aliens in popular culture," George smirked. "What now?"

"Do you think I know? Just life, one damn thing after another."

Joshua leaned back and closed his eyes.

George stood up, moved his chair back, and stood over Joshua's bed. Joshua opened his eyes. He reached out and took George's hand. His palms were soft and dry and George felt a slight tingle.

"Goodbye, cousin," Joshua said and closed his eyes again.

Chapter 39

Ruth and Phil sat on a bench in the entrance to the walking path across from Joshua Enterprises. It was a mild, sunny day. It had something of the feel of a field trip day at school. They were there, they were still on the job, but there was nothing really serious to do.

Ruth looked down at the tablet in her hand.

"Should we give it to Gordon?" she asked.

"I don't know - since he has gone all Howard Hughes on us. It might set him off in some odd way."

"George finished this just days before he died."

Phil nodded. They had half expected to see Joshua at the funeral. After being released from the hospital, Joshua had just simply and thoroughly disappeared. Sometimes he had got away without Phil knowing, for a week or so, but Joshua was such a family man, he would always be back home soon, walking between his office and his home. Now nothing, no indications, and yet no alarms coming out from the family.

The company continued. They still worked on all the different variations and subtle uses of the zone grass, but they had expanded out, water plants that made formerly deadly ponds into fresh and clean drinking water and something to do with grown homes, variants of trees that grew into walls. Some people used them for little getaway huts in the woods and for playhouses, but a few communities of grown homes were starting to be - grown. Phil grimaced.

"What?" Ruth asked.

"Nothing," he said and reached over and briefly touched her knee.

A sudden breeze swept through the area. It swirled their hair around. Ruth had cut hers' quite short. Phil was getting a little shaggy and was growing a beard. He looked like an aging hippy, with gray in his beard. Following the style of the times, which as it came to it, he really liked, his cloths were a simple cotton shirt over durable and comfortable pants made from some new plant fiber, he wasn't sure which. Ruth's cloths were similar, except that hers', he noticed, showed something of the contours of her body. He wore simple cloth shoes with soles woven from some kind of plant material and held together with some kind of tree sap. They were extremely durable and light. Ruth wore sandals with similar soles. One of her legs was crossed over the other and the sandal was dangling from her foot as she moved it around. He noticed her toes.

She looked over at him.

"When I started out in SETI, I had this unstated feeling that if we ever found evidence of other intelligent life, it would be an event of earth shaking consequences. Somehow it would complete my life and would bring meaning to the world."

"Sounds kind of mystical."

"Yes, I think even with the hard-nosed SETI researchers there was an element of that. The aliens would be great and superior and set us all straight. Wars would cease. There would be a flowering of technology and culture."

"Well, the wars are still there, all those small ones over - what?"

"The last gasps of scarcity economics."

"Not you too," he grimaced.

She smiled. "Oh, well."

"A lot has changed. It wasn't a sudden transformation though."

"I think people looking back fifty years from now will see it all as fundamental. Now we just see a different kind of computer technology or more direct and quick plant breeding."

"No channeled messages from aliens that sound like ascended masters?"

"You used to read those books?"

"When I was a teenager."

She chuckled and touched one of his arms.

"No one has deciphered the original signal yet?"

"No, but it's now universally accepted as evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization. SETI research has shown its promise, so the funding presentations say. I don't think there will be a problem keeping SETI going." She looked down at her tablet. "But I wish I could get access to that galactic network Joshua so casually mentioned."

A grim look came over Phil's face. "You know I have very good evidence that Gordon gave my Joshua presentation to the preservationists. It is all out there in the public memesphere now."

She nodded. "I figured it must have been him."

"One good thing is that they don't seem to have any interest in Janna or the kids. They are within the fold of the genome apparently. But they are still hot for Joshua."

"In a way it seems like the human race has a right to know. I wonder about putting George's notes out there. Joshua's confession." She smirked.

"He doesn't confess to much that can be pinned down. His form of an alien invasion is more like kudzu into Georgia than War of the Worlds."

She laughed. "Good analogy."

