WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE&;#063;

"What Would You Give.....?"

Even the spectacular arrival of the two creatures into the centre of
his study, very nearly failed to disturb him. When the small golden
sphere carved a letter box sized aperture into his dimension, just
behind him, then popped through it into the silent room, his
concentration was so intense that he sensed nothing. When it began to
expand in all directions, like a balloon being pumped full of water,
distending pregnantly until it took on the shape of a gigantic birds
egg, flattening the fibres of the carpet and dislodging flakes of paint
from the ceiling, he still remained glued to his work. Even after, from
its underside, there came a whisper of pressurised gas, as a hermetic
seam was unravelled and two rectangular shell structures drew apart
down its length, his pencil continued to dance across the page leaving
a trail of complex formula in its wake. In the end, it was the sudden
smell discharged by the egg as it drew neatly back from its two
occupants, then simply crackled out of existence, that caused him,
somewhat irritably, to glance up from his work. Smells were the only
thing that ever attracted his attention these days. Smells signified
that food was being ushered into the room, which was usually good. But
on the other hand, it would be his wife that was delivering it, which
was bad. The nagging bitch! He stiffened up and turned, smiling on cue
to greet her.
"What the...." he fell back against his desk in alarm scarcely
registering the sharpness of its edge as it sunk deeply into the back
of his legs.

The two creatures made no movement towards him but he could have been
no more terrified than if they had been a wall of flame that had begun
to consume the room. With whatever it was that they were standing
between him and the door, his precious sanctuary suddenly felt like a
very small and dangerous place to be trapped in.
"Do not be afraid Professor Verall, we have no wish to do you any
harm." Two crisp but distinctly separate voices rang in perfect unison
inside his head. Verall tipped his head forward and cupped the back of
it with his hands, and his eyes rolled over alarmingly looking like he
were trying to peer backwards into the centre of his own skull.
"This is a natural reaction Proffessor Verall, you are hearing our
thoughts, projected directly into your cerebral cortex. It may feel odd
at first but this will quickly pass." Verall tentatively removed his
hands from his head and looked at them in wide eyed wonder.
"You have understood what we have told you Proffessor Verall? You are
able to register the both of us?"
Verall nodded in a daze, resembling suddenly one of his own college
students struggling to come to terms with the beauty of Newtonian
physics.

The two beings were as nothing he had ever seen before, even in
feverish dreams. Yet quite the most striking thing about them, was not
so much how far removed they each were from any creature living upon
God's earth, but how different they were from each other. It seemed
almost comically to Verall that a giraffe and a sea lion would not have
made odder companions than these two.

One was over eight feet tall, of which three quarters of that height
was an intricate mechanical framework. Six elaborate legs fashioned
from unfamiliar materials; stiff unyielding materials with a brilliant
sheen not unlike mercury. The whole structure had an elegance that was
almost beyond description; every strut and brace seemed somehow to have
been teased and caressed into the most breathtakingly sensual curves
and complex eliptical shapes. Any human engineer would have surely been
driven to insanity trying to recreate its majesty, and upon closer
inspection there were angles and curves that no human mathematics had
ever described. The closest comparison Verall could make, was that it
looked vaguely arachnid like, but this was as crude as to compare an
ape with a man. Yet in what appeared to be staggering extravagance,
this technological tour de force appeared to have been constructed
solely to provide a platform for a most primitive life forms. Contained
within a rectangular corral upon the top of the frame sat a single
bright green object, looking like a large blob of mucous, its
gelatinous flesh spilling over the walls of its container like foul
treacle.