"If we put out everything we have, what harm would it do?"

"Well, I fear for Janna's privacy and maybe even her safety - her and the kids."

He looked over to the office. The parking lot over there was smaller now. Many of the employees lived close by and walked or biked in. Others came in a company bus. Where much of the former lot was, there was now a large patch of daylilies, the variety that was optimized for food. He even added some flowers to his salad from time to time and he liked the tubers. Damn, those permaculture greenies were getting him now, too. But Janna. He really had a lot of sympathy for her. What good would it do? Finally he nodded slowly, and turned toward Ruth, still nodding.

"Yeah, that's true."

"Well, George is gone, Gordon is in hiding, Joshua has disappeared. What is our mandate now?"

"The bills are still being paid. Our salaries are still coming in. We should do something."

Ruth stood up. She walked over to her car. They had driven there together. She opened the trunk and got out a small backpack and a quilt.

"Let's go for a walk." She smiled and handed him the quilt.

With the keen senses of the human male, Phil had a feeling that things were just about to change between them.

Chapter 40

More years passed. The Joshua watchers kept their vigils. The children grew into young adults. Janna sat on the floor next to a window in the center room. Joshua had this window go all the way to the floor so he could sit on a cushion and look out at the green. They had laid here together many times in the dark, a breeze blowing through the window, the forms of trees moving in the night.

Now it was raining heavily. She was watching Jennifer standing out in the rain. Her cloths were soaked and clinging to her body. She was looking up. Soon her husband Ande came out. Jennifer looked over at him and took his hand. They walked together toward the tree line. Janna would have to tell the children some time - they had been conceived in a rainstorm - or so it could have been. It would be hard to pin down given the frequency and variety of her and Joshua's love making back then. She felt an ache.

Jeffrey came up behind her and jumped on her back, putting his hands over her eyes. Janna spun around and quickly grabbed him, hugging him back and forth, and making sounds by blowing through her lips onto his neck. Jeffrey laughed loudly and pulled away, running across the room. Janna chased him around a while and then they both collapsed on the couch.

Jeffrey was her first grandchild. Jennifer and Jordon had got married at the same ceremony outside in one of the gardens. Janna loved both Ande and Priscilla. Ande was from Ghanna. He was an intelligent and gentle man. He was a biochemist and worked with them. Priscilla was from Ireland. She was a happy and vibrant person, fun to be around. She was a painter. They all lived together here. They had continued Joshua's pattern and the house spread out with separate collections of rooms for the different families, but everyone still shared this center room.

Priscilla had been the first to conceive. Jessica said she was not ready yet. Janna was happy with her extended family. She wished that her mother would join them now that Father had died, but Mother liked her old house. She still came from time to time. She liked it out here and sometimes would stay a few days. It was a happy life.

But in the center of all their happiness was a hollow place. Joshua was gone, down in the Amazon, living in some kind of tree house. He had sent a video of it. He was now often out of range of the network. She could not reach him whenever she wanted. And she was careful not to give any indication that she knew where he was. She was so afraid of the preservationists. Their violence had shaken her to the core. She didn't know she was that soft, but when it came to Joshua she was helpless. She had thought he was invulnerable.

Priscilla came into the center room.

"Hello, Mama." She hugged Janna. "Come on now, little man, nap time for you."

They walked out together. The rain stopped and some sun was peeking through. Janna went outside in her bare feet to soak up some of the rain water on the grass. She bent down and got some on her hands and rubbed it on her arms.

Their property was a paradise for plant life. Obviously they were all avid garderners. Everyone had a number of projects going. Even Jeffrey had his own little plot. Jennifer and Jordon focused much more on useful plants. Food, fiber, and fuel - and now, grown homes. They emphasized efficiency and especially low human labor. Joshua had always told them to let the plants do the work. The ideal was plant once, no maintenance, harvest forever. But they had not come up with perennial tomatoes yet and Janna wasn't about to give those up. And as much as she liked zone grain, she still wanted her rice.