The other creature in contrast, was only about the size of a small boy,
standing three or four feet high on five stubby reptilian legs that
emerged from the bottom of an upended cone shaped body. It appeared to
have no arms, but Verall noticed that there were two vertical slits
running down its sides that looked remarkably like pockets in a jacket.
Verall thought that it might perhaps have something resembling arms
stashed inside these slits, but there again, it could simply be how the
thing breathed for there were no other openings upon its body. Its skin
had a texture like worn leather and was a deep blue in colour, save for
a small patch of flesh across its midriff that was criss-crossed with
what looked like veins of bright silver. Even as Verall was attempting
to define them, he saw that they began to throb and thicken before his
eyes. They each swelled to round about an inch in diameter, then
smaller ones began to erupt from them with an audible pop and began to
spread rapidly across to the others like cracks forming in ice. When
they came into contact with another, they fused together like tiny
streams flowing into a river, and each time they did, these silver
cables grew larger whilst the remaining patches of blue skin grew
smaller. Within seconds, the creature looked as if it had stepped
through an enourmous spiders web, and in as short a time again its
original blue skin was no longer visible. For a wondrous moment the
creature resembled a futuristic piece of furniture shaped and honed out
of some dull metal, then the new silver flesh itself began to change,
dipping swiftly through the visible spectrum, sailing into reds as
vivid as Mars, then down through oranges as pallid as the sands of a
desert. When the changeling had concluded its dazzling display Verall
saw that its new skin had lossed its earlier leather like texture and
was now quite smooth and familiar. Its colouring was cornfield yellow,
its texture that of wall plaster. Verall was quite sure that the
creature was now cornfield yellow, because he vividly remembered being
locked out of his study for several days whilst his wife had painted
the walls that very same colour. It had been her attempt to 'brighten
things up', as she had put it. The alien now matched his walls
flawlessly.