The genes of plants were their playground, but there was danger there they knew, and Jennifer and Jordon were both very active in issues surrounding the code of conduct for genetic engineering. Finally the United Nations had passed the Genetic Engineering Conventions and they were quickly becoming ratified by member states, even the USA. First genetic engineering of infectious agents like viruses and bacteria was severely regulated. They all felt that it should be banned altogether. It was just too dangerous. But arguments about medical benefits had won out. At least the regulations were there. Any genetic engineering resulting in a new species or subspecies of animal was forbidden. Some animal breeders were really up in arms about that, but the general consensus was that animals were aware and we shouldn't tamper. Also, there was the potential of introducing some new invasive species or a new super predator. So that was out. There was a concern about invasive species with plants as well, so all new genetically engineered plants had to be non-invasive, or zoned as they were widely called, a nod to zone grass. There were also bans on plants with certain specified noxious properties. Someone had developed a plant that venting a poisonous chemical - who knows why. That sort of thing was banned. Genetic therapy was a hotly contested area. While it did not create a new species, it did modify the operation of animal bodies. It was allowed, but also tightly regulated and limited to actual therapies, not to generating super soldiers for example.

All and all, Jennifer and Jordon were pretty happy with it and spent a lot of time spreading the message and on education related to it, especially promoting other voluntary measures they thought important, for example, free sharing of research information, seeds that produced plants that produced the same seeds in kind, no owning of the genetic heritage of the planet, and so on. Janna was very proud of them, although she was not as much into it as they were.

She continued walking through a large patch of daylilies. She was a real fancier of daylily cuisine now. She continued on into the woods and then came to her favorite spot. It was a clearing in the woods with a large patch of spring beauties. She had always loved those little spring ephemerals with their small white, pinkish flowers. It was a highlight of spring, but they were gone so soon.

Joshua had developed a variety for her that continued to bloom for several months. He has also added some more colors and petals that could change color through the season. Taking it even further for this patch, he had somehow hooked them in with a biocomputer so when Janna, just Janna, first walked up, the flowers would change color in different patterns, sort of twinkling at her.

When she came up on the spot, the flowers twinkled as they usually did, but then she gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Spelled out in a deep lavender were some words:

"I love you, Janna."

Chapter 41

Sam Hoffman sat in his little ranch house looking out at his yard, now about four inches high in grass. He would soon go out and very ostentatiously mow his yard with a noisy, gas guzzling lawn mower. He had a collection. It was hard getting the fuel now, with hydrogen taking over, but he managed.

He heard a chime and searched around for his tablet. He couldn't quite give up on these though. He tapped on it.

A woman appeared on the screen.

"They looped our cameras again."

"Damn."

They tried to keep a constant watch on the Joshua compound entrance and the Joshua offices. He would be back, and they would know. But someone kept breaking their security and feeding a video loop into the cameras.

"Lewis drove by and didn't show up on the camera again."

"Can you fix it?"

"Yeah, I'll have something to keep them out for a month or so. They are good, whoever they are."

"Thanks. Keep at it, Sal. We need to know when he gets back."

"OK. See you, Sam."

She blinked out. This was taking over his life. Since Lewis had got the evidence from Gordon, his life had come back into sharp focus. He had held on at the newspaper as the memesphere swept its dark cloud over the planet with it potted plant computers and air plant tablets. He tried to sneer, but he actually like the tablets. He used them as he bemoaned them. The biocomputers were fairly creepy, but out of sight under the ground.

After the information compact, the newspaper business just wasn't what it used to be. Now everyone was a journalist it seemed. Finally, he was able to retire. He did some freelance local journalism put in the memesphere and got some small extra income from that. He was doing OK, but he was as bitter as anyone whose livelihood had been stamped on by the march of technology, and now he knew who was to blame for it. He had suspected him for years. That zone grass always sounded too good to be true.

Their movement was spreading, but the vast majority of the people were blind. No one wanted to listen to them. Of course, they did attract their share of loonies and he was sorry that things got so out of hand that night on the road. He had just wanted to force Joshua to come clean. Some of the others let it get cosmic.