Both creatures appeared to have what could be discernible as eyes, but
neither even remotely resembled the structure of the human eye, nor did
either alien possess the standard complement of two. The small alien
had a single eye that emerged from a fibrous hinged lid at the top of
its cone and was an incredible fusion of prisms and living tissue. The
amorphous alien had what appeared to be thousands of tiny copper
coloured telescopes crudely grafted in a semi-circle in the centre of
its body. With a dozen jelly like protrusions, it worked its control
panel furiously to send the telescopes peering in all directions. So
fantastic were the two beings, that Verall found himself unwittingly
taking a step closer so that he could regard them more carefully.
'Professor Verall?' the twin voices rang again in his head. 'Are you
okay? Do not be afraid.'
"No....not.....not afraid," he stammered as his eyes flitted in
astonishment between first one alien then the other.
"You are indeed David Verall, Professor of Applied Physics at Cambridge
University, and Head of research at the Hammond Institute of Emerging
Technologies?", the two distinctly separate voices rang again in his
cranial sutures, as clearly as if they had been his own thoughts.
Verall couldn't help but be impressed, communication through the
vibration of air molecules was such an inefficient process.
"I am." He replied nervously, "who are you?"
"Who we are is not important, what we have to offer you might well
be."
"What is it that you have to offer?"
"We are scientists Professor Verall, much like yourself. Our area of
specialism is in the field of evolutionary engineering. In simple
terms, we are attempting to catalogue the specific motivational forces
that drive the decisions and actions made by the most highly evolved
creatures from planets capable of sustaining life. If further
clarification is necessary, you may think of it as much like the human
field of psychology if you wish." Verall thought he detected a subtle
hint of pride running ostentatiously within their perfectly
synchronised words. He did not share their feelings of self importance.
On hearing the word psychology, his eyes blackened and his sudden and
intense disappointment sent a razor sharp fragment of emotion
barrelling across the telepathic link as if a grenade had gone off
inside his skull. The aliens registered the emotion as an elongated
spike in what had otherwise been a reasonably settling brainwave
pattern. They were surprised by it but as they were in some hurry, they
chose to continue without establishing its origin.
"Desire, Professor Verall, is an abstract concept, yet we have noted
its existence amongst many of the most highly evolved creatures who
inhabit the solar system. Even though in almost every civilisation it
is a complex emotion, and is not physically tangible, it appears to
have a considerable bearing upon the actions and inaction's of beings
of both yours, and many other planets we have visited. In fact our
research has demonstrated that it has been the driving force behind
almost all of the individual and communal struggles that have taken
place throughout the histories of many so called advanced
civilisations. Such is the importance and pre-eminence of this emotion,
particularly on this planet, that we have chosen to devote our academic
career to its study. We have devised a test that we believe allows us
to measure the levels of desire that exist within various
civilisations, with our ultimate aim Professor Verall, being to attempt
to establish a scale that defines where its maxima and minima might
lie."
Verall found himself losing interest, and he glanced back at his notes,
knitting his eyelids together in an attempt to read the last formula.
The aliens continued.
"To establish the ultimate limits of desirability, we are aware that we
must be in a position to offer something that is, by its nature, truly
desirable. We have determined...."
The aliens visceral voices were quickly fading away, becoming lost in a
choking duststorm as Veralls mind disengaged and his thoughts began
galloping back to his equations. He was becoming aroused by the
possibility that he might have the measure of it in only two more
reiterations. He turned and sat back at his desk.
"Professor Verall?" the aliens pleaded. He could barely make out their
voices now, they sounded so very thin and reedy. In fact they sounded a
lot like his wife did on those occassions when she would be in the
middle of recounting her most demanding and complicated case history,
and he would stroll casually out of the room and make himself a coffee.
He smiled to himself.
"Professor Verall?"
"What is it that you are offering?" he replied sharply without looking
up.
Sensing they were losing their audience, the visitors decided to cut
short their well rehearsed speech. "Not a thing Professor Verall, more
an opportunity."
"What would you give Professor Verall, to be able to take a trip into
the future, into earth's future? To see how man has progressed, to
witness at first hand, all that people such as yourself have helped him
to achieve?"
Verall whirled back round and leapt out of the chair, his face already
beginning to flush with excitement.
"What....how far into the future?"
"As far as you wish to go, the choice is entirely yours. What would you
give?" they asked again.
Verall was about to answer but then he paused, and his eyes narrowed in
a most unattractive manner. He began to peer at the aliens as if they
might have been newly discovered germs sitting impetuously at the end
of a microscope; first at the blob and then at the cone, suddenly
unsure of their motives. How did they know about his fantasies, about
his obsessions with the possibility of time travel. Did they know? Wait
a minute, what was this, what was going on here? If there was any hint
of deviance behind their fine words, it was certainly not evident in
the incredible bio-mechanical apparatus that they employed as eyes; he
might as well have been trying to establish the underlying motives
behind the eyes of a stone statue. Was it some elaborate hoax? Another
vicious practical joke by his work colleagues? Goodness knows they had
caught him out enough times before; ever since he had foolishly
confided his long held dreams to one of the lab technicians. No,
impossible. These were aliens of that there was no doubt. No elaborate
trickery could have animated these things that stood before him. So the
offer was genuine then? He wasn't sure. Would beings from an other
world be inclined to play practical jokes? Would they possess such a
human trait? No of course not, how stupid of him to even entertain the
notion. Jokes were the output of feeble minds, not an avenue for three
beings of superior intelligence. Yet still he was suspicious.
"Time travel is not possible," he said testingly
"The means do not exist upon this planet, we grant you that. Your
gravitational and climatic conditions have never been suitable to
encourage the formation of the specific mineral which makes it
possible. But other galaxies contain planets with suitable substrates,
where the immense gravitational fields and elevated temperatures that
exist at the planets surface have made formation of the mineral not
just possible, but inevitable. We have been mining the mineral for many
generations as a source of energy for our own cities."
"I don't follow" Verall said
"Raw energy Proffessor Verall is the single element that makes time
travel possible. Yet in another thousand years the scientist of your
planet will still not have developed a device that is able to produce
the truly enourmous amounts needed to recreate a wormhole in a
laboratory environment. Contained within just one earth kilogram of
this specific mineral, is enough potential energy, if correctly
extracted, to power every electrical device on your planet for ten
thousand years. Yet still the successful establishment of a laboratory
wormhole requires tons of the mineral at a time such is the power
required. You are familiar with wormholes are you not Professor
Verall?"
'I'm familiar with the concept, yes.'
'Not a concept on our planet Professor Verall. Once one wormhole is