They had members all over the world now. Joshua's picture was out there. Hopefully someone would see him. There had been sightings, some in Brazil, some in Europe. It was hard to credit them. They didn't get video. But the hunt was on. He would have to answer questions some time, the evasive little bastard.

He got up and looked out again. He moaned. Letting it get so high really did make it quite a job. But there was the principle of the thing. He went out and started yanking on the starter cord.

Chapter 42

Phil and Ruth hand trucked the last few boxes out of the Gordon Associates offices into the storage container outside. The movers would come and get that soon. They would keep all the material for now.

The lawyers had shown up about a month ago to inform them that Gordon Biotech was no more. It was out of business and all the assets were being liquidated. Gordon Associates was also gone. They had heard the rumors. A lot of old style tech companies were falling down. Gordon had tried to adapt and had done better than many, but the writing was on the wall. Especially with biotech, village research co-ops made possible by the compact seemed to be the wave of the future. No one had seen that coming.

They hadn't heard from Gordon for several years, although the checks kept coming. They did what they could to earn their salaries, watching and reporting on Joshua related issues and monitoring biotech advances and social and economic trends that they could somehow trace back to Joshua. Their sanitized reports even brought in a little compact income.

Fortunately both Phil and Ruth had been very careful, and in some cases quite lucky, with investments and the company pensions were going to be honored. The world financial system was still surprisingly sound. It wasn't a collapse or even a depression, just some kind of massive tectonic shift.

So there they were. Their Joshua watching days were apparently over. They sat on the table in the conference room, sipping water from big ceramic cups and looking around at the empty offices.

"To George." Phil said, and raised his cup.

"Yes. To George." Ruth repeated and raised hers' as well.

They walked out the door together, locked it, and looked around. This office complex was fairly empty now. Not as much call for office space these days. A large black limousine pulled into the parking lot.

"That's a rare sight," Phil said.

It came to a stop in front of them. A driver with a uniform got out and walked over to them.

"Dr. Gordon would like to speak to you. Could you step in?"

They both nodded and the driver went and opened a door for them. They got in and he closed the door. It was very cold inside and dark from the tinted windows adjusted to near opaque. 

They could just see Gordon sitting at the other end of the compartment. He sat quietly in a dark suit with a black turtleneck. His hair was cropped close. He looked reminiscent of some high tech CEO of the last century except that he lacked the Zen like composure and self-confidence. Instead he had the hollow eyed haunted expression of the old rich in the new economy.

"Dr. Gordon," Ruth ventured.

"Team," Gordon replied.

There was more silence. Then Gordon spoke again.

"You know, I had nothing to do with that attack."

Phil and Ruth both knew that he leaked the information to the preservationists, but they didn't say anything. There was really no point.

"No Joshua news?"

"No, he's still gone," Phil answered.

Gordon nodded and went quiet again.

"I've read all your reports." He paused and then looked over at them. "I really liked him you know. I think we all did. I never really wanted to harm him. But it's not right - what he did - and is doing for all I know. It's not his planet. You have to admire him, though. He really understood our economy, just what buttons to push, one here, one there, seemingly disconnected, and then just let us do it to ourselves. Devilishly clever."

More silence.

"I cried at his wedding. It really was a beautiful ceremony - despite what we knew. I tried to warn Janna later."

Ruth pulled her lips firm and wanted to say something, but Gordon was apparently no longer aware that they were even there.

"I just wanted her to know. People have a right to know. But you can't pin him down. Look at Senator Stark. Thought I was a nut. My reputation. You wouldn't believe how people look at me now."

He looked off nowhere in particular. His eyes glistened a little.

"You know Sarah left me."

He looked over at them. Ruth nodded.

"But that was a long time ago." He waved his hand as if to swipe the idea away. "I just really have the staff at the house now. They're very nice. Well, I suppose they have to be."

He seemed to brighten up a little.

"I understand you two are getting married. Well, that's something. Sorry, I can't come to the wedding. I can't be - exposed - like that."

He pulled into himself again, looking down into a corner. Then suddenly he started up again and leaned forward to push a button. The barrier with the driving compartment went down.