established and maintained in a stable condition, it is then only a
matter of ensuring that another wormhole is established and held open
at the intended destination in past or future space. Transport between
the two is instantaneous. The craft that brought us here makes use of
this power.' The aliens fell momentarily silent to allow Verall to
digest their explanation. "But we are not here to give you a science
lesson Professor Verall. We have a limited amount of time to conclude
our research, and therefore this offer is not one that can be mulled
over at length. We must have your answer please, or we must move on and
make our offer to another."
Verall thought quickly; their explanations appeared to make sense. The
argument that it may be physically possible to actually puncture the
fabric of the universe had already been put forward in recent years,
but it was true that the calculations of the energy estimated to do it
had proved it to be astronomical. Then to stretch and hold open such a
puncture, sufficient to permit the insertion of an object that was big
enough to be visible to the human eye - well that required a magnitude
of power almost beyond comprehension. But if it were true that a
suitable power source existed?
He began to tremble as visions of the awesome possibilities of future
travel began to burst like fire crackers behind his eyes. The advances
in technology would surely be breathtaking. His whole career, no almost
his entire life had been spent pondering such advances; trying to
pre-empt the future; trying to shape it with his own imagination. In
fact wasn't that why he had been drawn to the sciences as a young boy?
And wasn't it so that he had knuckled down and driven himself so
insanely towards greater and greater pre-eminance, simply because deep
down he wanted to have the breadth of knowledge necessary to allow him
to explore any and every emerging time travel technology? Now he was
being presented with the opportunity to see at first hand what he had
only yet visualised in exquisite dreams. What would he give, they had
asked him, for the opportunity to view the earth in a hundred years
time, in a thousand, in tens of thousands! With his lips wetting with
excitement and his heart beginning to pound in his chest, he knew that
the truthful answer was anything.
"What is it that you feel I should offer you?" he enquired. "I suspect
that you have something particular in mind."
The two aliens, party to all the flaring emotion streaming down their
telepathic links, turned their elaborate eye mechanisms towards each
other and shared something between them. In his delicious state of
excitement Verall missed it entirely.
"You are very perceptive when you choose to be Professor Verall." the
aliens said. "We would require that you give to us something that you
hold extremely dear to yourself."
"Name it," he replied.
The two aliens fell silent, as if what was to follow was momentous, the
insoluble crux, sure to dissuade even the most eager of participants
from the whole idea. When the next words were spoken there was only one
voice.
"The minimum requirement can not be labelled as an 'it' Professor
Verall."
Verall guessed that it was now the cone alien speaking, as at that
moment the jelly alien extruded a limb of protoplasm to nudge a button
on its control panel. Instantly, the elegant metallic legs took a
single silent step towards him, the structure articulating with the
grace and precision of an Olympic athlete. A quick squirt of mucous
across a touch panel, and suddenly all the telescopes were trained upon
him, their ink black irises studying his face, more precisely, his
reactions.
"In exchange for our offer Professor Verall, you must give to us a
loved one, someone that you hold dear to yourself," the cone alien
said.
"To do what with?" he replied
"What we do with this person can not be revealed. That is - "
"What is it harmful? What?" he interrupted.
"We can not disclose that information Professor Verall. That is the
nature of the test. If the test subject were to be made aware of the
potential fate that awaits the person they select, then our experiment
is corrupted, and any results obtained become immediately subjective.
If the test subject accepts our offer, we have to be certain that it
was in the knowledge that they were totally unaware of what they were
prescribing for the person they selected. It may be that the nominee
will experience the remainder of their life in a joyous utopian
existence where everything they have ever desired is put at their
disposal. We can do that Professor Verall. Or it may be, that the
nominees entitlement to life will expire in considerable pain the
moment that the deal is struck. You should be aware that we can do that
also. What we are trying to say Professor Verall, is that the
motivation behind desirability is quantified purely by the gamble. Do
you understand?"
Verall was thoughtful.
"Your suggesting that by not illustrating what will happen to this
person, be it something good or something singularly dreadful, then I
may decide that my desire for your offer does not outweigh the mental
anguish and feelings of guilt that I would inevitably suffer for what I
may have done to that person?" he asked very clearly and
carefully.
"Such is the nature of our experiment" the cone alien replied
'I just wanted to get it all clear in my mind.' Verall said. "It sounds
a little radical.'
"Science pushes back boundaries Professor Verall, you should know that.
We must return to our homeworld with realistic data and draw
conclusions that are incontestable."
Verall nodded energetically, finding a delightful pleasure in the fact
that there were scientists just like himself performing experiments in
other galaxies, yet still anxious to ensure that their work could not
be refuted by other scientists in their field.
'Yes your quite right' he said.
Then he began to think about who he could nominate. A friend perhaps?
He had no friends. Friends took time and effort to cultivate, time he
was not prepared to give. His time was precious, and jovial, non
consequential conversations of friendship bored him. He thought then of
his wife. Visions of the woman began to form like storm clouds in his
head. Although they had been married for almost six years, he found
with some amusement, that he was unable to clearly bring forth her
image, couldn't exactly summon her likeness in his mind. Instead, all
he was receiving were odd flashes, like jagged lightning; the flagging
smile; the light hearted attempts at conversation; the muffled tears
through the walls whenever her mother came to visit. And the constant
nagging!
"I just want to reach you David. I want us to spend some time together,
not a lot, just an hour an night, one hour out of twenty four, where we
just talk about anything other than your stupid work. Is that too much
to ask? I love you David."
"You should be aware Professor Verall," the cone alien said, "that you
are not the first human that we have approached on this matter, nor are
you likely to be the last. We have..."
Stupid work, how dare she, Verall thought. What did she know about it?
She who was just a physcologist just like these two, and then only
still a student at that. Not a Professor. Where he endeavoured to
expand mans horizons, she merely catered for those weaklings who could
not deal with such expansions.
"visited over fifty others" the cone alien continued, "as part of this
research, but so far we have been unable to find someone who..."
"Take my wife" Verall said quickly, quite casually.
The cone alien fell silent. If the creature with the thousand eyes had
possessed a thousand eyebrows, they might well all have raised at that
moment, so cool had been Verall's response to a fate for his wife, of
which he knew not. The lens of the tiny telescopes, like the black
remorseless eyes of a shark continued to stare at him as if awaiting a
punchline. When none came, the blob, seemingly satisfied, sucked the
temporary limb back into its nucleus and released the button. The legs
flexed and returned it precisely to its original position. Verall felt
the second thought line reattach itself.
"Very well" they both said