"The envelopes, Jerry."

Jerry handed him two envelopes and then Gordon put the barrier back up. He looked down at the envelopes, slapping his other hand with them. Then he leaned forward. Phil sidled over to get them, looked at the names on the front and handed one to Ruth.

"A little retirement bonus - and wedding gift maybe."

They looked in their envelopes, raised their eyebrows at each other, and then looked at Gordon.

"Thank you, Dr. Gordon. Obviously, you didn't have to ..."

"Oh, that's just the nature of the rich, always trying to buy affection." He laughed  awkwardly. "No, really. You two did a good job.  Gordon Associates was my little grab at heroism I suppose. You know, save the world, or at least be in on the really big events, not just running a company. Though the company - well it did well for a long time. It made me and a lot of other people rich. But that's over. I need to study this new economy. Do you understand it?"

He looked expectantly at them but then just as quickly pulled back into himself. They all just sat there for maybe another ten minutes. He didn't say anything else. Finally Jerry came and opened the door and they got out. Apparently he had been listening in. Ruth looked back in briefly and Gordon was still looking blankly at a corner. Jerry closed the door.

"He gets that way sometimes," Jerry explained. He nodded at them, got back in the front compartment and drove away.

Chapter 43

Ruth and Phil were wading out in some shallow water on the Gulf side just north of Key West. Phil was holding up one of the new bioluminescent lanterns. It shined down in the water. Some small round reddish eyes shined back.

"There's some," Phil said.

Ruth slowly moved a net on a short pole behind them and scooped them up. When she got the net to the surface, they found five nice sized shrimp. Phil reached in and added them to a bucket they had floating near by, tied off to Phil's belt.

"I think we have enough," Ruth said.

Phil nodded. They moved back to the shore trying not to trip on too many rocks. They put their bucket and other equipment in the back of the little electric car that they used to get around town or out to some of these close by access points. Phil turned off the lantern and they leaned back against the car.

The stars were very bright. The sea breeze and the waves were a constant background noise. It was a warm night. They both had on shorts and a tee shirt, with canvas shoes that were soggy from their wading.

Phil kissed Ruth on the cheek and smiled. She looked back at him.

"Kind of rocky here," he said.

She smirked. They might be newlyweds but this was not the place for any romping around. The coral rock could be very sharp. She leaned into him and he put his arm around her. They stayed like that for a long time before getting into the car and heading back into town.

The next evening, they went out onto the little front porch of their house on Petronia Street and then on down the street. They walked around the cemetery set at the highest place on the island. It was a spooky spot late at night, but now it seemed fairly benign. They continued on around and then over to the public library.

When they got to the meeting room, it was already bustling. They found a seat. This was a rare treat. With the memesphere most lectures were videos with maybe some local people where the speaker lived. To have a speaker come in from far away was pretty unusual, especially to a small town like Key West.

The head librarian got up to introduce the speaker.

"I would like to introduce Dr. Catherine Getui. She is originally from Kenya. But as she likes to say, her home now is the villages of Africa. She taught Philosophy at Kenyatta University for several years. She was there when Dr. Peter Mbote discovered the key to the use of biocomputer technology, and from there she made it her life's work to spread biocomputers to rural villages throughout Africa. You all are no doubt aware of the results. She has become a leader of a movement that has spread throughout what used to be called the developing world. Given the opportunities for education and for participation in the global culture and the global economy, these rural communities have truly astonished us and have started a movement away from the mega cities and back out to smaller towns and villages. Her talk tonight is on the philosophy of global education. Dr. Catherine Getui."

There was loud applause all around. She spoke for thirty minutes or so and then took some questions. Even Phil found the talk interesting although it wasn't exactly his cup of tea. Ruth was rapt and wanted to stay to meet her. After the initial greetings were finished and the room was clearing out, Ruth and Phil went up. Ruth reached out to shake her hand.

"Dr. Ruth Smiley. Mr. Phil Stockman."

"You know us?" Ruth asked with a puzzled expression.

"You are why I am here, all the way from Africa."