A second sphere came then to the room, this one the colour of polished
aluminium, and hovered at Verall's eye level. It went through the same
incredible expansions, until it too resembled an egg, scarcely an inch
taller than Verall himself. He watched it grow and took a cautious step
backwards when a thin line of light appeared like a scar down its
middle, growing larger as the twin doors yawned open.
"How far into the future do you wish to go?" they asked.
Verall was suddenly halted. It was the first thing that he'd really had
to expend any effort thinking about since the bizarre conversation with
the aliens had begun. Gosh this was tricky. He chuckled like a child
being handed the key to the sweet shop. What should it be? Ten years?
No, far to close. A thousand years? No too distant, nothing would be
comprehensible. Fifty years? Yes fifty, that was good, things would
really be different in fifty years time, yet not so much as to be
unintelligible. Besides, going fifty years into the future had a double
advantage. He would be able to see at first hand what marvellous
improvements to human existence his own pioneering work would have
made. Yes fifty years was good.
"Fifty years" he said with a grin sailing across his face.

Again the two aliens swivelled their eyes towards each other, and again
something passed silently between them, but this time Verall did
notice. He was unable to categorise what the something had been. Was it
disappointment? It had seemed like that, but how he might have
determined it, he wasn't sure. Well, no matter, he was only moments
away from the most fantastic experience of his life.
"What happens now?" he inquired.
"Simply step into the capsule and it will take you instantaneously to a
safe location fifty years into the future of this planet."
"How long do I have when I get there?"
"You have as long as you desire," the aliens replied. " The ship will
wait for you."
"And when I return?"
"Neither us or your wife will be here."
Suits me, he thought to himself stepping inside the capsule. Once in,
he turned round and regarded his two new 'friends' as the twin doors
came back together and resealed, fusing into the structure of the egg
as though they had never existed.

When the door of the craft drew open again, there had been no
perception of movement nor of the passage of time, yet what now existed
beyond the capsule was most definitely not the study he had left
behind. Not unless he had returned at night, and somebody had made
meticulous efforts to blank out any light source that might be trying
to chink into the room. Outside the door of the craft there was simply
blackness, nothing more. A blackness that had no beginning and no end,
nor any degree of shade. It was as solid as the thickest canvass and
totally unremitting. He stepped cautiously out. Nothing met his feet
and for a moment he panicked, thinking he was falling. But his stomach
didn't immediately sprint up into his mouth, and when he looked behind
him he saw that he remained level with the base of the egg. So what was
he standing on?

The darkness was impenetrable, yet incredibly, he discovered that he
could see himself perfectly. His arms, his fingers, even his shoelaces
were all clearly visible, but even a millimetre beyond the outline of
his being, there was nothing but the blackness. What on earth was this?
Where on earth was this? What had we done? Immediately his scientific
mind slipped into gear. Was he in a tunnel of some sort? No tunnels had
floors that you could feel. His feet were feeling nothing, there was no
sensation of his own weight bearing down upon solid matter. Yet he
wasn't weightless; he could walk normally upon this pseudo floor, for
in the abscence of it conforming to the most basic of rules, it
certainly appeared to be flat and level. Was he witnessing some form of
precision weather control? A period of absolute darkness followed by a
duration of bright sunshine, the exact climatic conditions for new
breeds of super plants? Again he would surely feel the texture of soil
beneath his feet. This felt almost as if he were walking on water. He
took a few further steps away from the egg, arms outstretched probing
in front of him for obstacles, there were none. The experience was
beyond comprehension yet he was not immediately afraid. The future held
no fears for men of science like himself, the future was as inevitable
and as welcome as each new breath. Experience had taught him that it
was always better than what had passed before; safer and more desirable
no matter how odd it may at first appear. Besides the capsule remained
exactly where he had left it, the door still wide open.
Suddenly he stopped walking, looked down at his feet, and in that
instant an awful comprehension began to come to him like the distant
aroma of hot food. He whirled around sharply, and dashed back to the
egg, but already the door was beginning to close. When he got to it, it
was melting back into the main structure and he beat at it with his
fists, screaming at it to let him in; pleading with it not to leave him
alone in this suddenly terrifying place. The capsule began to shrink
before him until it was a tiny ball again, hovering just in front of
his eyes. He tried to grab it, snatching at it like it were a fly, and
for a second he felt its warm smoothness on his palm. When he turned
over his hand and carefully opened his fingers it was gone, a slight
reddening of the skin his only evidence that it had ever existed.

There were no sounds in this place, nothing, not the chirp of a bird,
nor the distant rumble of traffic or even the sounds of his own
footfalls. That was what had eventually told him, that something about
this featureless world was dangerously wrong. He was a physicist, and
he knew that if he was not falling, then something, however tenuous,
must be supporting him, and the impact of his feet upon it must
therefore create sound. There had been none. Physics had laws, energy
dissipating in the form of sound was one of them. It could not be
broken nor circumvented in any way unless...... Unless he were in a
place that possessed no physical form able to create sound, or more
alarmingly, no reason to create it. At least not for a while anyway! As
the awful truth dawned upon him, he found himself recalling the
words,
If a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody around to hear it, does
it make a sound?
He was in the future all right. The aliens hadn't reneged on their
deal, nor had they been playing a practical joke. Unbeknown to him,
they had been monitoring the busy stream of emotions that he had been
generating, even whilst simultaneously engaging him in conversation,
for they could do that. They could do many things. They had been
optimistic, they had scrupulously filtered the signal, constantly
altered the gain, fine tuned the wavelength of the telepathic channels,
trying to isolate a particular band of emotions emerging from his
corroded soul. . That emotion was love. And if they had detected even a
trace element, they would certainly have congratulated him on passing
the test. Much to their dismay they had been unable to pinpoint even
the faintest of emissions.

So they had granted him his utmost desire and sent him spinning into
the future. But he was in a future that had not yet happened. He had
travelled forward in time, but the earth had not travelled with him, it
had not arrived there yet. No doubt it was still only at three thirty
five p.m, on January twelth 1998, exactly where he had left it, and it
would take another fifty years before it showed up at this current
point and space in time. He was in limbo, in a place that waited
patiently to host a performance that was life on earth like an empty
theatre awaiting a play scheduled to run in fifty years time.

They had said they were studying the limits of mans desire, to
determine just how much he would sacrifice to have what he most craved
for. He realised now, that they had not been on earth to study, they
had been there to mend. On an errand of mercy, an attempt to offer
enlightenment, an urgent mission to repair what was clearly broken.
Their remit had been a simple one; restore harmony, re-awaken long
forgotten feelings, remind those single minded souls of the needs and
existence of others. And why shouldn't they? Are compassion and concern
solely the admirable qualities of beings of earth? Do marriage guidance
councillors have to be human?
They had made an offer to over fifty others, that was what they had
been saying when he had been busy belittling his wife. No doubt
offering what had previously been determined by telepathy as being each
persons ultimate desires. They were about to add that not one of those
fifty had yet accepted. All had passed the ultimate test. In the moment
of reckoning, when asked to hand over a loved one, all had been forced
to seek out long discarded feelings, to unpack them like clothes from
dusty suitcases and be reminded of their remarkably enduring quality,
even after all the years of neglect. In the end, they had been truthful
to themselves and in so doing, all had found, often to their surprise,
that they loved too much to be persuaded. But not him. He had
demonstrated the alarming depths of personal desire, given them the
ultimate limits of one mans hunger in a turbulent stream of raw data,
unpolluted by any hint of love or compassion.
And so in their punishment the visitors demonstrated none of those
qualities either.
His wife, delivered safely into a new life of contentment, would never
hear his fifty years of screaming until the twelth of January
2048.

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