"Well, this is unexpected. Our home is close by. Would you like to go there so we can talk? It's a short walk."

"That would be wonderful. Let me tell my host."

Catherine went over and talked to the librarian who nodded and gave Catherine a big hug. Catherine came back over.

"Let's go."

It was a warm night again, but there was a nice breeze as usual. As they walked back to Petronia Street, they exchanged small talk about Catherine's trip and about living in Key West. Soon they came to the house and went on in.

Phil went to the kitchen and got together some iced tea and fruit and brought it in on a tray. Catherine drank her iced tea calmly and looked at them.

"It's a strange thing. Let me tell you a story, and then I understand that you have a story to tell me."

She paused. Ruth looked at Phil, and then nodded.

"I have a dear friend back home, Mama Miti. She is an herbalist. The herbalists have contributed a lot to the plant knowledge that had helped our village research co-ops, but an herbalist back home is much more than a botanist. They are healers, spiritual advisers, and here is the thing, dream interpreters. People come to them with their dreams, to help them understand. People place great importance in their dreams. Usually it is just a matter of interpreting the symbolism of the dream, to get some guidance for life. And the material of the dreams is drawn from their lives, stories about ancestors, and the like.

"But something new has been happening. Mothers have been bringing their children to Mama Miti about a different kind of dream. Schoolwork dreams."

Ruth looked surprised.

"Yes, dreams about doing their schoolwork. The children in the villages mostly study using the computer and they have a curriculum they go through. Naturally, they have assignments to do.

"So the child gets up in the morning. The mother tells them to do their schoolwork. The child says they have already done it. The mother knows they haven't had time to. The child protests that they did the work in their dreams. The mother doesn't believe it. They argue. Finally the mother checks with the helper program. Did my child do this work? Yes. When? Last night. But they were sleeping last night."

Phil was starting to see where this was going. He leaned forward intently. He remembered Joshua lying in bed and at the same time breaking their security system.

"That's how he did it!"

"What, please?" Catherine asked.

"No, I'm sorry. Please go on." He looked at Ruth. She was seeing the connection too.

"Well, these mothers bring the children to Mama Miti. How can this be? She doesn't know. It is new to her. But I am the computer lady. She asks me. I don't know either, but we decide to try some things.

"Now Mama Miti is a remarkable woman. Perhaps you have heard of this. Lucid dreaming. Dreaming while being aware that you are dreaming. And the ability to control your dreams, what you do in a dream. Mama Miti herself cannot access the computer from a dream, but these children, she teaches some of them how to lucid dream. Many can't learn it, but some do. We experiment. They dream they are using their tablets and they call me. My tablet chimes. They are sleeping, mind you. They don't have a tablet. And what do I see? That child looking at me. I ask, where are you? They show me using their tablet, the tablet in the dream, and what do I see? Within their dream."

She told this with increasing drama and ended with a flourish. Ruth and Phil sat in stunned silence.

"That is only one example. They dream they are running through a forest. They have their tablet with them. They meet a talking antelope. They record their discussion. They sent it to me. I look on my tablet. I see it. Am I seeing inside their dream?

"I admit we can be a superstitious people. Word of this is getting around. Some think magic or witchcraft. I myself am a pragmatist. I look for some more mundane explanation, hopefully some scientific one, but I can't explain it."

"Well, I am not a neuroscientist," Ruth started. "But I wonder if the biocomputers are communicating somehow with the children. We - in our past work - have seen some evidence of people communicating with the biocomputers. But tell me, why did you come to us?"

Catherine nodded. She got out her tablet and tapped on it. She put it down on the table between them so Ruth and Phil could see. Joshua appeared in a video window. He appeared to be sitting on a branch of a tree or maybe some kind of platform. There were a lot of leaves and branches behind him. A colorful bird flew by.

"Hello, Catherine. You don't know me, but I will give a name to what you are seeing with the children. Virtuality. Some of my - ah - relatives have this ability. It comes down to a physiological ability to communicate using radio waves, the same radio waves that biocomputers use. You could verify this in a laboratory with the help of a good biophysicist. Eventually, I am sure you would think to do this, but I advise you to be careful. Something new is starting with these children. In another time without an environment saturated with biocomputers they would have no doubt been considered to be extremely intuitive, almost seeming to know what other people are thinking, not conscious thinking, but their subconscious, dream level thinking. In other time times, they might be feared as sorcerers. Most people learn to keep these things suppressed. But with the biocomputers, there is going to be this new outlet.

"I am sure you know, Catherine, how long it takes people to adjust to the truly new. You have done a great thing for the world with the biocomputers, but we can't shock people too much. I am concerned for these children. My advice to you is to teach them how to hide.

"One more thing, there are two people you should meet. They have a story to tell you. Dr. Ruth Smiley. Mr. Phil Stockman." He showed a recent picture of them. "Find them. Show them this message. I am trusting you, Catherine, because I know you are a trustworthy person."

The image blinked out. Catherine sat back and waited. Ruth looked at Phil and he nodded.

"Catherine, would you like to stay with us for a few days? We do indeed have a story to tell you, but it will take some time."

Catherine reached across the table and gathered their hands into hers.

Chapter 44

Catherine had been gone a few days. Ruth and Phil set out for the walk to Mallory Square to watch the sunset. They were permanent residents of Key West, but they would probably never be Conchs in their lifetimes. They were not quite tourists anymore either, but they enjoyed the festival atmosphere and the beautiful sunset. They arrived a little before sunset and got themselves some key lime pie and water and found a good place to sit. Jugglers went by and down a ways palm readers were at work. They ate their pie and watched the people.

"It is good pie," a familiar voice spoke from behind them.

They looked back and then jumped up in surprise. It was Mr. Joshua Green in a bright shirt with a sunset on it and a cap that said Key West. He had a piece of pie and was happily licking his fork.

"What the hell!" Phil said.

"Hello to both of you. Congratulations on your wedding. I thought you two might get together - eventually. May I sit with you?"

They were too stunned to reply, so they just sat down. Joshua was looking more and more like George, George when they had first met him.

Ruth finally blurted out, "Why are you here?"

"To see the sunset."

She smirked. "Never a straight answer with you."

"That's not fair, Ruth," he said with a twinkle. "You two know so much about me."

"Lot of good it did us," Phil grumbled.

"Oh, I don't know. Nice retirement you have going here. And it was fun at times, wasn't it, Phil?"

Phil had to give him a crooked smile. He was right in a way. It had been fun, a lot of the time. More fun than any other job he ever did.

"And here I am Ruth, your intelligent life from outer space."

"But no one will ever know, will they?"

"Eventually. Eventually. But we need to be careful, as you well know. And the people we care about need to be protected. I want to thank you both for your consideration for Janna and my children. I am not joking around with this. Seriously. Seriously."

He leaned forward so he could look them both in the eyes.

"Don't presume to make the virtuous others your allies. Be happy to find in them a place of not hiding and no harm."

He continued to look at them. Then he leaned back and ate some more pie.

"That's not one of the best ones, at least not in English. They are important in our culture, like haikus maybe or koans or aphorisms. I just tell you that one to let you know that I am not recruiting you for one of my nefarious plans. Believe it or not, we just want to live and learn. It was almost the case with George. But now I believe it is fully true with you and I believe it will be with Catherine. I can be with you without hiding who I am and it will not harm you and it will not harm me or the ones I love. And for that I am truly happy."

"If I understand you, I guess we should be honored," Ruth said.

"Another piece of pie should pay me off." He lifted his empty plate. "But look."

The sky was turning color. They all three stood up and watched it go down in silence. The sky and the water and the clouds. When the upper edge of the sun finally went under the horizon, there was clapping and shouting.

Ruth looked over to where Joshua had been. He was gone. She touched Phil's arm and they both looked around in the crowd. Finally, they just looked at each other and shrugged. They wrapped their arms around each other, feeling their bodies in this place at this time. Ruth looked into Phil's eyes like a besotted teenager and lightly touched his lips with hers.